27th Jan

The Top 5 Marketing Trends For 2015

As we delve into a new year of business growth, we need to be aware of some of the changes in the market. It almost feels as if things are changing overnight (and they are, if you want to get technical about it).

In a brief snapshot, the majority of the predictions about 2015 will be regarding the digital sector. More traditional forms of advertising are becoming increasingly second-rate compared to the digital realm, which continues to become more complex and powerful as time goes on.

So, let’s get into it! Here are the top 5 predictions for marketing trends in 2015.

1. SEO will be more influenced by social media.

Before we get into this prediction a little more, let’s quickly review what SEO is. SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation) is a process of making your content more easily discoverable by search engines such as Google.

However, Google is beginning to increasingly rely on social media to inform its SEO rankings. For example, Google:

  • Uses Twitter to discover new content
  • Uses social shares to measure how much traffic your site is getting
  • Uses link-backs to your blog to judge your credibility (and therefore, ranking.)

This means that marketers will have yet another reason to put effort into their social media channels if they want to be seen by search engines.

2. Data skills will be very important to employers and businesses alike.

In late 2014, LinkedIn revealed the top 25 jobs that got people hired in 2014. Not surprisingly, the number one skill was the ability to perform data mining processes and then statistical analysis.

Why is this not surprising? Everything is based on data nowadays. This is simply due to the enormous amount of digital platforms and tools that are available to customers. Without the ability to collect data about what is really going on in your online marketing efforts (and more importantly, to interpret it), you would simply get lost in the wealth of information available to you.

So these skills will be top priority this year!

3. There will be an increase in the use of promoted posts on social media pages

This prediction is highly related to prediction number one. Because SEO is going to be more highly influenced by social media channels, companies are going to need to get more traction on social media channels if they want to be highly ranked.

Now there are two ways to do this. The first way is to create content that is important to customers that will make them want to share and hope that it gets some momentum. The second way is to use paid promotion to make sure that the businesses’ posts are seen.

Pretty much all businesses use both methods in tandem. It is hard to get your posts to be seen with the influx of content on social media sites without a little bit of assistance from promotional tools. So it makes sense that in 2015, there’s going to be a huge increase in the use of these promotional posts.

4. The hard sell will become even harder to pull off

People are becoming increasingly desensitised to the boring “buy buy buy” ads that they used to be unable to avoid in the past. There is a video of a cat doing a backflip into some Nutella right next to that boring post about farm equipment, so why would anyone waste their time with something that bores them?

Although these ads will not vanish completely (they still have their place in the advertising spectrum), they will become less effective in favour of more ‘shareable’ content.

This will put more pressure on marketers and business owners to really put more effort into what they are posting.

5. Online marketing efforts will become increasingly more individualised

Consumers are expecting more when it comes to companies customising to their needs. This extends to marketing. Target audiences are now splitting off into different regions of the Internet and marketers need to be able to reach everyone if they want to make an impact.

This means catering to the marketing needs of a variety of different sub-target audiences. Marketers will need to contact the tastemakers of their audiences (bloggers, YouTube personalities, podcasters etc) and advertise through them. You might see the same brands popping up on all of your favourite podcasts and blogs.

We hope that these predictions help you in your marketing efforts this year. As stated before, digital is not going away and if you are not on the bandwagon yet, you MUST get on this year!

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