10 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2007

By Kim T. Gordon

Throughout 2006, I've been watching and interpreting the marketing stats and studies that impact small businesses to give you tips on staying one step ahead. Now, with 2007 fast approaching, let's look at a roundup of the hottest trends, from changes taking place among consumer audiences through what to watch for in traditional and online marketing. Here's the info you need on the most important trends and how to make the most of them to increase sales and grow your business in the New Year.

Consumer Trends

1. College Grads
If you're searching for the most effective way to reach this desirable prospect group, move your marketing dollars into online media. The internet is now the primary source of media and entertainment among college grads, whose top planned purchases upon graduation are professional clothing, travel/airline tickets, health insurance and furniture according to the “Y2M: eGrad College Graduate Survey”. Nearly 80 percent of respondents are online purchasers, making them ideal candidates for your online campaign

2. Affluent Working Women
The big news is that this group is increasing in size, and the best way to reach them may be online. According to The Media Audit, affluent working women with family incomes of $75,000 or more are growing in number, and 94.3 percent access the internet during an average month. About half are now considered heavy users of the internet, while heavy use of radio, television, newspapers and direct mail has all declined within this group. To increase sales from this expanding audience, alter your media spending to place greater emphasis online.

3. Asian Population Growth
The southern region of the U.S. boasts the fastest Asian population growth rate (31 percent), followed by the Midwest (24 percent), the Northeast (23 percent) and the West (19 percent), according to an analysis of Census Bureau data in the “American Community Survey” by Kang & Lee Advertising. Asians represent a prospect group with higher than average household incomes and education levels. Can you offer a product or service that will appeal to this growing market?

4. Word-Of-Mouth
Want to build buzz? Lucid Marketing's study, "U.S. Adults: Word of Mouth Communications," found that women were more likely than men to share a positive experience with a business or recommend an enjoyable product; full-time employees made substantially more daily contacts than those not in the workforce; and people with household earnings of more than $100,000 were more likely to make recommendations than those earning less. So buzz marketers should direct efforts to these three "chatty" groups.

Trends in Traditional Media

5. Yellow Pages
According to a study from the Kelsey group, marketers targeting younger demographics should transition away from print. Only 28 percent of teens said they would turn to print Yellow Pages first to find a local business, product, or service, while 47 percent said their first choice would be search engines. And just 44 percent of respondents between the ages and 18 and 34 favored print Yellow Pages.

6. Simultaneous Media Usage
There's no longer such a thing as a captive media audience--consumers are frequently participating in more than one form of media at any one time. Seventy percent of web users, for instance, watch TV occasionally to regularly while online, according to BIGresearch’s “Simultaneous Media Survey.” It also found that nearly 65 percent watch TV while they read, and 51 percent of radio listeners read the newspaper while listening. The rise in multitasking among consumers mandates an integrated media approach and an increased emphasis on advertising within the most relevant and engaging content.

7. Newspapers
This past year, many of the websites of major newspapers have become the number-one portals in their geographic markets and are drawing a larger, younger and more affluent readership. The audience that reads a newspaper’s website but not its print version accounts for 2 to 15 percent of the Integrated Newspaper Audience, according to Scarborough Research, and that represents hundreds of thousands of readers for many newspapers in larger markets. They’re successfully attracting 18-to-34-year-olds to their sites, and the online readers are more upscale, which can make them a more desirable audience. If you're an advertiser in the "print" newspaper, you can negotiate for a combo rate to run online as well to reach these additional readers. And if advertising in the print newspaper is too expensive for your business, you may find more affordable rates online by drilling down past the main pages to place ads on content-rich, but less frequently visited web pages.

Hot Online Trends

8. Web Conferencing
As business travel becomes increasingly challenging due to increased security, advance check-in times and transportation delays, online workshops and meetings that require no travel are coming to the forefront. It’s more desirable than ever to demo your new product to a group or make a sales presentation without anyone ever leaving home. Participants can watch your presentation on their computer monitors and hear you live on their computer speakers or by phone. In fact, I'm now transitioning to this technology to deliver webinars, and you can, too.

9. Online Research
Whether you sell exclusively online or primarily through a brick-and-mortar site, online search will have a profound impact on your sales in 2007. When asked how often they researched products online before buying them in person or in a store, 87 percent of nearly 7,500 respondents to a BIGresearch “Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey” said they did so occasionally to regularly. And a comScore research study showed that 63 percent of searchers completed a purchase in offline retail stores following their search activity. So no matter whether you sell online, off-line or both, you need a great website with deep, persuasive content that keeps your prospects and customers shopping on your site or sends them to your store.

10. Local Search
Want to know where to invest your online marketing dollars in 2007? Aim for higher rankings in the top search engines. Sixty-two percent of searchers click on a link within the first page of results, according to a report from iProspect and Jupiter Research. To win higher rankings in natural search results, you can optimize your site by sprinkling the keyword phrases your best prospects will be searching for throughout all the pages of your site, in your page descriptions and in metatags. You should also secure links to your site from other high-ranking websites. But to guarantee you'll turn up in the top search results, invest in a paid search campaign. Local search campaigns are often the most affordable and will bring traffic from your immediate market area in the New Year.

