February 19, 2015 at 14:02Trends in electronic marketing for 2015, research and a list of top tools from Smart Insights
Smart Insights consulting company works with the largest retailers in the world, such as Canon, Unilever, HP. In his blog, the company's CEO, Dave Cheffy, wrote about how to improve and optimize marketing activity on the Internet and even provided a list of necessary tools. Below is a translation of this extremely useful material.
“My favorite reason for writing a blog is when I want to look into the future and try to predict the main trends in digital marketing next year. It seems to me that many marketers are eager to find out everything about the latest trends, methods and technologies of marketing.
Over the past few years, I have been making recommendations about trends, as I see them, based on an analysis of innovations in marketing technologies and a study of the opinions of Smart Insights readers about what is important for them.
When deciding whether there will be something in the trends, I do not just look at whether it looks “cool”. First of all, I am exploring the commercial benefits of a tool for online retailers. In the end, most of us are engaged in marketing in order to improve the business results of our customers or companies. Here is the forecast for last year. This year we also asked readers:
What digital marketing tool do you think will bring you the greatest effect in 2015?
So what are the results of the survey? The second year in a row leads the list of content marketing tools. But he was in one of the first places before the SMM and mobile marketing. In fact, he even rose to several positions due to the fact that SMM and mobile marketing reduced their sphere of influence as soon as market participants reduced their importance. It is important that Big Data is still in second place, although this year the excitement declined. I think this may be the reason for the introduction of data mining in companies in their marketing activities, especially when you consider that automation of marketing activities is in third place in the survey. In the last part of this article I will look at different tools for working with marketing analytics, reporting and data management. ”
Trends in Digital Marketing Tools and Technologies
Speaking about the trends of past years, I mainly studied innovations and trends in the use of top-level electronic marketing methods, such as content marketing, search, email and website work. But frankly, over the years, the basic principles have not changed so much. Therefore, this year, in my post about trends, I want to look at the tools and services that help in marketing.
All of these services are focused on analyzing data that is potentially important to the business. They cover a wide range from analytics to optimization of trading channels, but the first few are devoted to content marketing, as I believe it will be the most important and most interesting tool in the coming year.
10 key marketing services in 2015
Many trends force marketers to look for services, services, and software for managing, optimizing, and analyzing activities. Here is a list of useful tools that I have already presented to partners and clients at the art Insights Digital Impact marketing conference, the full presentation can be found here .
1. Tools for content management
A huge effect is given by the publication of micro and video content. Not surprisingly, the number of sites for such publications has increased and it’s difficult to manage all of them manually. And completely unnecessary, a lot of software is created specifically for the automation of these processes.
Here are three of them:
2. Tools for recommending, personalizing, retargeting and analyzing the effectiveness of content
Even if you have created great content, you still need to show it to the one who is interested in them. It will help dynamic recommendations of the most relevant content. For a long time, site personalization was used to properly configure online stores and display relevant products and offers for the client. But never before has this technology been so popular for personalizing content. Tools for this:
3. Services for the distribution of content
Under the distribution of content here refers to organic and paid sharing through social networks. In this list of services for organic sharing:
It is amazing how few products on the market for paid distribution of content. One of the most popular in this sense is AdRoll. Maybe you can recommend such a service?
4. Tools for managing SEO, content and social media?
The question mark here is because for now this is an unattainable dream. The tools that I recommend here have emerged as SEO services for checking keywords and backlinks, but now they have added some features for working with social networks and content management. They also provide the opportunity for convenient work for several people on the same project. But their main function is SEO analytics.
5. Tools for integration API
API - a set of tools for integration between different platforms. He is the key factor in buying any implementation tool. There are no examples of specific tools. Only attempts by platform manufacturers to integrate other services into their own to increase its value. Especially good in this were CRM services, for example with Adobe Analytics (in the past Omniture).
