Integrated marketing services provider Alterian today released the results of their seventh annual survey on social media marketing adoption.

Alterian found that 66 percent of respondents will be investing in social media marketing (SMM) in 2010. Of those, 40 percent said they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards funding their SMM activities.

To get a copy of the full report of the Alterian Annual Survey results (see below):

2009 Annual Survey Results Brief

Alterian's 7th Annual Industry Survey

Alterian's 7th Annual Survey Results offers insight into the methods and investments that marketers are currently exploring and implementing to engage with their customers.

The marketing industry is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Set against a backdrop of tight budgets, increased demand for accountability, the explosion in social media and informed, active and connected consumers, marketing is moving from mass communication towards multichannel customer engagement. While consumers are driving this change, marketers also are expecting their service providers to keep up and streamline and connect the services they offer.

Download Alterian's 2009 Annual Survey Results Brief

What happens to your business when you are focused on marketing?
 

• Your content suffers due to lack of time
• Your sales funnel process is half baked due to lack of time
• Your prospect follow up series is scattered due to lack of time
• You are not thinking about repeat customers due to lack of time
• Your customer service may be lacking
• You don’t have time to develop and implement new prospect conversion strategies
• You don’t have time to check your stats or do testing to determine the effectiveness of one strategy over another
• The list goes on, and on …

The bottom line is that marketing is occupying so much of your time that your real business is suffering and probably dying. Most people panic over this and begin doing even MORE marketing stuff.

If you find yourself in this situation then you need to seriously consider outsourcing your marketing.

What if you could hire over 800 marketing professionals for the cost of dinner for 2 each month?

That is exactly what we have built, not only for ourselves but for you as well. We call this outsource community Synnd.

What if you could hire over 800 people to market your content across the web for every page of content in your entire website?

What if, for the price of dinner for two, you could leverage $32,000 worth of human labor every month to work on marketing for you so you could get back to building your core business?
 

Who is this outsource staff?
 

Our outsource partners are all members of the Synnd community. They all use the Synnd software application and they are all paid in promotional action in exchange for their labor.

We currently have nearly 800 members from around the world who are ready to work for you right now.

Let’s imagine that you you just published a new page on your blog or website. Now you create a campaign in the Synnd network to enlist 800+ people to market that content.

Let’s suppose that 800 people market your content across 10 social networks each. That equals 8000 promotional actions for your new piece of content.

Each promotional action is equivalent to 2 minutes of human labor. 8000 promotional actions multiplied by 2 minutes each is 16,000 minutes or 266 1/2 hours of raw promotional action happening on that content.
 

How much would it cost to hire a marketing professional to spend 266 hours promoting your business?
 

It depends on the professional… You could outsource this to someone for $12 an hour on the low side. 266 hours multiplied by $12 an hour equals $3200 and that was just promoting a SINGLE piece of content.

What if you publish 10 new pages or posts in a month? How much would it cost in terms of human labor at $12 an hour? (10 x $3200 = $32,000)

Clearly this is not cost effective but by focusing MOST of your time on marketing this is probably how much money you’re losing because you are not focused on your business, you’re focused on marketing.

Fortunately you have the ability to eliminate that $32,000 a month outlay of time and labor by outsourcing your marketing to the Synnd community.

Right now, for less than $70 a month you can do the equivalent of hiring 800 marketing professionals working the equivalent of $32,000 worth of labor to market your content consistently, day in and day out.

The process and the software that we needed to develop to make this dream come true has cost us over $500,000 USD, 4 years and thousands of hours of testing to pull off.

We now have a powerful marketing community that is so efficient that $32,000 worth of labor is reduced to 5 minutes of actual work by any member of the Synnd community. The reason for this is simple leverage and state of the art software.

Synnd is a human powered promotional engine leveraged by software automation. We have efficiently reduced our marketing tasks so we can now focus on our core business. We welcome you to join the Synnd community.
 

© 2009 Social Media Science. All rights reserved.
 

