January is always a great time to make predictions about what will be important during the coming year. The marketers who adapt early might have a competitive edge over the rest of the industry to gain market share, lower Acquisition cost and improve their brands’ reputation, so the stakes are high. With these 5 important trends, 2016 is shaping up to be a great year for broker Marketing already:
1. Real Time Bidding (RTB) instead of regular display buys
Most brokers have experimented with retargeting by now, but many still execute the vast majority of their media plans through direct negotiations with publishers. But RTB also allows brokers to buy advertising on most publisher sites at a much lower cost and without all the paperwork or commitment. Savvy brokers will start to buy almost all their display advertising through RTB, with only a portion of their budgets reserved for custom sponsorships or things like broker listings directly with publishers. At MediaGroup we already buy 60% of all online advertising through RTB and are seeing a trend upwards.
2. Native advertising
The rise of native advertising will continue in 2016 and we predict it will be used, with great effect, to promote content already written by the analysts working for brokers. Native is not just something for online- for years brokers have been writing columns about the markets for newspapers like CityAM and others while on TV analysts have appeared in sponsored segments and TV spots. This is a great way to increase brand awareness and improve brand perceptions without the drawbacks of normal advertising.
3. Don’t just 'do' Mobile
For many years now the rise of mobile as a trend has been discussed in articles likethese. Most brands now have websites and trading platforms that work on all devices (and if you don’t please take a time machine back from the 90’s), but continue to think about ‘the mobile internet’ as something separate from ‘the normal internet’. It’s time to start thinking about the internet as separate from which device is used and use a device agnostic approach to online marketing. What works on mobile and tablets works on desktops too.
4. The death of free social, the rise of paid social
What initially attracted companies to Facebook and other social media platforms was that it was free. If you did it well, there was lots of business to be had. With the death of organic reach on Facebook and many other social channels, it’s time to start using social as a PR and support tool in addition to seeing social as another paid media channel (with the ROI focused campaigns that come with that).
5. Snapchat is going mainstream
Speaking about social channels, while Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and recently Periscope are all great social channels (with varying degrees of relevance for brokers), look for Snapchat to become mainstream in 2016, and so worth a look.
