Marketing in 2008 became decidedly social — and 2009 will see the social elements of marketing accelerate. Social media went from being on the cutting edge, to approaching the mainstream. When I say “social” I mean marketing driven by word-of-mouth relationships.

As you go through each of the following small business marketing trends, you’ll see how powerful the social component is for getting and keeping your ideal customer. Just remember, your customers control your brand, so act accordingly.

1. AUTHENTICITY– In 2009, the focus is on “authenticity” and letting the real people behind your company be visible and show through — no more hiding behind a faceless website filled with the word “We.” Instead, it’s “I.” Consumers and B2B buyers expect to know who they are dealing with before hiring your company.

In the event of a problem with your products, consumers want a real person to reach out to, whether it’s AngelaAtHP or ComcastCares on Twitter, or the Web designer you want to hire who actively participates in Facebook and Plurk. Business people are connecting one-to-one through social media sites and this activity will continue.

How to take advantage of this trend:

• Set up a social media presence in your real name on sites like Twitter.com, and interact with customers and prospects, mixing in personal information as well as business information. Examples: @ShaneGoldberg (Shane Goldberg, founder of Extreme Member),  @TimBerry (Tim Berry, President of Palo Alto Software), and @pixily (Prasad Thammineni, CEO of Pixily).
• Set up profiles and groups on Facebook and start recruiting customers to join.
• Create at least one blog to keep customers educated either about your industry or your products and services.

2. DO IT YOURSELF MARKETING – A study by the Yellow Pages Association of America found that more than half of all small businesses say that getting and keeping customers is a challenge, yet nearly two-thirds say they will NOT get any outside help in marketing. The costs of traditional advertising is going up with newspaper ad rates growing 18%, while the effectiveness of traditional marketing is coming down with newspaper readership coming down. In 1992 it took three touches to reach your buyer — and today it takes more than eight!

How to take advantage of this trend:

• Do some market research. Use free online survey tools like SurveyMonkey or QuestionPro to find out what’s really important to your customers.
• Invest in direct marketing. Take the time to build your customer lists and start sending direct messages to your customers whenever possible. Use the information you learned from your surveys to target your message. If you can’t afford direct snail mail, then do email marketing, which is cheaper.
• Post videos and slide shows on your web site and/or blog. Video a demonstration or collect testimonials from customers. Google likes video content, increasing your chances of being found online. By posting slide shows on your site and on SlideShare, you can reach two audiences – those on social sites like Slideshare and those that come to your site directly. And you make your existing presentations and documents do double duty by posting them online.

3. TECH-DRIVEN WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING – 68% of your customers will leave you because they don’t see the difference between you and the other guy. This is why word-of-mouth-marketing will become even more popular in 2009. Loyal customers tell their friends and family WHY to choose you. With so much advertising around us. small businesses will have to penetrate deep “firewalls” of resistance to get to their ideal customers.

How to take advantage of this trend:

• Put a forum section on your web site and run ongoing Q&As with your customers. This will give you the REAL reasons that they choose you.
• Start a referral or affiliate program. It’s as simple as approaching those businesses who serve your customers BEFORE they get to you. A good example is car dealers can refer insurance agents. Clothing retailers can recommend dry cleaners. Look ahead of you in the supply chain and behind you in the supply chain and start referring and collecting referrals.
• Measure your Net Promoter Score. Fred Reicheld wrote a book called “The Ultimate Question” that discovered that this single greatest predictor of profitability was the answer to the question “How likely are you to refer [this company] to friends and family?”

4. ECO AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY – “Green” has gone mainstream. It’s not just a trendy thing to say anymore. In 2009, letting your customers know that your product or service is eco-and socially responsible is literally a feature you want to communicate. A BBDO (Ad Agency) study recently showed that younger consumers made purchasing decisions based on how what “difference you made in the world.” Whether you’re into this trend or not — many consumers have put this on their criteria list.

