With every New Year come the dreams and predictions of what the next 365 days will bring. The DCG team has pulled together a few of our own predictions (and wishes) for 2013 …

1. The web content management (WCM) nomenclature fog will (finally) begin to lift, as bigger vendors further embrace some variation of CEM (customer experience/engagement management) for their expanding suites, and WCM becomes identified with web channel-centric projects.
2. Companies will take a more holistic approach to technology selection, looking both at technology platforms AND service providers together to ensure a more successful solution implementation.
3. More acquisitions in the WCM marketplace, plus disruption from new content marketing technology entrants will further blur the lines between marketing automation and web content management. A few more WCM pure plays bite the dust.
4. Marketing automation platforms will extend their functionality so that the technology can be leveraged beyond the early stages of the customer relationship lifecycle.
5. Talent shortages in the tech and marketing space will become a real issue for start-ups.
6. Lead scoring will continue to mature as an analytics discipline as marketers try to unravel the mystery (and qualify) site visitors from their very first interaction.
7. Inbound marketing will consume more marketers’ attention to ensure the marketing automation funnel is fed with a steady stream of new prospects.
8. Real-time analytics and Big Data get more and more airtime – and increasingly really mean less and less.  Look for the same “Cloud washing” marketing spin to happen to “Big Data” as happened to “Cloud” and “SaaS”.
9. The next frontier of content marketing and audience engagement goes global as brands start to try and figure out how to localize thought leadership and engagement.
10. Watch for new “owned media partnerships” as brands start to leverage co-opetition and partnerships to reach each other’s audiences.

Have predictions of your own? Share them with us via the comments.