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The Hottest Marketing Trends for 2008
Learn about the hottest new marketing trends plus the best ways to increase sales in 2008.
By Kim T. Gordon | December 20, 2007

Marketers nationwide are setting their plans in motion for 2008. Big-name brands will embrace new technologies and adjust their budgets in some surprising ways. And as an entrepreneur, you can use some of these tactics to reach your own audience in the coming year.

In 2008, you can expect major marketing trends to include:

A shift from traditional to "alternative" media

Advertising in newspapers and magazines, and on radio and TV will continue to be marketing staples, but spending in new media will show the biggest growth as advertisers move money into online, mobile and alternative out-of-home advertising. Many marketers are finding alternative media the best way to reach audiences effectively and to yield a measurable ROI. A communications industry forecast published by Veronis Suhler Stevenson predicts alternative advertising spending will increase more than 23 percent from 2006 to 2011, while traditional advertising will have a compound annual growth rate of just over 1 percent.

A growth spurt for interactive marketing

Interactive marketing spending will more than triple over the next five years, reaching $61 billion by 2012, according to Forrester Research. To put this into context, interactive marketing, which currently accounts for just 8 percent of all ad spending, will increase to 18 percent of marketers' total advertising budgets in five years.

Interactive encompasses new marketing channels such as e-mail and search marketing, online video ads and social media. Mobile marketing, also a form of interactive media, is getting hotter as consumers become increasingly comfortable using personal computing handsets. Other emerging channels, including game marketing, podcasts and RSS feeds, will claim increasingly larger shares of marketers' budgets.

More off-line support for online campaigns

Here's where the value of advertising synergy hits home. In 2008 and beyond, the trend toward using off-line media to drive customers to the web will continue and pick up speed. Traditional media are increasingly relied on to support new interactive campaigns. Display advertising, in particular, will be the workhorse that Forrester Research predicts will reach $14 billion by 2012.

TV is another traditional advertising medium that will increasingly be used to pique consumer interest and point prospects to a website where they can find more in-depth information. Once there, entertaining online video ads may be used to tell a longer, more involved story. Consumer adoption of online video is growing, and most age groups are expected to step up its use in 2008.

Taking Advantage of the Trends

In 2008, the major marketers who set the trends will help consumers adopt new media consumption methods. And they'll pave the way for small business owners to follow suit without the risk or heavy financial outlay.

Here are four ways to increase sales and your advertising ROI by capitalizing on the hottest trends for 2008.

1. Engage the customer. The move toward alternative advertising versus some of the more traditional methods coincides with the emergence of technologies that enable a one-on-one dialogue with customers. For example, follow the trend of social media by posting your products on sites that encourage customer or peer reviews. Social media add an element of impartiality and are increasingly looked to as reliable sources of information.

2. Integrate your off-line and online campaigns. Look for ways to use off-line media to drive traffic to a website with specialized landing pages that tell a deeper story. Use print and TV ads to start the customer education process and direct potential buyers online to learn more and take the next steps in the purchase process. And direct an e-mail campaign to your current customer database to offset the cost of direct mail. Simply alternate e-mail and postal mail for a cost-effective one-two punch.

3. Move some off-line dollars online. Online advertising now offers a strong alternative to some traditional media, such as print yellow pages. Consider moving some of your traditional directory advertising dollars into online directories and search engines. The vast majority of Americans research their products online before making purchases, so a paid search campaign is an ideal way to make sure you turn up at the top of search results.

4. Follow your customer. Alternative out-of-home advertising opportunities let you place your message wherever your customers go. You can put your name and company logo on the umbrellas used by urban street vendors, or name hiking trails in wilderness areas. The key to using these new opportunities effectively is to place your message where it will appear in the proper context and reach your potential customers when they are in the right frame of mind.

The new year comes full of high-return marketing opportunities. By closely watching the hottest trends, you can make smart choices that let you step ahead of your slower-moving competitors.
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Courtesy of Entrepreneur.com

[Bulletbobber]

jmenq2,

Here is an idea for some YE to run with!

There is a lot of money spent on marketing but it may end someday soon!

I see the day coming when any company will be able to get a list of email addresses of all the folks that want information on NEW PRODUCTS split up in SPECIFIC CATAGORIES for FREE, well almost for free. This would allow anyone to direct market to their target audience and cut out all the middleman and and reduce prices by 20% to 75% on some products.

