Interactive

Finally, for all those couch potatoes around the country who continually fend off advice to get up, drop to the floor and do 20, help has arrived. A new app, Viggle, is designed to reward us lay-abouts with points for checking into our favorite TV shows.

This is all new and untested, so whether TV viewers, and maybe more importantly, network partners, actually buy into the idea of rewarding loyalty to broadcast programming is yet to be seen. more

A new study of people who texted in donations on their cellphones for disaster relief from the Haitian earthquake in 2010 suggests they may not be the most steadfast and reliable contributors.

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Here is my annual list of what to expect in the coming year as it relates to marketing:

1.) Mobile is here and will grow. Make sure you think about its impact on your marketing when you do your 12-18 month planning. Customers and prospects are expecting you to accessible at their fingertips.

2.) Look for more integration of traditional media into social campaigns. While social is good at helping build credibility and dialog, it’s not the greatest at converting those conversations into business. Enter mail, email, face-to-face selling and telemarketing.

3.) B2B marketing will begin its long overdue transition into more measurable marketing. The days of trade shows, space ads and some direct mail only will be a thing of the past for those B2B firms that want to gain market share. Enter social media, more

Did you see the hordes out in stores and shopping malls last Saturday opening up their Amazon Price Check apps and aiming their smartphones at the barcodes on that rice cooker for cousin Nellie and the velvet smoking jacket for Uncle Phil? Well, no, neither did I. But retailers would be making a big mistake to take that as a sign that their protest against Amazon’s one-day/5-percent-discount promotion for the app was a success.

The deal was this: For one day, last Saturday, consumers could get a 5% price rollback on an item that they scanned in any store with the app and then bought it on Amazon instead. And some elements of the brick-and-mortar retail industry (and the politicians who love them ) were incensed enough to call for a boycott of Amazon for committing “an attack on Main Street businesses that employ workers in our communities.” Some organizers even promoted an Occupy Amazon event on Facebook for the same day that, I guess, involved going to independent retailers, NOT opening the app, and buying something—it was a bit unclear.

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Below were my 2011 marketing predictions. Let’s journey together and see if my crystal ball needs cleaning:

I can’t really claim these are anticipated, but here they are, my 2011 predictions advertising/marketing/communication specific to the New Year. For the record, my last few years’ predictions have been accurate. Use or dismiss this prose at your discretion.

Prediction #1: Video will play a keener role in website conversions, and marketing as a whole. It’s already happening and with YouTube the second most popular search engine (that’s right, only Google is bigger), it just makes sense. Zappos and other sites already know this, so test video on your site(s) and watch conversions skyrocket. As such, SEO/SEM will play a critical role in marketing effectiveness next year.



Video is being added to every new website that we now build and is being incorporated into old sites as well. YouTube continues to grow, so I would say this was spot-on. How often do you view video content on websites compared to one year ago?

Prediction #2: Consumer and Business purchasing decision-makers are changing their buying patterns because of advances in technology and the ubiquity of information that can be had on Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Bing, Rock Melt and the like. Thus, those who understand data – specifically how that data relates to transactional occurrences by each KEY target market segment – will rule the day. This applies to both customer and prospect segments. We have trained buyers to this fact: know intuitively who I am, what I am seeking and make it as easy as possible for me to do/continue to do business with you. Those companies that don’t understand this will be watching their bottom lines evaporate.

The web is blurring the lines between B2B and B2C marketing. Relevancy is the key to making me want to buy from you. Agree?

Prediction #3: Larger companies will hire more reputation mangers to make sure they can react swiftly to the chatter – specifically the negative chatter – that is so easy to post and even easier to go viral in 2011 and beyond. It’s a trend that will continue to grow and customers/prospects gain more powerful customer relation options thanks to the the web. more

Both Zynga, the online games company whose offerings include Farmville, Mafia Wars and Zynga Poker, and Groupon, the daily deal site, are dot-coms which deal primarily in virtual goods. They hold no physical inventory and rarely generate transactions that result in drop-shipped deliveries.

Despite this, the Zynga IPO, unlike the one presented by daily deal firm Groupon, doesn’t make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. The differences are rooted in how each company presents and markets itself. more