Top Digital Trends to watch out for in 2015

The Indian digital market today has become a cornucopia of exciting action with over 200 million people using social media space and more than 250 million smart phone users. In fact as a nation of consumers who primarily use search engines to frame purchase decisions, we rank 4^th in the world! Close to the heels of search engine marketing, is social networking that also accounts for a major chunk of digital marketing trends, and is expected to grow to phenomenal heights in 2015.

In Social Media, Million is just a Number!

By the turn of 2014 last year, India had reached an astonishing figure of 155 million mobile internet users with an impressive 100 Million mark for Facebook alone (http://www.digitalintheround.com/digital-marketing-trend-india-q1-2014/.

Digital marketers have instinctively been drawn towards the inherent potential of social media marketing, where every platform provides an opportunity to channelize information towards a particular target segment. Brand communications and content marketing constitute the key strategy-drivers for providing a high impetus to brands on the social media. Brands are engaging in powerful story-telling and witty ways to create that instant connect with consumers.

What Does 2015 has in store for us in terms of Digital Trends?

Digital Marketing has altered by leaps and bounds in all these years and if the companies want to stay in the game, they need to up the ante and create a seamless branding experience across all media channels. While customers have the option to access information across various channels, it is also a challenge for the marketers to tweak their campaigns as per the platforms. Here’s what we can expect in terms of digital trends for 2015:-

Content & Customized Marketing Will Lead

Digital marketers will retrace their steps and get back to the basics of evaluating and analyzing their target audience, a trend that has sadly declined in the past few years. Tailor made content and customized marketing campaigns have already reached a tipping point and the way further would be to re-prioritize resource allocation.

Value Added Selling Will Rule

Placing all your eggs in the ‘sales basket’ will no longer work. Selling alone will not make the cut and the consumers will start ignoring the ones that do nothing but sell. Marketers will now have to realign their resources and energies into adding more value to the service – very much digitized – along with the product that they are selling.

End to End Customer Experience

Digital marketing will take a deeper approach by shifting its focus from demand creation to providing an end-to-end solution to the consumer. The idea is to make it a journey and a continuous experience.

Emotional and Intellectual Connect Will Dominate

2015 is the year when digital marketing will face a paradigm shift and will gain acceptance as an ecosystem rather than being a marketing strategy. This ecosystem will integrate process of attracting, engaging and retaining the customers by giving them readily available access to information regarding what they want. Gone are the days when the marketers could get the customers on board by just preaching them. It is now about creating an excitement towards their brand that provides information and connects with the prospects at intellectual and emotional level.

Innovative Interaction Will Win

It is likely to see many large brands usurping media channels to gain a more loyal base of audience as end-user patience runs low, while competition is at an all time high. More human contact is expected through the intensive digital marketing strategies as the dull and boring campaigns stand no chance to sustain the mounting competition. It is the age of innovation and human interaction through video marketing and short, witty messages.

Transparency & Genuine Relationships A Must

Virtual story telling is the name of the game in emerging digital trends. This will not only help the brand stand out but will also help them engage with the target customers at a one-to-one level. Brands will now focus on creating genuine connections online if they want to earn trust and loyalty of their target customers.

Mobile Data Analyitcs Will Evolve

Mobile data will be the crowning glory of 2015 when it comes to digitization. It helps in eliminating barriers between receiving a message and then taking a subsequent action. Smart digital marketers should be able to use the mobile user base as the unifying principle to create effective strategies that can integrate marketing and human centric business models.

Youtube & Facebook

Facebook may continue to be the main tool when it comes to connecting with users, despite becoming a platform that will get more expensive to reach your use base, and will be shoulder to shoulder with Youtube to iwhere the secret to viral hits lies (http://www.digitalintheround.com/digital-marketing-trend-india-q1-2014/).

The Bottom Line

Digital trends will continue to reign supreme when it comes to 2015 and still be the preferred choice for the marketers to reach out to their target audience. However, to retain the loyalties of flippant consumers, it is imperative to keep quality of the marketing initiatives well-curated and thoroughly engage the audience by creating structured campaigns.