Happy new year! Whichever metaphor you chose (clean slate, new beginning, fresh start, etc.), it’s hard to deny the excitement this season brings. With a new year comes the opportunity to do everything bolder and better than in years past. Consider all that you have learned, all the wisdom you have acquired over the past 12 months and just how useful that will be over the next 12. How could 2015 not be an amazing year!
While predicting how you’re personal and company growth will affect where you stand a year from today is difficult, it is substantially harder still to make predictions for an entire industry. Here at Hall, however, we have offered up some bold predictions for the internet marketing industry, technology and the internet, and the next year in general.
Predictions for the Digital Marketing Industry:
- “We will see the continued decline in value of the “social media expert” and the concept of personal branding through low quality, high volume social media activity.” – Tom Hall, President
- “Automated marketing efforts, especially those which sync website interactions with sales teams, will continue to rise and will become more accessible for medium and small businesses.” – Gary Thayer, WordPress Developer
- “I think Google will continue to push even harder to find effective ways to track users as they switch between their different devices. We may see a more concrete solution in 2015.” – Marc Breglio, Paid Search Manager
- “I think we’ll see an even greater shift in demographic based marketing for digital. With Facebook and Google not far behind, there will be more opportunity to market to more of the masses!” – André McKay, Technical Search Manager
- “More websites where users get information, news sites, blogs, etc. will adopt native advertising strategies.” – Tim Howe, Lead WordPress Developer
- “The amount of social media outlets is going to continue to grow and increasingly cause confusion as to “which platform is best” to use for specific companies and purposes.” – Jonas Levasseur, Vice President of Operations
- “Title and meta description tags will become obsolete for search engine result listings in the near future. Google is going to focus on writing their own content for search results listings rather than relying on the individual site owners to do an adequate job. Google will most likely still continue to use title and meta description tags for ranking purposes.” – Mike Johnston, Director of Web Performance
- “Google’s semantic search is just the beginning. Search engines are really starting to discern the quality from the rubbish.” – Mary Soule, Junior SEO Analyst
- “We’ll be seeing more mobile marketing as well as more video ads on YouTube, Hulu, and Livestreaming services.” – Matt Harrison, Vice President of Technology
- “There will be an increase in mobile style navigation for desktop sites.” – Caitlin Frank, Responsive Web Designer
Predictions for Technology and the Internet in 2015:
- “Wearable technology may one day become commonplace; 2015 is not the year.” – Gary Thayer, WordPress Developer
- “More mobile devices coming out with a bit more on wearable tech but nothing major will be released. Also, this is supposed to be the year of the hoverboard.” – Matt Harrison, Vice President of Technology
- “Phone/tablet/phablet combinations are going to keep coming. The new ‘supertablets’ that are hybrids between laptops and tablets will gain a lot of traction too, as they offer the best of both worlds at the same price or cheaper than many laptops.” Jonas Levasseur, Vice President of Operations
- “More websites will need to compete with their international counterparts e.g. Alibaba and Amazon. This will also mean that more companies will have to deal with international standards.” – Tim Howe, Lead WordPress Developer
- “Artificial intelligence will begin to trickle down to digital marketing. We will see a giant leap forward in delivering completely personalized conversion experiences to site visitors based on their unique digital signature or thumbprint.” – Tom Hall, President
- “Amazon is going to give Google a run for its money as it increases its presence in the e-commerce search market.” – Beau Haseltine, Small Business Group Coordinator
- “Cable companies will be brought to their knees as internet TV options become more widespread. Eventually all the billions of advertising dollars being sunk into television will be passed on to online streaming advertisements and other digital marketing channels. Advertisers for this content will now be able target specific demographics as opposed to the current method of appealing to the masses.” – Mike Johnston, Director of Web Performance
- “2015 is going to be the year of online privacy and protection. More and more people will start to embrace the idea that not everything they do online is safe. Anything can be hacked and the key will be becoming smarter about what is posted online.” – André McKay, Technical Search Manager
Other Bold Predictions:
- “Bruins will win the Stanley Cup.” – Tom Hall, President
- “As a native of Northeast Ohio, I’m obligated to say the following: Ohio State will beat Alabama. The Cleveland Cavaliers will make the NBA Finals.” – Rachel Bowes, Director of Digital Marketing