General Marketing Trends

“Which rising trends will influence, change, and disrupt marketers’ work lives? Here are some that are likely to shape the landscape:” 

• Video. You’ll see this on almost every list. And it’s no wonder. In November, the Interactive Advertising Bureau(IAB) reported the following statistics that show growth from the first half of 2015 to the first half of 2016:
  • Total digital video, including mobile and desktop, rose 51%
  • Video on smartphones and tablets saw unprecedented triple-digit growth—a 178% rise

In a recent MarTech Advisor article, Workfront’s Joe Staples also weighed in with these statistics:

• • YouTube has over a billion users, almost a third of all people on the Internet
  • YouTube on mobile alone reaches more 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S.
  • 75 million people in the U.S. watch online videos every day
  • The top 500 brand channels on YouTube each average 884,000 monthly views

Staples says, “Marketers in 2017 will need to streamline their video production processes and develop that in-house expertise in order to keep up with the trends.”

• Mobile First.Gone are the days when marketers needed to optimize for mobile. We’re in the “build it for mobile first” era now. Again with the jaw-dropping IAB statistics:
  • Mobile revenue saw the largest year-over-year change, climbing to $15.5 billion, up 89% from $8.2 billion in Half Year 2015, representing 47% of total internet advertising revenue
  • Mobile search took a significant uptick, realizing $7.4 billion in Half Year 2016, a 105% increase compared to $3.6 billion in Half Year 2015

As included in Brandwatch’s 2017 predictions list, it is now being reported that for retail websites, mobile traffic has overtaken desktop traffic for the first time ever. Recognizing this, Google is working on a new mobile-first web index. “As more people consume content on mobile phones, Google has stated that there will no longer be a desktop algorithm and a mobile algorithm. There will be just one, and it will be mobile. This means that the rules for geo-targets and differentiating reviews will apply to all websites.”If your content isn’t easily viewed and digested on a mobile device, you’ll be in trouble in 2017 and beyond.

• Influencer Marketing. Of the 170 marketers surveyed by Linqia, 86 percent said they already work with influencers, and nearly 94 percent reported that influencer marketing was an effective part of their overall marketing strategy. ”In the last couple of years, influencers have become a much bigger cornerstone of Workfront’s own marketing strategy. (Thanks Ann Handley, Andrea Fryrear, Robert Rose, and others.) I join a wide array of marketing thought leaders in predicting that influencers are only going to get more important from here. Many believe that brands will rely on real-world influencer events and activations and will become increasingly dependent on micro-influencers with high engagement in niche verticals, which will be utilized in mass quantities to generate more organic and engaging content.
• Greater Integration Between Content Marketing and Sales. Top companies are engaging their front-line sales teams to identify topics for content marketing, and the content marketing team helps sales professionals to effectively use content in the sales process. It seems so obvious, and yet very few companies truly make the most of the symbiotic relationship between marketing and sales—especially now that content marketing has matured to the point that it has to be truly relevant, educational, and useful to do any good. As customers and buyers continue to do more online research, top performing organizations continue to integrate sales and content marketing. The goal is to ensure that when customers search for risks, challenges, and implementation strategies associated with your solutions, they will find your content to address their questions.
• Personalization. I know you spent at least a few minutes in 2016 looking for your name, or friends and family names, on a Coke can. It’s easy to spot examples of this kind of personalization hitting consumer products, but individualization i increasingly important across the entire marketing spectrum. Mass customization has transitioned into personalization. For some businesses, this will mean ensuring touch points are specific and individual. For others, it’s simply streamlining the purchasing process and making it more responsive. Consumers are smart and they expect their world to be personalized. Netflix and Amazon set the bar high, and consumers expect that from brands and publishers. Yet, almost every marketer’s website is generic and one-size-fits-all. Brands will seek out the tools to build custom experiences for individuals that are truly personalized, and this year they will deliver on that promise to consumers. Personalization will move from a buzzword to a fundamental part of the marketer’s toolkit, across web, social email and every other channel in the customer experience.
• Bots and Chatbots. Speaking of personalization, trailblazing companies are achieving it thanks to the ultimate depersonalized entity—artificial intelligence. The term sounds scary (to me, at least) until I realize I’ve been using it for years, in the form of Apple’s Siri. There’s also Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and others—all poised to influence customer behavior in a highly personalized way. This tech is only going to grow from here. Maybe not by leaps and bounds in 2017, but it’s on the horizon and definitely worth watching this year. Chatbots, which use both artificial intelligence and machine learning allow you to have personalized 1–1 conversations at scale, opening up a whole new audience who does not wish to connect with brand over email or download an app.
• Predictive Analytics. We’re moving into the age of predictive analytics. With the rise of analytics, businesses will reap the benefits of things like seeing a customer’s history immediately when they contact customer service and providing personalized experiences for consumers based on likes and preferences. This technology will also predict what consumers need based on patterns in their customer journey, allowing for agents to proactively reach out to consumers before the problem is even realized.
• Content Distribution Will Trump Content Creation. Content marketing has matured to the point that we can’t just create great content and expect it to be seen, liked, and shared. While it’s still important to craft truly relevant and useful content, much more effort needs to go into content distribution. The trend seems to be moving from less content to more promotion. This is correct. No longer can we afford to create and execute on content projects without them ever seeing the light of day. This will give rise to the growth in use of distribution and promotion strategies such as:
  • Engage in other communities, like Quora or Reddit
  • Tap lesser-known influencers. One helpful tool is BuzzSumo.Republish your content, using such services as Medium, LinkedIn Pulse and republishing media outlets like Huffington Post and Mashable.
• Google and Facebook Will Continue to Dominate. Just how dominant are these two behemoth companies now? Leading up to the first quarter of 2016, The New York Times reported that, “85 cents of every new dollar spent in online advertising will go to Google or Facebook.” Was that prediction correct? Jason Klint at digitalcontentnext.org opened my eyes with this stunning table:

 Facebook, due to its closed platform, and Google, due its dominance in browsers, ad tech, search and advertising, will have a large seat at nearly any industry or regulatory table discussing critical issues.

• The Marriage of Marketing Activities and Revenue. We should all expect business objectives to tie back to profit, revenue, customer retention, and satisfaction with an increased focus on ROI. Companies will spend a lot of money on data reporting in order to try to tie business objectives to profit, revenue, customer retention, and customer satisfaction. Businesses will collect ROI data from email, social media, paid advertising, direct, search, referral and affiliate, and print, radio, video, etc. in order to get a clear picture of where to invest their marketing dollars.

These marketing trends will shape the marketing landscape and as you plot your marketing strategy keep in mind the trends that are paving the way.