4 Web Design Trends for Ecommerce in 2016

Web design  is constantly evolving, especially in the ecommerce arena where most retail companies heavily rely on online sales as their major revenue source.

The need to constantly innovate, adapt and stay on top of the most recent web design and online marketing trends is what makes the ecommerce space so fierce and competitive. The top preforming ecommerce sites for 2016 will be the ones that take advantage of the latest online trends, including the rapidly growing mobile sales market (mCommerce).

Here are a 4 emerging web design trends that will become more and more popular among eCommerce websites for the 2016 year.

1. Simple & Standard Site Designs

When it comes to ecommerce web design, simpler is always better. Just take a look at some of the most successful online retail giants Amazon and Walmart. Both retail sites are nearly identical in design. A simple site frame with a basic header, search bar, featured web banner, and popular product listing is all that’s really needed in a homepage.

The reason for this isn’t a lack of creativity, but rather a strong focus onconversion rate optimization (CRO). Successful ecommerce sites know what works and doesn’t when it comes to generating more sales online, and will most likely continue to stick with their same winning formula with a few design tweaks here and there.

2. A Focus on Mobile Commerce

With mobile commerce (mcommerce) sales continually on the rise, more online retailers will continue to come up with new innovative ways to create more mobile friendly sales experiences online.

With mobile sales conversions still relatively low, there exists a huge potential to tap into this still young and growing mobile commerce market. Expect to see many innovative web design trends focusing on improving and further integrating mobile friendliness and user phone experience.

3. More Pop-ups

Although pop-up ads are extremely annoying for many online users (myself included), they are still highly effective in converting sales. Otherwise, why would so many eCommerce companies still be using it?

Pop-ups are a highly underrated web marketing and design tool for converting customers in all steps of the online sales process. Adding in a quick coupon pop-up might entice a potential online customer to buy your product or at the very least sign up to your newsletter and return to your website at a later time.

4. Images Sell, Not Text

Ever heard of the saying “A picture speaks a thousand words”? Well it couldn’t be truer for eCommerce, and online in general. Think of Instagram. In a social media-dominated Internet, images rule – and ecommerce is definitely no expectation.

By incorporating high quality images that promote your product effectively, you can quickly grab a customer’s attention, and hopefully their checkout too.

Source : http://bit.ly/1S5zz9j

10 Stupid Mistakes Small Businesses Make With Social Media

It’s hard to find a person or a company that doesn’t have a Facebook, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn account—but small companies beware! Just because everybody uses social media doesn’t make it a useful marketing tool. In fact, without a smart strategy, committing human and financial resources to a social media campaign could cost you big, draining resources and generating negative ROI.

Here are 10 mistakes to avoid:

1. Spreading Yourself Too Thin

Building a social media presence takes a lot of time and effort. You have to engage with people continually, and communicate highly informative and/or provocative messages to stand out from the crowd. It’s hard enough to do this on one social platform, let alone two, three, or twenty. Smart small businesses, knowing their internal resources are limited, take on one platform at a time.

2. Having an Undifferentiated Strategy

When companies make mistake No. 1, they begin taking shortcuts, usually in the form of mechanically sharing the same content on each of their platforms. Big mistake. Social media users use multiple platforms; once they read your company’s same message everywhere, they will lose interest. Have a unique strategy for each platform. For instance, use Twitter to announce sales promotions and Facebook to share action shots of your products in use. This gives users a clear reason to follow you on the applicable platform(s).

3. Not Responding to Comments

It’s amazing how many companies forget social media is social. When someone reaches out to your company with a comment, you must respond—quickly and thoughtfully. Once the perception takes hold that your company is above engaging with the audience, you are dead. You will be labeled as a company that is interested only in self-promotion, a cardinal sin of social media marketing.

4. Controlling the Message

Similar to No. 3, companies err by viewing their social media accounts as advertising platforms. On social media, authenticity is valued highly. It’s OK to admit a mistake, ask for help, and respond frankly to criticism. Many small companies are unwilling to do this, and if you are one of them, either change your attitude or look for another method of Internet marketing.

5. Not Giving to Get

“Giving to get” is the path to success in social media. This strategy requires a generous spirit. Small companies succeed in social media when they go out of their way to help people by providing useful content, sharing other people’s content, jumping into conversations where they can lend a hand, and making it easy for people to try their products and services.

