What’s New in Marketing? December 2012

A review of the digital marketing year

Well, that’s the end of another, interesting but challenging year for marketers to keep up-to-date and work out how to best apply all the innovations. To help review marketing opportunities in 2013, earlier in the month I wrote this review of marketing trends for 2013. Thank you if you voted in the poll or shared the article. If you take a look, there are two clear winners for priorities.

What are your personal memories of 2012? Perhaps some of these events will ring a bell?

Check out the most important ones in your country. Google’s annual Zeitgeist this year reviewed an aggregation of over one trillion Google searches.

YouTube also has a Year in Rewind tailored for your country (http://youtube.com/rewind).

All of the main providers of digital marketing platforms have been active as they look to increase engagement and ad sales. There were big changes in:

• Facebook marketing (IPO, Promoted Posts and timelines)
• Google marketing (launch of Google+ pages and numerous algorithm updates),
• Twitter marketing (new page layouts and ad options) and
• LinkedIn marketing (company and personal page updates).

We have also had the emergence of Pinterest marketing as a useful method for reaching new audiences in some sectors.

Innovations from December 2012

It’s rare for the main digital platforms to launch new features in December, so maybe it’s a good month to cut-through. The Google announcement of their features is probably the biggest although I don’t think these are significant for most businesses.

Here is what we picked out in December as being interesting and useful for marketers

Strategy and planning

If you’re based in the UK this update on the “cookie law” is worth checking to see you have taken the necessary actions - the ICO review complaints, give examples of compliance.

• New Internet use report - Ofcom’s seventh International Communications Market Report was published on 13th December 2012, this examines take-up, availability, price and use of broadband, landlines, mobiles, TV, radio and post across 17 major countries.

If you’re involved in reviewing changes in consumer and business demand for online services as part of planning for 2013 it’s worth a look – some statistics will be useful for presentations to convince colleagues or clients.

• How to grow your share through affiliate marketing in 2013 - this post from Graham Jenner reminds us of the potential for affiliate marketing for transactional Ecommerce sites in the year ahead.

Social media marketing

• Current trends in social media marketing - we have compiled some of the most recent reports on this.
• B2B LinkedIn pages? - LinkedIn asked for examples from its followers of the best pages making use of the new features introduced in 2012.
• Best and worst Facebook company campaigns of 2012 - useful for inspiration and what to avoid.

Search marketing

• SEO Trends infographic - we posted this useful review of the SEO year infographic from FuzzOne in December which proved popular as a review of what’s now important in SEO.
• SEO - the inconvenient truth - what do you think of this post on Smashing Magazine giving the designers view on SEO today? Sure to raise marketers and SEOs hackles we think!

User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation

A round up of reviews in technology innovation from different sites:

• The five most disruptive technologies of 2012
• A +Five year view of how the five Senses from IBM
• The latest on Internet of things a key theme of LeWeb
• [Design practices to leave behind in 2012](http://blog.crazyegg.com/2012/11/26/website-design-practices/ to leave behind in 2012)

Email marketing and CRM

• 2012 Email Marketing Resolutions Revisited - Jim Ducharme’s revisited his resolutions - always a good practice if you’re organised!
• Email marketing in 2013 - Jordie van Rijn, a specialist email marketing consultant explains what to watch for next year and beyond.