Digital marketing is a broad field that is continually changing. The strategies that worked a year ago or even a month ago may not work today, which is the reason why the modern day marketers need to update their knowledge continually.
Digital marketers who do not update their knowledge fail to perform efficiently throughout their career. It is a kind of the same thing in many other industries, but the technology sector is one of the fastest changing industries.
Top Digital Marketing Trends to that You Must be Aware in 2019
There is an estimation that the organizations worldwide will spend around $333.25 billion this year, which is 17.6% rise in comparison to 2018 global digital ad spending. Let’s check out the latest trends that will allow you to maximize your return on ad spending.
Image Source: Digital Vidya
Chatbots
According to the study, over 80% of modern customers expect an answer to their marketing question immediately. We all know that it is not possible to employ a customer service representative 24*7 for small businesses. However, the thing is that most of the questions are common, and we can program chatbots to answer them.
The customers have a positive impression of a brand if they get the response to their questions instantly. Due to that reason, all major tech giants like Facebook, Whatsapp, along with Uber, is now deploying advanced chatbots.
Make sure that you have a chatbot that can answer frequently asked questions, and transfer it to a human if it cannot give a decent reply to its users.
Influencer Marketing
According to the recent finding, micro-influencers are far more effective than a celebrity. A celebrity does not have a close relationship with their followers, but the micro-influencers know and understand their followers. They even know the names of their followers, which make them feel important.
The social media influencers are excellent when it comes to convincing their loyal followers to purchase the product. Also, you do not need to pay a hefty sum of money to micro-influencers to promote your product/service. At times, you can only give them a sample or a small commission to make them advertise your offer.
The impressive return on investment from the influencer marketing is leading companies to invest more and more in influencer marketing. One report claims that influencer marketing can produce 11 times more the money you spend in the campaign.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is critical, even for small organizations in today’s digital era. Your customers expect relevant emails and online messages from you, and it is difficult to make a sell without building a relationship with your audience, as there is intense competition today.
Image Source: Neil Patel
You may need to deploy a lot of tools for automating your marketing activities, as you need to create a sales funnel, segment your customer, send out emails, follow up, and more. However, there are tools like HubSpot and Infusionsoft, which include a lot of essential tools in a single package for marketers to utilize.
Video Marketing
The video sharing site like YouTube is now a significant player in the social media industry. Also, videos get more engagement on sites like Facebook. Cisco predicts that around 80% of the internet traffic will be video by 2021 (Source). It indicates a massive demand for online videos, and you can capitalize on it.
Today, anyone can create a video without investing a lot of time in video production and spending a lot on expensive pieces of equipment and skilled professionals.
Many online users expect a video from a brand, and they are more likely to take action after watching a video, which is increasing the popularity of video marketing.
An explainer video is quite popular among both small and large businesses, as it is cheaper to create, and it is incredibly powerful in convincing the people. It can easily break down sophisticated concepts into simple pieces.
Here is an example of an explainer video:
Video Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTTGALaRZoc
Personalization and User Experience
The user experience is a separate subject matter in the field of marketing today due to its growing level of complication and importance. Here is a resource that will help you understand about user experience in detail.
The recent study found that businesses lose $75 billion every year due to poor customer service, as people are likely to switch brands when they do not receive excellent customer support.
You can now get access to the data like buying history, browsing history, and so on. It is essential to utilize and feed what customers want to see and read. By investing your time in personalization and user experience, you will see a rise in your marketing outcome.
Smart Devices
The devices like Alexa, Siri, and other intelligent assistants is changing the whole landscape of how customers search and find their answers. The people are getting addicted to these smart devices. The study shows that voice assistants are not only getting popular in the developed world, but also many parts of Asia.
Image Source: Tech the Lead
The brands should now focus on voice search and optimize their content based on voice query and natural conversational words. You should research voice search optimization and implement it as soon as possible.
The growing importance of AI
Artificial Intelligence has impacted a lot of industries, and marketing is one of the sectors that AI has hugely impacted. It automates repetitive tasks, and with AI, marketers can automate the interaction with customers.
AI can also give you critical data like buying trends, search patterns, and so on, which will significantly affect your outcome. It is crucial for companies to invest in AI in today’s time. Many marketers have now realized the power of AI, and the majority of them are starting to invest in AI tools.
Check out the list of marketing AI tools, which are quite affordable. Keep in mind that you do not need to invest in all of them right away when you are starting. Make the priority and decide what you need the most for kickstarting your project.
Paid advertisement is now a necessity
It is getting more and more challenging to rely solely on free traffic in today’s time. Facebook is restricting the organic reach, and it is getting worse every single year. The primary aim of social media platforms and search engine networks is to make you spend more and more on the advertisement.
The digital advertising spending is increasing, and to compete with other companies and get to your potential customers early, you need to emphasize on paid traffic sources. You can expect the cost of reaching out to people to get higher in upcoming times, which mean that you need to improve your strategies continually.
I know that most of you are business owners who are reading this article, and you may be wondering how you can allocate time to update your knowledge.
Thankfully, there are plenty of top-notch digital marketing agencies that can handle the operation of this department for you. With that said, you must make sure that they have a solid track record before handing them with a contract.