How to take advantage of this trend:

• Promote whatever community programs or ecologically friendly projects or practices that you have. Don’t think that any effort at environmental-friendly activity is too small. If you are replacing all your light bulbs in your offices to the new fluorescent — then say so. If you are recycling paper — say so.
• If you’re a local business that does business locally — show your customers how you re-cycle and grow the money they spend with you back into the community.

5. BOOTSTRAPPING AND SIMPLICITY – We’ve been moving away from excess for a few years now. But in 2009, being resourceful and bootstrapping is officially cool. This year brings a terrific opportunity to cut out products and services that have little value. Simplifying your offerings gives you the opportunity to differentiate yourself and maintain (if not increase) your price points for products or services that you do best.

How to take advantage of this trend:

• Run a report of your products and services sold to each customer and check out the margins. Highlight the low-margin offerings and see if you can move your customers to a more profitable alternative.
• Look at your bills and statements and ask yourself the question ‘In what ways does this expense get and keep my ideal customers?’ If you don’t come up with a good answer — it may be time to cut that expense out.

6. MARKETING TO THE “BUY BUTTON” – Neuromarketing is the study of how our brains respond to messages. Neuromarketing is becoming the standard baseline for copywriting and advertising. Learning how your customers’ “buy button” works will save you time effort and money.

How to take advantage of this trend:

• Read the books Buyology and Neuromarketing to understand exactly how your brain is influenced to choose one product over another.
• Find ways to attach positive emotions to your product or service.
• Show your customer that you trust THEM by making a trial period available or quickly approving credit.

7. PAID MEMBERSHIPS — Membership sites are a new trend that make the Internet a terrific money-making opportunity for all kinds of entrepreneurs. Combine the trend of creating a niche, and a membership site, and you will have yourself a winning formula in 2009.

Offering memberships is not restricted to the Internet alone. Restaurants have used memberships successfully to even out cash flow and consistently bring in customers. Financial service providers have used memberships to educate their clients and provide special events and services.

How to take advantage of this trend:

• Think of ways to offer a regular benefit to members: product or service of the month, research, e-books, designs and templates. If you have a niche, you have the makings of a membership opportunity.
• Can you call your customers members? What could you offer them on a regular basis as a benefit of membership?
• Some examples of membership sites: Artella Words and Art, Artistic Thread Works, The Biz Web Coach.

8. MOBILITY — Accessing the Internet via mobile device or smart phone is a given. The sites that are mobile friendly will be the sites of choice for consumers looking for information on the go. Another common occurrence is receiving updates on your order or any information that you request via text message.

How to take advantage of this trend:

• Check out these services for sending text messages to customers from the Web: ClearSMS.com, Group2Call.com
• Talk to your technical expert to see what it would take to convert your web site or blog to be viewed easily on the web.

9. WISDOM OF CROWDS — Your customers will want more say in how you improve your product or service. Internet tools like UserVoice, Get Satisfaction and IdeaScale will gain more popularity in 2009 and will be common platforms for gathering customer feedback and ideas on product improvements. Using these feedback tools helps to build customer community and loyalty.

How to take advantage of this trend:

• Sign up for a free version of UserVoice, GetSatisfaction or IdeaScale and put a Feedback widget on your web site or blog. Tell your customers to contribute ideas.
• Be sure to monitor (or have your employees monitor) the feedback on such sites and participate in it. Then as you implement suggestions – communicate that to your customers.

10. PERSONAL BRANDING– Personal Branding will become more important than a killer resume or bio. Your personal brand is your public identity. It’s what you are known for within and outside your network. It has never been more important to differentiate yourself and focus on what sets you apart from the crowd.

