Six top marketing predictions for 2015

The only consistent thing about marketing is change.

While most of us can only guess what changes might unfold in the world of marketing next year, we’ve asked various experts to predict what could evolve in their corner to compile a list of six top marketing predictions for 2015.

1. Marketing teams will set revenue goals

“As marketing moves increasingly to digital, marketers are going to be held accountable for building revenue through lead generation programs.

“This means sales and marketing management teams will be relied on to collaborate more than ever before. Companies that do this well will establish meaningful metrics about how marketing can contribute and set marketing-sourced revenue goals.”

Wendy Coombes, founder, Brite Kite Inbound Marketing

2. Customer experiences will be even better

“Businesses will invest in ensuring the customer experience is so good that it’s worth sharing with others, which will be time and money well spent.

“The common denominator in companies thriving at the moment is that they focus on providing consistently outstanding customer experiences, according to the recent Optus Future of Business Report. And yet companies surveyed in the research were operating under the assumption that this was one of the least important things for customers.

“Perhaps in our pursuit of big data and streamlined digital channels, we’ve forgotten that the personal aspect of creating outstanding customer experiences is key to our success and longevity.”

Michael McQueen, trends expert and author

3. Content marketing will evolve

“Content marketing is going to get a whole lot smarter this year. It’s going to be about aggregating data about consumers that’s been collated from social media, customer data and mobile geo-location data to give a more rounded picture of a consumer.

“This will allow us to get content in front of them that’s much more interesting and targeted that’s completely relevant to their interests and life stage. For example, we’ll know if someone is pregnant and on holiday on the Sunshine Coast, for example, so we’ll be able to serve them up with content that is of interest to them. 

“We’re currently investing in data science experts to mesh those databases together to develop a new product for the company.”

Richard Parker, managing partner, Edge

4. Mobile ad spend will increase

“The predictions around mobile marketing will finally start to come true next year, as will the need to match users and increase click-through rates.

“In a multiple screen world, it’s vital for businesses and brands to accurately identify customers as they move between devices and platforms, particularly in the e-commerce space given that so many consumers will start a transaction on one device, and then complete the transaction on a different device another time.

“Brands will also understand the importance of leveraging their own data to re-engage high intent customers who don’t purchase on their first trip to a site.

“We believe you’ll definitely see more marketers embrace retargeting as an important part of their marketing spend, while mobile ad spend generally will also increase next year.”

Ben Sharp, managing director, AdRoll

5. Dark social will be better understood

“It has been impossible for brands to get a good grasp of the social sharing that goes on between intimate social networks. A newspaper story link emailed to a colleague or a story copied and the text pasted into an email, for example. This ‘blind spot’ within the social network has become known as ‘dark social’, which refers to the blind spot that exists within social networks.

“But this year, marketers and publishers will start to talk about dark social in a bid to better understand this space and try to find a way to tap into it.

“We can see that this is of massive interest to marketers and brands, who are interested to see what they can actually do about it and how they can track the data being shared in private networks.”

Kerry McCabe, managing director Asia-Pacific, RadiumOne

6. Corporations will keep acting like media companies

“Australian corporations are getting serious about editorial and creative, and how that’s going to be sent to consumers with their branding attached. This is because consumers aren’t inspired by brochures, and that requires a degree of media expertise within corporations. The foundation of how we’ve developed some of our products came from asking the question: how do we get corporations to do what Conde Nast does? And that’s what requires that corporations start to think and behave like media companies.”

Nick Bogaty, head of digital publishing, Adobe Global

Follow SmartCompany on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.