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SaleCycle’s top three online advertising trends for 2016

By Phil Docherty, Acquisition marketing manager

February 11, 2016 | 7 min read

2015 was a huge year in advertising, with the world’s biggest and best-known brands inspiring us to be more creative than ever.

I’ve taken a moment to take look back at what we learned in 2015, to identify the three key themes I believe will be essential to get the most from your online advertising budget in the year ahead.

Light’s, Camera, Action

With 2012, 13, 14, and 15 being 'the year of mobile' - 2016 has been tipped to be 'the year of video' - and it could actually be ‘The' year for video!

By 2018 just under 80 per cent of Internet traffic will be video content (WebDam) and with Facebook announcing a daily video viewing rate in excess 8,000,000,000 views – yes eight billion – numbers like this are simply highlighting the importance of video marketing.

Similar stats suggest that viewers are 85 per cent more likely to purchase (WebDam) after watching a product video – and with this in mind, brands are being forced to up their game in front of the camera.

At SaleCycle, we went as far as recruiting an in-house video marketer to produce awesome things like this:

Impressive right?

As with any type of advertising, it means nothing if you can’t track it. Whilst YouTube is of course a fantastic starting point, I’d also recommend the likes of Wistia and Teads.tv to help you take your video advertising to the next level.

If at first you don’t succeed…

Display advertising is getting its fair share of time in the spotlight recently, and not always for the right reasons.

With the ever-growing number of ‘Ad Blockers’ I find it hard to imagine life without ads. I mean, imagine a world without advertising…

There’s a lot of talk at the moment about ‘Ad Blockers’, with Facebook themselves even revealing their concerns towards this epidemic. For marketers, this means it’s more important then ever before to ensure that the ads you display are relevant to the person they are aimed at.

Don’t get me wrong, all ads have their pros and cons, and I’m even guilty of ad blocking myself, but if ads are relevant and non intrusive, I don’t mind them. In fact, they’re a guilty pleasure of mine.

In a similar fashion to what we do here at SaleCycle, retargeting allows you to target visitors to your website, making it 10x more effective than typical display advertising (CMO.com). Whether it’s your homepage, or a specific content/product page – retargeting allows marketers the opportunity to display timely, and relevant messaging tempting viewers back to your site. Like the time I visited Barclays…

The preferred choice of many marketers, myself included, is ‘Perfect Audience’ by Marin Software. The ease and usability of the tool is great, even allowing hands-on marketers the opportunity to simply upload, edit and optimize campaigns.

Social media - Never underestimate the power

Behold the power of social media. 2015 proved that the Internet is a more powerful place than first thought. With mass confusion over: the color of a dress, to the unity of the world in time of distress and terror, the things that make us tick online are somewhat unpredictable – but it’s how you react to a situation that makes the all the difference.

Although paid social has its many advantages, targeting the unknown being one – you don’t always have to spend a fortune to get the results you want. In fact, you don’t have to spend anything. Take a look at Drummond Central in Newcastle upon Tyne, setting up a webcam on Periscope of a puddle, yes a puddle – and from this, they practically broke the Internet!

From local brands, to some of the world’s biggest and best-known brands, even celebrities got involved - everyone seemed to want a piece of the puddle!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m more than confident Drummond Central didn’t set out to take over twitter and raise their profile in such a way, but instead, they merely set out to entertain the office and their existing following.

So my advice when it comes to social media - don’t over think it, just do it! (not endorsed by Nike)

Staying on top of your game is fairly easy, I use social media content posting & curating tool, Buffer, alongside SocialBro, great for finding out things like who your influential and famous followers are, and what the best time to tweet is. A sound investment!

Anyway, that’s enough from me; I’ll leave you with this…

Where are you most likely to spend your advertising/marketing budget in 2016? Video, Retargeting, Social Media or something else? Please let me know with a comment below.

Philip Docherty is an advertising marketing executive at SaleCycle. @PhilipDocherty

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