Key Trends in Digital Marketing for the coming year 2014

Digital Exceeds traditional marketing budget !! An identity based Eco-System : We as humans , have always had an intimate need to express

ourselves.By that very expression we further our identity.Awesomly Smart companies like Facebook (Time-line), Amazon(Personilized Recommendations) are already taking advantage to what I am calling as an Identity based Eco-System. The ever growing Digital world of tommorow be it businness , or consumer will revolve around individual identity .The one’s(COMPANIEESSSS) who take advantage of this trend will create ways to harness the concept that showcasing our identity is the MOST HUMAN & PRIMARY OF DESIRES.

CCA(Content Curation & Aggression ) : If you recall you’ve got mail (It’s a hollywood Movie) , you can never re-create the movie . Why? No one is excited to receive an e-mail anymore!! We have moved on from being an information hungry society , to an information overload society. But We do need information –New Information every single day !!That is the main reason we see the rise of website’s such as quora, pintrest ,Lisst.ly,Visual.ly to name a few.Pintrest is basically nothing but an organization system for images that already exists on the web , but WE need that system for aggregation , it’s a full on success.

VIDEO(bedio)=Device Agnostic !! : Do you frankly remember tha last time you said – “ I am watching a video on the television”, now you must be watching them on ur phone, phablet, tablet , smart phone. Video continues to become device agnostic!Now from a business POV Online Video will continue to play a bigger role in the digital SPACE.

Multi-Screen Revolution : Super bowl , the most amazing & Innovative event , actually defined the multi-screen revolution perfectly.While people watched the game on their TV , they were checking on the office mails on the computer , tweeting about the game on their tablets and smart phone’s,& texting their friend’s at the same time.The number of screens we use will only increase on time. Now when I Say screen I am not reffering to a Glass Solid thingy, even google glass for that matter qualifies (just).So Any surface you can interact with can be considered as a

screen. Hence looking for innovations in advertising as the number of screens increase will grow drastically.

SOCIAL LITERACY IS A MUST : Social Literacy will be a mandate by companies when considering candidates for any position. It would expand beyond the understanding of the global available social platforms to make the vast digital landscape a vital part of your proffessional repertoire. As a Skill Set , Social literacy can be furthe segmented into 2 parts- organizational & Personal.On the Organizational level – In the thought of strategy , the sheer ability to aggregate & understand multiple points of data for decision making & Hardcore authentication will be required. On the Personal Level- people will/should know how to create content , curate relevant information(cause we love Information as human’s),& To connect people & resources in the best possible manner.

A Picture is worth a 1000 words ( I think 1000 is a bit too less) :The search giant Google , recently released - Authorship, allowing authors to link content they publish on a specific domain to their Google Plus page and have their picture appear in the search results. So If you’re blogging, you need to be using this technique as it maximizes visibility, increases click-through rates and provides a competitive advantage.

The huge growth of Instagram and Pinterest over the past years had further reinforced the fact that pictures are more engaging. The increased use of info-graphics provides more proof that image-based content is KEY!!

Articles and blogs with well-placed images that strategically break up text guarantee increased views. Not only is an image good for increasing interaction, Boom !!It also increases your organic visibility by using relevant naming conventions alongside the image.

o Take out: If you’re blogging, use Google Authorship and break up your text to hopefully reduce your word count. In Addition to this Google also uses ‘trust’ as a key metric when ranking pages for SEO, making Authorship even more important. When thinking about social media, don’t forget to target image-based sites.

Location-based marketingo Advanced marketers have been communicating with customers based on their

location for years, more recently via checking in on Foursquare or Facebook, and previously via proximity technologies such as Bluetooth.Public Wi-fi can be the next level , provided we have that level of internet penetration in our country!!

o Consumers don’t have to check in for marketers to target them, we can do so based on their location via GPS. Google does this extremely effectively via AdWords. Radius targeting allows you to target your advert to customers within a certain distance from your business.

o Apple the innovation kings have taken this a stage further with iBeacon, an ‘indoor positioning system’ enabling an advertiser to tailor messaging to a customer based on where they are in your shop, office, stadium etc. The options nevertheless are totally endless, from informing customers in which aisle to find a product to providing navigational advice to their seat in auditorium, office .

o The real power is when you overlay this technology with demographic and customer information. Not only do we now know where this customer is but we know who they are and what they like, so we can target them more efficiently.

Love thy Short : If you want to connect with audiences, especially the YOUTH, create engaging and bite-sized stories, heck we all know that.

The growth of Pinterest & its crisp and simple UI proves people want simple.Google understood this before anyone else – is there a homepage less cluttered or more uncomplicated than Google’s?

In the year 2014, marketers must be able to tell their story as succinctly as possible.Now , as consumption of video on mobile devices continues to grow in 2014, short video storytelling will become paramount. Twitter’s Vine service, which allows users to upload 6.5-7 seconds of video, boasts just under 14 million registered users and has featured as the Apple app store’s most downloaded app.

This was my short (not so short) take on the key trends in digital marketing for the coming year