Top Marketing Trends For Brand Awareness In 2017

The most important aspect of marketing is visibility and that never changes with passing years. The digital transformation of marketing might have changed things but the basic focus has and will always be around how customers see your business. So what can you the expert on the marketing front in 2017? Social media and mobile together have impacted our world as in how we work, socialize and play.

The customer base gets more diverse when the business gets bigger and diverse. Yes, technology can help track your customers and get valuable information. But the most important thing is how you use this precious information. You need to stay focused and find ways to create conversations and increase conversions. So here are key insights into how you need to shape your online marketing for the year 2017 and what factors will influence it.

Live Streaming Of Video Becomes Popular

Back in 2004, YouTube had become a sensation, it became a popular platform to record, upload and view. But today mobile has become a popular medium to broadcast live moments. The year 2015 saw a rise in live feeds with the rise of Periscope and Meerkat.

This trend saw more popularity with Blab, Facebook Live and Snapchat Stories coming into the forefront. According to the latest statics, Snapchat’s Live Stories generated 10 to 20 million views per day.

On the other hand, Facebook had eight billion video views daily, while the users were spending thrice their time watching live videos on it. Facebook Live was used for covering many important events like the national conventions of the two major political parties in the U.S., Brexit referendum, Turkish coup etc.

The speculations of the analysts have been rife with news that perhaps Facebook Live could be best replacing television news. As a matter of fact, Facebook Live could be a great medium for small business to broadcast their events, product showcase, talk about your services, get engaged with the target audience and much more.

Customer Interaction Or Conversation Is Changing With Chatbots

Business is increasingly trying to humanize their ways with customers and chatbots is one of the additions. It is a way to stimulate intelligent conversation without a human being actually being present. The Facebook's chatbots are one of the few applications which are revolutionizing the way of conversation and helping marketers leverage its power.

The automatic chatbots can be incorporated in the Facebook's messenger. They enhance customer experience and interaction offering flexibility to automate tasks and also help in retrieving data. Mark Zuckerberg in April 2016 announced that this messenger platform could be used by third parties to create their own personal chatbots.

The most important functionality of the chatbots with their increasing popularity is to improve real-time engagement. Customers always look for a very prompt and immediate response to their comments and queries. Chatbots are designed in such a manner that they are competent enough to handle customer queries without any human interference.

Chotu is one of the most popular chatbot technologies that are an Artificial Intelligence robot on Facebook messenger, helping accelerate customer information acquisition through Facebook messages. It performs multiple tasks at a given time and gives 24X7 customer support.

The Future Of Social Content

No doubt that content is and will always be the king! But the essential question is what kind of content. Attracting attention online is a real challenge. There is so much clutter and noise that standing out becomes difficult.

According to a report published by Bitcatcha on an average, there are two million blogs published every day and 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. Average marketing tactics won’t work.

The answer lies in interactive content and creating urgency to a content table. Snapchat brought this urgency by making their "content expire”. When visitors know they have limited time to read or see content they pay attention. This also included 10-second videos that were gone after one view and then extended to Snapchat stories.

This trend was adopted by Instagram as well by adding “Instagram Stories” to its platform. Here is some interactive content that businesses can implement and take inspiration from:-

• LinkedIn’s education tool offering Data visualization
• The calculator's quiz and assessments are done by BuzzFeed
• Design Hill’s interactive guide to popular logos with their hidden meanings
• Automated diagnostic tools such as the headline analyzer tool.

 Infographics

Businesses also need to think about integrating customer service and social media. It should not just be limited to emails as more and more customers will engage with businesses through their social media accounts. They expect a quick response to their queries and questions.

Consolidation Of Social Media, Creating More Brand Awareness

As a big business move to social media, smaller social start-ups struggle to make a mark among the clutter. It is will be a foolery to assume that the rules will remain the same. Facebook bought WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus Rift. Periscope became a part of Twitter. LinkedIn was just acquired by Microsoft for $27 billion.

Seeing the patterns changing in the landscape the tactics will also need to be tweaked and reinvented. In addition, the social media accounts are also improving their algorithms and getting more accurate information from customers. Creating brand awareness in such a scenario is a tricky thing and your marketing mediums need to maximize their efforts.

Multi-Channel Strategy To Gain Organic Social Traffic

It was easy to get attention in digital world before. You could gain traction by getting likes on Facebook and followers on Twitter. But things are changing now and it is becoming difficult to gain organic social traffic.

Chronological timeline updates are being removed from Facebook, Instagram, and others platforms. Social media is becoming yet another paid medium. The reason behind this is simple - too much content and too little space. It is important to study and go back to the digital basics. So what do the budding marketers do in such a scenario? Well few things that they must do are:-

• Ranking on the first page of Google with better optimization strategies 
• Reaching to your audience by steadily building your email list without your content being blocked and filtered by Google or Facebook 
• Evolving new ways of marketing that really work in today's changing world 
• In short, it is time to pull up the sleeves and pursue a multi-channel strategy

Automation Software To Give You Marketing Edge

Marketing these days is getting more complicated and messy. Managing it with simple means and tactics is inefficient and does not scale up on the given parameters. Marketing automation software platforms like Marketo, Hubspot etc. are now becoming an important arsenal to gain an edge in online marketing.

They are becoming better, smarter and less expensive to buy. If you still haven't thought about using these tools as part of your marketing strategy, it’s time to think and get ahead in the growing competition.

Personalization Of Brands Is Becoming A Priority

In the present scenario marketing strategies desperately require personalization and targeting relevant content and advert delivery to customers. The digital advertising tactic of choice for campaigns is implementing strategies used by Facebook's retargeting and adverts that are driven by identifying where you have been on the internet and what your interests are.

This not only increases the conversion rates but also serves the much needed relevant content to customers. There is data extraction tools and automation software that can help you in sending the right kind of content to the right customer at the right time. Relevance is thus becoming an important factor in catching attention in the cluttered online world.

Isha Singh, an avid app developer is trying to take advantage of the technical knowledge she has to help people gain a foothold in the digitized world. Read her sharing her views on web and app development, the latest being Magento Extension development.