How companies are marketing online: A McKinsey Global Survey

A McKinsey survey of marketing executives from around the world shows that in marketing, things are starting to change: companies are moving online across the spectrum of marketing activities, from building awareness to after-sales service, and they see online tools as an important and effective component of their marketing strategies.

In 2010 respondents expect a majority of their customers to discover new products or services online and a third to purchase goods there. A majority of the respondents also expect their companies to be getting 10 percent or more of their sales from online channels in 2010—twice as many companies as have hit that mark today. These expectations appear to be driving plans for future spending, at least in some areas.

There are several online marketing vehicles that are described in this article

Blogs (short for Web logs) are online journals or diaries hosted on a Web site.

Online games include both games played on dedicated game consoles that can be networked and “massively multiplayer” games, which involve thousands of people who interact simultaneously through personal avatars in online worlds that exist independently of any single player’s activity.

Podcasts are audio or video recordings—a multimedia form of a blog or other content. They are often distributed through aggregators, such as iTunes.

Social networks allow members of specific sites to learn about other members’ skills, talents, knowledge, or preferences. Commercial examples include Facebook and MySpace. Some companies use such systems internally to help identify experts.

Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are highly social, three-dimensional online environments shaped by users who interact with and receive instant feedback from other users through the use of avatars.

Web services are software systems that make it easier for different systems to communicate with each other automatically to pass information or conduct transactions. A retailer and supplier, for example, might use Web services to communicate over the public Internet and automatically update each other’s inventory systems.

Widgets are programs that allow access from users’ desktops to Web-based content.

Wikis, such as Wikipedia, are systems for collaborative publishing. They allow many authors to contribute to an online document or discussion.