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) decreased the amount spent on advertising and promotions by 23.5% to $2,092 this past year,

The Kelsey Group’s study, "The Local Commerce Monitor Wave XIII," suggests that the penetration of digital & online media rose to 77% in August 2009 — up from 73% in August 2008 — while traditional media declined to 69% from 74%, respectively.  
 

Despite the overall decline during the past 12 months, on average SMBs increased spending on Web sites and profile pages by 26.8% to $769 in 2009, up from $608 in the previous year.

 
The study also suggests an increase in SMBs using the Internet to track or measure sources of new business leads. Of businesses that track lead sources, the percentage that taps the Internet via clicks or e-mails rose to 30% in 2009, up from 22% in 2008.

As a percentage of total advertising for the SMBs surveyed, digital and online advertising increased from 22% to 36.8% during the past year, according to the study.

While it’s no surprise that small and medium-sized businesses have accelerated the shift to digital and online advertising, taking money from traditional media, Steve Marshall, director of research, The Kelsey Group, says…
 

"…it’s the degree in which the shift is happening, because last year the SMBs told us contributions to both online and traditional advertising would remain about even."

 
It’s no surprise that this year’s study suggests SMBs have hunkered down to hunt for new customers and retain existing ones. More are experimenting with video advertising, and some with mobile, and others have ventured into contextual targeting ads. Behavioral targeting, which relies on browser cookies and Web site page code, remains a bit complicated and out of reach.
 

About 18% of the SMBs participating in The Kelsey Group study use blogs, which remains flat from the year-ago study.

 
While Marshall chose to keep some details from The Local Commerce Monitor Wave XIII study under wraps until mid-September, he did say that SMBs have increased their use of directional media that targets specific consumers to take action, email and direct marketing.

The study released August 2008, suggests that 9% of SMBs bought pay-per-click (PPC) advertising — up slightly this year. Last year’s study also revealed that 40% used search engine optimization (SEO) to make it easier for engines to find, index and serve up their sites.
 

"In this year’s study, the use of pay-per-click advertising was weaker than expected," Marshall says, but more companies with Web sites or business profiles are using SEO.

 
The latest wave of BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor study was conducted with research partner ConStat. The study defines "penetration" as the percentage of SMBs using a given type of media, regardless of spending level.

The survey, conducted at least once yearly since 1999, provides insight into 40 questions, covering subjects from media budgets to sales channels. The sampling comes from 300 companies.

This article contributed by: by Laurie Sullivan, of MediaPost News – Online Media Daily.

VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION… "Who do you trust?"

Let me be more specific… Who do you trust when it comes to your business?

For example…

Would you rather get instruction from someone "just starting out" or someone that has sold over $50 million dollars online?

Sounds silly doesn’t it?

The problem is, too many folks listen to advice from people who have little to no experience with what they are actually teaching.  Yes there are all kinds of free articles online teaching you this and showing you that.  But is the source really credible?

One resource that I trust is called Marketing Tutorials.

It’s hosted by world famous marketer Armand Morin and he answers questions (asked by everyday people) in step-by-step videos.

It’s the perfect solution if you want someone telling you exactly what to do to grow your online business – especially when your instructor has has generated over $50 million dollars online.

Also, when you click on the banner below, you’ll be able to see a brief video explanation of the type of content that’s been created for this membership.

Have you ever wondered why is it that the people you want to learn from aren’t accessible? Many times the argument is that they’re too busy making money to teach/share what they are doing. That’s certainly fair but it doesn’t make it any easier for the people who need some advice.

If you can relate to this, then you’ll appreciate this powerful and profitable monthly tutorial service I’m strongly recommending.  Even though he runs a $15 million dollar business, he doesn’t have any private clients and hardly ever coaches people one-on-one…

However, he has finally decided to offer something a lot more affordable than his group coaching program which costs $500/month. 

It’s called Marketing Tutorials and you can ask questions and get video responses.

Pretty cool eh? In fact, you can see and hear a full explanation of these videos here:

Anyway, if you’re looking for some guidance but don’t have the budget for some high priced coaching, then this is for you:

Good luck and much prosperity to you.
  

It’s Marc here again with a very  helpful ‘FREE’ marketing tip that I know you’ll find tremendous value in.

