I went to the fortune teller
To find the Marketing Trends;
Her predictions weren’t stellar,
So read this article to see how it ends . . .
They say there are many ways to predict the future, like coffee fortune telling, crystal balls, tarot cards, palm reading. Well, none of these was used in order to research the following top marketing trends for 2017, but you can give it a try and check them.
- Personalization
In a world of too much content and not enough time, personalization is a huge win for brands looking to earn the attention of their consumers. In order to capture distracted customers’ attention, marketers must reach them with personalized, relevant content. Tracking consumers’ habits, interests and browsing histories is key to creating strategies that get them to close the sale or purchase the service.
- Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing gives brands the opportunity to create word-of-mouth buzz through personalities whom consumers already follow and admire. People tend to trust recommendations from people they see as thought leaders. The right influencers establish credibility through each social media post or advertisement. When they work with brands, it’s because they genuinely believe in them, and that trust is passed on to consumers.
- Chatbots
Chatbots are a major game-changer that improves real-time, 24-hour engagement with consumers. Advances in artificial intelligence and programming enable chatbots to answer customers’ queries. A chatbot essentially is the sales associate who never sleeps and always is ready with a prompt reply.
- Marketing Automation
Why do the same thing over and over again when you can do it once and automate the rest? Marketing automation is growing at an impressive rate, using software platforms designed to put repetitive tasks on autopilot. It includes solutions for email marketing, social-media marketing, SMS and digital ads.
- Native Advertising
Native advertising means integrating your advertising efforts into content that already provides value to readers and viewers. Marketers love this form of paid media because it fits organically. The content usually is useful, interesting and targeted to a specific audience, which makes it one of the best platforms to launch any marketing campaign.
- Content Marketing
Content marketing sometimes is confused with native marketing. Native marketing is simply another way for marketers to distribute content. Content marketing is not a paid-and-done transaction, like placing a native ad. It is rather a strategic-marketing technique, integrated into an overall marketing strategy. It creates and distributes relevant information to attract a target audience.
- Interactive Content
The content you can interact with tends to be more popular. Think of ways to get readers to actively participate, instead of passively consume. Interactive content can include assessments, polls, surveys, infographics, brackets and contests.
- VR & AR
Virtual and augmented reality has become a seriously viable option for marketers looking to bring the online into the real world. A famous example is the Pokemon-Go game.
- lOT
Everyday objects are beginning to connect to the internet, and this Internet of Things trend is going to open doors for brands and marketers to integrate with the everyday lives of consumers.
- Mobile First
The present and the future are mobile. Internet traffic is now coming more from mobile devices than desktops. The content, the ads and the entire online experience must be integrated with a mobile user’s lifestyle.
Social Media Marketing Trends
- Livestreaming
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram have all released live video offerings and livestreaming will continue to push the boundaries. A big step in this direction was Instagram’s integration of a livestream option into its Stories feature. It’s clear that we’re going to see a lot more live broadcasts in 2017.
- Short-lived content
What gives Snapchat its appeal? The fact that the content disappears. Snapchat showed the value of short-lived content. This is a key attraction for Generation Z, famous for having an eight-second attention span, and is why marketers should be integrating short-lived content into their content strategy.
- Mobile Video
Have you looked at your Facebook feed recently? Chances are that 95% of it is video. And here’s a fun stat: mobile video views grew six times faster than desktop views in 2015. In fact, in Q4 of 2015, mobile video views exceeded desktop views for the first time ever. We now live in an age of mobile video, and it’s time we embraced it.
- Social Media “Buy” Buttons
We are moving into an age where purchasing doesn’t need to happen on a third-party site. Users are on a social platform, so why should they have to leave in order to buy something? “Buy” buttons are quickly turning social media sites such as Facebook and Pinterest into social shopping experiences.
Trends that are going out of fashion
- Popup ads
In August 2016, Google announced it was looking to penalize websites that use annoying pop up ads and interstitials. Do pop ups work? Sure, but Google apparently has the data to show that people don’t like visiting sites with pop ups as much as sites that don’t have them, so it only makes sense for Google to boost the rankings of websites that remove them.
- Fake reviews
70% of Americans check online reviews before making a purchase, according to a 2015 study. Around 88% of customers believe online reviews are as authentic as personal recommendations. As might be expected, this has attracted an industry that produces fake reviews to those willing to pay for them. In 2015, Amazon began filing lawsuits against companies for publishing fake reviews. Consumers are also becoming savvier. When fake reviews stop working, companies won’t buy them much longer.
- Big banner ads
There was a time when there were big banner ads on every site, distracting you from concentrating on your purpose. However, this trend is fading away as marketers concentrate on other tools such as native advertising, which have been shown to be 53% more likely to generate leads. Much of this trend appears to be related to higher mobile usage, where click rates on banners are notoriously low.
Obviously, we kept ourselves informed about all the developments in marketing, we took into account our experience, the state of the art innovations / applications and the experts’ insights to extrapolate these predictions for 2017.
Do you know/ remember the song Fortune teller from The Rolling Stones? The lyrics from the beginning of this article were inspired by it. Nevertheless, we promise to update them after a follow up, by the end of 2017, according to the extent of the fulfillment of these marketing predictions.