6. Selling Too Much

Social media users don’t like the hard sell. As a matter of fact, many use social media to escape commercialism. Don’t try too hard to sell your products and services; there will be a backlash. Again, social media is social. The best path to generating sales is to build relationships with your social media community, and then introduce the idea of doing business together.

7. Not Selling Enough

The flip side of No. 6 is also a big mistake—not attempting to sell through your social media campaign. This amounts to not having a strategy at all. If you view social media as a way to build credibility and brand awareness, that’s fine, but at some point you have to turn that credibility and brand awareness into sales. Smart small businesses gradually ramp up lead and revenue generation activities on their social media accounts; not doing it prematurely, but when the time is right to convert the “soft” asset of brand affinity into hard dollars.

8. Failing to Leverage Your Knowledge

Small companies know a lot about their products, services, markets and audiences. This knowledge, when communicated on social media, attracts the interest of potential customers. When a small business delegates its social media campaigning to a junior staffer with limited business knowledge, these potential customers will not be attracted, and may additionally conclude your entire firm is inexperienced and incompetent. By overdelegating, such companies turn their biggest potential advantage into a crippling disadvantage.

9. Failing to Establish Metrics

Many small businesses that have been on social media for a few years have absolutely no idea how well their campaign is working. Obviously, not having a way to evaluate a social media campaign leads to wasted investment and an inability to improve campaign effectiveness. Popular and useful metrics include tracking brand mentions; social shares of your company’s content; referred traffic from social media sites to your company website; and the number of engaged community members as measured by comments, direct messages. and other measurable actions. These metrics are not perfect, but provide a reliable sense of whether your campaign is stagnant, improving, or worsening.

10. Putting Too Many Eggs in the Social Basket

Social media marketing is really, really tempting for small companies because the financial barriers to entry are basically zero—signing up is free and the main investment is time. However, for revenue generation, brand awareness, and credibility building, other Internet marketing options may produce far better and quicker results—pay-per-click advertising and email marketing, to name two of the more obvious. Companies are smart to test various options. Social media could be the path of most resistance, but you won’t know unless you test. Budget accordingly and prosper!

Source : http://bit.ly/1QatO8u

The Secret to Predicting Startup Success in 2016

When it comes to investing in startups, one thing is clear ... nobody knows the outcome. This can change that.

What's the best way to measure a startup?

Profit is non-existent for most startups. Even revenue can be elusive at the early stages. And what's the magic number for users or customers? 100? 10,000? 100,000?

In the book Startup Wealth: How the Best Angel Investors Make Money in Startups, Josh Maher interviews many legendary investors including Brad Feld, Mark Suster, Catherine Mott, Christopher Mirabile, Allan May, Joanne Wilson, and more. What heuristics did they use to know whether or not to invest in a startup?

Right now the answer is all over the board. There are no standards. Some people invest purely based on their relationship with the founders and do little to no due diligence. Others spend months or even years tracking a startup before taking the plunge.

I'd argue that Net Promoter Score (NPS) should be a required foundational metric behind measuring startups of every size. If you are a startup founder, it should be used as a KPI. If you are an angel investor, you should request it for due diligence. And if you are a venture capitalist, you should be requesting your entire portfolio to be reporting NPS figures to you.

Here's why:

Universal Applicability

Whether you are running a consulting company or a high tech mobile app... whether you have just one customer or tens of thousands ... whether you have no revenue or millions in profit ... you can still run NPS campaigns.

That's because fundamentally all businesses have customers. Even if you don't have revenue yet (maybe you are still building out your user base) you still have users. And with users you can have an NPS score.

With NPS, you ask just one question: How likely (from 0 to 10) are you to recommend my product or service to a friend or colleague? As long as you have some kind of product or service, you can measure NPS.

This makes NPS an ideal key performance indicator if you are trying to evaluate a startup.

TIP #1: Don't fret about the exact score.

If your potential investment is running an NPS campaign for the first time, the chances are that their score is not going to be that great. Many products find that their first score is not what they expect. That's what makes NPS such a powerful survey technique. It gives you an honest assessment of how well you are turning users into fans.

You might be hoping that they are in the high +70's like Apple. But as long as they are positive (and not net-negative), it should not be raising any big red flags at this point.

