THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL MARKETING IN 2015

10 Digital Marketing experts share their predictions for future trends and challenges

Created by:ProofHub

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………………..2

QUICK SPROUT…………NEIL PATEL, CO-FOUNDER……..………………………………..3

WORDTRACKER………..OWEN POWIS, CEO……………………………………………….4

PROOFHUB………………SANDEEP KASHYAP, CEO AND FOUNDER…………………..6

MOZ………………………..RAND FISHKIN, CO-FOUNDER…………………………………8

CROWDFIREAPP………..NISHAL SHETTY, FOUNDER……………………………………10

SOCEDO………………….ASEEM, COFOUNDER AND CEO………………………………11

NIMBLE……………………JON FERRARA, FOUNDER AND CEO………………………13

POSITIONLY………………GREG KAZULAK, COFOUNDER AND CEO………………….15

BITLY………………………SAMANTHA YEH, PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER…….17

RIO SEO…………………..DEMA ZLOTIN, CEO……………………………………………..19

KEY FINDINGS…………………………………………………………………………………..21

COMPANY SUMMARY………………………………………………………………………….22

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Digital marketing industry has grown at a frightening speed over the past decade or so. Since the inception of Google in 1998, the world has seen a huge transformation in the marketing strategies, which continues to happen even today. Digital marketing has emerged as the new way of selling and communicating for businesses of all shapes and sizes, with businesses coming up with innovative strategies every other day to capture a bigger share of the pie.

And, the rise of social media has led to the foundation of new age digital marketing with businesses willing to invest heavily in this field. Most of the marketers are focusing on one-to-one personalisation with the help of digital marketing. This does not come as a surprise, considering the fact that there are close to 1.4 billion active users on Facebook alone. Add to this, the fact that there are more than 300 million users active on Twitter and you can understand why there has been such a sudden rise in interest of business to invest on digital marketing. While businesses are going all guns blazing with their digital marketing strategies, the big question that rises is ‘What is going to be the future of digital marketing?’

This is the reason that ProofHub decided to get in touch with leaders from the industry to find their views on the forthcoming trends in the field. The leaders we contacted are the pioneers involved in the development of some amazing collaboration tools during recent years. This study will provide you insights on the current state of digital marketing and what lies ahead in the future.

Each of these experts were asked these questions to see where the future of digital marketing lies in the coming times:

What trends and developments will we see in 2015 in digital marketing?What is the future scope of digital marketing?What are the benefits/advantages of digital marketing? What do you think are the challenges in digital marketing?

And, here’s what they had to say -

2

INTRODUCTION

1. What trends and developments will we see in 2015 in digital marketing? Content marketing will change. Everyone is blogging, and it is becoming more competitive. What you’ll start seeing is companies go above and beyond with their content. From the visual aspect to the quality of the content to even the length, companies will start stepping up their content marketing efforts. 2. What is the future scope of digital marketing? Everything will become more personalized just like how Facebook and Google try to give each of their users a different experience. In which the marketing material we push out as marketers will be more customized and personalized to each person. This will cost marketers more time and effort to do this, but their conversion rates will also go up.

3. What are the benefits/advantages of digital marketing? Digital marketing is an effective way to attract more customers online. It doesn’t cost much and you can get started instantly.

4. What do you think are the challenges in digital marketing? It’s becoming more competitive as time goes on. Industries like law, insurance and finance are already too competitive for newcomers to enter without having big financial pockets.

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QUICK SPROUT

Neil Patel

Co-Founder

LinkedinTwitterQuick Sprout

Neil Patel is co founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics.

1. What trends and developments will we see in 2015 in digital marketing?

Technology has a tendency to drive digital marketing trends, with smartphones driving the increase in mobile marketing and now developments in smart tvs and connected devices looking to drive the next major leap forward. However as we have previously seen new technology needs to reach mass market adoption before it becomes a full part of the digital landscape.

With this in mind I would expect to see a continuation of last years trends towards mobile and localisation within campaigns as these channels and technologies continue to mature. We also have more data available to us than ever before and understanding that data has become a key part of digital marketing. I would expect to see more movement towards properly integrated toolsets to allow that data to be connected across campaigns and channels.

