ANTenna Blog -- Business & E-Business

I had the pleasure of talking briefly about bMighty.com at a BtoB NetMarketing Breakfast meeting this week, and a couple of marketing veterans at the San Francisco event gave presentations containing some real insights online digital marketing for business owners. Fortunately, bMighty loves to share…

The event moderator, Kate Maddox from BtoB Magazine, noted that while overall ad spending growth for 2009 is now being revised down from 3.5% to just 1% (hey, at least it's growing), online ad spending is expected to grow 15% to some $11.5 billion. And Gordon Abel, director of media and digital marketing at Barclays Global Investors Service, laid out 7 key trends on how that money will best be spent "in the post broadcast age."

Abel said marketing is becoming more:

1. Addressable: Abel predicted a big increase in 1–to-1 marketing techniques, where campaigns are increasingly tailored and targeted to individual needs and wants.

2. Mobile: 70%-90% of US adults carry cell phones, and many professionals are "married" to their Blackberries, Treos, and iPhones. Abel said Barclays is experimenting with mobile advertising (including links to "activate" print and out of home ads, as well as click-to-call features), mobile communications (e-mail for now, but texting could be next), and mobile applications to reach them.

3. Searchable: Abel said marketing is become more universal, but also more vertical and contextual.

4. Social: Discovery, not just delivery, is the key, Abel said.

5. Interactive: Increasingly, customers don't just want to consume a marketing message, they want to interact with it to get the exact information they want.

6. Transactional: Today's technology allows far more than just getting the word out. You can actually make the sale on the spot.

7. Everywhere: Abel mentioned in-car advertising as an intriguing possibility, and cited the Microsoft / Ford synch system as a possible platform.

I agree with all seven of Abel's trends, and would like add a one of my own as well:

8. Local: As people become increasingly mobile and increasingly connected, the opportunity and value of contacting them with personalized, localized, and even time-sensitive marketing has never been greater.

Mark Wilson, VP of corporate marketing for Sybase, also presented at the event, and he offered up a couple of great low-cost ways to boost your marketing impact, based on his own experiences.

First, Wilson talked about how Sybase spent less than $15,000 to turn a dark, little-used conference room into a full-fledged TV studio, with camera, green screen, lighting, whiteboards, and more. He hired an intern from the San Francisco Academy of Art for $15/hour to handle the technical stuff, and Sybase now creates all kinds of videos at very low cost. Adding video to newsletters has boosted click-through rates by 50%, Wilson said, and Sybase shoots videos for product announcements and puts them on YouTube. They even video customers and use the testimonials in sales presentations.

Wilson's second thrifty tip is to track what people are saying about your company -- and its competitors -- in online forums and social media networks. Employing a company called Crimson Hexagon, Sybase can find out what people think of its products, and also what topics its customer community is interested in, so that it address it marketing messages to those concerns. Wilson said it cost Sybase less than $10,000 to get started with this technique.