As marketers, we monitor trends. The best among us make trends – even if only in our local market or among immediate competitors. We watch our audiences closely, and as their interests, needs and wants change, we change alongside them.
As you plan your budgets and tactics for 2017, here are some major trends you should anticipate.
Resurgence of Brand Storytelling
In this age of content/message/image overload, consumers want to know that the brands vying for their attention are genuine. These days. consumers discriminate to the extreme on what messages they engage with and which ones they ignore.
To rise above the chatter, and this is especially true in industries that rely on personal brands (like independent sales agents) and local storefronts (like real estate brokerages), your strongest brand story may be personal. When planning your marketing strategy, include a content element – about a customer you helped to achieve a goal that seemed impossible, the history of your company or the connection of your business to community roots.
As a trend, expect a revival in content marketing. This means blogs, content hubs, and long-form pieces like eBooks, case studies and market reports.
As a marketing planner, integrate a storytelling strategy. From a budget and labor perspective, reevaluate your content platform now to make sure it’s the best fit. If not, choose a new one and learn how to use it by the end of the year.
Double-down on email marketing
Brands will continue to re-embrace email marketing, and here’s why. Most 
marketing commentary says we’re at a tipping point regarding the cost of reaching social/digital communities. As you know, brands don’t own their follower communities and you’ve surely learned by now that if you want to get your message to them, you’ll pay the platform a hefty premium. With social advertising cost-per-click continuing to increase, small and medium size businesses will get priced out altogether from social advertising.
With this, expect brands to rediscover what’s been there all along – good old email. In looking for alternative mechanisms to reach their audience, they’ll return to the tried-and-true, no-short-cuts method of building a list of permission-based leads and emailing them with valuable content.
This won’t be your grandmother’s email, however. With mobile browsers now supporting rich HTML and responsive CSS, 2017 email marketing won’t look like it did a decade ago. Instead, expect modular-driven, rich and responsive designs, and visually appealing videos and GIF images.
And the lure of email marketing is that, unlike its first iteration in the 2000’s, this time everything is highly measurable. Expect an increased focus on digital analytics to accompany this trend
Lifestyle Market Segmentation
The rise of online community has created connections that have little to do with locale and everything to do with activities, interests and opinions. A recent study revealed that 78% of millennials would rather purchase an experience than a product. Think about that, and remember that the most meaningful experiences are shared.
As you plan your messaging strategy for 2017, view your contacts through a new lens – that of their activities, life stage, passions and associations. Then, instead of marketing to them like a customer, market to them like a friend. Create ways to share experiences and passions. Help them find ways to experience their community in a new way. Connect them with shared meaning.
Marketing is exciting because it’s dynamic. The best Marketers learn to anticipate and adapt to trends. Keep these in mind as you plan for the upcoming year.
