Consumers are smarter and more vocal than ever before when it comes to their favorite brands. No longer are the storytelling controls in marketer’s hands, the end-user and consumer can jump in at any time and take over the reins. For marketers, this means a shift to more focused branding and the necessity for more refined tools to measure any initiative’s effectiveness. 2014’s theme is going to be all about the individual and the focus on providing specifically tailored brand stories. These predictions for 2014 represent an acknowledgement of the shift away from the masses and toward the micro niche. Here are our internet marketing predictions for 2014

1. What’s on Your Marketing Radar this year?
January 2014

2. 2014 - it’s all about the
individual & tailored
brand stories.
Consumers are smarter and more vocal than ever before. No longer
are the storytelling controls in marketer’s hands, the end-user and
consumer can jump in at any time and take over. For marketers, this
means a shift to more focused branding and the need for more
refined tools to measure any initiative’s effectiveness.
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3. Top internet marketing predictions for 2014
 Customer Advocacy
Becomes Crucial
 Big Data Leverage Will
Be Possible for Smaller
Businesses
 Mobile Marketing Explodes
 Segmentation Makes
Marketing Automation a
Necessity
 Video Marketing Gains
 Google+ Stops Biding Its
Dominance
Time
 Content Remains King
 Social Signals Beat
 Business Blogging Will
Backlinks for Top
Rise
Rankings
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4. Customer Advocacy Becomes Crucial
 Find the customers who love your brand, reward
them, and encourage them to advocate for you
 More companies are creating specific roles to head
up customer advocacy programs
 Salesforce1 Customer Platform can help
 There’s too much noise for a single voice to cut
through the crowd, brands need to build their army
of advocates
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5. Big Data Leverage Will Be Possible for Smaller Businesses
 Users are generating more and more valuable
marketing data every second
 Companies that leverage data will have a
competitive advantage and stronger customer
advocacy
 Now there are “Big-Data-as-a-service” companies
sprouting up that put the power of Big Data into
your hands
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6. Google+ Stops Biding Its Time
 Google has been slowly integrating its services
under Google+
 One of the biggest rollouts was requiring a G+
account to post comments on YouTube
 Seeing signs that they are ranking visible comments
in YouTube based on G+ activities
 Study by SearchMetrics concludes that sharing on
Google will overtake Facebook by 2016
 If Facebook stumbles, watch for a possible victory
for Google in the social media world
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7. Social Signals Beat Backlinks for Top Rankings
 For years, Google’s primary way of measuring was
through backlinks
 Google has been experimenting with social signal
measurement
 We believe that social media signals will outrank
the importance of backlinks
 It may be time for a wakeup call if you’ve been
betting on backlinks
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8. Mobile Marketing Explodes
 Android holds an impressive share of the
smartphone market
 Apple and Windows phones are still in the running
 As mobile platforms becomes better and better,
marketing toward mobile phone users will in turn
become better
 Mobile usage is an undeniable factor in interacting
with content
 Marketers need to accept this reality and move
mobile optimization up on their priority lists
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9. Segmentation Makes Marketing Automation a Necessity
 Consumers are becoming smarter and expect more
of a one-on-one experience with brands
 Marketers will have to turn away from larger
demographics to very tightly defined ones
 Need to segment will require an increase in usage
of marketing automation techniques and tools
 As the market continues to fracture into finer and
finer categories, expect new automation strategies
and platforms to pop up
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10. Video Marketing Gains Dominance
 Of the top 10 fastest growing apps in the world,
four are visually based - Vine, Flickr, Instagram and
YouTube.
 Vine grew 403% from the first part to the second
part of 2013
 Video will only grow over the course of the coming
year
 As social media channels and content platforms
improve, more emphasis needs to be placed on
visual content
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11. Content Remains King
 73% of people prefer to get information about an
organization through articles, rather than
traditional ads
 61% of people feel better about companies that
deliver custom content and are more likely to buy
from them
 Entertaining, storytelling, informative content will
triumph over bland, run of the mill content
 Key to winning over new customers will be a focus
on authentic and relevant content
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12. Business Blogging Will Rise
 61% of US consumers have made a purchase based
on a blog post
 Old advertising portals are also forcing shifts
toward quality instead of quantity
 A marketer never has to worry about the algorithm
changing on a business blog
 Brands need to produce excellent, highly-relevant
content in order to dominate
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13. Each year brings about
new challenges for
marketers.
The marketers who stand out in 2014 are the ones who take
advantage of the shifting tides.
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