Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2017
Note: This is a Guest Post by Sam Hurley of Optim-Eyez, Regarded as an influencer in Digital Marketing Ecosystem.
Not only are the following core shifts in Digital Marketing taking place in 2017; they have been gradually replacing traditional approaches over time and will continue to evolve as we head into the next few years.
There are a million and one granular trends to explore … So I am going to cover some overarching concepts…
TREND-1: Human Interaction — NOT Senseless Advertising
The days of impersonal marketing and sales processes are long gone! Brands simply cannot afford to waste their time and money in this way.
If you want to truly connect to your audience and gain their trust enough for them to eventually become paying customers; you must exercise emotional intelligence, an acute degree of personalization and superior service that makes every experience special.
“We know that personalization can deliver 5 to 8 times the ROI on marketing spend, while lifting sales by 10% or more…”
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I built my business by genuinely interacting on Social Media … No website. No advertising.
This is only testament to the power of ‘humanized’ strategies.
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TREND-2: Even More Content Marketing
Owned, earned and paid — Content Marketing is CRITICAL to businesses and as the ‘inbound’ methodology spreads, so will educational content that attracts customers into sales funnels without direct promotion.
Sure, everybody in the Digital Marketing space has heard of Content Marketing … But there are still a vast amount of businesses not up to date with modern concepts like this.
It’s important to step out of our own bubble and realize there are many industries and brands playing catch-up. Research found nearly 50% of small businesses in the U.S. are operating without an online presence!
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TREND-3: Acquisition Of Influencers
Targeted influencer marketing can bring awesome results.
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Last year, more than 60% of brands strategized influencer marketing as part of their marketing budgets … And that figure is estimated to reach 75% before 2018.
Yet – glimpses of a unique type of deal we are seeing now, actually takes influencer marketing one large step further.
Instead of simply hiring an influencer – how about exclusively buying them along with their entire, highly engaged and loyal audience?
Well, that’s exactly what CNN did … For a cool $25 million.
TREND-4: Surges In Personal Branding Across Social Media
If you want to beat Google’s algorithms — Personal Branding is exactly how to do it. How many people in your industry have your name? And if you make it big, who will appear in Google search..?
It will be you. Each and every time.
People want to do business with people, not corporations! I cannot stress this enough. It all loops back to trust.
More and more brands are realizing the strength of Personal Branding via Social Media — we’ll be seeing a lot more of this tactic from all types of brands, large and small.
It is so immensely powerful and instrumental in securing guest posts, brand mentions, links, webinars, podcasts, partnerships, and, of course, customers. I can 100% confirm it from experience.
I expanded on Personal Branding and other SEO Trends!
TREND-5: The Continual Rise Of Machine Learning And AI
Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are our future. Scary yet exciting – there’s no escaping where we are headed, so marketers must embrace them in 2017 onward.
Catering for outstanding customer experience, machine learning programs and AI have the power to drive a seamless buyer journey – enabling instant response, feedback and superior personalization.
Just check out how many vendors exist today:
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Allied Market Research expects machine learning to generate revenue of $13.7 billion by 2020.
I recently covered more B2B Trends!
Note: This is a Guest Post by Sam Hurley of Optim-Eyez, Regarded as an influencer in Digital Marketing Ecosystem.
Sam Hurley is a lateral-thinking digital marketer holding solid experience in both agency and client-side settings. He is Founder of the eagerly-anticipated: OPTIM-EYEZ platform.
Sam has achieved success for SMEs, national to international blue chip organizations while being ranked as the world’s #1 digital influencer by Webinale and #2 most influential digital marketer by Onalytica. He was also commended as one of the top 3 content marketing influencers by ScribbleLive.
Catch Sam on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for cosmic amounts of helpful material on entrepreneurship and marketing!
