The summer months are fading out and 2017 is already coming to a close. Crazy, right? Well, just for fun we thought we would look back at the trends predicted in 2016 for this year of app intensity, digital growth, and social media expansion to see which ones really came true. In addition to this, we want to look a year ahead and predict marketing trends for the pending 2018 months that are highly anticipated to wreak technological promise.
We pulled all the way back from 2016 archives, specifically the Digital Marketing Institute’s archived articles, to determine which patterns of marketing fulfilled their promise and the results were quite interesting. The first to be mentioned was “in-store marketing,” which sounds like a pretty self-explanatory mention, but we digress.
In-Store Marketing
In these last months, it was estimated that the relationship between “physical and online sale techniques” was to decrease even further with in-store alerts through business applications and emails notifying customers of sales while within a certain vicinity of the store. Businesses were expected to take their “customer service” to the next level in order to compete with the always growing beast of online shopping, namely Amazon. Well, as we have been continuously haunted by location services on our phones whether we like it or not, we believe that this trend prediction is spot on. We are guilty of downloading the Vons app to find coupons and discounts on products in specific stores, and, of course, traveling to the ones with the best deals. Score one for the Digital Marketing Institute.
Live Video Experience
The next to be mentioned was live video and oh man, this really was the year of video interaction and marketing. Thanks to application improvements Instagram and Snapchat, even Facebook, took over the world. In this particular article, brand awareness and exposure was related to the predicted increase in live video. Exhibit A: Snapchat’s Feature Video section with the biggest names in the business marketing trends their efforts through live video. This includes: DailyMail, ABC, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, People, Cosmopolitan, Vice, MTV, National Geographic, CNN, and so many more we’re not even going to list them all.
Let’s just talk about Instagram’s updates this year with the live video feature. Not only do you have the option of viewing your favorite celebrity on shoot, at the pool or even during a filming as if you were actually there with them but even your cousin in another state, your favorite brand, politician, or your impressively tech-savvy grandma watering her lawn. Instagram went as far as sending notifications directly to your phone when they start the video, which increased the rate at which they were seen. Granted this has become a bit of a pain to ignore and purposely swipe under the notification to open the app without being directed to the video, but it’s definitely sneaky and smart on Instagram’s part.
So, yes, the Institute was right on this one as well, but they failed to mention two big dogs in this equation that ended up taking the prize for live video, aka Instagram and Snapchat. Only Facebook live video, which has pretty much died out with the incredible rise in Instagram stock and downloads, and Periscope were mentioned. We will give the Institute a half of a point for this one.
Expiring Content
This one we might have to disagree with: expiring content. In the article, the team predicts that Snapchat is ahead of the game with the timely videos that are able to be viewed within a certain amount of time and how it increased the awareness with positive pressure. But, honestly, we think this was just a pain if anything.
The disappearing IM feature on that (although you can secretly save messages by holding down on them if you didn’t know) was exciting for a day or two, but then you could never remember what you said to the person finally getting around to responding. Who wants that? Yes, the demand for immediate views definitely cut the cost that companies like Snapchat and Instagram spend, but we are not too sure if this was really what the consumer wanted in the end. Wonder if this feature may have lost its luster enough to disappear by 2018? We’ll just have to wait and see.
What Is Coming?
So, what are we expecting to see this coming year? Not much surprise here but still exciting stuff! According to Smart Insights, these are the digital marketing trends expected to sweep the marketing trends over the span of the next year: increase in video visualization via social media applications, increase in native ads to reduce bounce rate, personalizing marketing experiences and messages (user intent) , word-of-mouth marketing is expected to make a potent re-appearance, celebrity ambassador endorsements, reducing outsourcing and increasing high quality in-house content developers, and lastly, highly data-oriented enterprises for big data. And, you know what they say about big data.
All in all, these predictions aren’t too far-fetched from what we have seen this year, but we are excited for the formal implementation of quality content generation and re-introduction of user intent. Good times are ahead for marketers and their audiences. Who agrees?
