Digital Marketing Trends in 2017

Online mar­ket­ing is an ever-evolv­ing mode of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, adver­tis­ing and brand mes­sag­ing. We’ve already watched sev­er­al antic­i­pat­ed trends man­i­fest this year, and we are look­ing anx­ious­ly at the remain­der of the year for con­tin­ued changed and dig­i­tal growth.

Once a brand estab­lish­es a pres­ence online, it must be mon­i­tored and main­tained tedious­ly and cre­ative­ly. Trends are con­stant­ly chang­ing, so brands must apply the pop­u­lar mar­ket­ing meth­ods in their cam­paign strategies.

Let’s take a look at the digital marketing trends in 2017:

• Live video stream­ing. Live video stream­ing con­tin­ues to attract audi­ences, and large audi­ences at that. Brands who can pro­vide an inside look or behind-the-scenes per­spec­tive on an event are desir­able to the masses.
• Aug­ment­ed real­i­ty. Not to be con­fused with vir­tu­al real­i­ty, aug­ment­ed real­i­ty dis­torts phys­i­cal real­i­ty by involv­ing tech­nol­o­gy. An exam­ple we saw in 2016 was Poké­mon Go, an app that led the user through actu­al streets and rooms to suc­ceed in the online game. Although the game qui­et­ed not long after its launch, its ini­tial intro­duc­tion was mas­sive­ly appeal­ing to con­sumers. Brands can con­tin­ue to inno­vate around this type of tech-real-world overlap.
• Vir­tu­al real­i­ty. Vir­tu­al real­i­ty invites con­sumers into entire­ly new, often fan­tas­ti­cal expe­ri­ences. How­ev­er, it has made a mark on many by dou­bling as a (near­ly) tan­gi­ble way to expe­ri­ence a prod­uct or ser­vice before pur­chase. Con­sumers want to see what you can do with VR! It’s time to get creative.
• Viral mar­ket­ing. Every­body wants to go viral- it attracts mil­lions of view­ers to your page, prompt­ing a nice spike in search engine rank­ings. Going viral is so cov­et­ed, firms are devel­op­ing meth­ods to its mad­ness to ensure that qual­i­ty con­tent is shared to all, by all.
• Behav­ior-based email mar­ket­ing. Email had a love­ly run for many years, slow­ly sneak­ing ran­dom con­tent into sub­scribers’ mail­box­es. Now, con­sumers don’t want ran­dom offer­ings and con­tent. Adver­tis­ing has tar­get­ed con­sumer habits in a way where they now expect to see con­tent or items relat­ed to pre­vi­ous brows­ing. The same is now expect­ed of email- push con­tent that you know your con­sumers have been inter­est­ed in.
• Social media. Social media con­tin­ues to rein promi­nent, but shifts as quick­ly as mil­len­ni­als shift their pas­sions and sen­ti­ments. Fol­low­ing and stay­ing active on emerg­ing plat­forms that con­sumers show pref­er­ence toward is so impor­tant! Mes­sag­ing on each plat­form should remain con­sis­tent to the brand and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly adapt to the voice and vibe of each respec­tive social media chan­nel. Hir­ing a pro­fes­sion­al team for social media man­age­ment in Mia­mi is one of the most com­mon solu­tions amongst local companies.
• One-to-one mar­ket­ing is pos­si­ble with the help of data ana­lyt­ics so that every­thing can be per­son­al­ized. Each con­sumer is dif­fer­ent, and you can mes­sage to them accordingly.
• Mobile first. Mobile device com­pat­i­bil­i­ty and opti­miza­tion are cer­tain­ly not new, but they are still preva­lent in mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy devel­op­ment. More con­sumers search and shop on portable devices, mak­ing mobile plat­forms the pri­or­i­ty over our tra­di­tion­al desk­top-based brows­ing meth­ods. Mobil­i­ty is key!

Time has already told how well adopt­ed some of these mar­ket­ing strate­gies have been, and we have half a year ahead to see how the rest fare. Remem­ber, not all pre­dict­ed trends pan out, but you always learn some­thing in the process of pro­duc­ing an action­able mar­ket­ing item based on new tech­nol­o­gy. Give these trends a whirl, grow with tech­nol­o­gy and help it help you. For infor­ma­tion, insight or strat­e­gy assess­ment, reach out to our team at Rosy Strate­gies. We look for­ward to help­ing you tack­le this year’s unfold­ing dig­i­tal trends.