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Online Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2017

Regardless of the seemingly never-ending innovations in the world of online marketing, unique, high-quality content will continue to be the most important aspect of any campaign. However, there are some other interesting trends that the cognoscenti believe will dominate throughout 2017. They include:

• Augmented Reality – The popularity of Pokémon Go proves that enthusiasm for AR experiences is real. This year, more brands will be coming out with AR games and ads, and attempts to capitalize on the AR apps that already exist.

• Live Video Streaming – Thanks to faster internet speeds and the ubiquity of mobile devices, live video will be utilized by more and more brands and individuals.

• Data Visualization – The use of infographics will give marketers the ability to provide their target audiences with factual information via charts, graphs, animations, and other data visualization tools.

• Native Advertising – Advertising that eschews traditional formats and includes some editorial content such as a blog post or infographic helps marketers build trust and engagement.

• Niche Market Targeting – In order to break through the growing crowd of online marketing businesses, more brands will attempt to appeal to a narrower range of demographics with more specific topics.

• Immersive Experience – In addition to AR, virtual reality (VR), and formats such as 360 videos help make users experience “living in the moment.” The key is to provide some level of interaction in a way that makes people feel like they’re a part of something bigger.

• Wearable Technology – 2017 will see more smart devices such as the Apple iWatch, Google Glass, Moto 360, and other wearable devices that keep consumers connected to the digital world, all the time.

• User-Generated Content – Over the last few years, there has been a steady increase in the number of brands that use content created by consumers, sometimes called “personalized content experiences,” with their products featured in real-life situations. The trend will continue and grow.

• Dense Content – With attention spans continuing to fall, marketers are going to make sure that every word of every line of content, counts.

• Customer Service Chatbots – More chatbots will be employed in order to make customer service faster and more immediate.

• Social Messaging – Companies and brands will shift more and more to private social messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, which has over one billion users.

• Mobile Domination – Mobile will continue to outpace desktop as digital marketers experiment with more and more mobile searches, mobile payment methods, mobile apps, and mobile-only social applications to create brand value.

• Finally, search algorithms will change; and change again; and maybe even change again, proving that nothing ever stays the same in the SEO universe.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Most social media platforms have their own built-in data analytics tools, which enable companies to track the progress, success, and engagement of their ad campaigns. Companies can address a range of stakeholders through social media marketing, including: current and potential customers, current and potential employees, journalists, bloggers, and the general public.

Social networking websites are based on building virtual communities that allow consumers to express their needs, wants, and values, online. Social media marketing then connects these consumers and audiences to businesses that share the same needs, wants, and values. Through social networking sites, companies can keep in touch with individual followers.

To this end, companies make use of platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram to reach a much wider audience than they can through the use of traditional print, TV, and radio advertisements alone, and at a fraction of the cost. In return, customers can now post reviews of products and services, rate customer service, and ask questions or voice concerns directly to companies through the same platforms. This has changed the ways that companies interact with customers, as a substantial percentage of consumer interactions are now being carried out over online platforms with much higher visibility.

In fact, today, over 80 percent of business executives define social media as important, and over 97 percent of all consumers search for local businesses, online. 25 percent of all mobile phone usage is dedicated to social networks, 75 percent of consumers say they rely on social media to influence their buying decisions, and 47 percent of Americans say that Facebook is their number one influencer of purchases.

Other commonly-used social media platforms include: Google+, LinkedIn, Whatsapp, Yelp, Foursquare, and YouTube. However, there are dozens of new social media platforms popping up all the time, as the use of social media marketing becomes more ubiquitous and sophisticated. Below are a few, lesser known platforms:

