TOP TEN GAME CHANGING DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2016 A Publication of
2 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bernard May, CEO National Positions Bernard May is the founder and CEO of National Positions, an industry-leading digital marketing agency based in Westlake Village, CA. Bernard started National Positions in 2004 out of his garage in Calabasas, California. Almost 12 years later, the company has worked with thousands of companies and has over 500 employees around the world. Bernard has more than 20 years experience in digital marketing for some of the worldwide leaders in technology and innovation. Prior to founding National Positions, Bernard served as Vice President of Marketing at First Advantage Corp; Vice President of US Search.com; and Senior Product Manager at Symantec Corp. Bernard earned a bachelor s degree in business science from the University of Cape Town and a Masters of Commerce in marketing and information systems from the University of Natal, South Africa.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Each year, forward-looking digital marketing companies look at current ad trends to make predictions about where the market is moving and how to take advantage of these trends to stay ahead of the competition. This year is no different. There are a number of really exciting trends shaping up for the new year that should have a significant impact on your focus and your digital marketing investment. Below are the top 10 trends that we will be discussing: Marketing Automation Big Data (including market and customer insight, and predictive analytics) Content Marketing User Experience Mobile Marketing (Mobile advertising, site development, and apps) Paid Search Influencer Marketing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Social Media Marketing Including Social CRM and Social Customer Care Local Marketing and Fringe Trends
10 09 02 03 01 MARKETING AUTOMATION 08 07 06 05 04 The biggest trend in 2016 is going to be marketing automation. Lead nurturing and email automation is predicted to become more relevant than ever. As marketing costs continue to increase, marketers are going to seek out better ways to nurture their leads to get as much out of their marketing dollar as possible. We predict that companies of all sizes are going to be flocking to embrace marketing automation driven mainly by the diminishing costs. Until recently, only the largest companies have been able to afford marketing automation. Marketing automation allows companies to identify web visitors, score leads, communicate with prospects and track results easily and effortlessly. As the price of marketing automation continues to plummet, small and medium-sized companies that previously relied on Mail Chimp and Constant Contact will replace their email systems with more sophisticated marketing automation platforms.
5 Small and medium-sized companies will find that marketing automation platforms allow them to communicate with prospects in a more personalized and automated fashion based on rules, automated workflows, and segmented lists. As more and more information becomes readily available, marketing will take a larger role moving prospects down the sales funnel. Automation helps marketers to support the sales process
6 Marketing automation includes powerful lead scoring. This means that each time a prospect interacts with your website, or an email, they are assigned a score. The higher scoring leads are then assigned automatically to sales people, increasing the likelihood that the prospect turns into a sale. Lead scoring helps sales teams to work on productive leads Relationship Marketing Expect relationship marketing to become a more common term in 2016, as marketing automation allows companies to crystallize their communications on more one-to-one basis.
02 01 03 CONTENT MARKETING 07 06 05 04 10 09 08 The importance of owning Digital Assets will grow Building content for Siri, Google Now, and Cortana will be top of mind Dynamic personalized content will enter the mainstream Content that solves a client problem will grow rapidly Article length will continue to grow Niche content will grow in importance More rich content (video, infographic, responsive web) will improve user experience and SEO results Dynamic content will allow for more personalization More sophisticated marketing apps/widgets will increase engagement Content will be specifically developed for mobile Marketers will focus more on distributing their content
8 Content marketing topped out our list of fastest growing trends in 2015. This year we have downgraded it to the number two position. Content will still remain king, but companies in 2016 will focus more on producing relevant content and on distribution than they did in 2015. I do believe content is going to remain king, but people have been burned by content marketing. We expect that the term digital asset will become more popular in 2016. Digital assets are things like evergreen content, great videos, infographics, presentations, and other helpful and engaging content. Content Development In 2016, we predict marketers will actively begin to build content for Siri, Google, and Cortana. Many searches are done verbally today on people s mobile devices and it seems logical that marketers will build content that will answer the types of questions that people are asking of their mobile devices. The next interesting content marketing trend in 2016 is the creation of dynamic personalized content. Dynamic content requires the need for marketing automation, which allows dynamic personalized content to be served up to the end user. Expect to see personalized content deployed based on which pages visitors have viewed on your website and how those leads have been segmented by a marketing automation platform. This means, for instance, that if you are a CFO, the page served up will provide more financially oriented content, while a more technical visitor is most likely served up more technically oriented content.
