Online marketing is in a constant state of growth, expansion, and flux. The nature of inbound marketing is also rapidly changing. Those, who are not willing to change and adapt along with the current trends, will be left behind. Do not let your business get left behind. Keep your marketing strategies current with the following inbound marketing trends for 2013.
Inbound Marketing Increasing Importance of Visual Content
Providers like Pinterest and Instagram grew exponentially and became relevant in 2012. The importance of providing visual content for consumption will only continue to grow in 2013. Every major provider now provides features that allow users to utilize the power of visual content as a tool for inbound marketing.
Search and Social Continue to Merge
Google now includes social signals in their ranking algorithm. Facebook recently launched Graph Search. Search and social will inevitably converge. This makes sense, since both search engines and social networks are reflections of human behavior online. Here is how to take advantage of the convergence of social and search.
- Use social networks as a platform for adding inbound links.
- Create and post unique content on social assets.
- Connect social accounts together.
- Complete a Google+ page.
Mobile Device Usage Increases and so Does Responsive Design
As more and more people move towards using mobile devices to access internet content, responsive design becomes an increasingly better design option for web assets. Responsive design allows for an optimal user experience, regardless of the device the user is using to access your web content. Responsive design allows your marketing team to focus on simply inbound marketing, as opposed to creating separate inbound marketing plans for multiple versions of the same website.
Email Marketing Remains a Real Inbound Marketing Strategy
Online marketers have been announcing the death of email marketing for years. The reality is email is not going anywhere. Email will continue to be a viable form of communication and marketing for years to come. The way people access email has evolved with technology, but email remains. Many experts believe that (like the internet) email is still in its infancy.
Email marketing is not a passé form of marketing and generating inbound traffic. It has simply evolved. The same techniques that worked a few years ago no longer are effective. Mass email blasts with impersonal message and irrelevant content are no longer useful. Email marketers now must specifically target their messages with relevant, personalized content to turn the inbox into an inbound marketing success story. By changing and evolving your email marketing approach, email marketing can be one of the more successful pieces of your inbound marketing strategy in 2013.
Inbound marketing is going through a period of transition and trends continue to evolve. As search engines continue to better understand human behavior and integrate these trends into their algorithms, inbound marketing will continue to move away from spammy, black-hat practices and move towards providing relevant and useful content for the users who visit your website. The convergence of search and social and the emergence of mobile search and device usage will create new opportunities and outlets for inbound marketing in 2013.
Brandon Swenson
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