With 2015 just around the corner, it’s time to look back at 2014 and what’s happened in marketing over the course of the year. One of the biggest trends we’ve noticed is that marketing teams are working harder to defend their spend and demonstrate ROI on all their efforts. Other important trends have included an increased focus on social and mobile marketing, the growing importance of quality content and advances in marketing technology.
Read on to learn more about the terms, trends, technology, successes and failures that have marked 2014.
- 10 Words that Defined Marketing in 2014. iMedia Connection: “Attribution. This ties in part to another term that probably should be on this list too — big data. But unlike big data, attribution is a more manageable concept — albeit a tricky one. But this year, even marketers who have no idea how to achieve proper attribution across channels at least knew they needed to pretend to be figuring it out. The C-suite is no longer content to throw money at multiple digital channels and assume that, somewhere in there, good things will happen. No. They’re starting to ask smarter questions. Is our social media spending really moving the needle? What if we increase our paid search spend instead? Where are the conversions really happening? They have questions. To date, many of us have not had answers. Attribution is complex — just like a customer’s path to purchase. But we can’t hide from it any longer.”
- Top 10 Marketing Moments of 2014. Media Week: “Balancing the demands of freedom of expression with the right to privacy remained at the top of the marketing agenda in 2014. The ‘right to be forgotten’ was recognised in May by the European Court of Justice. Under the ruling, individuals may request that search engines operating in Europe take down links to articles about them. Reactions to it have bordered on the hysterical, with MailOnline publisher Martin Clark claiming that ‘de-linking’ was ‘the equivalent of going into libraries and burning books you don’t like’. The change puts search engines such as Google in the impossible position of judge and jury, in that it will be required to make specific decisions about whether or not to link to content.”
- The Top 10 Marketing Mishaps of 2014. Media Week: “In a monumental display of corporate arrogance, Apple ‘gifted’ all its iTunes customers with the U2 album Songs of Innocence to celebrate the launch of the iPhone 6 in September. The U2 page set up on Apple’s website triumphantly declared: ‘Never before have so many people owned one album, let alone on the day of its release.’ What it omitted to mention, and Apple had seemingly deemed to be a minor detail, was that none of these 500m customers had actually chosen to download the album. After a major customer outcry, Apple had to rush out a special tool that could be used to delete the album and remove it from the user’s purchase history.”
- 104 Fascinating Social Media and Marketing Statistics for 2014 (and 2015). Webbiquity: “Looking at marketing surveys and studies from the past year, a few trends are clear, among them that buyers are firmly (and increasingly) in control of the purchase cycle. They prefer searching to being found, and will often be close to their final decision point before talking to a salesperson. In response, marketers are producing an increasing amount and variety of content to support all stages of the decision process. They’re distributing and promoting this content through all channels in the web presence optimization (WPO) model, to maximize their opportunities to be “found” online when buyers are looking.”
- Deciphered: 12 of the Biggest Tech Developments for Marketers in 2014. Marketing: “In September, Barclays unveiled a scanner that reads vein patterns in the user’s finger to authenticate customers who want to log in to their online accounts. The device plugs into a PC via a USB port, and gives the customer access without a password or PIN. The technology – a first for the UK, although similar systems are in operation elsewhere – is different from standard biometric scanners, in that it examines vein patterns rather than fingerprints. The scanner, which will be available initially only to corporate customers, is due to roll out next year.”
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