Online Marketing Blog

With concerns over the recession and its impact on marketing, we decided to run a TopRank Reader Poll to discover reader (and their networks) preferences for digital marketing tactics in 2009.  Companies world-wide are cutting costs as well as looking for creative, high impact and accountable marketing.  Our amazing readers both on Online Marketing Blog and followers at @leeodden helped uncover the top tactics.

Over the past 11 days 532 readers have cast 1559 votes for their 3 top digital marketing tactics for 2009 with Blogging, Twitter and Search Engine Optimization topping the list.  Equally interesting was that out of the top 10 tactics, 6 fall into the category of Social Media Marketing. See the full list below along with other statistics about where voters came from as well as info about the readership of Online Marketing Blog.

Let’s face it, we’re experiencing more than “interesting” economic times, especially those with a marketing responsibility in-house and at agencies.

To tap in to the stream of marketing-savvy collective wisdom online, we reached out to our network with a top internet marketing tactics poll for the next 6 months. Over 400 business marketers responded, making this the most popular poll Online Marketing Blog has run to-date. Readers were asked: What 3 internet marketing tactics will you emphasize most in the next 6 months?

Here are the results of the poll:

• Search engine optimization (36%, 149 Votes)
• Blogging (33%, 134 Votes)
• Pay per click (26%, 107 Votes)
• Email marketing (22%, 89 Votes)
• Social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn) (21%, 86 Votes)

Networking has been a core tactic for building and marketing businesses long before the internet came of age and certainly even more so with the explosion of services such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Ning. Web technology and the mass appeal of making connections online makes social networking an attractive channel for businesses that want to extend their word of mouth reach, credibility and influence.

While there’s plenty of buzz about social networks (socnets), most companies aren’t quite “wired” for enganging social communities just yet. Amidst all the shiny new objects of Web 2.0 web applications, it’s important to understand which networks are influential and relevant. Hence, our Reader Poll:

Earlier this week we started a poll on what online marketing tactics our readers would use most in 2008. The polling plug-in allows for only one choice and over 100 people have responded so far. We’ll keep the poll running for another week or so, but here are the top ten tactics rankings so far out of 35 listed and the percentage of votes for each.

With the vote count at over 150, I’ve updated the top ten as of 02/13/08:

• Blogging (27%)
• Email marketing (16%)
• Search engine optimization (14%)
• Pay per click (9%)
• Social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn) (5%)
• Blogger relations (4%)
• Online public relations (3%)
• Viral marketing (3%)
• Free content (white papers) (3%)
• Corporate web site (3%)

If you are interested in RSS industry benchmark metrics, RSS marketing best practices and want to compare your RSS marketing results with those of your peers, then you will be interested in the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey being conducted by MarketingStudies.net.

Here’s the hype:

“Participate in the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey, conducted by MarketingStudies.net and aiming to research the RSS marketing landscape, to receive a free copy of the full 2006 RSS Marketing Survey Report, bringing you top RSS marketing best practices and metrics to compare your RSS marketing practices with those of your peers, to improve your RSS marketing results.”

As a thank you for taking the survey, respondents will get a copy of the overview report with the most important metrics and best practices.