Remember the pre-digital days? Driving to the music store to listen to your favorite artist’s newest album. Referring to the newspaper for local movie theater showings. Waiting weeks to rent the newest top grossing film from the video store. Future generations will simply never understand the way of the world before the web, and with all things considered it’s safe to say our society has “gone digital.”
For the first time ever, growing digital marketing budgets are expected to substantially exceed forms of traditional ad spending, like TV. In order to stay up-to-date and relevant, marketers should be prepared to pick up on digital trends. With the growing digital industry comes an increase in engagement, users, and opportunities for brand awareness and conversions. Given our digital expertise, we’ve decided to delve into a few hot new digital marketing trends.
1. Wearables
The industry for wearable devices and smartwatches is still growing. While the industry estimates a total worth of $14 billion for 2016, 2020 holds a forecast for a worth of $34 billion. Many wearable devices offer applications that are used on the smartphone devices they are paired with, but require a change in format. While this industry is expanding and more people are participating, wearable devices offer additional touch points for marketers already using mobile applications. Why make a call from your phone when you can do it from your wrist? James Bond would definitely be proud.
2. Snapchat
Snapchat is a popular, mobile-only application that offers digital marketing opportunities through its geofilters and “Discover” and “Featured” tabs.
Using geofilters, marketers can create camera filters that promote a new event or product to all users in a certain geographic location for a specific time period. Gatorade made one of the most praised Snapchat geofilters of all time; a motion-activated filter for the 2016 Super Bowl. Other large-scale marketers use nation-wide geofilters to promote widespread events like movies or popular products like breakfast cereal. Advertisers with visual content, such as ESPN, news networks, and national magazines more commonly use the “Discover,” and “Featured,” options. These tabs offer another venue for those brands to either repost or post additional content for their viewers.
In short, all of these Snapchat features offer effective methods for providing value to viewers or increasing brand awareness. Besides, we’re essentially evolving into the era of the selfie.
3. Interactive Content
According to SnapApp, interactive content is “anything that requires the participant’s active engagement—more than simply reading or watching the content.” Interactive content can come in the form of polls, quizzes, surveys and even video. If the consumer enjoys participating with the content while adding value to the brand, this engagement creates a positive relationship between the brand and the consumer, which can potentially lead to conversions or brand loyalty.
A popular example of interactive content is quizzes posted on Facebook by Buzzfeed—you know, those quizzes you take if you want to find out what type of potato you are? These quizzes not only require engagement, but also are easy to share with others because of the entertainment they bring to the table. They can even be used to promote multiple brands, such as movies on Netflix or popular TV shows.
4. Social Media
This should go without saying, but many marketers are still not using sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to their full advantage. Just like it’s important to stay current with Internet lingo, its important to make your brand known within the online community. In other words, OMG, get your brand on social media ASAP before your customers LOL, or we’re going to have to TTYL!
Social media presence, while not free, is a relatively cheap and efficient way to engage with consumers and build brand awareness—but it takes a lot of strategy! For some brands, it may be important to have a customer service function. For others, social media can serve as a way to update fans about their brand, or new products and services. In addition, if a consumer cannot find a particular brand on social media, it may lead the user to jump to negative conclusions about the legitimacy or existence of the brand. The same goes for brands that have used social media in the past but are inconsistent and infrequent with updates.
In summary, digital marketing is the way to go. With all the digital marketing trends out there, you can find the perfect tactics to engage with users, target specific consumers, introduce your brand and track your progress! Need help with your digital marketing efforts? Give us a call at (573)446-7777 today!
