7 Marketing trends to consider for 2012

Marketing trends come and go but which ones should you be paying attention to? If you are looking to increase traffic and make more sells these are the marketing trends you should incorporate into your campaign in 2012:Â

1. Your customers are king – where people fall with marketing is not thinking where their customers are. Setting up an amazing marketing campaign that isn’t being seen by the right people is pointless.  Find where your customers are and promote from those platforms.
2. The world has gone App crazy – The proliferation of Smartphone’s and tablets has made everyone go app crazy! Not just on applications like Facebook, Twitter and Angry bird but Estate Agency Applications too. Apps are now a necessity for all businesses.
3. Social, Local and mobile – this is where your customers are. Last year all these trends really took off but bringing them together in one marketing campaign will guarantee maximum exposure. Get involved socially, target locally and optimise your business for mobile.
4. Content marketing – Relevant content has always been important to drive traffic but blogs and case studies are now an essential part of any campaign. This will help with SEO and Social media, as it will provide visitors will meaningful content. This will in turn help you gain more fans on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. Â
5. Collecting all your data – Marketers love to know what the users are doing. Collecting and analysing data is the only way to do this. The important thing to focus on when analysing data is to look at your customers interactions over time.
6. Email’s not dead! – over the last few years many marketers have said email marketing is dying due to Spam filters but this hasn’t dampened the growth of email. A recent study has predicted email marketing will increase by 10 percent over the next few years, but marketers will focus their email campaigns more using analytics.  
7. Where, why, how? - Recognising the right channel or channels your users are using to find, research and buy can help you become more efficient, effective and resourceful with producing sales.
   
   Turning data into actions has become a great marketing tool. For example an Estate Agency user flow would probably go something like this:
   
   Google search for “Estate Agents in (local area) > Homepage > Property search > Individual Property page > Contact Estate Agent
   
   Once you know how people search your website you can begin making it more user-friendly by looking to see what you can cut out to improve efficiency. E.g. In the example above incorporating the ‘Property Search’ function on the homepage will improve the speed of search for the user.
   

By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant