Top Marketing Geeks Make Their Predictions for 2009
Will 2009 be the big year for corporate transparency, for a global conversation - perhaps for bargain basement online marketing tactics instead of old-school huge commercial campaigns?
Peter Kim, a former Forrester analyst now working on stealth enterprise software company, recently polled 14 of the most high-profile thinkers about social media marketing and asked them what they expected to see 2009 bring. The end product was an attractive 23 page PDF that we've embedded below, but we thought we'd pull out some of the thoughts we found most interesting for all you skimmers out there.
Social shopping
"Now with connective technologies like Facebook Connect, Google FriendConnect, and OpenID, consumers will now be able to see reviews, experiences, and critiques from people they actually know and trust." - Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Research
Our take: Much as we are concerned about the proprietary nature of Facebook Connect in particular, the ease with which people are able to see feedback left by people they know, with confirmed identities, really could be a game changer.
Access
"Twitter will continue to achieve legitimacy. But more than any push-channel, Twitter will give customers, advocates and critics unprecedented access to corporate personnel and vice versa." - Scott Monty, Ford Motor Company (Photo, right, by Wendy Piersall)
Our take: This makes sense, and it's pretty funny to think about. Even the biggest cynics often have a dramatic turn around about Twitter once they start using it, and the intimacy that develops is remarkable. We agree with Monty that this will become increasingly difficult to resist.
Measuring the success of social networks
"Implement listening programs through social media to get real time authentic knowledge that is actionable... Measure with customer service metrics like retention/ satisfaction & social metrics like engagement." - Rohit Bhargava, Ogilvy (Photo by Shashi Bellamkonda)
"Slowly but surely, we're going to develop a set of better metrics to help guide, direct and validate 'commitment'-based marketing and yes, Mr Kim....they will extend beyond the rather short term, blunt metric called ROI". - Joseph Jaffe, Crayon
Our take: Good luck with that, we're not optimistic. This is soft stuff and though clear success speaks for itself, all the gradations between success and failure are going to be very hard to quantify.
Quality vs Quantity in Social Media
"I believe we'll have more focused velvet-rope social networks in 2009 where the tools and the goals match verticals of interest instead of the general commons of Facebook." - Chris Brogan, New Marketing Labs
"Exclusivity trumps accessibility. Having thousands of friends becomes 'so 2008' and defriending becomes the hot new trend, driven by overwhelming rivers of newsfeeds." - Charlene Li, Altimeter Group (Photo by deneyterrio on Flickr)
Our take: Maybe, for some people and in some circumstances this will be the case. We expect most people to find a middle ground between the whole sale slow-down that some seem to expect and an evolutionary adjustment to vastly increased data input.
Making the most of limited budgets
"Dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball. " - Ann Handley, Marketing Profs
"Companies will struggle with how to control who says what -- but will increasingly realize that in an economic downturn, they need all the marketing muscle and leverage they can get and actively encourage." - Charlene Li
Our take: This makes a lot of sense to us, but we expect that it will be tempered by the fear of totally blowing it. Getting into the social media space and doing it wrong is something that a lot of companies fear getting blown apart for. We expect that to change slowly and only for a limited number of companies.
Here's the full document embedded below - what do you think of these predictions?
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'14 of the most high-profile thinkers'
Before I even read the report ( I am an American and I used to 'read' /. so I can get away with that) I have to say that high profile thinkers have done very little in the past to shape or foresee the future of any aspect of computing.
Still, I'll read it and if I think differently then, I will add another comment.
Patch your Windows systems folks.
Re: Social shopping - I completely agree with Jeremiah's thoughts. Personal reviews and recommendations can be a strong driver in commerce.
Our social shopping FB app, top3Clicks (http://apps.facebook.com/topthreeclicks) has proven out the basic use case that the interests of a friend are valued by other friends in a social network - many times much more so than a positive review in a blog post/magazine/newspaper.
I'm partly surprised that the marketing geeks did not factor in the role of search engines and how it will influence their marketing efforts come 2009. Although social media will definitely contribute but the limitation of experience shared will not make it a reliable resource on its own yet. Much of the information and insight needed will still be searched online.
Hi, good post, but can you elaborate more! I mean, it would help me in understanding things better!
Marshall, thanks for posting this and adding some color commentary. (And for the record, it's Ford Motor Company ;-) )
@Gary - the assignment was to make social media predictions, not marketing predictions.
Of all these folks, only Chris strikes me as being tuned in.
I mean geez, if you have to put quotes around the word real when you're talking about 'real' people, how 'real' is that going to be. It's not even real when you think it!
Social networking seems to be the big theme here with most of these folks. Let's see, what was it last year? Oh yeah... social networking. And the year before that?
Seems to me like most of these 'top marketing geeks' are stuck in the mindset of 2007, not 2009. When will they learn that we, the consumers they are targeting, simply DO NOT ENJOY BEING TARGETED?
Here's my prediction for the future of online marketing:
Consumers will take control of it and lots of PR and Marketing folks are gonna scratch their heads 'til their hair falls out.
Then they will all be gurus.
@Scott
oops, so that's why everyone seemed to be focused on social media... sorry. I was reading from the perspective of the title of this post which uses the word marketing.
Bleh. Ignore me. It's late and I obviously need sleep.
I predict new advertising venues will be explored online.
