When it comes to digital marketing trends 2017, everybody wants to know the latest techniques and the newest channels, but above all, there’s one persistent question: What will be The Next Big Thing? We, at 7 Digits, aren’t an exemption, so we asked 21 CMOs of the most innovative companies around the Globe asking for their prediction on this one question:
As a marketing leader, what trend, technology or channel do you foresee to be the most impactful of many digital marketing trends in 2017?
Below you’ll find 22 insights of the latest digital marketing trends right from the most innovative marketing leaders – but numbers first: We tried to pitch various verticals (11 of them) and different company sizes (6 types):
By Industry
By Company Size
So let’s see how some of the greatest marketing leaders conceive of the coming digital trends and tendencies:
Digital Marketing Trends 2017
1. David Pivk– Brand Communication Director (Nike)
In my opinion, 2017 will bring a rise in live video. I think this is a channel with the biggest opportunity for brands and marketers. Next to that, a rise in customized content for various digital channels will keep increasing.
My wish would also be that VR would start to be more used in brand marketing activities.
2. Nilan Peiris– VP Growth (Transferwise)
I think Word of Mouth growth, and figuring out how to drive growth out of your product is the most significant marketing trend.
3. Szabolcs Toth– Head of Online (BioTech USA)
The hardest thing today is to get leads and to nurture them, keep them in your domain. The key is, to have a dynamically personalized website infrastructure with a proper CRM system and the right dynamic paid advertisement solution.
Personalized content (paid or viral) and wisely implemented AI solutions can drive you to success. Build your team and make dreams happen together!
4. Nadjya Ghausi– VP of Marketing (Prezi)
The Move to Conversational Presenting: We too often forget about the need to engage our audience with a collaborative experience that’s tailored to them and feels natural on the side of the marketer and our prospects. And, the reality is that our prospects are more informed than ever by the time we get to a presentation.
By moving beyond the static one-way model of engagement with customers to conversational presenting – the ability to present ideas in a more natural, interactive way – this follows the organic flow of conversation, engages the audience, and leads to a more successful outcome.
5. Matthew Ravden– CMO (Balabit)
For me 2017 is going to be the year of account-based marketing. For a company like Balabit, selling security technology to large organizations, we have to move away from measuring marketing success in terms of ‘leads’ and instead look at the progress we are making with ‘accounts’.
It also means a move away from ‘one-size-fits-all’ content marketing, towards highly customized approaches to groups of prospects who share common needs. Of course, this will also change sales behavior – cold-calling will be a thing of the past.
6. Nick Worth– CMO (Selligent)
Consumers now understand how much data is available to brands. While they certainly expect rock solid data stewardship, what they will be demanding more in 2017 is that marketers use that data to craft communications and offers to them that reflect all that knowledge.
Generic, one-size-fits-all messaging will be less and less effective. Relevance is the new black.
7. Kevan Lee– Director of Marketing (Buffer)
I think anything to do with machine learning, predictive analytics, or Big Data will have a huge impact for marketers — both in the context they can gain to know what’s working and in the custom experience they can deliver to their audience.
8. Pam Webber– CMO (99designs)
Customer engagement signals: Your current and future customers are giving you a lot of information about themselves. They will follow you on Twitter, like your Facebook and Instagram content, and download materials from your website without worrying (too much) about whether they’re downloading a computer virus at the same time.
In 2017, I think we’ll see digital marketers leverage these customer engagement points as signals they can use to better reach and serve customers. Marketers will better define which engagement signals indicate “I’m ready to buy” vs. “I’m just browsing” and proceed accordingly.
9. Gina Gotthilf– VP of Growth (Duolingo)
Marketing and product roles will continue to converge such that understanding how to drive behavior from UI changes will become key for marketers at a progressive rate.
10. Ricardo Gato– CMO (Stratajet)
Every digital channel is extremely competitive nowadays. The aspirations of growth should not sit with any one channel, more than ever brands need to both diversify and also explore every marketing channel. Those overly reliant in any one area will be possibly vulnerable.
11. Dale Lovell– Chief Digital Officer (Adyoulike)
The major trend to watch out for in 2017 will be the continued rise of automation. Programmatic buying will continue to grow – and technology will advance this automation to facilitate the growth of these buy and sell models. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will become ever more prevalent as part of the process and it will increasingly become the expectation.
Native advertising will continue to grow, too, as programmatic native, increased mobile inventory and the continued rise of content-led advertising, becomes more and more established.
12. Gabor Szedlak– COO & Growth (Car Throttle)
By publishing content native to social platforms, more and more publishers adapt to the changing consumption habits of millennials. This creates an opportunity for marketers who want to reach people on social but are vary of working with flakey influencers. Cross-platform branded content campaigns provide social marketing at scale with the trusted association of established publishers.
13. Massimo Chieruzzi– CEO (AdEspresso)
In 2017 I think we’re gonna see Facebook & Google gaining even more market shares in the digital advertising space eating up smaller players in the market. Facebook will become more and more relevant growing at a faster peace with more and more advertising budget moving from Google to Facebook.
