Yearly Marketing Survey 2013 – IN SEARCH OF THE RIGHT BALANCE

Le 21 mars 2013  The House of Marketing présentait les résultats de son Yearly Marketing Survey 2013. L’étude indique qu’un pessimisme généralisé continue de régner parmi les spécialistes du marketing, qui se sont résignés à devoir faire plus avec moins. 60 % misent sur les médias sociaux, mais recourent aux canaux habituels comme les mass media pour générer du trafic vers les canaux en ligne.

Toujours plus pour toujours moins

Depuis 2007, The House of Marketing observe une baisse du Marketer’s Confidence Index (MCI), à l’exception de 2011. Cette tendance se poursuit également en 2013. Le MCI reflète l’opinion des mercaticiens au sujet de leurs budgets, de la composition de leurs équipes et du nombre de projets qu’ils doivent mener à bien. L’étude révèle que les deux premiers points, budget et équipe, sont soumis à forte pression, tandis que le nombre de projets sur lesquels les spécialistes du marketing travaillent n’a pas évolué. En d’autres termes : les mercaticiens sont à nouveau contraints de faire plus avec moins de budget. Ils semblent assez étonnamment s’y résigner.

Les cartes clients et points épargne ne fonctionnent plus

Les nouveaux mots qui font le buzz en 2013 sont ROPO (Research Online Purchase Offline), Phygital (combinaison de « physical » et de « digital world »), Channel Integration et multi-screen. Une référence donc au monde numérique dans lequel nous – et principalement les spécialistes du marketing – nous trouvons de plus en plus. 86 % des consommateurs utilisent différents canaux simultanément. Le Multi-Channeling est donc le point de focalisation des mercaticiens.

On assiste par ailleurs à l’ascension des mots en ‘de’ : de-branding, de-connecting, de-trend,… ce qui implique la lassitude de certains consommateurs face à la surabondance de marketing. « Comment un spécialiste du marketing doit-il relier les consommateurs à sa marque en 2013 ? », indique Jean Cornet, Managing Consultant de The House of Marketing. « En revenant aux fondamentaux, ressort-il de notre étude : reconnaissez votre consommateur, donnez-lui ce dont il a besoin et apportez de la valeur ajoutée à sa vie. « 2013 tourne autour de la pertinence de produits à favoriser et de l’amélioration de l’expérience des consommateurs. Les bons vieux systèmes de récompense avec leurs incentives et petits cadeaux ne fonctionnent plus. Les mercaticiens doivent davantage penser à long terme. »

Le retour de la foi en les mass media

60 % des spécialistes du marketing veulent investir dans les médias sociaux ; 40 % dans l’e-mail marketing. Ces chiffres sont plutôt surprenants, étant donné que la même étude de The House Of Marketing révèle que les mercaticiens ne sont pour la plupart pas satisfaits des résultats de leurs activités de médias sociaux. Ils comprennent cependant que leurs consommateurs passent de plus en plus de temps en ligne, et ils s’attendent donc à une hausse de 46 % des budgets en publicités en ligne, 33 % pour le Search Engine Advertising. Le numérique occupe donc une position centrale.

Pourtant, en 2013, les spécialistes du marketing miseront à nouveau sur les médias traditionnels. Après une forte baisse du budget escompté pour la radio et la télévision l’an dernier, THOM constate maintenant que les mercaticiens attendent une légère hausse. Les mercaticiens prennent semble-t-il de nouveau conscience que les médias traditionnels continuent d’avoir un impact supérieur, étant donné la valeur d’attention supérieure à celle des médias sociaux.

« Une utilisation intelligente des différentes possibilités de publicité peut représenter une plus-value pour les prestations des autres médias », indique Jean Cornet. « Ainsi, un spot radio ou un panneau publicitaire renforceront les recherches en ligne, avec la possibilité pour les mercaticiens d’offrir à nouveau un meilleur soutien par Search Engine Advertising. Les spécialistes du marketing ont tout à gagner à comprendre le chemin que suivent ces consommateurs online et offline. Cela fait, la quantité de technologie et de données ne déconcertera plus le mercaticien mais fera sens et permettra une meilleure focalisation », ajoute encore Jean Cornet. « En 2013, le marketing tournera autour de la pertinence du contenu et de la compréhension de ce qui fait cliquer et taper le consommateur sur son clavier. »

 

À propos de The House of Marketing

The House of Marketing est le plus grand centre d’excellence et de Marketing Expertise en Belgique. Depuis 1994, l’entreprise offre à ses clients des conseils stratégiques sur le marketing, de la gestion de projets marketing, du support temporaire en marketing et du marketing training & coaching. The House of Marketing est établie à Malines et emploie plus que 65 employés

POE EMMA Mars 2013

Advertisers Boost Social Ad Budgets in 2013 – eMarketer

Advertisers Boost Social Ad Budgets in 2013 – eMarketer.

Two-thirds increasing spending on paid social media ads

Advertisers’ appetites for paid advertising on social media sites shows no sign of abating in 2013. According to a study conducted for digital brand measurement provider Vizu by Digiday, 64% of US advertisers planned to increase their paid social media ad budgets this year, with just 2% saying they intended to spend less money in 2013 than they did in 2012 on paid social ads.

Most of those increasing their spending on ads on social sites planned to do so by 10% or less. But a significant number were making even larger investments: 26% of respondents reported planning to increase their social media ad spending by 11% or more.

 

Seven in 10 respondents said they would spend between 1% and 10% of their online budget on social ads, suggesting that for most it is a present, but not a dominant part of the marketing mix. For 13% of respondents, however, it plays a larger role: This group spends 21% or more of their online budgets on paid social media advertising.

Overall, eMarketer estimates that US advertisers will spend $4.1 billion on paid social media ads this year, rising to $5 billion in 2014.

In terms of what marketers and agencies are hoping to get out of these social ads, the majority viewed them as primarily a branding tool to raise awareness and influence opinions of the brand.

