Get ahead of the curve: marketing predictions for 2015 and beyond
Entertaining, informative and interesting marketing will continue to be a major player in the world of business – but how it will look throughout 2015 is anyone’s guess. However, it does no harm to make a few guesses – so here are five predictions for overall trends for the digital marketer for next year.
The end of print?
Old-school journalists, advertisers and content writers still lament the state of the print industry, which has been stripped to the bone. There is still a market for old-school PR and marketing – just – but there is a race against time for newspapers to match and/or better the value of the digital advertising revenue gain against the annual print revenue loss.
If that race is lost, newspapers will cease to exist, and in truth most people can see it happening soon. The typical content consumer now looks for blogs, guest posts, video and online literature on their phablets on-the-go, and the marketer should be working out ways of capitalising through companies such as Global Messaging to reap dividends.
Wearable technology will change the way we look at people
Google Glass, smart watches, fitness bands and high-tech jewellery must surely hold promise for the marketer, and two of the main challenges for 2015 will be
ascertaining a) the potential of the product and b) whether the investment of time to properly harness this is actually viable.
The keen marketer should already be thinking mobile in their content (and perhaps even SMS messaging and proximity marketing) but the proliferation and distribution of new mobile content and an effective way of channelling this will become one of the new challenges for disciples of the Internet of Things.
One can also imagine app developers, marketers, health firms, and fashion labels all diving in but they will face the same dilemmas, as well as concerns over battery limitations and privacy. And from an aesthetic and practical point of view, the question will be asked whether we really want more items in our lives that can be stolen.
Local is king
Amazon Local has been rolled out – and may completely change how we purchase on a local level. Same day deliveries and even a voice-activated Dash scanner allows shoppers to purchase groceries online, but Amazon is currently trialling a takeout and delivery service which will even let you order restaurant meals online. The logical step is for a spread worldwide (currently it is only being used in Seattle) branching into local services where one can order a plumber, a curry and a CD in one online transaction.
If and when this happens, how will marketing exist alongside it? How will it benefit the companies that sign up, and what will happen to existing websites such as Just-Eat and Uber? For them, 2015 will surely be a year of diversifying their marketing and planning for the assault.
All for one
Marketing, PR, advertising and journalism will continue to converge as agencies take control of the direction and supply an all-in one package, from research to implementation to analysis of results, with excellent design, content and coding along the way.
Creativity will continue to stand out – humour and emotion will be key components, delivered through stunning writing or fantastic videos. Here are 21 digital marketing predictions for 2015 from industry heads emphasising the importance of good content, courtesy of TopRank.
Contentment
Content curation and its presentation will blossom, and the consumer will continue to drive the process; they won’t read or view items that are irrelevant. Similarly any items that are not written in the correct style, or are unbelievable for the brand, will be rejected.
That means that good content writers will become more valued, and perhaps we will see a renaissance in the role of the ‘traditional’ journalist or marketer mentioned above. The ex-print staff who’ve actually gone out and seen interviewees, or picked up a phone, or experienced high-pressure deadlines in their working life, might still have a role to play in the new agencies.
