Are you looking for the latest trends and technologies in digital media this year? Need the big bang predictions about "What's the Next in the Online Marketing Scape?". Depending upon the views of experienced marketers and big business entrepreneurs, the digital trends keep changing year after year. Since the new trends can spring in the most beneficial and incremental benefits, the entrepreneurs and marketers are always interested in this probe. Here are a few catching up trends that are based on the opinions and inputs from their clients and the hands-on information from the entrepreneurs’, their partners and vendors. This is a list of the latest Digital marketing activities bringing in the maximum commercial impacts recently. Below listed are a few most popular digital marketing moves undertaken these days. Of all the ones listed below, Big Data is increasingly becoming popular for insights that lead to better decisions and strategic business activities.

1. Big Data (including customer insight and market overview paralleled with predictive analytics)
2. Content marketing
3. Communities (vertical communities and branded niche)
4. improving website experiences along with Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
5. Display ( Ad networks social media, banners on publishers including retargeting and programmatic)
6. Internet of Things (IoT) marketing applications Marketing Automation (including CRM, behavioral Email marketing and web personalization)
7. Mobile marketing (Site development, mobile advertising and apps)
8. Paid search marketing, e.g. Google AdWords Pay Per Click Online PR (including influencer outreach)
9. Partnerships including co-marketing and affiliates
10. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
11. Social media marketing including Social CRM and Social Customer Care
12. Wearables (e.g. Activity trackers, Apple Watch, augmented reality)

The Consumer’s Purchase Behavior

The consumer’s buying decisions have become rather intricate nowadays. The customers shift and use several devices and platforms to find out a high-value product and make their purchase worth. Also we can comprehend that most of the buyers make these purchase research online and not offline. 2016 calls on a surprisingly high increase in the use of mobile devices for shopping. So we can perceive a great surge in mobile marketing technology. Mobile marketing in 2016 is all set to change the customers’ shopping approach this year.

Shifting from 'Digital Silos' to Integrated teams

Looking at the current marketing and digital activity trends we can make out that there is a need for a 'post-digital marketing world'. A post digital marketing world has turned marketing world and digital media so interfused that our focus has all shifted to "digital marketing activities" for marketing. But in reality digital media must be integrated into marketing and should only be a part of a full-fledged marketing technique. So here we are referring to have this digital Silo rectified to make digital activities in an integrated part/team of marketing. This thinking has also been continuing due to the problems in managing marketing activities. These problems arise mainly due to the reason that the marketing units and their agencies do not have an effective communication and this gives rise to the campaigns that don't work across media.

One way of achieving this is by setting goals for digital marketing, setting integrated digital strategy and taking along specialist digital marketing skills. This must be adopted at early stages through new hires, new roles and teaching new skills to the current marketers. The marketing processes also need to be renewed so that it can integrate digital into the strategies and campaigns. This will not change overnight, but there of course needs an entire transformation of the marketing technology. That is why many businesses are now adopting digital transformation programs.

The Digital silos should shrink reducing the need for specialist Digital marketing managers. But there will always be a need for a 'Digital Centre of Excellence'. 'Digital Centre of Excellence' must be there to assess the latest digital trends, manage projects and optimize them setting the standards. Since many forms are still far from being digital and have just started to be digital, fresh ideas can be found everywhere.

The Rise of the Chief Marketing Technologist

Another important trend in marketing today is that the control of marketing technology has shifted from IT and Sales to Marketing. Finding out the pertinent digital marketers from complex Marketing Technology landscape has also turned important as there are a lot of different cloud services available in the market.

There also exists the challenge of integrating digital and traditional marketing. There must be an integrated plan for digital and traditional marketing activities. Many companies still have different marketing and digital marketing teams, which can be a complete waste of human resources and are structured in silos.

How do you see the idea of having a "post-digital world" introduced to your firm? Do you still feel that specific digital marketing skills are still required? At Putosys we look for a step ahead when it’s about your business and our efforts to make things work happen.