As we know, the marketing industry and the platforms associated with it change faster than most fashion trends. Even though there are some fundamental marketing principals and frameworks that will never date, the tools and channels in which we communicate with our audiences continue to evolve and will rapidly accelerate due to the evolving nature of technology.
Putting this aside, your competitors are another factor to keep your eye on. Businesses are continually trying to get ahead of each other in a bid to give their customers the “latest and greatest”, so to speak. You might be thinking, how do I do that? Well, if you want to outrun the competition and protect yourself from this continual strive to be number one, like most industries, you need to be on the forefront of the latest trends. To help you out I have put together some of the top up-and-coming trends in online marketing.
App-based SEO
This week already I met three people pitching their idea to me whom want to develop an App. Apps have been a great money-generating business and are projected to grow in popularity, while traditional browser-based Internet experiences are on a downward trajectory. Some have even started to ask the question if apps one day might replace traditional websites altogether. It’s hard to say, but with this being said there is no doubt that Google will continue increasing their efforts to provide better app-based experiences for their users, including their app streaming technology.
User-generated content
Customers should be the most important asset of any business. It is only now that brands are starting to realise what amazing power user-generated content holds. Through platforms such as a user-contribution based forum or a competition you can encourage your users to create their own content for your brand and share it with others. By doing this, it will save you the effort from creating the content yourself, but more importantly will help you establish a solid foundation to create a thriving brand community.
Social media aggregation
I have said it many times, and I will say it again – Social media is here to stay and we need to jump on the bandwagon! Social media targeted apps are becoming more aggressive, trying to do more and more to drive brands. Take Facebook’s Instant Articles, for example, which has brought content experiences in-house or in-app, and recently launched a live-streaming video feature eliminating the need to go elsewhere to find such functions. Social apps are trying to become “everything” apps, and because of that, your presence there needs to become stronger.
Next-level personalisation
Where we stand at this point in time, there is a limited scope of how much we can personalise marketing and advertising. Even though we might be able to customise our DM’s to different consumer segments, the functionality of personalising the marketing landscape will soon become a lot more sophisticated, partly due to the influx of this new concept called “BIG DATA” allowing for more dynamic, innovative forms of content personalisation.
These are only just a few of the up coming trends that have slowly started making its way into how we as marketers work on a daily basis. Feel free to take inspiration from the few mentioned however it is important to understand that not all of these trends may stay. Like most things in life, some may evolve and develop and others will crumble, but at least a few of them hold tremendous promise, and because of that, you owe it to your business to pursue them.
Lauren Musat
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School
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