If you’re reading this guide, you are probably ready to take your company’s marketing to the next level. New marketing trends and strategies are evolving in the current high-tech, Internet-connected era and businesses now need to use them to succeed in their efforts because what worked for you last year may not work this year. This year digital advertising market is expected to hit $94.9 billion up from $43.0 billion in 2015 in Asia Pacific. Brands are spending on their marketing sector where consumers are most engaged: namely online and mobile.
We are sharing with you top need-to-know trends across programmatic, mobile and e-commerce, to help marketers stay up to speed with a rapidly evolving digital advertising sector. The basic principles of marketing like creating powerful messages to attract your ideal customers still remain. However, the channel or method of delivery of your message now include a full game of SEO optimization, customer acquisition, retention, engagement, pay-per-click, social media, search advertising, and more.
Businesses that stay up to date with changing marketing trends continue to gain more customers and profits as slow movers get left behind.
Here are six key digital marketing trends for 2019 to take your business to another level.
Artificial intelligence will definitely be doing its fair share in the marketing world with its limitless possibilities this year. Businesses adopting Artificial intelligence in 2019 will be able to save costs and accelerate growth, getting an edge over their competitors. AI will take over the world or at least the world’s simpler jobs as AI is now powering customer segmentation, retargeting, push notifications, click tracking, even creating content. Artificial intelligence also offers information and tips to users by getting into conversations. According to Gartner, 25% of customer service will use chatbot technology by 2020, up from less than 2% in 2017. AI can analyze consumer behavior and search patterns, utilizing data from social media platforms and blog posts to help businesses understand how users and customers find their products and services. For example, Facebook messenger bots (which we’ll talk more about later) can help you automate and optimize your customer service.
Importance of including video into your digital marketing strategy in 2019 can be understood by the facts that 72% of businesses have said video has improved their conversion rate and 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions.
It’s not just YouTube, to witness higher engagement with your video marketing, you can make a video post or start a live broadcast on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. Live video is gaining popularity, with a large number of businesses using it for interviews, product demos and “behind the scenes” glimpses of events, life in the office, how products are made, etc. With ever-decreasing costs of film equipment and the increasingly high-quality smartphone cameras, businesses and marketers are heading for personalized video messages rather than phone calls or emails, which is called the 1:1 video approach.
YouTube and other videos are displayed in the SERPs, so video SEO is becoming much more important – like using text overlays and closed captions, in addition to your description, title and file names. Check out this guide to learn more about YouTube SEO. And 360-degree video content, which allows for a more interactive experience, is on the rise – just look for the circular symbol in the top left corner to start sliding the moving image left or right as it is playing.
People generally trust consumer opinions over corporate statements and that is what makes influencers a very effective marketing tool that works to attract customers. Influencer marketing is a type of word-of-mouth marketing that focuses on using Influencers who can be anyone from celebrities and Instagram or YouTube stars to well-known bloggers and journalists who help spread the word about businesses or products through their social media channels. Influencer marketing is convenient for the businesses and products to reach large group of consumers where you just pay the influencers to get out the word for you to their huge following by usually running campaigns in collaborations between brands and influencers.
Old and new marketing tools are combined in modern day influencer marketing. The idea of the celebrity endorsement is taken and placed into a modern day content-driven marketing campaign. Influencers, unlike celebrities, can be anywhere. They can be anyone. An influencer can be a popular fashion photographer on Instagram, or a well-read cybersecurity blogger who tweets, or a respected marketing executive on LinkedIn. What makes them influential is their large followings on the web and social media. Within any industry, there are influential people—you just have to find them. They are easily recognized by their hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of followers, and that’s the target audience you’re after.
Snapchat was the first social app to come out with the concept of “My Story,” this concept gained so much popularity that it led Instagram and Facebook to introduce this feature as well, and now YouTube has revealed their own story format, “Reels.”
Ever since these social media “Stories” feature has become important format of digital marketing to consider for marketers in their marketing strategy. The way social media stories have gained so much popularity in so much less time, it is an intelligent act to make use of its live video feature as well to promote engagement and brand awareness.
Since stories disappear after a set period of time, this is a great opportunity for marketers to make good use of FOMO (fear of missing out). You can feature your employees in the Stories, show the story behind the making of a product, ask for reviews about your products and services or get creative like Huda Beauty does while launching any of her new products.
Programmatic advertising is automated ad buying using Artificial Intelligence so more specific audiences can be targeted. This fast and efficient ad automation cuts down costs to acquire customers and conversion rate becomes higher. An example of programmatic ad buying is real-time bidding or auctions.
This new trend in digital marketing is definitely on the rise in 2019 as it is estimated to have near about 90% of programmatic digital displays ads in U.S. by 2020. Creative advertising can powerfully become all the more relevant to users with the vast amounts of data which will lead to ad adapting factors like location, device, weather, time, and demographics.
In fact programmatic customization has now become like a second nature in the world of digital marketing. It allow teams to improve their performance and provide more suitability with personalized messaging. One of the main benefits of the technology behind this is that it retrieves a lot of quick feedback, which allows marketers to modify creative in real time, and to change what’s in front of consumers’ eyes at a fast rate.
This AI-based technology will continue to be an important part of digital marketing in 2019. Chatbots talk with the customers and visitors on your site through instant messaging to chat in real-time at whatever time of the day or night. Near about 1.4 billion of people interact with chatbots daily and 80% of witty businesses are already using or plan to use chatbots by 2020. And it is estimated that by 2022, chatbots will help businesses save over $8 billion per annum, especially in the banking and healthcare industries.
Chatbots are responsive, give answers promptly, accurately recall your entire buying history, and never lose patience. This is the reason as to why many customers prefer interacting with chatbots instead of humans. These virtual assistants render exceptionally good customer service, meeting customers’ expectations and automating repetitive tasks while letting you to focus on more important work.
Uber makes the use of chatbot technology to communicate with customers. Chatbots have made made it easier for Uber and their customers to hire cars even on Facebook Messenger, from Slack or via Google Maps. Passengers can use the menu to choose the type of ride, make a request, track the location of the car, send friends a time estimate of their arrival, and even make payment.
Testing your products to see if it is up to your expectations before making any commitments can make your marketing very strong. You can completely get rid of most of the risk that comes along when deciding to buy your product for the first time. Using virtual reality to release your product ensures that there’s no risk on your prospect’s part and shows that you are ahead of your competitors. According to eMarketer, the figure of 48.1 Americans who experience augmented reality at least once per month is expected to rise to 54.4 million in 2019.
2019 is going to be about more desirable customer experience with personalization, automation and AI-powered technology. So, to increase conversions in the coming year and to stay ahead of your competitors in 2019, you’ll need to get better at producing custom, conversational content, particularly audio and video content, which you will share with your better-targeted audience.
Umar Rahman is professional Digital Marketing trainer and runs Digital Marketing Institute in Kolkata, India. Apart from that he also runs Digital Marketing company in Kolkata called UNA webtech. He has been working as well as providing training on Digital Marketing for last 15 years+.
