As this year's marketing gets underway, we want to alert multi-channel marketers to three important 2017 digital trends recently cited by digital marketing hub ClickZ author Rebecca Sentance. Trend One: Marketers need to go beyond "mobile friendly" to a "mobile first" strategy given current search trends. Think mobile is over-hyped? Sentance asks you to consider the following: Search-engine giant Google has removed the "right-hand rail" from the search results page and moved to only displaying paid ads at the top and bottom, making the main search results layout more adaptive to mobile; Google continues to strengthen a mobile-friendly ranking system that penalizes websites that aren’t mobile-optimized; and Google announced in October that it would further favor mobile search by splitting off desktop and mobile into separate search indexes, with mobile as its primary index. Trend Two: marketers need to embrace visual elements and visually focused platforms for more effective social media performance. Trend Three: Marketers should stop assuming social media is mainly a tool for brand and traffic building rather than direct sales. For the facts driving the last two trends, read our complete post at http://www.acculistusa.com/blog/
