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It can be a frustrating field, digital marketing, as it is an ever-changing landscape. However,  keeping up on the trends and forecasting your strategy on what is to come, can make sure you stay above the curve. This is a great article, highlighting some trends that we should be consider. Thanks Neil. Digital marketing is an impulsive, erratic, and volatile industry. The moment you catch the tiger by the tail, there’s a new tiger whose fugacious tail requires catching. Keeping up with a changeable industry seems like a fool’s errand. Where is the balance between chasing capricious trends, on the one hand, and ossifying into a Luddite on the other? Thankfully, there is an in between — a balance. If you can identify current trends, settle on an actionable strategy, and take measurable movement forward, you’re bound to succeed. I’ve identified X such strategies that you should keep in mind over the next few months, if not the next few years of digital marketing. 1.  Stop relying on Google. Don’t misinterpret this point. I’m not saying that Google is not on its way out. After more than a decade of domination, however, it may be on the decline.Up-and-comers like Duck Duck Go aren’t anywhere near dethroning Google GOOGL +4.09%. What their rise indicates is that consumers want alternatives — a choice not to depend on Google if they don’t have to. Marketers should take heed. Google is one basket, but it doesn’t deserve allyour marketing eggs. Search engine optimization is important, but a searcher can accomplish her goal through more means than just Google. I advise digital marketers to rely less on Google, and engage more direct forms of interacting with their target market. 2.  Mobile. Just mobile. I wanted to say that “mobile dominates,” but that line is so utterly cliche, that I had to state it differently. The importance of mobile search, mobile optimization, mobile conversions, and mobile ubiquity cannot be overstated. Mobile devices and our collective addiction to them are fixtures of the modern marketing era. This article is not the place to wax verbose on the importance of mobile. Instead, my intent is to remind you that mobile is the method of the masses, and should, therefore, be a priority of the marketers. 3. Social conversion is coming. Enough has been said about the power of social networks. Not quite enough as been said about the importance of social conversions. For ecommerce and lead generation sites, social provides a growing opportunity to improve conversion rates and gain new conversion channels. 4. New payment methods are on the rise. With the advent of EVM credit cards (October 2015), the public is in for a new experience when it comes to payment methods. These changes will have a ripple effect on online payment and e-commerce sites. Privacy issues are a mainstream concern and it’s up to digital marketers to lead the way in reassuring, educating, and coaching customers through the transition. 5. Paid advertising is here to stay. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to need to pay for advertising spots. I agree with marketers who claim, “PPC is dying,” but I also see the advent of alternative forms of paid advertising taking its place. Consider Buzztala for instance. Although they provide “organic video ads,” they are still ads. And they still cost money. Rising methods of organic/paid advertising are entering into the marketing methods of some brands, signaling a growing trend. 6. Marketing automation becomes de rigueur. Marketing automation is nothing new. It is, however, bigger than ever. Marketing automation is now easy and affordable enough for any marketer with a budget to do it. Once upon a not-so-far-away time, the only organizations doing automation were big companies with world-recognized brand names. Now, marketing automation is nearly a requirementfor any business that wants to stay on top 7. Content creators are more necessary than ever. Ever since Web 2.0, the writing profession has had a heyday. Anyone and everyone could become a publisher. Anyone who had a voice could also have a platform on the web. Now? Some content experts moan that there is too much content out there. Or is there? Content, often referred to as “king” is so essential to digital marketing that it can’t be dismissed as a “trend.” While individual publishers may be overextending themselves by publishing too much, there will always be content. It will always be important. Therefore, there will always be the need for great content creators, including writers, developers, video producers, podcasters, and speakers. Lizetta Staplefoot said it well in her Visual.ly article:  “The need for quality content will spotlight the importance of professional writers.” I know from experience that great writers are hard to find.  But it’s no longer enough simply to find a “great writer.” You need to find a writer who knows your niche. The world’s greatest writing skills don’t count for much unless the writer possesses knowledge, ideally experiential knowledge, of his or her subject matter. 8. The algorithm will change. And change again. The search algorithm will change. It will infuriate you, delight you, confuse you, and disappoint you.But it will change. I’m referring, of course, to Google’s search algorithm, the almighty search machine that decides which content ranks highest in the search engine results page (SERPs). Today, however, we need to consider Facebook’s algorithm, Bing’s algorithm, and even the mashup of Twitter and Google’s algorithm. 