SIX MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2015
Here’s my marketing predictions for 2015 based on trends in clients’ data over the past twenty four months and general trends in the industry. I’d love to know what your number seven would be, or if you have any opinions on my top six.
1) Increased amount of high quality paid placement on social media
Boosted posts will soar in popularity in 2015 as brands realise that non-paid for posts continue to decrease in view-count. This is largely due to the amount of brands now competing for space on Facebook users’ timeline. Once brands realise they have to pay for the majority of posts to be seen, they will be a lot smarter with what they post. Brands will pay more attention to Facebook’s algorithm which boosts popular posts, and will endeavour to only promote content that they believe will be interacted with. This will result in a positive user experience for the end-user, and will force companies to really ensure they are on the money with their content.
2) Short-form videos with call-to-actions
2014 saw the popularity of short-form video soar thanks to Vine and Facebook’s internal video hosting platform. 2015 will see these platforms used even more, with many brands using Facebook’s internal video platform to share short-teaser videos along with Facebook’s new call-to-action links which brands will use to direct traffic from Facebook to custom-made landing portals on their own sites.
3) Inbound Online Marketing
Inbound online marketing, the process of getting leads through your website by providing content that captures prospects’ attention, will be one of the areas that companies invest in most-heavily. Advances in analytics and a mass understanding of SEO amongst a new generation of managers who understand that a digital inbound marketing plan is as important as a shop window on a high street will see a surge in clever content being created and distributed online. Marketing practitioners will become more and more skilled in baiting customers and the process of presenting this information to maximize lead generation will be as focused on as the generation of the content itself.
4) Reformatting of Quality Content
2014 saw content marketing go through the roof. Many companies paid agencies significant percentages of their budget for well written articles. However, 2015 will see a rise in the amount of content that is reformatted for different platforms. Most good marketing agencies have now learned that they can deliver better results for their clients by writing one exceptionally good article and reformatting it into pictures, infographics and animations than spending the same amount of time and human resources writing ten adequate articles that only get shared in one format. We’ll see a rise in higher quality content being shared in multiple formats on multiple platforms.
5) Mobile First
Many brands now reverse engineer their sites to fit mobile first and then desktop. SMEs have been slower to embrace the trend. As analytics become more prevalent and more site owners realise that upwards of 40% of their traffic is mobile/tablet and increasing, demands for mobile-centric marketing will increase.
6) A Drive for Customer Data
All of the aforementioned trends are increasingly dependent on accurate customer data:
Social media is no longer free, therefore knowing your target market is crucial as the targeting functions will only be made use of if customer data is accurate.
Inbound marketing requires knowledge of the target market’s search terms and personal preferences to understand what they are looking for and encourage them to part with their details when they sign up.
The distribution of content across multiple platforms also requires enhanced customer data in order to know which users are on which social platforms and what kind of mediums will appeal to them.
Marketing departments who have been lax about data collection will be kicking themselves and this will result in a ramp-up of customer data collection initiatives as brands seek to find out as much as they can about their customers in both offline and online situations. As the online marketing forum becomes more crowded, intelligent and detailed customer data will shift from being optional to being an absolute necessity.
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What do you think about my six trends for 2015? What would be your seventh?
