What’s Cooking For 2008?

The year 2008 is all about accepting new innovations and technologies to help you increase your sales. The year of the rat is definitely all about embracing new trends and fine-tuning your business to ensure that you accomplish your goals this year.

To give you a clue of what to expect this year especially in the field of effectively reaching out to your target audience and generating as many leads as you can, here are some of the major marketing trends:

Alternative Marketing will be in-fashion.

Marketers are predicting that there will be a shift from conventional marketing to alternative media. It means that although print media - such as newspapers, magazines, and other print materials such as your local newsletters and advertising posters – will continue to thrive, there will be a definite increase in the spending of business owners to include new advertising tools. New media such as online vehicles, mobile and out-of-home advertising channels would be very popular as they look at these ‘alternatives’ as the best means to reach out to their target clients. A communications industry forecast predicts that a 23% increase will be seen from 2006 to 2011.

Spending will increase to include Interactive Marketing.

According to a research, spending for interactive marketing is predicted to increase more than triple over the next 5 years. From 8% of all marketing expenditures, it would be raised to 18% of the total advertising budget.

Interactive marketing channels such as email, search engine marketing tools, online video ads, and social media will take center stage this year; while mobile marketing will be very fierce as many users will be comfortable handling computing units for their personal needs. It will also be a good year for designers of game advertising, as well as podcasts and RSS creators.
Offline Marketing to support Online Marketing will pick up speed.

Look at 2008 and beyond for offline marketing to be utilized to support the online marketing campaigns. Clients and customers will be encouraged to go online with the help of traditional marketing tools such as your newsletter printing and poster printing. In the same research, it was predicted that advertising utilizing displays would reach $14 billion for the next 5 years.

In 2008, major marketers who were able to put in place these trends will be seen as main players to help consumers embrace the new trends in their spending behaviors. In as much as they set the new consumption trends, they will also be a driving force in making sure that small businesses will be able to adopt to the developments this year without risking so much of their capital outlay.