Over the years, adopting the latest digital trends has helped many business owners to come up with better digital marketing strategies and thus giving them an edge over competitors.
It has been predicted that the digital marketing spend is to hit $118bn by 2021, with companies allocating huge budgets for digital marketing, you cannot afford to miss the bigger picture, thus analyzing the trends and understanding what’s coming next is crucial and contributes to a lot to your digital success.
Now that 2018 is coming to an end and 2019 is knocking at our doors, let’s look into the latest digital marketing trends that are going to dominate the digital marketing landscape in 2019 and how they are going to impact your digital marketing strategy.
1. Voice Search – Voice search is one of the most used technologies that have impacted people’s online behavior majorly. Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri and Cortana aresome of the virtual assistants that enable voice search. “By 2020, half of all searches will be voice searches.” – ComScore. Thus, understanding how voice search works and how to make your brand visible for related voice searches is something that businesses need to figure out in 2019 as voice search has already arrived and kicking.
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2. Chatbots – Chatbots are instant messaging applications that are deployed to provide quick customer service/assistance. According to Gartner, 85% of customer interactions will be dealt with chatbots by 2020. A chatbot has the ability to understand complex queries and provide solutions or answers without any hassle. Many businesses have already taken customer service to the next level through Chatbot-integrated websites. If your business depends too much on providing hassle-free customer support, Chatbot is something that you need to seriously consider to up the game and stay ahead of competition.
Image Source- businesstodayonline.com
3. Micro-moments- “I want to know”, “I want to go”, “I want to do,” and “I want to buy” are the micro moments the comprise the consumer behavior and journey on the Internet.These micro moments generally happen on smartphones and 91% of the consumers turn to them for assistance in the middle of the task. Moreover, Think with Google, the Google’s Content Marketing Team says that a user experiences micro moments on an average of 150 times a day! These micro moments are the ultimate deciding factor of a consumer’s buying process and businesses that are building content and providing experiences in sync with these micro moments through their websites and apps are leading the game. In 2019, these micro moments are definitely a steal!
Know how to build a website for Micro Moments
4. AR & VR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality ) – AR & VR revolutionized the gaming industry but then in the recent times these technologies have started providing great opportunities for businesses to provide great experiences to their customers during their purchase journey.
AR & VR make the consumer an active participant and provide an enhanced experience during the consumer journey. For example, IKEA has been using these technologies for customer services, they help them to try out IKEA’s various solutions online before finalizing them.
Image Source- realitytechnologies.com
5. Social Media Powered Live Videos- By 2020, 40% of the Gen Z will be digital shoppers. Moreover, 196 billion global users use social media, which means 42% of the audience is online. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Pinterest are the top aggressively used social media applications used by business owners to reach relevant audience. One of the interesting features of social media lately is Live Videos.
Today, live videos are not just limited to bloggers or YouTube content creators but have become great content assets for B2B marketers as well. It has helped marketers connect with their loyal and potential customers in a more instant and meaningful way. Be it for event coverage, behind the scenes, development of a product, or for anything to be presented to a large audience. If stats are to be believed, 82% of the people choose live video over a pre-recorded video or a social media post.
Image Source- sproutsocial.com
6. Visual Search – Not just voice search but now visual search is also a real thing!. Visual search identifies objects that the phone’s camera focuses on and then searches for image or content related to it. Google Lens is one example of Visual search. Instead of typing a text query and get image results, your smartphone’s camera will give you search results related to the object focused on. 93% of consumers already consider visuals to be the deciding factor in a purchasing decision. Visual search is already revolutionizing the retail industry. It’s really the time to keep a constant tab on this trend.
Image Source- corporate.target.com
7. Video Marketing – YouTube is not just the video marketing platform that we’re talking about. As mentioned before people prefer videos more than normal social media posts. . Live Videos is one such format that is ruling the roost currently. One more interesting video marketing approach is 1:1 approach. This particular approach has taken video marketing into great consideration because such videos are recorded on smartphones as they cut out major recording costs and provide almost the same quality as of a recording camera. Marketers are using this personalized approach rather than normal messaging or email marketing for delivering support, offering content or for any other thing. Also, a 360 degree video content makes the videos more interactive. Moreover, Videos are also making their presence felt significantly in search results. Video SEO is gaining significance lately. Be ready to see more videos than ever.
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8. Influencer Marketing – Influencer marketing uses key brand advocates to bring out your message to large, genuine audience in an organic way. It is done by people with large social followings who have the power to sway your targeted audience and then focuses on marketing your brand and products/services through interesting ways. In other words, influencer marketing is a word-to-mouth marketing that focuses on using key leaders and their followers (basically the marketer’s targeted audience) to drive the brand’s message. Influencers can range from, YouTube stars to Instagram Stars, to well-known journalists and bloggers. A survey by Collective Bias displayed that 30% of millennials consumers are likely to buy a product recommended by a non-celebrity blogger.
Image Source- Medium @dexter.shawn
9. Mobile Marketing – We are already living in the mobile first era, where website development and content is curated keeping the small screens in mind, so not having a mobile marketing strategy in 2019 will surely cost you dearly in the future. In-app notifications, push notifications, pop ups, SMS marketing, and mobile ads are some of the tactics that are not going away anytime soon. Ericsson had predicted that by 2020, 70% of global content will be displayed on digital devices rather than on televisions.
Image Source- anthillonline.com
10. User Generated Content- All the above stated trends are only powered by great and useful content. User generated content is not a new thing but it has in recent years made the marketers think about the content they’re selling to their audience. For B2B, UGC means more powerful content in less time. They are looking for valuable personal connections and becoming more reliant on social media in the search of potential vendors and solutions. It is no less than a stellar opportunity. It has said by ComScore that Brand engagement of a marketer increases by 28% when consumers are presented with mix of professional marketing content and UGC. In addition to this, it is believed that UGC is trusted more than 50% of traditional media.
image source- tech.co
Looking for a reliable Digital Marketing partner who can take your company’s digital marketing process to the next level? Get in touch with us – Finessse Interactive, a full-service digital marketing agency with 12+ years of experience, we’ve worked with some of the biggest brands in the country. Call us on 91+-9810619956 or email us at info@finessse.digital
