Visual marketing enables an organization to show products without telling people about them and it also helps brands to share their business and personal stories. Visual marketing can help organization to inspire, connect and engage with their audience quickly and better than a simple text message. Read more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/power-visual-content-marketing-and-brand-storytelling-nutshell-0

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) consists of different techniques to connect a search engine's technology. SEM include SEO and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads. SEO and SEM are often used interchangeably. But, SEO is a subset of SEM. The question here arises that what is the difference between SEO and SEM. SEO's aim is to provide organic search results for free while with SEM, search are not always be free as it uses paid ads for the certain keywords on search engine results page. Read more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/what-main-difference-between-seo-and-sem

Consumers are purchasing online and so e-commerce sites have become very important. Thus ecommerce security becomes important. E-commerce dealers must be able to ensure protection for cardholder data and be able to provide strong access control measures through the payment card industry data security standard (PCI DSS). Heather Gilroy (Brand Development Manager at Personnel Checks), writes in this article link about some ways to improve e-commerce security:  http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/e-commerce-digital-marketing/4-ways-to-instantly-improve-your-ecommerce-security/1454

Nowadays retailers are utilizing big data to improve price, product, and placement effectiveness to new in-store experiences that influence social media. But, still there is a partial connection between these innovative ideas and the real time experience in each store. So, retailers need to get real-time data from the shop floor and pass it to the decision makers and in turn can make a real difference to both profitability and customer experience. In an era where consumer behavior is changing rapidly, retailers also need to change fast by empowering those on the shop floor to respond in real time. Retailers need to ensure right products are at the right price, on the right shelf and at the right time with the help of operational analytics. Read more at: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/customer-experience/big-data-in-a-mobile-world-shop-floor-decision-making/1460

Technology is always changing rapidly. Contact centers are technology driven and therefore in the contact center industry, monitoring of new trends and implementing the changes becomes important. Mobility, social media, video and cloud technology are some of the communication services trends that will be dominating in 2015. Read more at: http://www.callcentertimes.com/Home/tabid/37/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/395/CategoryID/1/NewsID/926/Default.aspx

Speech analytics or audio mining is used to analyze spoken words that reveal information when an interaction takes place between the contact centers and organizations and it optimizes workers performance and enhances customer experience. Speech analytics technology is used mostly in call centers to extract valuable business intelligence. North America is the strongest initial market for speech analytics and this market is expected to grow from $241.8 million in 2014 to $696.2 million by 2019, at a CAGR of 23.6% from 2014 to 2019. Read more at: http://www.sys-con.com/node/3287613

2014 was the year of mobile apps, mobile payments, and mobile-friendly websites. But 2015 will be a year of customer centricity. Customer centric is all about the customer- understanding of a customer’s value and what their significance to the business profitability. Benoit Gruber (VP Corporate Communications, Sage ERP X3), writes in his article link about the strategies that will ensure your customer centricity: http://www.callcentertimes.com/Home/tabid/37/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/395/CategoryID/1/NewsID/918/Default.aspx

Marketing is nowadays moving away from untargeted push-messaging to building customer relationships. Identity is important in one-to-one marketing. We must understand how organizations can create customer identity. Russell Loarridge in his article writes about the key challenges that today’s marketers face in building customer identity: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-features/marketing-s-new-imperative-customer-identity-management/1446

Software as a Service (SaaS) and subscription cloud-based software are becoming popular nowadays. But, small businesses should ask these following questions before selecting any cloud based software: which ones are the best for business? what is the cost? and are they better than the solutions you have now? Logan Roberts (Strategy Manager at Entech, an IT Consulting and Managed Services Provider), writes in the article link about cloud software a small business should consider: http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/4-cloud-options-small-businesses-consider-01130318

According to a new research it was found that 26% of marketers have never heard of marketing automation, and a further 49% are only partly familiar. 60% revealed that implementation of an automated technology had a positive impact on their marketing communications. Read more at: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-news/more-than-a-quarter-of-marketers-unaware-of-marketing-automation/1451

If a business website does not convince the audience, business might lose a client and it was proved that 7 percent of visitors leave a web page within the first 20 seconds if it isn't interesting. Rob Keating (Owner of Lead Generating Websites), writes in his article link about some tips to help business website content to be successful: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-content/five-content-musts-for-your-business-website/1425

