As a small business owner, what digital marketing should you incorporate into your marketing mix for 2015? A recent Small Business Trends article nicely summarized the trends that will help you reach customers on the channels they prefer most. Those trends are as follows:

  1. Multi-touch attribution – Getting a multi-touch attribution system in place will ensure you aren’t missing out on valuable data that lets you know exactly where you’re reaching customers (i.e. Facebook, Google Adwords, etc.). In other words, you’ll know whether your paid Facebook ads are giving you as much bang for your buck as your Google Adwords.
  2. Humor – Millennial shoppers, also called “the purchasing generation”, tend to research before they buy using four or more sources. Additionally, they are more likely to respond to humor and transparency in messaging versus a traditional sales pitch. Marketers who want to reach this audience should not shy away from humor and more conversational language in their campaigns. After all, small-to-medium-sized business owners have more flexibility to insert a little fun into their messaging.
  3. Combination of paid and owned outreach – With so much content being produced today, marketers are urged to focus on how their target audience is consuming the content. Paid and viral marketing will complement each other and analytics will be essential to uncover just exactly how customers are getting to your content.
  4. Single customer experience – Consumers today don’t have the time or attention span to seek out brands. They expect the reverse. Therefore, unified brand messaging across all platforms will become more important than ever.
  5. Mobile – As people are becoming more attached to their mobile devices, marketers are wise to optimize their marketing messages so they can be easily visible on a variety of devices.

Reference:

Patel, Sujan. “5 Ways Digital Marketing Will Change in the Coming Year”. Smallbiztends.com. 12/8/2014.