As we get more data into our campaigns the focus is shifting from Audience based marketing to Individual based marketing. For instance PPC activities can be targeted by demographic combining segments such as household income and interests within specific topics. When combined with the much wider adoption of retargeting we start to see marketers thinking more about a person rather than people as groups.

2. What is the future scope of digital marketing?

As we bring the internet into more and more of our everyday lives we have an increasing amount of touchpoints between us and our digital experience. The ‘web of things’ is a term we have all heard and is already sounding a little tired. However once properly fulfilled this will allow us to properly bridge the gap between online and offline, just as we are bridging that gap between channels in the digital space with multi channel marketing. As more of the offline world becomes integrated with the online world, offline and online marketing will become more and more integrated.

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Owen Powis

CEO

LinkedinWordtracker

I am the CEO at Wordtracker and have spent my career working in the digital marketing sector across both marketing and product development. With hands on experience ‘at the coal face’, multi-channel marketing is of particular interest, with a long-running bias towards SEO.

WORDTRACKER

3. What are the benefits/advantages of digital marketing?

Digital marketing allows for a far more data driven approach, where it’s becoming increasingly easy to track people across channels and understand how actions across the web connect. This allows for campaigns which are more targeted allowing the audience to experience increasingly relevant advertising.

The flip side of this is the cost of running paid media has increased significantly. This may not be such a bad thing though as it is forcing marketers to be more careful with their placements and utilising that ability to target more accurately. I think that’s ultimately a good thing for the consumer. If I have to be shown advertising I would rather it was relevant.

We know the world is becoming increasingly connected (now over 3 billion people or 40% of the population have internet access) and as it does online marketing spend will only increase (Gartner places this at around a 17% increase in spend over 2015). This means the space is growing and will likely to continue to grow.

4. What do you think are the challenges in digital marketing?

Digital marketing faces a greater challenge as it becomes increasingly prevalent and effective. We must balance the needs of the marketing person with a consumer's right to privacy. This has been tackled in some part by legislation and will likely continue to be. If, as marketers, we abuse the tools that are available to us to retarget and collect data those laws will, rightly so, become more restrictive.

The cost of paid media is also an increasing concern, and although it does drive better targeted campaigns by necessity, it does also further push the small business out of the space. As media spend increases the leftover budget for running costs must decrease in order to maintain a healthy ROI. Ultimately this leads to more ‘budget’ agencies operating who either do not deliver or use poor quality tactics. This doesn’t benefit the business or the consumer but is likely to be a growing issue as paid media becomes both more necessary and expensive.

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WORDTRACKER

1. What trends and developments will we see in 2015 in digital marketing?

Enough of hardcore sales, 2015 is going to be the year when Digital Marketing gets more HUMAN. The focus is going to shift more towards bettering customer experience and empathy rather than just selling. There is going to be a rise in number of marketers who can add human-speak to what they are saying, be it videos, images or any other form of visual content being shared on the web. The old-school marketing mantra to Sell, Sell and just Sell is going to fall flat. Marketers will have to realize that they are here to provide a solution to the customers and this should reflect in their digital marketing endeavors.

2. What is the future scope of digital marketing?

Mobile App downloads are already taking over social media following for all the major brands out there. And, if we look at the latest research on this topic, we come to know that it will continue to do so in the coming time as well. So, it is nothing short of obvious to say that the future of digital marketing lies in Mobile and handheld devices. With the focus of businesses shifting entirely towards investing in apps to increase their utility and adding value to customers, mobile is going to be the future of digital marketing, without a doubt. The battle between Apple Pay and Google Pay for consumer digital IDs and information will be something that I am looking forward to.

3. What are the benefits/advantages of digital marketing?

Digital marketing to me is lot more than just an opportunity to advertise your business. It is more of an open channel to connect with the customers, and provide them with the empathetic touch that traditional marketing tactics do not offer. As a two way barter, Digital Marketing gives both the business as well as the user an opportunity to share and exchange their views. So both can connect to work hand-in-hand for each others’ benefits. And, this connectivity, if we look at the current market scenario, is proving to be the biggest difference between success and failure for many a businesses.

