Digital Marketing Trends: Glance At 2012 And Outlook For 2013

In 2012 we saw a very rapid growth of social networks across the digital world as well as a major change in the brand perspectives in social media: more C-level execs started to realize the power of social media and its value for business. Summarizing the key digital marketing trends, industry thought leaders point to:

• Social media integration battles
• Real-time brands
• Pre-mobile era
• Mobile and video

The real-time era has a dramatic impact not only on how people interact and communicate, but on the way media organizations and individuals discover, consume and share information. Brands finally got the power of being real-time and this only became possible thanks to the massive uptake of tablets, smartphones and wireless technologies. And although each new year seems to be declared the year of mobile, 2012 was the year of cross-platform mobile. “In 2012 we saw lots of experimentation with mobile and mobile as a component of a broader strategy,” says Jonathan Gardner, Director of Communications at Vibrant Media. “Second-screen apps such as Shazam and Viggle started to get a lot of attention and show how the phone can play a role in connecting with and augmenting a broadcast experience.”

2013 will indisputably be the year of mobile marketing! According to Jonathon Gardner, this year marketers will see:

• New and innovative ad/marketing products from established mobile/social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare
• Mobile as a budget bucket with a great fund allocation among ad agencies
• Deeper integration of branded content into social media experiences
• The “viewability” challenge that brands are still facing will be a huge focus and a huge opportunity
• Going beyond “the like” towards content monetization

Fredrik Bernsel, Commercial Director, Partners, EMEA, Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn, adds in:

• Integrated marketing, i.e. strategic and creative campaigns span over several media channels such as social, outdoors, etc.
• B2B social media and mobile marketing as a result of the executives’ understanding of social media and mobile value, and word of mouth recommendations

Simon Kaastrup-Olsen, Engagement Manager at Ciklum Services & Consulting Office, supports the latter prediction. “The initial wave of companies moving into the mobile app space was part of the “App Gold Rush” in the B2C market space. Often these companies were early start-ups and SMEs looking to be on the platform to push associated services and products, but not converting their main business onto this new platform. It was very marketing driven and games driven. What we’ll see as a growing trend in 2013 is a growth in business moving their core offering onto the mobile platform, to make it accessible there as well. This is in line with their consumers’ needs, as they have now adopted smartphones.”

It’s pretty clear that to stay competitive in a mobile driven marketing world brands will have to:

• Create unique mobile experiences for customers that wouldn’t merely replicate what has already been done on desktops, and
• Unify cross-platform marketing much more tightly and with better integration.

To help marketing and digital media agencies better shape mobile trends and offer their clients state-of-the-art and truly innovative mobile web solutions, Ciklum has joined forces with our Development and Solutions Partner Netbiscuits to go to market together with a compelling value proposition. I encourage you to visit our Wall of Noise to learn more about the offering and what makes it really unique.

Source: sosyalmedya.co, 2012

About Viktor Bogdanov, PR Manager at Ciklum (53 Posts)

Viktor has 7+ years of online marketing and PR experience and specializes in content management, copywriting, tech blogging, market research, SMM and screenwriting.