6. Optimization of engagement and analysis of user behavior on the site.
Most companies use web analytics to track visits to their sites. The most popular free, but very powerful system for this is Google Analytics. In it you get information about the number of users, their source and the path to the site, but the problem and limitation is that this data cannot be segmented by user type. They are not intended to study a specific client or their group, to track the difference in the behavior of users coming from different devices, operating systems and browsers (although, recently, Universal analytics from Google has been making progress in this area). Below is a list of tools for sensitively monitoring the behavior of user groups or specific customers:
7. Feasible and understandable analytics
There is another limitation in Google Analytics and the services in paragraph 6. They require a lot of experience in analytics in order to understand how to use the provided data. In order to use them qualitatively, you need to know the right questions in advance, the answers to which you will look for in analytics, understand how to configure the tool, get and interpret multidimensional and complex reports. Only a specialist can quickly figure it out and really deeply understand such tools. Here tools that more clearly provide data will help:
8. From Conversion Optimization to Custom Path Optimization
We at Smart Insights are longtime fans of A / B and multivariate testing. Unfortunately, these great tools are focused on optimizing a specific page on the user's path, and not on improving his path on the site as a whole. Nevertheless, now there are many services that help to understand how, in general, the user behaves on the site and facilitate his path from landing to the ultimate goal.
The most popular tools for A / B testing:
Tools for tracking and analyzing the entire path of the site visitor:
9. Optimization of sales channels
. E-commerce management platforms focus on a large business that sells home delivery products, as well as on categories and products pages, as described in our Ecommerce Design Bible . Clavis Insights is a relatively new but already expensive mechanism that shows retailers and brands commercial analytics to help optimize sales channels and ways.
10. Wearable Devices, Augmented and Virtual Reality
Finally, we come to cool and “hot” technologies. I kept them to the last, because I believe that they will play the smallest commercial role for entrepreneurs. They will be released in 2015, so, in any case, it will be extremely exciting to observe new marketing trends related to these technologies:
I hope you find time to test and evaluate at least some of these tools and they will be useful.
“My favorite reason for writing a blog is when I want to look into the future and try to predict the main trends in digital marketing next year. It seems to me that many marketers are eager to find out everything about the latest trends, methods and technologies of marketing.
Over the past few years, I have been making recommendations about trends, as I see them, based on an analysis of innovations in marketing technologies and a study of the opinions of Smart Insights readers about what is important for them.
When deciding whether there will be something in the trends, I do not just look at whether it looks “cool”. First of all, I am exploring the commercial benefits of a tool for online retailers. In the end, most of us are engaged in marketing in order to improve the business results of our customers or companies. Here is the forecast for last year. This year we also asked readers:
What digital marketing tool do you think will bring you the greatest effect in 2015?
So what are the results of the survey? The second year in a row leads the list of content marketing tools. But he was in one of the first places before the SMM and mobile marketing. In fact, he even rose to several positions due to the fact that SMM and mobile marketing reduced their sphere of influence as soon as market participants reduced their importance. It is important that Big Data is still in second place, although this year the excitement declined. I think this may be the reason for the introduction of data mining in companies in their marketing activities, especially when you consider that automation of marketing activities is in third place in the survey. In the last part of this article I will look at different tools for working with marketing analytics, reporting and data management. ”
Trends in Digital Marketing Tools and Technologies
Speaking about the trends of past years, I mainly studied innovations and trends in the use of top-level electronic marketing methods, such as content marketing, search, email and website work. But frankly, over the years, the basic principles have not changed so much. Therefore, this year, in my post about trends, I want to look at the tools and services that help in marketing.
All of these services are focused on analyzing data that is potentially important to the business. They cover a wide range from analytics to optimization of trading channels, but the first few are devoted to content marketing, as I believe it will be the most important and most interesting tool in the coming year.
10 key marketing services in 2015
Many trends force marketers to look for services, services, and software for managing, optimizing, and analyzing activities. Here is a list of useful tools that I have already presented to partners and clients at the art Insights Digital Impact marketing conference, the full presentation can be found here .