9. Conversion optimization has high ROI. If CRO, or conversion rate optimization, is not in your 2015 budget, I suggest you take a look at the possibility of introducing it. Conversion rate optimization is the process of maximizing the number of site visitors whoconvert or make a purchase. By thoroughly understanding users and split testing changes on a website, marketers can determine what elements of a website or landing page will produce the highest number of conversions. The process pays off. Instead of paying big bucks for ad placements and organic traffic, marketers can instead funnel more of their existing traffic into sales. 10. Growth hacking will continue to evolve. In my opinion, one of the most fascinating trends in 2015 is the continued evolution of growth hacking. Growth hacking will continue to demonstrate its indomitable power in the face of unlikely odds. Conclusion This list of online trends might sound intimidating. In spite of your fears, go boldly forward. Wrapped up in success is always the risk of failure. I would never advise closing your eyes and jumping headfirst into a trend. The digital marketing space is too fickle for that. I would, however, recommend giving these trends a respectful nod and cautious experimentation. You’ll never know the upside until you give it a try. What digital marketing trends will you be using in the months ahead? For more information, please visit to our site at: http://payoor.com

It’s my favourite time of blogging year, where we look ahead to what will be the major trends in digital marketing in the year ahead. I find there’s a real thirst for knowledge amongst marketers about the latest trends in digital marketing and Ienjoy reviewing the latest marketing techniques and technologies. For the past few years I have given my recommendations on the trends as I see them, based on reviewing innovation in marketing technology through the year, plus crowdsourcing what Smart Insights readers see as important for them. February 2015 Digital Trends Update Well, we're well into 2015 now and we have been adding to our coverage of the latest trends. After you have taken a look at the tools listed here, I hope these may be useful too: * Managing Digital Marketing 2015 - free 25 page report for members * State of Digital Marketing infographic * Email marketing Trends 2015 - free 20 page report for members * State of content marketing infographic * Marketing technology in 2015 - Scott Brinker's compilation of tools What are the most important online marketing trends for marketers? In deciding on the most relevant trends for marketers I don’t just look at what’s “Hot” or “Cool”, but instead I focus on what make the biggest difference to marketers, from a commercial sense, since most of us are working in marketing to get better results for our companies or our clients. Here are the digital marketing trends we identified last year. This year we again asked readers to take a poll where we asked... Which single digital marketing technique do you think will make the biggest commercial impact for you in 2015? So, what were the results of the poll? Interesting! Content marketing topped the poll for the third-year running and in fact was even further ahead compared to previous years since mobile marketing and social media marketing have declined in importance as marketers have implemented these changes. It's close for second, third and fourth position.  It's significant that 'Big Data' is still in second position although the hype has receded. I think this shows the potential for companies to implement more data-driven marketing techniques in 2015, which will likely be closely related to marketing automation which is in third place. In the later parts of this post I review different types of analytics and reporting tools - perhaps not 'Big Data', but certainly to support data-driven marketing in 2015. Many thanks if you have voted, read or shared this post. I will update it at the start of October with the results of the poll and more commentary. Trends in Digital Marketing Tools and Technology In my discussion of trends in previous years I have explored innovation and trends in the use of digital marketing techniques at a top level, like content marketing, search, email and web development. But if I’m honest, the leading techniques don’t change that much. There is a problem of describing the “usual suspects.” So this year, when I’m presenting trends I have been taking a look at tools and services to help digital marketing. These data-driven tools are again all focused on those that can potentially make the biggest difference. They cover a wide range from analytics tools to retail ecommerce, but the first few tools relate to content marketing since this is where I’m seeing the most useful and interesting collection of tools. I have a full Slideshare deck featuring these tools at the end of this post. 10 key digital marketing technologies to use in 2015 Many of the trends in digital marketing involve marketers applying new services, platforms and software to plan, manage and optimise their marketing, so in this part of the post I take a look at the technologies that I think will fuel digital marketing in 2014. I recently presented these at the Smart Insights Digital Impact marketing conference and at a talk at the Brighton Digital Marketing Festival. These tools include: #1: Content Curation Tools With micro and visual content giving the highest impact, tools to manage the creation and publication of this content from different sources become important to fuel the content marketing machine. Examples of content curation tools include: * Percolate * Curata * Kapost #2: Content Recommendation, Personalisation, Retargeting and Effectiveness Review Tools Even if you have won the