Things like TIVO are popular because they eleimaniate commercials and these same people don't want junk mail in their inbox or mailbox out by the road. But those same folks do go online to find what they want and would provide an email address to keep them up on the latest if they could restrict the catagories and were assured it would not be repeat junk email.

Maybe - www what you want com - could be a big thing!

A .com company providing this service as an affiliate and have companies provide discount codes to track sales at a very low standard rate for all companies might go a long way!

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Originally Posted by Bulletbobber

jmenq2,

Here is an idea for some YE to run with!

There is a lot of money spent on marketing but it may end someday soon!

I see the day coming when any company will be able to get a list of email addresses of all the folks that want information on NEW PRODUCTS split up in SPECIFIC CATAGORIES for FREE, well almost for free. This would allow anyone to direct market to their target audience and cut out all the middleman and and reduce prices by 20% to 75% on some products.

Things like TIVO are popular because they eleimaniate commercials and these same people don't want junk mail in their inbox or mailbox out by the road. But those same folks do go online to find what they want and would provide an email address to keep them up on the latest if they could restrict the catagories and were assured it would not be repeat junk email.

Maybe - www what you want com - could be a big thing!

A .com company providing this service as an affiliate and have companies provide discount codes to track sales at a very low standard rate for all companies might go a long way!

Naw. There will never be an end to money spent on marketing. It may shift - from television commercials to product placement, for example - but there will be no end to money spent on marketing.

Whether someone could keep certain email out of their inbox through spam blocking or not wouldn't change the effectiveness of such marketing. People simply recognize it as spam and delete it without reading it. Even targeting it to people with that interest will just create a greater numbness to email spam.

The positive of this is that it would create even more business for email filtering services. Hell, if I was a provider of such services, I would be the one coming up with these types of marketing tools, so as to create greater business for myself while making a quick buck off of people looking for quick and cheap marketing avenues.

[Bulletbobber]

I know enough to never say never.

It will take time but cutting out the middle man or cutting him down to size a little bit at a time will happen. Folks want it cheap and suppliers are willing to help make it happen and keep a little mor for themselves.

That means both ends want to delete the middle guy!

It will take a website with a good reputation for controlling what gets through but sooner or later the middle guy (marketers) will loose out because of the internet.

I am not bashing you by any means and what you have writen is good info for today but I have seen things change and change is the only I am certain of!

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Here is the statement that you made:

"There is a lot of money spent on marketing but it may end someday soon!"

Under what circumstances do you see this occurring? The end of the world is the only situation I see. Please enlighten.

[Woodcs82]

No marketing = No sales.

People will always have a marketing budget.

[Bulletbobber]

"There is a lot of money spent on marketing but it may end someday soon!"

I meant that the amount may end being a lot soon and didn't mean to imply that marketing would ever end!

You don't have to go any further then the success stories on this site to see that middleman are being replaced by more economical midlemen.
wow my traffic today is insane!! You have to ask yourself why this guy is doing good today when it probably wasn't possible 3 years ago.

The playing field is leveling and anyone can do what the big marketing guys can do and do it cheaper. I will also grant you that many big companies are locked in the paradigm and that spending on advertising during the Superbowl may never go away. But you must also agree that the number of people getting TIVO is increasing and the return on marketing is lowering all the time.

I'll give in to everything you say if you just give me an email list of all my potential buyers. I don't care how you get it, just get it, and makes us both rich! You would become the ultimate one stop shop marketing dude. You would be able to instantly what use to take 100,000,000 phone calls.

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I don't understand. You stated that eventually there will be little to no money spent on marketing. I am just trying to understand you're reasoning. Sure, the marketing world is ever changing, as markets and technology change. However, I fail to see why money spent on marketing will soon dry up. I could go on with example after example, analysis after analysis, and fact after fact, but I think that the conclusion is so self explanatory that it doesn't warrant the time to do so.

[Bulletbobber]

I just think that marketing is a part of the supply chain that will see a big change. Marketing is all about connecting sellers with buyers.
The internet keeps making it easier to connect without marketers i.e. Ebay.

Data bases of buyers traits and their email addresses could be searched to find the most likely buyers making it simple, more direct and require less marketing money.

The definition of a good marketing company would become the one with the biggest data base.

Yet it still requires graphics and or video work to produce what you send to buyers and that is also part of marketing but even the tools to do it are getting easier and more folks can do their own or have someone in India do it. World sourcing keeps getting easier too.