Marketing & Advertising Strategy- 2015
- Grace Dobush, Dave Chaffey
- Nov 15, 2015
- 6 min read
Trends in Digital Marketing Tools and Technology
In my discussion of trends in previous years I have explored innovation and trends in the use of digital marketing techniques at a top level, like content marketing, search, email and web development. But if I’m honest, the leading techniques don’t change that much. There is a problem of describing the “usual suspects.” So this year, when I’m presenting trends I have been taking a look at tools and services to help digital marketing.
These data-driven tools are again all focused on those that can potentially make the biggest difference. They cover a wide range from analytics tools to retail ecommerce, but the first few tools relate to content marketing since this is where I’m seeing the most useful and interesting collection of tools.
10 key digital marketing technologies to use in 2015
Many of the trends in digital marketing involve marketers applying new services, platforms and software to plan, manage and optimise their marketing, so in this part of the post I take a look at the technologies that I think will fuel digital marketing in 2014. I recently presented these at the Smart Insights Digital Impact marketing conference and at a talk at the Brighton Digital Marketing Festival. These tools include:
1: Content Curation Tools
With micro and visual content giving the highest impact, tools to manage the creation and publication of this content from different sources become important to fuel the content marketing machine.
2: Content Recommendation, Personalisation, Retargeting and Effectiveness Review Tools
Even if you have won the battle to create outstanding content, site managers still have the challenge of connecting audiences with the most relevant content. Dynamic recommendations of the most relevant content for a visitor can assist here.
3: Content distribution services
Here content distribution means organic and paid sharing via social networks. The tools featured here focus on organic distribution
Hootsuite
Sendible
Oktopost
4: Integrated SEO, Content and Social Media Management?
There is a question mark here since this is an, as yet unachievable goal. The tools I recommend here originated as SEO told for reviewing keywords and back links, but are now expanding into social media and content management. They’re also featuring more management tools and workflow for multiple people in a tool. Analytics SEO is a leader in this area.
Examples include:
Moz
Raven Tools
Analytics SEO
5: API service integration and Hubs
APIs are integrations between different platforms. They are a key consideration in any type of tool you purchase here. No examples of tools in this section, rather efforts made by platform vendors to integrate other services to add value to their own tools. CRM services are particularly strong at this as are analytics tools such Adobe Analytics (formerly in Omniture).
Act-On
Marketo
Salesforce.com/ExactTarget
6: User Engagement and value optimisation
Most businesses use a web analytics services to track visitors to their site, with Google Analytics most popular as a free, but very powerful service. While they can tell businesses the number of users, their source and their journeys through the site, their limitation is that most data is shown in aggregate for different segments. They’re not designed for understanding individual user behaviour, repeat behaviour by groups of customers (e.g. cohort, RFM and lifetime value analysis) or behaviour across devices (although Google’s latest Universal analytics makes progress in this area). These tools, which have been available for several years now offer a user-based, value-based focus which Google has been applying.
Snapchat and Messaging Apps Social networking has taken a very personal turn in the past year with the rise of messaging apps and especially blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Snapchat. “For marketers, there’s ample opportunity for experimentation,” says Aaron Shapiro, CEO of Huge. “Two years ago, it was really just Facebook. Now we’re seeing a real explosion of social media innovation. It’s much more multidimensional than just collecting Facebook likes.”
Kissmetrics
Mixpanel (Mobile focus plus web)
Chartbeat (Publisher focus)
Ecommera (Ecommerce)
7: Actionable Analytics and intelligent analytics
Google Analytics and the other analytics services mentioned under #6 have another limitation. They require a good deal of experience to know HOW to apply the data they present. Users have to know the right questions to ask, how to customise the tool for their business, e.g. to show goals, find the right reports and then interpret highly complex multidimensional reports. Only skilled analysts can really mine actionable insight. Tools that present data more clearly to novice and management users and integrate action can help here. Google hasn’t evolved its Intelligence service, but new tools are becoming available including a new dashboard and recommendations service that will launch from Smart Insights.
Google Analytics Intelligence and Alerts
Quill Engage
Smart Insights
8: From Conversion Optimization to Experience Optimization
We are long-time advocates of structured AB and multivariate testing at Smart Insights. But these tools tend to focus on single pages in the journey rather than overall customer journeys, but they have increased hugely in their ease of setup and use recently. Tools that support analysis across customer journeys and channels are evolving:
Most popular AB testing tools * Optimizely * Visual Website Optimizer * Unbounce
Customer Journey Tools
Content management systems are now improving in their facilities to personalise and test. * Adobe Customer Experience Manager * EPiServer * Sitecore
9: Digital Channel Sales Optimisation
Ecommerce management platforms tend to focus on the serious business of getting merchandising right across home, category and product pages as described in our Ecommerce Design Bible. Clavis Insights is a relatively new, but expensive tool that presents commercial insights to retailers and brands so their can optimise their merchandising.
10: Wearables, Augmented and Virtual reality
Finally we come to what’s cool and Hot in technology. I’ve kept this ’til last since I suspect it will make the smallest commercial difference to most companies. All of these are due to be launched in 2015, so watching the popularity of mainstream adoption and marketing applications of their apps should be fascinating!
Apple Watch Apps
Google Glass
Facebook Oculus Rift
Smartwatches Messaging on smartwatches is tied directly to the popularity of messaging apps, Advertising Age reports. Personalized interactions with affluent, tech-loving consumers are where smartwatches will excel. Many of the initial apps for smartwatches were in categories you’d expect: flight trackers, maps, fitness, music, shopping lists. The Apple Watch is branching out with app integrations for Target, Honeywell and BMW.
Video Innovations
Socially integrated live-streaming video service Meerkat was the biggest app to come out of SXSW Interactive this year. “With all of the recent developments in video — Periscope, deeper Facebook integration, YouTube 360-degree videos — I’m excited to see what brands and consumers do with the new technology,” says Grant Owens, Razorfish’sGlobal Vice President of Account Planning. He points to the recent Meerkat and smart USA campaign as a good example of this.
Anticipatory Design Shapiro says Amazon’s Dash Button is just the beginning of the convergence of products and marketing. “More stuff in our lives is being automated and it’s a very powerful marketing construct,” he says. “Tide is a product, but by having the button on the refrigerator, Tide becomes a service too.” The next step is fully automated services — your calendar automatically orders you a car at the end of your meeting, for example. Owens calls this the digital service economy — “many of the standard, expected brand engagements are becoming more personal, predictive and seamless on the backs of new technologies. Having to submit a query, choose from a drop-down menu or click a series of links will become less and less necessary. The things we need will simply appear.” Research firm Gartner predicts autonomous mobile assistant purchasing will reach $2 billion annually by the end of 2016.
Smarter Retail Shapiro says retail is entering a new cycle right now, “Stores are realizing they have to offer an experience in-store,” he says. Retail has to prove itself as more than just a fulfillment channel. “How can the store be an expert advisor to make the right product decisions?” Many stores are integrating beacon technology and employing shoppers’ personal phones to integrate the in-person and online experiences. “It’s fertile ground for innovation,” he says. Nearly three-quarters of retailers will increase technology spending on customer experience this year, according to Gartner.
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