"The best piece of software EVER…!"

That’s a BIG claim I know… but give me 5 mins and I can prove it to you.

Tell me if you don’t agree with this…  One of the biggest complaints and frustrations that people have with being online is having to manage all of the different usernames and passwords for all of their different accounts.

And now you have to setup a username & password for every one of the various Social Media sites like: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Myspace, etc…

UGGGH!!!  How can one possibly keep up with it all…!?!?!

PROBLEM Finally Solved!!

I’ve been using this incredible piece of ‘FREE’ software for over 4 years now and absolutely LOVE it!  It has saved me hundreds of hours in wasted time trying to keep up with all of the various websites that I have an account setup on… and at last count, I have 1,253 different online accounts.  All with different usernames and passwords that I don’t have to remember or manage.

It’s 100% safe and secure and it’s been featured in the Wall Street Journal, PC Magazine, and by other very well respected authority sites.
 

=====================================================

You can download your compl.imentary copy here:
*** BestFreeSoftware Link ***

=====================================================
 

Ohh, I almost forgot. I also shot a quick 5 minute "sneak-peek" behind the scenes video to help you see just how helpful and powerful this ‘FREE’ software is first hand…

(Please give the video about a minute to load before playing)

** 5-Min Demo Video Link **

Enjoy and have a profitable day.

Regards,

Marc Gamble
aka *the Marketing Guru*
650-515-4654

P.S. Here’s the direct link to download the phree software directly: BestFreeSoftware Link

P.P.S. Don’t forget to check out the 5-min "behind the scenes" demo: 5-Min Demo Video Link
 

Let’s face it… the world as we knew it is changing as rapidly and dramatically as an infant changes into a toddler and then into a pre-schooler and then into a first grader.  That period of our human evolution spans about 6 years and in retospect, the infant who could not sit up, roll over, speak, or feed themselves, is now turning into a virtually self-sufficient and independent little individual.  They look forward to the daily and weekly changes in their lives… there’s very little fear in them regarding "what’s next" because virtually everything is new and unknown.

I use this as an interesting segue into the obvious resistance I’ve been running into with various business owners I’ve recently been chatting with.  To make a long story short, there’s no argument that there are Real and Serious DANGERS that small businesses are facing right now.  No business nor industry is immune — it CAN happen… and it IS happening everywhere you look.

Small businesses are failing and having to close down.  "Going Out Of Business" signs are litterally in every city and town across the country. Allow me share some sobering statistics with you:
 

Let’s do the math…

If about 637k businesses opened up their doors for the FIRST time in 2007… and that same year 588k businesses closed their doors for the LAST time…

Doesn’t that nearly add up to 1:1 to ratio of new business openigns and current business failings?  That’s down-right scary!

 
Business owners, managers, supervisors, executives, entrepreneurs, professionals…

I’m imploring you to WAKE UP and embrace the changes in your business industry… ADAPT and use them to your competitive advantage because as you can tell from these shocking SBA stats above, your competitors are probably ignoring these changes… leaving you to capitalize.

It’s one thing for me to "rant and rave" about "waking up" and expecting it to happen automatically vs. providing helpful tools and resources to enable the transition.

So, with that being said, I’ve got two great gifts for you…  
 

Gift #1: Download the complete e-book version 

Gift #2: Watch the video below (approx. 10 mins)

I hope after watching and reading this great story, it helps you with your ability to adapt and embrace the inevitable changes in your life.

Now, if you’re ready to schedule a complimentary consultation to chat about how you can leverage the clever new marketing strategies that will give your business an unfair competitive advantage in your marketplace, jump here now.

Good luck… until next time,

Marc Gamble
aka *the Marketing Guru*

By the way, if you’re interested in picking up a physical copy, jump over to Amazon.com and grab it.

Amazon.com — Change can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. The message of Who Moved My Cheese? is that all can come to see it as a blessing, if they understand the nature of cheese and the role it plays in their lives.

Who Moved My Cheese? is a parable that takes place in a maze. Four beings live in that maze: Sniff and Scurry are mice–nonanalytical and nonjudgmental, they just want cheese and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it.

