Web and Green Marketing are hot, Women, Gen X and Y, and Hispanics Catching Up to Boomers, but Marketing Basics are More Important than Ever.

Anderson Analytics surveyed the 1700 member Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG ) to find the top marketing trends for 2008. While the marketers weighed in on many marketing concepts a few key areas emerged. Marketing basics (60% “Very Important”) which include specific concepts such as customer satisfaction, customer retention, segmentation, brand loyalty and ROI were of greatest interest. Interestingly, Search Engine Optimization (42%) had relatively wide appeal, and cut across marketers in all fields. “Green Marketing” (32%) was another important emerging concept and it was identified as the trendiest marketing buzzword.

When asked about the most important customer demographics senior marketing executives rank Baby Boomers highest with 88% ranking them as either very important or somewhat important. What may be surprising is the fact that Gen X (86%), Hispanics (86%), Women (85%) and Gen Y (84%) are catching up to Boomers as customer targets.

Senior-level Marketing Executives read avidly to stay abreast of information and gain insights for their business. The most popular books are not necessarily the most recently published given that Good to Great, The World is Flat, and Blink were the top three most recently read books. In terms of all time favorite business book ever read, three in five executives were eager to make a recommendation to their fellow marketers. Topping the list were: Good to Great, Positioning, and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

The Marketing Trends Survey was fielded by Anderson Analytics among current MENG members between October 19 and November 20 of 2007. Anderson Analytics used text mining software to code open-ended/free form text answers to questions in order to truly understand what issues were top-of-mind among the senior executives. The 607 responses yield overall statistics with a confidence interval of +/-3.98% at the 95% confidence level.