The Society of Digital Agencies – a group that serves as a worldwide voice of digital marketing professionals with a mission to advance the industry through best practices, education, and advocacy – recently sent me the results of a large survey they conducted. SoDA solicited feedback from over 1,000 digital marketing executives from agency and client-side worldwide and captured some solid insights worth sharing here.

There is no question that digital marketing continues its upward trend. Certainly, when a company like Ford – from the historically lethargic automotive industry – spends 25% of our marketing budget on digital and social media, you know there’s a significant movement afoot. And across all industries in 2009, budgets were impacted by the economy, forcing marketers to be more ruthless about seeking efficient results. It should be no surprise to anyone that the rise of digital is a sure thing.

The 2010 Digital Marketing Outlook contains some 70 pages of particularly poignant facts for the U.S. and abroad (Russia, South America and Mexico), emerging trends, changing platforms, social media and more. Here are some key takeaways worth calling out:

Read more: http://www.scottmonty.com/2010/01/2010-digital-marketing-outlook.html

Small business owners who have been worried that they’re shouting into a void on Facebook should now be able to figure out whether or not they’re wasting their time.  Facebook’s started providing Page owners with a couple of stats.

Did 100,000 people admire the picture of a product or concept that you posted?  Or did a single soul perhaps misclick before moving on?  Data regarding the number of impressions a piece of content receives will let you know.

Facebook’s also sharing stats concerning feedback.  This might seem a little obvious, at first – small business owners are more than capable of counting the number of comments and such for themselves – but since the stats are presented as percentages, they’ll at least convey what portion of a given audience is paying attention.

Now, for a basis of comparison.  Loic Le Meur, who’s the founder of Seesmic and has quite a following online, wrote about these new stats from Facebook earlier today, and in doing so, showed that a couple of his Facebook posts have received roughly 6,200 impressions each.  Feedback, meanwhile, ranged between 0.32 and 0.89 percent.

Small business owners should be to get an idea of how their Facebook Pages are doing as a result, and also get a better grasp on what sort of stuff excites people.

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Eight out of ten people are using cell phones nowadays. Mobile phones are not only used for the purpose of communication. They are also used for many other purposes. In the past few years it is being used as an advertising medium to a great extent. This means mobile phones are used for promoting a brand/product or service of a company—the technique is known as mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing technique has been considered as one of the best way of marketing a product. Sellers can directly contact their customers by making use of this technique. It is a very easy process of marketing and doesn’t need much investment. It is in fact the most cost effective way of marketing any brand.

In order to market the brand successfully, it is essential for the marketers to find out the target customers. The target customers play a great role for without them it becomes difficult to promote any product. If the brand is promoted to clients uninterested by mobile marketing technique, the company won’t notice much difference in the profit amount at the end of the year. But if the same brand is promoted to people interested in buying the product, then the company might earn great revenues at the end of the year.

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Marketing on Twitter continues to be one of the most talked about subjects in social media today. The social media purists still sing campfire songs about how you can’t do it. Dell is up to $6.5 million dollars in sales there. While there may not be a right or wrong way to use Twitter — you can find an audience for anything on any medium with a certain level of critical mass — it is mainly a conversational platform.

Four major types of marketing styles have emerged among those using Twitter as a marketing platform, each with examples of large followings, audiences and (probably) successes.

1. The Conversationalist. Conversationalists are users who clearly have a reason to use Twitter for their business, but seem more apt and willing to participate in the daily chitter-chatter rather than carve out clear drives or calls to action for their business purpose. Many independent consultants and/or thought leaders fall into this category.

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A blog for your company generates new customers, keeps your customers informed of new products and promotions, associates your brand with your specialized niche in the marketplace, and creates an opportunity for fantastic customer service. What you must know about marketing your business with a blog.

1. Blogs cost almost nothing in terms of dollars and are arguably the most cost-effective weapon of advertising today in terms of return on investment.

2. Blogs create customers by introducing them to your company, and then by building a long-term relationship with them.

3. Effective business blogging can be achieved in as little as 15 minutes per day.

Follow these steps to marketing your business through a blog:

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