DENVER, Jan. 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- The Growth Co., a leading digital strategy consultancy released today an infographic explaining the key trends that will define marketing in 2016. Inbound marketing, strategic distribution, and automation top the list of marketing activities affecting businesses this year.
Here are the top 11 trends you need to know about in 2016.
1. Content and inbound strategies will be the foundation for winning in marketing across all industries, even old-school B2B markets.
Inbound marketing will continue to be the winning play for businesses that want sustainable growth, and this will be the year that late adopters take notice and take action.
Google Trends shows search volume for "inbound marketing" picking up steam. See our infographic for the chart.
No matter what industry you're in, inbound is the future of marketing, at least for now.
2. Content may still be king, but distribution is queen. And she will wear the pants.

Advertising guru David Ogilvy famously said: "On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar."
The spirit of Ogilvy's statement is still true -- you definitely need a great headline. But Ogilvy made his statement before the Internet, before 2 million blogs were written every day.
In this new reality, we need a new equation: plan on allocating about 50 cents of every content marketing dollar to distribution.
3. You won't be able to compete in digital marketing without high-quality content and marketing automation.
Great content and a marketing automation system used to be enough to make you stand out. Today, they're just table stakes.
If your content isn't great, it won't get read. More content is generated in one second than a person could consume in a month.
On the automation side, more companies are adopting marketing automation technologies. Surveys consistently show that top-performing companies are more likely to use marketing automation (including 59% of Fortune 500 companies).
To compete in 2016, you'll need high-quality content and some sort of marketing automation.
4. More companies will focus on owning the relationship with their audience by acting like publishers and building communities.
With the overwhelming amount of content available, the relationship between a company and its target audience is more important than ever before.
More companies will create entertaining content and act like traditional media publishers. RedBull CEO Dietrich Mateschitz said: "Brands need to take the phrase 'acting like a publisher' literally." This means creating journalism-quality content that their customers actually want to read.
Firms will continue building communities that deliver value to their target audience. Some of the most successful businesses of the past two decades have grown out of user communities. TripAdvisor started as a review website, but since they own the eyeballs they're quickly shifting to become more of an online travel agency by selling hotels. The lesson here is that companies need to build communities that deliver value to their target audience, and then use those communities to promote their products.
5. eCommerce will become the next digital race for B2B firms. Those that get there first will win long-term clients.
B2B eCommerce is expected to reach $1.13 trillion by 2020. This will be driven by what's known as "channel shifting," which means more business buyers will buy from suppliers online.
Currently, most B2B firms don't think they need to sell online because their customers still buy direct through sales personnel.
In 2016 and beyond, we will see more purchasers buying online for the cost savings and convenience.
6. Advertising will continue to get creepier with smaller firms using retargeting.
You know those banner ads that seem to follow you online? You visited a company's website once, and now it's like they're advertising directly to you?
Well, they are. In the marketing arena, this is known as retargeting. It's creepy, but also very effective: 90% of marketers believe that retargeting is as good as paid search.
Thanks to technology, retargeting is easier than ever before, and small businesses can get in on the action.
So, no matter what you think about those ads that follow you, be prepared to see a lot more of them.
7. Facebook will be the fastest-growing social media platform for B2B advertising.
Facebook advertising spend is projected to reach $27 billion dollars in 2017 and it's no surprise as to why. It works.
Most B2B firms think Facebook is for consumers only, but that's not true. Over the last year, some of our lowest cost per lead campaigns have come from Facebook.
That's why we expect social advertising to offer unprecedented marketing opportunities in the B2B space.
8. Marketers will stop talking about traffic and start focusing on what matters.
For a long time, digital marketers dealt in vanity metrics -- page views, Twitter followers, downloads. But you can have 50,000 monthly visits to your website and still not sell a thing.
There are really only three metrics that matter: leads, sales, and customer acquisition cost.
9. Email will continue to deliver the best ROI on your marketing spend.
While most firms will fumble around with highly designed email templates, simple emails written in plain English will continue to deliver the best return on investment.
Since email marketing is so effective, most companies' marketing strategy should be centered on growing targeted email lists.
And now for the bad trends that will define 2016:
10. The majority of marketing agencies will continue to focus on production and not on results.
Being results-oriented involves tracking and analyzing marketing data. It's difficult, but it's worth it.
11. Thousands of businesses will write a handful of blogs without any marketing strategy and will incorrectly conclude that content marketing doesn't work.
Many business will write a couple of blog posts, and wait for leads start rolling in. They'll wait a long time, and they'll decide blogging doesn't work. They're wrong.