Advertorial Makes a Comeback
Although the future looks bright for new technology in social media marketing, that doesn’t mean that some older trends are forgotten for good. In fact, one such trend is about to make a comeback in 2014 and that's native advertising and sponsorship, or advertorials.Late back in the 50's and 60's, TV shows used to be interrupted by short commercials from sponsors. This was a trend that gradually started to fall and then completely disappear for decades. Some of you may even remember the popular short lines such as ''this show was brought to you by…'', that is the integrated advertising trend about to make a swift comeback.
Most companies are already looking to make Advertorial 2.0 a part of their standard marketing campaign. Social media is no longer considered to be a free way of doing marketing. Monetization in 2013 has already proven that, seeing as how many sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Instagram require you to pay for your advertising.
Employee Advocacy
Employee advocacy stirred up passions in the previous years, and now it looks to make itself a standard trend in marketing campaigns.Companies are always looking for new ways to expand their marketing reach and employee advocacy seems like a very practical and efficient way of doing so. Why should companies limit themselves to marketing agencies and social media experts when employees can help out as well? Imagine a business with a sales and marketing team of 20 workers. Then, the company will advertise not only through the corporate account but through another 20 people.
Creating a fruitful employee advocacy strategy can be challenging, but if enough time and effort is put into realizing this idea, it will pay off in the long run. Besides, we are witnessing an evolution in employee advocacy platforms that will make the next step even easier.
The Rise of Fusion Marketing Dashboards
While fusion marketing is a concept familiar to many marketing experts, we haven’t yet seen a popular dashboard that is available to all marketers and companies in the social media world.The key is to find the best way to integrate all those aspects of traditional marketing with modern marketing tools. As the trend is becoming very popular we should expect to see many attempts in creating the perfect dashboard that would make the process of fusion marketing easier.
HubSpot and Marketo are the two most popular marketing hubs for now, but seeing as how their availability is pretty limited, new more affordable and accessible dashboards will have to come in 2014.
A Change in Social Storytelling
A constant problem in many companies is adapting marketing strategies to customer demands and expectations of the modern age. These new trends in marketing don’t often match with the companies' identity and existing cultures.One way out of this predicament was changing the marketing strategy while leaving the organization intact. However, demands for transparency began to rise and companies soon started to reflect their true identity in their marketing.
This leads us to conclude that 2014 will see the rise of coherent social storytelling. This will affect the way consumers see the company. Imagine that marketing is a way of telling a story to people who are interested (potential clients). What marketing used to do was focusing on the telling, rather than the story itself. Now that transparency is a demand, this change in storytelling focuses on the story itself, or in other words, it focuses on the brand.
Introducing Interactive Video
Video marketing has been pretty one sided ever since it originated in the 50's. A company makes a video, and the people watch it. There was no interaction and it was pretty passive. With the rise of social media platforms in the previous years we witnessed a drastic change in what was considered to be marketing. People were no longer idle observers and they could interact with brands and products. However, when it comes to videos themselves, they still remained fairly passive. That is why we expect to see interactive features in videos shared not only on social media networks but everywhere on the net.So, when it comes to marketing in 2014, it is about time to start using social media and follow trends to make your business grow.
About author:
This post was written by Katrina Barrow. She is passionate about social media, internet marketing, creative advertising and small business marketing trends.
Image credit: brandwatch
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