The technology persisting across the globe changes more rapidly than the reconstructing seasons. New trends and insights keep popping up every now and then. If you are a strategist or a merchant, then once in a while you need to review the performance of your company to keep up with the ever-changing trends of the society. Digging down your brand’s performance would give you insights of strategies that have helped your company grow along with those that didn’t work quite well.

The size of your business also helps you adapt various schemes and finally come up with a master plan to lead your business through the end of the year. Obviously, you have a large customer base if you own a large business, which will provide you a wide data on marketing trends for the year. Predicting things from a crystal ball might seem illogical in today’s world, but the advice of market experts on trends this year will definitely help you attain a great marketing strategy in 2017.

So, here are 7 exhilarating marketing trends to keep an eye on in 2017.

Focus on your customer base and create quality content. Market experts suggest that most successful brands focus on customer-centric philosophies as marketing strategies. An increased focus on the customer experience will definitely prove obliging and favourable in the market since the contentment of customer is the core of marketing for every industry. Marketing budget trends indicate that monitoring marketing is a crucial part of any strategy. To monitor your potential traffic, using trending tools like Google Analytics can provide an advantage and estimate of the otherwise encrypted sources.

“To me, the challenge is not awareness, it is engagement.”, John Hayes, CMO American Express

Along with creating a content base for your customers, it is important that they actively be a part of it. The concept of interactive content, therefore, comes here. Consider for example BuzzFeed’s popular quizzes. On one hand, it attracts people as it is more relatable and on the other hand it is gathering response, thus keeping people engaged. Instead of passively feeding your customers with all the content, try to create platforms through which they can actively participate and relate. Various forums such as polls, surveys, quiz, contests or other assessments can be easily created to draw traffic.

“An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane down.” Reid Hoffman, Co-founder Linked-In

The trends of the content that rule the web changes continuously. Having decorous written content is good, but the stars under the limelight are the videos. Blogs, ebooks, papers, newsletters are evergreen traditional marketing mediums, but video and live streaming take everything to a new level. According to a survey by Animoto, four times more customers would watch a video instead of reading about it. Videos always make the content more reachable and interactive. If you ever look at the feeds on social media platforms like facebook and twitter, you will find that most of it are videos. According to a market survey, mobile video views grow six times faster than desktop views. It clearly indicates the neighbourhood reach that video can achieve.
Videos can easily be included within the email, over the landing page, on website, through youtube channel etc. 
                               
 

Technology has now brought the online content to reality. It has proved to be a great success even in the field of marketing. This has been achieved by Virtual and augmented reality. It is considered as one of the most appealing and enchanting ways to draw the customers to your products. Consider the game Pokemon Go, whose records speak for it.
             
 

In the upcoming years everything will switch to the internet of things, the wave of which has already started being felt. From houses to television and consider even your washing machine to order detergent directly when it gets used up. These things are no more a dream and provide a huge opportunity for marketers to blend with their customers in day to day things. There is much more to look after and embrace the internet of things.
               

Image Source: http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey

Marketing trends from 2017 suggest a new trend of automation rising up. Try different approaches to send emails depending on the behaviour of your customer, and once the format of email works for that particular segment they can be automated. Automation has become necessary for those strategists who want to expand their existing business and watch them grow. Apps such as Marketo and Hubstop are bringing in the change for this cause.
Automate your sales by sending mails based on Cusotmer behaviour and activity. Communicate with your customer just when it is required and gain customer's attention.

Types of Automation

Depending upon the triggers, you can send various types of automations like,

• Welcome mail for a product purchase

• Confirmation mail for online queries

• Thank you mail if user generates a ticket

• Do not Worry mail of product B if product

• A purchased Suggestion mail for pending invoices

• Due Date mail if an offer is going to over Hurry-up mail if an offer is going to over.

When to Send ( Wait / Delay Time)

Though, a trigger initiates automation but you can decide when exactly the mail should be sent.

How is Automation useful ?

Choose what should trigger automation. You can send relevant emails only when you know what exactly your subscriber is doing. You can set triggers and schedule automations on them. Some easy examples may be like,

• A new subscriber is signing-up 

• Visiting some pages on website

• When a subscriber dis-qualifies from a selected criteria

• When a subscriber qualifies for a selected criteria

• Anniversary or date information of subscriber

• When a subscriber is added in a segmentation

Powerful Reporting

Detailed in-site of the running automation helps you to understand your subscribers more accurately.
                 

Personalisation facilitates sorting out the content based on the likes, habits or preferences of the customers. It is a huge step towards successful marketing for those brands that have a lot of content up their sleeves but little time. Also, native driven content has paved a way to the top marketing trends and issues. Marketing trends analysis for the year 2017 state that embedding or wrapping up the advertisements in the content that is already valued by the customers is a smart option, as more and more customers are becoming aware of the tricks practiced by the advertisers. The conventional advertising ways are becoming difficult to draw the attention of the customers.

“Make the customer, the hero of your story”, Ann Handley

Brand holders also have an option to select out of a purpose driven marketing or data-driven marketing techniques. Purpose-Driven Marketing connects directly with the people as it is supposed to be connected to a cause. Associating your brand with a non-profit organization like a charity or an NGO is ought to keep your presence among your consumers while the  Data-Driven Marketing  style keeps you informed about what’s popular on the social upfront. 2017 can be definitely credited as a year to bring about standing out and nuance changes in the marketing trends in India. Thus, it becomes the choice of the strategist to modernize and stay up to date with the marketing trends that suit them the best.