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Sandeep Kashyap

CEO and Founder

LinkedinTwitterProofHub

Internet Entrepreneur, CEO of SDP Labs and Founder of ProofHub

PROOFHUB

4. What do you think are the challenges in digital marketing?

The biggest challenge that lies ahead in digital marketing is to develop content for fragmented marketing channels (social media platforms). With Mixed Media becoming staple for digital marketers, it is the right time to amalgamate social media endeavors with content marketing strategies and satisfy the information hungry consumers. As the users continue to become more diverse, it is high time for digital marketers to acclimatize and come up with innovative approaches to satisfy their hunger for information.The key to success still lies in making your voice heard. The only difference is that there are plenty of more channels now, and you need to be smart enough to recognize which ones work and which ones don’t.

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PROOFHUB

1. What trends and developments will we see in 2015 in digital marketing?

I see a few big ones:We're obviously seeing a huge focus on mobile, perhaps to the detriment of other efforts. Google's announcements and frothing of the media have been very successful, and resulted in a lot of sites paying more attention to mobile friendliness than ever before. Whether that's a good thing for businesses or mostly just a good thing for Google remains to be seen.Social ads are getting more sophisticated and more effective. That's because marketers are getting better at buying and optimizing AND because social networks are getting better at making them visible (and shutting down organic forms of reach).Text content is giving way to video and visuals - and in both cases, the bias is toward short-form, easy-to-consume, real-time, and, often, fast-disappearing media. Meanwhile, podcasts, long-form content, discussion sites, and more complex material haven't suffered, but they haven't garnered headlines and attention the way Periscope, Vine, Meerkat, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc. have. 2. What is the future scope of digital marketing?

It's my belief that marketers of the future need a broad breadth of knowledge across the many areas of foci that impact their work as well as deep, targeted expertise in one or two specific verticals. This range and depth gives marketers the ability to have unique value in their organizations and careers as well as strategic understanding and the ability to work across their departments. I like the term "T-Shaped Marketer" to describe these traits. 3. What are the benefits/advantages of digital marketing?

Digital marketing is, generally, far more measurable than offline marketing. It also has the potential to reach a far greater group, often at much lower cost, than comparable offline or traditional methods. Digital marketing relies on a combination of technical talent and creativity, and the best digital marketers are often hybrids of the two.

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MOZ

Rand Fishkin

Co-Founder

LinkedinTwitterMoz

Rand Fishkin is the Co-founder of Moz, and an addict of all things search, social, and content on the web.

4. What do you think are the challenges in digital marketing?

Digital often feels less tangible and less observable than traditional marketing, and thus can be more difficult to sell, particularly to those who are used to feeling something physical (a magazine, newspaper, product, etc) or experiencing media in a familiar way (TV, radio, in-person, etc). Digital is also, often, more temporal and less direct -- many web marketing investments are only a part of a longer, multi-step journey to a conversion, and although measurable, may track less directly to that conversion.

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MOZ

1. What trends and developments will we see in 2015 in digital marketing?

We are seeing a very distinct shift in the way smart businesses are marketing digitally. In 2015, we believe the visuals-based emerging marketing channels like Instagram, Snapchat and Periscope will rule the masses - this is where marketers should move too.

2. What is the future scope of digital marketing?

It's huge! Traditional forms of advertising are losing their relevancy and reach. A very significant percentage of the population is online today and they've brought with them all their purchasing power.

3. What are the benefits/advantages of digital marketing?

We think the biggest advantage is the fact that there is so little you need to get started. Digital marketing levels the playing field, allowing even startups to compete with big brands. There are none of the prohibitive costs or efforts associated with offline marketing.

4. What do you think are the challenges in digital marketing?

The biggest challenge is digital marketing's constantly changing and evolving landscape. You cannot afford to ever get complacent. Google's pushing a new algorithm today, there's a brand new social network tomorrow and there's an awesome growth hack revealed the day after. You have to stay on top of all of these at all times and not everyone finds it easy.

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CROWDFIREAPP

Nischal Shetty

Founder

LinkedinTwitterCrowdfireapp

Nischal Shetty is the founder of Crowdfire [previously JustUnfollow]. Developer turned entrepreneur. Forbes India 30 under 30, 2014. Ex-Burrp.com.

