By Sue Brady
The New Year is sure to bring more change that will surprise and delight us users. Here’s my stab at six things I think will happen.
- The use of mobile customer service tools in call centers will explode. Cloud services in the call center environment has seen rapid adoption over the last couple of years, and that paves the way for the use of innovative customer service solutions. According to Frost and Sullivan, there were a dozen or so mergers/acquisitions in 2013 that pave the way for this development. Adopted tools will include more Siri-like services, and will also include location-specific help (‘I’m on 4th and Main. Where’s your closest service center?’).
- Snapchat will live to regret its Facebook $3 billion cash offer turndown. As it turns out, it’s also rumored that the CEO turned down an offer from Google valued at $4 billion. They will entertain offers but won’t get another one quite as sweet. Sure, the CEO is a young kid from a privileged background who may not care too much about wealth, but he turned down what sounded like a great deal, and you can be sure his investors care about wealth (as do his employees!).
- Google+ will continue to report high usage numbers, but will under-perform in all aspects of social engagement and lead generation in both B2B and B2C, except with helping SEO rankings on Google in general.
- Big data will continue to confound, but prove to be a goldmine for those who know how to use it. In order to handle big data, companies must understand their goals as well as have tools in place to do something with the data they collect. As more and more companies work out creative and impactful ways to use their data, their methodologies will be copied by others and using data will take on even more prominence. According to a CompTIA study of IT executives, 55% think data is critically important now, and 62% think it will be critically important in 2014. In the same study, they found that 8 in 10 execs agree/agree strongly to the statement: “if we could harness all of our data, we would be a much stronger business.”
- There will be a large merger between two existing social media platforms. This may be someone like slideshare merging with a video platform to enhance the one that they have or perhaps Pinterest doing the same. Short video is hot and gaining adoption. Look at the rise of Vine. It was founded in June, 2012 and has over 40 million users (now in 19 languages!). Plus there are newer players like Instagram Video (launched in June, 2013 to the 150 million Instagram users) and videos on Snapchat (launched video in February, 2013 to its 26 million users). Or perhaps this merger will in fact be a purchase of Snapchat by a new buyer.
- Attribution tools will take a huge leap forward because brands will adopt usage in increasingly great numbers. As more tools are developed that make attribution easier (read about that here) it makes sense that more companies will use them. And, adoption will happen because it’s the best way to value the ROI on multiple marketing touches.
What are your digital marketing predictions for 2014?
Digital Marketing Musings 