• Engagor – a comprehensive platform that helps businesses better engage with their customers in real time, by monitoring conversations about a brand or product across all major social networks, news websites, blogs, and forums.
• SocialCentiv – This self-serve platform lets users comb Twitter for potential customers using highly targeted metrics, such as those in their neighborhood or those seeking their specific product and services.
• HashAtIt.com – Dubbed as “The Social Search Engine,” HashAtIt.com collects status updates, tweets and other posts, allowing users to search for the most popular hashtags on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest — all in one place.
• Sparksfly – Sparksfly offers meaningful, targeted consumer engagement based on user-generated data.
• Sociota – Sociota is a social network management and monitoring platform offering the ability to integrate multiple Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+ accounts.
• Pushup Social – Pushup Social is a plug-in that lets businesses easily integrate a social network into their existing websites.
• HootSuite – With HootSuite, users can manage multiple social networks, schedule messages and tweets, analyze social media traffic, track conversions, and measure campaign results — all in one user-friendly dashboard.
• LeadSift – LeadSift mines millions of social media conversations, cutting through the noise to deliver relevant, quality leads based on metrics set by users, such as geographic information and keywords.
• SnapRetail – SnapRetail turns the average small business owner into a social media marketing powerhouse with ready-to-use social media content. The service offers a library with thousands of customizable, prewritten social media posts to choose from, eliminating the difficulty of crafting attention-grabbing updates.

The Importance of Online Marketing in 2017

Ecommerce continues to grow and competition will ramp up, as well, in 2017. This means that customers will be harder to win, easier to lose, and fussier on price and user experience. The low barriers to entry and the fact that consumers can switch from brand to brand with the touch of a button, means that those who fall behind when it comes to customer experience and pricing strategy will lose out. So, the savvy online marketer will have to keep up with the latest trends in order to stay ahead of the pack.

Here are some tips for online marketing in 2017:

 Influencers are becoming increasingly important because they are considered credible and, unlike classic advertising, their opinion is trusted. To be successful in 2017, you will need to cooperate with bloggers, YouTubers, etc., and win them over with your products and services.
 Just as influencers need be enlisted, so must users. Users who are convinced of something are an ideal marketing instrument because they transfer their conviction to the wider market.
 Customers will have to be better informed and more inspired; it’s no longer enough just to offer products that are accompanied by a description. Shoppers want more. Products must be accompanied with ancillary information and collateral subject matter. The inspiring and informative incorporation of products and services into offers will influence purchase decisions and increase visitor numbers in 2017.
 Chatbots are small programs that function like a real chat partner. For this reason FAQs can be found on practically every internet site. But clicking through a long list of questions is often frustrating. Chatbots can perform these tasks considerably better. The user can ask his questions and the software answers interactively. Interested parties as well as customers arrive at their answers quickly, and receive the desired assistance in short order. So Chatbots will make customer service and customers’ lives easier in the year 2017.
 Live video is becoming increasingly important. With live streaming, the interested party feels more connected to what is shown. It’s an especially powerful tool to introduce a new product or service.
 Old SEO tactics are becoming outmoded. For example, beginning in January, advertising that customers are unable to bypass will be used as a criterion by Google to rank a site lower. So in addition to inspiring content in order to rank high, websites will have to put the user first. Say goodbye to annoying pop-ups.
 Native advertising is gaining importance. This includes articles in blogs, portals etc. that have not been created by an editorial team, but by an advertising agency or a company’s marketing department. Good native advertising is characterized by high-quality content. The reader is encouraged to read the article, although it is still advertising. (Native advertising should always be identified as such; otherwise blogs and advertisers are gambling with their credibility.)
 Virtual reality and augmented reality will make completely different marketing measures possible in 2017. They allow the user to be involved, and not just to stare at a screen.
 Platform as a Service is now one of the hottest trends in ecommerce. Just look at the incredible success of Platform as a Service businesses like Uber, Spotify, and AirBnB. The smart online marketer should consider selling anything that is used or consumed regularly via a subscription model. The high disposable incomes of today’s Millennials means plenty of cash for subscriptions, but their low wealth means there is never much in the bank for big one-off purchases. So, there really has never been a better time to sell your product via a subscription model.
 Mobile devices now make up over half of all web traffic and continue to grow in importance. However, mobile (phone and tablet), while accounting for 59 percent of all sessions by device on ecommerce sites, count for just 38 percent of revenue. In 2017, the smart online marketer will understand that mobile is king for research, but desktop is still where consumers do their buying.

