As 2010 is now in full swing we can see some trends shaping up and taking priority this year. Despite the economic downturn through last year, or maybe because of it, marketing experts have focussed on more effective methods of marketing.

Quick stats;
Mobile marketing could grow from just $1.8 billion in 2007 to $24 billion worldwide by 2013, with a 24% increase this year.

The biggest growth regions for online users will be the Middle East and Africa, where there was over 1000% growth last year.

Traditional media marketing spend will shrink by about 10% and online marketing spend will increase by about 20%.

Main marketing trends for 2010

Text message marketing goes mainstream

According to the Mobile Marketing Association, text message marketing is already the most widely-used form of mobile marketing.

Text messages have a 90% open rate, 85% of which are in the first hour of receipt.

Smaller trends in mobile marketing;

• Acceptance of mobile coupons – A recession-weary public hungering for discounts is latching on to mobile coupons as the ‘killer mobile app’ due to their convenience. More consumer-packaged goods companies, restaurants, and grocers are launching mobile coupons each month.
• High ROI – Texting is proving to have a higher return versus other electronic marketing. On average, texting gets seven times the response rate versus email (7% vs 1%) and reaches twenty five times the number of users as does Twitter. Also some studies have shown it has a 50% action rate.

Smartphone applications will show new ways to engage customers

Before you go rushing to build your latest smartphone application, consider that smartphones made up only 25% of all new phone shipments in the U.S. in Q3 2009. Neilsen expects the market to continue to grow through 2010, however so far mobile application penetration is not as high as people initially expected, there was actually a reduction in smartphone usage  in 2009.  The thing to remember about mobile application users is that they are fairly evenly spread across the demographic board, so as the take-up of mobile apps increases, you will no longer just be talking to Gen-Y and the early adopters. With the rich media options available to smart phone application developers and marketers, it is hard to go past their attraction.

Keyword inflation will continue

Search keyword cost inflation has been a problem for years. It is expected that, each year, the cost for all keywords increases by 8% with lower cost keywords increasing by as much as 500% per year. This will definitely continue as industries try to become more efficient and effective with their marketing, and move more of their spend online. What may happen in 2011 or 2012 is online marketing costs will stabilise as they reach parity with direct marketing and mobile marketing.

Netbooks, mobile broadband and mobile surfing will impact web design

The number of mobile web users is expected to triple. The number of mobile broadband users is expected to double. The number of netbook users grew 79% last year.

Netbooks, the smaller, low cost laptops built for web browsing are the fastest-growing category within laptop sales. They are expected to account for 10% of laptop sales and 8% of all sales (by volume) in 2009. The new crop of netbooks will have HSDPA (3G) built-in, making them ideal for business users on the move.

All this means that most developers should develop a mobile web compatible version of their website. They should also optimise their normal web page for 1024×600, which is currently where most netbooks are at.

User generated content (UGC) will be King, Social media becomes mainstream.

A Universal McCann study in 2008 found that only 14% of users trust advertising, whereas 78% trust recommendations of other consumers. This is one of the reasons for the growth of social media as a method for marketing. Attracting responses from your customers will become a standard in 2010.

Growth in location marketing

Location sharing services like Foursquare, Loopt and Google Latitude, are already receiving mainstream media mention. It won’t be long before every rating and review site, such as Yelp! and Insider Pages, build this into the foundation and push coupons and discounts out to you based on location. Your location is also becoming a major consideration in pay per click advertising.

Your location, or that of your customers and prospects, will become another data point in the marketing mix.