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Marketing in 2010

By Jacqueline Drew
START Marketing Inc.
www.startmarketing.com

Is your business still partying like it 's 1999? Well, if you haven 't gotten out and really explored the new business landscape, then it 's time to stick your nose into 2010! There are tons of new things happening in marketing, and we 'd like to tell you about some of the new developments, and why you need to get on board.

1. Search Rankings Replace Yellow Pages. Peel that budget off the old yellow pages because people are using their computers now! It is critical that your website is well written, designed, and that it can be found using the right searches, it will generate a great number of leads for you. Should you use the online yellow pages listings? There’s really no need if you are easy to find using keyword searches.
2. Fresh or Stale? It is critical to keep your web presence up to date, and build in tools that make it easy for you to do so. Some web design companies offer Content Management Systems (basically an updating interface) to do this yourself, but in fact you can have your web developer create blogs (such as Wordpress) to make it easy for you to do this yourself. People are going to seek content, and lots of fresh content, to impress them, more than just a stale old brochure style website.
3. Engage in Communities. Through new online communities like LinkedIn and Facebook, we have opportunities to find and interact with professionals in specialized industries (through LinkedIn groups), or those with specific interests (in Facebook). If you want to reach outward to get to know other professionals in your field, or in market segment you wish to target, this is like going to a global trade show for no cost at all! Getting involved in these groups, and building a profile and reputation for yourself, is going to become important to compete in a global marketplace
4. Integrity can save you or fry you. Interactive online communities such as Twitter, Facebook and Linked In are quickly accelerating public relations. If you do great things, you could be famous instantly. If you screw up or upset people, you could be torched on the internet. So what can you do? Google your company or yourself daily? Search Twitter for comments? Even better, you can sign up for reputation management services that alert you based on the negativity of the comments. There are several such tools available online, such as samepoint.com.

Most importantly, spending time interacting with groups and online will allow you to stay ahead of new developments in your industry, and prevent you from being blindsided by new competitors. The landscape has changed so much, that doing the same old marketing and sales strategies just is not enough, even if your product or service is still the best. Nothing ever sells itself!