Is your content marketing plan considered shareworthy content or searchworthy? Determining the goal for content is critical to ensure driving successful results. While both social media and search engine optimization (SEO) may have similarities in content marketing, there are a few nuances to consider. Determining your goal up front can help shape the type of content to be developed.

I was recently reading postings on Inbound.com when I ran across a discussion on clickbait. One of the founders of HubSpot was active in the discussion and it really caught my interest. Clickbait wasn’t a term I had significant familiarity with, but the terminology seemed to speak for itself. According to Wikipedia, clickbait is a term describing web content that is aimed at generating action, even at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines to attract click-throughs and encourage forwarding of the material.

2014 saw a maturation of the content marketing industry as it both grew and evolved. In addition to ever-increasing mobile usage by consumers and major search engine algorithm changes, a need for multi channel and cross-platform marketing emerged. Many of the larger digital marketing trends developed throughout 2014 will likely remain important components to modern marketing strategies, and studying these marketing facts can give a digital marketer an educated jumping off point for the new year. Here are the top five digital market trends that emerged last year.

Although LinkedIn was originally established for individual-to-individual communications, it has grown to be a viable business-to-business (B2B) marketing platform. LinkedIn isn’t just a networking resource; it’s a hub that many professionals go to for news and for general information related to their industry. As a result, LinkedIn has grown to become a must for B2B marketing organizations.

While content marketing remains one of the most effective methods of B2B messaging, many companies find their digital marketing campaigns are going unanswered. A staggering 86% of B2B marketers report using content marketing, while only 38% of them believe their marketing is effective.¹ Most business people are inundated with dozens if not hundreds of messages every day.
Business people quickly learn to avoid anything that appears to be too sales-oriented. This decrease in content marketing effectiveness may be tied to a new report that states one in three B2B marketers² view their content marketing as focused on their company rather than their customer.

Social media is the No.1 activity on the Internet, according to Fast Company.¹ Social media is constantly evolving, with new social media outlets popping up and marketers in a constant intellectual arms race to keep up with the change.

As 2015 gets underway, businesses begin to evaluate their marketing plan and which agencies are best suited to help them achieve their goals. With technology continuously changing at the speed of light, agencies that know how to traverse the digital landscape will be standing in the forefront of 2015. As with every new year, there will undoubtedly come a wave of fads and trends for the marketing community. Below is a list of five digital marketing trends to watch out for in 2015.

Content marketing 2.0
For the past few years, agencies have been telling their clients to get on board with content marketing. Content marketing has become a channel most businesses know they need to invest in. In fact, a recent survey found that 83% of B2B marketers use content marketing.¹ The problem, though, is that many businesses don’t have a documented content marketing strategy. In 2015, the role of content will evolve to focus on areas such as:

Email marketing is one of the more successful channels for communicating with consumers. With over 91% of consumers using email at least once a day,¹ and with an average return of $44.25 for every $1 spent on email marketing,² it makes sense to target consumers through their digital inbox. But it's not enough to just send an email blast out to a targeted list. With over 51% of email opens occurring on a mobile device,³ it is important to develop mobile optimized emails.

In today's web-connected society, marketers are constantly finding ways to reach consumers online. Display ads used to be one of the most trusted weapons in a marketer's online arsenal. Sadly, the effectiveness of online display ads has been called into question. With so many online ads being served to customers on a daily basis, many consumers have "banner-ad blindness." According to DoubleClick, the average banner ad has only a 0.1% click-through rate.¹ When you factor in that 50% of clicks on mobile display ads are accidental, the number of viable click-throughs is even smaller.² So if display ads are no longer engaging consumers as effectively as we'd like, what's the solution? Many marketers and advertisers are looking to native advertising for the answer.

Many marketers are challenged by the need to constantly update their website. Updates for new products and services, updates for new areas of focus, technical updates, legal updates, enhancing the transactional nature of the site—the list goes on and on. The reality is that most companies also find nuances that they’d like to change in their website before they can even complete a massive overhaul. While there are times when a full redesign can be effective, it may not always be necessary.