Every year, it's not just the Christmas market that comes to Vienna's Rathausplatz; no, by December at the latest, the digital marketing forecasts with the hottest trends for the coming year also arrive. There are still some things you can rely on, after all.
At Zensations, too, we want to dedicate ourselves to this popular and exciting topic. While by the end of the year and with the increasing frequency with which trends are referenced on various blogs, the tips and forecasts seem to merely repeat themselves, we want to bravely forge ahead and set some trends ourselves. Copying? Anyone can do that!
Trend #1: More Quality
The first and most important trend we see is to finally stop chasing new trends. We see it daily in our professional work and when surfing the web privately: it's all about "more and more" and "ever new." But what about "ever better"?!
As soon as a new trend is proclaimed, self-proclaimed experts sprout like mushrooms after rain, and many agencies and providers adorn themselves with new, trendy feathers or dutifully add the respective trending topic to their website's menu bar. The question of quality is rarely asked. Why would it be? The client usually can't verify it anyway.
At this point, we all need to stop constantly wanting to offer new things and instead build a deeper understanding in our existing areas of work. It's time to gain a qualitative advantage and sit out the next race.
Trend #2: Mobile Interaction
The second point is also not a singular issue. Mobile, yes. Social, yes. Communication and dialogue with the target group, yes. But: the activities of most brands (and thus their agencies also come under criticism) act too staccato-like. What's missing is a comprehensive and overarching interaction concept to truly make brands tangible. Interaction clearly means more than "just" communicating, although many have not yet managed to implement even this dialogue. Interaction means letting people participate.
It is, of course, much easier said than done, but there is no way around this approach. All the knowledge we have acquired in recent years must now be implemented in a coordinated manner. Our target group, i.e., our potential dialogue partner, plays a central role in this.
What cards do we need to have ready to play this game? It begins with the technical requirements for intuitive (!) mobile applications, supplemented by storytelling and gamification elements, a focus on utility optimisation, and finally, comprehensive customer service. All of this (and depending on the project, much more) must be prepared in the right format, at the right time, in the right place, for the appropriate dialogue group. Only then can we counteract the "digital time and space scarcity" in the social web.
Trend #3: Transparent Advertising
The last few weeks have clearly shown: the social web is a difficult terrain for advertising. Increasing use of ad blockers, unclear/dubious whitelist assignments, publishers locking out users due to ad blocker usage... and I'm sure these developments are just the beginning. How difficult, for example, it is to handle Native Ads on the social web, I addressed in this article, somewhat provocatively but not unrealistically: Native Ads – A Trojan Horse in Sheep's Clothing.
Is there any way out of this dilemma that doesn't involve "omitting advertising on the social web"? I know I'm sticking my neck out when I claim that brands on the net could manage without "classic" advertising messages, but that ignores the fact that many companies are simply not ready for it yet. We are still in our infancy on the social web. Development takes time. But what do we do until then?
The path that appears to me as the only alternative is transparent and creative advertising. The focus here is not on the term advertising, but on transparent and creative! Advertising on the social web must be able to inspire, and it must be clearly recognisable as such at all times. I am convinced that there will be considerable development potential here in the coming years.
We have thus named the three most important trends for 2016, but what about the "more"? I have included this at short notice due to current circumstances. Actually, it's an "old hat," but if I take Trend No. 1 to heart and look at the current results of studies presented by the DMVÖ, I cannot help but include Content Marketing in the trending topics list again. But this time, everything should be different!
Content Marketing Must Grow Up!
The results revealed by the current Content Marketing study for Austria truly shocked me. Is this really what Austrian marketers understand by Content Marketing?
According to the study, 84% of respondents use Content Marketing to achieve their business goals. That's more than in the USA, the home of Content Marketing. While this seems very positive at first glance, a closer look reveals massive deficiencies in the understanding and implementation of this approach. I invite my readers to thoroughly review the results of this study and critically question themselves.
But even this problem has a simple solution: back to the start and everything from scratch! This article would be a good start.
Conclusion
The beginning of 2016 will certainly once again be ushered in by blog posts about the hottest digital trends. There's nothing wrong with that, yet we have chosen a slightly different approach: we clearly advocate for the qualitative enhancement of what is already available to us and less for chasing current buzzwords or even creating new ones. Our New Year's resolution is: more quality, less pretence
