15 Trends to Boost your Digital Marketing ROI in 2016

As the world now embraces, and is fully engulfed in the digital era, marketing as we all knew it has changed substantially. There are things to learn, things to rethink and there’s a lot more new information to digest if you want to stay relevant.

Although the fundamental principles of marketing still have the consumer-behavior, the high-quality engaging content, and the connection on an emotional-level between brand and the client base as key factors, the full-digitalization of communication has changed the “dos” and “don’ts” of the market.

With social media networks as prime leverage, and the automation of tasks that would otherwise cost you time and effort, the digital marketing trends of 2016 can make or break your business, depending on how well you adapt to the new rules of the game.

It’s recommended that you leave your comfort zone! Let’s dive into how you should approach 2016’s digital marketing trends without damaging your business:

1. Keep an eye on the real Return on Investment.

When the marketing-potential of social media, Facebook in particular, was first recognized as “the next best thing” of the advertizing industry, this outlet became indispensable for companies of all sizes and authorities. The number of likes, shares, and cost-saving effects of a nearly free advertizing campaign on Facebook were put under the spotlight. And it’s been a social networking notoriety frenzy ever since!

That’s why the real return on investment has fallen out of the sight of many. There are now budgets set up for social media networking, which are meant to keep a business’s online reputation afloat and to permanently stay in touch with the target audience.

The only way of avoiding the negative backlashes of this trend is to make sure that the likes, the shares, and the social media based traffic, are all contributing to your sales. Being popular is close to useless if conversion rates are at an all time low. So makes sure that the traffic leads users to a sales-efficient landing page and that the e-mailing lists keep growing.

2. Building your digital assets will give you long term sustainability.

Your marketing strategy can no longer be seen as a negligible part of your business. Nowadays it’s not about if you want to invest in advertizing or not; it’s about how much can you invest in it, in order to build the base of a sustainable digital asset collection.

The sustainability of digital assets comes from their ability to be searched, rediscovered, and from their potential to become “the gift that keeps on giving”. Your digital assets will now continuously add value to your business’s authority on the market via Google, and all social media networks. As soon as it goes online, it’s there to stay. That’s why you should prioritize the digital assets within your reach.

Firstly, you can do that by enriching and broadening your website’s reach. Make sure that your website’s blog is polished and modeled to fit the “needs” and “wants” of your customer base, and that your content is always refreshing, engaging and valuable to its readers.

Your rank on search engines and an online community built around your brand, via social media, are also key factors in optimizing your digital assets for a global reach that’s sustainable in the long run.

3. Globalization is both a challenge and a huge opportunity.

You have to consider the aspects of globalization in regards to two factors: your competition and your client base. They are both expanding, and they no longer give you the comfort of thinking on a local-level.

Corporations with online empires at their fingertips will be able to reach your local customers, so you have to follow the trend and go global. Consider your competition wherever you plan on finding new clients, and think on a large scale when approaching potential customers. There’s only room to grow more and more!

4. User-generated content is valuable.

If you’ve invested in creating a customer base that acts as a community which supports and advertizes your brand, then you’ve already created the stepping stones of a valuable source of content, which is bound to reach other potential clients.

Apart from being an ever-growing source of free advertizing, your brand’s fans will give your business a genuine customer-focused look. What says “satisfaction” better than an unsponsored display of support towards one’s business?

5. Think big by embracing automation and optimization.

Although content creation remains an art, many other aspects of marketing can now be automated and optimized to ease some processes that until now seemed like an indispensible hassle. Examples include: emails, from a simple sign-up, all the way to purchasing, social media posts, and paid digital marketing.

All these time-sensitive and data-reliant processes can now be automated, scheduled and optimized to keep things working smoothly, with minimum human intervention.

6. Email lists are still your marketing honey-pot.

You’ve discovered most of the new trends that are flooding the digital marketing industry, but the email is what should be considered the “evergreen” element of any business’s marketing strategy.

Although communication has long crossed the boundaries of the email, it is still the only globally-accepted business contact channel. And specialists have no restraints in approximating at least 3 decades of prosperous shelf-life for this versatile communication tool.

An email list is still considered to be a marketer’s treasure chest, for both leads and sales.

7. Pinpoint your target audience’s demands.

The most efficient way of engaging users, encouraging email subscriptions and getting customers to always come back for more is to directly address topics that your audience wants to read about.

A large number of digital marketing technologies, including highly-effective software, can help you pinpoint the demands of your audience, allowing you to easily customize the content, creating a match made in heaven.

8. A data expert will become your right-hand.

Your business no longer has to rely on the tendencies of the market and the intuition of a marketer. Of course you will still be at the mercy of the market, but a data expert will eliminate the guesswork of this important part of your marketing strategy.

Data helps you identify exactly how your audience responds to your actions, and it does so via automated processes which don’t require heaps of time or labor. This gives you the chance to focus on adding value to the type of content that your fan base responds to best.

9. Focus on what mobile can help you achieve.

By just taking a look at Facebook’s revenue, out of which 75% comes from mobile-based advertizing, it’s easy to tell that an optimized mobile-user focused marketing campaign is your best bet in being efficient in 2016.

The challenged posed by this trend is that you have to pick your battles, since a mobile device won’t allow you the freedom that the web has accustomed you to. You’ll need an efficient was of collection email leads, reader & mobile friendly content, on-display contact information, and an extremely easy-to find CTA (call to action).

10. Use digital platforms for professional results.

Because technology is now available to all, its costs have lowered down to the point where businesses of all size have access to professional software that makes digital marketing automation a walk in the park, once you’ve mastered the ins and outs of software such as: Ontraport, Hubspot and other digital platforms.

11. Paid social media advertising is unavoidable.

If social media started out as being a free-advertizing outlet for businesses, it’s no longer that way. Organic searches via Facebook will nowadays get you nothing, so you need to spend money in order to make money, regardless of which social media platform we’re talking about.

The key in paid social media advertizing is to analyze data after a campaign, and get a clear view of your return on investment. Spending $200 to gain $50 isn’t a viable deal. That’s why data and stats should be closely monitored.

12. Influencers can help you grow beyond your reach.

Sponsored content and online influencers have become a huge part of the marketing strategy of many popular brands. And this marketing technique goes from stars wearing your clothes, to Youtubers reviewing your products, or bloggers using their reputation and broad reach to give you worldwide access to potential clients.

This type of investment has proved itself to be extremely efficient, especially when the influencers have a very well outlined reader-audience.

13. Reality is enhanced using virtual-augmentation.

Virtual reality has already been integrated into the market by big-time investors, such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft. This means that the baby steps towards a new dimension of communication, and consequently a new era of marketing, have already been taken.

14. Technology becomes a bigger part of our lifestyles.

As soon as the market became mobile-dominated, marketers have started to work on the next tech-trend, and Apple watches and augmented-reality glasses are the best examples of technology getting more and more integrated into our lifestyle.

Technology becomes wearable, and communication tends to go further and further into the unexpected.

15. Mobile applications are now a must-have.

With app developers improving the technology behind the process of building responsive and customer-focused apps, the price of creating an app that helps you reach customers mobile-users has dropped significantly. There’s no reason to not have an app, and there are plenty of reasons why an app is a must-have in this mobile-dominated market, regardless of your business’s size.