It’s time to start looking towards 2016, and marketers are no exception. Here are the top 10 tends to look forward to in 2016 from Forbes.com.
1. AD Blocking Will Shift Marketing Company’s Directives
As we have spoken at great length about, Ad Blockers are disrupting the marketing industry. What we will see in 2016 is a major shift in the way we market your business, products, and services to your target audience. Customers don’t want content they’re not interested in shoved in their faces. The technology has finally caught up to a point where the customers can control what they see, and digital marketing efforts need to adapt. Start rethinking your content strategy in order to build a following that grows organically. Sharing your expert knowledge with your target audience and representing yourself as an expert in your field, for assistance check out our SEO Basics blog! Your customers will be looking for than just what your business does, they want to see value.
2. Distribution Values Will Skyrocket
As we have said time and time again Content is Crucial, but in 2016 we will see distribution becoming a huge piece of the digital marketing puzzle. While quality content is subjective to the reader, finding new ways to distribute and amplify the content you create on a paid level will be a vital way to differentiate your brand.
3. Social Media and Publishers Will Intersect
Using Social Media sites as a publishing platform has already begun. Looking at Medium and LinkedIn you can already see that publishers are now able to create content directly on their social media profiles. But with the new feature from Twitter allowing users to comment on their retweets, publishers now have a new platform in which to share their content. Look for this trend to continue among other social networks in 2016.
4. The Era of the Informed Customer
With 88% of business to Business companies using a content marketing strategy, customers will be aware that there is a virtually limitless supply of information at their fingertips to help them make the best decisions possible. Look for the launch of services like micro-moments from google to try and assist in optimizing customer intent.
By tracing their customers paths marketers can seed the journey with both educational and engaging content. Brands will be racing to be the first among their competitors to inform and educate their customers and become a trusted source.
5. SEO Budgets Will Change Focus
The time in which companies paid for links has passed. Your company’s budget should be shifting toward creating meaningful content for the reader, while avoiding old fashioned linking strategies. Search engines are rewarding content creators who know what valuable content is. Long-tail searches have the potential to result in much more high-quality traffic and sales for companies down the road. “In fact, a recent article from Moz states that one of the company’s clients has seen a 135 percent increase in the number of pages gaining traffic via search, with an accompanying 98 percent increase in overall organic traffic.” says John Hall of Forbes.com
6. Content Will Be Everyone’s Responsibility
Marketers have always taken the heavy load when it comes to content marketing. In 2016 we will see a shift to every piece of your business having something to offer the content creation department. Everyone from recruiting, training, to PR, and even accounting may have valuable content to dispense to your target audience. The growing trend is the creation of a company knowledge bank. These banks enable other teams to both pull and incorporate their own information from a central location and to power entire team goals and initiatives.
7. Publishers Will Embrace Facebook Instant Articles
Facebook burst on the scene with Instant Articles earlier this year, encouraging publishers to run articles and native ads directly on the social platform. While it is still in it’s infancy, 2016 will see a much bigger roll-out among bigger brands, and we will be able to better understand the platform that was created to give publishers control of their stories, brand experience, and monetization opportunities.
8. Mobile Will Grow
No surprise here. With 3.65 billion unique mobile users in the world, you can bet companies need to incorporate more and more mobile into their strategies. Mobile elements like mobile video and responsive design have become standard and expected by customers.
9. Video Will Grow
The Guardian stated, “By 2017, video will account for 69 percent of all consumer Internet traffic, according to Cisco.” There is nothing shocking about this, many companies have managed to be vastly successful in this medium. What will change, is that we are going to see less highly produced video and much more user-generated content. Thanks to new mobile phone technology we are all now professional photographers, expect that to change the mobile marketplace.
10. Disillusionment
2016 will be the year that marketers will finally look at their current marketing efforts and understand what is and isn’t working. We will understand that most organizations are ineffective at content marketing and make the necessary efforts to change pace.