1. What trends and developments will we see in 2015 in digital marketing?

The idea of social conversion will start to play a bigger part in digital marketing strategies. So much has been said about the importance of an active and engaging social media presence for modern business and brands, but not enough about the power of social media to directly translate to conversions. Marketers are now starting to realize the power of the connections that exist on social platforms and will continue to leverage their networks in order to generate leads and convert them.

2. What is the future scope of digital marketing?

As always, digital marketing will embrace the platforms where a business can interact with its customers. Right now, social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn are highly valuable sources for lead generation and nurturing. These sites will continue to grow in usage, but we may see new sites emerge and new ways to engage leads, such as the rise of video marketing. No matter which mediums and tactics take center stage, the scope of digital marketing must follow a multi-channel yet coherent customer journey.

3. What are the benefits/advantages of digital marketing?

Digital marketing allows for further reach and influence than has ever been possible. The connectivity that digital technology provides makes it the perfect conduit for marketers to get their message to the people who want it most. It is adaptable to countless industries and areas, and the rapid innovation we’ve seen so far in the space shows no signs of these trends slowing anytime soon.

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SOCEDO

Aseem

Co-Founder and CEO

LinkedinTwitterSocedo

Aseem Badshah is the Founder and CEO of Socedo and has been a leader in the social media marketing space for more than 8 years. Before Socedo, Aseem founded Uptown Treehouse, a marketing agency for Fortune 500 brands focused on social media. You can follow Aseem on Twitter @aseemb

4. What do you think are the challenges in digital marketing?

The huge potential for reach can be a double-edged sword for a lot of businesses. With such a large audience and pool of potential leads, it can be difficult to locate the right audience for you. Digital marketing provides so many channels and methods in which to create and distribute content, but if that content doesn’t make it in front of interested people, it simply falls on deaf ears. Marketers need to equip themselves with ways to cut through that digital noise.

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SOCEDO

1. What trends and developments will we see in 2015 in digital marketing?

Personalization and relevance is the key to reaching audiences by breaking through the clutter of our overconnected and over-communicated world. One of the main things that’s going to happen in digital marketing in 2015 is more one-on-one communication. Companies need to stop sending everybody that touches their brands the same generic messages and start sending tailored messages that are unique to who they are and what their company is about. This message will feel more human and personal while also containing the information relevant to the person you're connecting to and how you might serve them.

2. What is the future scope of digital marketing?

The Future Scope of Digital Marketing will be tying together our prospects’ various touchpoint signals and the customers’ journey with our brands. We can utilize these insights to stay top of mind and drive behavior that results in a mutually beneficial outcome.

Our customer data currently resides in islands of information across Marketing, Sales, Social, Product, Accounting, PR, BizDev and more. It’s no wonder management cannot get ROI insights on marketing and social spend. New tools will Automagically gather the contacts, conversations and activities already available and create intelligent customer relationship platforms that provide insights and drive the behavior needed to grow the company.

3. What are the benefits/advantages of digital marketing?

The great thing is that the information is already out there. If you figure out how to smartly group your customers into segments and send them the right message on the right channel at the right time, you will not only dramatically increase the numbers of people opening the messages, but you will also increase the numbers of people actually taking actions on the behavior you are trying to drive.

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Jon Ferrara

Founder and CEO

LinkedinTwitterNimble

Jon is a pioneer & creator of #CRM solutions and noted speaker about Social Media’s effects on Sales and Marketing. His most recent venture is Nimble.com, a leading Social Relationship Manager. He has been recognized on Forbes as one of the Top 10 Social Chief Executive Officers, Top 10 Social Salespeople In The World and among the Top 50 Social Business Twitter Accounts You Must Follow.

NIMBLE

4. What do you think are the challenges in digital marketing?

The challenges faced by digital marketing is that we live in an overconnected and over-communicated world where everyone is busy interrupting customers with BS. The traditional forms of Mad Men marketing no longer work. Companies need to stop yelling at customers about how great their product and services are and instead need to start teaching customers how they can be great. People buy a better version of themselves, not great products.

If you teach people how to fish, they will figure out you sell fishing poles.

