What's in store in the digital marketing world of 2014? What will be trending in the New Year? Whatever it may be, now's the time to start preparing your marketing plans for 2014. It's time to foresee what will work better and what won't, and include the essential things in your New Year marketing strategy. In this article we'll examine some trends that must be taken into consideration for any digital marketing endeavor in 2014.
Content Marketing Will Get Bigger
'Content marketing' has almost become the catchphrase in today's digital marketing sphere and come 2014; it's predicted to only become bigger. Let's see the figures for today. Social Media B2B claims that businesses that blog are getting 67 per cent more leads a month than those who don't. A great content marketing campaign will still be the best way to stamp your authority and earn your customers' trust. A good marketing strategy entails creating precious content on a large number of varied channels.
Marketing-to-Location
Almost all adults have their Smartphones close to them 24 hours a day and they are the ones who are being targeted in location-based marketing campaigns. This mobile device based technology, which is already being effectively used, will become a more popular next year as more and more people start using mobiles. Depending on their location, content marketers are using GPS technology to supply multi-media straight to persons using mobile devices. In 2014 this trend will flourish as businesses become more tech savvy. Marketing-to-location will become commonplace.
Social Media Will Diversify
Pinterest and Instagram have become popular too, like other giants of social media. It is a reflection how social media is diversifying and how it has become part of our daily life. Next year it will only get bigger as the number of visitors to social media sites will get bigger and bigger. In 2013, as many as 93% of marketers said that they used social media for their businesses and that figure is bound to be higher in the coming year. Therefore, in 2014 businesses will have to establish themselves on several social media networks to remain in touch with their customers to build their brands on these very popular sites. Also, LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to pay for ads on their sites. So, more marketers will use paid advertising on the social network. Apart from time, investing cash into these sites to enhance awareness of your brand, reach and social signals will be a good idea.
More Sharing
When you use the social media to share your content you will be rewarded by search engines like Bing and Google in your Search Engine Optimization effort. So persuade your friends, fans and followers to share with each other the content you provide them. The standard way to do this is via the 'share' button. But in future, try out some other methods to share like staging competitions on the basis of how much of your content is being shared; calculate and classify your shares and create outreach programs to stimulate momentum and awareness.
More Via Videos
On Vine, you have six seconds in which to display your product via a video. So, if your product is good, why not put it on the Vine? If a product or service works best on videos this site is great for you. Along with other sites where you can show videos, Vine is predicted to be widely used in the coming year. Snapchat and Instagram have also included options for video in their apps because of the growing demand. These small bits of content have become popular and brands use them in short bursts. Try them out before 2104 sets in and then you should be ready to take advantage of this video marketing technique.
More Pictures Will Tell Better Stories
The trend of using more pictures will continue and even grow. It has been proved by Pinterest & Instagram how powerful images can be and next year this will become more evident. Statistics claim that articles which have images get 94 per cent additional views and so pictures will help get greater attention. Images also give your site an SEO lift if you use appropriate ALT/Meta tags with every visual.
Simple, Direct Information
Messages will get simpler as the daily life of people becomes more hectic than it is now. Complex messages will go out of fashion and direct communications will be the order of the day. Simplicity and minimalism are already becoming the new custom in digital marketing. Google and Apple are already using simplistic website designs and ads.
Google+ and SlideShare Major Players
In 2014 B2B marketers will make more use of social media than they are doing now. They will use Google+ and SlideShare as regular tools for spreading content and social sharing. In 2013 B2B started to promote their content on social media and next year they will make extensive use of these networks.
Remarketing
Remarketing has become a popular way to convert web traffic. Normally, first visits by potential customers result in just 2 percent conversions and retargeting has become essential in the digital marketing process. Remarketing allows you to target customers who visited your site but did not convert. Here you can display your products/services on sites they will visit in the future. For the second time AdRoll has been rated one of the worlds fastest growing businesses. As this trend is expected to stay, try out the Remarketing technique before time runs out for you! Google Remarketing can be a great future marketing choice to build your brand in the world of internet marketing.
Go for 3D Printing
For businesses in the retail, real estate, military and fashion industries 3D printing will be a groundbreaking and hugely innovative way to attract customers. Design your products in plastic and let the 3D effect give them that larger-than-life appearance. It's an entire new and large playing field for a wide range of industries which will also cut down costs and waste products. 3D can even be effectively used for trending, one-off products.
Summing Up...
In the fast-changing technological world that we live in, it's vital that business persons stay abreast of the latest trends and prepare for those that will be most effective in 2014, which is practically around the corner. In this article I have covered the major factors that must be considered and I hope they will be useful to you.
(strategy / shutterstock)