Planning for 2010: The Dawn of a New Age

Late American author and columnist Bill Vaughn once said, “An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.”

No doubt 2009 was an unstable year at best, but we’ll go with the optimist here. As we enter into yet another holiday season, it’s inevitable that the New Year will be quickly upon us. The best armor to protect your business from more pain is careful preparation for the year ahead.

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Planning in this type of market is more vital than ever. According to the latest survey from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), marketers are still feeling pressure to reduce costs and spending. Retaining your company’s viability means long-term planning—and that means seeking out the most valuable investments. Print gurus are saying, again and again, that printers have to be willing to explore related communications services to survive. 

During the course of 2009, the legitimacy of a “new” player in communications—social media—was established. Social media has proved to be not only an affordable media channel, but an instantly accessible one at that. With 365/24/7 instant access, anywhere, at anytime, companies large and small are adapting to the use of social media to fit their own culture. Everyone from government agencies—like NASA and the FBI—to global corporations, the media and small businesses are embracing social media.

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For those business managers still insisting social media is simply a fad, think again. Forrester is just one well-known research organization whose forecasts support the push. Its latest forecast of interactive marketing budgets predicts spending on display media, search, e-mail, mobile and social media to reach nearly $55 billion by 2014, accounting for 21 percent of all media spending.

The forecast—based on Forrester’s survey of more than 200 marketers—found that 60 percent planned to increase interactive budgets by shifting money away from traditional marketing—40 percent expect to decrease direct mail budgets, 35 percent will reduce newspaper spending and 28 percent will cut magazine budgets in order to spend more in interactive media.

Major shifts are continuing to take place with advertising sales in the social network business arena. eMarketer projects that U.S. marketers will increase their social network ad spending 13.2 percent in 2010, to $1.3 billion. In its new report “Social Network Ad Spending: A Brighter Outlook Next Year,” eMarketer reports that Facebook, once a distant second to MySpace, has outperformed its rival in nearly every measure of usage—and is on track to surpass MySpace in ad spending by 2011.

eMarketer contends that U.S. spending at MySpace is expected to fall 15 percent to $495 million, while U.S. spending at Facebook is projected to rise 9 percent, to $230 million. Consequently, MySpace’s share is projected to fall to 43.4 percent in 2009, while Facebook and other social network venues will increase their share. These statistics could convince the worst of skeptics to consider how social media could help them reach their communications goals in 2010.

Embrace Direct Marketing

Also not to be missed when planning for 2010—and beyond—is direct marketing. Direct marketing is expected to remain above the 53 percent mark for the next five years, reports the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in their report “The Power of Direct Marketing,” an annual forecast of the direct market’s economic impact on the United States economy.

The DMA reports that direct marketing spending makes up 54.3 percent of all total ad expenditures, up from 52.7 percent last year. The year 2009 marks the fifth year in which direct marketing has captured more than half of all advertising spend nationwide.