Do you know what are the aspects or trends of graphic design and digital marketing that you should already be controlling?
I always say it … There are certain times of the year that we find more conducive to venturing into new projects, moments in which, for example, we decided to launch into the world of digital marketing.
Without a doubt, for me one of those moments is the beginning of a new year.
I guess you’ll agree with this statement, and if not, the truth, for what I want to tell you in this article I do not care, because I’m sure that you’ll get a lot of clear about marketing trends in 2016 , or you’ll learn something new about design that you did not know until now.
Just if you start or if you have been working on the Internet for a while, you will have to keep up to date on concepts, trends and other technicalities to keep pace.
And the most important thing: to keep up with your competition.
So, I do not want to get too wrapped up and before you have finished reading my introduction, decide to go where you came from.
I just want you to know that this post is a work of curation of content resulting from everything that I have been learning in recent months and sharing in my own blog and that today I have decided to share here with you.
Main advantages of being up to date in Digital Marketing
As I said, putting your batteries and updating is essential if you want your brand or business to rebound in visibility or at least stay afloat.
In the digital age we are overexposed to information and not everything is 100% reliable, much less all is of quality.
Thus:
“Those who manage to capture the essential information and apply it correctly, are those who only position themselves and achieve successful results.”
Being up to date with the latest marketing trends and what moves through the networks:
You will give a more professional and current image.
You will learn a lot from other colleagues.
You will achieve better results in your projects.
You can implement a solid content strategy.
You will differentiate yourself from your competition.
You will identify new business opportunities.
You will detect strategic errors.
You will position yourself as a benchmark in your sector.
You will attract already loyal customers.
You will increase the chance of getting more engagement.
That being the case, you will agree with me that it is important to be well informed, right?
Whenever I do not fully understand a concept, I investigate until I find the simplest and most disaggregated definition.
Sometimes I also like to relate two concepts to clearly understand a digital technique or practice step by step and thus, provide valuable content to my readers (something I highly recommend if you have a blog).
An example could be my post about the importance of Call To Action in Inbound Marketing .
Essential digital concepts if you work online
Working on the Internet, be it in the sector that is (have a website, a blog or an online store) you will come across terms that will sometimes be familiar but you will need to dig a little deeper.
You will also face others that you have not heard in your life.
I am aware that there are many other interesting terms to define but, I have made my own selection by categories of fundamental concepts in digital marketing.
These are the ones that I have been developing in many of my posts or learned thanks to my guest writers.
Digital Marketing and Social Media
Outbound Marketing: Advertising technique based on the capture through the interruption and the direct message to the user, seeking to reach the subconscious in an involuntary way.
Inbound Marketing: It is the opposite concept to the “outbound”, updated to the new era of digital communication.
This is based on the objective of capturing the user voluntarily through attraction strategies.
Lead: These are the users who make a conversion and provide some information, such as your email through the subscription to a form.
Call to Action: Or call to action, refers to the different buttons and messages of attraction that we use to make the user a participant of our web content and where they are instructed to perform a certain action (of their own volition) and in accordance with our objectives .
Content Marketing: Through the generation of relevant information and value, with this attraction technique it is possible to reach more users and increase the possibility of customer loyalty.
Newsletter: Also called newsletter, are regular communications that brands send their subscribers (prior consent), to inform them of the latest news and content of interest.
Graphic Design and Personal Brand
Graphic design : It is the graphic discipline, as well as visual, that conceptualizes ideas and transmits them through visual experiences with their own character.
Personal brand : This concept encompasses all the elements that make up the professional essence and make it different from the rest.
Logo: It is often confused with the image of a brand, but in reality the word “logo” comes from the Greek and means “word”, so only the construction of words that form a brand name (without an icon) is considered logo ).
We can break down 3 more concepts:
Isotype : This would be the part that refers to the logo icon.
Imagotype: It is the logo-isotype combination. As a whole, the icon and text are differentiated in significance.
Isologo: Logo-isotype combination but, in this case, as an indivisible single element.
Infographic : It is a communication element that summarizes and outlines a lot of information in a small space thanks to the use of icons and visual elements.
Storytelling : It is the strategic marketing area that is responsible for moving through the story of a commercial story with emotional significance and connection with users.
Web positioning and other technicalities
SEO: U search engine optimization, is a concept that encompasses all those techniques or strategies that are made to achieve better positions in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. These techniques can be applied “on page” or “off page”.
SEO On Page : This concept, meanwhile, refers only to SEO techniques that are applied within a web to achieve greater visibility in search engines.
SEO Off Page : The techniques that are performed “off page” or out of page, have more to do with the external success generated by the content of a web, for which it manages to be linked and named by other sites, although there are techniques such as the link building that allows to “force” the naturalness of this process.
Link Building: Here external link techniques that try to “manipulate” the algorithms to achieve better positions in a forced way would come into play.
Duplicate content : When a content is considered as a duplicate it is because it appears exactly the same in two or more different URLs, being quickly identified by the search engines and penalized for it.
Sitemap .xml: It is a document that collects all the URLs of a web, forming a “map” of its architecture that guides the search engines.