* Sources: U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, September 2008

Lesson on tactical "giveaways" to build marketshare…

Quiznos is in a tight race with Subway to stake a claim on value with a number of subs under $5.  But more strategically, Quiznos wanted to get new customers into its stores to sample a revamped value menu rolled out in January that includes lower prices on 37 different items, including the 20 $5 sandwiches.

Sandwich chain Quiznos achieved massive results with an online promotion offering a downloadable coupon for a free sub. The coupons were available from http://www.millionsubs.com/ starting Feb. 23 and lasting until the millionth sandwich was given away.  As it turned out, reaching that ceiling took less than three days.

In this economy, you can’t go wrong giving away free food. The Denny’s restaurant chain hit an apparent home run with its Super Bowl ad touting a free Grand Slam breakfast on the Tuesday after the big game. Two million customers showed up on Feb. 3 for a meal on the house–which CEO Nelson Marchioli characterized to analysts the next day as “a very encouraging lift in guest traffic,” hopefully including many of the “light and lapsed” customers Denny’s was targeting.

“We caught a tiger by the tail with this one,” says Rebecca Steinfort, CMO of the 5,000 unit chain. “For me personally, [the promotion] went a lot faster than I thought it would. I thought it would take a matter of maybe a month. There was a ton of power in this.”

“Our strategy during the first quarter is simply to drive more traffic,” Steinfort says. “For people who are already Quiznos customers, we want them to realize that we are now more affordable, and they can eat here regularly. Plus we want to bring in new people who’ve never tried a Quiznos sub.”

For all the seriousness of the intent in giving away free sub, the company didn’t do much formally to get the offer out: some PR, some banner advertising on a broad range of Web sites, and “those of us who are on Facebook got on and told our friends about it,” Steinfort says.

“We did do a little value-added TV, but that was a few days into the campaign and quite frankly the genie was out of the bottle by that time,” she says. The company also runs a “Q-Club” loyalty group and could have promoted the offer with an e-mail blast, but that wouldn’t have targeted the first-time customers Quiznos was really trying to reach.

The offer did get some viral spread, both on the www.millionsubs.com microsite and on the Quiznos company profile in Facebook Users could send information about the coupon offer to their friends or volunteer their friends’ e-mail addresses and have Quiznos contact them. Steinfort says about 200,000 visitors who registered and downloaded the coupon also passed information along to at least one friend. It’s too early for more metrics about how many pass-alongs the average visitor, or the average referrer, notched up during the promotion, Steinfort says.

“I think a lot of the passing was just people telling friends informally, whether verbally or in e-mail or talking about it in Twitter,” she says.

With big time-limited online stunts, it’s becoming more and more necessary to make sure that the Web site can withstand the expected traffic spikes. Quiznos was careful to load-test its millionsubs.com site before throwing the doors open.

“We thought a lot about Dr Pepper and making sure we didn’t repeat their case example,” Steinfort says, referring to the customer debacle that occurred when Dr Pepper’s offer of a coupon for a free soda upon the release of the new Guns N’ Roses album was disrupted by a Web site not up to the thousands of visitors it received. “And the site performed very well.”

Things may have gone smoothly for Quiznos on the tech side, but the campaign encountered unanticipated problems of another sort. The Quiznos chain is almost entirely franchised, and complaints began to appear rather quickly on consumer Web sites that customers were having trouble redeeming their free-sub coupons with specific franchisees. Anecdotes were flying about customers who were told that the offer applied only to a limited number of the small-sandwich menu—a stipulation nowhere made on the Web site—or only provided for a $2 discount on the regular sandwich price. Some bloggers reported being told that in order to take advantage of the offer, they had to purchase a drink and chips.

Photos went up on the Web of Quiznos franchises that had posted homemade signs saying the “Coupons are not valid on our ‘everyday value’ subs (they are already promotional items)”, when the printed coupon stated that the offer was applicable to both the everyday value and the signature subs. Other consumers chimed in with stories of operators who went to great lengths to check that the coupons matched the IDs of the presenters.

