It is that time of the year again when every business sets the goal for the year. It holds true for marketers as well. But, before they do that, it is important for marketers to know what the world of marketing would be like in 2017. Each New Year brings new trends and 2017 will be no different.

This year, marketers will look for new and innovative ways to lure customers towards their products. Customers are also much more aware and tech savvy than they used to be in the past. In this article, we will take a deeper look at some of the digital marketing trends that will transform marketing altogether.

1. Welcome To the World of Chatbots

With AI making an impact on our daily lives, marketing automation will become a reality with chat bots. Gone are the days when we used to associate with chat bots with 90’s website pop up. Today’s chat bots are sophisticated than their older counterparts so much so that they can replace humans. Facebook has invested billions of dollars in bot programs, which has helped them to automate operations and bring personalized News Feeds to users. It’s time that marketers also jump on chat bot bandwagon and automate tasks to achieve better results in 2017.

2. Mobile Videos, Live Streaming and Visual Story Telling

The proliferation of mobile devices has lead to paradigm shift in our media consumption habits of consumers. Today, we not only use our mobile devices to access the web but most of us also use these gadgets to watch videos. According to the video marketing statistics, 52% of marketing professionals considers video marketing as the best method to achieve highest ROI (Return on Investment).

With video being an effective medium to convey your brand message and popularity of video sharing and video streaming sites, it is a foregone conclusion that the use of mobile videos, visual storytelling and live streaming as the mode of marketing your products and services will grow in 2017. You might have heard this many times that, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” But for videos, it is, “A video is worth a million words.”

3. Influencer Marketing Will Take Over

Nothing generates a buzz like an influencer marketing your product or service. People rely on what their favorite stars are saying. Credibility factor and power of word of mouth is magnified manifolds and so does the impact of influencer marketing. The biggest challenge for marketers would be to find the right influencer and rope them in to market their products and services.

4. Interactive Content and Content with Expiry Date

As a marketer, you want your audience to interact with your content instead of passively consuming it, right? If that is true, then you must take advantage of infographics, polls, surveys, quizzes and other forms of interactive content. According to the research, we can remember 80% of what we see and do and only 20% of what we read. The popularity of infographics has grown exponentially in last few years as depicted by Google trends data for infographics.

If that is not good enough to convince you on switching to interactive content then the following stats will. According to research, 90% of the information brain transmit is visual and 40% people responds to visuals in a much better way than text. Our brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text.

Another trend that is quickly catching up is short-lived content. That is what made SnapChat such a hit. With Generation Z’s attention span not going beyond 8 seconds mark, it is critical that you deliver them short-lived content, which expires after a particular time, otherwise, it would not be possible to engage the teenagers and young adults.

5. Go Native or Go Home

According to Joe Pulizzi, “Native advertising is the gateway drug to content marketing.”He is not alone who is telling marketers to embrace native marketing, there are much more like Robert Rose. Future expenditure predictions and data suggest that expenditure on native ads will grow to $21 billion dollars by 2018.

Without disrupting the user experience, native ads bring interesting, targeted content for a specific audience, which results in better results. Due to this, more and more marketers are using native ad platforms to launch their marketing campaign. The biggest grudge people have against these native ads is that they can only yield good results for few industries. This notion will also go out of the window, as native ads will expand to a wide range of different industries.

6. Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Internet of Things

Most of the readers might be thinking what does virtual reality; augmented reality and internet of things have to do with marketing. They are latest tech trends, all right. But marketers will have to embrace this technology trends and bring the online world into the real world for their audiences. With the exponential growth in virtual reality, it offers an opportunity to marketers to maximize the efficiency of their marketing campaign through the latest technology.

A few years back, we might think of internet of things concept as nothing more than a concept from science fiction movies but today internet of things have become a reality with daily use objects connected to the internet. Internet of things will help marketers to interact with customers at a personal level and know their customer’s daily life in detail. The pace at which technology is evolving, we might see closer integration and applications of these technologies in marketing and advertising.

7. Purpose and Data Driven Approach

Nothing can help you in being in the good books of your customers than devoting your efforts towards a good cause. The trend of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has gained momentum in recent years. Steps like these help marketers to create a story that echoes in the hearts and minds of customers for a long time.

If you want to be successful as a marketer in 2017, then you should have a data-driven approach. By jumping in the sea of data and come up with key information on what works and what do not. More importantly, you can know which tactics will deliver results that you are looking for, which would make your life the whole lot easier.

Concluding Thoughts

There is no doubt that 2017 will be an exciting year for marketers as the industry goes through a transformation. Latest technologies like virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things will have a lasting impact on marketing and advertising industry. The rise of marketing automation, influencer marketing and engaging content and videos will continue in 2017 and open doors for new opportunities for marketers around the globe. Finally, native advertising will also come into its own this year.