battle to create outstanding content, site managers still have the challenge of connecting audiences with the most relevant content. Dynamic recommendations of the most relevant content for a visitor can assist here. Site personalisation technologies have been used for a long time for targeting products and offers to visitors to customer sites, but these have not been used so widely outside the Ecommerce setting. New tools make this possible. Examples include: * idio (B2B and B2C content recommendations) * Barilliance (Ecommerce content and offer personalisation) * BrightInfo (cost-effective tool for content recommendations to boost conversions suitable for blogs) * Demandbase (B2B) * Monetate (Ecommerce) * Evergage (B2B and B2C) #3: Content distribution services Here content distribution means organic and paid sharing via social networks. The tools featured here focus on organic distribution * Hootsuite * Sendible * Oktopost There are surprisingly few tools to help advertise or remarket across social media. AdRoll is one of the best known featuring remarking via Facebook, Twitter, plus mobile and media sites. Do you have other recommendations in this area? #4: : Integrated SEO, Content and Social Media Management? There is a question mark here since this is an, as yet unachievable goal. The tools I recommend here originated as SEO told for reviewing keywords and back links, but are now expanding into social media and content management. They’re also featuring more management tools and workflow for multiple people in a tool. Analytics SEO is a leader in this area. Examples include: * Moz * Raven Tools * Analytics SEO #5: API service integration and Hubs APIs are integrations between different platforms. They are a key consideration in any type of tool you purchase here. No examples of tools in this section, rather efforts made by platform vendors to integrate other services to add value to their own tools. CRM services are particularly strong at this as are analytics tools such Adobe Analytics (formerly in Omniture). * Act-On * Marketo * Salesforce.com/ExactTarget #6: User Engagement and value optimisation Most businesses use a web analytics services to track visitors to their site, with Google Analytics most popular as a free, but very powerful service. While they can tell businesses the number of users, their source and their journeys through the site, their limitation is that most data is shown in aggregate for different segments. They’re not designed for understanding individual user behaviour, repeat behaviour by groups of customers (e.g. cohort, RFM and lifetime value analysis) or behaviour across devices (although Google’s latest Universal analytics makes progress in this area). These tools, which have been available for several years now offer a user-based, value-based focus which Google has been applying. * Kissmetrics * Mixpanel (Mobile focus plus web) * Chartbeat (Publisher focus) * Ecommera (Ecommerce) #7: Actionable Analytics and intelligent analytics Google Analytics and the other analytics services mentioned under #6 have another limitation. They require a good deal of experience to know HOW to apply the data they present. Users have to know the right questions to ask, how to customise the tool for their business, e.g. to show goals, find the right reports and then interpret highly complex multidimensional reports. Only skilled analysts can really mine actionable insight. Tools that present data more clearly to novice and management users and integrate action can help here. Google hasn’t evolved its Intelligence service, but new tools are becoming available including a new dashboard and recommendations service that will launch from Smart Insights. * Google Analytics Intelligence and Alerts * Quill Engage * Smart Insights #8: From Conversion Optimization to Experience Optimization We are long-time advocates of structured AB and multivariate testing at Smart Insights. But these tools tend to focus on single pages in the journey rather than overall customer journeys, but they have increased hugely in their ease of setup and use recently. Tools that support analysis across customer journeys and channels are evolving: Most popular AB testing tools * Optimizely * Visual Website Optimizer * Unbounce Customer Journey Tools Content management systems are now improving in their facilities to personalise and test. * Adobe Customer Experience Manager * EPiServer * Sitecore #9: Digital Channel Sales Optimisation Ecommerce management platforms tend to focus on the serious business of getting merchandising right across home, category and product pages as described in our Ecommerce Design Bible. Clavis Insights is a relatively new, but expensive tool that presents commercial insights to retailers and brands so their can optimise their merchandising. #10: Wearables, Augmented and Virtual reality Finally we come to what’s cool and Hot in technology. I’ve kept this ’til last since I suspect it will make the smallest commercial difference to most companies. All of these are due to be launched in 2015, so watching the popularity of mainstream adoption and marketing applications of their apps should be fascinating! * Apple Watch Apps * Google Glass * Facebook Oculus Rift I hope you find it useful to check out these tools, do add via the comments any other categories of digital marketing tools or examples of tools which you see as important for your business or your clients in 2015 and I’ll update the post to include them. For more information, please vist to our site at: http://payoor.com

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For more information, please visit to our site at: http://payoor.com