Stay on top of the game: Digital trends for 2016
Digital technology is set to explode this year, and it is important for businesses, brands, entrepreneurs and employees to stay up to date on modern trends. With the advancement of new hardware, new software and evolving users’ inclinations, the ability to navigate through these technological advancement is essential.
Crafting forecasted trends to fit into the needs of your business ensures you are a step ahead in your industry and places you in a good position to meet your business goals if executed right. Let’s take a look at four key technology trends in 2016 that is set to get early adopters a leg up, appeal to new markets and reinforce industry leaders.
- Mobile remains king
If you follow digital trends, you will attest to the fact that the role of mobile has remained and fueled astronomical growth of digital innovations year on year. Facts and figures show that Mobile now dominates desktop. Last year, Google’s findings on the mobile takeover drove the release of “Mobilegeddon” algorithm that relegated sites that were not optimized for mobile devices.
For 2016, the focus will be on creating offerings that are solely mobile driven. From mobile optimized sites to applications to smart devices, to wearables, a lot of work will go into creating content that fits into different screen resolution. The goal is to maximize the benefits of the high volume of traffic coming from mobile channels.
The smart money rests on smart mobile devices, so smart businesses should key into stealing the attention of the small screen users to achieve their goals
- The rise and rise of Digital personalization
As humans, we are more receptive to an idea when it is coming from a familiar source. We connect to people or things that have a personal touch to them. No one wants to see ads that are unrelated to them. Same goes for content. Brands and marketers understand the need for personalization in any successful and effective customer engagement strategy.
This year, digital personalization will go a notch higher. This will be enabled through ‘algorithms.’ Algorithms are those crawlers responsible for business and marketing automation. They will be working on overdrive to ensure every tool and element of marketing is tailored and targeted specifically to each individual’s habits.
Brands and businesses can use the rise in Digital personalization this year to their advantage by carefully applying the necessary tools necessary to ride on the wave of change for successful output.
- Indeed, Content marketing is the best kept secret
It is possible that you have been doing content marketing within your business but never filed it under an industry term. Remember that newsletter you put together for clients, or that SEO strategy, or that social media plan? Yes, that’s the one. Simple yet complex. Correct execution of this strategy is what brings solid leads that eventually turn into customers.
Content marketing will take a different turn this year as it will focus heavily on remarketing of content. Not too different from retargeting of ads, it acts as an opportunity to connect with someone that has previously shown interest in your offering but has not followed through.
This reminder, while they are surfing the internet, may just be all it takes to convert them to customers.
- Big Data translating into Big Solutions
In this digitally driven world, one cannot undermine the benefits of data. Big data – a major buzzword in this ecosystem – represents large pools of data that are analyzed to get insights and make better decisions. The ability to meaningfully read into patterns that gives businesses a birds eye’s view into the mind of its end users and proffer solutions to their needs, ensures that value is continuously created by the business.
We cannot talk about Big Data without talking about Internet of Things (IoT) which is set to increase the volume of data. Global Research company, Gartner, predicted that there will be 6.4 billion interconnected things around the world this year. McKinsey Global Institute also has a study on Disruptive Technologies that shows how IoT will create an economic impact of $2.7 trillion to $6.2 trillion annually by 2025. One can only imagine the wealth of information that will be unraveled from the connections between these devices alone.
Analyzing this data to churn out meaningful insight is the goal for a lot of businesses as applying it in real time will ensure that they reduce waste and the quality of products and services offered is increased.