Good personal brands give people an immediate sense of knowing you and the experience your business offers. What do these names conjure up for you? Donald Trump, Oprah, Richard Branson? Each of these individuals have focused on a defining idea or element of who they are that is immediately recognizable. For example “You’re Fired” would not be Oprah and “Live your best life” would not be Donald Trump

How to take advantage of this trend:

• Make sure you are using a photo on the web. It doesn’t need to be professional, in fact, a candid and authentically-you shot is best. Use the same pictures everywhere until your brand is established. @GuyKawasaki has his standard picture – but he also changes it around now and then. @JenniferLaycock from SearchEngine Guide uses her company’s puppy logo as her brand.
• Register your name as your domain name. Also register extensions of your name on popular social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, and others. This serves a defensive purpose, too, as it prevent squatters from profiting off of your personal brand.

About the Author: Ivana Taylor is CEO of Third Force, a strategic firm that helps small businesses get and keep their ideal customer.  She’s the co-author of the book “Excel for Marketing Managers” and proprietor of DIYMarketers, a subscription site for in-house marketers.  Her blog is Strategy Stew.

They’re called by different names such as premium brands, luxury brands or even high-road brands. Regardless of the name, the value of attaining premium status in your industry comes with high rewards and the greatest return on sales (ROS) or margins in the industry. Moreover, as you attain premium status, you jettison the need to “push” ceaseless messaging and advertising and tip of field of gravitational pull in your favor by becoming a “pull brand” that attracts the right customers with less effort.

That said, not every brand can be a premium or high-road brand. For those brands seeking that status, however, I submit that pursuing a thought leadership marketing strategy is one path toward premium status. Let’s have a look at some of the characteristics of premium brands and how they correlate with thought leadership marketing.

What is a premium brand?

Premium brands are those that typically lead their category through innovation, innovation and more innovation. They also tend to earn more than 20% ROS (according to a Harvard Business Review article from 1997) while non-premium brands earn as little as 5% return on sales. Clearly there are financial advantages to being a premium brand. The consumers of premium brands also tend to be very loyal, willing to pay the premium price and continue to seek innovation (or tradition – the other side of the innovation coin in premium brands). While you may jump to BMW’s and Tumi luggage when you think of premium brands, let’s set our sights a bit lower. Kraft Macaroni and cheese is a great example of a ‘premium’ brand that has consistently outperformed competitors and store brands alike through constant innovation. Premium brands come in all shapes and sizes.

Characteristics of premium brands

When brands reach premium status, they typically exhibit a series of common characteristics:

Certainly there are other attributes that we could use to describe premium brands. However, these give us a reliable proxy for understanding what a premium service or product brand should look like.

Where does thought leadership fit in?

Thought leaders offer their market a unique and authentic value based on a differentiated point of view. Thought leaders are unique in their market position in that they are often the companies with the most profitable ongoing relationships with their clients and the industry that they serve. If we take a cross section of brands that practice thought leadership marketing, we’ll soon find that they have many of the same characteristics that are often attributed to premium brands. McKinsey consulting commands a premium for its services, Cisco extracts a higher return on sales than is peers in part due to its thought leadership in the computer networking market and everyone from vegetable distributors to startup internet companies command impressive returns by delivering tangible use value by producing thought leading content for their market than their downmarket peers.

Thought leaders, like premium brands, cannot go to market without something unique, innovative, authentic and valuable to offer. Moreover, just like premium brands have shown us the way on how define the best in a category, thought leaders use their passion and penchant for market stewardship and education to show us ‘how it’s really done’ by their industry leading standard.

Exploring the characteristics of premium thought leaders

You’ll see that we can begin to establish premium brand status for our organization by applying the same criteria from premium brands to our thought leadership marketing go-to-market strategy:

If premium brand status is your destination. There are a few tried and true paths to get there. However, I submit that for business-to-business marketers, professional service firms, non-profits and nascent startups they path of the thought leader is the way to go en route to premium brand land.

Go to Source

Not all leads should be treated equally. In our business, for example, the sales cycle can be upwards of 9 months – so lead nurturing it critical to stay in front of your prospect during their journey from awareness to consideration to purchase.

Furthermore, you are never quite sure when that illusive moment of need might strike in the heart of a prospect so you need to stay in front of your prospect with a fair amount of regularity.

