Digital Marketing

10 Trends To Watch For

10 Trends in Digital Marketing To Watch For

When it comes to digital marketing, resolutions shouldn’t just be made at the start of the year. In an ever-changing and evolving digital world it’s important to regularly look at your strategy and calibrate it against the emergent trends in order to maximise the opportunities presented.

The challenge is spotting which trends in digital can deliver real value for your customers and which are just passing fads. The following ten questions are based on trends that we feel have the potential to be leveraged by our clients and their brands over the coming months.

If you’d like to talk any of these through in more detail or explore ways in which we can help you build your digital marketing capabilities within your organisation, we’d be happy to hear from you.

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Are you integrating your digital activities into your offline brand experience?

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Integrating the online and offline customer experience can add true value.

House of Fraser’s Buy & Collect service combines the range and availability customers enjoy online, with a real-world retail experience.

Audi have opened the first showroom without any cars. Customers can use Kinect technology and a 210 inch screen, to personalise cars from an unlimited range of virtual models.

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Brand Learning has a wealth of experience developing tailored integrated communications and activation planning modules that allow Marketers to plan and develop their activities around the consumer regardless of the specific technology platform. We also offer a ready-to-go Integrated Communications Academy module.

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Is mobile key and core to your digital strategy going forward?

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Increasingly the world accesses the web through mobile devices; mobile is often the ‘glue’ between online and the real world.

Start-up organisations such as Path, creator of the ‘smart journal’ have opted to launch on mobile before any other platform. Facebook have also recently bought in talent from mobile start-up Spool, to improve the Facebook mobile user experience.

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We have expert consultants who have first-hand experience with the mobile platform, from campaign development through to leading mobile first start-ups, who can help build your capabilities in this area.

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Can you truly say your online experiences are creatively rich?

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Firms have been applying user experience expertise for years to optimise the navigation and delivery of website content.

At the same time, creativity is at the very core of powerful communications. Brands are beginning to fully appreciate and realise the importance of aesthetics, creativity and user experience to differentiate their online experiences.

This is being powered by both technology such as HTML5 and driven by increased user expectation.

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Creativity is a core component of great marketing. Our creativity workshops have given us proven experience in unlocking the creative potential within Marketing teams whilst our client/agency programmes are aimed at establishing a strong relationship and more impactful creative development processes.

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How dynamic and personalised is your digital content?

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Brands that automatically offer relevant, personalised web content can add real value for customers.

The technology behind Nike+ enables Nike to provide customers with rich data and insight into their own personal sporting performance.

Last FM gathers data about what music you and your friends listen to online and tailors the radio experience they broadcast to you.

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Are you utilising the technology that exists or fixing your sights on that which doesn’t?

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Marketers should consider how their brands can apply existing technology to add value to the customer experience.

Card company Moonpig has teamed up with augmented-reality specialist Zappar to create video-enabled greetings cards which can be viewed by the recipient on their smartphone. Augmented-reality is not a new technology but Moonpig have applied it very effectively in the context of their brand purpose.

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Our 2-day Academy Digital Acceleration module is designed to demystify digital technologies and allow Marketers to unlock and maximise their potential in digital marketing.

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Does your team have an eye for user experience?

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For successful digital marketing, it is critical to have Marketers in your team who have a variety of skills. In particular, digital Marketers must immerse themselves in creating an experience that delights the user.

Apple are passionate about creating amazing products that customers desire. Steve Jobs famously said: “The Mac turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians – who also happened to be excellent computer scientists”.

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Increasingly we need to augment our general marketing skills with digital expertise. Just as we have built our confidence and capability in the creative development process, marketers increasingly need to understand the basic principles of usability and technical developments. Brand Learning have a dedicated Digital Capability team who have hands-on experience of creating, designing and building websites with none of the appetite for technical jargon and complexity that the industry has become famous for and we would be happy to share our knowledge.

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Are youconnecting thedata to createinsights?

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Brands that can harness the power of “big data” across their organisations can discover powerful insights that drive growth.

Through research, Twitter found that what brought users back to the platform was the things they loved – hobbies, conversations and friends. Twitter re-designed the sign-up process so that the first thing new users now see are the topics they may be passionate about. This improved user engagement with the platform.

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Do you empower your team to test and learn?

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Marketers should embrace the opportunity to continuously learn, evolve and change direction when needed. Start-ups with an entrepreneurial culture label this mindset ‘pivoting’. As a market leader, do you actually encourage this approach?

First Direct are agile and experimental; testing, learning, listening to their customers and regularly making changes to their strategy and offer based on their feedback.

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Getting the culture right is absolutely critical in changing the organisation and unlocking the digital potential. Organisational transformation is an area of deep expertise with our Director team who have developed industry leading solutions for our clients in this area.

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Are you learning from the start-ups in your industry?

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As well as looking at what your major competitors are doing, it’s worth looking at what the start-ups in your industry are up to. Don’t dismiss them – they could grow fast and there might be some useful learnings from what they are doing.Yammer, launched in 2008, had a vision for how social networking could change the way we work. Microsoft recently announced that they will acquire this social network for $1.2bn.

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And finally, are you applying all the principles of world class marketing?

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Digital marketing success is being powered by the principles of world class marketing, not technology. We need to understand our customers’ needs, define our brand’s purpose, create added value for customers and make an impact. We need to apply these principles rigorously in all areas of marketing and digital is no exception.

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If you would like to discuss your Digital Marketing capability needs please get in touch.

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