What makes inbound marketing such an exciting, challenging, and rewarding field for us is that it's constantly changing. Advertising has always had to keep up with the times, but times these days are changing more quickly than ever before.

An online marketing agency that uses techniques more than a year or two old is already out-of-date. To keep pace with today's fast-moving technological environment, a marketer has to be on top of the wave, ready to change strategies as markets shift.

With the new year just getting underway, this is a great opportunity to discuss some of the ways inbound marketing is going to be changing in the year ahead.

Keeping Up With The Times In Modern Inbound Marketing

Human-Focused Websites

Changes made to Google's search engine algorithms in the past couple years have greatly depreciated keywords in importance, aside from Pay-Per-Click buys. Alongside this, users are changing how they use search engines. People aren't searching with keywords, they're searching with natural-language questions. After all, many now use a voice interface as their search tool.

Inbound-focused websites now have to be human-focused as well. Quality content is key, providing the answers and information they want.

Along with this, improved methods in consumer targeting are allowing us to ever more-precisely fine tune that content to speak directly to your customers. Relationship Marketing now goes hand-in-hand with content marketing, looking to retain and strengthen the bonds with existing customers rather than consistently looking to pull in new ones.

Competitor-Aware SEO

Online searches are now conducted in "micro-moments," as Google terms it. Thanks to the growing ubiquity of always-on devices, interactions with the Internet are no longer "sessions." They often only take a few seconds, conducted in between other activities the user is engaged in.

This means SEO and inbound have even less time to grab a user's attention. When the vast majority of searchers click the very first item on the search results page, a successful business has to get there first ahead of the competition.

At WSI we specialize in analyzing competitors strategies and search positioning to craft SEO strategies that can work in mico-moments.

Integrated Holistic Social Strategies

Social is no longer an "add-on" to your inbound marketing. With social now one of the primary ways people interact online, social media should be richly integrated into your overall online marketing strategies. This is reaching out to your customers where they are, and seeking out target markets within the millions of online communities available.

Social also offers plenty of opportunity to repurpose and retarget your content, helping ensure the most-qualified leads are exposed to your best materials, no matter where they're spending time online. Robust social integration paired with flexible smart content brings far greater returns from your content investment.

Future-Focused Mobile Support

Mobile is everywhere, and now wearables aren't far behind. An estimated 28% of online consumers will have a wearable device by the end of 2016... and full Virtual Reality systems, such as the Facebook-sponsored Oculus Rift, will be right behind that.

Your content and inbound webpages need to be structured so that they can go anywhere, onto any device, no matter how the customer is using or wearing it. Smart content and app investments now will bring big returns in the years to come, when you're already prepared for new technology as it happens.

With over a decade in online marketing and tens of thousands of clients served around the world, we at WSI understand the challenges of keeping up with modern marketing. For killer new strategies and future-focused implementation, contact us today to discuss your needs.