25 Inspired Marketing Predictions for 2013

As December comes to a close (and the end of the world is looming upon us), we’re thinking about the whirlwind that 2012 has been, and more importantly, what road has been paved for 2013. With a series of mergers and acquisitions, changes in privacy rules, and dozens of new tools emerging daily, not to mention several major tragedies that have changed expectations of brands and redefined the term “crisis management”, the future of digital marketing is impossible to predict.

In an effort to navigate the windy roads to come, ExactTarget has gathered the ideas of 25 social media, mobile, search, and email marketing experts and compiled them into a free ebook – The 25 Inspired Marketing Predictions for 2013. Learn exclusive insights from a smart group of marketing mavens (some of them even smarter than me!) about marketing automation, cross-channel promotions and trends you never even thought of. They may not all come true in the coming year, but they’re sure to give you some food for thought as you plan our your digital marketing strategies for 2013.

To get a taste of what’s included in the ebook, the fine folks at ExactTarget have also put together a nice infographic that outlines highlights from each chapter (and what would 2012 be without infographics?). Feel free to download, share, and enjoy these thoughts, and finally, don’t forget to let us know what we missed! It’s a wild world out there, but when it comes to digital marketing, the best is yet to come.

2 major changes within Google and Pinterest are the main platform developments

Each month we review the developments in digital marketing and share our alerts on what we see as the “must-know” developments across all the digital marketing platforms.

We also share some of our own advice for marketers. This month we start with two new free guides to help with marketing planning. Watch out for more advice on Planning and Strategy in the Autumn as we countdown to 2014 with our new #PlanToSucceed campaign.

Strategy and planning

• 2014 Digital Marketing Trends briefing. Each year, I look ahead to review the latest trends in Digital Marketing to help define digital technologies and marketing techniques which give options for companies to grow their businesses. This year, I have identified 22 Digital Marketing techniques that demand attention and you can listen / download a free briefing I have recorded.
  We hope this trends roundup proves useful – do vote to let us know what you think is important – there are a few surprises and – thanks if you have voted or shared already.
  
• The top 15 Classic marketing models? Marketing strategist Annmarie Hanlon and I have created a new guides showing 15 classic marketing models.
  Again, thank you if you voted or shares – the “wisdom of the crowd” has  selected a Top 5 most useful models that I certainly agree with. 
  

You can also download our free Essential Marketing Planning Models guide which explains how to use each model with examples.

Social media marketing

According to our readers, Content Marketing was the top priority for increased investment in 2013 and is likely to be in 2014 too. One of the best conferences covering CM is Content Marketing World. Geraint Holliman has a great post summarising 6 key insights from Content Marketing World.

Pinterest announced two new features - Susanne Colwyn summarised two more reasons for businesses to consider Pinterest.

Search marketing

BrightonSEO is now one of the most popular, if not THE most popular of the homegrown UK SEO conferences, we have two roundups from writers for Smart Insights readers who couldn’t make it. Michael Charalambous summarised what he felt were the 5 must useful talks summarising the latest thinking on SEO and Rhian Simms gave her 5 key SEO takeaways from BrightonSEO.

There were also two big changes in the Search world that marketers should be aware of in September.

• 1. Google’s new Hummingbird algorithm – We don’t think this is such big news as other named Google algorithm changes. Rather it was an announcement of a query processing improvement to make Google work better with interactive, conversational queries which are increasingly used on mobile phones.

• 2. Google changes affect keyword reporting in analytics – not new, but this post shows the increase in importance

User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation

• What makes consumers buy today? An infographic summarising some serious research from Verdict interviewing 10,000 online shoppers about their omnichannel shopping behaviour.
• Which social networks drive conversion – This data from retailers using RichRelevance will enable you to benchmark your social media conversion levels.

Email marketing and CRM

• Social media customer service metrics – Social Customer care specialist Guy Stephen recommends what we should monitor and improve.
• How email marketers should react to changes to webmail services – Mark Brownlow recommends Keep calm and keep mailing… and some practical tips.
• Responsive Email Design – Another great, practical infographic from Litmus.

I hope the monthly roundup has shed some light on a development in marketing you need to take into account. Do share our roundup with a colleague if you think it could help them too.