It's that time again when we review our achievements from the past year - how did we perform during 2012? What results were achieved? Was this a good or bad year for us? Most of us look forward to a new year with much gusto and positivity. The following lists what I predict will shape digital marketing and IT for the coming 12 months:
1. Digital Channel Convergence
Digital channel convergence the web, big data, analytics, mobile and social will become more seamless in 2013. As more organisations attempt to offer an integrated approach to digital and prove a return on investment through seamless tracking.
2. Customer centric experience
We all know that that the customer is king, but how many organisations truly follow through on this approach? 2013 will see more organisations auditing customer journeys and mapping to profitability. Adopting a customer centric for your most profitable customers is essential during 2013.
3. Consumerisation of IT thinking
Consumerisation of IT thinking beyond BYOD within the workplace will be essential, there will be increased pressure on CIOs to adopt technologies into daily operations and embrace new social and collaboration tools. We will see wireless everywhere with mass adoption in retail and transportation, some organisations will choose to operate this as a revenue stream others will use this as a value add for its customers. As a result of wireless everywhere security attacks will be on the increase.
4. Big Data
Big data will still be a talking point in 2013; more data will be collected and processed than ever before. It's estimated that in 2013, we will produce 4 Zeta bytes of new data. There will be significant investments made in social data and how this can benefit the organisation. The key will be knowing what data to utilise.
5. Price sensitivity
There will be more pressure on profit margins, as end users search for value. Voucher, discount and comparison websites will see an increase in usage, with 9 out 10 people already thinking frugality is cool. So, providing customer value in this economic climate will be the winning strategy during 2013.
6. Social Businesses
Be gone the days of social media broadcasting, organisations will look at ways to create a two dialogue with influencers and purchasers therefore becoming social businesses. Understanding the social channel will be essential, don't leave this valuable communication channel for inexperienced employees to handle.
7. Touchless Payments
Touchless payments have been around for some time, more adoption is expected in 2013. ABI Research predicted that dollars spent using NFC mobile payment systems will break the $100 billion mark in 2016.
8. Television Commerce
Television commerce (t-commerce) with more householders having internet enabled TVs we'll see this traditional medium being utilised as a revenue channel rather than an advertising medium. Purchasing via smart TVs will start to become more common place.
9. Increase in digital education and awareness
Assumptions that digital natives know how to implement online/social strategies is wrong, skill uplifting is required. Gone are the days of the marketing project manager.
10. Humanise the Brand
Finally in 2013 we will see more brands attempting to "Humanise the brand" be that through more relationship marketing, one to one account management or just reaching out to customers online and showing a desire to listen and value users within the social channels.
There are probably more trends that will happen in 2013, which I haven't documented within this list; it merely documents the top ten trends I think will affect digital marketing and IT over the coming year.
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