1. Optimizing for Mobile Devices – Smartphones

Many brands are quickly learning that they are better placed if they optimize their content for mobile devices such as wearable gadgets (interactive watches), tablets and smartphones. The number of smart mobile devices carried by people is growing tremendously and companies recognize the need to reach their customers in more convenient ways through these mobile devices. Brands will be forced to optimize for mobile devices by creating mobile user friendly blogs, emails and websites. The content here needs to be more SEO localized with more effort directed towards real-time marketing through short and precise bait content. Consideration for landing pages being optimized for mobile devices will greatly increase in 2015.

Key things to think about are images and videos and how well they integrate with the text content. Some brands have gone fully mobile and created mobile apps that enable customers to link directly to their online businesses. This trend might gain momentum and see the introduction of more brand related mobile apps. The extent to which we can use our smartphones is soon advancing to making payments! Starbucks have pioneered the use of Google wallet which was recently joined by Apple’s new iPhone 6 feature pay ecosystem. Customers paying through this method are given loyalty points to encourage them and others.

 

2. Innovative & Personalized Email Marketing

Companies that have actively used SEO services in the last couple of years have used emailing as one of the ways to draw customer attention. Sending newsletters and similar publications was sufficient to get a good number interested but times have changed! Content has become the most important anchor to almost all other digital marketing channels. Redundancy will be reduced by new ways of streamlining emails such as using downloadable eBooks as incentives for signups or just normal email list building. More creativity is expected to pop up as the year advances but the bottom line concerning email marketing is that it needs a strategic shift to a personalized relationship paradigm. Targeting specific market niches requires one to come up with extremely appropriate content that will persuade subscribers to purchase products and services from you.

 

3. Growth in Social Media Ad spend

The use of social media is arguably the best platform for customer-brand direct interaction. Marketing campaigns on social media continue to add value on overall brand exposure and it has been proven so far that more companies have turned to serious social media branding. This channel is also a vital part in any SEO program thus requiring a lot of strategy and planning. Once again content is key and it really matters how you engage your audience through text, pictures, videos, memes and social media paid ads. The social media marketing platform offers a wider market reach and is very quickly becoming a fulltime job with many companies opting to dedicate some staff members to social media branding and management. Many social media platforms have provided users with useful tools to track followers and brand activity returns. The access to this and more analytical data is likely to keep social media significance around for longer.

 

4. Personalized Content Marketing

We expect to see a major shift from quantity to quality with regard to content. Building customer brand trust will require companies to come up with content that is not only catchy but also highly relevant to the target group(s). Brands will invest in new, original and rich content creation to keep up with the competition.

Many brands reported successes with their content marketing strategies which lead to the clear assumption that this trend will see more changes and implementation in 2015. There is also anticipated budget reduction in general SEO marketing approaches with the funds being directed towards intensive content marketing. Emphasis is largely placed on creating high quality while lesser and lesser attention goes to distribution and promotion. Similar expansions are expected to be developed in the course of this year.

 

5. Visual Media Marketing

Videos combine images, audio and text to convey messages to customers with the best clarity. They engage the user to a level where the intended reaction is achieved. A funny video ad can stay in people’s memories for longer and this lasting effect can encourage extensive viral information spreading. They are also the best to show examples of products and services for any brand. 2015 will see the rise of content based video marketing in a big way! This will include revolutionized video optimization for mobile devices through which brands hope to reach millions of smart mobile device users. This is not to mean that other forms of visual media such as pictures will be totally phased out.

We also expect to see more original brand advertising video content customized to fit various marketing programs. Creating engaging videos is a sure way to pass messages to attentive consumers effectively. The video marketing trend will surely undergo a big change as competing brands budget for more video concepts to target different market segments. A lot of creative design is being channeled through videos for an ever increasing number of online users. Brands like Samsung and Red Bull have had their fair share of returns from this form of digital marketing. Search engines still maintain their crawling algorithms which have been known to give priority to videos and more specifically educative videos and for this reason, video marketing will be one of the top trends in 2015 for brand digital marketing programs.