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On Wednesday February 27th, my colleague Neil Hamilton and I will be at the TFM&A show in London. We’re teaming up on a presentation at 12pm summarizing a few of the hot trends we’re predicting for the digital marketing industry in 2013. Whenever I do a prediction presentation, I always think of the perhaps most famous quote ever from a science fiction writer:
"The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed" - William Gibson, 2003
For predictions that cover only the current year, and a year that is already almost 7/52 over, his quote couldn’t be more accurate. A prediction for the current year rarely is provocative. However, the areas that we’ll talk about summarize some of the big-picture trend areas that many of us who are “in the weeds” of our daily jobs have a difficult time seeing. We’ll be happy if you join us.
One of the trends we’ll talk about involves the Obama 2012 presidential campaign – yes a 2013 trend based on an event last year. Many pundits are calling it the best run political campaign ever. One of the, (if not THE) major reasons? A successful use of digital marketing best practices. Obama’s staff used digital marketing to build a giant community of interested and active potential voters, and transformed many of them into donors (contributing significantly to the $690m the campaign raised) and many others into political organizers. Rather than blast emails to millions of individuals, the campaign staff relied heavily on multivariate testing, fine-grained segmentation and other best practices to build a community.
The success of the campaign has become incredibly visible, getting coverage in major US and UK media outlets (e.g., here, and here) and countless blogs and online sources (e.g., see here and here).
The trend isn’t that the campaign used digital marketing best practices. What’s interesting about the campaign is that it used digital marketing so successfully and so visibly that they, more so than any analyst report, industry article or case study has ever done in the past, single-handedly raised awareness of digital marketing as a function that brings clear and measurable value to the bottom line of any organization.
So, in 2013, we’ll continue to ride the wave of interest and excitement into the potential of digital marketing. The next time your team gets more budget or headcount (as it may already have), whisper a quiet thank you to the Obama 2012 Presidential campaign. The mindshare and visibility it brought to digital marketing is the best marketing for our industry, ever.
