Author: Isabelle Leichtman
The beginning of a new year is an optimal time for businesses to reflect on the marketing campaigns utilized the previous year, identify strategies that produced the highest ROI, and tweak (or perhaps remove) the ones that didn’t perform as well. During this process, it is critical for companies to research the projected marketing trends and strategies for the upcoming year and prepare accordingly.
The constant influx of new and improved technology directly affects consumer expectations and demands, requiring businesses to evolve or fall behind. Below are five widely agreed upon trends that market researchers predict for 2013:
Social Media Continues to Surge and will Become a Core Component of Modern PR Strategies
Both Forbes and MarketingProfs have positioned this first on their lists of what to expect in the New Year. Uri-Bar Joseph for MarketingProfs predicts that there will be a surge in businesses of all types implementing various social marketing strategies. This continuation also means that PR strategies must be updated as well. As social media outlets allow you to reach millions of viewers with the click of a button, marketing teams should closely monitor everything they put out and have a PR plan in place for possible missteps along the way.
The Integration of Digital and Print Media Rises in Popularity
While digital marketing will likely become the front-runner for marketing in 2013, printed media remains an important component of a well-rounded marketing strategy, particularly in the form of direct mail. The importance of coupling digital marketing with direct mail will allow businesses to get their name and message out with a higher successes rate than adhering to one outlet. Internally, companies should incorporate multiple departments as content sources in order to broaden their audience. Kat Liendgens of PRDaily.com writes that her company uses cross-departmental collaboration in order to get different perspectives, voices, and expertise to enhance their company’s marketing content.
Visual Content Marketing Grows
With the rise in visually-based platforms such as Pinterest, infographics and Instagram, companies are increasingly integrating marketing channels that are image based. Visual elements have always been an important component for marketing, but have typically functioned as a supporting element rather than the main feature. Expressing information visually is not only a way to reach out to a different audience, it is also the focus of much research suggesting that presenting information in the form of images leads to a more effective and long-lasting impression on the part of the viewer.
Content Remains King and Continues to Gain Power
Establishing a clear objective for content is critical in order to in the setup of a well-designed marketing campaign. Not only will your marketing team need to come up with relevant (and interesting!) content internally, third party tools assisting with content creation and curation are beginning to emerge and are expected to increase rapidly in the upcoming year. Bar-Joseph predicts that software and service solutions will surface to help companies create and edit content for their marketing campaigns. Liendgens lists existing tools such as Scoop.it and Scribit that can help companies curate content.
