Digital Marketing Trends you need to know to prepare for 2017
Digital marketing has been gaining a lot of popularity in 2016 with large and medium-sized companies or businesses creating their online presence and promoting their services and products through several social media channels and sites.
Some marketers believe that the Internet space is going to expand further with more companies entering the digital world, while others thought that there will be a complete 360 makeover of how users and search engine giants give preference to the ridiculously huge amount of data available on the internet.
The online marketing industry is huge, complex and volatile. The sooner you hook the right nerve of a frequent internet user, the better you can appeal to them and stay ahead of your competitors in your business. In ushering the new year, we compiled a list of some of the reliable digital marketing trends that you need to know to prepare for 2017.
Tougher content marketing: It is expected for Content to still be king in 2017, and the fact that virtually every marketer is creating content for their audience means that standing out from that huge crowd will be more difficult. Users see hundreds of adverts in a day which means: One, they’re probably bored of them and two, they can spot a bad advert in just one glance. An impactful and visual content with a great narrative will sure win a very busy field in 2017.
Increasing dominance of videos ads and live stream: Video advertisements are nothing new for social media giants like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram but the news of Google entering the fray with in-SERP video advertising will change definitely change the whole spectrum of online advertisement. Video has been popular in the online market industry for years but as the years go by and videos can easily get viral now thanks to social media.
Marketers are not using just any type of video, but a live stream video. It should be a live stream in order for them to get the most views and engagement from their target market. Live streaming is pretty easy now thanks to Facebook live. Now other social media giants added live streaming feature in their platform, like Youtube, Twitter and Instragam also. You can easily interact and engage with your target audiences and customers with the use of live stream.
More focus on Mobile: Like ‘content king’, mobile first is a little bit cliche when it comes to digital marketing trends. After the “Mobilegeddon” in 2015, 2016 was a big year for mobile so it is to be expected for 2017 and beyond as mobile trends and mobile users increases as months flows by. And as ever Google was leading the mobile first in 2016.
Google has started to not only drive the speed of mobile websites through its Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP project, but it is starting to look like an SEO for mobile and allows it to lead the agenda over desktop. You definitely going to need a great mobile friendly website in 2017 – but not for Google but for your users and prospects as well.
Social Media is still dominating: Social media keeps on dominating the Internet sphere. Whether you’re in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any social media platform, millions of users are online 24/7. Anything can get viral, just a simple embarrassing picture or a cute or funny cat video. Enough has been said about the power of social media. Expect in the year 2017, the online communities will not be bound to only company-consumer conversations or attracting new prospects but instead they will provide opportunities to improve conversion rates.
With new features for business in social media, as seen on Facebook, Instragram and Pinterest, we have analytics and social media ‘buy’ buttons. You’ll probably notice that there are more ‘buy’ buttons on social media, allowing consumers to buy directly from social networks rather than going to a separate e-commerce website.
Internet of things: IoT is one of the most important marketing technology applications of the last 2 to 3 years, but it is more relevant to device makers and retailers. Wearable tech was always going to be the first step of IoT and it had some mixed success. Devices that has a clear purpose and benefit have performed will, but we have to admit that the Apple Watch was bit of a flop and needs some needed improvement for it to be more successful.
Anyway, the agenda of IoT is moving on with devices like the Amazon echo becoming more mainstream. There are expected to be 75 billion connected devices by the year 2020, meaning there will be ten times as many devices able to talk one another as there will be people in planet earth. IoT presents a great opportunity for marketers. Products that market themselves, order themselves and integrate into an ecosystem that will increase customer retention.