This has been a routine that’s been going on for far too long. For as long as anyone can remember, people love making lists of predictions for just about anything in the weeks leading up to the New Year. We know, because we do it too.
While doing it can be fun and in most cases, informative, some of the predictions in the world of marketing are just too clichéd to actually say anything of real relevance. Some just state the obvious, or some make predictions that have actually already happened, or they make predictions that simply border on the ridiculous. In any case, they are getting pretty annoying. Aren’t you just sick and tired of these online marketing predictions?
1. SEO will be dead and gone
Google may have made things a whole lot tougher for SEO professionals with all the algorithm changes it has implemented, but that doesn’t mean SEO will be dead. People, after all, will still be using search engines for the foreseeable future, and as long as search engines are in play, so will optimising for search.
If anything, all this SEO will be dead nonsense is all about raking in the page views, as far as I’m concerned.
2. Mobile will rule this year
Here’s news for guys who “predict” mobile will rule in 2014: It already has happened long before the calendar hit January 1, 2014. Millions of people already surf the net using their phones or tabs. We make financial transactions on them. We complain about and ridicule sites that aren’t mobile-optimised just yet. You don’t have to be Nostradamus to see that already happening.
3. Visual content will be all the rage in 2014
Predictions like this one are just as empty as the one about mobile ruling in 2014. Visuals are already the rage. The production of visual content has already been growing for years, as marketers already know that it is processed faster by the human brain than any kind of text you can come up with. So images, videos and infographics will not be dominating 2014; they already have done that in 2013 and in the few years before that.
4. Engagement will be the name of the game in social media
Sure, engaging your followers on social media would be great, but it will never be the be-all and end-all of social media marketing. For your metrics to actually move, you will have to find a balance between engaging your fans on social media, generating leads, broadcasting messages and driving traffic back to your business’ actual website.
5. The customer will control everything in the business relationship
Try telling that to the person who coined “The customer is always right”. Whatever your business may be, you are going about it all wrong if you think you’re the one holding the reins in the business relationship. Customers in general have always been in control since the beginning, and that should always be the case if you want to stay in business. As a matter of fact, customers have already become so powerful in recent years, thanks to technological advances that allow them to start a crisis or help you experience overnight success with just one Tweet or status.
Do you have other marketing predictions that you think have been done to death? Hit the comments and share them with us!