The Most Successful Online Marketing Trends to Pay Attention to in 2014

The internet has radically changed the way information is shared and has a great impact on marketing. Over the past couple of years, there has been more of a move towards inward bounding techniques, whereas several outbound strategies have become obsolete. More companies are succeeding by publishing the original content instead of implanting advertisements within external content. This is due to the extra benefits these strategies offer, for instance audience growth and branding. With these trends in mind, here are the top six online marketing trends to take note of in 2014:

1. Content Marketing will be Even Much Bigger than Ever

One of the main ways used by companies to gain trust and establish authority with customers is by regularly coming up with useful content through a number of channels. This normally involves important company information which provides awareness or entertainment to the target audience.
Doing this allows the company to gradually build relationship with its audience and develop a reliable following. The best content marketing strategies include: social media, e-newsletters, videos, case studies articles on a business website and articles on other websites.
By using either one or more of these channels, business will be able to build a good reputation within their industry. This trend puts forward that marketing to the multitude through techniques such as radio ads and television ads are becoming less effective. Rather, it is much better to focus on inbound marketing, by creating useful, engaging content intended for a particular audience.

2. Content that is Mobile Friendly will be Essential

As a result of the widespread and rapidly growing use of tablets and smartphones, it is essential for businesses to come up with content that is accessible to mobile users. According to Forbes report, eighty seven percent of the connected devices sales by 2017 will be smartphones and tablets. Whether it is coming up with a substitute mobile version of a website using responsive web design, it is vital to provide a positive experience to the users who are browsing using a mobile device.
Or else, it is very easy to lose customers to the competitors who have adapted this trend. As the change from the traditional PCs and laptops to mobile devices continues, companies that haven’t adapted to the shift are likely to suffer.

3. Ad Re-targeting Will Improve in Effectiveness

This marketing strategy has been really improved recently. In short, the strategy works by using browser cookies to help track the websites visited by users. After they have left a particular website, the products or services viewed by them will be shown to them again in advertisements across other different websites.
It is rather obvious as to why the strategy can be very effective. With just 2% of web traffic converting on the first visit, this strategy works to boost the overall rate of conversion by reminding the consumers of the particular product or service they viewed.
Some psychological studies show that simple exposure to brand names and brand logos creates familiarity, which in turn builds trust and make the customers more likely to make the acquisition.
Even if they won’t purchase immediately, this can really benefit the company in the long run. As a result of the success that many businesses have had with this strategy, there is a high chance that it will become more common in 2014 and there you need to pay attention to it.

4. Social Media Will Need More Diversity

Just a couple of years ago, businesses were limited regarding the social media networks they could incorporate into their marketing operations, with the bigger networks including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Now, it appears like new social sites are appearing every time. Even though some never actually get off the ground, other such as Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr have become very popular and are providing companies with a surplus of new options which allow them to create engaging content in various media forms and build their audience across more networks that ever before.

5. Image –based Content Will Continue to Remain Supreme

As customers are hit with more and more advertisements, it is becoming more essential to make the content easily and quickly understandable. If you look at the social media sites that are on the rise, most of them have a common characteristic – they emphasize on images. The quick rise to success of Pinterest is a proof to the power and the viral ability of image-based content.

6. Social Media Signals and SEO Will Be Even More Entwined

Even though the social signals do not usually carry the same weigh as the traditional bound links it is rather obvious that they play an important role in the organic search engine ranking nowadays. In any case, they are one of the 3 pillars of SEO.
Since the objective of Google and other search engines is to the users with the most relevant and best quality content possible, it is understandable why they would consider the number of social shares a blog post, product page or article receives.
There you have it, the top 6 online marketing trends to pay attention to in 2014. Hope they will help you make the right decisions concerning your business’s social media marketing.

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