 

Fewer advertisers and agencies used social ads as a pure direct-response tool to drive site visits or other actions, but 54% of agencies and 39% of advertisers reported using social ads to do some mix of branding and direct response.

Corporate subscribers have access to all eMarketer analyst reports, articles, data and more. Join the over 750 companies already benefiting from eMarketer’s approach. Learn more.

Check out today’s other articles, “What Makes Streamers Abandon Video Content?” and “Younger Consumers Account for Three-Quarters of South Africa’s Internet Users.”

Read more at http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Advertisers-Boost-Social-Ad-Budgets-2013/1009688#XBlyG0zVMxdrhE5U.99

10 big content marketing trends to look out for in 2013 | memeburn

10 big content marketing trends to look out for in 2013 | memeburn.

Last year was a great year for content marketing, one that saw it established as a key discipline as brands looked to create a genuine rapport with their target audience. And there were big names leading the charge; the likes of Coca-Cola and Red Bull both embed content strategy as an integral part of their overall marketing strategy.

Of course, with this new-found celebrity status comes a greater spotlight, and there are a number of key recurring themes and trends that everyone needs to get to grips with, if they are to really push forward with their content marketing strategies for 2013.

1. Content marketing is no longer a fad… so get your strategies in order
Content marketing is getting a bigger slice of the marketing pie, and has seen a 13% increase in spending over the past two years, according to the Custom Content Council’s report, “The Spending Study: A Look at How Corporate America Invests in Branded Content for 2012″. On top of this, 79% of people involved directly in marketing are now reporting that their companies are moving into content marketing either at a moderate or aggressive pace, while 52% of companies are reporting that they have outsourced some portion of at least one type of content creation in 2012.

However, Econsultancy’s Content Marketing Survey Report highlights a worrying trend; while 90% of those involved in marketing believe content marketing will become more important over the next 12 months, just 38% of companies have a content marketing strategy in place – or to put that another way 62% of companies are just doing content on an ad hoc basis.

2. Greater understanding of the link between content and digital
Content strategies need to underpin digital strategies. Take Facebook for example, anyone can get Likes on a Facebook page, but what sets brands apart is what they do with those Likes once they get them. That’s all about understanding your target audience and then delivering the content they want to engage them and keep them coming back for more on a strategic and not a one-off, campaign-driven basis.

It’s easy to get carried away with the numbers, but a Facebook like isn’t content. It is a small part of an overall content strategy that needs to look at how content is distributed to consumers across a variety of relevant touch points. On top of this, content is now inextricably linked to SEO. This has been driven by Google, which has implemented algorithmic changes, such as Panda and Penguin, aimed at improving relevancy and rewarding quality and unique content.

3. in terms of content, quality is most definitely king
One of the biggest challenges of all for everyone is understanding that content is not just “stuff”, and if you want to really engage your target audience, your focus has to be on quality. Anyone can produce “stuff”, but there is a world of difference between well thought-out, strategically developed content that absolutely tells stories about brands, as opposed to material – written, video or audio – that is produced without a thought for quality, understanding or strategy. And this, of course, is one key reason why brands should seek out companies experienced in creating properly thought-out content to underpin their marketing activities.

4. Multi-channel needs a strategy first approach
With so many different devices and channels available, making sure you are sending out consistent messaging across all your channels and effectively managing information and associated rich media assets, such as photos and videos, for all of your products is a huge challenge. Managing customer facing content has evolved into an extremely complex process, driven in no small part by the fact that consumer expectations have risen exponentially. We now all want to be able to see the same content and have the same level of experience and engagement whether we are viewing a website or webshop on a laptop, a tablet or a smart phone.

To be able to cope with this, retailers and brands need to have a fully integrated approach to their content marketing, which covers all the channels they operate in, and ensures their story is told not only in an interactive way, but also a consistent way. The most important to remember here is that only once an overall content strategy has been created – which will be very much determined by your business objectives – can you focus on individual platforms and look at distributing your content across all channels.

5. Big data will become a big issue 
With the vast amounts of information created by and for all the different channels that brands and retailers operate in today, the concept of Big Data has been doing the rounds as an issue for some time now. As content marketing becomes much more prominent in the marketing mix so it is going to become equally important that these same companies have the tools and technologies in place to deal with the data they have coming in – including everything from visitor behaviour, posts on social media sites and digital pictures, to videos, purchase transaction records and location-based information. By integrating their data sources, brands and retailers will be able to hone and guide their marketing efforts.

6. Mobile is still the right way to go
With mobile devices set to continue their explosive growth into 2103 and way beyond, making sure that content displays correctly on mobile platforms will be a key focus for people involved in content marketing content moving forward. And with so many competing platforms out there, this is going to be a tough process. The consequence to companies and websites of not capitalising on this growth is potentially losing visibility in a massive market place.

Current trends are highlighting the fact that while content consumption via mobile continues to grow at the cost of other channels, the iPad continues to be the real game changer. According to US-based e-commerce solutions provider Monetate, in its Ecommerce Quarterly report for the third quarter of 2012, the iPad accounted for 88.94% of all website visits originating from tablets, followed by Android devices with 6.34% and the Kindle Fire with 4.71%. In the UK, Screen Pages research from July showed that 20.8% of visits to ecommerce site were coming from mobile devices, and of that 84.5% were from Apple devices. Most interestingly though, iPad shoppers buy more; average conversion rates on iPads are 22.5% higher than on other platforms.

7. Video will continue to be hot property
Research late last year by Visibility IQ revealed that 78% of web users in Britain watch online video every week. And if you needed further convincing of the continued validity of video content, according to data from comScore, US Internet users watched 39 billion online content videos in September 2012. For anyone looking to create viral content, there is no better medium than video; even if you’re re-using old content or creating something low-budget, it’s still worth it. Shareable, eye-catching and effective, you don’t have to look far to find videos that have become incredibly successful.

