The biggest web trend in the last couple of years is going mobile. We are now carrying the web in our pockets; it's becoming much more intuitive, interactive, and social. Location is of great importance. This has great consequences in the world of online marketing.
An interesting trend to note, for instance, is loyalty going mobile. Paper is going out of fashion, and so are physical vouchers, loyalty cards, etc. More and more companies and brands are switching to mobile loyalty programs. The reasons are quite simple. For one, virtual vouchers do not take up space. Physical cards and pieces of paper fill up a wallet and cause uncomfort and annoyance to people. Furthermore, and more importantly, people always have their phones with them. If a customer had forgotten to take his physical vouchers and cards with them, that might prevent them from making a purchase. However, they are unlikely to leave their phone at home.
A survey conducted at the beggining of the year showed that 34% of senior marketers will be evaluating mobile applications and loyalty programs in 2013.
Mobile loyalty programs can gain even greater power when combined with location-based marketing. For instance, users can get a push notification whenever they are in the vicinity of a store which will give them discounts. This trend was quite notable at Golden Gekko, the company where I did my internship. As a B2B mobile developer, they were getting a lot of projects related to mobile loyalty programs. For example, one such project that got completed during my time there was a loyalty program app that would allow users to purchase discounted products without any kind of money transfers - simply by adding the cost to their phone bill.
Another interesting trend is gamification. Gamification is the process of applying game-design thinking to non-game related tasks to make them more fun and engaging. For instance, gamification can be applied to sports and personal training. With the help of mobile technology and augmented reality thinking, an app might aid the user in pretending he's being chased by zombies - just because zombies are quite a trend in popular culture these days. Using maps and GPS, the app could give the user a route to follow with a certain speed - if he goes below that speed, he gets killed by the zombies. And that app would be created, for example, by a sport shoes brand, like Nike. The game would engage the user into running, and, therefore, he would need running shoes. In the best case, he could incorporate the app into his daily routine - jogging every morning - and be reminded of the brand daily.
Gamification forms a good combo with loyalty marketing as well. In the aforementioned game, the user could earn points, which would give him discounts at the brand's stores.
Since the beggining of the gamification trend in 2010, over 350 companies have been involved in major gamification projects. The list includes Adobe, NBC, Walgreens, Ford, eBay, Panera and Threadless, among others.According to M2 research, in 2013 the industry will grow to $500 million just in the United States.
Some predict that gamification will reach its peak in the coming one or two years and then start declining. However, I believe that in the future, the trend will continue to develop in complex and unexpected ways that hold a great potential. With the rise of wearable devices and augmented reality, gamification can be taken to an entirely different level. Google Glass, for instance, holds such a potential for turning reality and regular tasks into games. As marketing is becoming much more intelligent and aiming to entertain the user or give him resources of value, instead of shouting out why should they buy a product, gamification will only be rising.
A quite important trend to note is content marketing, or inbound marketing. This is a process where companies invest in creating content and free resources to attract customers instead of boasting reasons why their products are the best. Customers are already over-saturated with such advertisements and have grown resistant to them. Content marketing, on the other hand, is a win-win situation. The user gets genuine content with real value - blogs, infographics, videos, white papers, webinars, etc. In return, he pays attention to the brand creating this content.
There are several things happening in the field of SEO worth noting as well. Google is ever striving towards organic search algorithms; it is already affecting linkbuilding. Backlinks are being thoroughly checked, and if there are links leading to your website that seemed placed there just for the purpose of optimization - not naturally - this will have a negative effect on rankings. SEO experts are starting to check all backlinks, and use the new "disavow" tool on ones that might harm optimization.
Moreover, Google is starting to include Google+ as a factor in Adwords. This shows how search and social are starting to integrate, and soon presence on social networks will affect search results as well.
An intriguing upcoming trend is search retargeting. Google will allow Adwords to be target at users based on their search history. This allows for ultra-targeting of very specific user groups.
Search engine algorithms, especially Google's, are becoming more organic every day. In the (very near) future, black-hat SEO would not be possible without getting an immediate penalty. In the past, buying backlinks on low-quality unrelated websites could have pushed your rankings up, but now it will just get you penalties, or it can even get you banned from Google. This trend will continue to grow. In a strive to make searching more natural, Google might start integrating social data into its algorithms. Google+ is already integrated into search results, even into adwords. SEO will become a much broader term in the future, and rankings will be affected by much more complex factors - backlinks and keywords might as well start losing importance.
Another trend gaining speed are videos. This could be classified as a part of content marketing. However, it is worth noting that more and more users prefer viewing content in the form of a video rather than text images.
2012 saw a great development in terms of analytics and 2013 won't fall behind either. There are new and improved tools being released constantly; data visualization is also evolving. Analytics will move from the traditional sort, which just tracks hits and clicks on a website, to marketing analytics, which track all marketing actions. "The last click" - the conversion - has been overvalued by marketers.
In summary, online marketing is going much more organic and unnoticeable. Instead of feeding the user with reasons, text and images, brands are giving them content, games, videos, making them feel comfortable and at ease. Search rankings are not as easily influenced anymore, they are becoming more organic. Social is gaining importance. And, of course, mobile is now an inseparable part of online marketing. To conclude with an optimistic note, online marketing is becoming much less intrusive and is starting to offer content of real valuse instead of boasting product features and reasons to buy.
Works Cited:
10 Online Marketing Trends for 2013. (January 3, 2013). Retrieved May 26, 2013, from
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225392.
13 Online Marketing Trends for 2013. (January 2, 2013). Retrieved May 27, 2013, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225392.
34% of Senior Marketers Evaluating Mobile Loyalty Programs in 2013. (April 4, 2013). Retrieved June 4, 2013, from http://www.tatango.com/blog/34-of-senior-marketers-evaluating-mobile-loyalty-programs-in-2013/.
Content Marketing Experience. (n.d.). Retrieved May 25, 2013, from http://pinterest.com/contentxpert/.
Content Marketing. (n.d.). Retrieved May 26, 2013, from http://pinterest.com/geles/content-marketing/.
Gamification. (n.d.). Retrieved May 25, 2013, from http://mashable.com/category/gamification/.
Gamification. (n.d.). Retrieved May 25, 2013, from http://pinterest.com/geles/gamification/.
What is Gamification? (n.d.) Retrieved May 26, 2013, from http://www.bunchball.com/products/gamification
No comments:
Post a Comment