The consumer behaviour is changing radically with the changing times. The reasons for this change are manifold. Firstly, with the advent of digitalisation, the in-store experience has been facing a huge challenge in terms of getting people out of their homes, on their foot into the stores. Innumerable devices like laptops, tablets and smartphones have allowed the digital media to penetrate our lives and how. As consumers, we experience new products and services from the digital world every day.
Here, I would like to shed light on some of the digital marketing trends that you might see or are already witnessing during 2016. Though it takes high-level of creativity and analytics to get these trends running but it is totally worth the effort.
Search and e-commerce: Moving from Google to Facebook and Twitter
Observe what this heading says for a moment. Consider a time when you will be able to do your “googling” activities on Facebook or even buy products through Facebook messenger. How amazing would that be? This also benefits you a great deal of being a marketer as it would enable you to have a better understanding of your customers. Facebook is developing its own search engine as we speak. Once this is done, it would take the search capabilities on social media to a different level altogether. This trend would prove beneficial for brands as they would enjoy greater visibility. However, the most exciting part would be the launch of Business Messenger.
Enterprises will be able to talk to their customers through Facebook’s messenger app. And this will also enable the customers to make online purchases through the app, receive order confirmations via instant messaging, and tell their friends about their purchases and all of this without logging into the e-commerce site they wish to buy from. This is going to be a great opportunity and should not take a backseat.
Instagram Advertisements
There was a start-up which realised that the society these days is thriving on visual simulations. They captured this need in the best manner possible and turned it into a highly successful business enterprise. Yes, I am talking about Instagram. In this age of social media, there is a constant hunger among the consumers to share their life experiences with the world. Instagram does exactly that and seamlessly. Due to its accessibility and approach, it was just a matter of time that businesses realised how they could use this app to their advantage. Collaborating with preferred partners like Ampish, Brand Networks, Salesforce and Marketing Cloud etc. Instagram recently started offering paid advertising opportunities.
As of now, this feature is not available to everyone but in 2016, Instagram ads will be made available to all the advertisers. It is time to start preparing. Get your creative juices flowing and start exercising your brain to find ways of promoting whatever you sell through Instagram. Digital Marketing can create carousel ads which allow you to produce multi-page ads or half-a-minute video ads.
Future of Advertising: Identity-Based Pay-per-Click Marketing
AdWords gave the digital marketing a pleasant surprise in early 2016 by revealing Identity-Based Pay-per-Click Marketing. This enables the marketers to target customers with specific ads based on their phone number or email ids. This allows the marketers to send the advertisements to a targeted customer based on his needs with great accuracy. This works like magic as it allows you to present the consumers with the content they are thinking about and providing them with an answer before they find it themselves.
Pay-per-click has never been attributed as a mainstream marketing method which would help a content or advertisement go viral. However, it surely accelerates the process. PPC enables the marketers to send the content to highly targeted customers, which resultantly leads to a viral marketing campaign.
There is always a great demand for Digital Marketing with sound knowledge of the nitty-gritty of the business. A skilled Digital Marketer is one of the most sought-after professionals in today’s times by all kinds of businesses.
