Product Marketing is key to maintaining success and viability in a progressively competitive global marketplace. 2015 will see the development and amplified importance of existing marketing tools and methods as they are used to their potential. In 2015, consumers will increasingly be the focus, and marketing will have to be targeted to their expectations. Transparency will become a more significant marketing tool.  In 2015, the best brands won’t be the ones with the best stories, or gimmicky fictions designed to tug at heartstrings. Instead, the most successful brands will be those who use transparency in their marketing so as to provide an accurate picture of what they do for the consumer. Showing the consumer what is involved in the process behind your product, organization, or service will increase the chances of capturing an audience. Radical transparency is something that few brands are taking advantage of. If your brand is suited to the use of transparency in marketing, it’s a strategy you can’t afford to ignore.

Mobile marketing will help to encourage your consumers Mobile optimization is becoming insignificant as mobile eats away at desktop share for consumer focused tasks. Although consumers still prefer the security of desktop access for larger, more involved purchases, the convenience of mobile access means that more people access businesses, services, and products via mobile devices. Consumers may use mobile devices to research and compare products and though these are purchased through a desktop, mobile access facilitated the purchase. Gartner analysts explain that “Any new idea emerges within the context of established ideas. To gain attention amid well-known, well—understood ideas that have their subscribers, a new idea or approach needs a way to both differentiate itself and attract attention”. Mobile marketing will also be paramount for visibility, as Google recently announced that it will give more prominence to mobile-friendly sites in search results, in order to remain competitive, mobile optimization cannot be allowed to lag. Social Media marketing will require more diversity and flexibility. There are a handfull of social media sites out there, all slightly different. The array of social media sites provide marketers with a plethora of options for the production and dissemination of engaging content and audiences across more channels than ever before. According to Gartner “Social media is the perfect format and forum for introducing (and continually reintroducing) yourself, your ideas and your offering to anybody and everybody. Your passion and excitement about your “crusade” can be communicated through incremental, additive, ongoing articles, blogs and tweets that build your presence and reputation”. In 2015, experimentation with multiple networks will be vital to reach as many people as possible. Social media has the added benefit of amplifying content, and though most marketers recognize the importance of social media, many have yet to use it to its full potential. Personalization will become a key strategy. All that mobile access combined with the use of social media, news feeds, and instant information access has conditioned the consumer to expect that content will be aggregated to serve them how, when, where, and how they choose. Consumers are resisting homogenization, forcing marketing to become regionalized, localized, and personalized. Marketers will have to manage their brands more effectively, particularly though digital asset management. Personalization is perhaps less a trend than it is a force that will change the way that marketers think about how brands are managed. Quality content will be a must as ads become less blatant.  Consumers are increasingly demanding a quality experience, and research has indicated that static banner ads aren’t good for much other than visibility. Just like product placement in movies, successful marketers will work with publishers to generate sponsored and branded content. An industry survey released in 2013 by StickyContent suggests that the digital copywriting industry isn’t up to par, 6 in 10 respondents expect a brand’s Facebook updates to be very poorly written hardly a ringing endorsement of the brand. 2015 will see a rise in the importance of guest bloggers and professional writers as a means of strategically placing ads within great content. In the coming year, the most successful marketers will pay attention to these trends and up their game when it comes to personalization, quality content, mobile optimization, social media use, and transparency.