How digital marketing will develop in 2017
Digital business expert Arithnea explains which developments will shape digital marketing in 2017:1. digital marketing is becoming more mobile worldwide. Smartphone use has already become widespread in the western world. Now the Asian market has followed suit in explosive fashion, and mobile use is also becoming increasingly widespread in developing and emerging countries. Companies in the export nation of Germany in particular must react to this and optimize their digital marketing measures for mobile worldwide.2. advertising opportunities for messaging apps arise.Users are communicating more and more frequently via messaging apps, above all WhatsApp, of course. Until now, there have been no suitable advertising options for these channels. This is likely to change in 2017 - largely driven by the takeover of WhatsApp by Facebook.3 AI is finding its way into the customer approach.Artificial intelligence (AI) is already being used to some extent in customer service and by search engines. For example, a New York hotel operates an autonomous information robot for its guests based on IBM Watson; Google uses AI to correctly resolve semantic queries. In 2017, it will also be increasingly used in digital marketing in order to save resources and respond to large volumes of inquiries in a targeted manner.4. marketing clouds continue to spread.In 2017, companies will increasingly use complete suites from the cloud for their digital marketing, such as those offered by Adobe, Salesforce and SAP Hybris. One reason for this is the consolidation on the provider market, which has led to special solutions increasingly being integrated into such complete systems. On the other hand, companies benefit from reduced complexity and simpler operation thanks to the suites.5. predictive analytics enable more automation.Based on the complete suites, companies will be able to collect and evaluate customer data more easily on a standardized platform in future. This will enable them to use predictive analytics to anticipate future interests and automatically display appropriate digital advertising at the right time.6 After "Mobile First" comes cross-device optimization.Most companies have now successfully implemented their "mobile first" strategies. Now they are starting to optimize their content for the other channels as well. This ensures that their customers' company, brand and service experiences are identical across all devices and that they experience a consistent customer journey.7 Content marketing must be measurable.While in the past the motto was usually to distribute as much content as possible on digital channels regardless of the costs, content marketing is becoming increasingly professionalized. In future, companies will determine the ROI and try to find a sensible balance between content quantity, publication frequency and topicality.8 Lifecycle marketing is also gaining ground in B2B. The digital advertising environment is becoming ever more competitive, making digital advertising increasingly expensive. For this reason, B2B companies will also adopt a lifecycle marketing approach, as has been common practice in online retail for some time. They will no longer only consider the costs of acquiring a new customer in their cost analyses, but will determine which costs and revenues arise over the entire lifecycle of a customer - and use these findings to determine their investments in new customer acquisition. "2017 promises to be an exciting year," says Christian Weckopp, Head of Digital Marketing at Arithnea, "New channels and new technologies will change digital marketing. However, companies must also optimize the management of marketing. The increasingly competitive environment means that they need to put their measures to the test and calculate them more precisely and comprehensively."