9 Changes in B2B Content Marketing Tactic Usage Content that solves a problem will grow very rapidly. We have seen that Google has favored longer content over the last six months. In fact, we will continue to see that content with 1200 words or more will show up at the top of the search engines and become commonplace in 2016. Niche content design for a specific audience still offers great opportunities for marketers as Google looks for more authentic, helpful, and engaging content. Videos and other advanced content forms We expect that content will morph into a more graphic form in 2016. Video content is still the most engaging type of content on many websites and we expect that trend to continue for many years to come. Infographics will continue to be important, as well as images, widgets, and other interactive content. We also predict that mobile content is going to be very important, both from a user experience perspective and for better search ranking results. Content distribution In 2015, many marketers focused on developing content. We believe that in 2016, these same marketers will put more emphasis on the distribution of their content. Over the last two years, businesses developed a lot of content, but without an effective distribution strategy, much of the content went to waste. We will see companies like OutBrain growing as companies try to pay to get the content in front of the right end users. Companies like BuzzSumo will continue to grow in importance as marketers try to understand the most effective digital channels for the distribution of their content.
02 01 BIG DATA 03 04 05 10 09 08 07 06 Data collection will become more important Data will be used to predict future successes Data will be also be used to better match needs to prospects Data analysis will continue to be a competitive advantage for companies of all sizes Organizations will invest in data analysts /data scientists Technical marketing analyst will emerge as a more popular title at many companies
11 We believe that companies of all sizes will leverage big data to optimize their digital marketing. Using big data will become an important competitive advantage and has the potential for companies to dramatically improve their return on investment. Data will be used to predict future successes, and you can already see new levels of sophistication in both paid search and display advertising as marketers leverage campaign history and third party databases to predict which ads will draw the most web visitors. For organic search, we will see better use of analytics in areas such as conversion improvements and user experience. The trend will be for SEO to become more of a science than an art. Obtaining more sophisticated, data will also be used to match the correct content to the appropriate prospects. This again leads us back to marketing automation. In fact, you will see many of these trends crisscrossing one another. The Year of the Data Analyst 2016 is going to be the year of the data analyst. Many large organizations are going to invest in data analysts. This is also going to be the year when Data Scientists will become Technical Marketing Analysts. Some of the larger companies already have these type of quantitative personnel on their team. We can expect that to grow and for students to begin to study quantitative marketing in college.
02 01 03 USER EXPERIENCE 09 08 07 06 05 04 10 Google rankings will become more tied to time-on-site and internal Google quality scores. This will force SEO to be focused on: Conversion rate optimization Quality of content Navigation Website structure Internal linking Page structure Quality of content The mobile experience We ve spoken a lot about user experience throughout 2015. This trend is going to become more important as we move into 2016. Google rankings will become increasingly tied to time-on-site and internal Google quality scores. Conversion Optimization Grows in Popularity User experience will be the big SEO buzzword in 2016 as it becomes one of the most important SEO Factors.
13 The quality of the user experience needs to be improved, otherwise time-on-site and resulting quality scores are not going to be very good. Good quality scores will result in good rankings so we expect that conversion optimization will gain in popularity. User experience is closely related to site architecture, if navigation is confusing or the web structure isn t good it will result in an increase in visitor bounce rates, which will cause a decrease in rankings. Successful companies in 2016 will focus on on-page interlinking, a solid page structure, bullet points, good use of white space, and other factors that will improve the user experience. We expect this trend to result in two things: one--an increased number of videos on websites, and two--higher quality videos than we've been seeing until now. As more web visitors are using mobile devices, where reading text content is difficult, videos will be a natural alternative. Search Engine Metrics 2015 SEO Ranking Factors Searchmetrics 2015 Study shows the importance of user experience and click through rate on rankings
02 01 03 MOBILE MARKETING 07 06 05 04 10 09 08 Mobile will dominate the desktop Google algorithm Mobilegeddon indicates Google s continued focus on mobile App focus will increase Google announced that they are indexing apps Google is beginning to rank apps Businesses will realize the importance of a dedicated app Apps that will do everything that mobile websites do, but in a more intuitive way Easy-to-read content will be required for mobile Personalized and dynamic content will become more prevalent on mobile There will be a bigger focus on mobile design elements such as calls to action, forms, and enhanced user experience functionality.