But what happens to those prospects that come to your site and have an immediate need – lead nurturing wouldn’t be right for someone who wants to engage with someone right away. We began noticing a need for a “Fast Lane” for leads that were bingeing on white papers and forward to 20 internal contacts that each downloaded the paper. A lead nurturing super highway was born.

Dale’s company EchoQuote handles this type of request for companies that already have lead nurturing and need to super charge their efforts – its simple, its measureable and it gets results – check out our podcast as Dale presents the system to me.

About Dale

Dale Underwood has been in Information Technology for 25 years. He started out as a Programmer, turned System Engineer, turned B2B Salesman, turned Business Owner.

For 15 years he was selling IT infrastructure products (mainly storage related; EMC, StorageTek, ADIC and Veritas) to commercial and Government customers nationwide. In 2004 he noticed customers were not relying as much on the VAR channel for information. Many customers preferred to go directly to the manufacturer’s websites where rich, current content lives. It was also becoming tougher to engage new customers since many of the traditional sales processes were being replaced by web based content. So, in 2005 he sold his company and began designing a new kind of company; one that focused on innovative self-service methods that would empower end-users.

In 2006 he started Federal Appliance, another VAR that used innovative tools to find new customers. It took advantage of the self-service nature of the internet to attract and engage prospects. The core of Federal Appliance was a custom software platform coded in-house that allowed end-users to instantly get their own budgetary pricing with the sales team’s approval. The system was fast and quickly caught on as the “go to” site for Equallogic equipment. It was soon obvious that business customers loved using the system and many asked if Federal Appliance would carry other products. He knew he had a winner and decided to separate the software platform and roll it into a new company. EchoQuote was born.

Go to Source

I sat down with Larry Garfield of the Garfield Group the other day to discuss inbound marketing.  We had an awesome back and forth conversation with ideas flowing both ways. Towards the end of the conversation, he asked me, “Is there anything else you think we should be learning?”

My response was, “Everything I learned about online marketing, I learned by listening and experimentation.”

If there’s one constant about online marketing, it’s that it’s always changing.

This got me thinking about what might be coming this year. Here’s a long list of predictions based on some logical leaps: 

The Obvious Ones

1. The Year of the Business Blog. Many say that this was the year of the business blog, or even two years ago was the year. But, from my view in the trenches – talking to small and mid sized business owners - business blogging has NOT arrived yet. There are still way too many CEOs, Marketing VPs and small business owners who are resistant to business blogging: Too much time; Don’t understand the value; Risk of revealing too much to competitors; Risk of that unhappy customer vocalizing. I think this is the year that business leaders will get over these crappy excuses. The economy will affect businesses in such a profound way (or CEOs will fear it so much) that they’ll be aggressively looking for ways to attract more traffic, capture more leads and make more sales via the web. Blogging is the first step to doing this cost effectively. A business blog will be as essential as a website in 2009.
2. SEO Consultants Will Deliver an ROI. SEO Hacks Will Go Out of Business. In 2008, If I had a penny for every time a business owner told me they paid their webmaster to do SEO for them or they hired someone to do SEO for them for $500/month, I would be on a beach somewhere right now: officially retired. In 2008, a good SEO consultant cost several thousand dollars a month. To maintain these prices, SEO consultants will need to expand their offerings to include content creation services. The only way to make SEO a consistent lead generation tool is to consistently create content. SEO consultants won’t just be fixing SEO mistakes, picking keywords and doing On Page SEO, anymore. They’ll be delivering an ROI within 3 months by creating content and link building at the 12th grade level. A good SEO consultant will generate leads. Not just polish the deck chairs.
3. Social Media Advertising Will Come of Age. The average mid sized company spends a decent amount of money on pay per click advertising each month. The average mid sized company doesn’t blog and doesn’t actively improve their organic search rankings effectively. It’s always easier to spend money than it is to spend time and resources. It’s especially easy to spend money when it’s very obvious what the return is. With PPC ads, you put money in, pick keywords, put up some landing pages (hopefully). Then, you get leads. It’s obvious. With blogging and SEO, there are a bunch more steps and it isn’t guaranteed unless each step is executed without mistake. The same goes for social media. Almost all businesses fail at leveraging social media effectively. It’s not about just putting money in. However, in 2009, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, Digg, etc, will make it easy to put money in and get targeted traffic out. Most of these sites are just recently launching their targeted ad capabilities.  They’ll figure it out this year. Businesses will jump on this bandwagon. Not because it’s right… but because it’s easy.
4. Marketing Software Will Become as Critical as Accounting Software. Companies like HubSpot, Constant Contact, Unica, Omniture, etc will demonstrate that a company without marketing software is a company without a future. The software the marketing department uses will become more important than the creative agency they use. Software will be as critical for marketing as it is for accounting.