Some of the commenters pointed out that the problem seemed to be that Quiznos corporate was capping the rate at which it was reimbursing its store operators for coupon redemption.

Steinfort agrees that the corporate reimbursement rate caused some issue early on with the campaign. “It’s not standard industry practice to subsidize coupons at all,” Steinfort says. “But in January we set up a program to do that for our franchisees during the first quarter, because we knew we would be couponing pretty heavily to get people in to see the new menu board and new pricing. We set up a program that would reimburse each store for 400 of any kind of coupons that would come in, including these free sub coupons.”

But once the “Million Subs” promotion showed signs of being such a runaway success, Steinfort says, the company moved quickly to revise its subsidy policies. Reports from the Web say the first move was to raise the cap to 700 reimbursed coupons per store; according to Steinfort, the company ultimately wound up removing the cap entirely on paying store operators back for the sandwiches they gave away.

One problem with capping the reimbursement rate, she points out, was that redemption rates varied greatly among stores, so that outlets near college campuses, for example, saw far more than the average number of free-sub coupons presented.

Still, those redemption issues have now got Quiznos involved in what’s becoming another standard part of online promotions these days: repairing customer relations in order to defuse the bad word of mouth that even a small contingent of frustrated consumers can create.

“We’re committed to satisfying every customer out there, even if they didn’t get to redeem their coupon,” Steinfort says. “We’re urging people to e-mail us at MillionSubs@Quiznos.com, and we will definitely try to make things right with every customer out there. In the full marketing operational life cycle, you have to handle these issues.”

Author: Brian Quinton Contributor to the Big Fat Marketing Blog on March 4th, 2009

Now, if you’re ready to schedule a complimentary consultation to chat about how you can leverage the clever new marketing strategies that will give your business an unfair competitive advantage in your marketplace, jump here now.

Another Unique Way That You Can Increase Your Sales & Profits From Your Customer Capture System

Understanding why it’s so important that you start building your customer list for your business as soon as you can… look at what’s possible when you leverage this "marketing weapon" in your arsenal:

The payoff for you can be tremendous for quickly increasing the sales and profits for your business during this recession.

In just a minute I’m going to share with you another unique way that you can use to profit from your customer list with a click of a button.

But before I show you how to do this, I wanted to bring to light an important point of why using your own customer capture marketing system for your business in this recession will work much better now than in normal economic times.

With the housing market going completely sour, the stock market plunging because of scared and wary investors, and huge corporations who have been around for years and years are now closing their doors and laying off workers, consumers are looking
for ways to stretch their dollar as far as they can.

They do this by scouting for coupons and sales where they can get discounts on food, clothing, services, and just about anything else they can get their hands on.

Consumers really don’t want to cut out their leisure’s if they could still enjoy all the things they like such as going to the mall to shop on a whim, hitting the local diners to grab a bite to eat, going to the movies to catch the latest flick, or using various services if they were certain they could get discounts on these items whenever they needed to.

This is where you come in….

You simply meet their needs to continue to fulfill their desires. 

If you ask your customers at the time they make a purchase from your establishment if they would like to get free coupons or gift certificates, they will jump all over the opportunity to save money during this recession.

You can do this by either handing your customers a small flyer that leads them to your customer capture website to get their free coupons or gift certificates for your store, or you can have them fill out a small card with their name and e-mail address, or simply verbally tell them to go to your customer capture website so they can start saving money by coming back to your store to buy stuff.

But it doesn’t stop there….

You now have all these customers (or walk-in traffic) on your customer list that you can e-mail with a click of a button to bring them back into your establishment whenever you have an announcement about your sale or special offer.

Do you see the power of this?

As your customer list grows larger and larger as the weeks go by, you’ll be able to bring more customers back into your establishment with a click of a button instantly increasing your sales and profits for your business.

The beauty of this is that it will totally offset your advertising costs saving you a substantial amount of money each month on your advertising costs because you’ll be able to keep selling to the same people who bought from you in the first place instead of hoping they come back into your establishment to buy from you more often.

