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Digital Marketing Trends: What to Expect for the Coming Year | DigitalMediaThoughts.com
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Digital Marketing Trends: What to Expect for the Coming Year

digital marketing trends

For businesses and entrepreneurs, staying up to date with what’s going on in the world of digital marketing is essential to success.

If you’re not employing the most innovative tactics, it’s only a matter of time before you start getting buried by your competition. In fact, resistance to change is one of the primary reasons why people fail in their digital marketing endeavors.

Digital marketing trends come and go rather quickly. That’s why you need to keep your finger on the pulse of this competitive industry.

To help you out, we’re highlighting some of the top trends in digital marketing for the coming year.

Chatbots

Providing a seamless customer experience to your clients is essential today. With so much technology at work in the customer support landscape, people are now used to a high level of service.

Chatbots have been around for years and continue to grow in popularity. This trend will remain healthy through 2018.

If you’re unfamiliar with how chatbots work, it’s best to think of them as an instant response mechanism ready to facilitate interaction between you and your clients. If your customers have questions or need help with a product or service, chatbots can assist in seconds.

However, they’re not only effective for handling support issues. They can also help boost engagement with potential customers and increase conversion.

By launching a website or Facebook chatbot, you can create an immediate connection with your target audience. This increases the chance they’ll further explore your services.

Live Video

Video marketing has proven to be a highly effective way to reach your target audience. In fact, 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.

In the next year, however, live video will become more prominent. This will allow businesses the opportunity to establish a closer relationship with their audience.

If you spend any amount of time on Facebook, you’ve likely already seen companies use live video to promote their products and services. You can achieve this with pre-recorded video, but a live element generates a more enticing immediacy to viewers.

And it doesn’t stop there. You can also use live video to inform and entertain.

Live video is also a great tool for publicizing your company events. This is a perfect opportunity to offer promotions for people who tune in and comment.

Artificial Intelligence

AI is one of the most powerful digital marketing trends that will reshape the way businesses and consumers interact. In the next year, look for artificial intelligence to help pinpoint consumer needs more precisely than ever before.

It’s also helping marketers personalize their email campaigns based on user behavior. This creates a more focused connection with potential clients and increases the chances of conversion.

Artificial intelligence can even help produce more personalized content for business websites. This is why it’s becoming more and more common to see ads and content related to your own search preferences.

The web design and development industry now implement AI to help people create attractive and functional websites without the need for professional developers.

The power of artificial intelligence is far-reaching and will soon be part of every digital marketing function.

Voice Search

One of the most apparent applications of artificial intelligence is voice search. Over the next year, look for this trend to become more prominent.

Voice search allows people to make search queries simply by speaking into their device. This is especially useful for mobile search.

This rising trend has a direct impact on a business’s digital marketing success. Voice search queries use conventional speaking language. We don’t speak like we type, which means there’s now a more conversational approach to user behavior.

This means businesses need to invest more time and effort into optimizing their sites for voice. Digital marketers now have to keep this in mind when implementing keywords and initiating paid marketing campaigns.

Influencer Marketing

You’ve likely heard a lot about influencer marketing over the past few years. This trend will continue to grow over the next year as more brands start to take advantage of it.

Look for larger companies jumping on the influencer bandwagon and using celebrities and micro influencers to help promote their products.

Brands will also employ user-generated content to involve consumers in the buyer experience. They’ll even give social media influencers more capability in order to expose more people to the products they promote.

This type of advertising is very attractive to younger audiences who react better to less generic or staged ads.

Expect to see more and more influencer marketing in coming years and more powerful companies implementing it into their initiatives.

Dedicated Mobile Apps

Mobile apps are expected to generate approximately $189 billion by 2020. This number could easily go higher. If your business still doesn’t have a dedicated mobile app, there’s simply no way you can compete.

There are a number of benefits mobile apps carry with them.

First, by having a dedicated mobile app, you provide more value to your client base and potential customers. You’re giving them all the information they need concerning your product or service. This is important, as people now perform more mobile searches than desktop.

Dedicated mobile apps also help build stronger brand loyalty. This results in higher engagement with your brand and better ease of use.

Some companies are taking advantage of loyalty programs where consumers receive points every time they interact with their brand. This is a great way to boost user engagement.

Take Advantage of These Digital Marketing Trends

Don’t let the newest trends in digital marketing pass you by. You can be sure your competition is using a number of them to boost their online exposure.

After reviewing the digital marketing trends discussed above, you probably know which ones are perfect for your business. Just remember to keep your eye on what’s working and what’s not so you can reach your target audience more effectively.

For more information on digital marketing strategies, visit our blog.