Is your Business Ready to Face the Marketing Heat in 2015?

It’s that time of the year again when businesses take a close hard look at the year gone by and try to foresee the challenges they might face in the New Year. So, we have businesses analyzing their marketing strategies, deliverables and trying to figure out what they did right and where they went wrong in 2014. They’re also trying to figure out how their sales and promotion strategies will be tested in 2015.

The question that most businesses are asking themselves is, “Are there are any marketing surprises in store for 2015?”

While nobody can predict the future, one thing is certain – businesses across diverse sectors will face increased competition in 2015

Yes, if you thought you’ve survived in spite of your competition throwing everything including the kitchen sink at you this year, get set to face more of the same next year, and then some more. But is your business ready to face the heat? Do you have a plan that will help you fight your competitors who will be coming at you all guns blazing with new and improved marketing arsenal?

Let’s take a look at some of the things you could do to face the marketing storm in 2015:

1. More Personalization

2014 was the year of personalization! With marketers using big data to get a better understanding of their customers, businesses could personalize their marketing campaigns and deliver customized marketing messages to potential and existing customers.

What’s more, businesses have begun using key customer intelligence to personalize shopping experiences. With 9 in 10 customers saying personalization plays a huge role in their buying decisions, businesses cannot afford to ignore it.

If you’ve been focusing on delivering tailor made marketing offers or creating customer driven shopping experiences, you’re on the right track. In 2014, this might have allowed you to go one up over your competitors who were ignoring personalization. Well, you might not be so lucky in 2015; every business will be making personalization an important part of its marketing strategy. You will need to push the envelope and do something more to get the attention of your target consumers.

You will need to do more with the data in your hands. You must offer something extra that your competitors haven’t thought about offering. Continuous competitor analysis will be the key. The idea is to keep an eagle eye on the activities of your competitors so that you are able to seize the initiative if and when there is an opening (by exploiting their weakness).

2. Mobile Will Assume Tremendous Importance

The use of mobile phones for shopping is growing fast. This year, mobile commerce transactions hit a massive figure of 72 billion and this figure is all set to heard north in 2015. More and more people are taking to their mobile phones and tablets to shop for products. These people are also spending a large percentage of their time on mobile phones, browsing the internet or performing some other activity using an app.

Ideally, your business needs to be able to target these users on their mobile devices itself. You will need to leverage mobile advertising to target them effectively. Mobile advertising is all set to grow at a CAGR of 24.24 from 2014-2018. What this figure means is that businesses will derive immense value from mobile advertising, and you need to make this marketing tactic an important part of your strategy in 2015.

Set aside a certain portion of your marketing budget for mobile advertising. Not doing so might mean your business will not be able to leverage the full potential of mobile commerce.

Something else you also need to do is make your business mobile ready. If you still haven’t got down to creating an eCommerce site that works well on desktops and devices like smartphones and tablets, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to increase your business’s sales. So you first need to get yourself a responsively designed website. But in 2015, you will need to go a step further and develop a mobile commerce application. This will allow your business to become even more accessible on mobile. The idea is to do everything possible to ensure you build a solid home for your business on the mobile devices of your target audience.

Of course, just having a mobile presence is not enough. You will also have to market this presence. In the case of your responsive website, you will need to use a mix of mobile SEO and other mobile centric marketing tactics to make it more visible to your target audience. As far as your mobile app is concerned, you will need to define and implement a comprehensive mobile app marketing strategy to improve the chances of your app being downloaded by its intended audience.

3. Do What You’ve Been Doing, But Do it Better

Don’t panic. If your marketing strategies have been delivering rich dividends in 2014, don’t change them; just make sure you are doing them better. Tried and tested marketing tactics should not be discarded to implement what you think are more advanced strategies, which can help deliver more profits.  Yes, the old should make way for the new, but only if they are ineffective. At times, you will find that an older sales generation strategy begins delivering even more returns, with the use of advanced technology.

After a deep analysis of your current marketing campaign, if you think it has failed to deliver the returns you were expecting, you could think of giving it a complete revamp. But more often than not, you will find that all you need to do is make minimum changes to your current campaign so that it can meet the challenges of a new year.