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The door of digital opens wider as we move into 2012

26th January 2012, by Chris Hall

As is tradition at the beginning of every year, we take time to evaluate the past and look forward to next 12 months. But the digital world moves at such a pace that it’s often hard to stop and take a breath or plan with any clarity.

However, here at WAA we’ve put the brakes on and taken a look at what was happening in 2011, and attempted to make a few assumptions about 2012. Here’s what we found:

Online activity 2011

  • 35% of consumers spent 180 minutes or more online per day
  • 78% did product research
  • 66% bought a product
  • 61% used social networks
  • 28% of organisations were moving their marketing budget to digital channels
  • 24% of overall marketing was spent on digital in 2011
  • 64% of businesses planned to increase their budgets for SEO
  • 70% said they intend to increase investment on third-party social media services such as Facebook
  • 54% increased their inbound marketing (blog, social media, SEO, etc.) budget in 2011
  • Companies say that the social media sites that have generated most consumers are their company blog and LinkedIn (57%), followed by Twitter (48%) and Facebook (42%)

In short, it’s set to be a big year for businesses, both across the social networks and with a clear focus to secure the right search engine results and website traffic.

Combine this with our predictions (see below), and 2011/2012 will be seen as a watershed moment across the digital landscape:

  • Mobile (smartphone) marketing (50% of UK phones predicted to be a smart phone by 2013)
  • Search and social marketing will become one
  • Google+ will grow at incredible rate, challenging Facebook – especially for business
  • Data: the analysis and interpretation of data is key. How you interpret it and translate that to your customer is crucial

So, what are your thoughts? Agree, disagree, or just want to have a catch-up on all things digital? Just drop us a line.

Sources referenced: www.silicon.com, www.emarketer.com

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