Internet Marketing Blog

5 Critical Online Marketing Agency Trends

July 15, 2008 – 4:30 pm

This year alone, Blueliner has experienced several partnership requests from traditional ad agencies. As an online marketing agency, the opportunity to increase our project flow by partnering with traditional agencies is exceptional. On the flip side, we’ve noticed how anxious traditional agencies are in outsourcing this work, for fear of losing their clients. The agency-to-agency relationship is a tricky one, but can be successful with the right balance of trust, collaboration and communication.

As digital economies and online advertising budgets increase, it’s only a matter of time before traditional agencies expand their interactive divisions, or become interactive entirely.

Today we’ll discuss a few trends or key indicators that help interactive agencies provide the best service to their clients. Traditional agencies, take notes!

Mobile - The next ubiquitous platform is mobile. Google Mobile, Microsoft Live Search, higher levels of usability and customer focus are driving mobile application adoption and development. Gen x and Y are already using mobile / web 2.0 apps to stay connected with their friends and progress socially. Mobile is more than a trend. It’s a direction and a disrupter. It’s a mandate for user-centered design. We all deserve to be able to leave the laptop behind once in a while. But we can seldom roam without our phones. Successful marketing agencies have adopted mobile as a platform and standards that insure device independence.

Wisdom of Crowds / Ratings - Initially popularized by millions of visitors to Amazon.com, ratings, comments and voting are now the norm. Transparency in sales and marketing is driving “community” on client websites to help them become thought leaders. Clients are responding to interactive marketing agencies that provide opportunities to interact with their customers in new ways. Interactive agencies are proving the need to engage visitors by allowing the visitor to be involved earlier and later in the sales process.

Social Media - inclusive, viral, connecting, sharing and rich media are all terms used in discussion of this meta trend. Agencies that understand the complexities of online social awareness are being rewarded. Interactive applications and websites are increasing “time on site” and social awareness. How many “friends” you have and how many visits your profiles have received are new traffic counters. Thought leaders are differentiated based on the level of community they facilitate online. Social media has as many perspectives as web 2.0 and will continue to grow by definition and implementation. We seem to have a need to learn and understand our world and social media is helping.

Visitor Engagement - The days of website intros are waning. Introductions are making way to interactions with your company while improving the “brand experience.” This critical sales or awareness process is not being overlooked by the top interactive agencies. The importance of grabbing your visitors attention remains but the need to interact with the visitor has become the new critical first step. Maintaining your visitor’s attention and their “time on your site (pdf)” has become the defacto standard in analytics and measurement.

Number 5 is you - Refocusing on “you” continues to be an important meta-trend. Let’s hope we all remain the most important fibers in the fabric of web. Just as you are the most important person in the online sales process, you have also remained a key indicator of a marketing agency’s success. As the Interactive Marketing Agency continues to adapt their offerings, we all benefit from a web that provides us all with a place to share.

So how do we continue to adapt? We increase out awareness of our visitor and client needs while learning the best tools and techniques that convert those needs into measurable results. Staying on top of the trends will help everyone adapt. Experience promises the shortest distance between adaptation and interactive marketing success.