The Top 7 Online Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2017
The Internet has drastically altered
the way in which information is shared, and has had a profound impact on
marketing. Over the past few years, there has been more of a shift toward
inbound techniques, while many outbound tactics have become antiquated. More
businesses are finding success publishing original content rather than
embedding advertisements within external content, because of the additional
benefits these tactics offer, such as branding and audience growth.
With these trends in mind, let’s
discuss my predictions for the top online marketing trends of 2017.
1.
Content Marketing Will be Bigger than Ever
One of the main ways that companies
are establishing authority and gaining trust with consumers is by consistently
creating valuable content through a variety of channels. This typically
involves relevant industry information that provides insight or entertainment
to an audience. Doing so allows a company to steadily build rapport with its
demographic and develop a loyal following. According to the Content
Marketing Institute, the top B2B content marketing strategies are social
media, articles on a business’s website, eNewsletters, case studies, videos and
articles on other websites.
By using one or more of these
channels, small businesses are
able to build a positive reputation within their industry. This trend suggests
that marketing to the masses through techniques like television ads and radio
ads are becoming less effective. Instead, it’s better to concentrate on inbound
marketing, by producing valuable, engaging content designed for a specific
audience. For help designing your content marketing strategy, see my articles “11
Places to Find Awesome Content Marketing Ideas,” and “How
to Build a Kickass Content Strategy.”
2.
Social Media Marketing Will Require More Diversity
Just a few years ago, businesses
were limited with regard to the social media networks they could implement into
their marketing campaigns, with the biggies including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Now, it seems like new social
media sites are appearing all the time. While some never really get off the
ground, others like Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr and Instagram have surged in
popularity and have provided businesses with a plethora of new options that
allow them to produce engaging content in a variety of media forms and build
their audiences across more channels than ever before.
Consequently, it has become common
for businesses to branch out and experiment with multiple networks with the aim
of reaching the maximum amount of consumers. This diversification seems to
prove fruitful for many companies because it often builds brand equity by
making it easier for consumers to recognize a particular brand. For help
figuring out which social media networks are right for your business, see my
article “How
to Determine Which Social Media Network Fits Your Business.”
3.
Image-Centric Content Will Rule
As consumers are hit with an increasing
number of advertisements, it’s becoming more important to make content easily
and quickly digestible. If you look at the social media sites I mentioned
previously that are on the rise, three of the four have a common
characteristic…they place an emphasis on images. The rapid rise to success of Buzzfeed and Pinterest are testaments to the power and
viral potential of image-based content.
Successful blog posts that receive
the most social shares also usually have a common characteristic: they pepper
in some well-placed pictures to break content up and emphasize certain points.
Another example is infographics, which combine images with a minimal amount of
text to explain a topic and provide statistical information or data from
research studies.
While I doubt that traditional
text-based content will ever completely go out of style, it’s pretty clear that
incorporating images is beneficial to a marketing campaign.
For more information about using
Image-based social media networks in your online marketing initiative, I
recommend the following articles:
- How to Use Pinterest in Your Online Marketing Initiative
- Visual Micro-Sharing Platforms: The Next Big Time in Social Media Marketing?
- The Power of Images in Social Media Marketing
4.
Less will be more
One notable trend is the apparent
shift in consumer preference regarding simplistic marketing messages instead of
in-depth messages. When you think about some of the top brands in the world
like Apple and Google, they clearly value simplicity. A large part of
Pinterest’s appeal is its clean, uncluttered, and minimalist aesthetic.
With many consumers feeling burned
out by a constant barrage of information and advertisements that scream “look
at me”, some of the most innovative marketers are going the opposite direction.
The’re now making efforts to tone-down their campaign messages and not
overwhelm consumers with hype.
Perhaps an article by Forbes said it best: “there is a sense that from the
hyper-connectivity of our highly-digitized lives to the bright, flashy,
complicated sensory input we’re fed every day, there is no way to continue at
this pace. As a result, 2016 is likely to be a year where the most successful small business custom
website marketing strategies will be ones that are not only simple in
nature, but promote goods and services that serve to simplify the consumer’s
life, or even just their customer experience.”
5.
Mobile-Friendly Content Will Be Necessary
Due to the widespread (and quickly
growing) use of smartphones and tablets, it’s necessary for companies to create
content that’s accessible to mobile users. According to Forbes, “87% of connected devices sales by 2017 will be
tablets and smartphones.” Whether it’s creating an alternate mobile version of
a website or utilizing
responsive web design, it’s important to provide a positive experience to
users that are browsing via a mobile device. Responsive mobile
website design is important for business or organization today.
Otherwise, it’s easy to lose
customers to competitors who have adapted to this trend. As the shift from
traditional PCs and laptops to mobile devices continues, businesses that aren’t
onboard are likely to suffer.
6. Ad
Retargeting Will Grow in Effectiveness
This is a marketing strategy that
has really caught on recently. In a nutshell, it works by utilizing browser
cookies to track the websites that users visit. Once they leave a certain site,
the products or services they viewed will be shown to them again in
advertisements across different websites.
It’s fairly obvious as to why this
technique can be so effective. With only two
percent of web traffic converting on the first visit, ad retargeting works
to increase the overall conversion rate by reminding consumers of the product
or service they viewed. This keeps the brand and the product at the top of the
consumer’s mind. There are even psychological
studies that have shown that simple exposure to brand names and logos
creates familiarity, which builds trust and makes consumers more likely to make
a purchase.
Recommended by Forbes
Even if there’s no immediate
purchase, this can really pay off in the long run. Due to the success that many
marketers have had with ad retargeting, there’s a good chance that it will
become more mainstream in 2017.
7. SEO
and Social Signals Will Become Even More Intertwined
Although social signals still don’t
typically carry the same weight as traditional inbound links, it’s pretty
undeniable that they play a
role in organic search rankings these days. After all, they’re one of the three pillars of SEO. Since the goal of Google and other
search engines is to provide users with the most relevant and highest quality
content possible, it makes sense why they would factor in the number of social
shares that a blog post, article or product page receives.
The more people that are sharing a
piece of content, the higher quality it’s likely to be, and therefore its
position should increase within the search engine results pages. It’s no
coincidence that the top-ranking search results tends to have lots of social
shares, while those ranked lower have fewer.
Besides this, social shares can
serve as a stamp of approval (ie, a trust signal) for visitors landing on a
page. If they see that it has hundreds or thousands of shares, it’s likely that
there’s something of value. That’s a big reason why so many businesses are
installing social share plugins and encouraging consumers to share as much as
possible.
While it’s difficult to predict
algorithms will evolve in the future, there’s a reasonable chance that social
shares will match or even outweigh traditional inbound links by the end of 2017.
For more information on how SEO and social media are becoming intertwined, see
my article “How
to Integrate Social MediaWith Your SEO Campaign.”
Conclusion
There you have it, my predictions
for the top seven online marketing trends of 2017. Did I miss anything? What do
you think about my predictions? Leave a comment and let me know!
Written by: Jayson DeMers
Source: www.forbes.com
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