5 Digital Marketing Trends to be Left Out in 2017🚮
As each year wraps up, there always comes the period of evaluation 📑where the highs and lows of the year are revisited. Let’s do this for digital marketing trends.
Not every trend seen in 2017 ought to be adopted in 2018❌.
Technology is advancing and so is the human mind. As at 2016, one third of the world was found to be using social media daily (emarketing 2016). In this year 2017, digital marketing expenditure is said to be the largest media investment
“In 2017, digital will become the single largest media investment channel, passing television for the first time,” Scott Symonds, managing director of media at AKQA, told Marketing Dive.
The question is, is your company keeping up?
Out of the numerous digital marketing trends that are present, the following five should be left out in 2018.
Celebrity Influencers💰
Most companies tend to turn to celebrities to popularize their brand through the image of the celebrities. This tactic for a small to medium scale business is one to be dropped. Although your brand will be known by more people with the influence of the celebrities’ popularity😃, it does not result into a higher engagement with your product😞.
Another influencer fad that should be dropped in 2018 is investing in influencers based on your sector of business. Don’t invest in a SAAS influencer just because you own a SAAS company🙄. This looks like a smart choice but in reality this doesn’t bring sales🤷 because the people visiting that influencers page don’t always have the mindset to purchase. They just have interests in that area. You should invest rather in sales influencers because they have a higher engagement rate, as their page visitors are ready to buy🤑.
To summarize, choose influencers based on engagement rate always.
Short Content
The notion that people don’t read long posts needs to stay in 2017.
Evidently, the way people focus is changing. Agreed, but the average person still has the capacity to be engrossed in a good write-up 😍📖.
The problem isn’t that people lack focus and have short time span👎. The problem is that people are not willing to focus on boring content 📖😴and this boredom plague isn’t curbed with creating shorter content but with writing valuable content.
Longform blog posts both improve SEO and attract buyers looking for high-quality posts.
BuzzSumo’s analysis of 100 million articles shows that longer articles actually get the most shares on social media. So when considering your content, the question should not be “How long” 📜but “How important” ⭐️.
Email Marketing is Outdated
If your business is not majorly targeting teenagers 👦, you definitely need email marketing. According to EConsultancy, email generated an ROI of 73% for small businesses. Taking the lead amongst other channels. With such statistics, email campaign ought to be THE holy grail of all small businesses.
In addition to this staggering results, it is simple to implement, and easier to use with the introduction of many CRM tools (our favourite being ShoutOUT of course! 😉).
Email marketing is also necessary for follow ups to your advertisements. People respond to multiple ads everyday💁, standout by following them up with emails!👌
Outbound Marketing
This method of pushing your ad far and wide hoping that it will meet your potential customers is not only costly but also has a lower return on investment (ROI) rate👎. This trend was actually tossed out in 2016 but there are still several companies that chose to adopt it in 2017, hence why it has to be thrown out again🚮.
Incase you’re wondering why🤔, this method lacks two key things.
- Personalisation — Your customer has a name and it isn’t “Customer”😡. According to a recent report from Accenture, 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a retailer that recognizes them by name, recommends options based on past purchases, OR knows their purchase history👍.
- Targeting — Showing your adverts to the right audience only 🏹. A 90 year old man is most likely not interested in your hot orange colored dress😬. Target your customers based on their location, interests, age group, history and behavior. Your customers are unique individuals, treat them as such.
Social Media Ghost
Thankfully in 2016 businesses got the memo that they ought to be on social media and so they did🎊🎈. Most did because they wanted to improve their credibility.
The problem now is the lack of interaction with customers on their social media space.
Don’t be a ghost 👻 on social media!
Engage with your customers because this is a very effective way to build loyal customers. According to Forbes, 62 percent of people say that they are more likely to become a customer if that brand interacts and engages with them personally on social media❗️.
Studies also show that social media📱 is one of the top three (3) customer support channels, alongside telephone☎️ and email📧.
If you aren’t putting your time and effort into social media marketing, you risk losing out on tons of sales.
Not Tracking Metrics
You can do it all, but if you don’t get rid of the idea that tracking isn’t necessary or it can be done at a later point you are literally killing your business💔.
You would think that this is a pretty obvious trend to cling🤦 to but that just isn’t the case for most businesses🤷.
Track EVERYTHING.
Yes you have to be that creepy 👀.
Marketing without tracking your metrics will stunt your business progress because no data driven marketing plans can be made. This constantly earns business losses.
Today there are so many tools to track your company’s metrics such as Google Analytics, Hotjar, Facebook Analytics, and so on.
Don’t just start a business and begin mindless advertising, determine your business kpi’s and begin tracking📊.
You are not your customers. So don’t make decisions on their behalf. Instead study how they interact with your product so that you can act effectively.
Conclusion
The world is advancing🏃, your digital marketing strategy ought to be doing the same🏃🏃. Based purely on statistics📊 some trends used commonly in digital marketing have to be dropped 🚮so that your business can grow in the new year.
Consumers relate better with people who are more like them👨👨👦👦. So opt for sales influencers rather than celebrity influencers, whose lifestyle does not support your cause.
The average person doesn’t have a problem with focusing. You just need to give them a reason to read🤷, so make your content worth their while.
Email marketing still brings in the highest return on investment rate in 2017💁💰.
You should be tracking all your consumer interactions with your product,. This is essential to your business growth.🌱
Engaging with your consumers through social media is the fastest and most effective way to get loyal customers 😁and get your customers involved in building your brand.
Shooting your ads at everyone does not increase❌ the conversion rate, rather it increases cost.😅