1. Tools for content management
A huge effect is given by the publication of micro and video content. Not surprisingly, the number of sites for such publications has increased and it’s difficult to manage all of them manually. And completely unnecessary, a lot of software is created specifically for the automation of these processes.
Here are three of them:
2. Tools for recommending, personalizing, retargeting and analyzing the effectiveness of content
Even if you have created great content, you still need to show it to the one who is interested in them. It will help dynamic recommendations of the most relevant content. For a long time, site personalization was used to properly configure online stores and display relevant products and offers for the client. But never before has this technology been so popular for personalizing content. Tools for this:
- idio (B2B and B2C content recommendation)
- Barilliance (personalization of content for e-commerce)
- Demandbase (B2B)
- Monetate (Ecommerce)
- Evergage (B2B and B2C)
3. Services for the distribution of content
Under the distribution of content here refers to organic and paid sharing through social networks. In this list of services for organic sharing:
It is amazing how few products on the market for paid distribution of content. One of the most popular in this sense is AdRoll. Maybe you can recommend such a service?
4. Tools for managing SEO, content and social media?
The question mark here is because for now this is an unattainable dream. The tools that I recommend here have emerged as SEO services for checking keywords and backlinks, but now they have added some features for working with social networks and content management. They also provide the opportunity for convenient work for several people on the same project. But their main function is SEO analytics.
5. Tools for integration API
API - a set of tools for integration between different platforms. He is the key factor in buying any implementation tool. There are no examples of specific tools. Only attempts by platform manufacturers to integrate other services into their own to increase its value. Especially good in this were CRM services, for example with Adobe Analytics (in the past Omniture).
6. Optimization of engagement and analysis of user behavior on the site.
Most companies use web analytics to track visits to their sites. The most popular free, but very powerful system for this is Google Analytics. In it you get information about the number of users, their source and the path to the site, but the problem and limitation is that this data cannot be segmented by user type. They are not intended to study a specific client or their group, to track the difference in the behavior of users coming from different devices, operating systems and browsers (although, recently, Universal analytics from Google has been making progress in this area). Below is a list of tools for sensitively monitoring the behavior of user groups or specific customers:
- Kissmetrics
- Mixpanel
- Chartbeat
- Ecommera (renamed OrderDynamics)
7. Feasible and understandable analytics
There is another limitation in Google Analytics and the services in paragraph 6. They require a lot of experience in analytics in order to understand how to use the provided data. In order to use them qualitatively, you need to know the right questions in advance, the answers to which you will look for in analytics, understand how to configure the tool, get and interpret multidimensional and complex reports. Only a specialist can quickly figure it out and really deeply understand such tools. Here tools that more clearly provide data will help:
8. From Conversion Optimization to Custom Path Optimization
We at Smart Insights are longtime fans of A / B and multivariate testing. Unfortunately, these great tools are focused on optimizing a specific page on the user's path, and not on improving his path on the site as a whole. Nevertheless, now there are many services that help to understand how, in general, the user behaves on the site and facilitate his path from landing to the ultimate goal.
The most popular tools for A / B testing:
Tools for tracking and analyzing the entire path of the site visitor:
9. Optimization of sales channels
. E-commerce management platforms focus on a large business that sells home delivery products, as well as on categories and products pages, as described in our Ecommerce Design Bible . Clavis Insights is a relatively new but already expensive mechanism that shows retailers and brands commercial analytics to help optimize sales channels and ways.
10. Wearable Devices, Augmented and Virtual Reality
Finally, we come to cool and “hot” technologies. I kept them to the last, because I believe that they will play the smallest commercial role for entrepreneurs. They will be released in 2015, so, in any case, it will be extremely exciting to observe new marketing trends related to these technologies:
- Apple Watch Apps
- Google Glass (at the time of writing, the GoogleGlass project was not yet announced)
- Facebook Oculus Rift
I hope you find time to test and evaluate at least some of these tools and they will be useful.