Every time Google does an update, the whole world of digital marketing takes notice. Changes to the search engine algorithm can be far-reaching, like in the 2015 update that upgrades the ranking of mobile-friendly sites, thus downgrading other sites by comparison. Businesses who had responsive web sites already in place that met Google’s standards got an instant boost in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This is just one trend that is still going strong and here are a few more that your business needs to start taking advantage of sooner rather than later.
Get On Board With These Digital Marketing Trends Now
Digital marketing serves two goals: To attract traffic to your offerings and to convert that traffic into paying customers. To achieve those goals digital marketers employ several strategies that can vary from year to year, depending on Google updates and digital marketing landscape. While many tried and true strategies exist, sometimes new ones pop up too. For 2016, the trends show an uptick in the following digital marketing strategies:
Video Marketing
The power of pictures, moving or still, is being mined thoroughly for digital marketing. The rise of smartphones and tablets make visual data far more important and easier to handle than ever before. Some trends you might see in 2016 are single home pages consisting of a video with partially hidden menus, accessed when selected. Another popular layout is the flexible grid that includes multiple images to browse. Images are far more appealing to people looking for quick information they can digest with just a glance.
Mobile Marketing
This trend continues from 2015 and includes local SEO and responsive web design. Special attention to new website designs includes the use of Google Material Design which has more textural relief and color impact than Flat Design. Special attention is paid to the use of scrollable features or swiping instead of trying to click textual links that can be hard to locate with a thumb on a smartphone.
Content Marketing
Content marketing continues to be important to gather interest from across the web. Business owners still need to publish content across different venues: their website, on social networking platforms, and on other third-party sites. Content should also be optimized to gather the interest of the target demographic and it should help business owners generate traffic to their offerings. One trend for content marketing includes making more calls to action, to create a response from the reader whether it is to generate a marketing lead or a sale. This trends continues to build up to what will be seen as “interactive content” where the content might actually shift according to how a visitor responds on the site.
It’s A Flurry of Digital Marketing Activity
One thing all these trends have in common are that they require quite a bit of knowledge and manpower to execute correctly. That’s why businesses tend to outsource a variety of activities to specialists, whether it is a freelance writer or a digital marketing agency. Then, all the business owner needs to do is specify their goals and their budget requirements. However, even if some of the work is done in-house, financing new projects will always be an issue, whether it is to redesign your website to be mobile-friendly or to publish massive amounts of video or blog content.
How To Always Have Cash Available for Your Next Digital Marketing Project
If poor credit is an issue, or there is simply no room in the current budget, some financing companies, like Business Credit and Capital, can still provide funding based on previous revenue history, as long as there are no outstanding judgments or bankruptcies on file. This can help businesses who are trying to stay ahead of the pack engage trends at the start instead of being the last in the pack. It can be the difference between the grabbing of larger market share or ending up at the bottom of the SERPs. In this way, businesses can have a ready source of cash to be proactive in their digital marketing efforts no matter what new hurdle gets posted by the next Google algorithm release.