Latest Developments in Online Marketing Strategy

A former colleague who's been out of the 'web game' for a number of years asked me what the latest developments have been. I took a while to compose this email to him:

I'd say the biggest ongoing change is that the concept of managing all online touch points together seems to be firmly established and generally practiced by leading companies. They don't often use that term, nor even exactly understand that they're doing it, but there is a much greater effort to engage target consumers where they are online -- social networking sites, totally planned search paths, microsites for retailer sites, etc. Some people refer to this a 'fishing where the fish are', and are much less concerned with generating traffic to their own site.

In terms of actual sites -- they've also become much more sophisticated in thinking about 'action architecture' of their sites. When users eventually come to an actual site, what is it they want to do, and what do we want them to experience / accomplish? How do we get them down some funnel, be it purchase or lead generation? Web analytics are also much more sophisticated and widely used.

Social continues to grow, and some people believe that it may essentially eclipse email over time. That said, setting a company-specific social strategy is key as there is such a tremendous difference in engagement models between B2B organizations, B2C, etc.

Search has become much more sophisticated, from terms to target, SEO tactics, copy, and finally search landing pages and paths on sites. It's really the most scientific area of all -- marketers can very clearly see why people are coming to the site and then provide information and experiences to get them hooked in.

Mobile is big and getting bigger. As contracts are rolling over a high percentage of adults are getting smart phones. Some analysts believe that in the next couple of years smart phones will be nearly a 'given' for business professionals. This is in many ways a reverse back to more simple site experiences. You just can't serve gigantic video or flash objects to mobile devices, and mobile interfaces are a challenge primarily because of the size of the screen. This necessitates even more detailed planning of exactly what needs to be offered... getting away from gigantic pages full of flash objects and 25 links...