2014 is now behind us and was a big year for online marketing.
2015 is set to be even bigger according to predictions made by marketers around the world.
Our very own digital marketing executive Lauren has put pen to paper and made her own predictions for 2015….
The modern marketer needs to mix their art with science, combining tried and true tactics for communicating and an analytical layer to understand what works.
But don’t forget to push the boundaries because without trying out new things we don't move forward.
1. Content Marketing Budgets Will Rise
Content marketing is marketing that concerns the creation and distribution of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers.
Instead of relying on tested solutions, you need to pay more attention to the customer experience and curate content in a more emphatic, client-oriented way.
What are the rules?
- Simplicity has the word implicit in it for a reason.
- Storytelling is paramount.
- It’s not all about link building but you should be considering it.
- Don’t be afraid to talk like a real person and connect to your customers.
What are the facts?
Interesting content is one of the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social media.
Over 409 million people view more than 17.8 billion blogs each month. That is just on WordPress!
It seems certain that more companies will adopt content marketing in 2015 and content marketing budgets will rise.
2. Mobile Marketing Will Take Over
If Google Analytics is showing a great increase in people accessing your site through a mobile or tablet device, it’s time you responded by adapting your site to be mobile-friendly.
The rapid increase in the use of mobile devices, gives use marketers more ways to target people more of the day.
Also during different activities; work, rest, play, and search time.
What are the facts?
Internet traffic on mobile phones is expected to exceed traffic from traditional desktops by 2015.
56% of mobile users depend on local search.
3 Tips for Making Your Local Search Ads ‘the Bomb’
- Optimise for the consumer's location.
- Help consumers find what they need. Make it easier for the people searching to see the information they need most. Simply adding a phone number, or a click-to-call button right in the ad can help consumers take action faster.
- Engage consumers near your stores. You should use radius bidding to reach consumers near stores and build an attribution model for local searches.
Source: Search Engine Watch
42% of m-commerce sales come through apps. Is it time your company had an app?
We expect mobile usage to continue to increase in 2015, possibly making desktop browser use a niche activity.
This is likely to be driven by phones, tablets and wearable technology.
3. Data, Data, Data
Data for marketing is more accessible than ever.
It’s only going to get easier to hone in what’s driving profitability.
The adoption of marketing automation technology is expected to increase by 50% by 2015.
Marketing Automation
Source: Redeye and TFM&A Insights “The Marketing Automation Report 2014” (2014)
Marketers that have adopted MA say the main benefits of Marketing Automation are:
- Taking repetitive tasks out of marketers hands, allowing focus on new/more exciting projects (36%)
- Better targeting of customers and prospects (30%)
- Improving the customer experience (10%)
- Better email Marketing (9%)
- Reduction of human error in campaigns (8%),
- Lead Management (4%) and Multichannel marketing (3%).
We predict that marketing data will continue to become more detailed (oh gosh), easier and faster to obtain.
More companies will be seeking ways to be data driven as tools become available to help them digest and use the data.
4. Marketing Noise Will Make It Hard To Hear
With an increase in companies making content the increase in marketing noise is going to call for a mass delivery of earplugs.
Noise is content that doesn’t really add any value, take a scoot back up to the top to understand how to be a bit quieter.
Google’s Panda 4.0 and Pay Day 2.0 search algorithm updates were intended to further reduce the ranking of low-quality content.
200 words is what Google labels thin content.
We predict an increase in low-quality content that adds hardly any value.
Don’t take this as Bible; take a look at BuzzFeed.
We expect search engines may become more stringent on ranking low-quality content.
5. Video Will Play A Bigger Part In User Experience
Also a part-time rapper as you can see.
The use of video has gone through the roof over the past few years.
Video has become a useful part of marketing that engages people, in a way you may not be able to with text and images alone.
High quality videos can increase shopping cart sizes by a shocking 174%.
Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that's almost an hour for every person on Earth.
73% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase after watching a video.
We predict that more companies will have explainer videos on their websites and make them a significant part of the user experience and lead generation strategy in 2015.
You can’t tell me you don’t pick the video first over the article that hangs beneath it or purchased a piece of clothing because the video of the model wearing it means it will look that great on you too.
6. Personalisation
It’s all about me, me, and oh yes, me.
Well yes of course it should be, if you are a customer.
In general, the more relevant something is to a customer, the more likely they are to interact with it.
When Domino’s Pizza text me with a 50% discount, it’s just about as relevant as it gets.
This results in more sales, a higher session time, increased customer satisfaction and reduced costs - the list goes on.
74% of customers get frustrated with websites when content appears that has nothing to do with their interests.
I may be wrong, but 2015 may not be the year that Amazon realises that the Peppa Pig doll you bought wasn’t for yourself.
Personalised emails improve click-through rates (CTR) by 14% and conversion rates by 10%
We expect one-to-one marketing to grow as personalisation becomes more available and more widely adopted.
Micro Targeting = Accurate Segmentation
As every year passes, we are using more websites, which passes over more and more data.
This means that Twitter and Facebook are jam-packed with information about your audience.
This means that you can now target a very niche audience size.
Only 47% of consumers opposed a law that restricted how data is used for online advertising.
Targeted content is, on average, almost twice as effective as non-targeted content.
We expect the ways to target audiences to increase and the sizes of the end audiences to decrease in 2015.
Sources
Redeye and TFM&A Insights “The Marketing Automation Report 2014” (2014)
http://www.wheelhouseadvisors.net/
https://wordpress.com/activity/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-mills/5-ways-mobile-search-has-_b_6426814.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2014/feb/28/business/la-fi-mobile-shopping-apps-20140301
http://www.emailmonday.com/marketing-automation-statistics-overview
https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html
http://www.inboundnow.com/10-online-marketing-trends-predictions-2015/
http://marketingland.com/5-key-mobile-marketing-trends-for-2015-112838
