2015 Channel Marketing Trends and Predictions

New Year’s predictions are fun. But what’s the best part? Looking at future possibilities through the eyes of others or looking back at last year’s thoughts in hindsight?

We say both! And each year we wait, with anticipation, for the release of Channel Marketer Report’s Channel Marketing trends and predictions for that very reason. It’s fun!

2014’s predictions included:

• An increase in social media engagement and social selling
• Vendors would create social communities and content for Partners
• Vendor provided content, content and more content both written and visual
• Email automation and syndicated web content would be on the rise
• Significant uptick in the number of hybrid service providers

Sure enough, many of those predictions were spot on.  More on-premise Partners moved to the cloud or at least a cloud model and social is well past “trend” status and even some are past “how do I do it status” and moving into “how do I help my Partners do it.”

So what’s in store for 2015?

Read the full article here if you wish, but in a nutshell the over arching themes are:

• An increase in automation tools and Vendor supplied Partner marketing platforms
• Bigger focus on ROI
• More local level marketing
• Integrated tactics across all marketing channels

Of course we’re always interested in hearing other perspectives. What do you think will trend in the Channel this year and why?