(After all, the real power of NPS is in the follow-up process)

The score is just a starting point on a journey.

So if you aren't overly concerned with the NPS score, how do you use NPS as a metric for evaluating a startup? Good question! That brings us to our second point.

Honest Customer Feedback

Most investors ask for customer references as part of the diligence process before investing. But this has always confused me. Whenever you ask for a reference, the people given as references are intrinsically likely to tell you good things, since they are often friends with the person in the first place.

But ideally, you would want a way to get a more critical eye for some honest customer feedback rather than just talking to the one or two best references that a startup can provide you.

If you have an NPS campaign as part of due diligence, spend most of your time evaluating the individual responses rather than obsessing about the overall score. And if you are not given all the individual responses, insist on seeing them.

The second question in a NPS survey is: What was the biggest reason for having given that score?

This open-ended question lets customers praise and vent about what they care about most. Reading through these responses will give you the most independent and honest feedback you can get when evaluating a startup.

Often, these responses will include the best and worst of a startup. People who love the service will tell you why they love it. People who are having trouble with the service will tell you why they are having trouble. Those problem areas can then be used as starting points for further diligence.

Many people underestimate how powerful NPS is, especially because it is so simple to implement with just two quick questions. But done correctly, these two questions really are the only two questions that need to be asked.

Implicit Accountability

Although I've already said that the first NPS score doesn't matter, I don't want you to come away with the impression that none of the NPS scores matter.

In fact, tracking NPS scores over time is a fantastic way to audit that progress is being made to improve the product or service.

After the first NPS campaign, you will know the top three biggest problem areas. The next time an NPS campaign is sent, if the same problems come up again in the same frequency (or worse), then it is a sign that something is deeply wrong.

Ideally, as an investor in startups, you should be able to keep track of all your portfolio's NPS scores over time. Comparing them to each other is a possible way to keep an eye on the investments that might need more of your attention. However, a better indicator is to make sure that all of your portfolio's NPS scores are steadily improving over time.

No other score that I know of can provide this kind of warning system no matter the underlying business model or source of revenue. NPS gives you a tool that uniquely can predict breakout success or imminent failure for venture capitalists.

 

Implementing NPS as a key performance indicator can easily be done whether you are a startup founder, an angel investor or a venture capitalist. And done properly, the results can be amazing. For example, after we implemented just one sales technique into our NPS process at Promoter.io, we were able to increase MRR by 32%. You can even use NPS to drive a marketing campaign. So add this tool to your diligence worksheet and ensure that all the startups you work with start tracking it today.

Source : http://bit.ly/1OCrAt6

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6 CREATIVITY HABITS FOR PEOPLE WHO THINK THEY'RE NOT CREATIVE

EVERYONE IS CREATIVE. (NO, REALLY.) HERE'S HOW TO UNLEASH YOUR BEST IDEAS.

Think about the roles and responsibilities in your office. There are probably people you think of as "creative"—maybe those in product or graphic design, marketing, and even sales. Then there are those who don’t immediately spring to mind when that word is used.

But thinking about people—or yourself—as "not creative" could be hurting your company, because you’re discouraging them from thinking in innovative ways before they can even do so, says Mark Prommel, a partner at Pensa, a Brooklyn-based design and invention firm.

"Ideas and the creative execution of those ideas comes from anyone, anywhere," he says.

Does your workplace have creative designations? Use these six tips to create a culture where everyone’s creativity is stoked.

HABIT NO. 1: BANISH "YEAH, BUT"

If Leslie Ehm, president and "chief fire starter" at Toronto creativity training firmCombustion, could give organizations only one piece of advice to encourage creativity, it would be "to ban the phrase ‘yeah, but,’" she says. "'Yeah, but’ is just ‘no’ in a dress." Change the phrase to, "Yeah, and." That simple change suddenly confirms the original person’s contribution as valuable and builds on it. People don’t feel shut down. That’s collaboration in action, she says.

HABIT NO. 2: GET NEW PEOPLE AROUND A TABLE

One of the quickest ways to get people who think they aren’t creative to shed that viewpoint and start to contribute is to get them around a table brainstorming and coming up with solutions with a diverse group of people, says Jay Mathur, founder ofvalueideas, a creativity and management consultancy. The interaction with new people can bring perspectives never before considered and spur new ideas within the group, he says.

