With 2014 dead and gone, it’s time to look at influencer’s predictions for 2015. We’ve compiled 21 thought leaders’ social media, content marketing, digital marketing and SEO insights for the year ahead.
Here’s a snapshot:
Social Media Marketing Predictions
Most influencers believe that businesses will have to start intelligently diversifying their social media strategies in order to stand out now that social media has become ubiquitous in the market.
This is what 2 social media experts had to say:
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“Businesses will find ways to bring their brand’s social experience to all employees and better engage them as ambassadors. Beyond marketing teams with daily responsibilities, we will start to see activation efforts for smarter, stronger and more organized social engagement at the individual employee level.” – Andrew Caravella, Sprout Social
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“Marketers will begin leveraging YouTube as a key medium within their mix. It’s predominantly been a place to play TV commercials, and has been ignored by most marketers. But the opportunity for long-form content and performance targeting , in addition to YouTube’s ability to develop custom features, makes a unique and exciting video experience for consumers.” – Eli Singer, Engagement Labs
Content Marketing Predictions
For the past few years, everyone has predicted that content marketing is going to be the next crucial aspect of marketing, and they’ve been right. Now most marketing professionals see content marketing as needing to become increasingly personalized and seamlessly connected with customer acquisition and advertising.
2 of these content marketing professionals believe:
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“As content marketing continues to become further aligned with business goals, market integrations will become invaluable. Brands will demand seamless solutions that make it frictionless to connect their content marketing efforts with their CRMs and ESPs. Technology providers will grow their partner ecosystem with exclusive contracts and look for new integration opportunities that will benefit clients.” – Shafqat Islam, NewsCred
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“Just as with product placement in movies, advertisers will embrace advertisements placed strategically within great content rather than being blatant with their advertising. Publishers and advertisers will work together to ensure paid content actually brings value to the user experience , and that it works seamlessly (and transparently) with existing content.” – Jayson DeMers, AudienceBloom
Digital Marketing Predictions
In 2015 marketers believe we will see a sharp rise in the mobile consumption of content and mobile commerce. The trend of individualized marketing will continue and we will see the start of wearable technology as a marketing channel. As technology makes extreme advancements, marketing is going to adapt to target potential and current customers in new ways.
2 Examples of digital marketing predictions:
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“Mobile -commerce is expected to grow from $133 billion in 2013 to more than $516 billion by 2017. Most experts predict Apple Pay will continue to be the leader in mobile wallets in 2015 as Google Wallet continues its growth through Google Play, but rises more slowly as a payment system at point of sale.” – Michael Della Penna, Epsilon
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“2015 will be the year when B2B marketers will wake up to hyper-targeting. Only 10% of online visitors find what they are looking for when interacting with online content. Savvy digital marketers will be able to match traffic with business attributes, identify segments they want to grow and serve them with a very targeted message.” – Christophe Primault, GetApp
Search Engine Optimization Predictions
Search engine optimization is entering a new era as Google search results are becoming more diversified in order to display answers easier and faster than ever before. Marketers foresee continued development towards a personalized and predictive algorithm which utilizes big data to grow.
Here’s what 2 SEO thought-leaders had to say:
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“[I foresee a] further fall of information websites as Google gives more answers. If you’re in the business of providing answers to your audience you’re about to have a bad time as you’re in direct competition with Google. Today we’re seeing complex queries being answered before all search results with the source of the answer being credited with an attribution link , whose click through cannot match the standard result with no direct answers.” – Dan Petrovic, DejanSEO
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“The future of search won’t just be about asking a Siri-like entity for information or thinking about questions and receiving answers in a micro heads up display (more contact lens than Google Glass), but the application of predictive search answers. In other words, a big data sourced understanding of individuals and situations so specific, that technologies will deliver information with amazing accuracy and relevancy before we need it.” – Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing
For the full presentation and more than a dozen additional influencer predictions, check out the Slideshare:
By the Wishpond Content Team
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