Three Hot Trends to Watch Out For

Since the new year is right around the cor­ner, blog­gers and mar­keters alike are post­ing their pre­dic­tions as if a psy­chics con­ven­tion has come to town.

So in keep­ing with that tra­di­tion, I’d like to post a few of my own. But unlike those who post their pre­dic­tions in point form, I won’t make a spe­cific list but rather share with you some of my thoughts.

(Near the end, how­ever, this post will cul­mi­nate in what I believe will be three major trends to watch out for and dive into, if you want to make some seri­ous money in 2008 and beyond.)

First off, let me state that you may or may not agree with me on these. But some­thing is def­i­nitely going on right now that points to these three trends. All the clues are pretty evi­dent, and you’ve prob­a­bly seen some of these yourself.

What I’m talk­ing about is…

… Inter­net mar­ket­ing is cor­rect­ing itself.

When the stock mar­ket tum­bles, short of a full-​​on crash, they call it a “cor­rec­tion.” Some­times it hap­pens pre­cip­i­tously. Other times, it takes place over a period of time.

Like­wise, I believe that Inter­net mar­ket­ing, right now, is going through a sim­i­lar cor­rec­tion. It may not be as pre­cip­i­tous as the stock mar­ket, but it’s indeed quite significant.

To explain what I mean, let me back up a bit.

If you’ve read Geof­frey Moore’s “Cross­ing The Chasm,” then you under­stand the prod­uct adop­tion curve. (In mar­ket­ing and aca­d­e­mic cir­cles, they call it the “Dif­fu­sion Process.”)

In plain Eng­lish, it means that new mar­kets go through a cer­tain adop­tion process that looks very much like a bell curve.

At first, new prod­ucts are con­sumed by the inno­va­tors and early adopters (i.e., niche and early mar­kets). They’re the type of peo­ple who buy new things the moment they come out.

Then, they are con­sumed by the major­ity (i.e., main­stream mar­kets, at the top of the bell curve, where prod­ucts get widely adopted by the major­ity of people).

Finally, the lag­gards make up the late mar­kets. They usu­ally wait until every­one else has tried the prod­ucts, which are no longer new.

Accord­ing to Moore, between the niches and the main­stream, there’s a gap. A chasm, as he calls it, espe­cially with tech­nol­ogy. It’s where things seem to slow down once a prod­uct has sat­u­rated the early markets.

But then, after a while, some­thing happens.

The prod­uct, if and when it crosses the chasm, enters the main­stream (often called the “mid­dle” or just the “major­ity”), and becomes widespread.

This is where the bulk of the mar­ket lies (about 68% of the mar­ket pie, accord­ing to stud­ies). And often, it hap­pens fast. Very fast. (For exam­ple, Moore’s follow-​​up book, “Inside the Tor­nado,” explains this in detail.)

What does this mean in terms of Inter­net marketing?

It means that the geeks (e.g., the risk-​​takers, inno­va­tors, Inter­net enthu­si­asts, and the like) are the first ones to pen­e­trate the Inter­net mar­ket. They set many prece­dents that shape the way we do busi­ness online, whether it’s through a new method, soft­ware, busi­ness model, or teaching.

(That’s why we often call them “gurus.”)

We’ve seen this hap­pen. Top mar­keters have entered the mar­ket, sold many a prod­uct, and made mas­sive amounts of money. But now, things are start­ing to change. We’re hit­ting — if not cross­ing — the chasm.

One obvi­ous piece of evi­dence is the recent flurry of “death of” reports. Whether they’re meant to pro­mote some­thing or not is a moot point.

Clay­ton Make­peace listed his own pre­dic­tions recently, and I not only agree with them whole­heart­edly but also view them as part of this cross­ing of the chasm. To me, the most salient point is that only 18% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion is online — but it’s grow­ing at a rapid rate, par­tic­u­larly in Asia.

If you don’t believe me (or even Clay­ton), watch this amaz­ing video.

It’s a pre­sen­ta­tion by a sta­tis­ti­cal researcher about income dis­tri­b­u­tion around the world, and how quickly some coun­tries are grow­ing in terms of wealth and gross national prod­uct, once the Inter­net enters them.

In short, the video shows that the Inter­net, while still in its infancy, is grow­ing at a rapid rate, and that there is hyper-​​growth occur­ring right now in Asian and middle-​​Pacific coun­tries, such as Sin­ga­pore, India, and of course, China.

Let me put that aside for just a moment, and share with you a few obser­va­tions. (I will tie all of this together very shortly, I promise.)

Here’s a question:

Haven’t you noticed lately how Inter­net mar­ket­ing sem­i­nars are changing?

I mean, for many years sem­i­nars were not only filled to the rim but also filled with the usual sus­pects who seem to con­gre­gate there all the time.

I remem­ber going to sem­i­nar after sem­i­nar, and see­ing the same faces over and over again. The same million-​​dollar mar­keters. The same “big names.” The same expert speak­ers. And very few new­bies or unknowns.

