With every marketing archetype tried out enough number of times, it was time to inject the marketing realm with something fresh, and something that could bring in numbers in hordes. And that’s what digital marketing has successfully accomplished. However, let’s not put on a sermon on how it revolutionized the whole concept of marketing. It’s time to look ahead, and envisage what online marketing holds for us in the New Year. Here is a rundown on the top 7 online marketing trends we might wake up to in 2014.
Content Marketing Will Continue Heading North
Last few years has seen a surge in the content strategy that companies have been employing to communicate with their customers and clients alike. As you would expect, the focus on valuable content has spiraled, as content is the new online face off any brand. The more quality driven the content is, more effectively it influences consumers’ purchasing decision. The biggest advantage to content marketing is that it has prevailed over the distance barriers that had otherwise been defying and dispiriting companies looking to create a rapport with their potential customers all across the globe.
The typical content marketing strategies have included writing article on content websites and linking them to company’s official website, leveraging social media for content marketing, sending out emails and issuing newsletters, etc. Companies have begun to realize how cogently they can build a reputation through online marketing. Reaching the audience through television and radio ads is slowly and gradually becoming a passé. Inbound marketing is making inroads.
Social media will need to inject more creativity
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter had leaped businesses’ marketing strategies up and beyond. What they did is not just add a new-fangled approach to companies’ attempts to reach a broader audience, but empower them to have an official social media page that doesn’t go door-to-door to call out consumers. Instead, folks who wish to keep themselves abreast with the company’s updates go and become a part of their community by simply following them. That said, it had begun to become monotonous with limited platforms around. However, last few years have seen a slew of social media sites emerging on the web. Sites like StumbleUpon and Pinterest have caught the frenzy of social media enthusiasts who have happily lapped up the new bevy of social networking sites and made them a roaring success. The virality factor stands equally potent with these new platforms as well. Posts written on blogs get popular by the means of shares across different platforms. ShareThis is a plugin that gives users easy access to a whole lot of social media platforms and only a few minutes spent creating accounts on them, they can get involved in the marketing process.
Use of Images with Content Will Increase
Now that the market is hit with aggressive marketing campaigns, consumers are keener to absorb content that is crisp and comprehensible. As is the current trend with the new wave of social media, a lot of emphasis is put on images. In fact, in the present fast-track world, the marketing heads of companies prefer broadcasting some creatively amazing images, and putting some catchy text in the middle of those images. The chances of virality of a specific campaign multiply with this approach as campaigns become more embraceable if there is the right dose of innovation. It is a capable method to create maximum impact with the consumer. Even for a content-rich post, images should be properly placed, taking forward the message the content is trying to convey. Text based content is not a passé yet, and it won’t be so perhaps in the future as well. But image-centric is seemingly giving better results.
Go Minimalist
Flashy hoardings or advertisements have ceased to work. Paying attention to the biggest of brands like Apple, one can easily deduce that consumers are more welcoming to clean, uncluttered advertisements. Campaigns that scream for customer’s attention have stopped getting it in the first place. The more restraint hat there is to a marketing strategy, more penetrating it turns out to be. And the marketing managers set to drive the 2014 trends agree in near-unison to this fact.
Mobile Ready Websites Will Flourish More
2014 will see a steady stream of more and more websites are fit for the mobile devices, as there is a huge jump in the number of users who access Internet on their mobile devices. The websites that are responsive on the handy devices will definitely be more viable to the audience as it would enlist more and more people in the list of followers of that particular website. If the managers are not agile enough to adapt to this trend, they might as well be on their way to a financial and technological downfall.
Retargeting of Ads to Bolster Marketing Drive
It’s hardly a news that there is a very small fraction of the visitors on a company’s website that actually turn into their customers. That said, however, the user who paid a visit to one of the service pages can be redirected to the same page from elsewhere. This is accomplished by using browser cookies to keep a track of the pages that are viewed by a particular user on a website. Now companies can place the ads for the same pages on the subsequent websites that particular user visits. This will go a long way in keeping user aware of the brand and its product, rather than him leaving it behind with just a few more clicks. This strategy may not get them immediate purchases, but by placing the brand right in front of the customer, they are creating a familiarity that can translate into a higher recall value.
There Will Be Greater Involvedness Between SEO and Social Media Aspects
The amount of traffic SEO brings to a website is unmatched. But social media has also been one of the biggest traffic pullers through its shares and likes capabilities. The viral a post on the Internet, higher are its chances of being pointed out to a user by the search engines when he or she is searching something on similar lines. The god quality content unquestionably gets higher shares, and is thus more easily identifiable by search engines. Moreover, when you see thousands of share on any of your posts, it is testimony to the fact that it is providing a lot of value to the readers, and you can thus gauge the consumer interest and proceed accordingly.
Besides these 7 trends, there is always a dark horse lurking somewhere in the corner. It might come from behind anytime and change the market landscape totally. And if you have predicted something that’s missing out in the list, do leave a comment to let us know.
Photo Credit: Flickr/Luca Nebuloni
