Digital Marketing in 2016: What to Expect and How to Prepare

It’s been an exciting year for digital marketers with the launch of #Mobilegeddon, virtual reality becoming a thing, algorithms continuing to change, and advertising data becoming easier to access. Next year we can expect even more exciting, and somewhat irritating, advancements for the cyber world. Take note of the advancements below as you begin to start planning your 2016 marketing campaigns.

Mobile Conversions Will Become Priority

This was the year for each and every website to become mobile-friendly. Google set a deadline and gave plenty of advanced notice of the impact mobile-friendly websites would have on SERPs. Many businesses listened and adjusted their websites to work on mobile, while some are still struggling to update their sites.

Next year is going to be the year where businesses need to take the responsiveness a step further and perfect their mobile design and funnel. It’s no longer enough to just have a mobile-friendly website. People need to be able to easily make purchases, sign up for webinars, and get the information they need on their phones without it being a hassle. Landing page optimization for mobile will be key and switching gears from increasing traffic to increasing conversions from mobile will be the new goal.

Influenced Marketing Will Takeover Purchaser Decision

Instead of investing all of your advertising dollars into Google and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, start investing a portion of the budget into real people in 2016. Have you noticed how every other celebrity whitens their teeth and posts photos of them doing so on Instagram? What about the trending skinny tea posts, like #FitTea?

The companies behind the teeth whitening products and weight loss teas are bringing marketing back to it’s roots – using public relations techniques. A majority of these sales come from people who are following stars and social media celebrities who are using products and posting about them on social networks and blogs. Using a celebrity type of endorsement is still a valuable advertising asset for marketers and will only become more valuable as social media celebrities grow larger in 2016. Dust off your PR skills and start reaching out to these Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram stars to begin building relationships, similar to the old idea of link building. 😉

Long Form Content and Keywords Become the Norm

Simple 500+ word blog posts will no longer be enough to satisfy Google’s search algorithms. Long form content will become the norm, averaging 1,000-2,000+ words per page. This is because people don’t just want quick answers anymore, they’re now hungry for knowledge and want to know why the sky is blue instead of yellow.

The transition to long form content will automatically encourage advertisers to expand their keywords to add more long-tail. Search inquiries are getting more detailed as people start to search similar to how they talk to Siri, using a natural language. Advertisers must mimic this natural language in their keywords and bid accordingly.

Every social media channel is unique. It’s time us marketers start giving social channels the individual attention they deserve. This means you have to stop sharing the same blog posts across all of your social networks on the same day, same time, using the same copy and image.
Posts on Instagram need to be drastically different than posts on Facebook because Instagram’s platform is made to be drastically different than Facebook’s.

Get back to basics with your social media efforts in 2016 and focus on posting valuable content, like videos and how-tos, based on a channel’s style and demographics. Remember to give followers a reason to follow you on every channel by providing unique content that actually relates to the social channel.

Facebook Will Continue to Improve Advertising

Facebook is consistently working to improve a better experience for advertisers and users. If ads are going to appear on Facebook, users want them to be relevant and advertisers want them to have the lowest cost per conversion with the biggest results. Here’s a few new Facebook ads that should help satisfy both the user and advertiser in 2016:

Mobile Ads
Change up your regularly scheduled advertisements by offering them strictly to mobile audiences. Redefine an advertisement’s demographic to only show the Facebook ad to a mobile audience. Test the ad to see if the conversion rate improves and how competitive the cost is compared to your desktop ads.
Lead Ads
These types of ads do exactly what the name suggests: give you leads! Instead of sending Facebook fans to a landing page from an ad to gather leads, you can use Lead Ads on Facebook to collect accurate lead information. The idea is the same as an offer ad where users sign up for more information or request something from a business and then users have to fill in their info.

Local Awareness Ads
This type of Facebook ad is going to be the most useful for smaller, local businesses and corporations that have multiple locations. One of the biggest struggles with Facebook for businesses is pinpointing the exact return on investment. With certain advertisements it’s easy to see how many clicks were made or how many Ugly Christmas sweaters were purchased from a Facebook ad, but other types of ads are much harder to measure. For example, measuring foot traffic in a store that came from Facebook used to be nearly impossible to track. Now, with Local Awareness ads, businesses can find new customers by displaying ads to groups of people who are near their business and/or neighborhood and actually track the results.

Blab and Live Streaming Become a Real Marketing Tool

Periscope, Blab, and Meerkat aren’t just three weird names. They are live streaming and video networks that have drawn the attention from brands big and small. As we move into 2016, live stream marketing will become more of a thing and be yet another outlet that marketers need to be a part of. Video has already surpassed imagery engagement on social networks, and even for Google. Imagine what live streaming webinars, talk shows, interviews, and how-tos on a regular basis can do for your brand in 2016.

Oculus Rift Will Be Released

When Facebook makes an effort to be a part of a company, let alone own a company, you can usually expect big and great changes to come from the transition. That’s exactly what happened when Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion in 2014. Zuckerberg made his announcement post on Facebook about the company purchase and gave users a detailed forecast of what’s to come with Oculus:

“But this is just the start. After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home.”

Over a year later and now people are drooling over the new Rift technology and what virtual reality will eventually do for everyday life. Think a few steps ahead on this one and imagine how you can eventually incorporate virtual reality into your products.

What are your big plans for 2016? Comment below with the types of changes you see coming for 2016.