15 Mobile will dominate the desktop The numbers show that visits on mobile devices have already outstripped visits via desktop in 2015. We will see this trend extend into all the major markets in the world in 2016. In short, more people are browsing from mobile devices than from stationary workstations. In April 2015, Google added focus to this trend with their algorithm change known as Mobileggedon. We are already seeing people working seamlessly on multiple screens with the predominant emphasis on mobile devices.
16 App Focus Will Increase We are making the prediction that apps are going to become increasingly important for marketing in 2016. Since Google announced that they are interested in indexing apps (making apps searchable and even usable within the Google interface), we ll see a larger push to an integration between apps and traditional computing. As apps become more sophisticated in what they can actually do, businesses are going to realize the importance of dedicated apps. We predict that they will do everything that mobile websites do plus more, in a user-intuitive way. In mobile marketing, we need content that is easy to read and digest on a mobile device. That may mean we should focus on video, especially since the zeitgeist is shifting in a direction that favors that kind of content versus written articles. Mobile Will Bring More Personalization A mobile device lends itself to personalized and dynamic content. They can also be easily tracked, resulting in local campaigns that will result in interesting ways to target mobile users in 2016.
02 01 03 INFLUENCER MARKETING 07 06 05 04 10 09 08 Will become mainstream in 2016 Marketers will realize that Influencers lend credibility to brands Influencers will expect compensation to review brands Brands will consider a larger variety of influencers Influencers will increasingly be used to: Increase the content assets for brands To grow a brand s social media There will be a move by Influencers to build the value of their digital presence as the market becomes more lucrative The cost of influencer marketing will go up as new marketers embrace this medium
18 Influencer Marketing Will Go Mainstream in 2016 We expect to utilize influencer marketing in very effective ways in the upcoming year. The term influencer marketing will morph into the idea of online PR. Marketers are going to realize that influencers lend credibility to their brands and they are going to be seeking them out to expand their reach on the web. Influencers will continue to want to get paid for their efforts as influencer marketing becomes commonplace. As this trends gains momentum, compensation for influencers is going to continue to increase as the competition for these resources intensifies. Over the next year, brands will consider a host of different types of influencers. In 2015, marketers chose influencers that were very niche or closely aligned to their business or industry. In 2016, expect to see more variety in the influencers chosen. Many companies are going to realize that influencers are a great way to get content assets created for their brands and also to expand their name on social media. We are also going to see influencers investing heavily in their digital presence as they continue to see the return on investment of their efforts. Influencers will invest in their blogs and in their social media presence to make these digital assets into a real business. We predict there are going to be a subsection of people who will quit their jobs and become influencers. That means that being an influencer will become a legitimate career path. Online PR Will Continue to Be Important Basic online PR, (trying to pitch companies brands across the web in a different medium) will continue to be widely important and a necessary part of marketing into the future. For instance, using HARO (Help Out A Reporter) and other such platforms will continue gain momentum.
02 01 03 PAID SEARCH 07 06 05 04 10 09 08 Marketers will continue to look beyond Google for better ad deals Yahoo Gemini Native advertising Social advertising (especially Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram) Video ads to grow in popularity Video ads will start dominating Google is finally getting on board with in-serp video advertising. It s a sign that users are becoming more accepting of video ads online Expect to see more types of video ads popping up in more unexpected places. Such as in social ads. Retargeting and programmatic retargeting will continue to be more sophisticated Google Customer Matching will become wildly popular The focus on mobile ad serving will grow
20 Look Beyond Google for Better Deals In 2016, marketers will continue to look beyond Google for better ad deals. This is a prediction that we made last year and it will continue to be a trend in the new year. Expected Social Media Winners in 2016 Facebook has done incredibly well in 2015 and millions of advertising dollars have been diverted into this advertising platform. We expect that trend continue. OutBrain s native advertising platform is doing well and as companies focus on content promotion, this trend will only increase. Expect Yahoo to have a comeback in 2016, their Yahoo Gemini platform has been well received in the marketplace. If Yahoo is able to deliver on better platform technology they have a very good chance of increasing their market share in the upcoming year. Increase Spending in Social Media People