We’ve done some thinking at Friday, and have come up with our thoughts and predictions for Digital Marketing trends in 2017.

Some trends have stayed popular, however, there are a couple of new ones, and as a digital marketer I am excited to see where we are going and where we could be in 5 years time.

AMP

I wrote about the introduction of AMP pages last year. Accelerated mobile pages are mobile pages (websites) that load instantly on your phone. You can sometimes see them as a carousel in Google’s results.

What’s happening is that the content behind the headlines is loading in the background before you read it, and when you open an article it loads up to 85% faster than normal old school websites.

We predict that AMP pages will see a big spike in uptake in 2017 – stay tuned for more info.

Social Recruitment

We have found a growing trend in organisations using social channels as a key tool in their recruitment process. It is a powerful way to connect with potential employees and recruit them.

Unsurprisingly, LinkedIn is number one for obvious reasons but, Facebook is fast becoming a popular platform to drive recruitment.

Audiences can be reached more accurately and closely than any other platform. You can target by demographics, location, age, interests, education, etc.

Here are some stats:

· 86% of people in the first 10 years of their career are likely to use social media in the job search
· 14.4 million job seekers have used social networks to find a job.
· 59% of recruiters rated candidates sourced from social networks as “highest quality”
· 94% of recruiters are active on LinkedIn, but only 36% of candidates are. Job seekers, by a wide margin, prefer Facebook; with 83% reporting they are active there, compared to just 65% of recruiters.
· 79% of job seekers are likely to use social media in their job search.

Find more stats here.

 

Mobile wallets

No more wallets, no more bank cards – pay with your phone.

Install Android Pay or Apple Pay or any other mobile wallet option, and you’re sorted. However, if you lose your phone, well… that could be a problem!

Other parts of Europe are still waiting for this step to be completed, however in Ireland we are ready. Mobile payments here we come.

· The number of mobile shoppers in UK will reach an estimate of 40.1 million-nearly 89% of the digital shoppers.
· Retail mobile sale (m-commerce) will leap to £25.74 billion ($39.34 billion)

Make sure your business is set up to accept mobile payments for your goods and services by having NFC enabled terminals/card readers.

Quality Content

Content, content, content!  It’s long past time when people were writing content for search engines.

You should always think of your users. Have a Content Strategy – be relevant, be informative, be educational. Try answering “who”, “what”, “when” and “how” questions, and search engines will reward you.

However, if you’re still doing the same thing you were 5 years ago; writing content for search engines, keyword stuffing and link building campaigns without any strategy… be prepared for a dramatic drop in ranking or manual actions.

There will always be new algorithm updates as Google will continue to perfect their search engine, and with that we have to continue perfecting our SEO skills.

Always have people in mind when it comes to content or SEO and the rest will follow.

One more search and content change that will be hugely popular in 2017 is voice search. This was initially started as a help for the blind, but as always with Google it developed into something greater, they managed to perfect something that was never meant to be so popular. Thank you Google :)

JSON Schema

You won’t need to remember this but JSON stands for “JavaScript Object Notation.”

In simple terms, JSON helps showcase parts of your website you’d like to highlight in search results – phone numbers, social networks, recipes, reviews, product listings, executives, founders and more.

As I mentioned in our AMP Pages post, Google is doing everything it can to keep you on their network – the aim is to provide you with all of the useful info you’re searching for, without having to leave the Google platform.

Conversion Rate Optimisation

Conversion rate optimisation is nothing new – it’s the method of using analytics and user feedback to improve the performance of your website through testing and iteration.

The end goal is always a conversion, the action you care about the most such as leads, downloading e-book or a good old sale.

If SEO is all about getting traffic to your website, CRO is what converts that traffic into the leads/customers.

CRO as an essential part of the eCommerce process will be more popular in 2017.

There are some powerful CRO tools out there for you to use such as Optimizely, Unbounce, or even the free Google Analytics Content Experiment.

You can find more CRO tools here.

UX led design

UX design is the process of designing products (websites, apps or softwares) that are useful, easy to use, and delightful to interact with.

It’s all about how a user feels when interfacing with a system.

Lately we are seeing more and more companies embracing UX in their journey, and it will only continue to grow. B2B and B2C companies finally realised that having just a website is not enough anymore. It needs to be user friendly.

As a UX agency we couldn’t be happier about that. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level drop us a line and we’ll do the rest! If you need some inspiration check out our blog on UX trends.

Live Video Streaming

Both YouTube and Facebook introduced 360-degrees videos, and we have live videos on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Video has shown to be the best way to reach your customers, as it is creative and entertaining. It builds trust, you can explain everything in few seconds, and not to mention that Google LOVES videos.

I have something to get you even more excited: 76% of business say that video provides good ROI.

Are you using video in your marketing efforts?

 

Wearable technology & The IoT

Wearable technologies are slowly taking their turn. It’s all about accessories as a girl might say. ;)

We witnessed the development of smart Apple Watches, Google Glass, L’Oréal smart hairbrushes and there is much more to come.

I would like to see a wearable technology that can teleport me to work on Monday morning. Soon hopefully.

Check out the video below.

 

Snapchat for marketing

Snapchat is my favourite! I don’t want to be bias, but this is the platform I couldn’t live without.

There are so many opportunities for marketers yet to be found on Snapchat. Geo-targeting, filters and instant communication with their audience are just some of them.

In the future Snapchat could create different branded filters, like the existing filters for cities that show where are you, soon we could see someone posting his/her picture with the Coca-Cola logo to show they were in the Coca-Cola factory.

There are endless possibilities with Snapchat, you just need to be creative and find them.

 

So in summary, there are some old trends that are growing in importance and popularity and some interesting new technologies that we expect to see more update in.

If you need help with your digital marketing, let us know, we’re always ready for a new challenge at Friday.