State of Marketing 2015: Best Practices and Actionable Tips

Over the past few days, we’ve been reviewing the findings of Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s 2015 State of Marketing report in an attempt to help marketers tap into the latest digital marketing trends.

Surveying more than 5,000 marketers around the globe, Salesforce found that more and more marketers are acknowledging the importance of mobile and social—61% say that mobile integration is effective or very effective, while 66% say that social media marketing is core to their business.

To help marketers take advantage of these channels, and to “make [the] report’s data more actionable in [their] 2015 strategy,” Salesforce has released some of its best practices for marketers to implement in their campaigns.

Best Practices for Mobile Marketing

As we emphasized in our previous article, mobile is surely the place to be . Salesforce found that more than half (58%) of marketers surveyed now have a dedicated mobile marketing team. What’s more, marketers who’ve integrated mobile into their marketing strategy have seen positive results, with 90% of marketers surveyed stating that mobile produces significant ROI for their company.

The message being conveyed is pretty clear: Integrate mobile into your overall digital marketing strategy this year or witness your competitors overtake you.

To strengthen the power of mobile marketing, Salesforce also recommends that marketers “help [their] team and larger marketing department understand the huge impact [of mobile integration] on business.” The mobile team should work together with its social, email, and web teams to gain a clear and “holistic” understanding of customers’ preferred touchpoints during every stage in the customer journey.

Furthermore, with a significant percentage of marketers stating that mobile loyalty campaigns and location-based content contributes to the success of their campaigns, it’s critical for marketers to invest in these categories.

Best Practices for Social Media Marketing

Although popular social channels, like Facebook and Twitter, top the list of the most used platforms, with 80% and 70% of respondents using these channels respectively, newer ones like Tagged and Viadeo are seeing greater success when it comes to effectiveness.

In fact, 86% of those surveyed said that Tagged is effective/very effective for their campaigns, while 81% expressed the same opinion about Viadeo. “Do your research on channels that might resonate best with your unique audience,” Salesforce said in the report. “Engage in some social listening to see if topics relevant to your brand or competitors are taking place on these lesser known social networks.”

The study also recommends that marketers adopt a “round-the-clock” strategy for their social campaigns, as recent data indicates that consumers are more active and engaged on social media during weekends. This means that marketers need to ensure they have an on-call social manager who can actively interact with customers—by posting status updates and answering customer questions—during weekends or whenever needed.

For more information about Salesforce’s insights on social marketing, read our article here.

Other recommendations from the report cover marketers’ overall marketing strategy and email marketing campaigns, etc. Download the full study or subscribe to our coverage here to learn more about the best practices for digital marketers in 2015.

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Marketing Digest Writing Team

The Marketing Digest Writing Team provides the content you need to keep you well-informed on the latest developments and trends in the digital marketing industry.