The Power of Online Marketing

Online, or digital marketing, is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies. It includes any effort to spread the word about a company that uses the internet as an advertising medium.

Over the last two decades, online marketing has become an absolute necessity for every business that wants to reach its target consumers. No longer can a company put an ad in the Sunday newspaper and assume that everyone will read it and then go out and buy its product. In fact, these days, if your business does not have an online presence, it might as well be invisible.

Indeed, online marketing has become so pervasive that is has resulted in a paradigm shift in the customer/advertiser relationship – people are now in control of their marketing experience and businesses must use various internet platforms in order to adapt to the changing expectations of consumers who are wanting ever-more sophisticated offerings throughout the purchasing journey.

But even though the balance of power has shifted in favor of the consumer, businesses should not be unmindful of the many advantages that online marketing offers. For example, the use of digital marketing allows brands to market their products and services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year. It also allows them to offer customer support all the time, and not just during “normal” business hours. In addition, the use of social media platforms allows brands to receive both positive and negative feedback from their customers, which helps them decide quickly which products are popular and which may need to be put out to pasture.

Another advantage is that digital marketing is easy to be measured, allowing businesses to know the reach that their marketing is making, whether it is working or not, and the amount of activity and conversation that is involved. The results of traditional broadcast marketing simply cannot be measured nearly as accurately.

In addition, there are many powerful arrows in the online marketing quiver – any of which may prove to be the one that hits a potential consumer where he or she lives. They include:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a methodology of strategies, techniques, and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – a paid version of SEO where marketers pay for display ads in order to drive traffic to a company’s web pages
• Content Marketing – the creation of valuable media and content made available to potential customers who are searching for information about a particular product or service. It may include articles, blogs, videos, etc.
• Social Media Marketing – using one or several social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., to engage with customers and build relationships
• Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) – paid ads on search engines and social media sites
• Affiliate Marketing – a type of referral marketing where companies promote each other’s products
• E-mail Marketing – contacting customers who have given permission to reach them via their email accounts

Most businesses, these days, engage in omni-channel marketing, which employs a mixture of these strategies in a synergistic way, in order to maximize their effectiveness. And it’s a wise advertiser who learns to harness and master the power of online marketing.

Your Customers are Looking for You, but Can They Find You?

These days, more than ever, it’s not enough just to be good at your business – you have to know how reach your customers and potential customers where they live. And, today, more and more of them are living online. So, if they can’t find you on their computers, tablets, and smart phones, then you are probably losing them to your competition. Here are some tips that will help them find you when they look:

1.You must have a professional looking website that is highly functional and easy to navigate. If your customers can’t get the information they are seeking within seconds, they will hit the back button and go looking somewhere else. Make sure that your website meets current usability standards and that it is optimized for use on a mobile phone; that the information is correct and up-to-date; and that it is easy for a potential customer to do business with you.

2. Concentrate on your local market as most consumers still prefer to do business with those nearby. Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing provide business owners with a free way to get businesses listed ahead of all the search results via their default map systems.

3. Get listed on review sites. People want to know that others have done business with you and have had positive experiences.

4. Attract buyers by blogging. Blogging not only elevates your professional profile, it can help raise your company website to the top of the search engines pages.

5. Use social media. People buy into you before they buy from you. Social media lets you connect with potential customers without coming on too hard as a salesperson. By having an open, interesting dialog with people who may be interested in your goods or services, you stay in their minds. Then, when they are ready to buy, they are more likely to remember you.

6. Use online press releases. Think about all the new and interesting things going on in your business and write an article about them. Embed a few links back to your website, and send the release to the most appropriate online press release services.

7. Shoot a video and upload it to YouTube, or any of the other video sharing sites, and be sure to link it directly to your website. Then promote the video with social media to increase your online presence.

8. Send out regular email newsletters to current customers and anyone else who has contacted you in one way or another. By sending out fresh, new content on a regular basis, you’re reminding your customers that you’re still out there.

