When it comes to business, this is the season of predictions and forecasting. While you are preparing your marketing plan for 2016, here are a few of the trends that could mean a lot for your small business.

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1) Go Mobile

It is a fact that mobile devices are nowadays everywhere. In cafes, riding a train or the bus, in airports and at restaurants, everyone is using their mobile phones. Let’s have a look at the stats:

• According to Global Web Index, 80% of the internet searches are performed on smartphones.
• The Internet Trends reports that in 2014 2.1 billion people owned smartphones everywhere in the world.
• The US Consumer Device Preference Report from MovableInk says that 66% of all email in the United States is read on smartphones.

This is precious information for your small business. It means that your website should be mobile responsive and that you offer a mobile application that allows customers to interact with your products or services through their favourite mobile devices. Also, email marketing campaigns should be mobile-friendly as well.

2) Automation 

Email automation tools have always eased the marketer’s work. These tools make it easier for users to spend time and therefore, money, on “grunt work” such as the creation and distribution of emails. This way, the marketer will invest more time in creating high quality, engaging content for those emails. Marketing automation makes it easier for your entire marketing campaign to go on smoothly, extending these benefits to your entire marketing program.

This way, through marketing automation, it will be easier for you to segment mailing lists, track the response rates, create your emails and make a schedule for them, post on social media and even calculate the conversions. For small businesses, where marketing departments are usually one or two people, marketing automation allows you to achieve more without having to increase the budget.

3) Content Marketing Will Always be King

Practically everything you are doing online is considered content marketing. People’s appetite for useful content continues to grow. It seems readers respond to content that provides them useful news and value. More than this, search engine algorithms are created to reward high quality content with high positions in search results. According to the CMO Council, 90% of Americans say that custom content is useful, while 78% feel the companies providing them high quality content cares about them.

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Related: How to Establish a Killer Online Presence in 5 Simple Steps