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Sergio Ferreira is an Electricity & Energy Project Manager at the European Copper Institute (ECI), a non-profit organisation involved in the support and expansion of copper and copper alloys markets in Europe. An environmental engineer, he graduated in 2004 from the University of Aveiro, Portugal. He has worked in a lobbying organisation and in the European Commission, Directorate-General Energy & Transport on energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, and his main area is ecodesign.   • Another is Hans De Keulenaer, who works with the European Copper Institute as a Programme Manager in Electricity & Energy. He has a Master's degree in electrical engineering and an MBA from the University of Louvain in Belgium. With more than 20 years' experience in running pan-European and global marketing campaigns for companies and international organisations in the industrial sector, he is currently working on sustainable energy systems, concentrating on the quality of supply, smart and age-adaptive building installations, energy regulation, and the use of novel Web-based technologies for B2B marketing.

Following is a look at the top 10 marketing trends for 2008, based on interviews with marketers, ad agencies, media executives, analysts and other industry experts.

“If you create great content and no one knows about it to link to it, you’re spinning your wheels. A combination of content as well as social networking, link networking, public relations and gaining editorial visibility as well as viral and individual link solicitations will all work together synergistically. Building a community of consumers of your content as well as relationships with the media in your industry is the distribution network necessary to gain the most link value out of creating great content.”

Social networking, popularized by teens sharing information with their friends online on Web sites such as Facebook Inc., is now blooming in the business world, thanks to new social networks that enable professionals and executives in industries such as advertising and finance to rub virtual elbows with colleagues.

Creating microsites for different challenges, focuses, industries or company types gives marketers a tighter way to connect with actively interested leads.

The IT industry needs to change its approach to selling Web 2.0 technology to companies and ditch the "jargon-filled messaging and attitude", warns IT services firm, Parity.

"The whole fashion system will have to change," says Beppe Modenese, called the founding father of Milan Fashion Week. "[It] must adapt to the reality that there is no strong difference between summer and winter anymore."

With an industry standard hovering around 1 to 2 percent, most sites are failing to capture all the business they can have. Once a company makes a commitment to boost its conversion rate, there are several key areas it needs to monitor to measure whether its efforts are successful.

In the telecommunications industry, interest is growing around the concept of Customer Life Cycle Management (CLM). This concept goes beyond traditional time-views of CRM and embodies the customer history as a real-time predictor, and also aims towards the long-neglected aspect of customer retention.