"If you bring a diversity of ideas, this is where a collision of ideas happen and the energy that releases new ideas. It can combine ideas. It can create more refined ideas," he says.

A 2015 study by researchers at Rice University and elsewhere backs a similar concept. The researchers looked at sales representatives at a pharmaceutical company in China. Those with wide networks of contacts came up with more creative solutions to sales and marketing challenges.

HABIT NO. 3: GIVE YOUR EMPLOYEES FREEDOM

It’s important to have job descriptions so that people can get things done and know the benchmarks by which they’re being measured. However, leaders who are trying to create a culture of creativity also need to reward—or, at the very least, not discourage—people from contributing beyond the confines of their roles, Ehm says. She cites a team she’s currently training where employees are worried about whether they’ll actually be allowed to contribute once the training is over.

"We keep saying to them, ‘Leadership is saying yes,’ [and they say,] ‘But, when we get back to the regular kind of workflow, and we have to do things fast, are they going to allow us to do it?’" she says. Make sure your own culture isn’t causing this type of creative hesitation. And encourage people to question processes, Prommel says. Let people know that if they see a better way to do something, it’s not only okay to speak up—it’s valued.

HABIT NO. 4: REWARD THE EFFORT EVEN IF IT'S A FAILURE

Ehm defines creativity as "combining previously uncombined thoughts and ideas to create new thoughts and ideas. Once you’ve gotten people to do that, you need to reward the effort, rather than the outcome," she says.

"Hierarchically, everyone is rewarded for coming up with the right answer, to sort of smooth the rough spots in the process. There's not a lot of room for rewarding or celebrating the risk and the failure. You can't have creativity without failure," she says.

HABIT NO. 5: WORK ON NEW PROJECTS

Grinding out the same old projects every day can burn out even the brightest creative light. At Pensa, Prommel and his team try to carve out time to think about projects on which they’d like to work, or areas in which they’re interested and think of ideas. Give employees time to think about the projects on which they’d like to work and try to get them involved on those teams, he says. Letting employees be part of projects that excite them is going to stir creativity. Plus, contributions from people who have fresh perspectives can help bring forth new ideas.

Source : http://bit.ly/1RPk6bK

5 Traits That Make Entrepreneurs Great At Selling

Great salespeople aren’t born. They’re made.

That’s right.

Contrary to popular belief, there’s no such thing as the “natural salesperson.” Yes, it’s true that some people naturally have personality traits that make it easier for them to sell. But even these lucky people have to learn how to be better influencers. They work hard to hone their sales skills. They learn through experience and practice. Just like any other professional.

In order to be successful, entrepreneurs have to learn how to sell effectively. If they don’t, it becomes almost impossible to succeed. Here’s the good news: Anyone can learn how to sell. I learned. So can you.

When I first started learning how to sell, I was excited. I loved the idea of getting people to buy from me. Since I was good at dealing with people, I figured it’d be easy for me. I was both right and wrong. Yes, I knew how to talk to people I knew how to get them to like me. It helped, but it wasn’t enough. I could get some business, but not as much as I wanted.

So I ended up going through sales training. I learned quite a bit. I worked hard to master the sales techniques I learned. It made me better. Again, it helped, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be.

Through my experience, I learned that there are certain qualities that make a person a great salesperson. I found that these are qualities that I needed to possess in order to become the type of influencer I wanted to be.

When I started to adopt these qualities, I found that they shaped the way I used the sales techniques I had learned. I saw that I could use what I learned to have a positive impact on my prospects. Below are the qualities that can make you a great at selling.

How To Become Great At Selling

Trait #1: Mental Toughness

“The way you think when you lose will determine how long it will be before you win.” – GK Chesterton

Let’s face it, selling is not for the faint of heart. You have to be mentally tough to be an effective persuader.

Here’s why.

Selling involves rejection. Lots of it. Even the greatest salespeople in the world get rejected. A lot. It’s unavoidable. If you’re not mentally tough, rejection can erode your self-confidence until you feel like giving up. It can be pretty discouraging. To make matters worse, the discouragement you feel because of the rejection can carry over to the next sales call.

This makes it harder to keep the same level of enthusiasm, which makes it more likely that you will get rejected again. It’s like a vicious cycle.

