Online marketing what lies ahead in 2014

Online marketing experienced major changes during 2013, and if we look at the changes that we witnessed, we can analyze and develop our strategy for the rest of 2014, if you want your website to be competitive in the online world. There are couple of trends that will have huge impact during 2014.

Content marketing – something that is more important than ever

Competition in the content marketing world is vicious, marketers and companies continue to develop more valuable content that ever since technologies evolve rapidly and it is more difficult than ever to attract the consumer attention. The content marketing during 2014 will present to us how important is the developing of a valuable content. Google on other hand, continuously update its quality in the search results in terms of content monitoring and quality, and it surely giving more credits to pages with more valuable content. We can only expect further improvements from Google updates like Panda and Penguin in term of quality web content.

Multiple channels content distribution

During 2014 it is more important than ever to integrate your marketing efforts and distribute your content across multiple channels. Consuming is changing rapidly and it is absolutely essential to provide your customer experience that will satisfy him on different channels. This brand experience includes a solid online and offline marketing campaign in which they both compliment each other for greater user experience, and also to make sure that customer will get your unique message.

And it seems that now it is very important time when you must spend resources to create quality content that will lead to increasing your brand awareness and this will also lead to creating a positive brand image, attracting links, building your online presence and community for your customers.

Social networks investment is a must

For some years we are witnessing how important social networks are for any online strategy. The initial craze about Facebook and Twitter is leading to creating more visual social networks like Pinterest and Instagram which take a big part in nowadays online marketing world, which makes them really important during 2014. There are several case studies and official statements that show us that the most successful businesses are active in an average of 5 or more social networks. We will also witness how networks like Instagram will continue to gain more strength on the online marketing scene and it also expected for networks like LinkedIn to increase its popularity among B2B businesses.

Google+

Google+ is something that you need to watch also since it is also increasing its popularity and positions and it is becoming a big factor that will also have influence on your positions in the search engines like Google. Investing time and effort in this network will become something essential for marketers, since also Google+ is more orientated to grow a business mind community.

E-commerce key factors in online marketing

It is important for you to set and authorship account and link it to your Google+. Authorship is factor that is already becoming more and more important in the SERPs and also it have big impact on your Author rank. Google +1 is something that is already implemented in the google algorithm when it comes to evaluating of your social content, this is something that have strong impact and it is a must for your online strategy.

Advertising and Inbound Marketing

The traditional marketing focused on interacting with the user and offering him a certain product or service is something that is getting back in the online marketing world. The new and absolutely successful way of making a campaign will actually involve:

Inbound marketing Content marketing SEO Social media marketing

Inbound marketing services are growing fast and with this increase will also open a market for the software developers because it will require a specific kind of software.

The inbound marketing attracts 54% more leads that the traditional marketing and the average cost for getting a lead with inbound marketing is 61% lower that cost for lead with a traditional marketing. Clearly we can see that the winning and most effective formula for now is the inbound marketing.

The mobile factor in the online marketing

Mobile is a major factor in todays marketing strategy. In many cases and it is becoming more and more a trend, we can see how most of the campaigns have around 40% or more opening rates from mobile devices. In the United States alone half of the population owns a smartphone

and at least one third have a tablet and it is expected this data to increase during 2014. Optimizing your website for mobile devices it is absolutely a must. According to Google 61% of mobile users which lands on an optimized mobile doesn't leave it immediately but returns to it on a other device like PC so it is more readable. Noticing such a behavior in users Google is rewarding those pages which are optimized for mobile devices and it is implementing changes to give more credits to websites in the SERPS which are mobile optimized. The mobile optimization of a site is something that is becoming very important.

Understanding Search Engines

There are several changes in the google algorithm like the Hummingbird updates which are more focused around the online marketing. The main objective of this updated is to focus on user understanding when performing a given search. Basically this is a change in the traditional concept of what we had for the search engines queries and now it more focus on directly asking questions rather to give values only on keywords. This will have bigger importance for search engines structures, of course the SEO strategies will have to adapt to this new approach, this will mean focusing more on the user and knowing him through those questions.

The most important factors even if we are only watching the evolving of the online marketing world are easy to be noticed. A strong mobile optimization, higher social media presence and high quality content will become the foundation of any online marketing strategy and we must be prepared.