Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends of 2016 Digital marketing has become a medium that your business might not want to avoid.

Digital marketing has become a medium that your business might not want to avoid. Though it is a trillion dollar industry, not everyone has tasted success. If you look at statistics available, there are numerous startups and emerging businesses struggling to survive after going through all possibly available ideas. The key to survival for businesses is not only to be active on all digital platforms, but also ensure that they are following trends, which are making waves in 2016.

Digital marketers keep on looking out for new trends emerging every year to tap into the vast unexplored market. If we look at a potential customer, he/she is networking into an array of social channels, through multiple devices and platforms in one or the other way. Businesses try hard to engage and grow consumers through these mediums.

Here are a few digital marketing trends expected to make impact this calendar year.

1. Digital marketing and the ever growing ecommerce and search engine marketing:

Search engines are expected to get serious competition from Facebook and Twitter for ecommerce and search market share. Facebook is currently working on its own search engine, which would bring superior search capabilities in social media. This would allow businesses to interact with end customers through the Facebook messenger application and would give them freedom to buy products through the app, receive notifications and spread the work to their friends.

2. Influencer marketing:

One thing all marketers would be chasing in 2016 is influencers; to expand business horizons and acquire new customers with their help. The focus has shifted from targeting the whole market to specific individuals who have influence over what, how and when people buy things. All marketing activities revolve around these individuals to increase sales.

Influencer marketing is your typical verbal or non-verbal communication process which has gone on to a bigger scale. Influencers could be known figures in the community, they could themselves be potential buyers, or third parties such as industry advisors, journalists, analysts who would support/promote your product in some or the way.

Imagine someone who is a youth icon and endorses or promotes your product on social media with just a picture; this will certainly contribute in skyrocketing your sales. In fact, in many scenarios, influencer marketing works much better than SEO, PPC, advertisements, in a given time frame.

3. Content Marketing:

Content marketing has changed the way organizations have been interacting with their customers, along with driving organic traffic through search engines. It acts as a bridge between audience and the brand, and is also a reason behind getting that audience converted to customers.

Content has always been a way to get relevant traffic and potential customers on your website, but in the current scenario in 2016, it has become even more important with the rising advertising costs involved in social and traditional mediums.

The best part about content is - it comes in handy when you do not have funds to invest in flashy outbound marketing campaigns, as content comes almost 60 per cent less costly.

4. Content re-marketing:

While we all know that content is the king and you would always need content to lure customers to your website, you also have to strategically re-market the content that has paid-off.

You would need to design campaigns that help recapture people who have visited the website in past and make them see your content while they are reading an article or watching a video on some other site.

This would not only remind them what they read in past while visiting your webpage, but also help them take a conscientious decision while making a purchase.

5. Persona Development:

A lot has been said of personas and how can they help you or what may be their drawbacks when the research is not conducted with precision. With all pros and cons seen in last couple of years, 2016 looks like the year for persona development.

Startups have been the best users of personas as they want to be at right place at right time with right technology for right people. Businesses in online marketing or ecommerce industry can best benefit from personas to identify and convert potential customers to buyers searching for specific products or services on various online mediums.

These are just some of the 2016 trends; stay connected for more updates in digital marketing, social media marketing and web designing trends in 2016.