During the last several months we’ve observed a very steady rise in demand from the business community for internet marketing related courses, seminars and workshops.
We predict that 2011 is the year when the mainstream business community will get web serious. Significant additional resources will be ploughed into the hiring of new staff and the up-skilling of existing staff. As a medium term consequence, there will be less outsourcing of the core internet marketing functions.
We have identified 7 business trends that we believe are responsible for driving this wave of interest in internet marketing related training:
1. Marketers are being forced to up-skill – they’re being pressured to take greater direct responsibility for their website content, the online management of their brands, and new media platforms encompassing PR and social media. The days of the IT dept managing website content and all things internet are drawing to a close.
2. Established marketing agencies are struggling to keep up with the online play – clients are starting to question why they should pay a premium for L Plate campaign results. This is particularly true across the sub-disciplines of search marketing, i.e. website search engine optimisation, paid search, and digital asset optimisation.
3. As the importance of the internet from a lead generation/ ROI perspective steadily increases, so will the investment in human resources – there is now a strong business case for organisations to consider bringing on additional staff into newly created roles to support the Marketing Manager, e.g. Online Marketing Manager, Community Engagement Manager, Content Manager and Analytics Manager.
4. The rise and rise of social media – there is a shift away from the question of ‘should we?’ to one of ‘how should we?’ Even organisations that aren’t ready to actively participate in social media are realising that the market research or ‘listening insight’ potential of the medium is too valuable to ignore.
5. Everyday Public Relations within an online context doesn’t require an intermediary PR agency – a basic understanding of keyword discovery techniques and search engine dynamics enables any organisation to release their own costless, targeted and measurable online communications. The businesses community are just starting to get this.
6. Website Content Management Systems (CMS) are now affordable to any sized business, and more can be done with them – organisations can now easily and quickly produce, optimise and publish their own website multimedia content. Quality content production has become an important online business objective.
7. Analytics have come centre stage – cheaper, faster, user-friendly data reporting has facilitated better and more frequent decision-making. Online campaign success relies heavily on a feedback cycle of data analysis and campaign setting adjustment.