What’s really cool about this is that you can e-mail your customer list each week about your sales or special offers thereby giving you a steady and predictable flow of customers come into your establishment each week/month where other businesses are struggling trying to get new customers to come back into their stores to buy from them.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you about another unique way you can profit from your customer list as I promised you.
 

Your customer list will quickly become very valuable to you where you can start doing joint ventures and cross sells with other local business owners whose products, services, restaurants, etc. will complement your business.

 
Let me give you an example of how this works…

Let’s say that you own a pizza store. Pizza always seems to be associated with fun activities like parties, sports events, get-togethers, or special occasions.

All you do is simply get together with another business owner who has a complementary product or service that your pizza customers would enjoy and do an add or coupon swap with the owner. (Or sell them an ad spot)

Third-party recommendations have been known to be one of the highest converting forms of marketing. When somebody recommends another restaurant, product or service to another person, most people will use the recommendation simply because it came from a trusted source, thereby eliminating any possible barriers.

So in this example, if you’re a pizza storeowner and you do a coupon swap with another local company that sells party supplies, that would be a great match to cross sell each other’s products and services.

All you do is send out a quick message to your customer list informing them that your friend who owns the party supply store down the street is offering a special deal by giving away a bundle of free balloons with every order which is only available to
customers of your pizza store.

Your customers would really appreciate the fact that you know the owner of the store and that you’re offering a personal recommendation to do business with them which comes from a highly trusted source (you).

In return you offer a special deal to the same owner of the party supply store down the street to give all their customers half off when they buy a pizza from your store.

Doing joint ventures and cross sells with other local business owners is a fantastic way to quickly increase the revenue for your business as well as build long term relationships with the local owners.

Now that was just an example. The scenarios are endless of what you can do with joint ventures or cross promotions with local business owners.

Having your own customer e-mail list can also put you on the upper hand of a deal if the owner of the other store does not have a list of their own.

In this example you could actually charge the business owner a certain amount of money for you to send a recommendation out to your list about their products or services that are on sale.

In return you could also make it a requirement that in addition to payment that they also have to tell their customers about your pizza sale.

I hope I gave you some really good ideas on how you can profit from building your own customer list using a customer capture website for your business.

~Thanks Frank!!

Visit www.AttainResponsePro.com for the most effective and truly affordable Complete Video Email Marketing System available for small businesses.

This is a direct re-print from Frank Bruno (a well respected expert in the small business marketing community) of an advanced strategy that works like ‘gang-busters’ when implemented.

So for SMB’s reading this column, I thought I’d highlight a few key takeaways related to maximizing your presence via local business listings.

In the first panel, "Up Close with Google Maps & Local," I re-iterated the importance of claiming your listing directly at the Google Local Business Center, as well as data providers like Localeze, Universal Business Listing, and infoUSA. Verifying with these data providers is key-both because of their direct feeds to Google, as well as their use in directories and other local search portals, which serve as citations via Google’s web crawl.

Chris Silver Smith followed up with a few tips for the case in which your physically-based business actually serves multiple neighborhoods or towns where you don’t have a location. He recommends:

• Creating plenty of city-or neighborhood-specific content on your own website to let the search engine spiders know you serve these additional areas.
• Registering a PO Box and obtaining a local phone number in the additional towns or neighborhoods you serve.
• Claiming your profile on local portals or data providers who only require a business name and phone number, or who will accept a PO Box as an address.

These steps should ensure that Google Maps picks up your additional "locations" in its web crawl, which you can then claim as local business listings.

Jumping ahead a little bit, you could follow up the content on your own website by starting a series of HyperLocal blogs focused on news and events specific to these communities. In the next panel, "Local Search Marketing Tactics," Matt McGee demonstrated that these kinds of blogs build buzz for your company in areas which you serve, and accrue more town- or neighborhood-specific web crawl citations.

