It’s safe to say 2009 and 2010 were breakout years for social media. Our last Digital Marketing poll showed 6 of the top 10 tactics as social media complemented by search engine marketing and email. Slimmer marketing budgets and mass media attention have inspired a rush to many types social media marketing tactics bringing a certain over-optimism about what the social web can do for a company’s bottom line.
With the economy recovering slowly, what will 2011 bring? Are social media and content marketing the glue that brings multi channel marketing together? Is 2011 finally the year for mobile? Will companies focus on more holistic online marketing?
We’d love to hear your opinions in the 2011 TopRank Digital Marketing Poll. Please take the poll here and share it, post it, bookmark it and help us reach over 200 responses:
What 3 online marketing channels & tactics will you emphasize in 2011?
- Search engine optimization (38%, 87 Votes)
- Social network participation (Facebook, LinkedIn) (34%, 78 Votes)
- Blogging (30%, 69 Votes)
- Email marketing (15%, 35 Votes)
- Content marketing (15%, 35 Votes)
- Pay per click (15%, 34 Votes)
- Video marketing (13%, 29 Votes)
- Microblogging (Twitter) (12%, 28 Votes)
- Social media advertising (8%, 19 Votes)
- Corporate web site (7%, 16 Votes)
- Article marketing (6%, 15 Votes)
- Social network advertising (6%, 15 Votes)
- Mobile ads (6%, 14 Votes)
- Mobile & smartphone apps (6%, 14 Votes)
- Behavioral targeting/re-targeting (6%, 14 Votes)
- Affiliate marketing (6%, 14 Votes)
- Viral marketing (6%, 13 Votes)
- Free content (eBooks, white papers) (5%, 12 Votes)
- eCommerce feeds & Comparison shopping (5%, 12 Votes)
- Geolocation (Gowalla, FourSquare) (5%, 11 Votes)
- Branded microsites (4%, 10 Votes)
- Blogger relations (4%, 9 Votes)
- Podcasts (4%, 9 Votes)
- Contextual advertising (3%, 8 Votes)
- Online contests, giveaways (3%, 8 Votes)
- Online display ads (3%, 8 Votes)
- Webinars (3%, 8 Votes)
- Blog advertising (3%, 7 Votes)
- Advertorial (3%, 7 Votes)
- Online/digital public relations (3%, 7 Votes)
- User generated content (3%, 7 Votes)
- IM/Mobile SMS (3%, 6 Votes)
- Online communities/forums (3%, 6 Votes)
- Sponsorships / Cross branding (3%, 6 Votes)
- Widgets (2%, 5 Votes)
- Freemium services/tools (1%, 3 Votes)
- RSS advertising (1%, 2 Votes)
- Social sharing: news & bookmarking (1%, 2 Votes)
- Paid reviews (0%, 1 Votes)
- No holds barred spam (0%, 0 Votes)
- Teleconferences (0%, 0 Votes)
- Rich media apps/demos (Flash) (0%, 0 Votes)
- Buy web sites and retool (0%, 0 Votes)
- Virtual tradeshows (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 232
Loading ...Thank you for taking the poll and we’d sincerely appreciate your help promoting it. We even have an awesome short URL for you to share: http://tprk.us/dm2011
We realize there are a lot of choices in this poll and appreciate your time and participation a great deal. Our last digital marketing poll was of great benefit to many of our readers and we hope to tap into your expertise and opinion on a topic of interest to every digital marketing professional.
We are absolutely interested in your comments about this poll and about your opinion on the future of digital marketing. Did we leave any tactics out? Should we have?
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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Kind of surprised that landing page/conversion rate optimization isn't in the list for 2011. Still too new or assumed to be a part of something else on the list?
Good call Josh. I think it should be included although it is an inherent part of PPC campaigns.
Not too new, I think you've made a good call. Many will consider landing page/conversion rate optimization as an inherent part of PPC I think.
Ahhh . . . I can't believe we are already talking about 2011!!!
I am really surprised why Contextual advertising have not got any votes till now. I do believe that Contextual advertising is going to be one of the biggest thing in Online Marketing in 2011
I suspect each tactical area may be different for companies in different markets and industries. Thank you for taking the poll Cijo
Getting a head start
Thanks for taking the poll Kevin 
I see that my answers were popular ones, so I guess I had better have more coffee and cigarettes on hand to break through the noise barrier.
I had to laugh at the “No holds barred spam” option. The funny part is that a “no holds barred spammer” would never be honest enough (even with themselves) to answer that one. Just in case, can you track this and give (sell) us the IP ranges for anybody who does answer that one?
I had Social Network Participation(1), Blogging (2), and Social Media Advertising (3).
@SocialChadder
We'd adore to hear your opinions in the 2011 TopRank Digital Marketing Poll. Please take the poll here and share it
CRO being offered by many marketers and are popular among the clients as well, so i will have my vote to this as well with social media having main concern
Thanks Cijo. Brand marketing is a broader concept and not a specific tactic, right? I open to including it on future polls, but am curious what others think.
I think of the spam option as a funny little Easter egg in the poll.
Very interesting to see the results of these votings; well, I am gonna use SEO as first of all others, too. What I really like and should not be forgotten amongst all the social media is Email Marketing. It's still a possibility to reach many customers directly and send over nce adverts.
Thanks Lee…good poll
I will be interested in the final results. Regarding Branding, I believe it really falls into the same “General” category as SEO. Both are more overall strategies than actual tactics. Anyone who is serious about marketing anything today has to pay attention to both Brand Marketing Tactics and SEO Tactics – which will explain why SEO will come in as #! in the poll. Branding is like painting a picture and SEO is the start of telling the world it is for sale.
Again, Thanks for putting this together. The final results should highlight some interesting points.
Its quite right that social media marketing has emerged as one of the quite powerful tool for online marketing. But for online marketing social media alone is not enough. Its about using the right SEO process in a right time for a positive deliverable. The post is really nice and it also make people familiar with some quite new SEO processes and online marketing tools.
Hi Lee,
Nice post, well all marketing channels are important but it is one limitation that we can just vote to 3 marketing channel.
I agree that all marketing channels are important but its also to through some print media in there as well for a circle of credibility. If your develop a cohesive campaign based on the web and print it's much stronger. But to answer your question more directly I would have to go with affiliate marketing.
I still want the Easter Bunny list of respondents so I can fire off a nice DoS attack. I think that could be some of the most valuable outcome for all of us. We could just DoS anybody who does not answer correctly, starting with the spammers.
BTW: When I say “correctly”, I mean my version, naturally.
Social media + SEO + branding + mobile ads… This is what I believe will highlight digital marketing of 2010.
Waiting for the results of the pull
only 3? =(
I had 7 picked, hard to get down to 3.
So much more to come.