Digital Marketing Trends May Change the Second Half of 2016
Marketing practices change so rapidly, it can be difficult to keep up. Sometimes, business professionals don’t recognize the dramatic shifts until they have a chance to look back and see the difference.
If you want to get ahead of the game, and perform on top of a trend before it happens, you have to look ahead constantly. The second half of 2016 is showing some major changes in digital marketing trends of which everyone should be aware.
What We’ve Seen So Far
The first half of the year was notable for several memorable marketing tactics. Retailers in both the storefront and online sectors had to make significant changes to their strategies in order to keep in step with their online competitors.
For starters, we’ve seen a much broader integration of digital and physical marketing practices. More marketing specialists are viewing physical and digital marketing as inseparable entities.
Pretty soon it may be the case that the terms “physical” and “digital” will no longer be employed to reference separate categories of marketing. Instead, the entire process may simply be treated as “marketing,” period.
Marketers have made this shift largely in response to customer behavior. Research shows that nearly 70 percent of millennials choose to share their in-store shopping experiences with others, whether through texting or social media.
This indicates a definite need for more digital interaction among consumers who happen to be shopping in a bricks-and-mortar setting.
What to Expect in the Future
The integration of all facets of marketing into one endeavor serves as a forecast for an altered future that may entail new and unfamiliar practices. But the main focus has remained on improving the customer experience.
In a digital-first world that’s seen a massive rise of mobile use as well as video and social media marketing, the concentration on the customer is the primary constant. Nothing else gives marketers precisely what they need to know in order to cultivate stronger customer-business relationships.
Such being the case, here are a few things you can expect to see in the coming months.
- Mainstream Data Analytics: Major leaders in data gathering, such as Google and IBM, have been racing to develop data collection and analytics processes that can be made available for small businesses. Both corporations have already announced services specifically for small and mid-size businesses. Now smaller firms are learning to use data analytics processing in order to improve their customer service and efficiencies.
- The Changing Face of Digital Marketing: Personalized advertising and marketing experiences make up the name of the future marketing game. Multimedia will become ever more visually pleasing, playful and humorous, and customized to suit the viewer. Because the use of data will become utterly mainstream, companies will have the power to offer customized digital marketing experiences to each one of their customers.
- Marketing Transitions to Publishing: We’ve seen this already in today’s marketing techniques, but it’s expected to grow even more in the future. Marketers are putting everything they have into content creation, and they’re looking to publish their content on every available platform. Even better, the content will be developed quickly enough that it can be published in real time. The era of information sharing is expected to kick up another notch.
For now, these are just predictions. But based on past experience, we know the future of digital marketing has to change. Here are some ideas on websites that sell.
Just as in the past, when things transform swiftly, marketers will have to adapt. They’ll run analytics, experiment, and often fail before they identify what works best.
It’s the risk all marketers have to take, but the ones who persevere are the ones who see success come out of their efforts.