More than 600 top-level marketing executives responded to a survey designed to identify the top marketing trends of 2008.
Marketing Trends -- 2008
The three main themes that marketing executives will focus on in 2008 are as follows:
- marketing basics (60%)
- search engine optimization (SEO) (42%)
- personalization (36%)
Marketing basics included the following:
- customer satisfaction
- customer retention
- segmentation
- brand loyalty
- return on investment (ROI)
The high prevalence of SEO marketing techniques reveals how valuable the Web has become as a corporate marketing tool. In addition, Web developers who possess the programming and database skills to personalize the Web experience should continue to command a premium in the current marketplace.
Marketing Executives
The executives surveyed are members of The Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG). A summary (pdf) of the findings is available from Anderson Analytics. eMarketer provides an additional summary of the survey results.
Marketing Basics
Whether we are looking for a job, marketing our professionals services, or merely representing the organization we currently work for, we could all benefit from thinking more like a marketing executive and getting back to basics.
While 70% or the executives in the survey group have graduate degrees -- the majority of which are from top-20 business schools -- a six-figure education is not required to learn marketing basics.
The survey identified the business books most recently read by U.S. marketing executives:- Good to Great
- The World is Flat
- Blink
- Blue Ocean Strategy
- Long Tail
- Made to Stick
- Freakonomics
- Execution
- 4 Hour Work Week
- Age of Turbulence
- Who Moved My Cheese?
- Wikinomics
- Word of Mouth Marketing
- The Goal
- New Leaders 100 Day Action Plan
Business Books
Beantown Web will provide key highlights from these and other business books in the New Year. In the meantime, start with The World is Flat, a must read for anyone who wants to survive, if not thrive, in today's global economy.