Stars Are Aligned, But Probably Won’t Happen Until Late 2009

1. B2B Lead Generation Will Arrive. You’d be amazed at how many traditional B2B marketers respond with, “We don’t sell anything online”, when I ask them if online marketing is an important tool for the growth of their business. Marketers will finally wake up to the fact that the internet and b2b marketing are a match made in heaven. B2B buyers are looking for information to educate themselves. The internet was made to deliver the information people need 24×7x365 in millisecond response times. Buyers are willing to share their contact information to get that information. B2B Marketers will finally put 2+2+2 together.
2. Most One-Trick-Pony Agencies will Die The website design business – as a standalone business – will die. So will the traditional PR agency and the traditional ad agency. There are far too many 10-30 person agencies who do just one thing. In the past few years, mid sized businesses have moved more and more of their budget to agencies that can do interactive marketing work: demand and lead generation. This year, those agencies will start adding some traditional agency services to their offerings. Then, they’ll just take away all of the business. They won’t just take it from traditional agencies either. Web site development companies have just as much to worry about. This is the year for marketing and web development agencies to adapt or die. They MUST develop services that generate demand for their clients. They must turn themselves into inbound marketing agencies. It’s more about delivering an ROI. Not just billable hours.
3. Web Celebrities will Develop Best of Breed Agencies.  Chris Brogan, Lee Odden, David Meerman Scott, Darren Rowse, Paul Gillin. Most of these guys were relatively unknown a few years ago. Their blogs and books have made them famous (at least among internet marketing circles). Most of them make money from books and speaking engagements. This year, if they haven’t already, they will realize that they can make much more money consulting to corporate clients. They’ll gradually build teams around them. Lee Odden is the farthest along with his SEO agency. Chris Brogan is off to a real strong start with his New Marketing Labs social media agency. I’m not saying that all of these guys will make the jump. But, the path of using your blog to start your best of breed marketing consulting agency will be proven. In fact, any agency that wants to survive will need to have a well known blogger like Steve Rubel or Todd Defren at the thought leadership helm.
4. Sales and Marketing Departments Will Function as One. Sales and marketing groups never seem to get along. They never share power. An organization is either “sales driven” or “marketing led”. HubSpot is an anomaly. Our sales team is bigger employee wise, but that’s because our marketing team reliably generates demand with less people. We also work together to define what an ideal lead looks like. Sales tells marketing what kind of sales objections we receive and why people do or don’t buy… and all this affects what content that marketing creates next. In 2008, we never missed a monthly sales quota. Marketing never missed their lead generation monthly quota. We use data and software to make unbiased decisions. We adapt weekly and monthly. As more companies adopt marketing software that integrates with sales software to do closed loop marketing, more more marketing and sales teams will function as one.

