4. ACCORDING TO FORBES
Some marketing trends that will dominate
2014:
Content marketing will be bigger than ever
Social media marketing will require more diversity
Image-centric content will rule
Less will be more
Mobile-friendly content will be a must
9. A RECENT STUDY CONDUCTED BY ADOBE SHOWED
THAT SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING REMAINS THE
MOST IMPORTANT MARKETING AREA OF CONCERN
FOR THE UPCOMING THREE YEARS.
13. WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS MEAN FOR US?
Converged media, discoverability and story-first
Trust and quality
Omni-channel
User experience
Integration of owned, earned and paid
Responsive delivery
Promotion and distribution
Print is not dead
New platforms
Exclusivity, discoverability
Story first
Mobile device use increased by 30 percent. Now, more than 50 percent of juniors are using mobile devices as their primary way to go online.Tablet use is increasing at an even faster rate, with 100 percent increase in use vs. last year. Though just 17 percent of 2014s are using tablets as their main way to go online, the trend is only going upward.
Trends to watch:Email with social sharing will boost click-through rates more than 150 percentSocial media marketing budgets will double over the next five yearsPay Per Click budgets will increase more than 70 percentMore than 70 percent of press releases will include images
Content will be the #1 way to attract and retain customers. Engagement in real-time, whether through interpersonal communication, social media or traditional marketing strategies and tactics, will deliver better ROI than direct mail and advertising.Images will outrank words for engagement with key audiences.Less will be more in message development and delivery.
To round out the authentic experience, students want to be able to tour campus while doing their investigating. About 51 percent say it is important or extremely important for a college to have a virtual tour. Though, when on campus, students still want the live human perspective; just one-third of 2014s say that a GPS-enabled app could actually replace. a student-led tour
Students still consider colleges’ websites centrally crucial to get the official and peer-to-peer perspective and research key areas. Nearly 82 percent of juniors reported that colleges’ websites are influential or very influential.Key pages cited by 2014s include: Academics and Majors (96 percent), Admission Facts (89 percent), Scholarship Estimators (88 percent), Application Pages (80 percent) and Campus Life (76 percent).
Inbound marketing is a holistic, data-driven strategy that involves attracting and converting visitorsinto customers through personalized, relevant information and content –- not interruptivemessages – and following them through the sales experience with ongoing engagement.
With its 1.18 billion users, of which close to 58% are active daily, with an average of 20 minutes per day, Facebook is certainly not disappearing anytime soon. Outside emerging markets where growth is still happening, Facebook has reached a certain plateau, with even some decreases within the younger generations, in particular the 13-17 teens. A study by Pew Internet & American conducted earlier this year found that more and more teenagers were jumping ship from Facebook to Twitter and Instagram, in great part “because there is less drama”. It’s also easier to fly under parents’ radars and have a more secretive approach on Twitter.
Snapchat is a photo messaging application developed by Stanford University students.[3][4] Using the app, users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients. These sent photographs and videos are known as "Snaps". Users set a time limit for how long recipients can view their Snaps (as of November 2013, the range is from 1 to 10 seconds[5]), after which they will be hidden from the recipient's device and deleted from the Snapchat server. As of April 2013, its 5 million active users were uploading over 150 million photos per day!
Last but not least, videos should continue their upward ascent in the social media marketing toolbox hierarchy. In particular short videos. YouTube shows no sign of fatigue, all the contrary in fact with its 100 hours of video uploaded… every hour!! Yet for brands, the best promises come from the rise of applications such as Vine, with its 6-seconds video capabilities, and Instagram, with its 15-seconds video capabilities complete with filters and integration within Facebook.When I attended Social Media Marketing World Event back in April, in San Diego, videos (along with blogs & podcasts) were indeed already identified as the hot marketing trends to look out for. And we are now seeing more and more companies embrace these short videos as quick, inexpensive and efficient ways to tell their brand story. Without a doubt, this is one trend we can expect to grow in 2014. If pictures tell a 1,000 words, videos can tell a million! Students want to get the authentic campus experience, even if they aren’t in a position to travel to your campus. So they can’t get enough peer-to-peer video.
Smart brands will focus on the genuine quality of their output and as a result receive the audience's trust, attention and custom.A well-planned, integrated omni-channel approach that takes and adapts core source content to social, mobile, tablet, web, digital and print will ensure quality and consistent messaging while maximising the effectiveness and return on your content investment.Consumers are expecting a seamless and consistent experience of a brand whenever and wherever they encounter it.Brands should continue to build relationships with their audiences delivering content that is relevant, authentic, useful, entertaining or an educational experience for the consumer. This content needs to be delivered in the right places and on the right platforms.Investing in the promotion and distribution of content is as important as the creation and production of it.Print is still a useful tool but know when to use it and what audiences want it.Be aware of the possibilities that new platforms emerging next year will offer. Released next month, Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One are both developer friendly, always on, connected, content- delivery platforms - not games consoles. They could change the way we think about content in a similar way to how smartphones did five years ago.By using marketing geared to a select audience, brands can build value into key relationships. Like exclusivity, discoverability is about enabling the audience to make their own connections, without it feeling like work.Brands need to tell a story and it has to be a story that people can care about. The format, channels, platforms, devices and timing of how that story is told will be dictated by what you want your audience to feel.
