Times are changing and so are the modern marketing and the modern consumers. In the year 2010, we should be aware about the key principles that can help us do marketing right. Begin your year 2010 with knowing these 10 key principles of modern marketing, reap, maximum benefits and put your marketing efforts on a solid business footing.

Be Truthful About Your Products & Services
Consumers have become smarter than ever. So, the very first thing to note here is that advertisers should no longer exaggerate or lie about the products and services they offer. If you are not truthful about your products and services, you will be found out very soon. And once consumers discover the truth, they have a number of online platforms where they can voice their opinions. This will ultimately harm your business and the company status. If advertisers are making claims, they need to back those claims by admirable products and services.

Don’t Target Customers with Messages They Don’t Want
Advertisers may think that their messages are quite well targeted. The fact of the matter, however, is that those messages are not relevant and timely enough to attract consumers. Today’s consumers are overwhelmed with information. Modern consumers have developed sort of blindness and they ignore ads and banners in a way that did not see those ads at all. It is interesting to note the following, as a recent study suggests.

Ad recall faces an all-time low.
Banner and ad click through rates are extremely low.
Consumers avoid noticing the top and right of web pages, where ads are put typically.

In other words, the days of big ‘push’ advertising are nearing an end.

Respect Your Customers
With connected peers, modern consumers have a lot of power. They are smarter enough to discover whether reviews and blog posts are paid for. Since today’s consumers have become more intelligent, smarter and empowered with information, advertisers also need to respect consumers. In case an advertiser behaves badly, consumers can easily call them out and overcome them.

Make it Easy for People to Find You
Since the sun is setting on ‘push’ advertising, it is about time advertisers concentrated on ‘pull’ techniques to attract more and more customers. When consumers come to know about the launch of a new product or service, they research for the products and services on their own. So, advertisers should be geared up to make it easy for people to find their products.

Make it Easy for People to Pass Along
There is no denying the fact that word of mouth is one of the most powerful tools for boosting the sales figure of a company’s product or service. The fact that word of mouth neither comes from the marketer nor is it marketing makes it even more effective. So, one of the key principles of modern marketing is to make it easy for people to pass along any product or service information. For example, 200 people review a camcorder on Amazon and give it 4 starts out of five. It is certainly not marketing, but word of mouth campaign.

Listen to Customers
To make the most of your online marketing efforts, you need to consistently listen to what your customers or consumers have to say. Whether they love your products or hate it, they will voice their opinions online using numerous platforms. Try to figure out what they like about your products and services. And if they hate it, find out what is it that they do not like and get it improved. Get your customer’s feedback and modify and make changes to your products to match their expectations.

Therefore, advertisers need to plan their modern marketing strategies in 2010, keeping all these points in mind. If you follow these principles, you are definitely going to put your marketing efforts on a strong business footing and boost the online sales figure of your company’s products and services.