In the dynamic world of online Marketing, trends come and go but the basic essence remains the same, i.e. to engage more and more visitors for any targeted website and to enhance the user experience (UX). However, in this ever changing scenario, one has to keep tabs on the latest happenings and changes year by year and 2015 is no exception to this. Sometimes keeping up with all the changes in the digital marketing world can seem to be an uphill task since technology keeps on changing at such a fast rate. Ideas that are new and fresh today may seem obsolete and out of date just tomorrow. However, one thing is for sure, that methods like social media and search engine marketing will never fade in the arena of digital marketing, but their forms and applications may differ dramatically as compared with the past. In the ever evolving world of digital marketing, let us try to keep abreast of the latest trends that seem to be selling like hot cakes in the year 2015 and get a hang of what is happening on the ground in this year.
1. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing consists of strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search engine advertising. As per the insights given by the Search Engine Journal, 93% of all online experiences begin by the user interacting with a search engine. Hence, it is important that your website has top rankings on the search engines if you want to make your website visible to the surfers, who may become potential customers of your product or service or you may build a loyal fan following. Search engines drive over 300% more traffic to different websites as compared to social media. As per the recent changes in Google’s search algorithm, search will focus more on quality rather than quantity. Your websites needs to have quality content and inbound links from reputed and trustable sources. You need to concentrate on generating the type of content that is useful for the viewers of your website and links from high powered informative and high ranking websites. Due to the ascendancy of factors like focusing more on user experience (UX), the emphasis on keywords is going to decrease and webmasters are going to suffer if they engage in keyword over stuffing just to drive traffic. Meaningful content is in and keyword driven content is out.
2. Mobile Marketing
With the proliferation of smart phones in the world growing at rates never seen before, the push of mobile marketing, when it comes, is going to be immense and it will take the digital world by storm. The year 2015 promises to be a trendsetting year for mobile marketing. Possessing a mobile friendly website has become a norm rather than an exception as the number of people accessing the net on the go has skyrocketed.
Consider another interesting statistic, almost 80% of smartphone users use their phones to shop online. And this is just the beginning. Hence, you should be paying much more attention to how your site adapts and behaves while on mobile. Take a note on tweaking that needs to be done or changes that need to be made in order to have an optimized website for mobile. Whatever method you may choose for making your presence on the mobile arena, just make sure that users get the same kind of comfort and facilities as they would get in your desktop website, since mobiles have definitely arrived on the stage of digital marketing.
3. Content Marketing
The phrase that ‘content is king’ has been grilled down to the last rung in the heads of digital marketers since the phenomenon began. However, keeping in view the recent changes made in the search algorithm of Google, this phrase assumes greater and far more significance. This year, content marketing looks like to evolve even further. The concept of content marketing is basically creating and sharing useful and quality information and other quality content through various online mediums. In order to do an effective content marketing campaign, you need to accurately evaluate the needs of your target audience and put it out successfully in your content for the website, or tablet or mobile. You need to consider the fact that every platform has different content needs and the way it is presented is also different. A new trend in visual content is of info graphics and is becoming quite popular nowadays. Not only content that is rich in word count and quality, but creating visual content in the form of info graphics, pictures and even quality videos will go a long way in being the spearheads of your digital marketing campaigns.
4. Social Media
The way social media is growing is phenomenal and it is estimated that social media usage has increased over 100% in the last five years and will continue to skyrocket. Hence, making your presence felt on the social media has become a necessity now and you need to buttress your social media presence. However, for small and medium sized online business owners, it would become virtually impossible to do justice to all the social media platforms out there in the World Wide Web.
Hence, these entities need to do their research well and choose the top three platforms that would be the best for your business. You need to be quite clear about whether being on Facebook is going to help you more or building your presence on Instagram is going to help you better. After identifying the appropriate social media platforms for your business, you need to use them wisely by posting consistent, interesting, entertaining and helpful content. You should make all the efforts to woo your visitors and make them comment on your posts and you should always be ready for some lively discussions in the form of discussion threads.
5. Email marketing
You may have heard otherwise, but email marketing is not dead and in fact has risen like a phoenix in its new and improved avatar. Email continues to remain as a leader in spreading the marketing message. As per the research conducted by email expert.org, for every $1 spend on email marketing, the average return is $44.25. Virtually everyone has and uses an email currently and email marketing has thus evolved itself to cater to such a large population of users. Latest trends suggest that email marketing will become more straightforward and should always be permission based. Even though email marketing has assumed a new avatar, spam like methods are dead. Hence, you should desist from using spam and over hyped words in your subject lines which may mislead the users opening your email. Email messages should be kept short and to the point. Make sure that the subject line concisely and precisely covers the important message you want to convey in your email and you should also ensure that your messages are mobile friendly.
6. Meme Marketing
A meme is a growing and a popular internet trend where a tacky or a funny image is captioned with a clever quote or saying and the pair creates magic. This funny picture and quote can create an entertaining or funny situation to which we can relate with our everyday lives. Memes are also becoming popular in billboards and other offline advertising methods. Memegenerator is a good resource where you can create your own memes. They enable you to use your own images and add your own text and create the magic of pairing the appropriate image with an appropriate quote.
Such kind of meme marketing can bring humor and entertainment to everyday situations which can create a flutter in the world of online marketing. They have a huge potential of your visitors sharing your meme and help engaging your online audience, making them comment and take appropriate call of action if need arises. However, you need to be careful about memes, for there is a thin line in producing an offensive piece of content that can hurt someone’s sentiments or are just plain inappropriate. Hence, if done in a right manner, memes can be a humorous way to make your content go viral and take your digital marketing goals to the next level for this year.
By following correctly these six hot trends in this year, we sincerely hope that you are able to meet your digital marketing goals. If you yourself have some new trend to share, or want to add to this list, feel free to comment in the comments section and we would absolutely love to have your feedback. Thanks.
