Eight Digital Marketing Trends to Follow in 2017

© 2017 March Oyinki

The digital marketing industry is an ever-evolving sector with constant improvements and new developments in both content and application. The dynamic nature of the industry has greatly influenced content delivery, moving from text, illustration and graphics to GIF animation to videography and video streaming.

1.  Digital Payment Apps

Ecommerce has revolutionized electronic funds transfer, which in the past few years have experienced steady improvement in the payment processes, which involves the issuing houses, processors and the merchants by introducing faster and more secure algorithms, coupled with increasing use of smartphones in the buying and selling processes. Thereby further making the payment for purchases both online and in-store via the mobile device even easier and quite accessible.

2.   Twitter Character Limit Extension

Digital marketers have long awaited the increase of the number of characters that Twitter allows from 140 previously to 280 presently. This development is a welcome development, especially at this time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to confine your content within the Twitter limits.

3.   LinkedIn Video Streaming

This year also saw the originally text-illustration based social business site, making a 360-degree turn to please millions of its customers who have waited a long time for the company to introduce video streaming. This improvement is coming at a time when the industry is moving increasingly to video streaming, animated GIF and videography. According to Cisco, video content will account for 69 percent of all consumer internet traffic in 2017, and video-on-demand traffic alone will almost be trebled at the end of the year.

4.   Facebook Video Streaming

Facebook Inc. acquired the rights to stream professional sporting events, as part of deal it signed earlier this year with Major League Soccer (MLS) and Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Communications Inc. that gives the social media giant exclusive, English-language rights to stream at least 22 regular-season soccer games in the U.S. starting March 18. These games will appear on Univision Deportes’ Facebook page, while the live shows will stream on MLS’ Facebook page.

5.   Ad Blocker War

The digital marketing industry experienced in 2017, one of the most aggressive periods in its history, where all types of unsolicited and often annoying advertisements and fake news appears as pop-ups on the screens of unsuspecting Internet users, in what could be described as the digital tsunami. This activity led to the introduction of AdBlocker by Eyeo, an application that allow users to block adverts they do not want to see. This could not have come at a better time, and the massage patronage it received is a clear indication of that. While on the other hand, publishers and advertisers were losing sales because of AdBlocker and this caused Facebook along with other publishers and advertisers to react, which resulting in what came to be known as AdBlockers War.

6.   Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 comes with an exciting new tool that allow users including digital marketers to create Marketing Campaigns from the Business Contact Manager form in Outlook, which allow you to track the curation and the customer response to your Marketing Campaigns; tracks the number of new sales that were generated by each campaign, as well as the level of interest generated and the financial results of campaigns. With the Business Contact Manager tool, you can create an email list, a campaign code and a budget for your campaign.

7.   Influencers

Influencers are mostly bloggers, and they are expats in their various fields who have built a career on the respective fields and have gained the trust of the hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, who they offer advice to on a given subject, and make recommendations on specific products and services they believe will benefit their audience. Their role in the industry is equated to that of word-of-mouth marketing, which is one of the most effective form of marketing. Influencers have continued to attract more attention, especially in the last few years, and their relevance has increasingly place them as first choice in most companies’ digital marketing strategy.

8.   Mobile Marketing

Mobile devices, especially the use of smartphones have dominated the digital marketing industry. Mobile ecommerce and mobile banking have become the rave of the moment. Online store operators are optimizing their storefront for mobile and commercial banks are introducing banking apps that makes it easier for customers to carrying out banking transactions straight from their mobile devices. Mobile social is also increasing tremendously, capturing over 80% of the entire social media users.