This article is by Troy Ireland, managing partner at Digital Current, a conversion-based digital-marketing agency specializing in content marketing and SEO.
’Tis the season to wax poetic about the year we are leaving behind and to make grandiose predictions about the year ahead. While I enjoy these endeavors as much as anyone, isn’t it a lot more fun to analyze the projections that went bust?
Last January, there was a blizzard of buzz about digital marketing—and for good reason. Those of us in this arena are experiencing a heady, exciting time. The technology is finally sharp and readily available, and hoards of hungry marketers are eager to test the wares, experiment with their words and ideas and attempt to push the trends to the next level. Some of these ideas, such as people-based research, brand advocacy and real-time marketing, achieved enormous breakthroughs this past year.
Other predictions, well, they completely fizzled, such as those predicting the death of banner ads. (Anyone with a computer knows the state of that one). Or what about wearables? A year ago, everyone was aflutter with the notion that Google Glass would launch a wearable marketing craze. That failed. We may, however, soon see wearables coming back to the forefront with the pending Apple Watch—time will tell how consumers ultimately take to this product—and its many current and pending competitors.
Some predictions weren’t all hot air, but they never quite got off the ground. For instance, many predicted 2014 would be the year native advertising would take off. While we are pretty darn close, it certainly hasn’t hit mainstream yet. That, I believe, will come in 2015 (there’s my prediction). In fact, it seems we are at just the beginning of a golden age for native advertising and brand publishing. By the end of 2014, BI Intelligence data shows native ad spending will have hit approximately $7.9 billion—and it will grow to $21 billion by 2018.
Growth hacking and “mobile-first design” are two more predictions still hovering on the verge of success. Growth hacking is experiencing great success with startups but, again, it hasn’t quite broken into mainstream yet. And, as designers are still trying to figure out how to cram everything into mobile, holiday sales derived from “mobile-first design” have been sluggish.
Whacking at failed predictions is a lot more enjoyable as party banter, so I asked a few online marketing experts to share their thoughts on prophecies (their own and otherwise) that never quite materialized in 2014:
Neil Patel (co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics): “My biggest prediction for 2014 was that extremely thorough content such as 10,000—if not 30,000 word guides—would be extremely popular. And although people did enjoy reading these guides, they weren’t much more popular than a thorough blog post. The main reason the predication failed was because it was information overload. It’s rare for people to be able to sit down and read 30,000 words, which is roughly the same length as a short book.”
Brian Honigman (marketing consultant, writer, speaker): “The success of Oreo's Super Bowl blackout tweet of 2013 had many marketers and agency talking heads predict a continued focus on real-time marketing in 2014 in order for brands to stand out to consumers. Fortunately, real-time marketing has not been the golden ticket to success with content and social like many marketers predicted, although it had many moments of glory throughout the year. Marketing in real-time can be a powerful approach to tying your brand into the relevant conversations of your audience, but relying too heavily on any tactic or strategy is how businesses crash and burn online. The right approach to real-time marketing is understanding how it works and why, then bending these rules to best match your organization's offerings and audience. Maybe real-time marketing will become more prevalent in 2015, it just didn't move to prominence this year like many had claimed it would.”
Ann Handley (author, speaker and digital marketing guru): “2014 was supposed to be the year of short-form, micro- and visual content. That turned out to be only partly true. In truth, writing and long-form content still matter more now than ever. Micro-content and visual content are important, but they are in addition to long-form content...not instead of. Writing and story still are the fuel for any content engine. Also—I thought G+ would be dead and buried in 2014. But it's still kickin'. So what do I know?”
Rand Fishkin (Wizard of Moz): “I did make some predictions for SEO in 2014 back at the beginning of the year (as I do every year): http://moz.com/blog/6-predictions-for-the-marketing-world-in-2014. While I got a few right, I also got some very wrong, including my prediction that Google would algorithmically target and publicly denounce embeddable badges/widgets. I'm surprised they haven't done so, but perhaps one of the reasons is that widespread adoption of embedded content is, in fact, a positive signal that they don't wish to discount. The other possibility is that they've taken action to remove the value from these links, but haven't promoted that fact publicly.”
I would love to hear what other marketers feel didn’t work in digital this past year—and why. Please share your comments below.
