Digital Marketing is one of the fastest growing and changing industries we’ve ever seen. As the new year is already off to a fast start, digital marketing trends in 2017 is something on everybody’s mind. As a local digital marketing agency, it’s important for us to be at the tip of the spear when it comes to latest trends and topics in digital marketing! Here is a list of content the team at Atomic has complied with the latest digital marketing trends of 2017.

The need for faster and more efficient communication is something that will dominate social media play in 2017. Between major apps like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, and WhatsApp, companies are pushing users off SMS toward social platforms.

With a recent study that finds 41% of millennials still on Facebook, the boundaries are becoming more and more defined. Facebook has made enormous efforts to keep the generation on its social platform with a mass exodus of users leaving for more tailored and meaningful social experiences.

Using data to target specific groups with specific interests will be another social trend going into 2017. Because of new data being provided, we are able to narrow down paid social traffic with better click through ratios and impressions by selecting more qualified users.

Learning from the best around is a trend you don’t want to miss. You can learn from other’s mistakes and successes by listening to great advice. If you’re located in the DFW area – check out Social Media Breakfast. This is a monthly event you can attend for free!

Expect designers to stray away from just the static image and use animation to enhance users experience. Animation can provide storytelling and personality from your brand easier and faster than video or text. If the animation is designed strategically and with intent, it can elevate your web design. With that being said don’t go overboard with the animation! You don’t want your site to look too busy or take too long to load.

Websites flat design are beginning to look all too similar. Designers are seeking innovative ways to present information to their viewers and increasingly beginning to break the grid rules in hopes of executing creativity. This can be a great way to show brand personality or reinforce content. However, before you go out and start breaking all the grid rules to be trendy examine your audience and message to determine if it is appropriate.

This year will be a step towards sincere candid photography. Stock photos are easy to spot, often overlooked and have the tendency to reduce trust in your brand. Consumers desire a certain authenticity and identity from their brands that stock images lacks. Recent studies have shown that images with real people have a better chance at converting visitors than those with stock photos. Although this year will make a great stride in reducing stock photography it will probably be a long time before the cheesy stock photography disappears forever.

Mobile first has been taking over as the way to design a website for a while now, but with mobile devices now holding over 50% of the market share, it’s even more important that this become the norm. Google is now indexing pages from a site using the mobile version of the site’s content and penalizing sites that have intrusive mobile popups.

HTTPS has been a ranking factor in Google search engine results since 2014. Starting this year WordPress will only be promoting hosting partners that provide an SSL certificate by default going forward. This is a big push to make the web a safer and more secure place. Take a look at Let’s Encrypt if your provider doesn’t offer SSL encryption.

Parallax is a simple trick that appears to create a 3D illusion by scrolling background and foreground images at different speeds. This is in no way a new trend, but its usage has only increased and there’s no reason to expect it to decline.  With the release of the new 2017 WordPress theme, you can expect this trend to continue along with a rise in video headers and backgrounds.

As we learned at Digital Summit Dallas this past year, email marketing is taking a huge step forward in creating an email message that will engage the customer with the information they want. Users know their information is being collected on your site, and expect smart marketers to use that information to make things easier. This will include personalized emails “Chris, we think you’ll like this size large shirt…”. The personalization will be based upon your business model, or the type of information you ask for. What you want to avoid is being creepy with that information. We all know it is sometimes weird to be followed around the internet by an ad for a toaster, but to receive an email about it might just be too much for some users.

Websites do it, so why shouldn’t emails? This emerging trend in email design will begin to drive the market as more companies start to implement. The only caveat is Outlook. It still does not support a number of email design advancements, which can add a significant amount of time to the email development. The adoption of this trend should be evaluated with your marketing goals.

Statistics are showing that social media links are often some of the most clicked links in emails. This demonstrates that customers are moving between platforms in their experience with your brand. One way you can further enhance this engagement is to ask customers to engage with your brand in the email itself. Build in functionality that allows customers to share the content of your email directly.

With the release of Google’s Home & Amazon’s Echo, home-based voice search is sure to gain popularity. Recent studies show that 55% of teenagers and 41% of adults use voice search on a daily basis. Current speech recognition word error rates are have decreased by over 50% in recent years, making voice search more and more reliable.

Mobile traffic has been on the rise for years and in 2014 even surpassed Desktop traffic, so it will no doubt continue to increase in 2017. Google recently announced “mobile-first indexing”, which essentially gives higher priority to the mobile versions of websites instead of the desktop versions. If your website is not optimized for mobile-first indexing, your SEO may suffer.

RankBrain is Google’s algorithm learning artificial intelligence system which was officially confirmed on October 26, 2015. Google stated that RankBrain is the “third most important factor” in their ranking algorithm. (along with backlinks & content) With RankBrain still being in its infancy there will no doubt be many changes that we will need to adjust to in 2017. Having a good understanding of machine learning and how it affects SEO will enable you to provide the best results.