A new year is just around the corner, which means that we’ll be seeing new technologies and new ways to market our business to our consumers. Every year, new marketing fads come on the scene. Some stick around (PPC ads) while others don’t make much of a splash (QR codes).
Every year, marketing bloggers and experts alike take a stab at their predictions for the popular marketing trends for the upcoming year. The following are my marketing predictions for 2013.
Social will continue to grow.
Social media is not yet ready to leave the scene as a popular marketing tool. In 2013, I think that many companies who have yet to become social will start to embrace the tactic as a way to reach their customers. The average consumer is still using social media sites like Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook, among others, and companies will realize that if they want to get in front of their audience, these are the places to do so.
Among popular social networks to reach consumers, I also believe that more companies will start to embrace internal social networks as a way to communicate with one another. This is a great way for large corporations or companies with multiple branches to keep all of their employees up to date with events and policies. Internal social networks like Yammer will become more and more popular, or companies will start to invest in their own customized internal social networks.
Websites will take a back seat.
Websites will still be present, and companies will still update their web content, but I think that websites will take a back seat to companies who are starting to focus on social media. These companies will start to put more effort on their social media accounts, which means that these pages will get updated more often and see more traffic than their traditional websites. In fact, social may be the driving force behind a company’s SEO and SEM efforts.
Email will lose its effectiveness.
The onslaught of social networks will force email to fade away. Last year, the use of email declined for every age group except those over 55. Instead, people are turning to social networks as their main form of communication. Companies will stop putting money into their email campaigns and put it towards social media.
Mobile will become the norm.
The constant launch of new and improved mobile devices such as the iPhone 5 and the Google Nexus will increase the importance of mobile marketing tactics. More and more consumers are turning away from the traditional use of a computer to access information and are instead receiving this info on their smartphones and tablets. If websites and marketing tactics are not optimized for use on these devices, companies will lose out on reaching their consumers.
It’ll be all about the video.
More and more consumers are finding themselves attracted to video content. Video is more entertaining than reading a blog, website or online article, and video can also provide consumers with information more quickly. And in our busy society, the quicker we can receive information, the more effective the campaign will be.
It’s inevitable that marketing will change in 2013. These were my predictions for what marketing will look like next year, but only time will tell if my predictions were accurate.