Brands are investing more in social media. As per Forrester research, marketers will spend €4.3bn on social media by 2019, up from €2.6bn, and a compound annual growth rate of 10.5%. Further, it was found that 82% of the spending will be on social mobile advertising from 2014 to 2019. The study also says that Facebook dominates European consumers’ social habits, with 60% online people are in the top seven European countries visiting Facebook monthly and 14% visiting Twitter. Read more at:  http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/social-media-marketing/from-social-media-to-social-commerce/1427

Partner relationship management or PRM platform is related to CRM. PRM refers to cloud platform for managing your channel partner relationship and strategies. A PRM platform needs integration with sales and marketing systems and can be integrated with enterprise resource planning, CRM and project management. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/future-trends-in-prm-65329

This era is the era of personalization. But, consumers have become impatient nowadays.  Recent research from Janrain revealed that 58% of consumers unsubscribe after three mistargeted emails and 17% unsubscribe after one mistargeted email. 95% of consumers react negatively to mistargeting – with 55% deleting emails and 53% unsubscribing; while 40% categorize the emails as junk/spam. Brands now need to win consumer trust. Personalization should be a standard component of the marketing toolset. To know more, follow: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-lead-generation/personalisation-welcome-to-the-last-chance-saloon/1420

According to a recent report from Infusionsoft, it was found that 62% of small businesses surveyed cite word-of-mouth/customer referrals as a top 3 tactic in marketing strategy, 34% of people considered email as a top 3 tactic, 25% considered networking, 23% considered social media, 14% considered search engine and 13% considered content marketing. Read more at: : http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/26859/the-most-effective-marketing-strategies-for-small-businesses

 According to eMarketer, programmatic video ad sales in EU-5 reached €226m in 2014 and is expected to rise 63.5% this year to reach €369m by the end of 2015.  Tod Sacerdoti (CEO and founder of BrightRoll) writes in his article link about some important signs that indicate why 2015 is set to be an important year for video advertising: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-advertising/three-major-signs-that-2015-will-be-a-breakthrough-year-for-video-advertising/1434

The latest trend in e-commerce industry is the use of usage-based billing. Digital service businesses should be looking to integrate at least one method of usage-based billing in their business model in order to tap into new revenue streams and maintain customer satisfaction in this competitive environment. James Gagliardi (Vice President of Product and Innovation at Digital River) writes in his article link about two models businesses should consider – subscription and freemium:  http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/e-commerce-digital-marketing/the-recurring-revenue-revolution/1413

Nowadays marketing is data-driven marketing and the more data you have, it is better for the company. Big Data helps companies ranging from small companies to huge multi-national enterprises. Every organization should take advantage of big data and the value it brings. It helps in analyzing campaign revenue, survey responses, tracking social mentions and assessing buying behavior and is also essential to unlock insight into emerging trends to design future campaigns. Tracking conversations via social media enable businesses to find out when a topic is starting to trend and what their customers are talking about. Social analytics will therefore open the door to responsive product optimization. Read more at: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-data/don-t-be-afraid-of-data-marketing-use-data-analytics-to-measure-progress-and-inform-strategy/1433

In 2015, mobile device will be the key driver for commercial and marketing activity. According to a recent study it was found that only 13% of the world population will be connected with a smartphone or tablet and mobile messaging will play a vital role. Ramsey Masri (CEO of OtherLevels), writes in his article link about tactics and strategies that mobile marketers should consider in 2015: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/mobile-digital-marketing/moving-the-mobile-marketing-needle-in-2015/1421

Customers are choosing when and how to interact, turning customer relationship management (CRM) and data analysis as the most important thing. So, retailers now need to know about how to engage customers.  Customers have short attention spans and to overcome this, retailers have to offer a more personalized experience. CRM has been used to build a profile of a customer and thus can identify their likes and dislikes, past purchases and interests which in turn will help them to interact with customers in a better way. Personalizing the online experience and product offering is the key to make customers feel valued and listened to by the brand, thereby ensuring that they are likely to revisit in future. Read more about this in the following article link: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/customer-experience/how-can-retailers-get-more-personal-with-their-customers/1411