Condemned To Google Hell

Beginning in September 2006, Skyfacet no longer showed up on the first few pages of Google's results when users typed in search terms like "diamonds" and "engagement ring." The site's traffic vanished, and Sanar says his sales dropped $500,000 in three months.

What happened? Sanar isn't completely sure. But he does know that his site has been condemned to the supplemental index, a dreaded backwater region of Google search results that goes by another name in online marketing circles: Google Hell.

Google Hell is the worst fear of the untold numbers of companies that depend on search results to keep their business visible online. Getting stuck there means most users will never see the site, or at least many of the site's pages, when they enter certain keywords. And getting out can be next to impossible--because site operators often don't know what they did to get placed there.

Google's programmers appear to have created the supplemental index with the best intentions. It's designed to lighten the workload of Google's "spider," the algorithm that constantly combs and categorizes the Web's pages. Google uses the index as a holding pen for pages it deems to be of low quality or designed to appear artificially high in search results.

Those pages are scanned far less frequently than those in the main index, meaning that once a page is marked for Google Hell, it can languish there for as long as a year before Google even deigns it worthy of a reappraisal. And as Google tries to manage an explosively growing Web, more and more sites are finding themselves thrown into the search engine's digital dungeon.

If that makes the world's leading Web-crawler sound judgmental, consider Google's difficult position. The search juggernaut is faced with the endless task of reading and ranking the ever-expanding Web's billions of pages, the equivalent of putting the Earth's population in order from tallest to shortest every few minutes. Meanwhile there are growing numbers of pages filled only with junk text and advertising, designed solely to fool the engine. It's Google's task to sort out the trash from the worthwhile, and to do it better and faster than competitors like Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ), Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), or InterActiveCorp's (nasdaq: IACI - news - people ) Ask.com

Work-At-Home Moms

The ability of at-home moms to earn an income is also being driven by technology such as high-speed Internet access, the increase in home computers and a greater willingness by cost-conscious companies to rely on free agents rather than hiring full-time staff.

The work-at-home moms might work irregular hours, after their husbands come home from work or when their children are in school. They often work as independent contractors; most don't get health benefits.

Networking services for this labor pool are also growing. Home-based working moms are organizing their own business conferences, and many glean business tips from others through Web sites devoted to making money while staying at home with children.

DOUBLECLICK UNVEILS ONLINE MARKETPLACE

Article By Doubleclick Digital Advertising

• The DoubleClick Advertising Exchange service solves both problems by providing advertisers, agencies, publishers and ad networks with a dynamic marketplace where they can buy and sell online display advertising - impression by impression - with greater efficiency, transparency and control.

Video on the Internet has become increasingly sophisticated thanks to advances in technology that have enriched the experience for consumers. Additionally, online video provides advertisers the opportunity to interact with their audiences in a way that is increasingly dynamic—with live, streaming video taking this new media even one step further in advancement. Read More

What Is Podcasting?

Podcasting is a simple way for us to distribute MP3 files and for you to receive them. By subscribing to our podcast using a podcast reader, you'll receive automatic updates of our new shows. Podcasting's initial appeal was to allow individuals to distribute their own "radio shows," but the system quickly became used in a wide variety of other ways, including distribution of school lessons, official and unofficial audio tours of museums, conference meeting alerts and updates, and by police departments to distribute public safety messages.

I've never used podcasts for marketing but I know that all the "BIG" dogs are doing it. They're relatively easy way to get friendly with your prospects.

Want to listen to your favorite radio shows and audio and video programs anytime? The iTunes Store offers tens of thousands of podcasts, from both big names and independent creators.

Marketing Method For Your Home-Based Business

Part of running a successful business is its growth. Home-based businesses are no exception. In fact, it can be even more important if you are just starting out or lack a potential client base. The key to growing a business is marketing.
Marketing is how you connect with individuals who may become customers or clients and includes methods such as affiliate programs, newsletters, trade shows, web sites, brochures, advertising, and more. The potential marketing methods available are almost limitless in scope and deciding on an approach may seem daunting, but a little preliminary effort can help you narrow down the field of options and help you make the best choices for your business.

–Determine Targeted Audience
–Set a Budget
–Evaluate Marketing Methods

Marketing Your Home-Based Business on the Internet

The Internet has opened up a whole new world of advertising and marketing for home-based businesses. Instead of having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on expensive print campaigns or mailings, you can now reach a global audience on a shoestring budget. Here are some of the popular and cost-effective ways that you can advertise your home-based business on the Internet.
Internet advertising can be broken down into three main categories:

1. Cost-per-click, where you only pay for actual clicks or leads for your advertising.

2. Cost-per-impression, often referred to as cost-per-thousand impressions or CPM, where you purchase a set amount of views for your ad.

3. Set-price advertising, where you can purchase a specific amount of advertising for a given length of time.

Cost-per-click advertising offers small business owners great value for their advertising dollar. There are several sites that offer the ability to pay only when customers click on your ads.
Google AdWords is one of the most popular advertising venues for small businesses. With the AdWords program, you bid on keywords related to your business, and your text ad is displayed when Google users search for that term. You pay only when a user clicks on your ad, and the cost per click varies according to the popularity of the keywords you select. Google AdWords does not require a minimum purchase, and you can easily spend less than $25 for a successful advertising campaign by using AdWords properly.