75 percent of the 474 surveyed companies rely on five instruments, while weblogs are losing their shine.

In addition to usability, SEO, e-mail, and Web-Controlling, SEM is now also a must in online marketing. These five instruments are used by about three-quarters of the surveyed companies. Furthermore, mobile marketing is up and coming, while more companies are engaging the strongest on social Web portals.

A comparison of the values reveals major shifts in certain trends, for e.g., the fact that blogs have been overrated in the past. In 2007 almost sixty percent of the businesses intended to increase their blogging activities, while in 2009 only 48 percent claim to do so. "Corporate blogs are a flop", comments consultant Torsten Schwarz on the results. Only a few companies really manage to operate interesting blogs. "Besides Frosta, Walther and the Shopbloggers, there are only a few examples of good business blogs" Schwarz criticizes. The Social Web is also on the rise. Eleven percent more companies than in 2007 plan to look increasingly for opportunities to show presence in the communities.

New to the obligatory tasks of online marketers is the taking out of keyword ads (SEM). 10 percent more companies intend to use SEM – rising from 67 to 77 percent. Only slight changes are noted regarding homepage, e-mail marketing and Web-controlling. The improvement of user-friendliness (usability) is still at the top, followed by search engine optimization (SEO). Just as e-mail marketing and newsletters, the importance of a good Google ranking is undisputable among today’s online marketers.

Indispensible for successful online marketing is still the use of Web 2.0 instruments. This includes the use of user-friendly technologies such as AJAX, as well as the allowance of user comments. However, this user generated content is still a hot iron for many traditionally minded marketing departments.

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Instruments of traditional online marketing such as banners and affiliate marketing are still stalwarts in their respective areas of duty, but not comprehensive enough. Whoever wants to establish reach with a classic image campaign, will use of course traditional banner advertising. The younger audiences use the media of the Internet already more than TV. Affiliate marketing however is obligatory in the mail order business. So anyone who sells products online should use this form of advertising performance.

The study is available in German for download:
http://www.absolit.de/trends.htm or http://www.absolit.de/PDF/Online-Marketing-Trends-2009.pdf