Where To Spend Digital Dollars in 2011

I just presented at a conference in Slovakia last week and all the speakers echoed the same kinds of trends for the new year: mobile, mobile and more mobile. Whether through local search tactics or geo-targeting vouchers and social deals, or even niche online communities, local marketing is going to take precedent.

Video marketing is also growing as brands get more creative with YouTube’s annotations, like BooneOakley whose entire website is a series of YouTube videos linking content through annotations (uhh brilliant!)

Today, Brett Relander wrote a great post about the digital trends for the new year and where you should focus your digital dollars (hint: Facebook and mobile are where it’s at).

I would add that as SMB’s are expected increase their digital marketing budgets in 2011 (according to a new survey released by Zoomerang and GrowBizMedia), we’re going to see a resurgence in direct marketing through social and niche sites.

As people focus more on local and niche expertise, LinkedIn is proving to be the preferred social site for SMBs, especially with the recent community and “expert” enhancements. I believe we’re going to see more companies streamline their brands to more specialized thought leadership and LinkedIn is custom-built for that strategy.

Digital advertising and search, including PPC, is also expected to increase. Search spending accounted for 56.3% of digital spending in 2010, reaching $15.6 billion, up 6.4% from 2009 levels.

* Display accounted for 33.6% of digital in 2010, reaching $9.3 billion, up 10.7%.

* Email marketing accounted for 5.1% of digital, reaching $1.4 billion, up 8.6%.

* Mobile accounted for 3.2% of digital, reaching $0.9 billion in spending, up 30.8%.

* Social apps, widgets, and listening platforms accounted for 1.4% of digital spending, reaching $0.4 billion, up 5.4%.

* Lead generation spending accounted for 0.7% of digital, reaching $0.2 billion, up 5.5%.

Let me know what you think. Are your clients already moving digital dollars around?

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