2011 Predictions for online business

Now I’m not usually one to don a headscarf and gaze dreamily into a crystal ball. However, this time of year does tend to bring my psychic abilities to the fore. The difference between me and, dare I say, Mystic Meg is that my predictions are based in reality. They are educated guesses based on my experience. I watch my market relentlessly, and while this narrow focus may affect the breadth of subjects discussed at my dinner table, it does allow me to predict how B2B marketing will evolve in 2011.

Throughout this week I’ll be discussing my five predictions for 2011. I’ll be suggesting what to look out for, how changes will affect you and, most importantly, what you can do to benefit from these predictions. For now though, here is a quick summary of these five predictions:

1. Social Media will become an essential part of the marketing mix – up to and including 2010, Social Media has been a “nice to do”. Something that slightly out of touch marketing directors know needs to be done, but aren’t quite sure how it can integrate with current plans. This year it changes. Those who “do social” are king. More than that, those who understand social will prosper.

2. Mobile Marketing Growth – It is easy to say that Mobile has been a rapidly growing sector for a couple of years. If you start off small, with say 1% of overall marketing spend, getting to 2% of spend is a major achievement. In fact, it is a massive 100% growth. 2011 is the year of mobile devices, not just mobile, and that itself is going to impact how you will want to get in touch with your clients.

3. Sales Intelligence from Social Media – LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs and Facebook provide in-depth knowledge of who you are to anyone who wishes to look. 2011 will see this information used by more and more demand-generation teams to personalise approaches to key decision makers. Sales intelligence garnered from social media sites will give rise to targeted approaches from sales people. Wait for the coming revolution.

4. Geo-targeting marketing – Targeting advertising to a local area is not new. Targeting advertising to individuals based on their location co-ordinates is. This will revolutionise how advertising is delivered to individuals and now is the time to explore the possibilities for your business.

5. Cloud Cloud Cloud – behold, the I-life is nigh. Having access to every document you need, wherever you are, is going to change how business is conducted forever. The cloud will in turn negate the need for a lot of things but mostly it will liberate individuals from the office environment. How will your business evolve to embrace this?

Each day I’ll take a topic and explore it in more depth. On top of that I promise to come back to these topics later in 2011 and give you an honest update and appraisal on whether my prediction was right or not.