In 2010, the following seven trends will be at the core of online marketing. These trends show an evolution from the past few years as businesses face a more competitive online marketplace and a more diverse set of communication channels.

* Improved lifecycle marketing provides customers with appropriate information. Customers will get this information at each step of the purchase process. With tighter budgets, marketers will maximize their retention marketing efforts to increase the profitability of their current customers. Providing post-purchase support will become more important to ensure that customers continue to use their products. To leverage these efforts, think about how you can add value to your offering and create related products that can be sold post-purchase.

* Segmentation becomes essential to delivering relevant communications. Especially in appropriate formats to diverse groups at various points in the purchase process. This translates into understanding and offering individual prospects and customers different communications options, allowing them to modify their choices and incorporating past activity to personalize communications. This implies the need for more sophisticated database operations.

* Social media marketing strategies mature. As the market continues to evolve, companies move away from a knee jerk, “We need a Facebook page” reaction to making an ongoing investment in staff, marketing, and related systems for listening, tracking, and participating to ensure you’re in tune with the members of the appropriate communities. Developing advocates and enhancing their reach to attract new prospects are the areas where companies should focus their efforts. The recent FTC endorsement guidelines hopefully will translate into greater transparency as brands increase their efforts to socialize across platforms. What’s certain is that there will continue to be new social media offerings and current players will change.

* Content becomes more shareable This will leverage social distribution networks and increase the earned media the unpaid exposure companies get when consumers share information about them. This translates into continued focus on content creation to meet a wide range of information needs across formats. Utilize a variety of means to distribute content including your Web site, social media, third-party sites, widgets, iPhone apps and offline collateral, and media. Use “Add This” and provide incentives for consumers to engage with you and build relationships.

* Search marketing continues to evolve and expand. Consumers use search to discover information and they expect search to work effectively across interactive offerings. Due to limited supply, paid search for broad key terms, especially terms used earlier in the purchase process, will increase. While including a broader offering of formats, real-time search will continue to evolve. Use of other forms of search will increase including YouTube, the second largest search engine, and social media, used for peers’ recommendations. Additionally, driven by smartphone usage and other GPS-oriented devices, location-specific search, which tends to be more action-oriented, will increase.

* Metrics continue to become more sophisticated. They will support evolving and more diverse online marketing channels. As you add new online marketing tactics, ensure that you can effectively track your results. Continually test different aspects of your marketing mix.

* Offline marketing continues to expand its reach online. This will, in turn, increase the integration of different distribution channels from continued online engagement of offline media to enhanced in-store servicing of online merchandising, including pickup and returns of merchandise purchased online.

By Heidi Cohen