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NIMBLE

1. What trends and developments will we see in 2015 in digital marketing?

In 2015 we can already see the evolution of trends that have emerged in the previous years. We’ll see a growing importance of the big data, mobile marketing, marketing automation and personalization, omnichannel experience, and… content (yes, content will still be sitting on the marketing throne). Also, throughout the year we will definitely witness more tech developments in augmented reality, drones, iBeacons and 3D printing.

From the marketing point of view, 2015 will still be very interesting as some of the trends will come to hand. I can see four important changes that will affect and shape marketers’ work this year. 1) Customer-Centric Attitude - focusing on the customer is nothing new in marketing, however this year marketers will have to change their focus from selling products to listening and caring more about their customers. This attitude entails two things.

First of all, marketers should incorporate a human-voice into all their messaging. Marketing campaigns should not only be more personalized, but also more creative and appealing for target groups. The selling-language is no longer attracting people’s attention and marketers will have to humanize the way they speak to their audiences.

Second of all, digital marketing should stop working as a separate department and start cooperate closely with customer care and sales teams to create highly targeted, relevant valuable and engaging content.

2) Authenticity - more and more brands are becoming more open, genuine and transparent for their clients. Startups such as Buffer, Groove, Slack and Unbounce are building their identity based around authentic and transparent insights into their personal journey to company growth. They present their own real story with all obstacles and pitfalls that occur along the way.

They do it to not only to be more authentic, but to also show that a company is a living organism that grows, changes and evolves. This new narration in which brands present themselves will sooner or later have an impact on how digital marketing works.

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POSITIONLY

Greg Kazulak

Co-Founder and CEO

Positionly

Greg Kazulak is the Head of Positionly. He’s a believer and a dreamer who knows how to execute ideas and turn them into meaningful products. He’s an Investor and Advisor of few Polish startups.

3) Mobile-First Attitude - in 2015 brands will finally have to optimize their businesses for mobile consumption. Marketers’ job will be to provide users with the same unique brand experience across different platforms, and the mobile channel will be a priority this year.

2. What is the future scope of digital marketing?

For a digital marketer to be successful he should not only adopt new tech solutions to his strategy and make the best use of inbound marketing tools, but first of all, he should understand customers’ behaviour and real needs on all of the stages of the customer life-cycle.

I believe that, in the future, users will seek for more authenticity and transparency in the brand-customer relationship. Companies with a developed personality that manage to create more personal and genuine connections with their audience will win their hearts.

3. What are the benefits/advantages of digital marketing?

Digital marketing has many advantages when compared to the old-fashioned ways in which we used to promote things. To name a few of the benefits of digital marketing:

it is cost-effectiveits effectiveness is easy to measure and optimizeenables to directly connect with potential customers and create more personalized interactionmakes easy to present a brand to a wide range of audiencesit is accessible to small businesses and freelancersit makes easy for customers to connect with brands and give their feedback

4. What do you think are the challenges in digital marketing?

The biggest challenge that I see in digital marketing these days is in providing more tools for collecting crucial data and analyzing it in a smart way. Every single marketing decision should be data-driven and yet we still miss solutions that are affordable for smaller companies and easy to use (even for newbies).

In the near future, we will see more tools dedicated to content marketing. We will miss solutions that help in planning, creating, promoting and analyzing performance of content that we create on a daily basis.

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POSITIONLY

1. What trends and developments will we see in 2015 in digital marketing?

Is anyone sick of hearing about mobile yet? It may sound cliché, but mobile is definitely going to continue its reign as one of the most important factors in a robust digital marketing strategy. As marketers learn more about how people interact with mobile devices, we'll have to adapt our strategies to ensure we're providing great experiences across all devices. This means making sure the links shared on social are optimized for the mobile web or a brand's app and email headlines are written knowing they'll get cut off after 32 characters on an iPhone. Lastly, marketers must realize our content is designed for an audience that may engage with it in the few minutes they stand on the subway on their way to work or while waiting in line at the grocery store.Audiences have become pickier about content. It's no secret that content is a great way to drive leads - but in 2015, the industry will definitely see the results of content overload reflected in how audiences choose to engage with a brand's content. Since content is part of every brand's strategy, audiences can pick and choose the resources they turn to based on the value they see in it. It's more important than ever to have great, useful, engaging content so that a brand’s materials stand out from the massive amount of newsletters, blog posts and tweets that audiences are bombarded with.

