blur Group’s Industry Predictions for 2014
blurGroup
by Will
1 January, 2014
2013 was an extraordinary year, both for blur Group and the various business industries that the Global Services Exchange is focused on. What will 2014 look like?
One of the benefits of working with something like the Global Services Exchange is that you get insights into a huge range of industries. But with the amount that’s happening, and the amount of information that we’ve got available, how do you narrow your perspective down to what’s going to be important in 2014?
Luckily we’ve put together some predictions from industry experts. Take a look at their insights below, starting off with a look at the future for blur from our CEO, Philip Letts.
The future for blur
“In the next 12 months I want to make sure blur maintains a leading position in business services innovation. I want blur to be a true UK global technology success story. We saw in Q3 that blur and s-commerce is developing globally and is maturing at a fast pace, so I plan on keeping blur on this track. We just recently announced that we will be opening an office in Southern California that will be responsible for leading the development of blur’s strategic plans and business model.
“It will change not only the way that businesses transact when buying and selling services, but also help them to understand that there is always global choice whenever the time comes to buy a service – they need not use the same provider if they’d prefer a fresh perspective. It will free up ambition and possibility for businesses worldwide.”
Philip Letts, blur Group CEO and Founder
The rise of personal data
“I think that personal data analysis will be the big thing of 2014. With so many social media sites clogging up our smartphones, people are going to want to know what is worth keeping and what is worth ditching. Curiosity is inevitable; how many winks am I getting on Tinder? How many people actually watched that video I posted on Facebook? It seems to already have happened with Tumblr, which initially seemed to have the focus more on who you are following, but with their new control panel your activity is thrust in front of you, whether you want to see the rate of people following you and reblogging you or not. Facebook’s ‘See Your 2013 Year in Review’ is part of a similar move. There’s been a shift from active user to active provider, and people are going to want to see how their content is being received.”
Phoebe Ellis-Rees, blur Group Contributor
Clever Touch’s insights into marketing
1.Marketing automation will become more embedded, and intelligent engagements beyond drip campaigns will be seen as a new source of marketing advantage.
2.Marketers will evolve their social strategies beyond ‘social sentiment analysis’ with tools such as Radian 6, moving them to ‘social segment analysis’ with tools like CrowdVu.
3.Marketers will develop and reassess their data management and governance strategies…reputation management is the new brand management for 2014.
Adam Sharp, Clever Touch MD
Salesforce say go mobile
We are predicting that the world is going mobile. At the moment, less than 20% of enterprises are providing mobile ready applications. By 2017, we are predicting that over 80% will be mobile.
Get ahead of the curve if you haven’t done already!!!!!
Prediction for enterprise in 2014 – an increased focus on restructuring their company to focus their sales, service and marketing via mobile applications!”
Stephen Collins, Account Executive at salesforce.com
The outlook for content and PPC
Content Marketing: Content will be a key focus of this (as it already is) but expect more businesses to fully integrate content into their sites, tell stories and connect social properly. We suspect that many SEO campaigns (beyond the standard site optimisation) will look more like creative/branding projects rather than link-building/outreach campaigns. With great creative comes increased brand awareness and strong social support – This leads to social links, blog posts and PR (the things Google really love).
PPC: Bid management will continue to evolve and real time bidding will become a feature that most suppliers add to their suites. By monitoring and adjusting bids every few clicks instead of every hour (or often just a handful of times per day), businesses should find greater savings or improved returns for their budget. Whether these savings will out-weigh the cost of the tools in the first place will depend on the individual business and industry…
Paid search localisation will continue to evolve, with more concise targeting and mobile usage. If phone batteries ever improve then we will likely see more people with their mobile GPS turned on, which enables pinpoint accuracy and hyper-localised targeting.
Paid search ads will continue to take up more space in the search results, with extended G+ integration and more use of images in the paid ad space (images to support traditional search ads, and also Product Listing Ads).”
Stelios Pardalakis, Stellar Search
Continued improvement of content
“Over the course of 2013 we saw the quality of content improve massively, and I really hope this continues. Spammy articles have been completely devalued, and marketers are investing in well-researched content packed with original thought and depth. The rise in co-citation will raise standards even higher in 2014.”
Claire Broadley, Red Robot