9. Content is still king. Create useful content and give it away free to your customers on your website. There are many types of online content: white papers, articles, reports, case studies, and webinars, for example. In addition, the more useful and original your content, the higher your site will rank on search engines.

10. If your budget allows, pay for online ads with Google Adwords and/or Bing Adwords. Paid placement will get your business on the front page of their search engines when customers are surfing the web. Get some professional advice, though, before you spend a dime. Doing it right can help your business thrive; doing it wrong can wreck your bottom line.

Remember the old conundrum: If a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, if your customers are looking for you, but can’t find you, can you really do business with them?

How Much Should I Spend on My Business’ Online Presence?

The easy answer to this question is: “As much as necessary and as little as possible.” But, of course that’s the easy answer and in business, there are no easy answers. Some experts suggest that you allocate 15 to 20 percent of your company’s annual income for the best results, but that answer is also a little too facile.

You know that you’re going to spend something for your business’ online presence and you know that it’s probably going to more affordable than print ads, radio or TV commercials, or sending out actual mail. But what you really need to do before you spend a dime, is decide what you want to achieve, where you will find most of your customers, and what aspects of online advertising and communication will give you the biggest bang for the buck by generating leads and sales and directing people towards your company.

Generally, you will have several main choices for your online spending: a website, which requires building it, hosting it and maintaining it; search marketing, such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), digital ads such as Google AdWords, pay per click (PPC) campaigns, etc.; a social media presence, such as Facebook, Twitter, and all the other various platforms; review site advertising such as Yelp and Foursquare; and email communication.

The most important of these is probably your website. There you have some choices. You can build it yourself using any number of off-the-shelf templates, such as WordPress, or you can pay to have one constructed for you. Your other basic costs will include a web domain, web hosting, a web developer (if your platform needs specific functionalities that are not available as plugins or extensions), and perhaps a social media manager (if you don’t have the time or the knowledge of how to manage the different channels). And remember: as the world becomes increasingly mobile-centered, it’s best to have a website that will display properly on smart phones and tablets.

Paying for SEO is another essential cost for many businesses. There are several models in play. You can pay a monthly retainer, which is a set fee each month in exchange for an agreed-upon array of services; or you can contract for services at fixed prices. Two other options are project-based pricing and hourly consulting.

Of course, you need to be on Facebook. It costs nothing, unless you wish to pay for boosting your content. The main expense is in labor. Facebook pages need to be updated constantly. In many companies, it’s a full-time job.

Sites like Yelp and Foursquare that offer customer reviews are also helpful tools for directing customers to your business through their advertising options. Most (non-PPC) advertising is priced on a CPM basis – essentially the cost per thousand impressions. You will have to do a lot of number-crunching to determine if this option will net you a decent return on your investment.

Finally, email marketing can be the centerpiece of any effort to stay in touch with existing customers, while reaching out and finding new ones. You can use it to promote new items and offer special discounts to loyal customers or to simply keep your customers informed. Blast email programs are relatively inexpensive, but you will need to pay a staff member to keep on top of everything.

Now, once you’ve done a lot of thinking, planning, and budgeting, you can re-ask yourself the question at the top of this post: “How Much Should I Spend on My Business’ Online Presence?” With all of your newly acquired knowledge, however, you will still likely wind up with the same answer: “As much as necessary and as little as possible.” Like we said, in business, there are no easy answers.

Does My Company Need a Mobile App?

There is only one way to answer the question: Does my company need a mobile app? And that is: It depends. It depends on a lot of things going on in your company and the type of business you’re in, so in order to answer the big question, you’re going to need to ask yourself a lot of lesser questions and keep probing until you have enough answers to get past the doubt.

Let’s start with some basic questions: Do you think that your business will benefit from having an app? Will the benefits outweigh the costs? What are your competitors doing and how will that impact your decision? These are not easy things to figure out, but perhaps using an analogy will help. Not too long ago, businesses didn’t have websites. If someone wanted to find your business they had the Yellow Pages and, if you could afford it, paid advertising in various media.

