What the Future Holds in Store for Digital Marketing

The key to staying a step ahead of your competition is to know where to find your target audience. And according to an article in Forbes in April 2015, mobile devices and wearable gadgets are where customers are going to be at by 2016.

The evolution of these devices is one of the key factors influencing marketing strategies already. “As the focus is shifting to smaller screens, brands will be able to strike up a more personalized relationship with their customers by leveraging the power of mobile,” according to Forbes. Here’s a look at the top trends expected for 2016 and beyond.

High quality content is unlikely to lose its relevance any time soon. Content marketing provides information to existing and potential customers with the aim of building brand recognition and trust, while establishing one’s brand as a thought leader in its industry, says Bahar Shishechian, Content Offers Lead and Creative Campaign Designer at Kids Sports News Network, in her article titled Top 3 Digital Marketing Trends for 2015 – 2016.

Shishechian goes on to say that 90% of consumers “find custom content useful,” while 78% believe that businesses that provide such content wish to build strong relationships with their customers.

Have you noticed how most content that goes viral is video based? Little wonder then that YouTube has turned out to be the second most popular search engine, after Google AdWords Help. Some interesting statistics were quoted in the article titled Digital Marketing Trends 2015-2016, published in April 2015. For instance, did you know that a 60 second video has the same power as 1.4 million words? Or that one in every two people watch at least one online video daily? So, if you want to tell people your story in a way that not only hits hard but has the potential to go viral, use video content.

Touted as the next big thing in virtual reality, Oculus Rift proved to be one of the most successful Kickstarter projects. Now that it has partnered with Samsung for the very first virtual reality glasses, customers can now connect these glasses with their mobile device to do much more than just play VR games. Slated for release in the form of a customer-ready product in the first quarter of 2016, Oculus Rift is definitely expected to have a significant impact on how marketers will engage the target audience in future, says the leading resource for marketing news, ClickZ, in an article published in August 2015.

Instagram and Twitter seems to be taking over where Facebook left off. Social media has already become an integral part of a comprehensive marketing campaign and its importance is unlikely to wane in future. However, the approach you take might need to be tweaked. According to the Future of Digital Marketing report by MSN UK, the relevance of marketing messages will ensure that you truly engage with your target audience, while interaction will be key to offering the consumer a unique experience, thereby building your brand image. Already it is it difficult to find a business that does not engage via social media. However, in the future, the social media strategy has to focus more on engagement than promotion.

In fact, today, marketing campaigns need to be comprehensive, addressing everything, from the website to social media and even mobile marketing, says a blog by New Jersey-based SEMGeeks.

Data and analytics can determine the direction that a marketing campaign takes. Retargeting your campaign based on metrics can help improve conversions. More and more businesses are understanding the need to increase their spend on acquiring and analyzing data. Collecting, managing and using both internal and external data will become more and more vital to coming up with actionable conclusions regarding marketing. In fact, according to an article on Gartner for Marketers, “Distribution of the data to decentralized groups such as brands or business units will occur to allow for informed recommendations/decisions about what action to take.”

In fact, an article on 10 Top Trends Driving The Future Of Marketing, published in Forbes in April 2015 as brands recognize the need to measure marketing success.