The entire world is going social today. In fact, digital growth continues to gather pace around the globe, with more than 2 billion people having access to the internet. Among these, almost one billion people are active social media users. Naturally, the growing use of social media has impacted the policies and functioning of brands across sectors. So while some trends and ideas may have worked in the past, now brands need to expand their knowledge to create campaigns that are creative, engaging, inspiring and effective at the same time.

Here are 5 trends that we feel will impact the field of digital marketing in the coming year.

Social media is a popular & vast medium, so invest your resources intelligently!

 The Potential

Social media is widely used, with innumerable users registering their activities every moment. Every 60 seconds, 104, 00,000 photos are shared on snapchat, 2, 78, 00,000 new tweets are added on Twitter, 72 hours of video is uploaded on YouTube and 3,600 photos are added on Instagram.

How to Milk the Opportunity?

The heart of any successful social media campaign lies in proper understanding of the target audience. So, as there are multiple social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. available, it is immensely important for brands to choose the correct social media platform and the correct target audience, so as to deliver high levels of engagement and loyalty.   

Social listening is the key to connecting with your market.

 The Potential

In a rapidly evolving social media landscape, a conversation about your brand has the potential to enhance or destroy your reputation in the market. A bad word spreads like wildfire and can devastate a brand. Social media pages have eliminated the need of having suggestion/complaint boxes. Now, customers praise/criticize a product or service (which may become viral) on the social media profile page of that brand. In the coming year, social listening will become an integral part of all social media campaigns.

How to Milk the Opportunity?

Listening constitutes an important element of good communication. It means that brands must convert their social media platforms into venues for sharing and conversation rather than turning them into monologues. Brands need to continuously monitor the customers’ posts; answer their queries and resolve issues instantly; and express gratitude for any compliments received! For celebrated branding, investing in social listening skills and keeping ears and eyes open will be a welcome idea in the coming year. 

The importance of Real Time Marketing, especially for social media will increase!

 The Potential

Real time marketing is based on up to date events, trends and customer feedback. It can be a reaction to a particular event or a brand’s own updates. With the evolution of social media platforms, real time or right time marketing has gained multifold importance. Companies believe that with strategically structured and quickly executed marketing plans based on current events or feedbacks, customers will feel more involved with the brand and believe that the brand is updated, responsive and cares for their opinions and feedbacks. According to CMO.com, real-time marketing is very important for any campaign and provides a dramatic lift to consumer sentiment (16 percent lift), purchase intent (14 percent lift), interest (18 percent lift), likelihood to recommend (18 percent lift), and seriously consider the product/service (18 percent).

How to Milk the Opportunity?

Long before the social media platforms gained currency in India, Amul Butter used the strategy of real time marketing. In the coming year, real-time marketing will become essential for marketers and brands. Brands must react to current events and have real- time communication with their potential and existing customers! They must create platforms where the consumers can voice their opinions in the forms of likes, shares, retweets, etc. and maintain them qualitatively. Big brands may also employ specialized ‘real time marketing teams’ to achieve the purpose. 

Content is the backbone of good social media marketing.

 The Potential

“Our words are our currency”– Beth Dunn

Relationships are created and maintained on the basis of what, how and when you communicate. Likewise, advertising content can make or break a brand in the social arena and decide the fate of ambitious marketing campaigns. Words directly impact the psyche and mood of the consumers, thereby affecting the success of your campaign. Thus, framing a perfect content strategy is not a luxury today but a necessity.

How to Milk the Opportunity?

Content has and will always remain the king, across all forms of digital campaigns and platforms. Good content is the one that is written according to the segment of target audience. Companies must judiciously hire quality copy/content writers, who are excellent in not only minting beautiful words and assembling them into grammatically correct sentences, but are also pros at out of box ideation and conceptualization. The ability to write engaging content that can inspire real emotions and connections will help companies get noticed and amplify their message across various platforms.  Companies must draft their content well, especially on social media, and ensure that it is engaging to such a degree, that it gets shared by your target audience, thereby increasing brand promotion and engagement.

Facebook and Twitter ad pricing will increase due to their enhanced reach!

 The Potential

Facebook has more than a billion registered users while Twitter has more than a million users. In the coming year, the number of users on both these platforms is set to increase substantially. As both of them are popular social media platforms, brands can use them to effectively promote their goods and services. Facebook ad pricing has already gone up 10 percent since 2013 and this trend will continue in the coming years as well. Similarly, Twitter is also growing as a popular medium of marketing, especially among brands that have limited budget and want to reach out to a particular segment. Further, as they allow targeted advertising, brands can reach their target market at a fairly affordable price.

How to Milk the Opportunity?

With increasing advertising costs on popular social media platforms, brands must allocate decent social media marketing budgets and carefully design their campaigns for better ROI. They must hire experienced digital media professionals or outsource their social media marketing to specialized digital marketing agencies. Bringing on board such specialization will lead to correct audience targeting, perfectly worded and designed communication across the appropriate social media platform, and elimination of any probability of hit and trial by amateurs.

#NewYear2015 will bring new hopes and ambitions, and also higher sales targets! Keeping the above trends in mind, brands can meticulously plan their social media campaigns that may work wonders for their sales.

“The only thing that is constant is CHANGE”
                                                                                                 – Heraclitus, Greek Philosopher

From changing business models to evolving consumer behaviors to advanced trends in technology, today’s marketers have to perfectly balance various elements of digital marketing in order to create an impactful and effective campaign. Staying updated on these changes is the only way in which a brand can deliver a seamless and impressive experience to all its customers.

