Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Over the past few months, the experts on our Team Digital have dished on everything from 12 Social-Media Mistakes That Entrepreneurs Make to How to Get Your Marketing Mojo Back.
In this final column, our Team Digital answers: What's your prediction for the next big digital marketing trend?
It's the value a business can bring to consumers through the limitations of an experience. Whether it's the 140-character limit on Twitter, the 15-second limit on an Instagram video or the fact that content shared on Snapchat self-destructs, these features force companies to create a valuable moment within the confines of a community that is unique, interesting, educational, emotional, hilarious or any combination of the previous.
Brian Honigman,
BrianHonigman.com It's that outbound marketing is cool again. We've spent the last ten years beating up on advertising and promotion in favor of content and inbound generation. Now that we've all gotten so good at creating valuable content, advertising to promote that content is both effective and desirable. So, sue me!
John Jantsch,
Duct Tape Marketing
It's simple: If the past ten years were about social media, the next twenty are going to be about customer service. Marketing as we know it will still exist, but the concept of marketing being strongest to the customers you have (as opposed to now, which is all about the customers you want) will grow exponentially. As we all become more connected, the ability to make the customers you have feel like a million bucks will translate into immediate action on their part, driving new customers and increased revenue the likes of which we can't even begin to fathom.
Peter Shankman,
Shankman|Honig It's more digital marketing trend columns. Heh.
Jason Falls,
CafePress It's whole-brained business intelligence. The advent of digital technology has led to businesses thinking solely with the left side of their business brain -- the part that is sequential, rational and logical. Back in the Don Draper days, advertising was about changing perception, tapping into motivation, creating desire. The thought process was right-brained in nature -- it was holistic, subjective and intuitive. And while we couldn't measure it, it did work. Today, technology has allowed us to get much smarter about not wasting money and that is a very good thing. We're all adopting this technology, demanding efficiency and learning best practices. So, now what? The brands that ask this question and create marketing that leverages both parts of the business brain will pull ahead in the years to come.
Adam Kleinberg,
Traction It's the ability to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. Yes, the ability for location-based marketing has been around for a bit now, but I think we're just scratching the surface. Marketers are getting smarter, technology is improving and we're figuring out how to use data for how we interact with our customers. It's a win for marketers, win for consumers.
Rick Mulready,
RickMulready.com It's going to be about creating a brand -- and that means quality. Gone are the days where you can get away with trying to game or spam the system to gain market share. The true winners of the future will understand that it's all about creating quality for your audience where they'll remember you. This not only applies to digital, but marketing as a whole. What does creating a brand mean? It means creating something that makes people like and remember you. If you can get those two parts right, the sales will flow in. Quality will be the only answer as technology and people continue to evolve.
Eric Siu, EricOSiu.com
It's focusing on the customer. Customer-centric marketing will lead to building great brand advocacy and will be hugely advantageous for the companies that invest in it. Loyalty will matter more moving forward than it ever has before. Marketers will have more tools, more resources and more channels available to them than ever before. We have no excuse. We should be thinking about how we can add real value to the user and seed those loyal moments, hopefully building a community of fans that advocate on our behalf.
Joanna Lord,
BigDoor It's about going to one screen! I certainly hope that at some point one of the next big digital marketing trends involves us all having just ONE screen. With multiple devices, including large monitors and a flatscreen TV at home, it's hard to manage it all, let alone carry it all. I predict at some point relatively soon, we all go to one very flexible all-encompassing screen.
Jim Joseph,
Cohn & Wolfe It's brands partnering with influencers, experts and celebrities both within and outside the immediate scope of the brand's influence to co-create and co-distribute. This will allow brands to expand their reach beyond their current market, and provide influencers with a leveraged credibility by association with the brands.
Karen Leland,
Sterling Marketing Group It's more and more people becoming "entrepreneurs." This goes beyond being a digital marketing trend. In fact, it is thanks to digital marketing that it's possible to become self-employed, whether by design or by force of circumstance. Some research claims independent workers will be 50% of the US population by 2050. For us to succeed in self-employment, we need to perceive ourselves as entrepreneurs (or solopreneurs) which means taking responsibility for our work lives. And for that we will need more information about how to make it on our own together: how to build networks, access resources, get help and, of course, market ourselves online (and off).
Ilise Benun,
Marketing-Mentor.com It's semantic and location-based search targeting. As mobile search continues to evolve through new technologies like Apple's Siri, Google Now and Google Glass, users will increasingly perform search queries in a "conversational" manner with their mobile devices. This, paired with the pervasiveness of Google Glass, will fuel a new kind of location-based, semantic search which will open the door to marketers looking to capture the interest of their audience in real-time, when users are on-the-go and in the mood to buy.
Jayson DeMers,
AudienceBloom