Probably More Accurate Predictions for 2010

1. Non Media Businesses will Launch Their Own Online Media Companies. HubSpot is a software company. But, most of our prospective clients are attracted to us because of the media we create: marketing webinars, this blog, HubSpot tv, marketing white papers, etc. The media we create is the engine behind our amazing growth in 2009. We now have 1,000+ clients. We’re teaching them exactly how we’ve turned content creation into a demand generation machine. I predict that there’ll be a bunch of product and services companies that will launch full blown media companies. These media companies won’t sell advertising. They’ll create demand for their owners. Johnson and Johnson’s BabyCenter is the perfect example. We’ll see much more of this. Hosted social networks like the ones from Awareness and Jive will enable this movement.
2. Effective CPL Ad Networks Will Arrive for B2B. LinkedIn or some other social media sharing site will take on Cost-Per-Lead advertising and win it. They’ll be able to provide leads on a cost per lead basis even to niche B2B companies. They’ll force Google to get serious about CPL. They’ll forever change the way b2b companies generate demand by creating a centralized lead capture system similar to the Adwords publisher network. This network will make online lead generation turn-key. Since it’s performance based, there’ll be no barrier to trial. Any company not using it will be foolish. This is not necessarily a good thing for companies who haven’t started turning their own website into a lead generation machine; Relying on a 3rd party network where your competitors can simply outbid you removes all competitive advantage you may have. This network is also not a good thing for those who haven’t started creating their own media. In order to effectively advertise on this network, advertisers will need to supply their own webinars, white papers, ebooks, etc. 
3. Search Will Become Social. Social Media Will Take a Large Chunk of Search. Facebook’s market share will grow and it will deliver real value for businesses. People were talking about Facebook at every holiday party I attended this year. It’s adding users at an unprecedented rate. Everyone uses it. Facebook’s web search market share will grow past Yahoo’s search marketshare. They’ll also figure out how to rank results based on your profile and your friends’ profile and online activities. Or maybe it’ll be Twitter. Who knows? But, I think social media and social networking will become an important variable in algorithmic search this year. As a result, social media sites will begin to even out the playing field of search and search advertising. Good SEO consultants and social media marketers will realize this long before it happens. They’ll be combining their SEO and social media services into one offering.
4. New Ecosystem Businesses Will Grow Very Quickly and Demonstrate the Power of the Web to Change an Industry. There are very few “EcoSystem” businesses on the web today. Google is the best example. They created software that organized the web. Then, they leveraged the attention this generated to create an audience of billions of searchers. They turned these searchers into consumers by launching an ad platform. This attracted advertisers. They had more advertisers than they could serve. They then built an army of publishers. They had more advertisers than they could service themselves, so they built an ecosystem of advertising professionals. They combined software + publishers + advertisers + ad agencies + consumers together into an ecosystem. Yet, they only directly employ the software developers. Everyone else participates because they receive greater benefit than they put in. More businesses will create an ecosystem around themselves like this. The ones that do will win really really big. Like Google has changed the online advertising game, these businesses will transform their industries too.

What do you think of these predictions? What do you predict? (Photo by griraffes.)

Webinar: Rethinking Marketing

Want to learn more about how you can use inbound marketing to grow your business? Download the free webinar to learn how to turn your website into an internet marketing machine.

I sat down with Larry Garfield of the Garfield Group the other day to discuss inbound marketing.  We had an awesome back and forth conversation with ideas flowing both ways. Towards the end of the conversation, he asked me, “Is there anything else you think we should be learning?”

My response was, “Everything I learned about online marketing, I learned by listening and experimentation.”

If there’s one constant about online marketing, it’s that it’s always changing.

This got me thinking about what might be coming this year. Here’s a long list of predictions based on some logical leaps: 