8. Content curation
The type of content that you share can say as much about your brand as any direct sales message, and with a seemingly ever-increasing number of channels at our disposal, collecting and promoting relevant and on-brand third-party content is becoming a huge task. Today content curation is becoming a science in its own right, as well as becoming increasingly more relevant to the modern marketing strategy. Good content curation isn’t as simple as pushing a share button, it’s a combination of finding great content and following some simple best practices on how to successfully share that content.

9. Print isn’t dead
Despite what many digital agencies may tell you, print is far from out of the equation for most businesses. Brands are continuing to take the role of traditional publishers and monetizing their content across all their channels by delivering marketing ROI, but this is not taking place exclusively in the online domain. Certainly in the UK, all the big retailers are increasing their magazine print runs, and this is definitely the case in South Africa with rapid growth among certain demographics where readership of free magazines is incredibly high.

10. New roles are emerging
If your business doesn’t yet have a Content Strategist, Data Scientist, Social Business Manager or something of that ilk, the chances are they will be having one fairly soon.

Trends Night 2013 – Bart De Waele

Trends Night 2013 – Bart De Waele

Trends in interactive design 2013

Prophets Agency presents “ID13″: the trends in Interactive Design for 2013. Third year in a row, after the ID11 and ID12 trends. Written and designed by our Design Director Petra Sell. 

Starting at the emerging trends in 2012 moving to what is happening in interaction design in 2013. the consolidation of ongoing trends up to future thinking and some advice on how to keep up. 

Take your time to browse through the 147 slides of this impressive deck. Brands who fancy a ‘live’ presentation in their offices can contact us to make an appointment. Do spread along, cause sharing still is caring.

The brand new year: key trends | Econsultancy

The brand new year: key trends | Econsultancy.

 

Marketing automation on the rise, social media going ballistic, location-based marketing ramping up. We certainly saw some major changes in the brand management landscape in 2012. 

But what do we predict as the key trends in branding and marketing as 2013 gets under way? Let’s have a look.

1. The power of the story

Word is that John Lewis generated £91m in a single week before Christmas. And a large part of that success was down to an imaginative television ad, which told the story of a cartoon snowman travelling over mountains, through rivers and across cities in search of the perfect gift for the snow-woman in his life.

This fairytale quite simply succeeded in captivating its audience, to extremely profitable effect.

Of course the concept of brand stories is nothing new. But we do believe the John Lewis experience will encourage other brands to look further at the power of storytelling as a branding technique through which to increase consumer engagement.

2. Promises, promises

Remember that woeful business of the McDonald’s Twitter initiative in 2012, which backfired so spectacularly when the company invited consumers to tweet their #McDStories?

Many customers responded by tweeting pictures of their purchases which unfortunately looked rather less appetizing than the product shots in the company’s communications and restaurants. Ouch!

The need for brands to keep their promises has never been so critical – not least because social media has given consumers so much power to voice their opinions and experiences of brands to the world at large.

Staying true to brand values will be as vital for employees in 2013 as it will be for brand and marketing departments – and it’s never been more important for senior management to inspire employees to keep those brand promises.

3. For ‘multichannel’, read ‘trans-media’

Until now, ‘multichannel’ has meant distribution of brand assets to print, web and mobile channels from a single source, usually a brand or digital asset management system.

But that’s changing. We agree with Real Story Group’s Theresa Regli, who predicts that, during 2013, there will be a trend towards delivering different aspects of the brand promise through different media or, as Ms Regli has termed it, ‘trans-media’.

In order to achieve this trans-media distribution, brand management software must be able to segment messages, depending on channel.  This is designed to ensure that consumers experience the brand in ways that suit their personal needs – while allowing the brand manager to maintain brand consistency.

4. In the eye of the consumer

Traditionally, brands have directed messages at the consumer without regard for individual preferences or behaviour. But we think 2013 will see a marked change with sharper focus on consumers’ interactions with and experiences of brands.

In short, this means seeing the picture from the consumer’s viewpoint. By mapping the customer’s experience from his or her individual point of view, the brand will be able to extract data from which to assess whether it is keeping its brand promises.

5. Media on the move

Social media and mobile communications together have become an unstoppable force and we foresee no slow-up in 2013. Everyone now has a significant voice; peer-to-peer purchase behaviour and recommendations are becoming more and more important in purchase decisions; and in-store mobile buying is a fast developing trend.

This is driven not least by a new generation of smart apps that quickly learn their users’ preferences and behaviour, offering suggestions and reminders. And of course this presents brands with a potential wealth of data to pick up on. Indeed, brands are catching on fast to these changes in the retail landscape, with in-store wi-fi and mobile discounts now becoming standard.

And, indeed, it is these evolving technological and customer-driven trends that underpin our final prediction for 2013. Because we believe the key differentiator for brands this year will be how effectively they can succeed in tying their brand stories and promises to the emerging raft of new engagement opportunities.

An exciting year ahead? We think so – and we hope a rewarding one for all.

Jens Lundgaard is Founder and CEO of Brandworkz and a guest blogger on Econsultancy

 

Related articles

• Six content marketing trends to watch this year | Econsultancy
• 17 digital marketing and ecommerce trends for 2013 by Econsultancy CEO Ashley Friedlein
• Content Marketing And E-Commerce Tops Digital Marketers Priority List For 2013

trendwatching.com présente le Trend Briefing “10 Tendances Consommateurs Indispensables pour 2013″

trendwatching.com présente le Trend Briefing “10 Tendances Consommateurs Indispensables pour 2013″.

Introduction :

L’année 2013 sera un véritable tourbillon de nouvelles opportunités et de nouvelles demandes. Certaines économies se maintiendront à niveau tandis que d’autres sombreront dans les abysses. Mais quel que soit le marché ou le secteur, les acteurs qui bénéficieront d’opportunités sont ceux qui répondront aux attentes du marché et qui comprendront les nouvelles tendances de consommation. Une économie mondiale réorganisée, de nouvelles technologies (ou des technologies déjà existantes utilisées de manières novatrices), de nouveaux modèles économiques… que demander de plus ?

