Top 7 Online Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2015

1. Mobile-optimization will become more important than ever.

Optimizing for mobile has been a significant priority for businesses in 2014, but 2015 will be the year that mobile strategies move beyond simply having a responsive site or mobile app, and focus on mobile-optimized content and social media marketing as well.

2. Social media ad spend will sharply increase as brands realize the importance of social media marketing.

Businesses are seeing positive results from their investment in social media, including increased exposure and traffic, and are seeing paid social ads as the way to scale these results. Twitter’s new advertising options (currently in beta), where payment is triggered by specific actions like website clicks, app downloads and email opt-ins, will mean small to medium-sized businesses will be more likely to invest in these objective-based campaigns.

3. Content marketing will be (even) bigger than ever.

According to the B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks report, 93% of B2B marketers said they used content marketing in 2014, and 42% said they considered their strategy effective (up from 36% last year).As marketers continue to see the benefits of their content strategies, money previously earmarked for search engine PPC, SEO and social media will be re-allocated to content marketing efforts. A major struggle, however, will be finding ways to stand out amidst the throngs of other content vying for attention.

4. Email marketing will receive a renewed focus

With social networks reducing the amount of visibility brands and businesses get on their platforms, and with search engines intimidating business owners and marketers with ever-increasing complexity of their ranking algorithms, businesses will return to the one marketing asset that they can control entirely; their email list. This renewed focus on email marketing will intertwine with content marketing to blur the lines between email and content marketing.

5. The lines between SEO, content marketing & social media will become more blurred

Content marketing has been described by some as the “new SEO;” which is somewhat accurate. SEO and content marketing will continue to co-exist as two separate but intertwined disciplines that rely on each other for success. That said, content marketing is now the primary influencer of search visibility. Businesses that don’t invest in a solid content strategy will discover that their SEO campaigns are ineffective, at best, and damaging to their search visibility, at worst.

6. Brands will scramble to humanize

With the rise of social media, brands will realize that their customers are on social media channels to interact with other people, not with brands and corporate-sounding lingo. Brands that are able to connect with their audience on a human-level will enjoy higher conversion rates, better brand loyalty, faster audience growth, and happier customers.

7. Marketers will find new ways of making native advertising less promotional and more relevant

With steadily decreasing click-through rates over the past few years, businesses have begun to fully realize the ineffectiveness of banner advertising for driving sales. While increased visibility is still a benefit of banner ads, small to medium-sized business looking for results will be less inclined to invest in channels that don’t offer a calculable ROI.