I guess I wouldn’t be a credible interactive marketer if I, too, didn’t post some sort of 2010 predction..right! Well here goes it!
Facebook fan page … Check, Twitter account…check, Business blog…check, Search Engine Optimization program…check, Pay Per Click campaign….Check, eMail communications…Check….and, oh yeah, business web site…..CHECK!
Congratulations! You have just entered into the phase of information and data overload! If you are like the hundreds of other businesses trying to maximize every single interactive marketing channel then 2009 was probably a year when you, head first, dove into interactive marketing by creating all the hot 2.0 web technology offerings. Most of them are free so why not….right? So now what?
The answer, I believe, lies in the new level of service offerings for 2010 and beyond. 2010 will be the year of the dashboard. This will be the year when we see technology firms and interactive marketers realize that simply creating all of these channels isn’t enough to justify the cost that many businesses are investing.
Marketers will need to start justifying social marketing activities with real metrics and real business cases. Those who hold the purse strings for budgets will want to see real results.
That said this will be the year that listening platforms and analytic tools merge to create custom dashboards which will allow you, at a glance, to see important metrics like how many fans you now have, how many followers or retweets, your keyword performance, email data, average rating at review sites, website mentions, and conversion metrics from your web site (if you even have one in 2010~ another trend I’ll discuss at a later date is the idea that some businesses are opting to lean on social channels rather than ALSO having a web site…interesting trend to watch).
I predict that by the start of 2011 most of us will have an easy to use dashboard and probably even a scalable widget to see all of our important metrics in once place which will allow us to easily monitor and optimize….at least this is what I’m hoping for.
Until a full service (without the extremely costly fees) is available to us (Google are you listening?) make sure you take the time to understand how and when to access all the multiple marketing touch points and get yourself into a regular routine of checking those reports. Set some time aside one day of every week and evaluate. You should be able to pull the most important information from all locations in less than an hour if you get yourself into a regular routine of checking
Here’s to 2010 and to making data sexy!
January 23, 2010
Uncategorized