The Hottest Marketing Trends

Marketers nationwide are setting their plans in motion. Big-name brands will embrace new technologies and adjust their budgets in some surprising ways. And as an entrepreneur, you can use some of these tactics to reach your own audience in the coming year.

You can expect major marketing trends to include:.

A shift from traditional to "alternative" media
Advertising in newspapers and magazines, and on radio and TV will continue to be marketing staples, but spending in new media will show the biggest growth as advertisers move money into online, mobile and alternative out-of-home advertising. Many marketers are finding alternative media the best way to reach audiences effectively and to yield a measurable ROI. A communications industry forecast published by Veronis Suhler Stevenson predicts alternative advertising spending will increase more than 23 percent from 2006 to 2011, while traditional advertising will have a compound annual growth rate of just over 1 percent.

A growth spurt for interactive marketing
Interactive marketing spending will more than triple over the next five years, reaching $61 billion by 2012, according to Forrester Research. To put this into context, interactive marketing, which currently accounts for just 8 percent of all ad spending, will increase to 18 percent of marketers' total advertising budgets in five years.

Interactive encompasses new marketing channels such as e-mail and search marketing, online video ads and social media. Mobile marketing, also a form of interactive media, is getting hotter as consumers become increasingly comfortable using personal computing handsets. Other emerging channels, including game marketing, podcasts and RSS feeds, will claim increasingly larger shares of marketers' budgets.

More off-line support for online campaigns
Here's where the value of advertising synergy hits home. In 2008 and beyond, the trend toward using off-line media to drive customers to the web will continue and pick up speed. Traditional media are increasingly relied on to support new interactive campaigns. Display advertising, in particular, will be the workhorse that Forrester Research predicts will reach $14 billion by 2012.

TV is another traditional advertising medium that will increasingly be used to pique consumer interest and point prospects to a website where they can find more in-depth information. Once there, entertaining online video ads may be used to tell a longer, more involved story. Consumer adoption of online video is growing, and most age groups are expected to step up its use in 2008.