Now’s the time to start thinking about the next year of your online marketing efforts. It’s important to keep marketing trends (and online user practices in general) in mind as you make these decisions in order to get the most for your marketing dollar.
This year is going to see an increase in online marketing content quality across the board as individual users become more mature in their approach to the Internet.
Online Marketing in the Next Year
Quality Content
Content marketing with quality is becoming more important than ever. Entrepreneurs and marketing professionals need to pay attention to the types of content they’re generating, because contrary to popular belief, people are reading more than ever before.
We’re all getting smarter about the Internet. Users are learning through experience all the historical tips and tricks marketers have used, so it’s crucial now to not approach online marketing with tips or tricks, but instead focus on meaningful dialogues with potential customers.
Many marketers still rely on keyword-heavy search engine optimization content to drive their search results toward the top of the first page. While this approach still has its uses, this isn’t smart or meaningful content to human beings – only to robots.
Marketing professionals in the next year should focus on increasing the proportion of quality content that hits home with potential customers. Because business owners and advertisers tend to be busy with other things, the broad availability of freelance writers should really be taken into account as a good and affordable solution to generate this content.
Mobile Moves
The second broad point to emphasize is the increasing use of mobile phone and tablet apps to handle not only individual social media desires, but to really take care of many computing needs that were once solved by laptops.
In the next year, the use of smartphones and tablets as computing solutions is only going to increase. Marketers should be tapping into mobile wherever possible, and considering it when making any content or advertising decisions.
We’ll be seeing a great decrease in the reliance on more traditional-style advertising with social media platforms (like Facebook ads), and a big uptick in the sponsored content phenomenon. Not only will platforms like Twitter be presenting paid content in line with other tweets, but even individual blogs and news sources are utilizing their own staffs to generate content for advertisers in a writing style already trusted by readers.
Emotional Connections
The move away from impersonal, distant, pure advertising content will continue to be a solid trend in the next year. Users and content readers are increasingly skeptical and leery of advertising efforts, and advertising is seeing less and less return.
Entrepreneurs and marketers need to truly emphasize content quality in the next year. This was stated above, but it bears reinforcing that what’s starting to resonate with society in general is when a company, brand, or personality that seems distant and inaccessible makes an emotional connection with a customer.
Think about stories you may have heard recently about one-to-one connections on Twitter. Airlines in particular are doing a better job at this – far be it from most businesses to model any practices on those of airlines, but they’re a perfect example of social media’s (and the Internet’s in general) ability to reach people through dedicated customer service representatives and empowered social media staff.
The next year should see some online marketing moves away from pure advertising diversification (i.e. formats, locations, etc.) and instead emphasize content type diversity. This emotional connection will be reached through multiple levels of lead interaction; from company website to social media profile to blog post to comment to tweet, each level of interaction needs to be cultivated closely.
The thesis for the coming year is this: minimize the menial, maximize the material. Increasing reliance on mobile and social media apps are changing the ways people interact with content online. Giving potential customers quality online content and quality interactions to go along with the quality products and services about which they’re learning is always a good idea.
