Digital Marketing Trends for 2016

The digital marketing industry is complex, volatile and consistently changing. Since internet has drastically changed the way information is shared. So as online marketers, we face new platforms, tools and technologies every year. Thus, it is important to understand the main trends that will shape the digital marketing landscape for the year 2016. Here are the digital marketing trends I anticipate to keep you ahead of the curve.

Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends 2016

1. Video ads will be king.

In 2016 Google is getting on board with in-SERP video advertising. It signifies that more and more users are accepting and are becoming comfortable with online video ads. As this trend continues, expect to see more types of video ads popping up in more innovative ways. In fact, advertising platforms like Bing, Facebook, Periscope, Snapchat are already offering advertisers video options. With Google’s owning YouTube, the possibilities are virtually limitless.

2. Mobile will keep dominating desktop.

2015 saw the release Google’s “Mobilegeddon” algorithm update to phase out sites not optimized for mobile. Also Google has already started to index mobile apps in a similar fashion as it indexes existing websites – this offers online visibility advantages to these apps.

As the time passes mobile apps will begin to replace websites since they can do everything website can – in a more intuitive, convenient and accessible ways. This means that in 2016 the smart money will rest on mobile-focused digital marketing.

3. Crowd sourced content.

People love to step up and give their opinion. Engage your community and solicit their input. Crowdsourcing gets your customers including potential customers involved and gets the target audience invested while playing a pivotal role with content creation and marketing.

Scaling content on your own is costly and hard to do. In a research Onalytica discovered that just on YouTube alone fans were creating 99% of the content mentioning the brand. In 2016, as online marketer you should particularly focus on strategies for successful crowdsourcing. As a result, you can earn that free attention that companies crave.

4. Virtual reality will emerge.

Some of the most advance VR devices are coming out in 2016. VR devices will present an entire new medium of digital advertising, with integration to well-known video channels, social media platforms and even forms of direct messaging. Huge investments in VR technologies by players such as Google and Facebook with its $2 billion Occulus Rift acquisition is setting the stage for immersive digital marketing.

5. Wearable technology and Digital assistants.

Wearable technology devices should start gaining more traction in 2016. More wearable devices similar or even smarter than Apple Watch will start emerging. These devices will change the landscape of local digital marketing for ever. As the web becomes noisier and heavily crowded the use of wearable “smart devices” by marketers will be tested.

The rise of digital assistants like Siri and Cortana is going to lead to a new kind of optimization. Make sure your business information is easily accessible to these digital assistants, rather than trying to funnel people to your site specifically.

These five digital marketing trends aren’t the only ones that will emerge in 2016, but they will be some of the most noteworthy. The earlier you start, the more time you will have to leverage the full benefits of your forward-thinking campaign.

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