The difference between a great salesperson and a not-so-great salesperson is how they view rejection. Great salespeople see rejection as an opportunity to improve. They can learn from the mistakes they made on the sales call and adjust their approach accordingly.

In this way, a great salesperson can turn a rejection into a tool that can be used to earn more business on her next sales call. Being mentally tough is the only way you can handle consistent rejection without missing a beat. If you want to be a great persuader,  you better become tougher.

Trait #2: Genuine Concern For The Prospect

“Stop selling. Start helping.” – Zig Ziglar

Yes, I know it sounds nice and fuzzy, but a great influencer actually cares about the people they seek to influence. They desire deeply to bring a lasting benefit to the lives of the people they wish to persuade. The same is true when you’re trying to convince prospects to buy your offering.

Great salespeople want to see their prospects get what they want. This means they present only the solutions that fit the prospect’s needs and wants. They won’t try to push potential customers into buying things they don’t need.

When you approach your sales calls in a way that is focused on helping the prospect solve their problems, you gain a greater level of trust. It enables your prospects to connect to you on a deeper level. You have to show your prospects that you view them as more than just a paycheck. You must have a genuine desire to see your prospect get what they want. If your prospect believes you are only trying to get their money, they will be much less likely to listen to what you have to say. 

Start finding ways to help your prospects. Even if the help you’re giving them doesn’t involve your product or service. Give value beyond what you sell. When you do this, you become more valuable to your prospect.

The more valuable you are to your prospects and customers, the more likely it is that they will continue to do business with you. The amount of influence you have over a prospect is directly tied to how much of a benefit you are to them. Find ways to offer more value.

Trait #3: Patience

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going. – Beverly Sills

This might be a surprise, but I’ve found that patience is a key trait to have in order to be great at sales. I know it goes against how most people view salespeople, but it’s true.

Great salespeople are patient with their prospects. Instead of shoving their offering down their prospect’s throat, they take the time to get to know them. They focus on understanding what their customer’s true needs are.

Being pushy and aggressive has become a thing of the past in most cases. People just don’t want to deal with high-pressure sales tactics.

I can’t blame them.

I’ve found that taking the time to make sure my prospects are comfortable with buying from me creates a better experience for both the customer and myself. That’s exactly how great salespeople want their clients to feel

Before presenting your solution to your prospect, take the time to get to know them. Ask questions. Build rapport.

Make the interaction as human as possible.

The more your prospects feel connected to you, the more likely they are to buy your product or service. You must focus on building the relationship. It may take a little longer, but in the end, it’ll be worth it.

Trait #4: A Sense Of Purpose

“People don’t buy WHAT you do. They buy WHY you do it.” – Simon Sinek

This is incredibly important. If you don’t have a sense of purpose in what you’re doing, you won’t be able to persuade others that your product or service is worth buying. You have to believe in what you’re selling.

It’s about branding.

An attractive brand purpose helps you stand out from your competition. It gives your prospects a more “human” face to connect to.

With so many brands to choose from, your prospects have many potential choices to make. By identifying and expressing a purpose that people can buy into, you become more relatable.

Why do you do what you do?

What do you believe about the world your company occupies? What problems are you trying to solve? What kind of impact do you want to make on the world and the people in it?

These are the types of questions you must answer if you’re going to persuade prospects to become paying customers. A strong sense of purpose will enable you to sell with conviction. This is something that makes great salespeople far more influential than those without the conviction of their purpose.

Trait #5: They Serve

“Make a customer, not a sale.” – Katherine Barchetti

A great salesperson is there to meet their prospects’ needs. After the sale, they don’t just move on to the next prospect. They understand the importance of continuing to give value. They focus on building relationships.

The customers of great salespeople know that they are in good hands. They are confident in the fact that they are going to be taken care of.

Great salespeople work hard to make clients are happy. This is what keeps their clients coming back for more.

Because of this, these salespeople are able to turn their clients into evangelists who sing their praises to others. Also, they don’t have to worry as much about the competition. They have cemented their place as their clients’ resource.

If you want to be great at selling, you have to serve. You have to do everything in your power to give a wonderful experience for your customers. In each interaction with your customers, try to make as big an impact as possible by giving them as much value as you can.

Exceed their expectations whenever possible. Give them unexpected benefits every now and then. When your clients feel they are truly being taken care of, they will remain loyal to your brand.

