Happy New Year! We’ve ready to leap into 2015 with a host of new work projects and developments here at The Practice. But in the meantime, we wanted to consider just what the year has in store for digital marketing.

Although we’ve said this many times before, mobile is no longer thought of as the second screen- after all, an estimated 1 billion people worldwide will only use mobile for their Internet access in 2015. That means sites must be fully optimized for smartphone users, and businesses should also start thinking about developing apps either alongside or in place of their mobile site. And improved mobile sites mean mobile payment gateways will be at the forefront of each business too- especially services such as the newly launched Apple Pay. Coming in the wake of those before it such as Square and Google Wallet, Apple Pay enables users to purchase goods with the touch of their iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, and even the iPad Air 2 or iPad Mini 3. With these popular devices all compatible and numerous merchants on board with the payment system, its looks as though Apple Pay will be a feature for mobile app and site developers to adopt as soon as they can.

We’re sure that content marketing will be top priority for brands looking to create original and targeted campaigns for their audiences. Blogs, video, and social media will be paramount, and popular tactics such as “reactvertising” will likely be a significant part of any marketer’s agenda in 2015. With everything from #Bendgate, to Oreo’s “Dunk in the dark” Super bowl tweet, to Ellen’s Oscar selfie, the past couple of years have shown us that the trend is set to continue. This means that marketers will have to be constantly up to speed with how to incorporate world events into their campaigns, and on the ball when it comes to live-tweeting. In a similar way, piggybacking and responding to popular trends with parodies in the form of videos, tweets and social media memes is something businesses will likely continue to visit this year to aid relevance and exposure. There will undoubtedly be a greater need in 2015 for brands to be confident and creative publishers.

Personalised marketing will arguably be a big trend of the coming year, with Twitter and Facebook already making it easy for brands to target specific audiences. But instead of advertisers segmenting their audiences with certain posts designed to reach a specific demographic, we hope to see greater personalization. According to a study conducted by IBM, 36% of consumers now reported willingness to share their location with their favourite brands via GPS for instance, which is twice last year’s number. So with a wealth of mobile and web-driven data now available, it’s never been easier for marketers to create unique experiences for their customers, with tailored notifications, adverts and apps.

And in order to increase exposure to customers, paid-for advertising will be even more crucial this year, with Facebook announcing that as of this month, it will place highest priority on promoted posts and adverts, while weeding out promotional organic posts. So this means that any unpaid posts which act as adverts for a company’s products or deals will be pushed further out of sight. It also means that brands need to focus on distinguishing their strategies for paid and unpaid posts- those which are unpaid should contain creative, high quality and original content, with an emphasis on brand storytelling as opposed to publicity. With Twitter and Instagram likely to follow suit too, we imagine that social media optimization will be more important now than ever before.

Do you agree with our digital predictions for 2015? Which trends do you think will be big in the coming year? We’d love to hear your thoughts as always, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.