What’s the latest in digital marketing strategy in 2018? We’re here with an update to help you keep your strategy fresh.
We live in a fast-paced world, and it’s important that your company’s digital marketing strategy keep up with the trends in 2018. While we have some mainstays on the list like Social Media, the consistent evolution of the technological and IT spheres means it’s more important now than ever to keep on top of rapidly-changing trends in order to keep your digital marketing strategy relevant and up-to-date. Here, we’ve round up five of the most important trends in digital marketing strategy in 2018, and don’t forget to check out our previous articles on Visual Marketing, SEO Basics, and more in our Marketing section.
One of the timeless aspects of any business is your business plan; whether you’re just starting out or you’re prepping for yet another important meeting, check out our free business plan templates available for free download to make sure you’re as prepared as possible.
Social Media
If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times: social media is essential to your digital marketing strategy. Apps and platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Youtube are evolving all the time, and newer platforms are always waiting in the wings to throw their hats into the ring as well. On social media, keep in mind that the goal isn’t simply to sell your products or services, it’s to drive engagement with your brand that will reap rewards in awareness as well as sales.
It’s also important to consider how Social Media is affecting how customers interact with your business. Customers increasingly interact with businesses and brands via Social Media messaging apps like Facebook and Instagram. This means that brands absolutely must pay close attention to activity not only on their feeds and Stories, but in their messaging applications and secondary inboxes. Sleeping on or being unresponsive to Social Media can be a grave mistake for growing businesses and a real killer for your digital marketing strategy.
Chatbots & AI
Companies like Uber, Deliveroo, Amazon, and more have adopted the Chatbot on their site, and it’s an excellent idea. Artificial Intelligence or AI is set to become more prevalent in the coming years, and its in any business’ best interest to integrate it into their digital marketing and interface. The Chatbot is especially useful in its benefit to User Experience and to the perception of your company’s customer service, all at a minimal cost to the enterprise. Your business will be easier to interact with and solutions to customers’ questions and problems found faster and at less cost. Given how often we speak to Siri and Alexa, it’s important to consider building a similar service into your business’ interface.
Video
Video streaming accounts for over sixty percent of all internet traffic, and that figure is only set to rise. In the past few years, video has exploded for a host of reasons. First of all, it’s one of the millennial generation’s preferred methods of communication and information absorption. Adding to this, platforms like Instagram and Facebook have added a number of features such as Live, 360, Filters, and more. Video content and video marketing have become an essential part of any business’ digital marketing model, especially if you want your content to have wider reach and remain relevant to younger generations. It’s more shareable content, more visually compelling, and often easier to absorb.
Voice Search and SEO
More than ever before, people are using voice for search rather than completing their queries manually, and it’s been predicted that in 2 years, half of all searches will be completed through Voice. By this we mean talking to Siri, Google, and Alexa, or simply using dictation services available through numerous applications and websites. This means that you need to optimize your online services to take this evolution into account. Because most voice searches are done on mobile devices, it’s more important than ever before that your website have a version optimized for mobile users. Incorporating this into your SEO means keeping your metadata strong and making sure that your keywords are optimized for the questions that your users are likely to ask their devices; find the bridge between their questions and your content.
Companies like Dominos Pizza have already hopped on the bandwagon, integrating a voice search service into their interface and allowing users to order pizza directly by speaking to their device. In theory, it’s win-win for business and customer, driving both sales and the ease of engagement.
The Micro-Moment
With the advent of the Story, first on Snapchat and now integrated most notably into Facebook and Instagram, the pace at which users interact with brands and businesses was called into question. The idea of the micro-moment has become essential to any strong digital marketing strategy. More and more, people look at their phones in the middle of doing something else, as well as to look for ideas for things like travel, dinner that night, general information, and immediate information on products they’re in the process of purchasing. While we spend several hours per day on our phones, it’s often in smaller intervals that ends up adding up over the course of time. This means that businesses need to learn to communicate effectively with customers and clients in extremely short periods of time, providing the information needed or desired in, quite literally, the blink of an eye. On Social Media, short, aspirational snippets that involve strong imagery and, ideally, video content, that are meant to inspire desire in the customer — a desire to go, do, to have — can drive engagement and sales. In terms of the interface of your online services, the nature and functioning of your customer service, the more a business can conform to customers’ time being dealt in micro-moments, the more they stand to benefit from the rest of their digital marketing strategy.
To watch the speed at which the world around us is changing is impressive, and it means that businesses will need to adjust their digital marketing strategy diligently in order to keep up with the ever-changing times. While certain aspects of digital marketing strategy like AI may seem far in the future now, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a huge part of how we live and how we interact with one another on an economic level. By making sure to integrate the latest trends into your digital marketing strategy and your business’ interface, the more your company stands to gain from the tides of change.