The Obvious Ones

1. The Year of the Business Blog. Many say that this was the year of the business blog, or even two years ago was the year. But, from my view in the trenches – talking to small and mid sized business owners - business blogging has NOT arrived yet. There are still way too many CEOs, Marketing VPs and small business owners who are resistant to business blogging: Too much time; Don’t understand the value; Risk of revealing too much to competitors; Risk of that unhappy customer vocalizing. I think this is the year that business leaders will get over these crappy excuses. The economy will affect businesses in such a profound way (or CEOs will fear it so much) that they’ll be aggressively looking for ways to attract more traffic, capture more leads and make more sales via the web. Blogging is the first step to doing this cost effectively. A business blog will be as essential as a website in 2009.
2. SEO Consultants Will Deliver an ROI. SEO Hacks Will Go Out of Business. In 2008, If I had a penny for every time a business owner told me they paid their webmaster to do SEO for them or they hired someone to do SEO for them for $500/month, I would be on a beach somewhere right now: officially retired. In 2008, a good SEO consultant cost several thousand dollars a month. To maintain these prices, SEO consultants will need to expand their offerings to include content creation services. The only way to make SEO a consistent lead generation tool is to consistently create content. SEO consultants won’t just be fixing SEO mistakes, picking keywords and doing On Page SEO, anymore. They’ll be delivering an ROI within 3 months by creating content and link building at the 12th grade level. A good SEO consultant will generate leads. Not just polish the deck chairs.
3. Social Media Advertising Will Come of Age. The average mid sized company spends a decent amount of money on pay per click advertising each month. The average mid sized company doesn’t blog and doesn’t actively improve their organic search rankings effectively. It’s always easier to spend money than it is to spend time and resources. It’s especially easy to spend money when it’s very obvious what the return is. With PPC ads, you put money in, pick keywords, put up some landing pages (hopefully). Then, you get leads. It’s obvious. With blogging and SEO, there are a bunch more steps and it isn’t guaranteed unless each step is executed without mistake. The same goes for social media. Almost all businesses fail at leveraging social media effectively. It’s not about just putting money in. However, in 2009, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, Digg, etc, will make it easy to put money in and get targeted traffic out. Most of these sites are just recently launching their targeted ad capabilities.  They’ll figure it out this year. Businesses will jump on this bandwagon. Not because it’s right… but because it’s easy.
4. Marketing Software Will Become as Critical as Accounting Software. Companies like HubSpot, Constant Contact, Unica, Omniture, etc will demonstrate that a company without marketing software is a company without a future. The software the marketing department uses will become more important than the creative agency they use. Software will be as critical for marketing as it is for accounting.

Stars Are Aligned, But Probably Won’t Happen Until Late 2009

1. B2B Lead Generation Will Arrive. You’d be amazed at how many traditional B2B marketers respond with, “We don’t sell anything online”, when I ask them if online marketing is an important tool for the growth of their business. Marketers will finally wake up to the fact that the internet and b2b marketing are a match made in heaven. B2B buyers are looking for information to educate themselves. The internet was made to deliver the information people need 24×7x365 in millisecond response times. Buyers are willing to share their contact information to get that information. B2B Marketers will finally put 2+2+2 together.
2. Most One-Trick-Pony Agencies will Die The website design business – as a standalone business – will die. So will the traditional PR agency and the traditional ad agency. There are far too many 10-30 person agencies who do just one thing. In the past few years, mid sized businesses have moved more and more of their budget to agencies that can do interactive marketing work: demand and lead generation. This year, those agencies will start adding some traditional agency services to their offerings. Then, they’ll just take away all of the business. They won’t just take it from traditional agencies either. Web site development companies have just as much to worry about. This is the year for marketing and web development agencies to adapt or die. They MUST develop services that generate demand for their clients. They must turn themselves into inbound marketing agencies. It’s more about delivering an ROI. Not just billable hours.
3. Web Celebrities will Develop Best of Breed Agencies.  Chris Brogan, Lee Odden, David Meerman Scott, Darren Rowse, Paul Gillin. Most of these guys were relatively unknown a few years ago. Their blogs and books have made them famous (at least among internet marketing circles). Most of them make money from books and speaking engagements. This year, if they haven’t already, they will realize that they can make much more money consulting to corporate clients. They’ll gradually build teams around them. Lee Odden is the farthest along with his SEO agency. Chris Brogan is off to a real strong start with his New Marketing Labs social media agency. I’m not saying that all of these guys will make the jump. But, the path of using your blog to start your best of breed marketing consulting agency will be proven. In fact, any agency that wants to survive will need to have a well known blogger like Steve Rubel or Todd Defren at the thought leadership helm.
4. Sales and Marketing Departments Will Function as One. Sales and marketing groups never seem to get along. They never share power. An organization is either “sales driven” or “marketing led”. HubSpot is an anomaly. Our sales team is bigger employee wise, but that’s because our marketing team reliably generates demand with less people. We also work together to define what an ideal lead looks like. Sales tells marketing what kind of sales objections we receive and why people do or don’t buy… and all this affects what content that marketing creates next. In 2008, we never missed a monthly sales quota. Marketing never missed their lead generation monthly quota. We use data and software to make unbiased decisions. We adapt weekly and monthly. As more companies adopt marketing software that integrates with sales software to do closed loop marketing, more more marketing and sales teams will function as one.

