Making predictions is a mugs game as they're regularly wrong and even if they turn out to be right by then everyone has moved on to the next thing. However, it is beneficial to try to plan for what might be. Please bear in mind that I'm only concerned in Suffolk and in general concerned in the online marketing world - this isn't meant to be global economic forecasting time. So what might happen in the online world in Suffolk, Uk in 2011?
Well the good news is that I can't see any new 'knock-out' bits of technology or applications on the horizon that we're all going to struggle to get our heads around. It's going to be more of the same which hopefully will give us a chance to work on the areas where we're not so strong ('development opportunities' I think the Americans call them); so, for example, on the Guides we're going to learn more about Facebook this year as we're not where we should be with that channel.
I predict that more clients will join the Guides as more and more businesses turn to the internet to find new targetted, trackable, enterprise leads. That's pretty determined really, no prizes for that. We had a 40% increase in new clients last year despite my pathetic sales efforts, and hopefully we'll grow even faster this year as more businesses get online and as the still relatively young Suffolk Weddings Guide.
I hope that renovation rates for existing clients on the Suffolk Guides will remain above 85%, and that current clients will continue to get more and more value from their adverts. This will be from a mixture of us driving more targetted traffic to them (unique visitors rose by 48% in 2010 and we want the same this year, whilst maintaining strong conversion rates on each of the Guides), and also - hopefully - clients being more proactive in managing their adverts, updating them with offers and providing us with more facts that we can use to cross promote them throughout the Guides. It's free & gratis, doesn't cost you a thing and you can update your advert as often as you like, whenever you like. You will get more leads if you update your advert regularly, I guarantee that it's not a watse of time.
Don't forget that you don't pay any commission for leads that we bring you so the more leads we can bring you the better; there's no downside, unlike with many Online travel Operators (Ota's) where they charge commission on bookings. So drive bookers to your website rather than straight through the Ota's, and keep the commission £.
I think that more Suffolk businesses will originate an interest in communal media - Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube etc etc - and try to find ways to utilise these tools to bring them more leads. At the moment, to be frank, utilisation of these platforms is low which is understandable as we're all a bit in the dark about how to use them and what the benefits are. Accessing these socal media channels is free but dedicating time and resources to getting the messages right is not - that's a big chance cost for most Suffolk businesses. On the other hand communal media marketing can be a lot economy than offline advertising if it's done right, so you can save your enterprise a lot of money. So the q is - until it's effectiveness is proven and we have a clearer idea about how to use it, why should we spend time Tweeting and Facebooking in 2011?Fair q - and I predict that a lot more time this year will be spent on answering that question. I shall bring you the results as soon as I get my hands on them.
In the meantime what we can all do is refine our advent to communal media, provide clear calls to operation on messaging (Book Now! Call Us! Come & Visit etc etc) to drive leads and sales, and part success. We know that online marketing is more trackable than any other media, but in truth not so many clients currently track their online results - ie where their leads are advent from, who's bringing them and what the potential of these leads are. More on this in time to come blogs but the point is we need to know what's working so that we can spend more reserved supply on the bits that work and drop the things that don't. (This is an age old qoute - yonks ago Lord Leverhulme said
"I know that half of my advertising funds is wasted, but I'm not sure which half"
Also we need to watch communal media sites for disgruntled customers, & have procedures in place to speedily talk to complaints or grievances aired online. Often these complaints occur after no response, or a poor response, from using original customer aid channels, so if we can heighten those original channels we can forestall some complaints from being broadcast to a global audience.
Mobile, mobile, mobile - the world is going mobile. There are 4.6billion mobiles colse to the world, and smartphones can do a lot of stuff already, so we will need to make sure that our websites have mobile versions, truly shareable on the phone networks. I don't think this is going to have a big impact on Suffolk in 2011, but truly over the next 3 years we need to be aware of it as more and more of our customers will use their mobiles as SatNavs/Travel Guides/to access Rating Reviews on places they haven't been to before/to seek real time information/ to provide instant criticism on the potential of your services via Facebook/Twitter/Trip consultant etc etc. Be aware. (& will this mean an end to original Visit Britain/Aa ratings/stars/awards?)
Social Search, Networks and Forums - 'search', either geographic, communal or by manufactures sector will continue to grow, and are likely to converge. In English what this means is that over time the crusade engines (Google, Bing etc) will return results to an enquiror based not just on what crusade term they enter, but also based on their communal networks, their previous crusade patterns and preferences. So, for example, if an enquiror searches 'Luxury Hotels Suffolk' and always chooses say The Swan at Lavenham but while their best mate (connected via on Facebook, Google mail etc) always choses, say Hintlesham Hall Google will return The Swan at whole 1 spot and Hintlesham Hall at whole 2. Clever stuff.
2011 might start to see the emergence of truly local, micro communal communications forums. In time one will emerge for Suffolk and it will be a platform for fellowships to impart with users in more authentic and transparent ways, and for users to impart with one other to share facts and reviews about Suffolk.
But whatever new online trends emerge in 2011 some themes will continue regardless -
quality not quantity (in website content, visitor numbers, twitter followers etc etc)
Relevance
Customer aid and responsiveness - dealing with online enquiries instantly is key to conversion, ideally adding online availability and maybe even booking functionality to your websites? Consumers are getting used to instant results and real time facts - we can't always give it to them but we need to try.
Joined up marketing ie any online marketing you do is complementary to your offline (brochures, newspaper or magazine advertising, direct mail etc) marketing or, best still, leverages it. What I mean by that is that if you produce a brochure, for example, then there should be lots of references in that brochure to your website to lead people online; ask them to result you on Twitter if you have a Twitter account, or Like you on Facebook, sign up for enewsletters etc.
2011 is likely to be a tough year as enterprise costs continue to rise whilst revenue remains uncertain due to weak consumer confidence. Any way in Suffolk we should advantage from other 'staycation' year and, with interest rates low, those in employment do have cash to spend - so the challenge remains persuading them to spend it in Suffolk.
That's all for now folks - Good luck in 2011 and if there's whatever we can help you with please get in touch.
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