Voici donc un aperçu des 10 tendances de consommation déterminantes à prendre en considération pour les 12 prochains mois (sans ordre particulier). Commençons sans plus tarder :

1. PRESUMERS & CUSTOWNERS

Alors que les consommateurs participeront de façon croissante et de plus en plus diverses au financement, lancement et développement des marques et produits qu’ils aiment (existants ou nouveaux), il est à prévoir une hausse significative des précommandes, du crowdfunding et de la participation des consommateurs en 2013. Une évolution certaine par rapport à la consommation traditionnelle…
En savoir plus, avec les exemples de ZaoZao et de Barclaycard »

2. EMERGING²

Alors que les deux dernières décennies voyaient des marchés développés répondre aux attentes des marchés émergents et inversement, il faudra désormais se préparer à une véritable explosion des produits et services des marchés émergents pour les marchés émergents…
En savoir plus, avec les exemples de Lenovo et de Peak Games »

3. MOBILE MOMENTS

Pour ceux qui se demandent vers quoi le monde du “mobile” se dirige, une analyse des comportements devrait fournir quelques indications à ce propos pour 2013. Les consommateurs se tourneront vers leurs appareils mobiles pour maximiser chaque instant, en privilégiant le “multitasking” voire même “l’hypertasking”, pour leurs achats, communications et toutes leurs expériences utilisateurs…
En savoir plus, avec les exemples de SnapChat et Jana »

4. NEW LIFE INSIDE

Une éco-tendance pour 2013 se dessine : le phénomène des produits et services connaissant une seconde vie. Plutôt que d’être mis de côté ou même recyclés (par quelqu’un d’autre), ces produits peuvent être offerts et faire croître quelque chose de totalement nouveau, avec toutes les éco-histoires qui iront avec…
En savoir plus, avec les exemples de Molson et Tierra Patagonia »

5. APPSCRIPTIONS

Les technologies numériques sont les nouveaux médicaments. En 2013, les consommateurs devraient se tourner vers la profession médicale et les institutions médicales pour certifier les Applis “santé”, ou pour que leur médecin leur en “prescrive” dans le cadre de leur traitement…
En savoir plus, avec les exemples de Happtique et Proteus Digital »

6. CELEBRATION NATION

Les marchés émergents vont fièrement exporter voire étaler leurs héritages culturels nationaux dans les 12 mois qui viennent. Les symboles et traditions auparavant ignorés ou dépréciés seront considérés comme une source de fierté par les consommateurs d’une culture et comme des objets d’intérêt pour les consommateurs extérieurs…
En savoir plus, avec les exemples de NE-Tiger et Sulwhasoo »

7. DATA MYNING

À ce jour, la discussion au sujet des “Big data” s’est focalisée sur la valeur des données clients pour les entreprises. En 2013, attendez-vous à ce que les consommateurs inversent cette tendance. Les consommateurs eux-mêmes vont vouloir tirer parti de leurs propres données et se tourneront vers les marques qui utilisent celles-ci pour proposer aides et conseils de manières proactives, leur permettant ainsi d’améliorer leur propre expérience client et/ou de réaliser des économies…
En savoir plus, avec les exemples de Movenbank et Kroger »

8. AGAIN MADE HERE

La soif inextinguible de NEWISM et de niches, l’exigence de trouver le bon produit (et instantanément !), les préoccupations croissantes des questions écologiques et le désir d’histoires intéressantes… toutes ces tendances s’allient à la fabrication à la demande et à la diffusion de nouvelles technologies de fabrication locales telles que l’impression 3D pour déclencher unerésurgence de la fabrication intérieure sur les marchés établis en 2013…
En savoir plus, avec les exemples de Tesla et Google »

9. FULL FRONTAL

Alors, quelle est la prochaine étape de cette mode de la transparence pour 2013 ? Les marques doivent passer du stade “nous n’avons rien à cacher” à montrer et prouver de manière proactive qu’elles n’ont effectivement rien à cacher…
En savoir plus, avec les exemples de McDonald’s et Natura »

10. DEMANDING BRANDS

2013 verra l’essor de marques engagées (embarquant sur le chemin d’un avenir plus durable et plus responsable) exigeant que leurs clients apportent leur contribution…
En savoir plus, avec les exemples de Tata Docomo et Vitoria »

17 digital marketing and ecommerce trends for 2013 by Econsultancy CEO Ashley Friedlein

17 digital marketing and ecommerce trends for 2013 by Econsultancy CEO Ashley Friedlein.

 

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Following are my personal thoughts on what will be interesting and important in the world of digital marketing and ecommerce for 2013. As is traditional for my trends, there are around seventeen of them.

I haven’t spent too much time on giving extensive justification for any of these; they are based largely on the many conversations I have with industry influencers and practitioners.

Many are really just notes, or bullet points, but I’ve tried to give links to further information if you want to delve deeper. They are in no particular order though I’ve started with the more ‘strategic’ stuff.

As ever, I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts, or feel free to post a link to your own trends or predictions.

1. The end of the digital beginning

Obviously digital maturity differs by country globally but there was a phrase used in PWC’s “Global entertainment and media outlook: 2012-2016” report which resonated for me.

They describe that we are at the “end of the digital beginning as companies reshape and retool for life in the new normal”.

With digital now at the core of business-as-usual, PWC believes that experimentation and execution are no longer sequential but will proceed in parallel:

The technology to deliver the enterprise with digital at its core is here now. The main challenges are around leading and marshalling the talent and innovative culture needed to make it a reality.

I entirely agree.

There are some significant implications for the phase we are now entering:

• Restructures and ‘re-orgs’. A lot of companies are restructuring ‘digital’, in some cases dissolving it completely as a separate function. In some instances the good digital people stay, with wider roles and remits; in others their passion for pure digital, or frustration at the re-integration with the corporate mother ship, cause them to leave for a start-up or pureplay digital company.
• M&A. A lot of consolidation has already happened. A lot more is to come. As digital has gone mainstream the big incumbent players are either going bust, painfully trying to transform, or, in most cases, buying digital assets. This is particularly true for agencies and consultancies but also true ‘client side’.