are going to be putting a lot of money into social advertising, especially on Facebook, and upand-coming platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram. Our big prediction is that Instagram will continue to grow like wildfire as more advertisers see the benefit of paid ads in Instagram feeds. This will only grow on what we have already seen after the launch of paid advertising in the fourth quarter of 2015. Video Advertising Will Continue to Gain Popularity Video ads will continue to gain in popularity with Google ads showing up in the search engine results pages. This trend offers Google a massive growth opportunity and it opens up further uses and avenues for reach than YouTube offers. We should see more pre-roll video advertising. Already, people are used to seeing pre-roll on YouTube, and we are going to see this becoming increasingly prevalent across the
21 board, especially on mobile devices. Video search and mobile go hand-in-hand. This trend is going to impact organic search because as paid advertising dominates the mobile screen. It pushes the organic results further down. Video Pop-ups Again to Become Prevalent and Annoy Web Visitors We are expecting to see all kinds of video pop-ups across the web and especially on social media sites. Because of this trend, we expect to see the production of videos increasing. Retargeting and programmatic advertising is already sophisticated but will continue to gain even further sophistication in the upcoming year. This is evidenced through the work we are seeing from companies such as Quantcast and Google. Retargeting has become huge, and companies such as Google and Facebook will continue to build their dominance in this area. Social ad retargeting is going to become become bigger and more sophisticated as the cost of leads continue to grow in cost. Google s Customer Match Will Become Very Popular Google s Customer Match is a very exciting development that could have a very big impact on paid search in 2016. Advertisers can now upload email lists, which can be matched up to web visitors, allowing advertises to re-target to customers on their email list. This means that advertising will become further targeted and return on ad spend will improve.
02 01 03 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION 08 07 06 05 04 10 09 SEO is alive and well in 2016 and will only grow in importance Google algorithms will continue to be more automated RankBrain to get more sophisticated Automated Penguin will increase frequency The significance of the factor keyword will continue to decline in favor of topics SEO around Siri, Google Now, and Cortana queries will grow Technical SEO will continue to grow in importance User experience and user signals will grow in importance Click-through rate and time-on-site will grow in importance This means better meta tags Better web layout and content Video will grow in focus From a statistical viewpoint, backlinks are still a prerequisite for high rankings. More creative legitimate methods will be employed by SEO companies to generate quality inbound links
We are happy to say that SEO is alive and kicking and projected to grow in importance in 2016. As paid advertising increases in competitiveness, and therefore more expensive, SEO still remains an excellent return on investment. Google Will Continue to Automate Algorithm Updates We are seeing an increase in Google algorithms being automated. This trend will continue into the new year. RankBrain is the latest announcement from Google in the fourth quarter of 2015, which will allow Google to update their search results in an automated way. It has also been announced that Penguin and some of the other Google penalties are going to become automated. Automated penalties will mean frequent updates, which should allow website owners to easily recover from penalties. Keyword Analysis to Morph in Favor of Topics Keyword analysis is going to continue to decline in favor of topic selection. Marketers will need to think about silo content development, as well as content themes and topics, and the use of long tail keywords. SEO Will Become More Mobile Focused We already discussed SEO for Siri and Google Now, as well as other types of voice-activated query tools. SEOs will begin to write content geared toward these specific applications.
24 Technical SEO will continue to be important Technical SEO is important for user experience. Web visitors and Google expect websites to load fast and be error-free. SEOs will also focus on site structure, interlinking, and the layout of content on webpages. Click-through-rate and time-on-site will continue to be important. Google is using analytics data such as bounce rate to determine their quality scores. SEOs will need to work on bounce rate and quality of time-on-site to ensure that that they are not penalized for poor user statistics. Meta-descriptions Will Grow in Importance As meta tags and meta descriptions affect overall click-through rate to a website, more time and effort will be placed on re-writing meta-descriptions. Quality Back Linking Is Still Critical From an SEO perspective, backlinks are still going to factor into ranking in a big way in 2016. Because of this, the demand for quality back links will continue to grow. The SEO industry will consider more creative, legitimate methods to create quality inbound links. We re sure to see a growth in outreach linking and content promotion to generate links.
