Are You Prepared for these 2016 Digital Marketing Trends?

If you’re involved in the digital marketing space it’s important you have a pulse on what trends are going to continue to dominate the market well into the future. Without constantly looking forward it’s easy to get caught up focusing your energy on outdated strategies that aren’t actually moving your business forward.

Luckily, we’ve done some of the hard work for you. Below we illuminate a couple trends that are taking foothold in the market right now, as well as, highlight a few up and coming trends that are going to play a big role in the digital marketing space well into the future.

Let’s get to it!

1. Mobile Marketing

I know you’ve probably heard this from us before, but mobile is going to be huge. It’s growing so quickly, Google announced that mobile traffic overtook desktop traffic in over 10 countries last year. This is a trend we don’t see slowing down anytime soon.

Mobile phones are becoming cheaper and more powerful. Plus, since mobile phones are basically becoming the extension of a person’s hand, this means the chances are fairly higher that they’re going to be using their phones on a very regular basis.

If your website currently isn’t mobile optimized, or doesn’t have a responsive design, then you need to ensure this happens as soon as possible. The longer you wait the more traffic and potential customers you’re going to miss out on.

2. Enhanced Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is only set to grow into the future. Marketing automation is simply a hands-off approach to engaging with your leads and getting your company out there in the market. Of course, having a personal touch for a lot of your interactions is important, but you can allow marketing automation to handle a lot of the grunt work.

Chances are, you’re already automating some of your marketing efforts. One of the most common forms of automation is via an email autoresponder. This is the nifty piece of software that regularly sends out emails to your list after they’ve subscribed, or done some other action on your website.

Expect the automation of certain marketing activities to continue to grow. From lead generation, to social media, to blog post reach out, to keeping track of leads. The more you’re able to build hands-off systems to take care of a lot of the grunt work the more time you’ll have to focus on high level business activities.

3. Up and Coming Advertising Platforms

With the flood of new social media apps into the marketplace the sheer number of advertising choices you have is outstanding. Back in the “old days” you’re only real chance for online advertising was through Google Adwords and buying a banner ad on a relevant site. Those options still exist, but now you have dozens of different choices.

In the last year alone we’ve seen the introduction of Instagram and Snapchat advertising, as well as the continued expansion of the Facebook advertising platform. Every single one of these platforms enables you to tap into new marketing demographics and utilize new targeting data.

These platforms are primed for growth in the future. Beyond these expect new apps to further unlock even more advertising potential well into the future.

4. Virtual Reality

We don’t really know what VR means for digital marketers yet, but we do know that it’s going to play a role. The Oculus Rift has already become a media sensation, and this is just from the first contact with this new piece of technology.

Most of the largest technology companies in the world are already investing in VR, so you can expect some big advances in this field rather quickly. Although there aren’t any opportunities to grow your brand and advertise within these “new worlds” yet, you can expect for them to be plentiful in the future.

Keep an eye on the development of this field, and see how you can position your business for success by becoming an early adopter.

5. Internet of Things

You might remember that we did a roundup of 5G and the Internet of Things, a little while back. The Internet of Things is essentially a world where smart devices will communicate with one another and interact with one another in the physical world. Think of devices like autonomous driving cars, smart homes, even smarter smartphones, wearable technology like the Apple Watch and on and on.

Since this is a developing field it’s difficult to make any solid predictions. However, the potential of what this can bring in terms of data and real-time marketing is quite exciting. Imagine being able to have in-depth customer data that tells you exactly how your target customer spends their time and when the best times are to mention your product or services to them.

We have a lot of data to process and analyze today, but expect this to grow into the future.

I hope this post didn’t overwhelm you. We covered a lot and it can be fun to dream about the future these digital marketing trends will help build. If you need any help building a digital marketing strategy that will position your business as a contender in the long-run, then get in touch with our team today.