As 2018 comes to a close, a savvy marketer will
be looking ahead to the upcoming year and developing a digital marketing
strategy to stay ahead of the competition and boost brand awareness.
With so many changes that occurred at the end of 2018
,
it’s important to revamp your strategy and account for current trends,
strategies, and technologies to maximize your efforts.
Here are the biggest digital marketing trends
leading into 2019:
Topic Clusters
Search engines are now favoring clusters of
content that surround a particular topic, as opposed to keywords. If you want
to stay at the top of the search rankings, you need to develop these content
clusters that link to one another.
To do this effectively, you need a broad topic
outline that covers the most pertinent subcategories. Then, the surrounding
content should have specific, long-tail keywords that connect back to the
original outline with the same keyword.
This boosts your overall performance since any
page performing well will result in the entire cluster performing well. This
moves you further and further up the rankings.
In addition, choosing topics in which you have
proven subject matter expertise or knowledge will give you an even better
ranking, since search engines are now prioritizing the value and relevance to
the user.
Shorter Video Ads
Internet users have much shorter attention spans
than they once did, so it’s possible to lose a viewer with a long video that
would’ve worked a few years ago. Audiences tend to engage with shorter ads,
such as under 10 seconds, so you’re also getting more for your efforts.
Businesses are more likely to use shorter video
ads in the coming year, so you want to work these into your strategy to ensure
you stay with the current trends.
Chatbots
Chatbots are becoming more popular, due to their
ability to address basic customer service needs and help businesses interact
with more customers. Chatbots also create two-way communication between your
audience and your business, which improves your customer satisfaction and your
response time to messages. Both of these aspects will boost your search engine
ranking.
Chatbots have a reputation for providing negative
user experience, leading many businesses to hesitate to include them in their
marketing strategy. Overall, however, customers are pleased with the use of
chatbots and the ability to access information 24/7, so there’s no reason to
hold back on this trend.
Chatbots also operate in Facebook messenger
often, which has a click-through rate of 80 percent. This offers incredible
potential for how a chatbot can lead to more sales for your business.
Blockchain
Blockchain is quickly becoming a necessity for most
industries, but one of its most overlooked potentials is in marketing.
With the poor attention span of many internet
users, it’s more difficult to draw attention from content and keep your
audience engaged. Blockchain can be used to incentivize customers to watch
advertisements and engage in some way, whether it’s sharing, tagging, liking or
commenting, through a Basic Attention Token (BAT). This technology breaks up
the monopoly of digital ads to trade on the value of online attention and
engagement and reward the audience that’s willing to interact.
Influencer Marketing
Social media influencers are achieving more
influence in recent years, gaining significant followings on multiple social
media platforms. Social media isn’t new, of course, but its reach is continuing
to grow. Positioning yourself with the right social media influencer can make
all the difference.
In the past, businesses were able to have
influencer endorse products openly, but consumers are becoming more aware and
are less receptive to this marketing tactic. Because of this, a subtle approach
is needed to gain the benefits of a social media influencer.
Businesses with successful social media
influence develop mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with
influencers, so both receive more organic endorsements. These relationships not
only provide you with a steady outlet for your promotions, but it also makes
influencers less likely to abandon your brand.
Transparency
Fields like advertising, marketing and sales
have a negative connotation, with the belief that these representatives are
only out for their own interests, using deceptive and aggressive tactics to get
sales.
As a result, consumers are more skeptical and reluctant,
as well as being more difficult to impress. The easy access to reviews and
testimonials also gives them more information about a product or service’s
strengths, and more importantly, its weaknesses.
Now, businesses are addressing this issue with
transparency, openly admitting its own shortcomings, faults and negative
feedback to show loyalty and dedication to customers. They’re also encouraging
two-way communication on a public forum to not only build more trust with a
specific customer but also to show their efforts to other potential customers.
Mobile Optimization
Though it may seem obvious, mobile optimization
is one of the most important aspects of your digital marketing strategy to
address in 2019. Though many businesses already work toward mobile-friendly
sites, more and more users are switching to mobile. Google is even prioritizing
mobile-friendly sites in search rankings.
With so many users going mobile, you can’t
afford to lose a follower because of poor optimization. Small issues, such as
links too close together, a poor zoom function or text that’s too small can be
all it takes for a customer to abandon your site and move on to the next.
Be sure to check your site’s mobile user experience
and make any adjustments you need to create a flawless user experience.
Voice Search
Voice search is on the rise, thanks to personal
assistance devices like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri.
Nearly one-third of the 3.5 billion searches performed each day are voice
searches, which use natural human speech patterns to determine the searcher’s
intent.
If you think you can use the same strategy for
voice search, however, think again. Voice search differs from a desktop or
mobile search in that you get fewer results. If you want to be one of the sites
that comes up, you need to tailor your SEO strategy for voice search.
Voice recognition technology is only expected to
improve and become more popular as well, which has the potential to disrupt
marketing altogether. User experience and SEO have been the main focus of most
marketing campaigns, but these aspects become irrelevant with a short search
and no search results screen.
While there’s no clear answer to tailoring your
strategy for voice search, a bit of brainstorming to understand the nuances of
the human voice. How users tend to phrase voice searches and what types of
phrases are prioritized is worth your effort.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence has become a hot topic
in marketing recently, and though many are still unsure of its applications and
limitations, it’s starting to find its place in marketing campaigns.
A widely implemented form of AI is chatbots,
which improve customer service with lower costs and fewer resources. They’re
also quicker than humans and offer targeted, personalized services to any
customer at any time.
On a larger scale, the same capabilities of AI
that make chatbots so effective can be applied to many aspects of marketing,
such as forecasting, personalization, segmentation, and data analysis. The
possibilities are truly endless, so it’s best to get on board before AI takes
the marketing world by storm.
Final Thoughts
Marketing trends come and go, some of which
reshape the industry and others that may just fade into the background. If you
want to be successful in your marketing efforts year after year, it’s important
to be able to identify the upcoming digital marketing trends and stay ahead of
the competition.