Every year, as the calendar starts to wind down, we look to the new year with great hope and optimism. Maybe the coming year is the year when brands start to “market like the year we are in” as Gary Vaynercheck has eloquently said.
In my top marketing predictions for 2011, I predicted that marketing automation would become a required part of the marketing technology stack (right), that marketing attribution would become a hot topic (not so right), Display media would make big budget gains (right) that we would stop asking about social media ROI (not so right) and that we would start to see a shift to content marketing (slow start but right.)
My 2012 Marketing predictions included CMOs struggling with talent (right), marketing increased focus on supporting sales (dead wrong), I also talked about Content Marketing delivered via social (right), augmented reality marketing (dead wrong) and also predicted a rise in video production from brands (right).
My 2013 Marketing Predictions included bets that content marketing conversations would mature. I thought branded content hubs would start to proliferate as paid budgets shifted to owned media. I also predicted the need for content strategists, social sales leaders and data scientists. Not a bad year for predictions?
For 2014, my marketing predictions were all about content, data and culture. I bet correctly that we would see more investment in content marketing, big data and marketing technology in general. I also predicted that HR would become the marketer of the employer brand which is a long term and slowly emerging trend that is hard to ignore.
