What to expect in the year 2016?

With the beginning of New Year, the majority of us makes some kind of to-do list. I'm really fed up with the detox diets, how to lose weight after holidays and so on. Why don't we simply decide to be happier? If you like to eat cakes - eat cakes, if you like to go jogging – jog the whole day if you like to work with people – choose a job like marketing and then you won't have to work a day in your life anymore.

All jokes aside, today I'm triggered to talk about predictions. As we stepped into the new year I know that you've all made your new year's resolutions so I would like to help you to make some for the prosperity of your business too. That's why I’ve chosen marketing predictions for 2016 as my today’s topic.

I was searching for other expert’s opinions and ran across all sorts of texts, some were understandable at first, some were not as easy to understand, some focused on only one thing (kind of like my blogs – blogging is important, technology is inevitable, ethics must be present all times and so on), so I decided to make my list of predictions and how they will influence your work. And of course, always think about your website. You can make the best of it using the EasyDNNsolutions products but don’t forget about marketing tips that can make your website even better and more accessible.

When making this list I tried to take into consideration the marketing aspect for your business but both some trends that are inevitably present, and will also have a great impact on every person in the following year.

1. A website is a must-have

Welcome to the year 2016. in which you really, really, and I mean really can’t survive on the market without a simple, fast yet organized website. If you still aren’t sure where to start – try here.

When people visit your site they want to be able to find everything necessary as soon as possible. To do so, they need to have an easy access to every part of the website and they don’t want to include a lot of effort in it. Be precise and try to express yourself the best you can.

2. The Internet of things

What is Iot (the Internet of Things)? According to Wiki, it is a network of physical objects or things embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network which enables these objects to collect and exchange data. Imagine you are with your friends and you turned off heating in your home and you don’t know when you’re coming back. Half an hour before you return, you increase the temperature on your thermostat through your mobile phone and return to the warm home. Such savings! And a fridge that lets you know you’re out of yogurt because a sensor picked up that the expiration date is due. A machine is talking to a machine. You have them all connected and they all can be managed from one place. The trend is gradually increasing and if you ask me, 2016 is just the right year to open all the doors to it.  

3. The constant battle between visual and content marketing

This battle for the throne is constantly going on in my head and I still don’t know what to rule. Since I make content I know that I could never express myself as easily in any other way as I do with words. The thing is, if you see an image, you can perceive it in your way but still, the person next to you can perceive it in another way. But if you write about it, you get to share your insights and feelings about something. Don’t get me wrong, by following the trends I can see that all the media that are using visual content has an increase in popularity, meaning, people really like pictures, every content that you put on the market has to have pictures with it to keep a customer interested and informed. I really don’t have to explain that a picture is worth a thousand words, but can you put a thousand words into one picture? If you ask me, no, so combine them in 2016. because this is a no-win situation.

4. Rise of the virtual reality

Virtual reality. I relate it to the Back to the future movie. You know why, because when the movie came out, we were all like – no way, this is impossible, the world is not going to change so much in just 30 years. Some of the things aren’t developed, but the things that are, give us a feeling like they were always there. I had to wiki it, to see exactly what people say about it and I give my great respect to the man back in 30-ies who first wrote about it. How great is that? But I think that the era of virtual reality is yet to come.

Virtual reality is changing people’s experience in many ways. To be able to see, touch, smell or hear things that aren’t around you and the experience that gives you physical presence in places in the real world or an imagined world is just priceless.

5. Employee engagement to build human trust

The thing I’m always also emphasizing and that will continue to stay the same in the following year is a necessity for a business to show the world that they’re ordinary people. Maybe not so ordinary because they managed to create something worth your interest but still, just people.

Companies turn to employees for amplification, because who would better explain some work that is made in some office, a quality of a product or a service that the person who made it happen.

According to research content shared by employees, by one recent measure, gets eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels. So step by step, companies will seek to employ a team of people who will share updates on social networks, write blogs about their business and have just the right amount of time to offer to their customers.

6. Being-human marketing – UX is No.1

In everyday communication, it is important that designers and developers know what users want even before they even know they want it. People intentionally or unintentionally direct their thoughts, feelings and towards realizing their goals. Your task is to show them that behind every company there are people building it who are ready to listen to them, understand them and help them reach a common goal. I really don’t think I have to emphasize that we are years away from the traditional marketing of advertising and we have researches pointing us to the statistic that only 14% of people trust traditional advertising, and 78% trust other peers recommendations. I’m in the second group, I’ll always go with something that my friends or family suggest. So run your business with just one lead – be human.

7. Offline and online behavior is united

All businesses are transferred online, so we are focusing on presenting ourselves through emails, websites, social networks. That is why we were discussing the importance of both visual and content marketing, because you present yourself online through images and text and videos. We can easily say that we live in a silent world but we have to make some noise once in a while. Meaning, it is understandable that we follow trends and marketing and that most of our communication is ran through emails, messages, that is, it’s written communication but still, the closest and the best communication is when you hear a human voice or see a person you’re talking to. So use written communication but don’t forget about the power of a human voice.