Companies seem to ignore the single largest online branding/advertising venue available: their own regular external emails. Why not use these emails to market the senders company?
You have a website.
You send emails.
Why not multiply your sales-staff by “wrapping” the regular email in an interactive letterhead?
No other marketing or advertising medium is as targeted as an email between people that know each other (as opposed to mass emails). These emails are always read and typically kept.
I still believe that old school is better. Old school marketing is better. The online marketing world is boring.
I predict a User insurrection against these very Marketing geeks and other insidious misuses of our data.
At some point soon the secret will get out that we, the long suffering End Users, have all the power. Once we realized companies are making a fortune on our user created content, social graphs and attention, the tables will turn and we will be paid for our mouse clicks...
...at nightmare scenario?
RE: Limited budgets
Just because social media advertising is cheap, doesn't mean it's a good deal. At the end of the day, targeted banners can't approach search PPC, organic, and segmented e-mail for ROI.
In my opinion, this can only change if MySpace/Facebook can somehow shoehorn Amazon into their user experience and become shopping destinations. That's a major challenge. I think Twitter may ultimately win here, because it's better suited for a mixed environment with general socializing for fun and marketer-customer interactions for profit.
What are the concerns with Facebook connect, is it possible security issues?
I agree that the benefits of not just user feedback, but of people you actually know or have online acquaintances with is a huge plus for online shopping.
Companies will further dive into social media and will begin to do so in the right way. There are many big companies that act as case studies for both positive/negative strategies that companies will take a more strategic look in before socializing and monitoring online.
Social media is cheap and will continue to surge, but I don't think it can be done alone on its own. As someone utilizing social media for a small start-up, it's difficult for a little fish to get noticed in the big sea with no other advertising budgets whatsoever. That clearly is the advantage many companies have and will utilize. SEO/SEM and a mix of other methods will continue to help raise awareness for companies, and social media should be more looked at as customer service than strictly advertising.
FOLLOW-UP ( Thanks @pzriddle ! ):
"...Every day we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: we click web pages, flip channels, drive through automatic toll booths, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls. Now, in one of the greatest undertakings of the twenty-first century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is beginning to sift through this data to dissect us and map out our next steps. Their goal? To manipulate our behavior -- what we buy, how we vote -- without our even realizing it."
http://thenumerati.net
At Minggl, we think Charlene Li is dead on with "Exclusivity trumps accessibility." As such we have built cross-site newfeed filters and a means to upload photos to social profiles that only selected friends can view. We think the next step is building an app to manage your relationships around the social web. That is, what comes into your view and what goes out to your friends will be based on relationship strength with each of them. Our paper for the W3C Workshop on the future of social networking goes into this in more detail. For those who wish to explore: http://tinyurl.com/6z4dyt
interesting that you take someone else's ppt and put it on digg for rww :)
Posted by: Allen Stern
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December 17, 2008 10:45 AM
'a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is beginning to sift through this data'
sounds like Wall Street a la web...
Allen - we did the same here http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_if_amazon_and_itunes_impl.php and it hit the front page. Good exposure for everyone. I'd like to keep a closer eye out for good powerpoints, in fact, to share with our audience. We always add some editorial in our coverage in addition to sharing it with our readers.
thanks for your reply marshall - ya'all have certainly become the new masters of digg!
I like what Peter has done. I've pulled together some 2009 predictions for the year ahead in digital democracy at www.basiccraft.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/digital-democracy-predictions-for-2009.
Thanks for this post. There are some good insights and nuggets here.
As a corporate marketer, I'm always intrigued by those who dare to predict what will/may happen in the social media space 12 months ahead of time. Given that it's user driven by consumers who generally are not that interested in talking to brands, unless endorsed by friends/network I wouldn't put my reputation on the line.
On the contrary though....
I'm surprised that video hasn't reached this list. Has video reached it's potential for marketing in 2008? Surely we are just seeing the tip of iceberg or technologically are there too many shortfalls such as copyrights/IP, territorial boundaries etc that maintains the volatile status quo of this powerful marketing medium.
I'd love to see a marketer's wishlist perhaps instead of or in addition to these predictions. Based on user/consumer trends, these tools would help all of us to do our jobs and serve our clients better.
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Hi Marhall,
I ended up reading the predictions that have been compiled by Peter.
In fact after reading those, I guess I too got inspired and decided to put down 10 of mine. Do have a look and let me know what you think about it
http://windchimesindia.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/predictions2009/
Nimesh
Social shopping in the form of review and recommendations is definitely on the rise. But it may dovetail with some of the pull back on over-friending.
Recommendations from a trusted network could be very powerful. So, instead of seeing an aggregate view of Yelp reviews, you'd see the reviews of people you know. The context helps place greater weight on particular reviews.
I'm also on board with new ways to measure advertising and tracking brand management. CTR must die as a metric of success.
My bold prediction is that Facebook will reposition itself as a portal, leveraging Microsoft's Live Search and possibly acquiring Netvibes. This would provide a real platform for Microsoft to compete against Google and may get Facebook to profitability.
The rest of my predictions can be found on Blind Five Year Old:
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/2009-internet-and-technology-predictions
"Twitter will give customers, advocates and critics unprecedented access to corporate personnel and vice versa"
OMG We are gonna be compromised!
you're the best
http://www.ingilo.com