What Are the Top 10 trends? – In digital marketing in 2019

By Robert Dokhani Source: http://www.viawebsolutions.com

What Are the Top 10 trends? – In digital marketing in 2019

With new technologies emerging every day, and digital advertising techniques changing in real time, it’s no longer enough just to keep pace. Staying ahead of the curve requires looking forward to what’s coming next and then taking the right steps to get your business where it needs to be.

Here is a sneak peak of some of the top trends that will change the digital marketing world in 2019:

1. AI-Powered Solutions Are Everywhere — From Small Businesses to Large Enterprises

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will change marketing immensely over the coming years and we are already actively engaging with AI in our everyday lives when we might not even realize we are.

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 I have detailed in this article: Manychat & Messenger Marketing: The Ultimate Guide) can help you automate and optimize your customer service.

In addition, AI will take personalization to the next level. Marketers will be able to create products and services that continually learn from the feedback of their users (think those videos you’re recommended on Netflix or that latest Spotify list made just for you).

2. Chatbots

In my article on 2018 digital marketing trends, I wrote about chatbots. I’m including it again here as the trend continues to evolve.

For some reason, businesses have been slower to adopt chatbots than I expected. But by 2022, it’s estimated that chatbots will help businesses save over $8 billion per year.

Chatbots can help with customer service tasks and tie into your various systems to answer repetitive customer questions like: “When will my package be delivered?” “What time is my appointment?” “Where are you located?”

Bots can also be used to warm prospects, schedule sales appointments and help make purchases.

I recently set up a bot to help a client close mortgage loans without ever needing a human. It asked all the questions that a human would ask and was designed to include emojis to make the conversation sound more natural.

3. Online marketing is moving to integrated Omni-Channel approach

First off, Omni-Channel refers to a significant shift: marketers now need to provide a seamless experience, regardless of channel or device.

Consumers can now engage with a company in a physical store, on an online website or mobile app, through a catalog, or through social media. They can access products and services by calling a company on the phone, by using an app on their mobile smartphone, or with a tablet, a laptop, or a desktop computer.

Each piece of the consumer’s experience should be consistent and complementary.

With recent drastic fall in exposures on social media platforms, there is continued interest in developing integrated digital marketing strategies across multiple channels that complete each other.

4. Voice Is Becoming the Ultimate Search-Marketing Tool

While the majority of users are still unaware of the things voice search can do, its prominence in smart devices is expected to rise in 2019. It’s only a matter of time when voice search will be considered a norm by all.

It is estimated by Klick that by the year 2020, 30% of the web browsing will be done without touching the screen. In addition to this, estimates 50% of searches will be conducted through voice commands.

Digital assistants Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa and Cortana are gaining virtual ground as you read.

To capitalize on this trend, I suggest optimizing your website for voice search. To do this, you must understand what your prospects are searching for.

Keep in mind that audio queries are conversational and longer. A prospect searching for a restaurant wouldn’t say: “Alexa, restaurant,” but something like: “Alexa, what restaurants are serving dinner now?”

The second step is to incorporate those questions and phrases throughout your website. Build a FAQ section and answer all of those questions you discovered.

You could also write blog posts on the various topics and questions, but the best way is to naturally incorporate the particular phrases. If you were optimizing for “restaurants serving dinner now,” you could write content that says, “We serve dinner from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Monday thru Saturday.” This would get picked up and allow you to rank higher with voice search.

5. Personalization

Content marketing won’t work as well unless you create unique content.

If you want to stand out in 2019, you need to personalize your marketing – and that means personalized content, products, emails, and more.

With the availability of data like purchase history, consumer behavior and links clicked, custom content has never been easier. In fact, 96% of marketers believe that personalization advances customer relationships.

A study by Marketo shows that personalized, triggered e-mails based on behavior are 3x better than batch-and-blast e-mails.”

Businesses like Netflix and Amazon are already leveraging the power of personalization. Logging on to your Netflix account, for example, immediately shows you the evidence of this: the banner, carousels, order, artwork, text and search are all personalized for you.

6. Video content

Video marketing will be the leader of digitization in the coming year.

These numbers show the importance of incorporating video into your digital marketing strategy in 2019:

70% of consumers say that they have shared a brand’s video.72% of businesses say video has improved their conversion rate.52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions.65% of executives visit the marketer’s website and 39% call a vendor after viewing a video.