Back to the original panel-my co-presenter Steve Espinosa also presented some excellent tips to optimize your local business listings, and increase your citation totals:

• Include yourself in as many relevant categories as possible at Yahoo-this can often lead to multiple URLs, and thus multiple citations.
• Pay the $9.95/mo. for Yahoo’s Enhanced Product. His company has found that the little "Merchant Verified" checkmark increases phone calls by 180%.
• Don’t forget about video, both as a citation source and a direct traffic driver. Getting a video thumbnail AND a local listing on the same search result page has led to a 340% increase in phone calls.
• Properly constructed social media profiles, like Twitter, can be picked up as citations if they include your business name, address, and phone number.
• Be sure to link out to your various profiles and citations directly from the landing page you list in the Google Local Business Center. This will ensure that Google is crawling your citations and correlating them with your local business listing.

And finally, Will Scott of Search Influence took Steve’s last nugget one step further with his concept of "Barnacle SEO." Essentially, the idea involves linking to your various local profiles from your own content, as well as building links to these profiles through external content.

By doing so, you can leverage the domain authority that a site like Yahoo.com or Yelp.com has in the search engines, and make sure that your own profile is the most relevant result on that domain. Targeting the right sites with a large enough volume of links means not only will these profiles be seen as powerful citations for your Google local business listing, but will rank organically on their own for geo-targeted searches as well.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author, and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

David Mihm is a Portland, OR Web Designer and a noted authority on Local SEO. He writes frequently about Local SEO topics at his blog, Mihmorandum. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

Spending on marketing will grow just half a percentage point over the next 12 months, with traditional ad spend decreasing 7% and Internet growing 10%, according to The Chief-Marketing-Officer (CMO) Survey, a poll of 581 top U.S. marketing executives taken this month.
 

 
Business-to-consumer marketers expect to make the most significant shifts to the Internet, for both product and service advertising, the survey found.

Prof. Christine Moorman of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, who conducts the study in conjunction with the American Marketing Association, says that while the continued move to the Internet is due partly to the medium’s ability to reach consumers, it also reflects a hope for improved ROI by using less expensive–yet effective–tools.

Companies also plan to increase marketing efforts that highlight their social responsibility and what they are doing to minimize environmental impact, the study found. The CMOs’ intent to pursue both categories showed a large jump from the first CMO Survey six months ago, Moorman noted, and there’s also been a significant shift in reasons for such marketing – what once was just good publicity has now become key to earning consumer trust.

And such trust means increased business. "Customers are saying, ‘Do I trust this company? Do I want to have a relationship with them, and give them my money?’," Moorman told Marketing Daily.

One company that consumers seem to trust is Apple, which CMOs have again cited as the best example of marketing excellence. Echoing an Epsilon survey of 180 CMOs last fall, the new CMO Survey respondents voted the same three companies–Apple, Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola–for "Excellence in Marketing," with Apple again leading the other two by a significant margin.

"They really know how to make products that people love," says Moorman, and have become "a design leader in a category that doesn’t have much design."

"Clearly, the results of the study show there will be an increased emphasis on product innovation," Moorman continued. With marketers reporting that new product and service introductions will increase 10% in the next 12 months, she says, expect them to also start pushing product products out to new markets–whether geographic or demographic. The latter, she noted, is being made easier by the Internet, including the increasing propensity for consumers "to identify themselves" through opt-ins, social networks or other online behavior.

Other survey results included:

• 59% of marketers said they are less optimistic about the economy than in the previous quarter, down from 77% with that response in August.

• Respondents reported their firms failed to reach marketing ROI and overall profit goals during the past year (falling short by 0.6% and 3%, respectively), but they expect increases in both categories during the next 12 months.

• Respondents plan to spend 4.5% less on marketing consulting services over the next 12 months–and their hiring plans will remain flat for the near term.

• Marketers still place a strong emphasis on customer insights, sharing marketing knowledge, and integrating existing marketing knowledge.

• 30% of respondents believe that low price will be their customers’ top priority over the next 12 months, with 20% citing trusting relationships and 19% superior product quality.

• The marketers predict no increases in rivalry among competitors, but instead stronger cooperation on non-price strategies–a trend Moorman says may reflect a greater emphasis on open innovation among firms.

The twice-yearly survey plans to add European CMOs next year, and Asian CMOs in 2011.

by Les Luchter, of MediaPost & Marketing Daily