We are already close to a month into what promises to be a dynamic and disruptive year for marketers. This year will be dramatically different from 2014 and savvy organisations need to be ahead of the latest trends to gain or maintain a competitive edge.
Cade Witnish from independent digital agency, Loud&Clear shares his top 10 digital marketing predictions for 2015.
1. The rise of the CRM and the death of the traditional CMS
Gone will be the days of ‘one size fits all’ content. In 2015, we will see clients trade in their traditional CMS for CRM driven content. Leveraging the ‘big data’ they collected in 2014, we will see contextually aware, personalised content pushed across digital channels.
2. Ecommerce will change dramatically
Amazon will move in as predicted and dominate. Australian-owned businesses (that are notoriously more expensive than American counterparts) will suffer. Even the Iconic, which currently dominates, will struggle to compete with them on price, variety and customer service.
3. The rise of health related wearable devices
Both tech companies and health insurers will make a play to be the first industry that combines the Internet of Things and wearables in a truly useful way for health purposes.
4. The rise of material design
Material Design is mostly Flat Design, but uses very subtle gradients, layering and animation to retain a sense of the tangible world (physical space and objects). As leading digital companies such as Google embrace this design across all their platforms, the Material Design movement will take a strong foothold in design studios across the globe.
5. Conversion not traffic
This year marketers will focus more of their marketing spend on improving conversion rates, rather than increasing website traffic.
6. Marketers will increase their spend in content marketing
Vice will join the ranks of Buzzfeed and Huffington Post, seeing an explosion of content marketing in Australia and blogger outreach will become the most powerful persuasion tool.
7. Big brands will start to acquire content publishers
Publishers aren’t making enough money and brands are becoming impatient with slowly growing audiences through social media that they don’t own and can’t control. The solution – brands will buy publishers and their loyal audiences.
8. Scrolling over clicking
The mobile web continues to grow and web design continues to skew in the direction of a more effective and enjoyable mobile experience. Scrolling will therefore continue to dominate clicking. It’s more intuitive, easier to do, cuts down on load times and allows for more dynamic interaction to take place between the user and the website.
9. Disruptive Financial Products
This year will see the first truly disruptive financial products hit the marketplace. They won’t be backed by the big four bands and they won’t involve cryptocurrency.
10. Drones’ Air Space
Drones will be approved their own air space and will start being used across multiple industrial sectors for research, delivery, cleaning and auditing.