By the year 2019, Tubular Insights predicts 80% of the online content will take up the form of visual representation.

On top of all these factors, many apps allow lots of easy ways to make your videos even more entertaining (think bunny ear filters or 360 videos).

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.

Keep in mind that video should be your starting point, but these assets can be leveraged across multiple platforms and turned into other forms of content (audio, blogs, white papers, infographics, social media, etc.).

If you are new to Live Video, I recommend reading this comprehensive article: Facebook Live For Small Business

7. Podcasting is taking over

About 17 percent of Americans 12 or older, about 46 million people, listened to a podcast in the past month, up from 12 percent in 2013 and 45% of people listening to podcasts have a household income of $75K and over.

The medium is taking off now because of the happy convergence of three big trends.

A. The technology has finally improved enough that listening to podcasts is easy and convenient for ordinary listeners. The wide adoption of smartphones with mobile internet capabilities, beginning around 2010, removed these hurdles. Only 10 percent of Americans owned smartphones in 2009. This year, that number has jumped to 71 percent.

B. Talented professionals — many of them veterans of NPR or other radio outlets — have begun to focus on the medium. Many early podcasts were amateur efforts; others were simply on-demand versions of radio programs produced by major outlets such as National Public Radio or BBC Radio. But recently, there’s been a new wave of professional, dedicated podcasters making shows with the same high production values you hear on the radio.

C. And a new generation of podcast-focused businesses are figuring out how to convert these professionally produced, popular podcasts into serious money.

Podcast ads are lucrative. As of late last year, podcasters reported CPMs — cost per a thousand ad impressions, the standard industry metric — of between $20 and $45.

Network TV programs, for comparison, earned about $5 to $20 per thousand impressions, radio ads made between $1 and $18 per thousand, and regular web ads between $1 and $20.

Those kinds of numbers have attracted a bit of a gold rush to the podcasting business.

8. Visual Search

Visual search is another revolutionary development that is powered by Artificial Intelligence/machine learning, allowing us to search by inputting images instead of text.

Visual search can take the user experience to a totally new level. With visual search, users can upload an image to conduct a search and get more specific results.

Not surprisingly, Pinterest has jumped on the visual search bandwagon – they came out with Lens, a new visual search tool that allows users to take a photo of an item to find out where to buy it online, search for similar products, or view pinboards of related items.

And Pinterest is not the only one with visual search.

Google Lens is a visual search engine by Google, which recognizes objects, landmarks and other things visually through a camera app (currently only available on Pixel phones).

If you take a photo of a:

Business card: You can save the phone number or address to a contact.Book: You can get reviews and other details about it.Landmark or building: You can get more details about it.Painting in a museum: You can get details about it.

And CamFind is a visual search mobile app, which enables users to search for anything from their mobile phones simply by snapping a picture and this app will tell you what it is. Instead of typing queries into a search engine, you can directly search through images to find similar images, price comparisons, local shopping results, etc.

You can also take a picture of a movie poster and CamFind will show you movie information, trailers, showtimes, and local theaters.

Marketers can get the edge on competitors by jumping on the visual search trend in 2019 to draw customers and serve them the perfect product.

9. Local Influencer Marketing

While influencer marketing is not a new topic, the focus on local influencers is. Unless you run a massive global brand or an e-commerce business, chances are your marketing is mostly local.

While it’s “cool” for an influencer or celebrity to endorse your product or service to their millions of social fans, it can be short-lived. Try partnering with local influencers and put together long-term campaigns and promotions.

Make a list of the top influencers in your market. Check out podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and other platforms. Follow them first, and learn about them and their brand. Then, reach out with a casual message and start a conversation.

10. Programmatic Advertising Is Going Mainstream

Programmatic advertising means using AI to automate ad buying so you can target more specific audiences.

Real-time bidding or auctions, for example, is a type of programmatic ad buying. This automation is much more efficient and fast, which means higher conversions and lower customer acquisition costs.

It’s changing the face of digital advertising so swiftly that, according to eMarketer, almost 90% of digital display ads in the U.S. will be programmatic by 2020.

Digital display is well on its way to becoming 100 percent programmatic. But what’s really interesting is how traditional media is following suit. You can expect to see this shift from programmatic to traditional media begin to take shape in 2019.

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