The areas that I see that businesses need the most help and support in the online and digital sphere are around automated marketing solutions, content marketing, leadgen and lead nurturing programmes, and integrated CRM with digital, online and social channels. Coupled with, of course a strong emphasis on the need for serious digital strategy and planning, a comprehensive period of listening to the market, customers, competitors and ultimately the rolling out of tactical solutions that incoroporate all the points that I made at the start. This is a fascinating area for anyone with an interest in technology, marketing, sales, communications, organisational change etc…but yet what is amazing is that there is so much focus on the tools for the tools sake, and solutions that have not evolved over the past 7 years. I really cannot understand this.

Well in fact, I suppose I can. A lot of those who claim to be experts in all things Digital – seem to be very monothematic in terms of their skills and language that they use. They are particularly good at reducing the entire business world down to terms such as SEO, SEM, Email Campaigns, Twitter, Facebook without standing back and thinking what from a business perspective does a senior marketer, sales, communications or product management resource need and want to solve and why. There seems to be a total disconnect in the vocabularies and insights that the typical digital and online practitioner has in regards to addressing real business problems and understanding how businesses operate.

I think 2010 is going to be an interesting year for online practitioners. The business community is looking for far more integration of technologies rather than narrow focused skillsets and solutions. There’s a lot of room for improvement across the board for everyone operating in this area and those outfits who still have not migrated beyond PPC, SEM, SEO, Email Marketing solutions need to move the needle intellectually and digitally soon or risk being caught out in a very serious way.

automated marketing solutions, content marketing, social media, social networking, social software, socialmedia, web 2.0