Every year, new and impressive products/trends help brands to create powerful, dynamic and engaging mediums of connections with their target market. The year 2014 saw various advancements in social media, mobile communications and digital technology. So while the basic fundamentals of marketing remain the same, there is a constant change in the marketing landscape, requiring digital marketers to be updated so that they can remain ahead of their competition. Here are 5 trends that we feel will impact the field of digital marketing in 2015.

Here are 5 trends that we feel will impact the field of digital marketing in the coming year.

Mobile communication will become even more powerful and impactful

The Potential

The age that we are living in today is rightly called the ‘Smartphone Age’. One in every five persons in the world owns a smartphone, so it is but obvious that every aspect of marketing will soon become mobile. According to studies, one billion people will access the internet through mobile phones in 2015. So don’t make the mistake of spending millions of dollars on creating the perfect brand story and structuring the brand DNA, only to ruin it by a complicated and lazy mobile experience. Also watch out for ‘Mobile Pay’, which is all set to become colossal in 2015, especially after the entry of ‘Apple Pay’ in the market.

Milking the Opportunity

Brands have to consider mobile as a medium of direct and impactful communication, rather than just an aspect of digital marketing. Don’t plan campaigns and content for desktop/laptop and then scale them down to mobile. Create solutions that will enable your target audience to experience all aspects of digital marketing from Facebook posts to marketing mails on their phones, in a convenient and engaging manner.

Video is much more than YouTube with other mediums like Vine and Instagram becoming popular for video sharing

The Potential

If we were five years into the future, what do you think – would you be watching this article or reading it? This is an interesting question as consumption of videos continues to rise every single day. According to Cisco, video will account for more than 69% of consumer internet traffic by 2017. The success stories of viral videos are remarkable and that is why many digital marketers feel that video is definitely the future of content marketing.

Milking the Opportunity

Creative video, not only in terms of creation but also strategy, is how brands must approach video production. Strike the emotional chords, engage the viewers and they will definitely share your video with others and spend longer hours on your website interacting with your brand. It goes without saying that a creative video is one of the best tools for any social media campaign or SEO exercise. Also, with the possibility of creating shorter length videos on Vine and Instagram, the production cost can shrink dramatically, allowing even small and mid-sized companies to invest in this medium successfully.

Brands will shift from globalization to personalization, for better consumer connect.

The Potential

If brands truly want to expand their customer base globally, they must learn to connect with the local roots. In its white paper- ‘The Balancing Act: Getting Personalization Right’, Yahoo says, “Content personalization represents the fulcrum balancing the consumer ‘need to know’ with their ‘want to know.” Today, consumers too have understood the value of personalized content. According to web analytic company Webtrends, an average consumer has 260 unopened emails in their inbox, 56 of those from brands. 60% say they would open those messages if the subject line was personalized. That is why creating a digital experience that has a strong relevancy factor will help your brand improve its engagement and brand advocacy in a substantial manner.

Milking the Opportunity

The competition in the economy is assassinating and it becomes extremely arduous to retain the customers. Hence, focus on creating personalized relations with your target audience. When you connect with a customer on a personal level, you create an engaged and loyal customer. And a loyal customer is a prized possession for a brand! In the coming year, focus on personalized solutions so that you can empower and strengthen your brand in a comprehensive manner.

Wearable technology will gain more prominence

The Potential

Smartwatches and Fitness Bands shot to stardom in the year 2014. From Apple to Samsung, we have witnessed a wide array of smartwatches from major manufactures and brands. The wearable tech trend will continue through the next year as well with many more innovative products being introduced in this category. According to research from tech analysts Gartner, the market for smartwatches will increase from 18 million this year to 21 million in the next year.

Milking the Opportunity

The future of wearable technology is indeed bright. The next few years will see the emergence of ‘smart clothing’ as well. This is because consumers are ready to integrate technology into their daily lives with wearables in all forms and types. Data from Garter states that smart clothing will go from practically non-existent sales this year to more than 10 million in 2015 and going up to 26 million in the year after next. That is why there is a need to personalize these gadgets so that it benefits the users to become more productive and efficient. With all signs showing wearable technology as the next big thing, businesses that want to remain competitive in the future must prepare for the next wave of wearable technologies with strategies to leverage their value for both employees and consumers. After all, it does look like the future will be one in which everyone wears their business on their sleeve.

Transparency will become the most important tool/aspect of marketing.

The Potential

Consumers today are extremely aware, discerning and clever, given the wide range of sources of information available to them. They are empowered to influence a brand in multifarious ways, especially through the use of social media. Social media has given consumers an upper hand in voicing their opinions and thoughts about a particular brand/product. They can now use social media to demand better products/services while at the same time appreciate those brands that exceed their expectations. Not exaggerating, but a tweet today can initiate the process of making or breaking a brand.

The idea of complete transparency in operations/ products/services is something that few brands accept and many brands still continue to resist or shun. But with the growing power and knowledge of the consumers, brands will have to come out of their fossilized mindset and become accountable to their consumers at all time.

Milking the Opportunity

Next year, the best brands will not be those who allocate the biggest pie to marketing or design. The finest brands will be those that invest in creating a transparent structure that gives an accurate and real time picture of what they are doing in the interest of the consumer. The key to success is to have a favourable consumer perception and opinion -create an environment where the consumer feels empowered, satisfied and not cheated. For instance, a quick response time on a query on the facebook page of the brand is an easy way to earn a loyal customer. The digital world of tomorrow, whether it is connected to a consumer or brand will have to be focused on creating genuine solutions that meet the expectations of the consumer in every possible way.

The year 2015 will bring with itself new challenges, opportunities and potential for brands, to push their boundaries of imagination and creativity. That being said, this year looks to be an exciting year for both digital marketers and consumers, alike.