Latest Digital Marketing trends for 2017

A passionate digital marketer will always think about the new trends and new approaches to their business and its digital needs. Unfortunately, many digital marketers are eager to see the future of their industries and also the digital marketing trends because to prepare their business for new approaches.

As I don’t have to say about the rise of digital marketing around the world because you all can see around you, 2016 was a delightful year for all the online marketers. The Internet is the bread and butter of millions of people, and it will not go, just like a digital marketing industry.

AI revolutionizes digital marketing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is widely expected to be the biggest revolution in digital marketing since the Internet. AI won’t take our jobs anytime soon, but it will influence what we do in our jobs. By leaving the most time-consuming and logic-based jobs to AI, marketers can free up the time to think creatively and ensure that AI efforts are aligned with strategic goals.  AI-based products are built into more and more vendor applications and there are plenty of open source libraries to use. Changing marketing from one-way communication to a customer dialogue as a result of AI language processing allowing us to do this with minimal human effort.

Social media analytics leaves outside its engagement

Social media analytics are getting more powerful, precise and easier to use. Marketers are going beyond engagement rate because they are in desperate need of tools for measuring the quality of content and the most important – ROI. Instead of measuring single indicators of engagement like clicks or likes, we should go further and focus on tracking the whole customer path on its multiple touch points. Rather than staring at the number of shares, we should find out how many leads or purchases the post actually generated. The numbers should always be viewed in context with one another to understand the visitor’s true motives. Proving the campaign successful is only possible when we know what happens after the click.

Multichannel marketing becomes a custom

The number of touch points where we can reach our customers has continued to grow at a surprising speed over recent years. We as marketers have often enthusiastically run after these different opportunities to engage with our customers. Yes, we all know what this causes unconnected customer experience. The change has been largely enabled by the increasing sophistication of marketing and advertising technologies. While going forward, companies which are able to build engaging customer journeys with the right audiences across different channels are sure to gain a competitive advantage.

Marketers start to use their own data in advertising

The world where you separate advertising from other customer communication is becoming a thing of the past. You need to start serving the customer to reach the experience what they are expecting from a brand. This is where new technologies, such as DMPs, play a significant role. Strongly linked to this is the exponential increase in programmatic ad buying. When marketers start to use their own data in advertising, the buying is always carried out programmatically and run by the company’s own buying desk or external agencies.

 The potential of Account Based Marketing is finally realized

We think it’s something more profound. It’s finally possible for companies to execute ABM at scale, thanks to evolving marketing technologies. Furthermore, ABM requires that marketing and sales finally speak the same language. It’s no longer only about leads, as marketers need to understand how to target chosen accounts in the similar manner as sales do. The benefits of ABM range from better resource allocation to improved pipeline metrics. It’s not just about technologies, but about a new mindset that drives sales results better than ever before.

 It’s all about customer experience

Even if your company might be able to deliver a personalized email, it doesn’t mean you have hit the jackpot in delivering great Customer Experience. The ability to engage with an individual with relevant timing and with great content throughout the customer’s entire journey cannot be built in one month. It’s the truth regardless of how many touch points there are, what transactions or activities your customer has or has not done online or offline over the short or long period of time. This year, leading marketers are taking steps towards optimizing their Customer Experience through personalized content and with the new way of operating content.

New capabilities, roles, and way of working are needed as the customer experience runs your business and where data has become the glue in your operations. Some capabilities need to be implemented within organizations while others can be outsourced to new types of agencies. The change is not easy, but it is crucial to any company that aims to be a pioneer in data have driven marketing and advertising.