Here are the top 4 digital marketing trends for 2016

1. Quality Content

No matter what industry you’re in, quality content is vital. It not only provides information to existing and potential customers, but it’s a great way to build your brand. You’re establishing a relationship by building trust and your brand will be seen as an expert in the field. So don’t blow it with useless content.

Quality content can make a huge difference to how your brand is perceived and with long term effects. Check out these stats:

  • 80% of decision makers in businesses prefer to get information about a company from a series of articles rather than from advertising
  • 71% of consumers say they’re left with a positive impression of a company from their video content
  • 58% of consumers find companies which produce video content to be more trustworthy
  • Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional outbound marketing (per lead)

Then there’s the boost in search engine ranking which comes from quality content, another reason you really need to keep up with the 86% of B2B organisations already utilising content marketing. It’s been around for a while, but content marketing is no longer something you can afford to leave out of your marketing budget.

2. Mobile Optimisation

With people accessing digital content 24/7, and on multiple platforms, optimising your website for mobile devices is a necessity. Everything from initial research of a product and price comparisons, through to finding the retail location and the final purchase is increasingly done on mobile devices. By making it easy for the consumer, with an optimised website, the conversion rate is increased by 160%.

Today’s consumer is not willing to plod through a clunky website on their device, they’ll simply search for another. You want to keep them on your site, and ensure they remain a customer for life. So get optimised and all the hard work you’ve put in to your digital marketing will be seen by all.

3. Flexible SEO

SEO ranking, the all important reality of digital marketing can be boosted by prioritizing visual content on your website. Google are now placing higher importance on quality content over keyword optimisation, so take advantage of it. Gone are the days of the basic key word search, with longer more complex queries happily being typed into search engines. You can even search “how many combinations of comb-overs are possible when one only has 6 hairs left?” and get results. So with greater importance placed on content, it’s easy to keep generating useful & relevant content to keep your website ranking high.

4. Professionally Designed Website

First impressions count. When you’re dealing with the reputation of your business, your website is not something you can place enough importance on. According to Google, that all important first impression takes place in 50 milliseconds (yes someone timed it…).

Your website needs to look good, and grab the attention of the viewer (in a good way). It’s not something your 12 year old ‘computer guru’ child should knock up in their spare time. A good design agency will give you a website that not only fits your brand, but is on trend and ensures the viewer is engaged with interesting visuals.

And of course it needs to work and be easy to use. The last thing you want is your customer spending 3 hours trying to purchase something only to have the final link take them to the local pizza bar website. Again, a good design agency will ensure the backend of your website works.

So there you have it, the trends for 2016. Be ahead of your competitors and get them in place before it’s too late.

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Article sourced: LinkedIn