Chart ahead for next year with our list of the predicted top five data-backed marketing trends of 2017, which includes a rise in experiential marketing and augmented reality.
Quickly name five data-backed marketing trends you successfully followed in 2016. As the final quarter of this year draws to a close, many of us in the marketing industry are looking forward to a well-deserved break. At the same time, curiosity and a new year’s goals urge us to peek at the calendar year ahead and wonder what trends are on the horizon that are worthy enough to follow.
Unlike last year, 2017 does not seem to hold as many incoming disruptions. Although surprises will no doubt happen, many of the biggest developments will be the solidification of existing technologies and practices. However, as adoption of these practices takes hold, the daily activities of a marketer undeniably shift until these tasks are nearly unrecognizable compared to the year before.
In that light, here are the five biggest data-backed marketing trends of 2017 that could change the nature of marketing:
Immediacy Solidifies Moment Marketing
The unexpected success of Snapchat shows us just how much people’s appetite for bite-sized content drives the evolution of online culture. More so than satisfying short attention spans, the immediacy of this type of content demonstrates how audiences desire authentic experiences.
Marketers are taking note. For example, spirits brands have taken this practice of moment-based marketing and made it their own, creating both temporary in-person events and coordinated digital content campaigns. People can expect more of these experiences to rely on virtual reality and 360° video in order to help others feel immersed in something fleeting yet memorable.
Augmented Reality Gets Its Due
Addictive Pokémon Go whet the appetite of both the public and the marketing world for augmented reality experiences. Use cases before 2016 focused mainly on installation-based technology at physical locations, but the hit game app showed that smartphone technology can open a window into a fantasy world based firmly in our own.
Loyalty gamification and virtual showrooming, including for destinations, will no doubt take hold as augmented reality progresses.
Live Chat Sales Reps Grow
Live chat has found its way into many consumer-focused sites, but the American Marketing Association highlights how B2B industries have begun to realize its power. Live chat site features can lift sales conversions by 20% while increasing customer satisfaction.
This type of service-based capability becomes critical as traditional business activities move online but need a human touch to smooth out any friction.
Gone are the days of companies only helping buyers via a 1-800 number once something goes wrong with a product. Savvy consumers nowadays expect brands to offer a seamless level of personal service throughout the entire sales process, whether they are contacting brands online, in physical stores or on social media. Through these customer contacts, live chat will likely enhance a larger portion of both e-commerce and bricks-and-clicks business models if current trends continue.
Ads Aim to Become More Relevant
Ad-blocking has reached critical mass, and while content publishers fight back by blocking ad-blocking, many advertisers instead focus on making ads that fewer people want to block. Expect a rise in native ad content as well as both long-form and bite-sized content on owned media in order to bring consumers into the marketing funnel without them feeling subjected to a hard sell.
Self-Service Visualizations Expands
Organizations of all sizes and scopes have begun investing in data collection and analytics, but they are increasingly finding themselves lacking the flexibility to obtain continual insights. To solve this problem, they have begun steering towards solutions that enable self-service visualization and data processing at nearly every company level.
Some 64% of senior IT and business respondents feel that self-service visualization is the way of the future since it can “create a significant competitive advantage.” As this emphasis on omnipresent data analytics grows, the need to invest in more organized and robust data architectures simultaneously becomes even more apparent.
And, of course, the rise in all of these trends will result in more one-on-one interactions that will create exponentially more data points. The need for a structured data-backed marketing program will only grow then as we give more consumers more reasons to tune into digital marketing programs.
No matter what organizations will be trying in terms of marketing strategy and content, 2017 will be the year that more people begin to master their data volume and connect all of their actions into a cohesive, informed strategy. Here is to what the New Year will bring!