Marketing is changing so fast these days. To stay on top of all the trends one would have to employ a dedicated resource to follow them. This is a very good list to keep your eye on.
1. Content Marketing
The importance and role of content marketing and how it works across social media, search, multimedia and mobile is becoming a key focus for many brands. Many companies don’t understand the importance of this trend and how it underlies almost all digital marketing. Brands such as Coca Cola have recognised this and changed their strategies to meet the web realities.
Great content is important for differentiating your customer experience. More brands are starting to understand the key to creating meaningful, long-term loyalty goes beyond the generic content that has been created in the past. Content comes in the form of social media, video and blogs. Providing your customers with content which places you top of mind as the trusted source for your product puts your brand in a position of strength. If the only differentiation being created is in price, those usually aren't the customers you desire.
2. Mobile Marketing
The rapid rise of smart phones and tablets has flatfooted many marketing managers and delivering marketing messages and content that is optimized for mobile platforms is becoming a “must”. Increasingly consumers are viewing content, receiving emails and buying products from “small screens”.
It is no longer acceptable to ignore the mobile device. The companies who are embracing their mobile customers are winning market share. Technologies that enhance the customer experience with the device they have on them allow for more enhanced interactions that go way beyond coupons or generic messaging. Using the information the customer is providing form their mobile devices allows for experiences we are just starting to realize. Mobile is the future of marketing.
3. Integrated Digital Marketing
Companies that are savvy marketers are realizing that digital marketing should not be one offs that are islands of isolated tactics. Social media and content is impacting search results. Google created Google+ for a few reasons including capturing social signals. Ensuring that your approach is allowing you to tie them all together to achieve maximum effectiveness is becoming key.
Digital marketing has become much more than websites, CPC and SEO. Digital marketing is becoming the hub of all online and offline communications. Being able to tie all transactions and messaging together, regardless of channel provides customer experiences which are hard to compete against. Customers want a better shopping or services experience then they currently are receiving and the technology is starting to enable the delivery of such.
4. Social Media at Scale Marketing
Brands are also realizing that “doing” social is complex and is like juggling many balls at once. We are seeing the rush to develop, buy up start-ups and implement Enterprise platforms that are assisting marketing professionals to market, manage and monitor multiple social networks and even other digital marketing (eg email).
This is the rise of marketing automation platforms. The ability to speak to customers in a personalized manner without having the need to hire a person for each of those interactions is the magic. Your marketing automation tool should be able to communicate with your customer, regardless of channel, and be triggered by events through any channel, including offline.
5. Continuous Marketing
Marketers need to realise that a strong trend is emerging called continuous marketing. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t run “campaigns”. The reality is that being found online (found in social network updates, Twitter streams and in a Google search) requires constant SEO activity and content creation, publishing and marketing.
I believe this goes well beyond social and SEO. Outbound marketing has suffered from the campaign mentality for years. Customers all behave differently and need to have communication and message patterns that take into account that behavior. Each customer should be on a continuous cycle based on their behavior. So long are the days where you send an email blast every week with generic messaging.
6. Personalized Marketing
The “one size fits all” approach to marketing where mass messages on television and traditional media are becoming less effective due to media saturation. We are seeing the rise of personalized marketing on e-commerce sites, websites and emails that tailor the advertising and user interface to the relevant interests of consumers.
The more personalized the better. Remember, this doesn't mean 1-to-1 marketing, this means becoming more personalized in manageable chunks. Rarely can an organization go from generic to fully 1-to-1 personalized, that should not be the goal. Incremental improvement in this area goes a long way. Remember to use data analytics to measure the results and find the next group to add personalization.
7. Visual Marketing
We first saw the creep of visual marketing into the landscape when YouTube entered mainstream consciousness a few years ago. Since then this creep has turned into a torrent of visual marketing with emergence of Pinterest, Instagram and even Slideshare.
As humans we love visual stimulus. This is why television and the advertising on that medium has been king for so long. Personalized visual content which speaks to customers based on their interests is a very powerful tool. It is also very expensive and reserved for your best customers and customers that look like them.