Trends in Digital Marketing for 2016: #WhatsTrending?

As technology evolves, digital marketing does too. As a marketing professional, you must be able to keep up and stay up to date with the new trends or be one step ahead of the game, because digital marketing can make or break your business. You must be open to new ideas and possibilities on how you can reach your customers and target market.

Here are the top trends for 2016:

1. Video ads

   Video Advertisement has been in the marketing game for a long time, but they are dominating in 2016. Marketers are becoming more competitive in terms of quality and creativity; video ads are a huge asset in marketing, especially in digital marketing. A good video advertisement can make your company’s sales up.

1. Mobile usage dominates over desktop

   Everyone’s on their phones nowadays and mobile usage has been taking over desktops because of the usefulness and convenience that smart phones give. Marketers should focus on creating mobile-centric marketing strategies and advertisements to keep up with the current trend. Why would you settle on just catering for desktop usage when there are a lot of people you can target with mobile?

1. Apps

   Apps will rule the digital marketing industry in 2016. Though mobile friendly websites are usually used by marketers, apps will make a breakthrough this year because they are more convenient and more responsive to individual customers than mobile sites.

1. Virtual Reality

   With the evolution of technology, many virtual reality gadgets have been made. This is a big thing in digital marketing because through the use of virtual reality, you can interact with things as though it is in real life. Marketers should start thinking of ways to incorporate advertisements into virtual reality.

1. Personalization

   Knowing and understanding what your customer wants is essential in marketing. A lot of people usually scrap an email they receive that starts off with a “Dear Ma’am/Sir”. Personalization makes your customers feel a sense of familiarity when reading your promotional email because it seems that the message is speaks directly to them.

1. Instagram

   This is the most used medium when it comes to digital marketing in 2016, Instagram is easy to use and convenient. “Instagram has recently been offering paid advertising opportunities through selected developer partners such as Ampush, Brand Networks, 4C, Kenshoo, Nanigans, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, SocialCode and Unified. For now it is not yet available to everyone, but in 2016, Instagram ads will be available to all advertisers.”, according to Karlyne Zovitsky on Conversion Advantage. So get ready to bust your guns and get your thinking gear to start creating strategies on how to utilize Instagram to advertise.

1. Pinterest

   Pinterest will be introducing their new feature called the Animated Cinematic Pin, with this you can now target a person based on what they pin on Pinterest. As shared on Conversion Advantage, “The cool part about these cinematic pins are the fact that they are set in motion when a user scrolls, but as the user stops scrolling, the motion stops as well. Now you are in control whether you want to watch the video or not. Users are a part of the experience.” By this, marketers will be able to make use of personalization more efficiently and easier.

   Digital marketing is hard, but it will be easy when you know what to do and consistently trying to be updated and being one step ahead in terms of conceptualizing and coming up of new ideas in the marketing industry. Following these trends will really help make your business better and marketing, easier.

Sources:

Gavril, M. (2015, December 16). 7 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch Out for 2016. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/254006

Zovitsky, K. (2015, September 16). 10 Digital Trends every Digital Marketer should know about in 2016. Conversion Advantage. Retrieved from http://conversionadvantage.com/digital-marketing-trends-2016/

Gesenhues, A. (2015, February 18). Online Vs. TV: 72% of Agencies Say Online Video Ads Are As Effective – Or More Effective – Than TV [Survey]. Marketing Land. Retrieved from http://marketingland.com/online-vs-tv-72-agencies-say-online-video-ads-effective-effective-tv-survey-118854

Geoff. (2015, January 23). This Is How You Should Be Doing Digital Marketing in 2015. We are Social Media. Retrieved from http://wersm.com/this-is-how-you-should-be-doing-digital-marketing-in-2015/