4 Marketing Trends to Watch for This Year
It is no surprise that some of the top marketing trends for 2018 are all technology and mobile related. As the digital space continues to plunge forward, you don’t want to be left behind. Here are some of the top trends that we have been reading about that will have large effects in 2018.
Responsive Website
Mobile devices provide for more than 50% of internet browsing. If your website is older, most likely it is not optimized for mobile devices.
Even if you have a newer site, not all of them are mobile friendly. Do you know if your site is mobile-friendly?
Mobile-friendly sites, known as being “responsive”, form to the size of the device. It is much easier to use a site on a phone or tablet that conforms to the size restraints of the device.
Have you ever used a site that is really hard to use on your phone? Most likely, it is due to the fact that it is not responsive.
When users land on a site that is not mobile friendly, most will leave to look for a site that is easier to use. It is critical that as more and more people are searching the web on their phones and tablets that your t-shirt business website is responsive.
There are numerous articles that support the fact that Google is even rewarding mobile-friendly sites.
Creating a mobile friendly site is easy if you are using a platform like WordPress. All you need to do is pick a theme that is responsive. Most of the themes being created now are mobile friendly because it is so important.
[Related Content: How to Create a Website for Your T-Shirt Business Using WordPress]
To see if your site is responsive, simply visit it on your phone and see if it conforms to your screen size, or if images and content make you scroll in weird ways. Usually on a responsive site, content will “stack” up nicely on a phone.
Video Content
It is expected in 2018 that 2/3 of content consumed on mobile will be video related.
Videos are continuing to grow in popularity and as the way of choice to consume content.
Videos don’t have to be pre-recorded either. There are lots of platforms that allow live broadcasting.
Tools like Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, and SnapChat stories are easy and popular ways to engage your audience. Other tools like webinars are still a successful means of engaging with users.
Use these to launch products, hold live Q&A sessions, or to teach a tutorial. Videos and live virtual events help connect you more closely to your audience.
Chatbots
As the amount of these types of tools continue to increase and improve, more and more companies are turning to artificial intelligence to help their website visitors. Chatbots are computer programs that are able to interact in human conversation through internet chat.
It doesn’t take a computer programmer to start using these, either. There are platforms available that take no coding skills and you can start using them for free.
As more users are hitting your website, chatbots are able to answer questions from your customers. Now you can be in multiple places at once!
This article from entrepreneur.com covers the top 10 chatbot platforms.
Social Media
You are probably already using social media, but which channels are you using? The tides may be shifting on platforms.
For 2018, Instagram is becoming a very valuable channel.
Instagram is growing at an incredible rate. It announced in 2017 that approximately 800 million people actively use the platform each month, up from 600 million a year before.
Brands tend to see better engagement on Instagram than any other social media platform.
Facebook continues to grow as well, closing in on 2 billion active monthly users.
Twitter, on the other hand, has fallen behind and is not growing as rapidly. They are seeing little to no growth in users.
In 2018, see which channels are performing best for you, and maybe it’s time to leave some channels behind.
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So, what do you do with all of this information? Use the slow period around the holidays to do some research and figure out if it’s worthwhile to budget some time or money in the coming year to improving how your customers find and interact with you.