Sisarv Business Blog: 7 Major Trends in Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is a rapidly developing concept throughout the globe. It completely changes the approach on marketing and turns everything around that conventional marketers have ever believed in, shattering the confidence of many senior outbound marketing hardliners. Even in heavy business industries such as Oil & Gas, where the industry culture is highly old-fashioned, digital marketing is taking its toll and pushes business-people even in this kind of industry to start reshaping their approach. As an industry of rapid change, digital marketing not only reinvents strategic approaches in many different industries, but also in itself. In this blog entry we are going to talk about 7 major trends in digital marketing that will develop its industry!

1. Customer Experience will be a Key Performance Indicator

Customer experience is increasingly growing into an indicator of business success within digital marketing. Before that it was design itself. When more and more agencies realised the importance of this factor through their data, they have put a higher focus on it to generate sales. Even software companies such as Adobe have started to work on products that exactly target customer experience as the outcome with Adobe Experience Design (which is out but still in development).

2. Multi-channel- and campaign management will increase in value

Consumers are showing increasing interest in multi-device and multi-channel usage. Therefor marketers need to develop and work on highly actionable strategies that can be implemented throughout all consumer channels and marketing campaigns, such as by using Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) and 360° marketing.

3. Content Marketing will rule the Marketing-mix

In 2015, content marketing started to grow more important in business: Useful content within the right setting and the right format will keep being an essential factor for raising brand awareness.Corporate blog such as this will be critical for business success throughout the next years. Photographic and motion content are also on the forefront of gaining attention from marketers and the masses.

4. Mobile Usage Access will also become an important indicator for effective marketing.

Responsive web-design, putting a major focus on mobile usage will be the most valuable approach for gaining customers, since more and more people conduct their search through their cellphone. This shift in media usage will have direct consequences on the marketing industry and will make or break an agency.

5. Social Media Marketing is gaining more attention

With the increasing trend of people using social media, platforms such as Instagram or Facebook will be essential to a firm’s branding strategy. Social media are going to rule the online space based on their usage numbers and importance among users and therefore, the web. Social Media Auditing tools are going to be an absolute must in order to measure a company’s numbers and return on investment.

6. Data Mining Will Be Integrated into Digital Marketing

Data-driven marketing approaches having been growing in the past year. The ability to deal with big data in a time of unstoppable increase of information in the digital age will be an essential issue for marketers and agencies to tackle. Programmatic advertising and personalised marketing will therefor be the next big thing.

7. Digital Customer Interaction and Service Platforms on the rise

Since the introduction of Web 2.0, users are sharing their opinions online. Firms need to position themselves within those web spaces where consumer opinion is the golden argument. Especially in place where the density of consumer opinion is very high. Having a dialog with users online is a big challenge for firms since many yet didn’t master this approach, though it will be lethal for the growth of a business and especially marketing agencies. This challenge can be tackled with social-CRM solutions that track, gather, analyse and evaluate client data.

The Idea in brief:

Since consumers are spending an increasing amount of time on social media, businesses need to tackle this challenge and the fact that the mobile phones will be the number 1 device to search the web. With the increasing amount of data in the digital age and the importance of a customer’s opinion through Web 2.0, businesses and agencies will need highly effective and efficient strategies to keep up with a very rapid and big trend. They can do so by using social media platforms to their own advantage, have a reliable CRM system, full-stack web-developers who know the do’s and don’t’s of responsive web design, along with marketers who have technical skills such a search engine optimisation. The gathering, evaluation and implementation of big data will also be a key performance indicator.