10 Online Marketing Trends in 2015

Online marketing has been evolving over the last few years and just like any field that relies on communication technologies; online marketing is rapidly developing towards some directions and departing from others, rendering some practices obsolete.

In this article we're going to take a closer look at the new trends in online marketing. Read on to find out what are the major online marketing trends in 2015.

1) The continuous rise of content marketing.

The popularity of content marketing strategies will continue unabated into the upcoming year. Instead of relying on tested solutions, companies will pay more attention to customer experience and will create content in a more client-oriented way.

In a recent study B2B companies with blogs are expected to generate 67% more leads per month than those organizations that don't have blogs. High-quality and relevant content will be key to digital marketing of the future.

2) Augmented reality & wearable technology.

Closing the gap between the online and offline experience will be a big step not only for online marketing, but for Internet in general. One of the first possible technological applications meant to combine online and offline are micro-location technologies, in particular Apple’s iBeacon, which has during the last year completely revolutionized the scene and is slowly being introduced into commercial settings.

Wearable technology will also become popular enough for us to see some of the first marketing application of the technology. The Internet of things will create a completely new kind of environment and marketers will have to keep up with its rapid development in order to stay in touch with the changing needs of consumers.

3) Marketing analytics will boom.

We're already seeing marketers using dozens of analytics tools in order to see how customers interact with their business. The importance of this section of marketing is rising in 2015. Furthermore, we'll see marketing automation technologies applied more and more often – their use is predicted to grow by 50%. In short, marketing data will become a crucial point in any marketing endeavor and its acquisition will be easier and faster. Consumers will generate a vast amount of detailed information and companies are expected to use specialized software to help them to analyze data at their hand.

4) More videos than ever.

During the last few years, the use of videos for marketing purposes has been steadily growing. Videos are perfect to show how a service or product works in such a way that is impossible to achieve with text or images only.

5) Personalized means better.

Marketers want users to interact with their content, and what better way to achieve that than through providing relevant content? By offering personalized content during the last year, companies were able to increase the number of sales, lower the costs of operation, increase retention and foster customer satisfaction.

6) More marketing noise than ever.

Together with increased interest in content creation goes marketing noise – a kind of low quality content that doesn't really add any value. Because marketers will focus more on providing interesting and engaging content, we might see marketing noise slowly losing its power.

Over the last few years, marketers increasingly appreciated a long copy over short one and we'll see this trend blooming in 2015. The length and value of the content will be more essential than ever for effective SEO – Google already labels content of less than 200 words as thin content.

7) Visual storytelling will go wild.

Due to the increase in marketing noise, marketers will need to find a medium that will help their message to stand out from the crowd and that could be visual storytelling. Perfect for engaging and nurturing engaged consumer communities, visual storytelling will be employed to communicate the brand's philosophy and aesthetics.

Together with increased use of videos, visual stories crafted for marketing purposes will be able to spark the movement and inspire emotions, sending a clear message about the brand to its consumer communities and helping to define it against the surrounding surge of noise.

8) More money allocated in online ads.

The web is a place, where people spend their time during work and free time, giving marketers a wealth of great opportunities for targeting, segmentation and tracking options that are simply unavailable in traditional offline advertisements.

Internet advertising is predicted to rise by 10%. Furthermore, mobile ads are also expected to grow by a smashing 48% in 2015. Consequently, online ad spending will increase during next year and this trend will continue further on, allowing marketers to precisely target specific user groups.

9) Hyper-segmentation and micro-targeting

Lots of people use various websites and leave a whole wealth of data on the web. Access to this information will allow marketers to target niche audience sizes and the use targeted advertising more efficiently than ever.

10) Going mobile all the way.

The importance of mobile will grow in each and every aspect of business, online marketing included. People use mobile devices all day long and in various contexts, allowing marketers to target them in a longer stretch of time and during different phases of the day – at work, during rest or play.

Some believe that the mobile web will become bigger than desktop usage in 2015, but one thing is clear – spending for mobile ads will grow – and grow fast. All agree that the popularity of mobile devices will only grow in 2015, driven by smartphones, tablets and wearable technology.

In order to stay effective, online marketing strategies should immediately respond to the preferences and behaviors of their targeted audiences and follow consumers in their daily use of the web. Considering these facts there's no doubt about one thing – marketers will find next few years inspiring deep changes in the ways in which consumers interact with online environments.