In my last blog post, I talked about how you can accelerate your inbound marketing efforts by combining them with outbound marketing tactics. Business Insider just released its 2014 Future of Digital slide deck. I’ve reviewed it, and it reveals a ton of hard data to support a lot of things most of us already know:
- Mobile is taking over
- Digital advertising is growing, all other media are shrinking (except radio)
- Google and YouTube are dominating
- There is a very wide digital divide between the young and old
I reviewed the entire deck, and pulled out 6 slides that I think provide some valuable insight for digital marketers as they map out their outbound marketing campaigns for 2015.
#1 – Look for gaps to find opportunity.
Digital marketing opportunities afford themselves disproportionately to the early adopters. The earlier you can jump into a trend, the more success you’ll find. The following slide shows the gap between where people are spending their time and where marketers are spending their dollars. You can easily spot two severe mismatches; print and mobile. It tells me that print is still wildly overvalued, whereas mobile is the land of opportunity right now.
#2 – Mobile-first does not mean mobile-only.
Google and Facebook have both made it very well-known that they have a “mobile first” strategy with their products. That’s because they recognize the obvious trends to mobile technology. However, it’s important to recognize that mobile is growing the entire pie, not simply eating away at the desktop market share. People are still buying computers and the amount of time spent on them has leveled off, but isn’t declining significantly.
#3 – The big growth is in mobile.
So, while you don’t want to forsake desktop, it’s important to realize where the serious growth will take place. That’s in the mobile space. Successful outbound marketing campaigns will likely take advantage of this growth by targeting mobile channels and ensuring they have mobile-optimized experiences.
#4 – Combine mobile and video for the “kaboom.”
Most digital marketers probably already knew that mobile is the place to be. But what’s the best way to leverage that trend for outbound campaigns? Video.
#5 – Search engine marketing is getting saturated.
Desktop display advertising tends to be the “front of mind” channel for digital marketers’ outbound campaigns. There’s good reason for that: The volume is still massive. However, the competition is fierce and the revenue deceleration is revealing in that respect.
#6 – Other opportunities include native and programmatic advertising.
If pay per click doesn’t represent the best opportunity for 2015, what does? In addition to mobile advertising, the other interesting opportunities for outbound marketing in 2015 will be in native and programmatic advertising channels. Although the growth for social media advertising is projected to be lower than these, that’s where I’d be focusing my attention. I think social media channels are still largely misunderstood and underutilized – especially for outbound marketing campaigns.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been concentrating more and more on Facebook and YouTube as outbound marketing channels. Based on all of the data provided from these charts, it seems like my instincts were on target. And so I’ll throw in one last bonus chart from a related Business Insider article this morning; Facebook And YouTube Account For Almost 40% Of All Mobile Internet Traffic