Business.com made 4 major predictions about online marketing for 2016:
Online Video would increase through Live Streaming
Marketing Automation would continue to evolve (retargeting solutions)
Apps will start to earn a fair share of digital marketing
Expect Digital Advertising to Experience a Major Transformation
All the predictions made by business.com came true by the end of 2016. For 2017, there are a new group of predictions that small business owners are going to want to adjust your online presence to address:
Online Chat
Online chat enables you to have real-time conversations with visitors of your website. Here are six reasons why live chat solutions are beneficial for a business today:
Prediction Alignment: Consumer Connections | Customer Support
Push Notifications
Push notifications enable a chance of instant communication with customers and prospects. While emails might take a little while to be delivered (not even speaking about being delivered to spam folders), push messages reach clients instantly on a customer's desktop or mobile device. Here are five reasons to consider push notifications as a solution for your business:
Prediction Alignment: Mobile Users | Consumer Connections | Customer Support | Online Ordering
Opt-In Solutions
Opt-in solutions are dominating the landing pages of many websites. Opt-in forms popup, float-in, appear on exit, display after so many minutes of a site visitors session and trigger based on content views. These tools increase email marketing lists by 40% and higher. Here are five reasons to deploy opt-in solutions on your website:
Prediction Alignment: Consumer Connections | Customer Support | Online Ordering | Email Marketing
Dynamic Content
Dynamic content is HTML content on your website, forms, landing pages, or emails that changes based on the viewer of the content. This approach has proven to increase engagement and visitor conversions. Here are five reasons to deploy dynamic content:
Prediction Alignment: Consumer Connections | Customer Support | Online Ordering | Email Marketing | Live Broadcasting
Downloadable Content
Downloadable content is information a site visitor can gain access to after providing general contact information. This helps build customer loyalty, future engagement and helps grow your email list. Here are 5 types of content you can offer on your website:
Prediction Alignment: Consumer Connections | Customer Support | Online Ordering | Live Broadcasting
Online Discussion Forums
Discussion forums are still an effective approach to managing customer relations. Discussion forums give your customers a straightforward approach to getting questions answered while extending this same support to other customers. Helping answer questions before the question is asked is the best approach to building customer loyalty. Here are 5 benefits to offering a discussion forum:
Prediction Alignment: Consumer Connections | Customer Support
Call Me Back
As website traffic increases in the upcoming years, your business will need a way to ensure you are available through a variety of contact methods. Forms, Live Chat and Email are great tools but often at times site visitors want to talk to someone over the phone. Call Back solutions present a mechanism for website owners to capture a lead or current customer and ensure a callback. Here are 5 benefits your business can expect to gain from a call back solution:
Prediction Alignment: Consumer Connections | Customer Support
Appointment Schedulers
We are all busy and time, often at times, is the most valuable resource we have. Overbooking appointments, missed appointments, or appearing to be unavailable can hurt customer service, customer retention and decrease new customer acquisition. Website appointment schedulers can assist your customers with gaining access to you and your team without feeling ignored and at the same time demonstrating your ability to be reached. Here are 5 benefits you can expect to gain by offering appointment scheduling:
