Can you believe we’re going to say goodbye to 2014 in just a couple of months?
It’s crazy.
Or as some say, cray cray.
The digital revolution has transformed how today’s marketers interact with their customers, and the transformation isn’t over yet. As an aspiring business owner, you must be ready for what is coming up next.
So, to get you ready for the future of marketing, here are my 5 Marketing Predictions for 2015:
1) Rise in Content Marketing
In recent times, Content Marketing has been the talk of the town. And for good reason!
Many businesses are shying away from traditional tactics, and are now making high quality content that is targeted towards their specific niche of customers and finding great success.
I predict that even more companies will adopt content marketing strategies by increasing their budgets for it and reaping the benefits if they do it well.
How do you do content marketing well, you ask?
Educate and entertain through creative content.
2) More Marketing Automation
You’ve heard of Marketing Automation. But what is it?
Marketing automation is the use of software and strategies that allow companies to nurture leads with highly personalized, useful content and email sequences that convert leads to customers. In addition, it will keep past and current customers happy.
This type of marketing automation can provide your business a fantastic ROI.
However, be warned that it’s not as easy as it sounds! Businesses that implement complicated automation programs, without organic leads, usually find that their investment has little impact on revenue.
Recognizing that marketing automation can help scale your successful efforts is key to staying connected to the prospects that make up your target audience.
3) Social Media Ad Spend with Increase
More and more people flock to the Internet during work and free time.
As a result, marketers are finding greater success with online ads, as they can target messages to their customers. Furthermore, online ads give marketers not only power to target, but to segment and track their ad spending and ROI, which makes them all the more appealing.
If you haven’t yet jumped on this lucrative bandwagon, 2015 is the time!
4) List Segmentation Will Become The Norm
If you’ve got a large or active email list that you’ve been marketing to, but you want to improve conversion results from that list, list segmentation is creating smaller lists, or segments, from your larger list.
No matter what email marketing strategy you are taking, the first step to ensure a successful email campaign will likely be list segmentation.
This can be done in many ways and the best way to optimize your list segmentation is going to be completely unique to you.
5) Lead Nurturing Will Be A Must
Developing some best practices for lead nurturing in 2015 will be crucial for your marketing success.
Thanks to Social Media and the power of the Internet, people aren’t as easy to sell to nowadays, and you’ll need to develop a relationship with them before you see an increase in sales.
How should you make this possible? Why not try a short video to showcase your value and build your brand? Or perhaps start sending personalized follow up emails to each prospect you engage with?
Just because your business is small doesn’t mean that your customer base has to be small as well.
By getting your head around these predictions and incorporating them for 2015, you can and WILL expand the size of your pool to include some pretty big fish; you just need to have an action plan!
