By John Masier, Webmaster/Copywriter
Well it’s that time of year again- The End. The last gasp, the holiday craze, the latest turn of the cosmic wheel. Whatever you call it, it always comes with a bit of reassessing, learning from the year just passed and looking toward the year ahead.
In marketing, things never, EVER stay the same, so we thought it would be fun to see what some of the gurus and prognosticators say about what’s happening in the future marketing world of 2016… and at the end of next year we can see how close they came!
From Hubspot: Meaghan Moraes gives us “7 Game-Changing Marketing Trends To Tackle in 2016”.
Many ideas here about marketing in the digital/social/interconnected age. From Relationship Marketing (building a more emotional, ‘one-on-one’ interaction with your customer as opposed to perceived mass-marketing- think of Apple-style customer advocacy) to location-based marketing, ephemeral short-term marketing and more, it’s a digital world in 2016, driven by data, data, data.
Search Engine Journal’s Margot da Cunha has her “10 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch Out For in 2016” and points out that by 2017 digital ad spending is expected to finally surpass television, and honestly, that is a big deal. Like Meaghan, she also sees a lot of focus on personalization and automation of digital advertising, while giving tips about improving your social media ads, producing video, and the future of Facebook Messenger. Perhaps most uniquely, she also points out the growing marketing potential of podcasts. Yeah, podcasts!
Kaleigh Moore sees many of the same things as the others- personalization, video, data- but reminds us that despite what you may believe, the quaint old technology of email is still the king of digital marketing, with $38 of ROI for every $1 spent.
And last but most visually impressive, MarketingProfs has a fancy Microsoft infographic here that addresses budgeting, consumer perception, and a brief primer on new tech. I guarantee there will be something on this list you’ve never heard of.
Well, that’s our brief look at some of the marketing predictions from the collected wisdom of the Internet. Learn something? Made you think? Keep your eyes on this spot in 2016 for more marketing tips, trends, tradeshow ideas, and just plain fun from Marketing Plus!
