Digital Marketing Trends-2013



Digital Marketing Trends-2013


Though the mandate of this blog was to steer very clear of this type of content, I am posting this nonetheless. The objective of capturing “Key Digital Trends for 2013” is just to highlight emerging ideas/areas, which might be useful to know for marketing professionals. This list does feature some of the usual suspects [mobile, search (oh yes, we all have heard that, before)].

Presented here is a short summary of the Key Digital Trends 2013 released by all major platforms, followed by a short marketing impact statement.

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
#1: Search—And the way it is changing

According to data presented in Digital Trends 2013:
  • there is a discernable change in search behaviour, with orientation toward longer keyword searches; for exact data points refer http://ex.pn/YKO4nt.
  • search is becoming more complex, sophisticated, and detailed
  • search engines are transitioning to content portals rather than being pure navigational tools

Source: Digital Trends, 2013, Experian, http://ex.pn/YKO4nt.


Relevance for Marketers: Though the increase in percentage points for longer keyword searches may not be tectonic, increasing value creation will happen by search engines themselves. As pointed out in the report, as users cease to view search engines as pure navigational tools and more as content gateways, marketers need to invest renewed marketing focus & budgets on search engine marketing. Again, access to data that proves how search is positioned within the digital marketing value chain would be critical but hard to get. Useful to mention here would be the McKinsey’s report, The Impact of Internet Technologies: Search (2011), which captures the economic value generated by search (I couldn’t locate a more recent report on this).

#2 Big Data—Better Results

It would have been impossible to ignore this! Though data has always remained the backbone of marketing architecture, only now do we have such wealth of rich, impactful data.
Big Data refers to data sets whose volume, variety, velocity and complexity make it impossible for current databases and architectures to store and manage (IDC Report, http://bit.ly/ZT9y0N). And marketers have loads of this, what with endless social data, campaign reporting data, analytic reports.
Some facts:

Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created
90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone!

Random, but true!

IDC. “Big Data Analytics: Future Architectures, Skills and Roadmaps for the CIO,” September 2011, 

Big data, is big. And marketers can use it to create business value.

Relevance for Marketers: Effective data mining by marketers could lead to unlocking significant value, for example, channel optimisation (for some products, the best channels may simply not be digital, contrary to our bias). One of my current interests is to develop marketing use cases for big data. A small step for big data!

#3: Mobile

Its 2013, and we are still talking about this? Yes, and this is because mobile is still second (probably, the weaker channel, too) for most companies. Till the time GT-Market becomes GT-Mobile, we’d still be talking about this. Even though websites are increasingly mobile optimised, the consumer mobile experience needs to outrank and outperform the experience across all other devices.

Source: 13 Major Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing Insights for CMOs, cmo.com.

Relevance for Marketers: This wouldn’t work for everyone obviously, but for those marketers whose target group/products are in this space, the question to ask would be “How Would It Look on Mobile?”, and I have started using this as some of my TG is highly internet savvy (mobile being the primary consumption device, computers are just passé for them). How would this marketing campaign look like on mobile? How would this website be on mobile? Can I see this call-to-action on mobile?



#4: Cross channel optimisation

Utopian? Although marketing professionals are doing this, with varying degrees of inefficiencies, if there is a perfect solution that renders 100% integration for my complex set of marketing requirements, then I am not aware of it (and need to know!)

Relevance for Marketers: Most marketing professionals would agree that this would be the single most life-altering experience for them (it would be for me). After struggling with one set of tools each for each activity, this would, make life in the digital stratosphere easy.

# 5: Email

This might seem like a marketing dinosaur here, but it is and will remain one of the most important tools that a digital marketer employs. Content, delivery and consumption can all alter the email experience for users.

Source: Digital Trends, 2013, Experian,

Relevance for Marketers: Can marketers re-look at the way an email is delivered & consumed? Can personalised email experiences be created to drive richer more meaningful interactions with customers? More on this, in the next post.


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