Digital Marketing Changes Quickly: Trends To Watch This Year

Source: Yourstory.com

The constant evolution of technology is moving the different industries and businesses towards a new digital era, and marketing is clearly not an exception. While the current market is still dominated by traditional marketing, digital marketing has come to revolutionize the way companies approach people. The speed, with which innovations and new technologies appear,  forces the different companies to update themselves regularly. The methods used to attract consumers change so fast that even the trends used last year can be considered old. This is why companies should always try to be aligned with the current trends, the following are some examples of the ones that are expected to be popular during 2017:

Live Video Streaming: With some popular social networks like Facebook and Instagram including this function into their channels recently, many other platforms are expected to join this trend too, helping Live Video Streaming to finally boom during this year. Video Streaming represents a big opportunity for brands as it can be a powerful tool to create a good relation with their customers. People are curious about watching things directly from someone else's point of view and live streaming can offer this.

Augmented Reality: The power of Augmented reality and its impact on consumers was evident with the incredibly fast growing popularity of Pokemon Go during 2016, and while its popularity also went down really  fast,  it gave an example to marketers of how useful augmented reality can be. Many app developers and marketing experts are currently working on ways to make AR more popular, which could be a good opportunity to incorporate it in your digital marketing strategy and help your business create awareness and engagement.

Virtual Reality: First is necessary to explain the difference between augmented and virtual reality as many people seem to get confused with them. While augmented reality uses technology to add or distort something from the real world, virtual reality immerses you in a reality different from the one you are in. Virtual reality is expected to reach different types of markets, like real state where agencies can use it to show a property. Virtual reality is expected to change the industry during 2017 and you should better  join it before you get behind.

Viral Marketing: Quality not quantity is the key nowadays. Everyone out there is trying to create content that has the potential to go viral. Either a video, a tweet or a photo , but all companies are trying to go viral. The reason is simple, google's algorithm takes into consideration your content's popularity when giving it a ranking. It's a new and more effective way of SEO, to get  a better ranking you should have more:  more likes, more shares, and more engagement.

Behavior-Based Email Marketing: For a long time E-mail marketing was the way to reach your consumers, however, times have changed and countries such as Canada now have anti-spam laws. While some consumers still choose to subscribe to companies newsletters many end up unsubscribing due to the irrelevant content. As Goulart (2017) states “Generic emails are no longer a success and spam emails will jeopardize your marketing success”.  A new way  to solve this are Behavior-Based Emails, which similar to Ads displayed online they are adjusted according to your online activity.

Visual Content: While written content is essential for SEO and still needs to be produced, visual content appears to be as the best way to get the attention from consumers nowadays. Graphics, photos, presentations, even memes will help you attract customers while your written content ends up engaging them.

It is clear that companies need to be adapting to the newest trend when it comes to digital marketing. Each year major changes occur in the industry and maybe even the trends that were popular at the beginning of the year are irrelevant by the end of it. Still, the trends that were presented previously appear to have a huge potential and could be very useful for the different companies in the years to come.

Gerard Galindo & Marcus Pernegger

References: 

Matthew Goulart (May 2017). Digital Marketing Changes Quickly: Trends To Watch This Year. Forbes, retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/05/11/digital-marketing-changes-quickly-trends-to-watch-this-year/#4e63d39340e0