Digital Marketing Strategies & Trends for 2013: observe or evolve

The digital world is forever evolving and changing, but what does the future hold in 2013.  Here are some the hottest digital trends for the New year, 2013 and beyond…

1. Reactive, Real Time Marketing & Optimisation

In 2012, there were signs of the adoption of real time branding and optimisation within digital campaigns including reactive ‘on the fly’ campaigns. Looking at dynamic data and behaviour will be more the norm in 2013, giving tight controls over campaign management.  If a campaign message isn’t going down as well as it should be, finding out early and tweaking it in order to maximise full potential and return on client investment, (if you’re an agency).

To obtain anywhere near digital utopia will require tight and close collaboration and convergence between major players and buy into the ‘big data’ picture and insights.

–  Greater use of attitudinal and behavioral data from real time analytics and insights. (What could this mean for Google analytics?) will be required to make informed decisions for campaigns (social media & creative campaigns) and to optimise maximum value from clicks.

–  Responsive agencies and internal marketing departments that can rework creatives based on insight and data, real-time events and triggers that are based on inbound marketing activity and not push-marketing, or outbound campaigns.

–  Smarter media publishing platforms that are self learning and automated for optimisation based on real time data and information.  For example; a banner creative with multiple iterations and in campaign insights feeding back into the banner campaign for redesign/rework.

–  Technology and in house developers will need to integrate and provide a unified single source of data and information that can be used for automating decisions and feedback into the campaign loop.

2. Targeted Behavioural e-Mail Marketing: data driven

e-mail marketing is not over yet, but no one wants the standard boilerplate email marketing message do they. They want to feel like you care about their needs.  Sending  an email to thousands of potential customers is yesterday.  Sending thousands of different emails to thousands of potential customers that is tailored to their interests, buying habits, etc is the future.

Watch out for smarter email marketing applications where you can build in more reactive responses and tailor the message for a particular customer, from real time data.  Again it’s all about the data and smart targeting.

3. Omni-Channel Marketing: knitting together the big picture

Omnichannel marketing. What’s that? It’s about tapping into your customers behavioral patterns, and using touch points and data from online, offline and mobile to provide a better experience , interaction to the consumer.  It’s less effective to swamp people with random noise, as oppose to reconnecting with them based on previous experience and interactions, thus giving relevance to the message.  Social media behavior and data collection will play a large part in shaping the bigger picture, and omni-channel solutions will  provide active insights and multi-threaded campaigns with more purpose than previous passive campaigns. Over the next year, it will become essential for companies to invest in technology that can collate customer data in a way that is more easily measurable and actionable.  Marketers will be syncing data from all avenues; including Facebook, Twitter and Linked in, and importing into their contact databases, so providing in depth profiling on customers.

A retailer might integrate loyalty and special offers from local stores to your mobile device, when you’re passing nearby in the car – smarter and more intelligent marketing is the order of the day for 2013 and beyond.

4. Mobile Marketing & Apps for the Future

It’s as plain as a pike staff, that mobiles have become the centre of attention in most peoples lives.  By that I mean more people are rarely without their mobile and rely on them more now than in 2012, and the year before that. It’s been said that 75% of iPhone users take them to bed with them. Marketers will need to have a mobile marketing strategy that is integral to the overall company strategy that blends with online and off line marketing campaigns.

Mobile coupons will go large with with the advent of geotargeting and Near-Field Communications (NFC). Marketers will be able to push out special offers and discount coupons as you drive past the store within distance.  Digital coupons will be utilised more and more n 2013.  Large retails stores are already providing GPS based information on how to find departments and products, so as to maximise the shopping experience whilst in store.

HTML 5 will become mainstream in mobile app development because it is universal, more cost effective than developing apps for native IOS and android that requires different expertise and resources.

 5. Smart Content: just got smarter

Up selling items at online checkout, relevant product recommendations, music tastes can all be catered for through dynamic and smart content. You’ve only got to use iTunes and see how their ‘genius’ feature recommends the music you may like to buy.  Providing dynamic content to the consumer enables marketers to serve highly personalized messages to the right audience at the right time in the buying cycle.  This could be smart banners,  items/products on e-Commerce sites or tailored articles/news to a specific readership interest.