6 Lessons from Inbound Marketing in 2016 & What they Mean for 2017 [Part 2]

This is part 2 in the series “6 Lessons from Inbound Marketing in 2016 & What they mean for 2017”. In part 1, we discussed local SEO becoming more important, inbound marketing and blogging becoming a bigger part of the marketing mix, and social media becoming a lifestyle. In this article, I will focus on advertising, video content, and inbound marketing as a whole:

4. Advertisements will have to adapt to the prevalent use of adblockers and a more critical consumer.

• 91% of people say ads are more intrusive today than two years ago. (HubSpot, 2016)
• 73% of people dislike pop-up ads. (HubSpot, 2016)
• 4 out of 5 of people have left a webpage because of a pop-up or autoplaying video ad. (HubSpot, 2016)
• 72% of consumers say they would have a lower opinion of a brand if they subjected the consumer to a pop-up ad. (HubSpot, 2016)
• 34% of consumers say they have mistakenly clicked on an online ad. (HubSpot, 2016)

Consumers are being more and more critical towards ads. If a webpage is hindered with advertisements that effect a positive customer experience, then consumers will respond with an adblocker or even worse, simply exit the page. In my experience, there have been many times where I have instantly exited a page the moment sounds from a video played without me having prompted the video myself. If I have to be on that website, the first thing I will do is stop the automatic video. If this is the type of response consumers have to a website, they will likely leave to go to a competitors How advertising will adapt is up to the creators, but what is true is that they will need to evolve in line with consumer preferences and keep customer experience a priority.

5. Video content is now the most popular format.

• 55% of people consume video content thoroughly. (HubSpot, 2016)
• 43% of people want to see more video content from marketers. (HubSpot, 2016)

The ongoing trend and popularity of online videos will take the next year by storm as more companies will invest in creating video content. 48% will create content for YouTube, the king of user-created video content, and 39% will create for Facebook, which has recently become increasingly popular. Below is the complete graph showing what distribution channels businesses will use.

6. Marketers will put more emphasis on inbound marketing.

• Inbound organizations are 4 times as likely to rate their marketing strategy as effective. (HubSpot, 2016)
• Just 61% of marketers believe their marketing strategy is effective. (HubSpot, 2016)
• One-third of marketers think outbound marketing tactics are overrated. (HubSpot, 2016)
• 33% of inbound marketers and 31% of outbound marketers rank outbound marketing practices, such as paid advertising, as the top waste of time and resources. (HubSpot, 2016)

This is more of an internal trend. There’s a shift occurring in mainstream marketing to try and pull consumers towards you with engaging content. This could be in reaction to #4. Advertising is slowly being viewed more negatively, so more and more marketers have chosen an inbound strategy to combat it. For more information about the differences between inbound and outbound marketing, click here.

 

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Overall, 2016 has kept a lot of marketing trends stable. There have been numerous improvements to local SEO, advertisements, and inbound marketing that will continue well into 2017. Companies have started investing more in creating content, specifically blogging and video. It is hard to predict the future, but these statistics can give us a good idea where the general direction is going.