2. What is the future scope of digital marketing?

The future of digital marketing is building greater user experiences, but across more than just digital channels. The number of ways consumers can engage with a brand is growing. They could visit the store, tweet at the brand or visit the app. As the number of ways consumers can engage with brands continues to expand, the best brands will build seamless, integrated experiences that transcend across all marketing channels.

3. What are the benefits/advantages of digital marketing?

Now that so much of marketing is digital, it almost doesn't make sense to single it out anymore! A strong digital marketing strategy is the core of creating and sustaining strong relationships with customers, and building a healthy, thriving business. Audiences are becoming increasingly digital in every facet of their life – marketers must keep this in mind with everything they do.

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Samantha Yeh

Product Marketing Manager

LinkedinTwitterBitly

Samantha is currently product marketing manager at Bitly and a part-time journalism student at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is experienced in print, broadcast and digital media.

BITLY

4. What do you think are the challenges in digital marketing?

There are many important components to a great digital marketing strategy and a handful of different platforms that digital marketers can use every day to build a holistic understanding of their initiatives. Building a great team that understands all of these components and the value each piece drives is challenging, but crucial.

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BITLY

1. What trends and developments will we see in 2015 in digital marketing?

As search results become more local based on an array of consumer behavior and data, digital marketing as we know it will continue to adapt, to converge multiple strategies under an overarching goal. We see emerging trends incorporating these principles:

Mobile is local – Brands and marketers need to align their strategy with the needs and wants of mobile consumers, who are constantly on the go and looking for relevant information.

Hyperlocal technology – The dawn of wearables has given us a quick look into how marketers can create laser-focused campaigns to users based on their location. New beacon and geofencing technology will allow for further personalization of offers and messages from brands trying to drive foot traffic and in-store conversions.

Measuring online to offline conversions – Engaging consumers at the local or broad level has been a key strategy for brands over the past couple of years, but now there is a need to drill down and measure online traffic against in-store conversions. Integrating hyperlocal content with identifiable tracking metrics through purchase can help brands and marketers close the loop and measure ROI effectively.

Local + Social – Brands need more than an optimized user experience for web users and traditional SEO strategies; they must also leverage the social nature of consumers into local marketing campaigns. This should include establishing a local, relevant presence on social networks, so that each experience is relevant to consumers in their geographic markets.

2. What is the future scope of digital marketing?

The future scope of digital marketing is all about personalizing the experience for each consumer as much as possible. There are many ways to do this, but the overarching goal is to drive relevancy to users based on the context of location, habits, and activity history.

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Dema Zlotin

CEO

LinkedinRio Seo

Dema Zlotin is the CEO of leading cloud-based local SEO technology platform Rio SEO. Prior to RioSEO, Dema founded one of the nation's largest search marketing agencies, Covario, which sold to the Dentsu Aegis Network in 2014.

RIO SEO

3. What are the benefits/advantages of digital marketing?

Digital marketing has the benefit of getting a brand or service in front of a consumer at the time they are researching, considering, or ready to purchase, resulting in more cost effective customer acquisition and awareness. Key to success is the intelligent use of technology to combine data and insight to decipher customer intent and drive conversions from channels such as search engines and online directories.

4. What do you think are the challenges in digital marketing?

Two common challenges in digital marketing today are choosing the correct approach and being able to measure results. Beyond traditional SEO and SEM, search is increasingly mobile and local and requires highly relevant hyperlocal content. Digital marketing tools and best practices have to evolve to manage this complexity to drive the best ROI from these contextual focused campaigns.

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RIO SEO

Trends and developments

Content marketing will continue to flow towards the upward slope with better focus on its quality, quantity, impact and several other aspects. With more and more people going mobile, the market will witness a significant growth in the mobile user base. Since data has became a vital part of the digital marketing process, we’ll see more usage of integrated tools that’d allow better connectivity of the data across multiple marketing channels and campaigns. A shift towards better customer experience will be observed, leaving behind the ongoing “just sell it out” marketing strategies.

