Digital marketers are faced with new challenges every few months as digital marketing keeps evolving as a result of the introduction of new social networks, mobile devices and other technologies. This constant state of evolution leads to creating trends that may work and others that fail miserably. This year like every other, brings with itself its very own trends but only the best ones survive.
The Digital Marketing trends of 2014 however, are a little different from preceding years in light of the major changes made to Facebook’s algorithm and the Twitter IPO. Add to that Google constantly modifies its algorithms, and marketers are always working towards damage control.
Content Refuses to Leave the Throne
At the cost of sounding like a broken record, we will reiterate what everyone else is saying; Content is still the undisputed King. Statistics show that 78% of CMOs believe that the future of digital marketing lies within content. What has been changing in this regard is the kind of content that is being viewed.
Visual content has increased since the previous year and will continue to do so in 2014. It is known to increase engagement by 65%.
Video Marketing is On the Rise
As visual marketing continues to grow, videos also gain more popularity. In fact, they may be the most powerful weapon in the visual arsenal. Numbers show that videos can attract 3 times more engagement than text.
As video apps such as Vine, Instagram and Snap chat continue to grow, we can see a shift towards video content optimized for mobile. As these events unfold, it can be seen that the importance of video in digital marketing efforts will continue to grow over the years.
Social Media Landscape
The social media landscape altered drastically in the last year as visual social networks such as Pinterest, Vine, and Instagram were on the rise. This led to a diversification of platforms for businesses to use, enabling them to carve out a niche for themselves based on the users that visited the sites.
In fact, 93% of marketers are already making use of social media for digital marketing. This number makes sense when you look at it in light of social media usage, where 33% of consumers are now using social media to discover new products.
