We’ve got about two weeks here at the One Degree offices (virtual as they may be) before we break for the holidays. To wrap up the year in fine style I’ve asked some of the One Degree Contributors to provide us with a rewind of 2006 and a fast forward to 2007 to give you something substantial to chew on as the days get shorter. June Macdonald shares her thoughts on the highs and lows of this year and what we can expect next year…
1. Rewind – What trends in Internet marketing surprised you in 2006? The explosion in blogs (only Ken knew they would get this popular), social media sites, and the mess of tagging and feed icons. It was really hard to keep up with them all if you weren’t glued to your monitor with an intravenous DSL line (think Boomer). I had some catching up to (still) do.
2. Rewind – Did you add any new tools to your online marketing toolkit in 2006? They’re in development for 2007, so other than finally getting a better handle on email delivery, we’ll have to wait for the new year to get results on these new goodies. I personally started up a lot of accounts on all the usual suspect sites, but there are so many… I did spend less money on iTunes this year and used Pandora.com instead.
3. Fast Forward – What do you see as the biggest trends in Internet Marketing in 2007? I don’t know about the biggest trends, but these are what’s up in my crystal ball:
- Despite being hyped as being the next thing for several years now, with the proliferation of smart phones and more people reading email on mobile devices and better availability of GPRS, mobile marketing is going to be getting another look. Mobile IM is going to increase dramatically as it becomes available from all carriers in all flavours.
- Email response may dip with the recent increase in spam, but then go back to same levels of the last couple years, and meantime email marketers discover RSS.
- More spammers get sued. Hooray!
- Marketing communications gets less hype and more content. The Mac/PC guy ads are a TV example I think of how the concept of conversations are going to impact ad and direct email creative. Less shouting and going over the top and more direct communication to humans.
4. Fast Forward – At the end of 2007, what do you expect we’ll be looking back at as overhyped?
- Mobile marketing.
- Regional media restrictions so I can download Grey’s Anatomy off of ABC or BSG off of Space Station — or is that the ‘wishful thinking’ section?
- Social media.
5. Fast Forward – Any SPECIFIC predictions for 2007? Buy-outs, bubbles bursting, records broken, reputations toppled, break-out companies?
- YouTube classifieds. And they go local. I want to see if Boris matches his voice. Seriously, similar to others postings we’ll see Google will get in and make some changes.
- New job requirements and education courses on having insightful conversations with customers. Customer relations 101 added to marketing programs and becomes part of more companies’ HR offerings.