Scope of digital marketing

Personalization and customization will be seen as the key factors in majority of the digital marketing materials such as content. There will be a momentous growth in the number of ways consumers can connect with a business, brand, product or service. Since mobile market is already blooming, the mobile app download will have an influential place in the market. Companies will be investing more in providing users with apps rather than increasing their social media followings. Better understanding of customer’s real needs and behavior is going to be the primary concern for digital marketers. More personalized and authentic brand-customer relationships will continue to thrive in the coming future.

Benefits

Digital marketing is not just an opportunity to sell out a product or service, but it gives marketers an effective way to share and exchange thoughts with the audience. It is cost-effective and time-effective in nature, since there’s hardly any large monetary investment required and one can start with it in no time. The results obtained by the digital marketing endeavours can easily measured by the marketers and can iterate accordingly.Digital marketing is not bound to place and time. With just an internet connection, it is accessible to everyone.

Challenges

The field of digital marketing is getting more and more competitive each day. Marketers need to keep up with the new trends and technologies to implement the best digital marketing practices for powerful results. Moreover, aspiring marketers might find it difficult to get in because of the constantly changing marketing landscape. The cost of paid media is another big concern for the marketers, especially the ones with limited budget plans such as small businesses. The limited availability of digital marketing platforms raises a big question among marketers - Which one to choose considering the cost, quality and requirements? Yet another hefty challenge is to create affordable tools and solutions for effective data collection and analyzation, which can suit small businesses and newcomers.

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KEY FINDINGS

�

Quick Sprout is a marketing blog that teaches people how to grow and increase

their online sales.

http://www.quicksprout.com/

�

Wordtracker is a SaaS company who provide keyword research tools. We believe

that the internet becomes a better place when businesses can effectively engage

with their audiences. What we aim to do is facilitate this by uncovering the true

language of the market. Know how your audience talks, and communicate with

them better.

http://www.wordtracker.com/

�

ProofHub is a project management software that brings together the right blend of tools so that you could manage projects

faster, better and easier. It helps you to better collaborate and manage projects to

deliver them always on time.

https://www.proofhub.com/

�

Moz is a software startup focused on helping marketers with SEO, social media,

content marketing, and other forms of growing web traffic through organic

channels.

https://moz.com/

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COMPANY SUMMARY

�

Crowdfire is the go-to product for social media marketers and enthusiasts. Used by over 10 million individuals and businesses around the globe, it has powerful tools for Twitter and Instagram growth, publishing,

analytics and a lot more. Try it today:

http://www.crowdfireapp.com/

�

Socedo is a web-based marketing platform that discovers leads on social media and

qualifies them through an automated interaction flow. Find your target audience, engage them with one click, and fill your

funnel with quality, interested leads.

http://www.socedo.com/

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Nimble simply works for you and your team by automagically creating an Intelligent Relationship Platform. It gathers your team's contacts, calendars, email and

social interactions with social profile details from everywhere.

http://www.nimble.com/

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Positionly is a startup that offers a simple, easy-to-use, yet professional and accurate

SEO software. It is suitable for a wide range of clients, from small and local businesses or freelancers with great

potential but tight budgets to enterprise companies and agencies.

https://positionly.com/b

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�

Bitly empowers marketers to make better decisions. Founded in 2008, Bitly has been relentlessly committed to the power of the

link. Bitlyshortens and provides intelligence on 800 million links per month and

processes 10 billion clicks on those links per month from every social platform,

media site and brand site in almost every country in the world. Bitly is the partner of

choice for 20 of the 25 Forbes World’s Most Powerful Brands and 37 of the comScore Top 50 Multi-Platform Properties (Desktop

and Mobile).

https://bitly.com/

�

Rio SEO facilitates the discovery of global retailer and service providers’ local listings and optimized content by local searchers across multiple platforms. Organizations have used Rio SEO’s industry leading SaaS-based local search automation

solutions and patented SEO reporting tools since 2009 to drive traffic to their location listings through all major search engines, social networks, and data aggregators. Today, Rio SEO’s Store Finder, Mobile Store Finder, and the industry’s only international Local Business Listings

Management software power more than 100,000 location listings for top multi-

location retailers and service businesses.http://www.rioseo.com

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This paper was produced by ProofHub, the project management software that brings together the right blend of tools so that you could manage projects faster, better and

easier.

www.proofhub.com

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