Probably More Accurate Predictions for 2010

1. Non Media Businesses will Launch Their Own Online Media Companies. HubSpot is a software company. But, most of our prospective clients are attracted to us because of the media we create: marketing webinars, this blog, HubSpot tv, marketing white papers, etc. The media we create is the engine behind our amazing growth in 2009. We now have 1,000+ clients. We’re teaching them exactly how we’ve turned content creation into a demand generation machine. I predict that there’ll be a bunch of product and services companies that will launch full blown media companies. These media companies won’t sell advertising. They’ll create demand for their owners. Johnson and Johnson’s BabyCenter is the perfect example. We’ll see much more of this. Hosted social networks like the ones from Awareness and Jive will enable this movement.
2. Effective CPL Ad Networks Will Arrive for B2B. LinkedIn or some other social media sharing site will take on Cost-Per-Lead advertising and win it. They’ll be able to provide leads on a cost per lead basis even to niche B2B companies. They’ll force Google to get serious about CPL. They’ll forever change the way b2b companies generate demand by creating a centralized lead capture system similar to the Adwords publisher network. This network will make online lead generation turn-key. Since it’s performance based, there’ll be no barrier to trial. Any company not using it will be foolish. This is not necessarily a good thing for companies who haven’t started turning their own website into a lead generation machine; Relying on a 3rd party network where your competitors can simply outbid you removes all competitive advantage you may have. This network is also not a good thing for those who haven’t started creating their own media. In order to effectively advertise on this network, advertisers will need to supply their own webinars, white papers, ebooks, etc. 
3. Search Will Become Social. Social Media Will Take a Large Chunk of Search. Facebook’s market share will grow and it will deliver real value for businesses. People were talking about Facebook at every holiday party I attended this year. It’s adding users at an unprecedented rate. Everyone uses it. Facebook’s web search market share will grow past Yahoo’s search marketshare. They’ll also figure out how to rank results based on your profile and your friends’ profile and online activities. Or maybe it’ll be Twitter. Who knows? But, I think social media and social networking will become an important variable in algorithmic search this year. As a result, social media sites will begin to even out the playing field of search and search advertising. Good SEO consultants and social media marketers will realize this long before it happens. They’ll be combining their SEO and social media services into one offering.
4. New Ecosystem Businesses Will Grow Very Quickly and Demonstrate the Power of the Web to Change an Industry. There are very few “EcoSystem” businesses on the web today. Google is the best example. They created software that organized the web. Then, they leveraged the attention this generated to create an audience of billions of searchers. They turned these searchers into consumers by launching an ad platform. This attracted advertisers. They had more advertisers than they could serve. They then built an army of publishers. They had more advertisers than they could service themselves, so they built an ecosystem of advertising professionals. They combined software + publishers + advertisers + ad agencies + consumers together into an ecosystem. Yet, they only directly employ the software developers. Everyone else participates because they receive greater benefit than they put in. More businesses will create an ecosystem around themselves like this. The ones that do will win really really big. Like Google has changed the online advertising game, these businesses will transform their industries too.

What do you think of these predictions? What do you predict? (Photo by griraffes.)

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