  There aren’t many big purely digital agencies left now; in any case their competition is increasingly from the big consultancies (Accenture, PWC, Deloitte, Capgemini, KPMG etc.) as projects get bigger, more complicated, more strategic.

• Business model evolution. Many ‘traditional’ business models remain under threat because of the rise of digital. Most notably publishing which is being further squeezed by their erstwhile advertising clients investing more in their own content marketing and their readers’ move to mobile devices which make advertising difficult to deliver effectively.

  But digital businesses are running out of digital-only growth too and facing increasingly stiff global competition online. As digital matures it feels like digital alone will not always suffice; and being “medium sized” is not a good place to be.

Whilst we might be at the end of the digital beginning we are a long way from the beginning of the end of digital. In any case, before we reach that stage I believe the distinction between digital and non-digital will have become largely meaningless.

For those of us who have been in digital for more than fifteen years it is strangely almost a surprise that digital has finally ‘gone mainstream’.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• Econsultancy’s Trends Briefings.

2. The war for digital talent

I talk about this a lot because I feel it is probably the biggest challenge for most things digital. There are three notable things I’d draw out for 2013:

The size of digital teams has grown a lot

Forrester did a report called “Right-Size Your Interactive Marketing Organization” where they found that:

• At the end of 2009, 60% of marketers surveyed had fewer than 10 people dedicated to digital.
• By 2012 only 17% had teams this small.
• 45% boasted more than 25 dedicated digital marketers.
• 20% had 100 or more digital staff.

I now talk to Heads of Online (or whatever the most senior digital person is called) who manage digital teams of 1,000+. Likewise for agencies or consultancies. There is a huge need to feed these organisations with digital talent. The demand far outstrips supply.

The ‘big and boring’ companies are most desperate

Start-ups, and internet companies like Google, have been cleverly luring the best digital talent for years.

It seems only recently that bigger ‘traditional’ players have woken up to just what a problem they have in attracting and retaining digital talent right from graduate level to the more experienced staff.

Often they can’t compete on salary, despite deep pockets, because of pay inequality issues compared with other staff; they struggle to compete on the working environment (Wot no bean bags? No BYO device approach? No everything run as SaaS? No Agile throughout?); and they can’t offer meaningful equity.

Digital Marketers aren’t the most in demand

I’m afraid to say that whilst digital marketers and ecommerce professionals are still very much in demand, particularly in certain niches, those even more in demand typically have ‘product’, ‘data’, ‘engineering/developer/technical’ or ‘architect’ in their job titles.

Combine those words with ‘mobile, social, video, content strategy, platform’ and ‘manager, director, head of’ and the recruitment consultants are drooling.

We recently did an interview with Chris Ramsbottom, Sky’s Mobile Product Manager. Not only is that clearly a killer job title (see last bullet above) but his description of how Sky works sounds pitch perfect for the kind of approach I predict all large organisations will need to adopt if they want to attract and retain digital talent:

We work within an agile (scrum) framework, with a Mobile Product Manager responsible for one particular part of the business, such as News, Sports, or Movies. We then typically have a number of development teams working on different products on different platforms, but all the teams are co-located in London so there’s a lot of knowledge sharing that goes on between them.

The Product Managers will research, define and then drive the product strategy, working with user experience experts and designers within our Sky Creative department to help create wireframes, story cards and acceptance criteria.

Everything we propose is based on anticipated customer need, so we do a lot of user testing, usability studies and market research before and during development.

The development teams then have a solid basis to begin work from – we research, design, develop, device test and then launch to market – but scrum allows us to be flexible in the functionality we decide to prioritise, meaning we can respond much quicker to change in the external environment, which, working in mobile, is the only thing that can be guaranteed.”

Useful Econsultancy links:

• My article on How do you create a marketing function fit for the future?.

3. Optimized cross-channel customer experiences

Basically this is what we should all be focused on delivering, right?

Currently mobile is particularly weak for most companies (including Econsultancy…) so that’s getting a lot of focus. And integrating online and offline, whilst not a new topic, is still a big, and complex, journey for most companies.

We need to be delivering outstanding customer experience across all channels and touch points. They should be personalised intelligently, relevantly, responsively, in real time. The customer journey should be seamless across channels and each should play to its strengths.

There is a lot of cool stuff happening (control the web with your phone via a QR code scan), the internet of thingsand intelligent environments open new possibilities, behaviours like ‘show rooming’ bring new challenges and opportunities.

We’re not short on buzz words, or marketing theories, or even best practice. Actually delivering it is much harder. For that you need the right people. See point 2.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• The future of mobile in 2013
• Why Cath Kidston needs a mobile website for Christmas.

4. Focus on the head rather than the long tail

For a long time the long tail has been part of digital lore. A recent Econsultancy article heretically suggested that perhaps the long tail of referral traffic is short.

I think there are few reasons that the ‘head end’ might be coming back into fashion in 2013:

Focusing on the biggest bang for your bucks

Given we all have limited resources, it seems that focusing on the long tail can sometimes be an awful lot of work for limited results. Or, at least, easily measurable or short term results.

So whilst we might want to engage with all those niche bloggers, or build links to tiny product categories we stock, do we actually have the resources to do this?

With so much fragmentation I think we’ll see increased effort on the few rather than dispersed effort on the many.

This reminds me of one of my favourite internet articles of all time by Mike Grehan back in 2004 called Filthy Linking Rich And Getting Richer!

Polarisation of attention

There is increasing evidence that we now have far too much choice and actually we crave less, but better and more relevant, information and services. We are starting to settle on particular sources as those we trust.

If this continues then there should emerge a smaller number of ‘winners’ leaving a swathe of insignificant players. This polarisation favours concentrating on the head end.

Ossification of consumer behaviour

We all talk about ‘the next Google’ or the ‘next Facebook’ sagely noting that these could spring from anywhere at any moment such is the world of digital change. But do we really believe this? I don’t.