Today, you’d have a hard time finding a business that didn’t have a website. They’re just too valuable a tool for connecting with customers. Your business has a website and your competition does, too. Well, mobile activity is proceeding at a pace similar to the desktop/laptop activity of only a few years ago, and it may overtake it in the very near future. If you believe that most of your consumers will be on their smart phones most of the time, then you may well want to engage with them in that manner. And if your competition is already there, then you definitely need to consider having your own app, as well.

Today, the sectors that are most aggressively producing apps are restaurant and retail. Restaurant apps make it easy for users to find locations, review menus, place orders, and make reservations. Retail apps are very convenient when looking for a specific product or comparing prices. They are also used to find offer codes and coupons. And, of course, some companies, such as Uber, are totally dependent on their app. All these apps have specific purposes. So another crucial question you need to have a good answer to is: “What will your app do?” If you can’t readily explain your app’s purpose, you need to go back to square one.

Here’s another good question: “Is your current website ‘responsive,’ meaning does its layout adjust according to what device is being used to access it?” In the very recent past, most website interfaces were designed to work with a keyboard and a mouse on a large screen only; they didn’t work well on mobile platforms. But a responsive site can be accessed on a desktop or a smart phone and the interface will be optimized for each different device. If your business already has a website that’s mobile-friendly, an app might be superfluous; especially when you consider that apps have to be written and maintained for different platforms (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, etc.), but responsive websites are all-inclusive.

Finally, here are a few more questions that you should consider that relate directly to the consumers you would be trying to engage with your mobile app: 1) “Will your app make life easier for them?” 2) “Will your app make life less expensive for them?” 3) “Will your app make life more fun for them?” Remember, there are already thousands and thousands of apps out there. The world is not screaming for another one – unless of course, it can answer all of the above questions, positively. Then there’s always enough room for one more good one.

This list of questions is by no means exhaustive. But they are the kind of business questions you need to start asking yourself before going to the expense of creating and maintaining an app that might not amount to much more than an icon on page five on someone’s smart phone. If, when all is said and done, you can undeniably ascertain that an app will benefit your company because you believe it will make more than it costs in the long run, and that if you don’t have one you will lose ground to your competition, than you can pretty much conclude that you need it. But ask the questions, first.

The Importance of Online Marketing in Today’s World

In order for a business to survive, it must have customers. In order to have customers it must sell a product or service that people want or need. Then it must find ways to reach out to those potential customers in order to convince them that their wants and needs can be satisfied by that particular business. In a competitive marketplace, where every business is reaching out to a finite universe of consumers, getting enough customers “in the door” not only requires excellence in the product or service being offered, but most certainly in the ways in which the business promotes itself and markets it product or service to the public.

In the advertising world, there are two broad categories of marketing, sometimes known as the shotgun approach and the rifle approach. The shotgun approach just puts the word out there to be seen or not be seen by a broad swath of potential buyers. Examples are billboards, newspapers, radio and TV. In contrast, the rifle approach concentrates a business’ marketing efforts on a more narrowly defined audience. Direct mail marketing and ads in niche publications are two examples.

In today’s advertising environment, online marketing – marketing that uses websites, emails, and social media platforms to communicate – manages to marry the best of both strategies. With a robust and compelling website, a business can literally advertise itself to the entire planet at minimal cost. Anyone searching for a product or service can see anyone else’s electronic billboard at any time of the day or night through the medium of the World Wide Web.

But online marketing also lends itself to a laser-like personalization of customer relationships. Businesses can track its website use in order to cultivate those who have visited it, and then use sophisticated email campaigns, as well as all the various social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, etc. – to reach out to specific individuals who are most likely to become, and stay, customers.

In today’s world, having an online presence and utilizing the internet to its fullest capacity, is crucial if a business is going to be able to reach people where they are and how they now shop. Businesses cannot survive without customers, and for the foreseeable future, those customers will be knocking on their doors via a home computer, a laptop, a tablet, and/or a mobile phone.

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