Spring Digital Trends

Digital trends are known for their fast paced changes and their tendency to change from season to season. 

Emerging trends for Spring 2014 are indicating an increasingly customer focused  approach; hot topics include content marketing, further expansion of social media and the repeat of ‘the year of mobile’ once again!

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a buzzword that is often used but not always understood; PR practitioners preach the importance of this over more traditional SEO whereas some say that this has killed the SEO profession. Content marketing is simply creating interesting, entertaining or useful content and media to add value to your brand and encourage engagement and potential conversions.

Social Media Engagement

Content marketing is often used alongside social media in order to build a rapport with customers and encourage them to interact and personify the brand itself.  However, rich content can be extremely expensive and is dependent on the nature of your business; viral videos for an undertaker won’t have the same effect as one from a drinks company. Paid media continue to get the lion’s share of the budget, but there is erosion from earned media; tools such as analytics for Facebook mean that more ‘viral’ forms of media are beginning to get more attention. Industrialising the creation and production of content at scale needs lots of people and lots of time, so is not always ideal for small businesses.

Targeting and Personalisation

This links perfectly with the increasing importance of targeting and personalisation in optimal modern marketing strategies; it is important to reach the right person, with the right message, at the right time.

Email marketing can be overwhelming to customers; out of the 50 emails in their inbox in the morning, what makes yours stand out? The importance of a targeted ad enticing subject line is a high priority to begin with, but it is the content which will keep the reader engaged and will optimise conversion rates. Content targeted specifically to them along with use of simple Javascript/personalisation such as Copernica’s ‘Smarty’ can be a two-minute job for a marketer with a large pay off. 

The rising issue of how millenials are using email means that the system is being evaluated and re-evaluated daily; when social media is rife amongst young people, is email really worth it? We say yes! Email is sure to become more relevant as these millenials begin to spread their wings and enter the job market; where email is still an invaluable resource.

Conversion Rate Optimisation

Contributing to this, mobile optimisation of both your site and your email marketing can dramatically improve your lead generation and conversion rates – mobile penetration is projected to reach 4.55 billion people in 2014 including with 1.75 billion smartphone users. Because of this, it has become imperative to implement a mobile friendly site to access users on the go; people are more likely to search you on their mobiles because of the ease and instantaneous nature of mobile – it’s always there and ready to use, unlike a desktop computer or even a tablet device.

Mobile Optimisation

Introducing a responsive site is the easiest way to combine your existing site with your mobile site; this means that you do not have to build completely separate device-dependent pages, and different devices will simply allow the site to ‘respond’ to their own screens; for instance, by including a burger menu which will expand out on larger displays. By doing this, your site can be available at any time and at any place, an essential tool when competing in today’s digital marketplace.

Drop us a line if you want to have a chat about how we can help you get to grips with your digital marketing this spring!