In the past year, we’ve seen higher demand for personalized content, creative new ways to reach our target audiences, location based advertising, and innovation in many other forms over the year.

So what’s next?

We took a good look at what 2016 did for digital marketing and put together this list of 8 innovative marketing trends to watch in 2017.

1. Video content.

Getting a customer’s attention has become exponentially more challenging over the past several years and with the success that we’ve seen from video content we can expect to see this trend get even stronger over the next year.

Videos receive higher engagement from your audience, are highly flexible when it comes to squeezing additional types of content out of them, and allow marketers to send powerful messages through storytelling.

Just about every social media platform has some sort of streaming option available, YouTube is the second largest search engine, and mobile users have constant access to consume these videos on the go. Expect to see more mobile-optimized vertical video and VR/AR content being produced over the next year as the competition drives marketing innovation.

2. Targeted email marketing.

Many customers interact with brands through a multitude of channels including social media, landing pages, influencers, blogs, and email. With that many avenues of communication we are able to get an accurate idea of what our users need from us if we want their business.

One of the most innovative places where we can use this behavioral data is in the realm of email marketing. There are several variables that go into determining the success or failure of your email campaigns, and many of them are getting easier for us to control.

In the past, email marketing meant you wrote a terrific copy and sent it to a target group based on inferences, but with the enormous amount of cross channel information we can pick up now, expect to see improvements in targeting based on behavior, messages, time of day, and more.

3. Influencer marketing.

According to a Nielsen study, 92% of people trust recommendations from individuals, regardless of their relationship to them, over brands . In 2017, we will see that marketing and advertising will be relying more and more on industry influencers and less on traditional channels to reach customers.

However, It’s important to align the right influencers with your brand. For example, YouTube influencer Jenna Marbles will resonate with a young female demographic whereas YouTube influencers such as PewDiePie and VanossGaming will attract a majority male-population interested in video games.

4. Collaboration.

Working with others in and out of your specific industry is going to become more essential over the next few years. With big brands shelling out huge budgets for influencers to pitch their products for them it’s going to be harder for the small business to out market them unless they work together.

Doing the legwork of reaching out to tastemakers in your industry and leveraging their audience is going to be one of the most efficient tactics for young businesses who need to grow their following without spending tons of cash.

It’s a good idea to spend some time really thinking about what it is that you’re selling. Once you understand the benefits you provide the consumer on an emotional level it becomes easier to brainstorm about different industries to reach out to and collaborate with.

5. Messenger bots.

Facebook is leading the way when it comes to AI and automated marketing with bots. These programs are still in the early phases in terms of what they eventually could do for marketers, nevertheless, hundreds of brands use them to do everything from process orders to deliver stock quotes.

Facebook messenger has over 900 million active monthly users and the potential to be the next big space for digital marketers to benefit from.

Zuckerberg is still working out the kinks, but the more businesses that interact with consumers via Facebook bots, the more the AI programs learn about how to put together conversations and respond in the right ways. Expect this trend to really pick up steam this year.

6. Interactive content marketing.

Interactive content is going to get more targeted and useful for customers at all stages of the buying process. There are enormous benefits for brands that use this type of content ranging from the attention getting aspect, to the user’s retention of the brand information.

More brands will be allocating budgets to this trend and developing the expertise to build interactive tools for users.

These tools such as personalized assessments, interactive infographics and data visualizations and live charts will all become more commonly used by businesses and provide a gateway to freemium options, reusability for consumers, and increased value added through all channels of digital marketing.

7. Mobile domination.

Last year, more users accessed the internet through their mobile devices than desktops for the first time. This trend has significantly changed the landscape of digital marketing and will continue to do so going forward.

With more than half of Google’s ad revenue coming from mobile ads last year, it’s clear that the smartphone has become the gateway to the majority of consumer’s attention. According to one study, 73% of mobile searches trigger additional action & conversion. So, expect to see improvements on location based advertisements and services, mobile messenger marketing, and vertical video content.

8. Native content.

We have seen so many new social platforms pop up and get huge over the past couple years that it can be hard to manage each channel with the same content.

There are marketing channels for written word, long videos with sound, short videos with sound, music videos with dynamic images. The list goes on and on, but one thing is true – every platform has a specific type of content that will inherently do well on it and alternatively do poorly elsewhere.

It may be hard to create optimized content for each one of these platforms depending on how many you’re using, but expect to see a better performance from digital marketers when it comes to native content. Be sure to look out for creative ways to repurpose content and make it fit with the platform throughout this year.

Article Written by George Beall of Business 2 Community