Digital marketing is always evolving. Meaning it’s vital to a marketing agency’s longevity that they keep up with the best business practices and trends.
Two critical questions that are continuously being asked among marketing professionals are:
What’s new in the marketing world? And more importantly, what’s coming next?
To address these questions, we’ve compiled a list of some of the newest agency trends of 2017. From cutting back on internal business operations, to relying more heavily on marketing technology, here are several new business trends to look out for this year.
9 new business trends in 2017
1. Less money spent on internal business operations
According to the 2017 RSW/US New Year Outlook Report, most agencies (89%) are planning to invest either “somewhat” or “heavily” in their internal business operations this year — people, marketing, and sales:
new business trends investments
Although this number may seem impressive, it’s a slight decrease from previous years. In 2014, for example, 96% of agencies reported investing “somewhat” or “heavily” in their internal resources:
What’s causing this decline? Why now, do agencies feel more hesitant to invest in their own agency business operations than in years past?
The report points to three main factors to be the cause: the movement of work in-house, more work being distributed as project work, and more money being spent on marketing technology.
For instance, with marketing technology quickly on the rise, and more money being spent here (more on this below), it only makes sense that agencies will start to spend less money in other areas, such as internal marketing functions.
2. Increased spending on marketing technology
Previously, all marketing teams and agencies endured the same common issue: fragmented, slow, inefficient processes — “The Design Review Drag,” or DRD, as we like to call it. But now, with marketing technology — a combination of marketing and information technology — teams can reduce DRD, and experience better, faster, and more fluid communication.