Online Marketing Predictions for 2016 You Can't Afford to Miss

Online marketing moved at the speed of light in 2015, it felt like every week we heard or read about new updates, new trends, new statistics or new strategies.

As the online community grows by leaps and bounds, it is an exciting time to be a part of the developing landscape of online marketing and 2016 appears set to continue at a similar pace.

Mobile Domination

Last year saw a huge surge for mobile as traffic surpassed desktop usage around the world. Google released their Mobilegeddon algorithm early in the year, a change designed to penalize websites considered non-mobile friendly.

Mitek, a global leader in mobile capture and identity verification software solutions, has unveiled its top predictions for the mobile industry in 2016. After conducting an in-depth study of the impact that Millennials are having on mobile banking and mobile commerce, the key findings from the survey include:

Mobile Means Money for Businesses Racing to Capture Millennials

• Eighty-six percent of respondents make purchases and conduct transactions from their mobile phones, with 11 percent doing so daily.
• Forty-two percent have made a decision on where to spend their money, or switched companies based on what the organization allowed users to accomplish with a mobile device.

Millennials Want to Digitize All Commerce Through Their Mobile Cameras

• Sixty-eight percent would prefer to always use mobile capture instead of manually typing information on their smartphone.
• Twenty-eight percent want to enroll for everything from a new credit card to a gym membership by snapping a picture of their driver’s license. 

The result of these rapid-fire changes is a mobile-first mentality which is great for businesses that have already developed for mobile behavior. As users progressively advance with mobile technology, developing a multi-channel strategy with a heavy focus on mobile is crucial.

There’s An App for That

App indexing, app links and app linking are all terms used for various efforts designed to allow people to move between search results and apps, or between apps to apps, in the same way they move between web pages. App indexing has been around since 2013, but hasn’t really hit the spotlight until this year. Due to the surge in mobile usage, app indexing is bound to become an even more important feature of online marketing in 2016.

Google App Indexing is a system that allows people to click from listings in Google’s search results into apps on their Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. Bing App Linking and Apple App Search & Universal Links, are both similar to Google App Indexing.

In 2016, Google’s App Indexing and how Google handles ranking apps will be an incredibly important area for SEOs to pay attention to. Google announced mid-November that it can now index and rank app-only content within Android, content that only exists within the app itself and which has no equivalent website. Additionally, Google will now “stream” the content from those apps without requiring searchers to download the actual app.

In the wake of these developments, it’s not a stretch to suggest that the mobile web will soon be exceeded by mobile apps. As we have seen with search engine ranking in the past, there will soon be a more complex ranking system for apps as well.

Although this phase of mobile development may not fully mature by 2016, an increase in app development by many more business owners will be a trend throughout the year.

The Wearable Future

Wearable tech will steadily flood the market as 2016 gets underway and more products are developed. Consumers, mainly millennials, are looking for devices that make information more readily available. Wearable technology will begin to change the digital scene by offering convenient, more personalized experiences for users.

According to a new market research report published by Markets and Markets,

"Wearable Technology Market by Product (Wristwear, Eyewear, Footwear, Neckwear, Bodywear, and Others), Application (Consumer Electronics, Healthcare, Enterprise & Industrial, and Others), Type (Smart Textile, Non-Textile), & Geography - Global Forecast to 2020."

The overall market for wearable technology is expected to reach USD 31.27 Billion by 2020.

Smartwatch sales are predicted to hit 34.3 million units in 2016, up from 21.3 million this year, and by 2019, total sales of some 88.3 million devices.

Automated Marketing

It's clear in today's market that companies need to adapt to the digital environment to grow market share by creating more personalized campaigns. Marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration, and campaign management. Next year marketers are expected to get much more intricate with their campaigns, targeting users with a much more personalized outreach.

Why? Because users expect it and brands will find that users only click on ads that appeal to them on a personal level. When you look at the cold hard facts, marketing automation is the new normal for the marketing landscape in 2016. Simply thinking about putting a plan into motion is no longer enough—action steps for automating your marketing outreach also need to be well underway.

Automated marketing tools will be there to help and as their algorithms develop and advance, marketers will be able to determine the optimal time to deliver and message individuals to drive the highest conversion rate.

The Age of Video

Video advertising is nothing new; however, now that Google is contemplating video advertising within search engine results, it will certainly become more valuable in 2016. This is a significant step for online video ads, because it shows users are finally accepting their presence and businesses are beginning to discover their effectiveness. Unsurprisingly, this aligns with the fact that Google owns YouTube, and also that users are becoming more comfortable with the emergence of the video genre.

Facebook and Bing have also jumped on the bandwagon and are now offering video options to advertisers. It will definitely be interesting to see how video advertising will develop throughout 2016.

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