Conclusion

If you want to become great at selling, you must have these traits. It takes time. But when you have these traits, you will find it easier to attract and keep clients.

Become mentally tougher. Genuinely care about the success of your prospect. Don’t rush through your sales process. Find your sense of purpose. And finally, serve your newly-earned customers.

Becoming great at selling will also help you become a great entrepreneur. Not only that, it will help you make a greater impact in the lives of others.

IPHONE APP

Source : http://bit.ly/1NlFfXT

How Video Can Increase Your Site’s Visibility on Search Engines

An increased amount of video content has been one of the most noticeable online trends of recent times. Vido now accounts for more than 60 percent of all online traffic, and that number is expected to rise to 80 percent over the next five years, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index.

In addition to offering the benefit of retention of information, video can also improve a company’s search engine optimisation. It should, therefore, come as little surprise that businesses have responded, with research showing that the use of online video in marketing has doubled over the last year.

So how exactly can you effectively include video content

 in your search marketing?

1. Get the Content Right

You could hire the best SEO company in the world, but if the actual content of your videos is poor, that part of your search marketing strategy is doomed to fail. For this reason, producing quality content should always come before employing any SEO tactics to boost search rankings.Video content should aim to solve problems or provide new information; it also should be interesting, entertaining and, ideally, interactive. Based on attention span statistics released by Statistic Brain, videos should also be short, as the average human attention span now stands at just eight seconds.

2. Host Your Videos on YouTube

For SEO purposes, videos should be hosted on YouTube rather than on your own site for three main reasons. First, it will reduce page load times, which is important given that Google’s algorithms take page performance into account. Second, a study by Wistia found that more than 90 percent of video thumbnails displayed in Google search results were hosted on YouTube, suggesting strong algorithm bias towards the video hosting site. And finally, although many don’t think of it as being one, YouTube itself is a search engine–the second largest in the world–which means it will give you access to a huge potential audience if video optimisation is done correctly.

3. Label Videos and Provide Backlinks

While video content cannot be read by search engine algorithms in quite the same way as text-based content, you can still utilise your existing SEO keyword strategy when it comes to naming videos, providing descriptions and tags for them, and so on. Think carefully about the labels you give your videos. Meanwhile, if you are hosting videos on YouTube, it is important to include backlinks to your website, as some viewers will find the videos through searching YouTube itself, or through social media shares.

4. Provide a Transcript

Wherever possible and appropriate, place a transcript into the HTML of the page where your video is embedded. Transcripts of videos can be enormously beneficial to your SEO strategy, offering visitors an option to read during times when they are unable to watch videos, while also providing search engines with keyword rich content to crawl and index. Moreover, a transcript can be used as a starting point to expand further on the information in a video, effectively making the video and its transcript an introduction to longer, more detailed written content.

Source : http://bit.ly/1Z5cvb5

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7 Marketing Trends You Need to Know for 2016

Here are seven marketing trends to budget for in 2016 and to set up your team for success.

Mobile, video, and other marketing tactics that have been on the rise for years aren't really "trends" anymore. So, how many more trend articles do marketers have to read through that really just tell us what we already know?

Now, just because they're not current trends doesn't make them unimportant. Optimizing for mobile and including high-quality visual content and video in your strategy are still good practices. But to keep yourself and your company ahead of the competition, you need to analyze what's happening now, review your strategy from different perspectives, and prepare for what's to come.

To help, here are seven marketing trends to budget for in 2016 and to set up your team for success.

1. Writing skills and experience will be critical.

When the industry started shifting from print to digital, there was fear among English and journalism students that their craft was dying and no one with a degree in those fields would have jobs. And now with the rise in content, these research, writing, and editing skills are becoming increasingly important, especially when high-quality content is becoming the new SEO.

However, in its 2016 B2B Content Marketing report, the Content Marketing Institute found that only 19 percent of marketers would prioritize becoming stronger writers in the coming year. To keep up with other top content creators and publishers in your industry, encourage your HR team to recruit employees with these game-changing skill sets to build a successful content team, or start investing in education to help your existing team strengthen its writing.

