Companies world-wide are cutting costs as well as looking for creative, high impact and accountable marketing. With concerns over the recession and its impact on marketing, I recently ran a poll of the 17,000 subscribers at Online Marketing Blog to discover their intentions for digital marketing tactics in 2009.

Poll respondents cast 1,559 votes for their top three digital marketing tactics (from a list of 45) for 200. Blogging, Twitter and Search Engine Optimization topped the list. Out of the top ten rated marketing tactics, six fell into the category of Social Media Marketing.

The actual question asked was, “What 3 digital marketing channels & tactics will you emphasize in 2009?” Here are the top ten tactics selected:

• Blogging (34%)
• Microblogging (Twitter) (29%)
• Search engine optimization (28%)
• Social network participation (Facebook, LinkedIn) (26%)
• Email marketing (17%)
• Social media monitoring & outreach (17%)
• Pay per click (14%)
• Blogger relations (12%)
• Video marketing (10%)
• Social media advertising (7%)

Email marketing rated higher than PPC which is surprising given the budgets spent on PPC vs email. Some tactics are much easier to implement than others, or less expensive, which may explain a few of the top choices, such as Twitter.

Corporate web sites didn’t rate in the top ten tactics. Does this mean the death of company web sites? Some companies are succumbing to the social media perspective to extremes, like the Skittles site which had been simplified to a page of search results from Twitter and then changed to their Facebook page. Others are adding social features to their company sites to complement existing messaging and functionality.

By now, most companies have their 2009 online marketing plans in place. Does this ranked order of tactics mean you should change up your online marketing mix? The answer is that digital marketing tactics should match the needs of the situation, company resources, the target market and end consumer preferences. The proper tactical mix for a digital marketing program could be anything from the 45 tactics listed in the poll and still be successful as long as they support a valid strategy.

Some companies are prepared for digital and social media marketing programs and many are not. To get “ready”, companies need to develop a social media roadmap and get up to speed on both best and worst practices. Whether those methods of reaching and communicating with customers reconciles with existing marketing plans or not, companies would do well to allocate resources to some level of ongoing social media training, testing and development of expertise in the social media space.

MarketingVox points out that W Hotels is advertising on the HotelChatter blog.

MarketingVox: W Hotels Tries Blog Media Strategy

I can’t believe this is my first post about the Business Blog Awards. I could almost pretend that this post was timely, as the awards were just announced yesterday, but the pathetic truth is I just stumbled across the site for the first time now. That despite the fact that Jeremy Wright, one of the masterminds behind the site (along with Daron Barefoot, his partner in crime at Inside Blogging) emailed me about it a couple of months ago. (Awful confession: I barely ever look at the email sent to the Gmail account I set up specifically for this site.) Have I mentioned that I’m really busy with a new job?

Needless to say, I didn’t win an award.

Link

Easy come, easy go. It was just over a week ago that I noted Gawker Media had launched two new sites with exclusive ad sponsorship, including GridSkipper, a travel site sponsored by CheapTickets. Well, it turned out that the racy tone of the blog was too rich for CheapTickets’s blood and it’s withdrawn its sponsorship.

This promises to be a touchstone for all those who doubt the viability of blog advertising. I agree that it will take a while, if ever, before many advertisers feel comfortable with the unrestrained tone of blogs, but I also agree with Nick Denton, Gawker’s publisher, that it’s their loss; speaking to PR Week, he said:

"We’d rather lose the occasional advertiser than the character that
attracts the audience in the first place. If an advertiser wants a safe
environment, there are thousands of tired media outlets to choose from.

"Weblogs are supposed to be unexpected and wincingly frank.
That’s an essential part of the appeal to a generation that’s turning
away from network television and print media. We had a million visitors
to our sites on Tuesday alone."

Details on PR Week.

Microsoft’s uber blog evangelist Robert Scoble is frothing at the mouth he’s so mad about about a marketer daring to not have RSS on his site. He blogged [emphasis his] "Sorry, if you do a marketing site and you don’t have an RSS feed today you should be fired. I’ll say it again. You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed." Easy, boy. We’ll get a doctor. You’ll pull through.

Jupiter Research analyst Eric Peterson politely suggested Scoble get a grip, that RSS really isn’t for everyone. His colleague Michael Gartenberg concurs. Me too.

A new seminar on business blogging: "Blogging Goes Mainstream: New Media For Corporate Growth." Cost: $125.

