What will be the big focus for Digital Marketing in 2014

In late December 2012, the expectation that Mobile Advertising would be the biggest focus for the industry has proven correct. With the growing move to smart phones from desk-top computers for many sites, both these sites themselves and advertisers have during the year been focusing on improving digital mobile advertising. With mobile access said to exceed desktop access by the end of 2014 or 2015, there will continue to be a big push for this during the coming year.

So what will be the biggest focus for 2014? A survey recently conducted suggested the following:

So the majority think it will be a push towards content marketing. Everyone keeps talking about it- but what exactly is content marketing? This definition seems to work: Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

The emphasis here is relevant. In order for digital advertising to become increasingly effective, the advertisements need to be relevant not just to the individual but narrowed down even further, to the time of day. If you have an individual who likes shopping – a targeted email sent at night will not be as successful as one in the middle of a work day (and bearing in mind the different time zones).

The second most popular option for 2014 was Big Data. This is a term which appears to be banded around quite frequently. But again, what exactly is Big Data? Wikipedia gives the definition “Big data is the term for a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications.” Through the internet, companies have managed to amass a huge amount of data on individuals, their habits, jobs etc which they never had access before. How to use this data effectively to market to people is the issue which people are starting to grapple with.