Bot will also become more relevant and I think we’ll start to see some interesting use cases for AI in marketing.
14. Simon Whittick– VP Marketing (Geckoboard)
As a B2B marketer targeting SMBs, one of the biggest digital marketing trends I see is content marketing moving beyond text. Text content is fast becoming saturated, and we’re excited about audio in the form of podcasts.
However, video is potentially more exciting as it seems to get a lot more organic reach on social networks and the introduction of live video on Facebook and Youtube opens some simple opportunities to reach new audiences.
15. Christen Scarpa– Marketing Director (Adbrain)
2017 has presented new challenges for marketers and advertisers as the view of the consumer becomes more fragmented across the multiple devices used throughout the customer journey.
By utilizing customer ID mapping technology, marketers can break down the data silos and achieve a single view of their customer; enabling them to send a consistent and personalized message across all devices.
In today’s connected world, personalization is key for a winning marketing strategy.
16. Rees Calder– CMO (MyMiniFactory)
For someone who works in 3D printing, and sees the innovations within this space on a daily basis, I believe that the merging of the physical and the digital – the “digical” if you will – will facilitate the growth of experiential marketing in a way that has not been seen before.
This overlap will allow digital marketers to capture data regarding how people are interacting with physical objects, allowing them to target people in novel and interesting ways, deliver better experiences and sell more product.
17. Shira Abel – CMO (Folloze)
The biggest trend we’re seeing is a focus on Account Based Marketing (ABM) – mainly because it works so well. If you’re in an enterprise that is aiming for enterprise it makes sense to spend the time and effort to focus your sale towards your top tier accounts.
Folloze customers are enjoying up to a 30%+ increase in closing rates since switching to an ABM strategy. Think about it, ABM means making sure your content is relevant, engaging, and educational. It helps a consultative seller, which means it’s not a hard sale.
It’s a collaboration of efforts where the salesperson is helping propel the success of their customer. It raises trust and builds relationships, so everyone is more successful. I predict ABM will be a focus for enterprise to enterprise sales for a long time to come.
18. Amina Waters– Head of Marketing (Pusher)
Pusher provides API products to developers globally so for us, the most impactful channel in 2017 will continue to be content marketing. Our customers typically find us by searching for solutions to help them build the features they want to add to their apps.
One of the most effective ways that we can demonstrate the value that our products bring them is to produce and promote high-quality technical tutorials and other content to help them do their jobs better and faster.
19. Timi Garai– Marketing Manager (Antavo)
Mobile. Everyone is focused on mobile, and this trend will only get bigger. In our market, recent research found that 77% of loyalty program members would be happy to receive loyalty updates via text. And text has a 98% open rate! (This is amazing in the age of apps.) Mobile technology offers the opportunity for marketers to directly connect with their customers.
Combining the use of this channel with personalized offers not only boosts customer loyalty but can also encourage customers to make more purchases and interactions with brands.
20. Romeo Ju– VP Growth (Sulvo)
2017 will probably be the year when digital fragmentation will start hitting CMOs and other Marketing Executives incredibly hard. It has been gradually getting worse of course, but now that Snapchat is out with their ADS API we are about to witness the 3rd giant joining the programmatic, data-driven fight. Google, “Facebook/Instagram” are in the arena already with Pinterest, Linkedin and Twitter lagging behind.
While it’s getting easier and easier for smart marketers to reach their desired audiences, it is also getting harder and harder to consolidate all possible touch points for finding the best solution to your particular business problem.
We are at the point where it’s almost impossible to find the “most efficient channel” since there is so much optimization possibility online that it would take months if not years to properly test everything, by which time the market would have moved already.
21. Jaoued Ahmed– CMO & Co-founder (MyAppConverter)
I think what we’ve seen taking shape and grow in 2016 will certainly become even stronger on 2017 such video as a strong marketing channel to tell the story about the product and service in question by taking into account and visualizing the customer journey, its pain points and how the new solution/product can enlight the new experience. Video is a powerful tool to get a marketing message going viral. I expect a phenomenal growth in this area.
I also expect content marketing will also continue to grow. However, smart content around collateral topics and not directly pushing company products and services will be key in helping and educating customers, thus helping increase sales conversions.
Our thoughts on marketing trends
+1 Peter Kadas – VP (7 Digits)
As I see this, personalization is going to be the winning bet this year. It’s the newest chapter of an already ongoing and ever-strengthening trend, the trend of shifting from ads to information. The more data available out there, and the more connected digital marketing tools become, mediocre quality or poorly targeted marketing will become more and more ineffective.
Personalization, as a leading digital marketing trend already, on the other hand can seriously boost up conversion rates, and the most interesting thing is that this kind of supreme quality becomes more and more available for smaller players on the market.
We hope these thoughts on digital marketing trends will help you being even more successful with your marketing decisions this year. Please don’t hesitate to add any comment or share your opinion below. Also, learn more about the latest UX design trends in 2017.
