3 Most Important Trends for Your Marketing Strategies
We are living in the age of digital transformation, where new media and flow of information is changing our whole living behavior. So for a marketer, it is important to make their marketing strategies accordingly. There was the time when the digital banner was very exciting medium and giving very handsome ROI.
For digital marketers, the goal was to intrude in user desktop. But just as devices and technologies change, so to do our marketing methods. 2015 was the first year that mobile traffic exceeded that of desktop users.
As marketers, this opens up a whole new field of ideas to try and avenues to pursue in order to reach these customers, create dialogues and forge relationships with them in a way that makes our offer irresistible. Now consumers are hyper-connected and just moment away from interaction. Here I am going to discuss three most important things which should be on the top of your marketing strategies in 2016-17.
#1 MOBILE:
Smartphones have changed the way we communicate. More than a phone, a Smartphone is considered as a handheld computer which has multiple features to run the applications. With the always on and fast internet connection, the days are gone, where people had to access the internet only at homes.
A smartphone is considered as a phone which performs the functions of both camera phone and a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). A study has discovered that the average person checks their device 85 times a day, spending a total of five hours browsing the web and using apps.
The latest data shows that we are now well past the tipping point mentioned at the top of this post. Mobile digital media time in the US is now significantly higher at 51% compared to the desktop (42%). This is United state trend and soon this trend will be followed in India too.
41% of total eCommerce sales was driven by mobile in 2014, according to the influential annual assessment of the Internet economy by Mary Meeker.This is very good news for the marketers. Because when consumers are hyper-connected then marketers will have more opportunity to connect and interact with them. But here they have two major challenges and the first, there are loads of distractions on these devices so creating the experience where you can attain undivided attention is quite tough. Second, you will have to match the desktop experience on mobile and for this, you need deep mobile UI and UX expertises. In crux, you have to strategize specifically your marketing strategies in the context of mobile devices.
#2 SOCIAL:
Social media usage continues to grow around the world, with global penetration rates now in excess of 30%. Facebook continues to dominate the global landscape, accounting for almost 1.5 billion users. The world’s favourite social platform shows little sign of losing its grip either, with 180 million new users joining the community over the past 12 months, up 13.7% year-on-year. Social media use continues to grow in India, 10% of the country is currently ‘socially active.
Aforementioned data trends are well enough to understand that how big this shift is. It is not stopping here but it goes further when we see the trend that social, e-commerce, content platforms and further even websites are blurring together. The way facebook introducing shop, services and instant article this trend will further be adopted by other social players. Google SERP started showing result from the social sites. Social media strategy became part of SEO strategies.
We will have to understand unique behavior of every social platform more deeply where consumers are active. We have to create content according to social platforms and consumer behavior on those.
#3 VIDEO:
CISCO has predicted that by 2018, 69 percent of total Internet traffic will be video. Every minute, 48 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube. The popular video publishing platform rakes in more than four billion views per day, making it the second most popular search engine in the world and the third most visited website. As traffic shifts away from traditional blog posts and toward YouTube channels and dedicated video blogs, so marketers will have to embrace the significance of this evolving tactic.
Branded video content will become the lifeblood of the modern digital marketer. Many still think of digital video as viral content on YouTube, video ads on Facebook, and flashy homepage videos that tell a brand’s story.
Many still think of digital video as viral content on YouTube, video ads on Facebook, and flashy homepage videos that tell a brand’s story. But in recent years we’ve seen the most successful brands expanding their use of video throughout the entire customer journey to help them build better relationships, educate and convert buyers, and improve customer satisfaction. From creative campaign videos that bring light to pain points to customer testimonials and personalized product demos, video will play a starring role at all stages of the marketing and sales funnel.
So in conclusion, the success of brand and marketers depend on how effectively they adopt and optimize Mobile, Social, and Video in their overall marketing strategies.
Disclaimer: I have published this post earlier on my blog: www.humanisethebrand.com