Every year brings a lot of changes in the world of marketing. Digital marketing techniques change all of the time. There are a number of reasons for this. In the first place, search engines such as Google change the algorithms they use very frequently so search engine optimization companies and digital marketing companies have to always be testing, tweaking and measuring their campaigns. What works well one year may not work as well the next.
Forbesandnbsp;compiled its list of what companies should do in 2017 to develop and execute successful digital marketing campaign, here they are:
- Celebrities’ endorsements will mean less. Does Jennifer Anniston really use Aveeno products to look great? Consumers may not believe so much after years of seeing their favorite actors, musicians and others hawking everything from Aveeno to Zen Mobile.
- Influencer marketing will gain in its importance. If your digital marketing agency has already starting developing campaigns around influencer marketing, which has the added component of practice building that are scaled will do well. This approach will help grow brand awareness and improve companies’ bottom line.
- Changes are coming to digital marketing technology. It is already becoming more and more accessible. More changes are afoot that will make it easier for smaller, less established businesses with smaller marketing and advertising budgets to compete with larger companies. They will see a higher return on investment (ROI) for their efforts.
- Martech stack will merge with scalable influencer marketing. Influencer marketing’s is going more and more popular and as a consequence, there will be a much larger need for IM technology and better efficiency. The ability to see and analyze the entire marketing landscape quickly and accurately has become almost the Holy Grail for many digital marketing professionals. This need will drive the merger of technology for influence marketing and the various business intelligence platforms.
- Business to Business (B2B) marketing will be greatly impacted by influencer marketing. Purchasing decisions are made by individuals. They often do their own research and are distrustful of brand marketing and messaging. B2B marketers who are smart and see this will take advantage of influence marketing.
- Online and offline efforts need to be developed together. It is not enough to spark some engagement online to call a digital marketing campaign a success. The ability to make online efforts create results offline and consumer action will be one metric that defines how well the digital marketing campaign is going. Influencer content that is product specific should drive people to stores to buy that item.
- Brands will be more selective to regain creative control over their message. Blanket digital marketing campaigns that reach the widest audience need to be scrapped in favor of more targeted, specific and selective. In prior years, the goal of social media marketing has been to get brand messaging in front of as many eyes as possible but that does not always produce sales. In 2017, companies will be better at targeting their efforts to reaching people who are interested in their products or services.
- Individual audiences will gain more importance. Digital marketing companies will need to shift their focus away from looking for influencers who they think are like their audience to campaigns that are centered around performance data and who the influencer’s audience is. This is another indicator of how the shift to eliciting direct action by consumers by reaching targeted audiences.
- Say goodbye to traditional social media metrics. In 2017, it will not be enough to rack up the “likes” on Facebook or the retweets on Twitter. This is the year that real conversions to sales will determine how successful a digital marketing campaign is or is not. Companies will look, instead, at how their true bottom line is impacted.
- This will be the year of the niche. Real conversions and a truly engaged audience will be indicators of success. That means that marketers who are able to identify the people who are interested in their product and reach those consumers will do well.
In years past, it has been enough to rack up social media stats that may or may not have real world meaning. In 2017, digital marketing campaigns will have to focus on real world tangibles like sales.
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