During the last several years, the digital marketplace has suffered many changes. Some of them were negative, and most of them proved to be positive.
If you think about it, ten years ago Facebook wasn’t even popular. Ten years ago, not everyone was able to afford a smartphone or any type of smart device.
Along with the technology advancements and the social media “boom”, the business tendencies have definitely changed. Some practices have gone for good, some are still present, and many of them have appeared from nowhere.
Successful marketers are very different from average marketers. Those who understand that marketing success is entirely dependent on the marketplace tendencies will be successful. Those who are conservative with their marketing knowledge and strategies will have to suffer a lot.
Predicting Digital Marketing Trends
If you’re still reading, you’re probably interested in finding out where the digital marketing trends are heading to. Trends come and go, and there’s no certainty for how long they’re going to stay.
Nevertheless, if we want to predict what’s going to come next, we have to look at the most popular tendencies. Before predicting anything, we need to analyze the consumer tendencies, we need to pay attention to the analytics, and we most definitely have to stay open and flexible.
In 2017, there are quite a few important digital marketing tendencies which are easily recognizable. During today’s post, we’re going to display – what we think to be – the most important digital marketing trends that are here to stay for the next few following years.
#1. Storytelling
In marketing, stories aren’t just stories – they’re pure art. When your brand offers your prospects an amazing story, they’ll immediately start loving the concept that your brand relies on. Implementing storytelling into your digital marketing campaigns is one of the most efficient ways to attract your future customers’ attention.
Hold for a second and please answer this question in your own head (right now!):
What makes you share a story with a friend?
Most commonly, the answer is: “to let him know of an interesting happening or event”. While you’re doing it, you’re not even aware that your story is a strong attention-drawer. Smart brands have understood this, and they started to leverage storytelling in order to build their brand’s image and reputation.
Here are a few examples. Nike motivates people to get up and start being active. Microsoft inspires security and trust, while KFC emphasizes the secret recipe which came from a genuine farmer. UFC (the most aggressive fighting sport) has built stories around their fighters – each of them has a unique success story which fans adore.
#2. Personalized Marketing is Relevant
The days when aggressive advertising made lots of sales are gone for a long time now. Consumers have started to become smarter with their decisions, and they became less ignorant during the last several years. They now have Google that helps them look for relevant information before making any purchasing decisions.
Personalized marketing aims to approach the consumer in a different way. Instead of aggressively marketing your products and services through the use of intrusive ads, marketers have started to carefully select their target customers.
The purpose of this marketing style is to reach customers on a personal level. More than often, these types of promotional strategies are clearly purposed to earn the consumer’s interest in the brand’s products or services.
Successful brands manage to create rapport with their customers. When rapport is existent, there’s only a very small step towards a purchase, and that’s because rapport ultimately transforms into trust and loyalty.
#3. Content Marketing
Content is king. Again … content is king. This popular phrase began to be true and relevant along with the development of the blogging sphere. When blogs became extremely interesting for the general consumers, big companies started to come up with more and more content.
Even B2B organizations are now huge fans of content marketing, as they have witnessed the amazing benefits that it brings. No matter what anyone else says, I’m a firm believer that the foundation of any contemporary business should never lack the presence of a content marketing strategy.
To be even more precise about this trend – the tendency towards educational content is visible nowadays. Instead of proceeding with the traditional sales pitches, successful companies began educating their brand’s followers using the highly qualitative content.
Educational content that has business purposes in mind should never show “salesy” clues. In fact, it should always give the reader the solution that he’s looking for.
After you taught him how to do something, you can then offer to sell him a complementary ingredient (your product) in order to reduce the time and effort he has to dedicate in order to solve his need.
#4. Big Data
Businesses that don’t continually track their performance will never thrive in today’s business environment. Every marketing campaign should be planned, developed, and performed with the help of analytics. This way, you can always be up to date with your website visitors (a.k.a. potential customers) are doing.
For example, tools like Google Analytics –as you should know by now- lets you detect your website visitors’ clicks, mouse movements, and reading tendencies. You can know which topics from your blog are consumed the most, you can find out which ads have the highest conversion rates, and so on.
Big data, though, goes beyond analytics. The “big data” trend relies on two main concepts: automation and machine learning. Giant brands have already started to implement big data practices. Google, for example, has started to create algorithms around its users’ online behavior.
Big data is basically analytics that is taken to the next level. The machine learning tools are carefully analyzing and suggesting the user’s behavior.
In addition, multinational companies like Facebook are leveraging the big data concept in order to automate the creation of personalized content that appeals to each person uniquely. This trend is here to stay, and what we’ve seen until now is just the beginning!
#5. Mobile Marketing
We’re in 2017, and probably 1 out of 100 people are missing a mobile phone. Smartphones that are developed today are already integrating the most popular digital apps into their systems. Therefore, the new users (children & teenagers) are beginning their digital user experience in the way the big mobile companies want.
People can do almost anything they want on their mobile phones: they can communicate, look for information fast, pay their bills, reserve a seat at a table, and so on. Because smartphones are bringing this level of accessibility to the table, it’s almost obvious that the mobile industry is here to stay.
This is why mobile marketing campaigns should not be missing from any business organization that aims for higher purposes. In order to keep up with this trend, your business website always needs to be mobile optimized. You want every possible customer to be able to access your website. Otherwise, you’re losing a lot of potentials.
Conclusion
Figuring out which digital marketing trends are most predominant in the present moment will serve your business very well. By guiding your action in relation to the marketplace’s tendencies, you’re making sure that your business is one step ahead of the game.
