In 2015, inbound marketing, thought leadership, and optimizing your mobile website will all grow in importance. Lee Odden of TopRank Blog recently posed these questions to many leading marketing professionals who work for Cisco, IBM, Dell, Google, Intel, and LinkedIn.

Here are some of their marketing trends and predictions for 2015: 

Pam Didner – Global Integrated Marketing Strategist, Intel Corporation

Didner suggests that there will be shift back to the basics. Marketers will reevaluate their target audience, and seek to determine what strategies work best. Resource allocation and investment will become top considerations. 

Brian Solis – Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group

2015 will probably not see a complete integrated approach across all channels, including social, mobile, advertising, marketing and communications. Solis, though, does believe there will be a concerted effort to improve collaboration across these different channels in order to deliver “one experience to customers wherever they are in the lifecycle.” 

Tim Washer – Senior Marketing Manager, Social Media, Cisco Systems

With brands trying to reach Millennials, businesses will look toward incorporating more humor into their digital marketing as a way to build loyalty and trust. 

Tom Webster – Vice President, Edison Research

2015 will represent the “rise and eventual preeminence of mobile data,” Edison asserts. “[…] Today’s smartphone-equipped consumers can take actions in the moment in a way that can be directly attributed to the medium that drove the action, without friction,” unlike clickstream data.

Clickstream data gives “short shrift” to many key elements of the marketing and buying process, such as social media, word of mouth, and traditional advertising. 

Webster believes that mobile—which eliminates the barriers between the message and action—makes the process of attribution modeling and credit simpler. In turn, digital marketers can move toward a more user behavior-centered model. Mobile also serves as the link unifying offline and online marketing. 

Adam Singer – Analytics Advocate, Google

Singer’s prediction for 2015: Digital analytics will become more sophisticated and marketers’ usage of the tools will increase.

Marketers are focusing more on measurement—something Google uncovered through its research and conversations, as well as its position as a provider of these services. 

As the number of devices and channels are increasing, it’s become incumbent on marketers to quantify their efforts.The technology is available—it’s been here before 2015, but Singer projects that, going forward, brands will formalize their measurement efforts.

“2015 is the year digital measurement finally comes of age,” he states. “Smart brands have already formalized their efforts across organizations and efforts. If you’re not there it’s time to catch up.”

Conclusion:

Many of the marketing trends to watch for in 2015 aren’t new. Integration across different channels, the rise of mobile and mobile data as well as digital analytics have existed now for years. What marketers are predicting is that these trends really gain ground in 2015. They’ll become more commonly used and investment will increase. Rather than being the strategy only some businesses are pursuing, they will become the norm.