02 01 SOCIAL 07 06 05 04 03 10 09 08 Social signals will continue to be a factor that correlates strongly to better rankings Most marketers will still struggle to make money directly from social media Facebook will grow and continue to dominate On the rise: Instagram expected to be a leading player Pinterest seeing rapid adoption LinkedIn growing rapidly and key to any B2B social campaign Snapchat Tumblr Decline Google+ will continue its decline Twitter
26 Social Signals Will Continue to Be a Factor That Correlates Strongly to Better Rankings In 2015 we saw a correlation between rankings and social signals, and this should continue to become increasingly important in 2016. Many people have predicted that social factors would replace linking, but this obviously hasn t happened, and probably won t happen in the near future. Many Markets Will Struggle to Make Money From Social One of the biggest problems many marketers face is that they are struggling to make money directly from social media. We predict the market will keep experimenting to find those products that do well on social media; for other marketers, they will use social media as a branding tool, or higher up on the sales funnel as a great awareness tool. Facebook to Continue to Dominate the Social Scene Facebook will continue knocking it out of the park. Expect to see an increase in inline advertising on Facebook as well as retargeting. Facebook is the thousand pound gorilla and will continue to dominate the social scene.
27 Instagram One of our top predictions is that Instagram is poised to be the next biggest player in social media. Instagram has seen a phenomenal growth that should continue on in 2016. Instagram paid advertising is still in its infancy and will grow in sophistication. Pinterest Pinterest has seen rapid adoption. They re poised to continue their growth. With a predominantly female- oriented audience, Pinterest is the logical channel to choose the appropriate products LinkedIn LinkedIn is also rapidly growing and will continue to do so into 2016. They outdo any dominant social media platform for B2B. You'll see a lot of growth in this arena. Snapchat and Tumblr Snapchat and Tumblr are growing in size and adoption, and it will be very interesting to see what happens with them. We think it s still early in the day in terms of trying to understand how people are going to effectively make money on Snapchat, but on Tumblr there is an opportunity for the right type clients to make some money in 2016. Google+ and Twitter Still declining, Google+ will become irrelevant, or morph into more of a review site in 2016. Twitter pulling their user stats was not a positive move. Their stock is doing badly in 2015. A lot of people are feeling very negative about Twitter. We think it s either going to decline or, at best, stay where it currently is in 2015.
10 02 03 01 FRINGE PREDICTIONS 09 08 07 06 05 04 Local Marketing will change will blur the lines between online marketing and traditional advertising. Expect more local apps and hyper local campaigns Fringe Wearables (e.g. Apple Watch, activity trackers, augmented reality) Google and Facebook (Oculus Rift) have put billions into virtual reality. It will be interesting to see what comes of this Local Marketing Will Continue to Be More like Conventional SEO Local Marketing and SEO have become majorly intertwined over the last 18 months. Although there are some differences, for the most part, local marketing and SEO tactics are very similar. Local marketing is going to become really interesting on mobile devices where we should see an increase in apps and hyper local marketing campaigns. It is expected that hyper-local apps will continue to become more sophisticated and location-based shopping promotions will become more prevalent. There is also a chance that online data will be used to customize shopping experiences.
29 Wearables Could Be an Outside Opportunity It is believed that Apple has sold 3.9 million devices by Q4 2015. As the price drops for these types of devices, expect their popularity to grow. As wearables are very personal devices, marketers have the opportunity to get the message seen immediately through texting or native apps. Virtual Reality Is Not Really Ready for Prime Time in 2016 Facebook has invested heavily on virtual reality with Oculus Rift and 2016 may be the year where they try to make some kind of return on this investment. Google has also made announcements that they are very interested in virtual reality. It s still difficult to understand how companies will use virtual reality to advertise their products and services. Gaming is an obvious use of virtual reality, and it is possible that ad placements will be found within these games.
CONCLUSION 2016 is going to be a very exciting year for marketers. Many small and medium-sized companies will now have the opportunity to automate many of the marketing activities. Companies will continue to invest in understanding their data to find a competitive advantage. Companies will continue to invest heavily in themselves by building digital assets. User experience will gain momentum with SEOs. Marketers are expected to look beyond Google in the upcoming year while organic search will continue to be an important part of digital marketing. Influencer Marketing will finally go mainstream, and social media companies such as Pinterest, Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram will thrive. If you would like to find out more about how to take advantage of these and other trends emerging in 2016, please contact a member of the National Positions staff.
WHO WE ARE National Positions is an industry leading Digital Marketing agency headquartered in Westlake Village, California. Founded in 2004, National Positions has helped more than 3000 companies grow their business online. The company has over 200 employees worldwide National Positions has won numerous awards for its work, including being named in Inc. Magazine s list of fastest growing privately held companies. National Positions specializes in Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Advertising, Marketing Automation, Influencer Marketing, Content Marketing, and Social Media Marketing. Some of the brands the company currently services include Nike, Unilever, and Land Rover.
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