Digital trends evolve every year and marketers should always be aware of the changes in order to easily adapt with emerging technologies and stay ahead in the market. This allows marketers to gain a competitive edge and develop new ways of growing their businesses, generating leads and improving the relationship with their existing customers.
Based on the digital marketing trends from the previous year, 2018 has been the year of rising augmented reality, video content, voice search and influencer marketing. To help you determine where the trajectory is heading over, I listed out 5 digital marketing trends that you can take advantage of to improve your marketing strategy and meet a desired outcome.
1. Voice Search
By 2020, 50% of all queries will be voice-based. There are mainly two types of voice search: Those that are implemented by smart speakers such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple Homepod, Google Home and Microsoft’s Cortana which give searchers immediate voice answers to their questions and those that are installed in desktops, and smartphones such as Siri and Google Assistant which display written search results.
Brands should be thinking about how to utilize voice-enabled devices to their advantage. They are affordable and offer greater capabilities than ever before while more visitors are using voice search to interact with their brands. Which means businesses should also focus their outreach efforts on using voice engine optimization and marketers should use a more natural language SEO to create content accordingly. This requires marketeres to think what their target audience may use in their voice queries as well as focus on long-tail keywords because searchers are likely to be more specific when asking a question. As a result, marketers should deliver more targeted, specific content which leads to increase their click-through rates.
2. Smarter Chat
45% of end users prefer to use Chatbots as a major means of communication in customer service. Chatbots play an important role in improving the customer experience and allow marketers to better engage with their audience - without really doing much. They offer real-time assistance to the user, dedicated support and a proactive interactions where they ask questions to understand the real problem. Another rising trend is Whatsapp Business Messaging, which has become one of the most used messaging apps worldwide according to Statista. Besides, it’s no longer restricted to personal usage; businesses are using the application on a daily basis for their daily activities.
3. Micro-Moments
As more users are processing their online activities using their smartphones, marketers need to continue to leverage micro-moments to attract their audience’s attention and fulfill their instant decisions. When a customer searches for something, looks for a nearby store, wants to finalize a task or makes a purchase, marketers should take advantage of these types of micro-moments to create targeted content and advertising.
4. Augmented and Virtual Reality Marketing
Augmented reality ads is one of the major applications that are now used by some marketers. It’s a way to bring static or unreal environments into a more realistic experience, something that would integrate the "offer" with the "reality" of the buyer. For instance, IKEAD and L'Oreal managed to improve their customer experience with virtual reality by allowing them to visualize their products before buying them. This trend is not new but is one of the most highlighted trends for 2019. AR and VR market size worldwide are expected to reach $200 billion in only 4 years.
5. Live Videos
With companies like Instagram and Youtube, live content is the fastest growing segment of internet video traffic due to the remarkable waves in the recent years. Live streaming content is effective because it’s free, takes a short time to produce while it offers a real-time user engagement, and viewers use your content based on your time not theirs. It has the ability to generate greater impressions than posts published in the newsfeed, especially if users choose to post them to their stories. Live streaming content allows marketers to engage with their leads in a quickest way possible, improve their relationship with followers, reach a broader audience and boost their social channels traffic.
Comments