I can’t believe Google is really worrying that much about some students in a garage eating their lunch. As Fred Wilson says in a recent article, I think we’re seeing consumer behaviour ‘settle’ much more, though it varies globally. It is now much harder than it was to become a global force quickly.

If this is true then again it makes more sense to focus resources on the existing ‘head end’ big players rather than expend lots of effort on many niche players who may never gain real traction.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• The long tail of referral traffic is short: report

5. Internationalization

With businesses looking for growth in stagnant economies their gaze turns to digital not just in their home markets, which are becoming more mature and saturated, but they see digital as the obvious route to international expansion and growth.

My recent post on “China: a special report on digital marketing and e-commerce” shows a digital giant that has yet to turns its attention aggressively to the west. But, in the words of Brad Pitt, this is inevitable.

The war for talent (see point 2) is also encouraging companies to look internationally, particularly for technical skills.

Why not have a play with Google’s Global Market Finder tool to see where you could be expanding this year.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• The Internationalisation of E-commerce: A Best Practice Guide
• The 11 Cs of e-commerce internationalisation

6. GAFA

The big four of the internet: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. I don’t think Twitter, Pinterest or even Microsoft quite merit entry yet into the GAFA-rati.

For me there are four interesting broad themes here:

Resurgence of Google

At some points in 2012 (the leaked results, ‘disappointing’ G+ performance etc) it felt like we’d seen serious chinks in Google’s armour. But anyone writing off Google in favour of the likes of Pinterest, Twitter or even Facebook are, in my view, much misguided.

Android is soaring; YouTube is starting, finally, to seriously eat into the territory of traditional broadcasters; G+ is really starting to grow on me, and others; Google Communities, Google Pages… all starting to nibble at Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress etc.

Google also has the best ad platform for mobile; Google’s own marketing and creativity, in ad format innovation too, is impressive.

Amazon, the dark horse

Amazon is a global e/m-commerce steam train that has just powered through another massive Christmas sales success. And yet it is building a media business; and yet it has an awesome cloud services business; and yet it owns LOVEFiLM and IMDb.com and is taking ever more share of the consumer wallet.

Amazon gets less press coverage than the likes of Facebook or Twitter but it has a built a behemoth that it looks very hard to compete with given the scale and complexity of the e-commerce operations in particular.

Amazon as a broader platform for paying for, and getting delivered (physically or digitally), pretty much anything makes it a fascinating one to watch.

Will Apple set out to conquer TV?

Apple’s hardware no longer seems as sexy and distinctive as it once was with the likes of Samsung doing very well. Apple’s software, likewise, is looking less differentiated, particularly in the mobile space.

The Maps fiasco left a slightly sour taste in the consumer mouth and are you, like me, getting somewhat tired of constantly re-approving increasingly draconian T&Cs every time you use an Apple service or downloading huge software updates?

But Apple makes obscene amounts of money and has $100bn+ in cash. So what is it going to do with it? TV has to be the big prize. Not least because the current TV user experience is so broken that even a smattering of Apple user experience magic could transform it.

Rationalising your choice of platforms

There is growing evidence (see point 4) that consumers don’t want to manage and maintain presences across all the platforms and networks available. It’s just too much effort, too many logins to remember, too many profiles to try and reconcile etc. So perhaps most of us will settle on only a couple?

If I think about it I’d consolidate around Google (for apps, G+/identity/networking, blogging, search, content) and Amazon (for commerce, delivery) rather than, say, Facebook and Apple.

Over 2013 and beyond I imagine more people will start to settle on a preferred ecosystem. If so this will clearly have important ramifications not just for those businesses, but for us marketers.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• 12 reasons behind Amazon’s massive mobile success
• Get on Google Plus or get left behind
• Apple shows chinks in the armor with Maps fiasco

7. Personalisation

This is really a sub-set of point 3. But as I point out in more depth in my article on “The 4Ps of Personalisation”, personalisation is very much back on the digital agenda.

I recently came across a concept I liked the sound of: “automagic”. We must aim to create digital services that are self-aware and personalised to the point that, for the customer, they just seem to magically know what they want and make things generally easier and more enjoyable.

If automagic is achieved then I don’t think customers will care too much about giving the personal data and permissions required to make it possible.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing: Personalisation, Trust and Return on Investment
• Infographic: The ROI of personalisation

8. Content marketing

I’ve always been uneasy with the terms ‘content marketing’ or ‘content strategy’. Not because I think focusing on earned/owned media, rather than paid media, isn’t a sensible approach, but because it feels like we’re inventing a new term for something that should be blindingly obvious and shouldn’t need buzzword-ing.

Really ‘content marketing’ is again just a sub-set of point 3. It isn’t about ‘marketing’ content. It is about creating outstanding customer experiences which, inevitably, involve content in its many guises.

The rise of ‘content marketing’ has also been fuelled by the realisation that actually a lot of the success of, say, SEO or Social Media or Email Marketing or Most Forms of Marketing, isn’t about “doing more SEO” or “investing in social” but is about creating great content that people will want to read, link to, talk about and share.

This shouldn’t be the Damascene moment it appears to be for so many businesses. 

This said, there are considerable implications of the increased investment in owned media. In particular, where ‘brands’ are investing in content instead of advertising. Firstly, these brands will have to try and find the talent and get used to working with editorial which most aren’t used to; secondly, this will further disrupt the publishing and media business models of old.

Within content marketing, there are three areas which interest me:

• Content curation. In fact, content business and operational models generally. Assuming we’re going to be creating more content, the question is then how, and how much it will cost versus the ROI.

  In a recent presentation I gave (“What can retailers learn from publishers online?”) I talked about hybrid models e.g. 70% Aggregated, 20% Curated, 10% Original.