Attendee Profile:

• Corporate Communications and Marketing
  Executives
• Product Development Executives
• Brand Managers and Directors
• Technology Executives
• Research Analysts
• Advertising and PR Professionals
• Journalists and Bloggers

Where: Microsoft Customer Briefing Center

1290 Avenue of the Americas, Between 51st and 52nd Street, 6th Floor

New York, NY

When: April 28th, 2005

4:00PM - 8:30PM

Business Development Institute: Blogging Goes Mainstream

Scott Kessler of BusinessWeek has picked his five favorite companies to watch in ‘05 and I’m sure you’re surprised to read that there’s a blogging company included. 

Weblogs, Inc., co-founded by Brian Alvey and Jason Calacanis, is the company behind well regarded blogs like the Autoblog.

According to Scott:

I believe blogs will grow increasingly prominent, because they offer interesting and unique content, are easy to search and organize, and have the potential to generate notable revenues and profits through the use of online advertising (primarily keyword search) and affiliate marketing. Gawker Media is another major network of blogs.

iMedia writes:

Speakers at a recent Blog Business Summit believe blogs are replacing email as an effective two-way dialog tool.

Going forward from the recent Blog Business Summit in Seattle, two powerful messages have been reverberating through the marketing world:

1. Blog feeds are rapidly replacing email as a form of proactive marketing communications
2. Marketers wishing to post their own blogs should not approach the form as another one-way communications medium, but should plan for their blogs to offer two-way dialog.

Yawn. I’m so tired of this idea that blogs and/or RSS are ever going to replace email (as I’ve said before). Why do journalists always think that a new medium means the death of an old one? Radio is still doing very well, thank you, despite TV having come along some 60 years ago now. Blogs are good. Email is also good. Spam is bad, but spam is not the end of email. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. As for RSS, I still don’t use it. Still haven’t found a platform I really like. And besides, I get too much email already and don’t feel like I have to stay up to the minute on every blog in the world… But maybe that’s just me.

iMedia Connection: Bye Bye Email?

There was a day when I had to talk AdTech into a panel on blogs (November 2003). For their next show in San Francisco, April 25-28, I’m interested to see they have three sessions on blogs and kindred topics: "The New Personal Web," "Feeding the Beast: RSS, Data Feeds, PodCasts and More," and "Micropersuasion and Blogvertising."  Most amusing, Steve Rubel, an AdTech panelist and would-be contributor to this site, managed to get his session named after his blog!

Sounds a bit silly, but an email services firm called WhatCounts has launched a new blog system, dubiously named BlogUnit, complete with proprietary hardware. MarketingVox reports "Called the BlogUnit, the rack-mountable server includes security,
monitoring, integration and collaboration features. WhatCounts claims
the unit can be up and running within 15 minutes, allowing business
bloggers to publish, measure, manage versions and syndicate content
feeds."

Ironically, I don’t even see the press release about this new product or any relevant product information on WhatCounts’s site, much less a blog…

For once I agree with Jason Calacanis.

Jason Calacanis: Why Bloglines sold: It’s not a business

Bob Parsons, CEO of bargain domain registrar GoDaddy, has been blogging for a few months. In this post, he tells his company’s side of the story for why the NFL and Fox chickened out at the last minute from airing the second of its racy ads during the Super Bowl.

To support its Super Bowl ad about someone finding a french fry that looks like Abraham Lincoln, McDonald’s has launched this fake blog. Yawn. Steve Rubel and Kevin Duggan among other bloggers are not lovin’ it.

McDonald’s Fake Lincoln Fry Blog

So, Ask Jeeves just launched a blog. About time, considering the very identity of the company is the pesonification of personally answered questions online.

Link

You’ve probably already read this by new (I’m several days late in getting around to this post; I’ve been insanely busy at work of late), but Gawker Media just launched two new blogs: Lifehacker, a software blog with Sony as the exclusive launch sponsor, and Gridskipper, a travel blog with CheapTickets as exclusive launch sponsor. More details on publisher Nick Denton’s site.

According to the press release:

Mokena, IL Penn Media announced today that it will publish fifty of its flagship owned and operated e-zines as Blogs, positioning them as one of the largest publishers of consumer trade blogs. It has contracted with Pheedo, Inc. to guide them through the evolution and provide RSS and Weblog advertising services.