But in 2007, a shift started to hap­pen. Some of those faces are not show­ing up at sem­i­nars any­more. The num­ber of old-​​timers seems to be shrink­ing, while new faces are mak­ing their appear­ances for the first time.

With each pass­ing sem­i­nar, it seems, the audi­ence is slowly being replaced with new mar­keters and total new­bies — peo­ple who are com­pletely new to Inter­net mar­ket­ing and even to the Inter­net in general.

More and more vet­eran mar­keters are retir­ing. Some are leav­ing the Inter­net mar­ket­ing field alto­gether. Many are no longer attend­ing sem­i­nars, speak­ing at them, or teach­ing Inter­net mar­ket­ing at all.

Is it because the Inter­net mar­ket­ing indus­try is dying or jump­ing the shark?

Not at all. Quite the con­trary, in fact. While some Inter­net mar­keters have moved on, many of them have sim­ply refo­cused their busi­nesses on those three major mar­kets I was refer­ring to earlier.

To give you a hint, let me tell you a true story…

At the last sem­i­nar my wife and I attended, I was sur­prised to see that the vast major­ity of atten­dees was com­pletely new. The event was still packed to the rim (and even big­ger than before). But many of them admit­ted to us that this was the first sem­i­nar they’ve ever attended.

In fact, they were so new that, at a pre­vi­ous sem­i­nar where my wife and I spoke, we were both sur­prised by the kinds of ques­tions they asked us.

After speak­ing on stage and walk­ing towards the back of the room, Sylvie and I were asked ques­tions like, “What is an autore­spon­der?” Or, “How do you cre­ate a text file?” (No joke!)

And it didn’t just hap­pen once or twice. It hap­pened many, many times. And it hap­pened at almost every sin­gle sem­i­nar we’ve attended or spoke at in 2007.

Now, what does all this mean?

It means sev­eral things: Inter­net mar­ket­ing is shift­ing. We are see­ing more and more peo­ple enter­ing it for the first time. We are see­ing less of the suc­cess­ful, sea­soned mar­keters who have made their wealth and moved on.

In other words, what we’re see­ing is a shift to peo­ple who are com­pletely green, enter­ing the world of Inter­net mar­ket­ing, and launch­ing a busi­ness online for the very first time — with very lim­ited knowl­edge about it to boot.

And many of the exist­ing, top mar­keters we have learned from in the last few years have either retired or decided to go after… well… the “major­ity!” That is, they are going offline.

Yes, offline.

And that, my friends, is the golden key.

More impor­tantly, we’re see­ing — and we’ll see more of — the Asian mar­ket, too, enter­ing the Inter­net mar­ket­ing sphere.

The more Asian cit­i­zens gain access to the web, the more Inter­net mar­ket­ing will change, too, to reflect this shift. China, Sin­ga­pore, Malaysia, Indone­sia, and oth­ers are def­i­nitely going to be forces to be reck­oned with.

We’re see­ing this already.

(Sylvie and I are speak­ing in Sin­ga­pore next spring, by the way. Some of these events pack as many as 3,000 people.)

Bot­tom line, these shifts rep­re­sent not only a major cor­rec­tion affect­ing the world of Inter­net mar­ket­ing, but also show the three major mar­kets to watch out for in the com­ing year:

1. The new­bie market;
2. The offline market;
3. The Asian market.

And that’s my pre­dic­tion for the new year and beyond. Watch out for these mar­kets. Enter them. Serve them. Or get out of the way.

That said, I do have a few technology-​​related pre­dic­tions. (A blog post on new year’s pre­dic­tions wouldn’t be com­plete with­out them, eh?)

Some of the ones I made last year did come true — and we’ll see more and more of them in 2008 as well.

For exam­ple, online video will become ubiq­ui­tous. The web will become increas­ingly “wid­getized.” Peo­ple will demand for more sam­pli­fi­ca­tion. And inter­ac­tiv­ity will become vastly more pop­u­lar and sophisticated.

But what about some of the major tech­nol­ogy companies?

Well, I hate to make those kinds of pre­dic­tions because Inter­net mar­ket­ing is as volatile as the stock mar­ket. But I agree that some major acqui­si­tions are in store for the com­ing year. My guess? Any one of the following…

• AOL by Yahoo!;
• Yahoo! by Microsoft;
• Tech­no­rati or SixA­part (mak­ers of Mov­able­Type and Type­Pad) by Microsoft or Yahoo! (likely to com­pete in the blog­ging space against none other than giants Word­Press and Google’s Blogger);
• Or Face­book — maybe by Microsoft, Yahoo!, or some­one else.

Speak­ing of Face­book, whether or not it does get acquired, it’s going to see the same kind of decline in pop­u­lar­ity in 2008 that MySpace saw in 2007.

In fact, when my kids got me onto Face­book ear­lier this year, and I refused at first because I told them I already had a MySpace account, in a pre­ten­tious tone they replied, “But Dad, MySpace is soooo last year!”

I think Face­book will face the same fate, I fear.

Any­way, there you have it.

Until next time, thank you for your sup­port this year. I appre­ci­ate you and wish you a peace­ful, healthy, prof­itable, happy, and pros­per­ous new year!

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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