• Content creation, curation, experience platforms and services. Related to above there is an interesting new set of platforms and services appearing that enable these new content models, often enhancing existing CMSs (Content Management Systems). We at Econsultancy, for example, use both Idio and Flockler to add more capabilities to our core CMS. There are a host of new decisioning engines, social curation platforms, content provisioning and production technologies and services emerging (e.g. Storystream, Smartology,iTrigga etc).
• Content as data. Obviously all digital content is data. But the future of content is most interesting when that content becomes ‘smart’ through data: semantic, meta, or otherwise. This allows the content to be efficiently distributed, packaged, “sliced and diced”, to maximise its value.

  Thinking this way might even save a few publishers’ business models. Have a read of The World Is Not Enough: Google and the Future of Augmented Reality to see an example of how we should be thinking more intelligently about ‘content’ as data.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• Hubspot presentation on Inbound marketing.
• Content and curation are changing integrated digital marketing
• Which content marketing metrics are valuable for Econsultancy?

9. Mobile

Clearly the year of mobile was a few years ago. There is so much happening in mobile that it would need a full post of its own: mobile search, mobile ads, mobile payments, m-commerce, social/mobile etc.

So I’ve highlighted just two themes for 2013 which interest me:

Mobile, especially native apps, is less ‘ossified’

With reference to points 4 and 6, I think mobile is where there is still most to play for. People get excited about social, video, connected TV etc but it feels to me like mobile is where there are the biggest chances to be disruptive, to be small, but still have a good chance.

Look at the sheer range of answers in “Econsultancy’s favourite mobile apps from 2012” – this is a fragmented space.

So whilst you are unlikely to have a *really* big app, and the costs of creating, maintaining and marketing it across multiple OSs are bigger than you might think, there are still opportunities to get real engagement and long term loyalty if you deliver a great app that serves a particular need.

M-commerce

For me this has to be the big focus for 2013. And it’s just about getting the basics right: mobile search marketing, a good mobile web experience, better integration of mobile into the multichannel experience, and better integration of mobile throughout the company (marketing, customer service etc).

Responsive design is great but isn’t always realistic as it is more difficult than most people think, therefore hard to find the talent, expensive etc.

Just having a stripped down mobile-specific site that does the basics well would be a good start for most (and, yes, Econsultancy is guilty of not having this). Not wishing to pick on B&Q but when I was out shopping this Christmas and wanted to find the opening times of my local B&Q store on my phone, to then go and buy something in store, I got the following:

Full marks for having a mobile site but it’s not much good when it is riddled with 404s. This reminds me of the early days of websites.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• Best mobile innovations of 2012
• Show rooming

• Why retailers need to embrace mobile internet in stores

10. Social media

As with mobile, a huge topic. So a few areas I’d single out:

• Talent (see point 2) – people who actually understand social and how to ‘execute’ – the biggest challenge. Also, how to do social media at enterprise scale is still a big challenge in terms of process and, to a lesser degree now, technology.
• Personalisation. This is the topic of point 7. There is a lot of talk about ‘social CRM’ and how we can personalise based on social data points but still relatively few executing successfully on this (Amex, KLM, Photobox come to mind as brands who have). So 2013 should see more experimentation and results here.
• Campaigns making better use of social. In the previous year or so there has been a great improvement in marketing and advertising campaigns that make powerful and effective use of social.

  Read our “10 of the best social media campaigns from 2012” or look at Google’s Creative Sandbox resource for examples. We’ll see more examples in 2013.

• Owned versus earned social media. Or ‘onsite’ vs ‘offsite’ social as I tend to think of it i.e. social activity happening on properties you own, like comments on your blog, forums you run, reviews on your site etc, versus externally controlled properties like Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn.

  I think this distinction is helpful since some companies mistakenly think they own their Facebook pages or friends. They don’t. Facebook do. In previous years the focus of activity and investment has been in offsite social, most notably Facebook.

  In 2013 I think we’ll see a slight redress in the balance towards onsite social integration, including community management, underpinned, of course, by plenty of ‘content marketing’.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• Social media fast food fight: McDonalds vs KFC
• Six simple social media tips to get you noticed
• About time: Nike moves social media in-house

11. Interactive design and user experience

With increasing numbers of devices, at different resolutions, coupled with a desire for efficiency and streamlining of costs and content management, responsive design is understandably a focus for 2013.

However, given the proliferation of devices, it is increasingly difficult to deliver responsive design that isn’t actually somewhat of a compromise all round. As Stephen Pinches of the FT explains below I expect we’ll be designing not for specific ‘devices’ but for different screen sizes which have different use cases.

In an ideal world, responsive design shouldn’t be just about designs that scale for different devices, but about ensuring your customer experience is responsive to the customer journey and use cases across channels.

Web experiences will become increasingly influenced by mobile devices: the tablet-ization of websites evidenced through above-the-fold-swipe-y designs. Personalisation, video, social integration, chat, HTML5… richer experiences generally that are more complex to design for but which must appear simple, elegant and beautiful to customers.

In the War for Digital Talent I expect great interactive designers to soon out-trump even the engineers in scarcity value.

Great interactive designers will be close in nature to the great digital product managers: sensitive to both the customer experience and business needs and able to knit a compelling experience from APIs, content and data that may already be available and craft new digital services and products from them.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• Will designers get a gold rush of their own?

• Tablets: the opportunity for marketers

12. Advertising

There is lots of on-going interesting experimentation with online ad formats, YouTube is doing some innovative things with ads, the Facebook Exchange (FBX) is proving interesting, but the buzzword in digital advertising at the moment has to be ‘native advertising’, coined I believe by Fred Wilson in this talk.

Native ads are those formats designed for a specific platform and which only exist on the platform: iAds, promoted tweets, Facebook ads, Adwords in Google search, Foursquare etc. This TechCrunch article on “Native ads in 2013” has a good round up, with examples.

In 2013 I’d expect to see continued experimentation here as media owners try to find the right balance between monetisation and the user experience.