2. Content marketing will enhance other areas of business.

Many people view marketing as the department that works solely to promote your company to your external audience, and while this is one of its key functions, it's not the only one. Content the marketing team produces will become an increasingly necessary asset to many other departments at modern companies, because those resources the team creates for external audiences are just as helpful for internal audiences.

For example, marketing team publishes a piece of content, our entire team is alerted. Because the content is created for your audience, including clients and prospective customers, your client-facing and production team members can use it to fuel their efforts, our sales team can send it to address common objections or questions, and your HR team can use it to train new team members about your processes. 

3. Personalization will prevail.

One of my favorite keynote speakers at this year's BOLO digital marketing conference was my friend and marketing trend expert Rohit Bhargava. During his speech, he talked about the growing importance of personalization and providing opportunities for clients and customers to feel like VIPs, and he used Disney's MagicBands as an example.

Instead of every visitor receiving the same band, each Disney MagicBand is personalized to that visitor's vacation experience. These simple gestures of personalization show that your brand cares about individual customers, and they're effective. In fact, my daughter didn't want to take off her band when we left Disney because it made her feel so special. Avoid generic templates and find ways-from simply targeting your messaging to sending personalized emails and gifts-to make each individual customer feel that special.

4. Industry authority positioning will become a must.

 Companies without thought leaders who provide voices and contribute to industry conversations are taking harder hits to their credibility than ever before. Executive branding and leadership positioning are no longer just nice to execute-they're becoming increasingly necessary. People want a connection to your brand, and they want to trust your leadership. The best way to establish this connection and trust is to create content that showcases your authority.

To effectively position your company, start taking advantage of your team's unique insights and expertise, and craft your messages into thought leadership content that establishes your company as the industry leader.

5. Add value for your audience and stop selling to them all the time.

Stop focusing only on making the sale, and start focusing also on delivering true value to your customers and potential clients. Whether this value is found in the quality of your content or in the experiences you provide, it's becoming more and more important for marketers to ensure that value is delivered to those who interact with their brands.

For example, on a recent call with Mura Experience Platform, a member of its team mentioned to me that a custom Cards Against Humanity deck designed for attendees of the Content Marketing World event with the Mura Experience Platform brand was one of their most successful marketing campaigns. This campaign was successful because it was original and delivered direct value to Mura Experience Platform's target audience. To keep up with competition, it will be important for marketers to take advantage of the rise in content to create and deliver value to customers.

6. Thought leadership is a new SEO driver.

Traditional SEO-using link building and keyword optimization to increase your pages' search results-is no longer your ticket to high rankings on Google. After Google's continued algorithm updates throughout the year, the search giant has begun rewarding higher-quality content with higher search rankings. Despite efforts by some companies and content creators to cheat their ways to the top of results pages, high-quality content prevails over the old keyword-stuffing tactics of the past.

For example, in my own writing during the past year or so, I've seen a dramatic difference in traffic to my own articles because my team and I have continued to perfect our content-creation processes to align with exactly what our target audience is searching for. Now when you search terms like "thought leadership speakers," you can easily find the article I published to my Forbes column. Because Google's updated algorithm recognizes that this piece of content was created to provide specific value to my individual readership, it rewards the article with a higher ranking to make it easier for readers to find.

As a marketer moving into 2016, your priority should be to provide the best possible content to your audience, not to publish junk content in hopes that it'll land you on page one. Trust me, when you create truly engaging, valuable, and relevant content crafted to serve members of your audience and what they're looking for, you'll earn that sweet spot at the top of the results page.

7. Full-service won't solve all your problems.

The best thing you can say to make someone lose faith in your company's credibility is "My company is great at everything." No single company is great at everything, and that's why full-service firms are becoming a thing of the past.

As the industry becomes more specialized, we'll see fewer full-service, best-at-everything marketing companies in 2016. Instead, focus your efforts on the one thing your company is truly great at and what your customers need and want most from you, and become the absolute best at whatever that is. You'll need to live and breathe that area, develop technology to support your efforts, and consistently innovate your products and services, but you'll ultimately serve your team and your customers better if you focus your efforts on the one thing that separates you from your competitors.

As this year draws to a close and your marketing team starts determining what initiatives will be valuable investments in 2016, a variety of content resources,marketing speakers, and other thought leadership resources will help point you in the right direction. Take the time over the holiday season to do the research and plan where your focus should be in 2016.

Source : http://bit.ly/21olt5h