Digital Marketing Trends
There are those who do not like to use the term “tendency” when talking about brand image, graphic design or digital marketing strategies but I always make a point here:
“Following trends does not mean losing authenticity, it’s simply a way of modifying small nuances to convey current events, safeguarding the essence.”
Design innovations for your brand image
This little reflection that I have just shared comes just as a result of having spoken in one of my latest ebooks about trends in logo design.
While it is true that through the design of a logo we try to convey the essence and identity of a business or brand, from time to time, it is important to update it, because it can also become obsolete.
As it happens in the world of fashion, the graphic design sector must know very well how colors and shapes are represented today.
For this year 2016, and since the last months of 2015, we have observed up to 8 clear trends in the design of logos that you can not miss if you want to know if your brand is up to date (be careful, because not all can be combined between yes):
Flat design
Originally it has been applied in web design but the novelty is that more and more we see logos of flat design, free of shadows and refills.
Typographic design
It is increasingly common to see brands that base their corporate identity at 99% on the name and typography, practically canceling the iconic.
Overlap
This trend is quite original, and is based on superimposing or messing up the different elements of the logo.
Two colors
The application of only two colors in the design of logos is another taste sample tending toward simplicity and clarity.
Vintage style
The retro style we see a lot in business related to restoration (such as pastry shops), because they convey a very familiar and lifelong essence.
Craft design
Freehand designs in logos have also been seen a lot in 2015. This year, it will continue to be a trend to see brands that represent their image with handcrafted elements.
3D effect
This tendency may well be combined with the flat design if one works without borders or shading, with the difference that the visual result simulates the effect in 3 dimensions.
Weathered effect
This is, perhaps, the trend that most breaks with the previous ones, since it could hardly be combined with the typographic or artisanal style.
It is based on the application of colors that go from higher to lower intensity (or vice versa).
Given these trends, what if we go to see the trends that are applied in web design?
Trends and tips for designing a web page
Although the style of a website must always be consistent with the design that has been applied to the logo and the corporate image (respecting typography and colors) there are also certain techniques that apply a lot today.
If you are thinking of launching your new website or blog, or simply want to give a new approach to the existing one, keep in mind that there are requirements that you can not let go, such as having a responsive design.
“While the widespread and growing use of mobile devices and tablets to surf the Internet will last, responsive web design will be, more than a trend, a fundamental requirement.”
In addition to this blunt statement, I would like to mention other common characteristics that we can find in the current web design:
Flat and / or minimalist design
Simplicity has invaded the image of brands, from their web appearance to their corporate identity, avoiding eccentricities.
The flat design in 2016 will be starred more than ever by the clarity and empty spaces, betting on the iconography and the characteristic typographies.
Full-width images
More and more value is given to simplicity and, therefore, the information must be displayed in the most intuitive and visual way possible.
For that, many websites use images at full width even at home, generating a sense of impact and giving more weight to the visual.
Use of storytelling and infographics
Brands tell their story not only through advertisements, but also through their corporate pages.
A very current trend is the webs designed vertically in infographic format, in which the history of the brand is shown (from its business philosophy, to its successes and failures).
Application of the parallax effect
It is a web design technique that shows the images by “scrolling down” at a different speed than the contents appear.
This tendency is usually combined with the application of the full-screen background image, giving higher priority over written content.
Geometric patterns and iconography
The webs, in addition to clean of refills, usually contain elements and symbols composed symmetrically.
It is also very common to play with symmetry as well as with the use of symbols and icons that give an ordered structure.
Ghost buttons
Next to the icons, we also have these mysterious and popular buttons, which are nothing more than links to other web content that are displayed when you scroll through sections in full screen.
Some things you should know about SEO
Before finishing and since we are in SEMrush, I did not want to leave you without mentioning some new features that are also intuited in the field of SEO positioning and that I consider very remarkable.
Without encouragement to give me understood in a field that is not strictly mine, clarify that these 3 points I owe to one of my guest writers, Alberto Estrada :
Responsive design is also essential for Google
Since April 2015 it is known that Google with its “mobile friendly” algorithm no longer passes one.
Improving the search experience and the consumption of information through mobile phones has become a factor in ranking.
Therefore, websites that have a responsive design are awarded in positioning.
The presence on Twitter as a factor of visibility
Thanks to the agreements between Google and Twitter we can expect that if our brand has a strong presence in the social network it will also do so in the search results of the Internet.
Voice searches as SEO trend
One of the latest algorithms announced from Mountain View, is the so-called Rank Brain, which tries to go one step further in the area of semantic searches.
With this, Google wants to improve voice searches, to consider them a third signal in the positioning (after the content and links).
Conclusions
Either at the time of launching a new project or to be able to survive in the turbulent online world and stand out from the competition, knowing what moves in the networks and digital marketing trend is, at least, essential.
Not only that, you also have to be up-to-date in concepts and technicalities because you never know when we will need to apply them in our business.
In this article I have talked about some of the concepts that we most often use when we are dedicated to online marketing.
From those strictly focused on advertising and Social Networks, to those that have to do with design and search engine positioning.
On the other hand, remember that it is important that you update the image you project with your brand on the Internet.