In the first instance this focus on native advertising is not really about users, or marketers, but about the business models, or lack of, behind online publishing. It seems you have four choices as a publisher trying to make money out of advertising online:

• Have native ads. This is great if you can make it work because you should be able to charge a premium AND the advertisers can’t get this form of advertising anywhere else AND the ad experience should be the best it can be for the users in your ecosystem, making it effective. But you need deep pockets to invest in creating and marketing the formats in the first place and you need huge scale to make it worth advertisers working with your bespoke format.
• Don’t have native ads but have massive scale. You can still make money out of banners and the like but only if you have massive scale.
• Don’t have native ads but own a valuable niche. You can still command very good CPM rates with standard ad formats but only if the audience you attract has genuine scarcity and value.
• Be super lean on costs. If you run your site on next to nothing then it is possible to make a living with the smart use of network ads and affiliate networks e.g. as a blogger.

The problem is that most publishers aren’t in any of the categories above, certainly those that have historically relied on print and been focused on a single nationality.

Business model problems aside, the implication for digital marketing of native advertising is primarily yet more fragmentation, and yet more need for specialists that are hard to find. Key will be to prioritise those platforms that work best for your business and target market.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• Are pre-roll video ads going the way of display ads? 
• How the way our content is being shown has changed

13. Analytics

A lot of the focus for 2013 as regards analytics will be just doing what we’ve talked about a lot already (see next point). As ever, the major challenge here will be finding the right talent to do it.

Following are areas of interest for me which mostly relate to supporting earlier points:

• Social data and analytics to power ‘social CRM’. See point 10. Lots of talk about social data and social CRM but less obvious successful action to date.
• Web analytics and business intelligence converge. This has been happening, slowly, for years. It will continue to happen through 2013 as the back end and legacy systems of enterprises become more connected to the digital front ends and web analytics systems and processes.
• Personalisation and the analytics relating to this. As per point 7.
• Mobile analytics. Getting better at understanding and optimising mobile usage and behaviour.
• ‘Agile Browser-layer Content Delivery’ (“ABCD”). These are technologies which live in the DOM of the browser and allow marketers to change what users experience without going back to the server (likeMonetate). This is empowering from a marketer’s point of view; perhaps terrifyingly so for anyone in IT or web operations.

  Forrester calls it ‘dynamic content delivery’. I think of it also like ‘goal hanging’ in football: whatever any other system has done you can nip in right at the end and claim the credit for achieving a desired goal

• Attribution modelling fatigue. I’m as much a fan of attribution modelling as the next man. However, there is a point where the Return On Analysis Resource (“ROAR”) starts to flatten out i.e. there is only so much attribution modelling worth doing before you conclude a) most of this stuff is worth doing b) social media has a value c) so does email d) so does offline marketing etc.

  Yes, you need to understand and optimise the mix, but I contend it still comes down to point 3: if you focus on the customer needs and the customer experience across your ecosystem then that effort will pay dividends even though you cannot hope to analyse every attribute.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• Best practices in data management: report
• Web analytics: stuck in a world of reporting

14. Conversion rate optimization (CRO); marketing automation; video; real-time bidding; agile.

These are all things we’ve talked about a lot in 2012 and which are good things to do. So in 2013 we should get busy actually doing them, or doing them better.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• Will 2013 be the year of conversion optimisation?
• The rise of video in 2013
• The truth about Real-Time Bidding (RTB)
• Agile management practices: start benefiting from tomorrow

15. Connected / internet TV

Back in my 2011 digital trends post I thought that connected TV would make more of an impact in 2012 than perhaps it did, despite the Olympics.

Most of the action around ‘internet TV’ in 2012 was not about the TV itself being connected to the internet but around “second screening”: mobile devices being used in conjunction with linear TV viewing to provide interactivity.

During 2013 I expect ‘social TV’ to gain traction primarily as TV producers and broadcasters become more aware of the commercial and viewer engagement opportunities and begin to commission and produce content that has interactivity and social ‘baked in’.

This is not new but it is becoming more mainstream.

However, the more important shift I expect to see over 2013 is increasing numbers of consumers actually internet-enabling their TVs, many of which have been internet-capable for years.

Many more consumers will have purchased new TVs over Christmas or in the New Year sales with Wi-Fi connectivity. They will connect these TVs primarily to get on demand services like BBC iPlayer and streaming services like LOVEFiLM and Netflix.

Then they’ll find themselves starting to watch cute kittens doing funny things on YouTube, but on their TVs. Then they’ll start watching more and more ‘TV’ off the internet but on their TVs.

If this happens it ushers in an era of huge potential disruption in the broadcast market. Not only does it threaten existing broadcasters and operators but even the likes of Sky should feel threatened. If a Google, Amazon or Apple went aggressively enough after content rights to premium content (sport, films etc) what could they achieve?

At the same time the TV manufacturers (e.g. Samsung and LG) own the interface to this content and thereby potentially displace EPGs (Electronic Programming Guides), like Sky’s, and create new revenue streams for themselves. It feels a bit like the ‘walled garden’ AOL days of the early internet.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• Who exactly uses connected TV?

16. Honourable mentions: email and SEO

“If I was down to my last dollar I would spend it on PR” is a famous Bill Gates quote. In digital marketing I would cut almost everything else before email or SEO despite them both being supposedly ‘dead’ according to many commentators.

There are some mildly interesting trends happening in both email and SEO, particularly SEO, but nothing that seems fundamentally different to what has gone before or which doesn’t relate to things I’ve already talked about but just applied to email or SEO e.g. social, content marketing, video, mobile.

Most of us still don’t do a good enough job of email or SEO so 2013 is still about better execution.  This is not a technology challenge any more. It’s about people and process.

Useful Econsultancy links:

• ROI from SEO: misunderstood, undermined and inaccurate
• Why good SEOs should look like they don’t exist
• 10 things you can do to make me love your emails

17. The ascendance of long-form blogging

And finally… I predict a rise in popularity of very long blog posts.

Ashley Friedlein is CEO and Co-founder of Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter (4,600+ followers) or connect via LinkedIn (5,200+ connections) or Google+.

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