Are you ready for 2012? With all the events that have been happening – Google+, Panda Update, The Freshness Algorithm Update, Google pushing local seo, Twitter Analytics, Facebook Timeline – 2012 is going to be a huge year for SEO and marketing in general.
In order to help you create an effective marketing plan for 2012 we’ve created a list of the Top Ten Marketing Trends of 2012. Our list is designed to help you adapt your companies marketing strategy to create more leads and ultimately sales.
Trend 1: Market with Value
Rankings and traffic are great but without a way to measure the results of your marketing efforts they’re useless. When creating your 2012 strategy think of how you can measure your efforts to prove your ROI and track which methods are most successful.
Trend 2: Make Your Snippets Rich
With Google providing more information about your company in search results without requiring searchers to click through to your site you best get wise. Google giving more information about your sounds great but it actually reduces that number of page views and shrinks your sales funnel. So make sure that you optimize your snippets with rich text.
Trend 3: Now You See the Data, Now You Don’t
Is all the data you’re getting really all the data there is? Probably not. Google can hide more valuable data in Google Analytics so you need to keep a sharp eye out for information that’s useful for you.
Trend 4: More Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing is catching on as many consumers are using their mobile phones to do their shopping, especially for local products and services. Over 50% purchase because of mobile search and 90% of mobile search move consumers to take action.
Trend 5: Local Search
Google Local and Local Search are going to be red hot in 2012. With 4 billion local searches per month on Google with over 60% resulting in purchases you can’t afford to ignore local search.
Trend 6: Searching Social Media
Google’s using its social network as part of search results. So if you don’t have a Google+ account that’s optimized for search engines ranking you aren’t as likely to show up on search engines.
Trend 7: Video Can Revive Your Campaign
Video is extremely important on the web because of its high interaction. Videos account for about 50% of online traffic. Videos promote visibility and engagement by 430%.
Trend 8: Your Reputation is the Most Valuable Thing You Have
With the internet become one of the most valuable resource your reputation on is the your most valuable asset. Most consumer’s trust online reviews and 78% search a company online before purchasing. So make sure you guard your reputation fiercely.
Trend 9: Nurture Newborn Leads
with online marketing becoming more competitive good leads are harder to come by. So they’re more valuable. Make sure you nurture them as 50% of qualified leads aren’t ready to buy immediately but when you continue contact they have a 10x response rate.
Trend 10: Don’t Forget SEO in Your Strategy!
Good links still have a powerful punch when it comes to search engine optimization but miz it up a little and use different types of links. You want to vary your anchor text to make them more natural and get the A-OK from search engine spiders. And remember the rule of reciprocity.
Top Take Away: leverage your SEO with a broad spectrum marketing strategy. Social and search, mobile and local, lead and links: all of it is valuable. So don’t skimp out when it comes to the future of your brand.