5 Interesting Digital Marketing Trends That Will Affect Your Business in 2019.
If you are one of the many businesses out there looking to improve effectiveness, increase sales and be on point with your marketing numbers, then this article is for you.
In this article, I have collated the different trends in digital marketing for 2019 that will help you up your marketing game and also improve your results in 2019.
If you know our team, you know we have a saying that goes, “Marketing is marketing is marketing.
As sure as I know I love digital marketing, there’s one thing about marketing that is constant; and it is this, “marketing is constantly evolving.”
With new technologies that are also consistently being launched, such as artificial intelligence (AI), bots, virtual reality, augmented reality, natural language processing, and facial recognition becoming mainstream, it can feel as if marketers are always in a big loop.
So in this post, I will be sharing with you some key marketing strategies that business owners and marketers need to know and use for success in 2019.
So let’s dive into the 5 Interesting Digital Marketing Trends That Will Affect Your Business in 2019 in a massive way.
- Artificial Intelligence
I love technology or should I say, “Anything that makes the process so much easier, faster and simpler.”
The exciting entry of AI and the deployment of it has got a lot of buzz from different business owners and marketer. As the latest supporting marketing tool, we are able to better understand behaviors and patterns by going through data.
It is my belief that “Artificial intelligence will take over the world! Or at least the world’s simpler jobs simply because it will enhance personalization and marketing automation.
BENEFITS
- It improves and helps you maintain a clean and efficient customer database also providing emphatic insights of your potential and current customers to your team.
- Using Artificial Intelligence, you can scan social media conversations your prospects and existing customers are having to provide you with real-time intel on your competitors.
- It gives a clear and concise picture of your current customers, where they are at now, their behaviors, search patterns and ideas on where they may be going based on previous transactions, – in the past, this would take a long period of time to analyze.
- It also helps with after sales processes. Data gotten from some social media platforms can help you automate and optimize your customer service.
If businesses are able to start adopting AI in 2019, it will help to save costs and accelerate growth, getting an edge over their competitors.
2. Live Video
Video is still at the top of content marketing because it is easily accessible and consumed. The only thing better is live video. Everyone wants to see the person behind the madness and success. That’s why behind-the-scenes tours of your office, product demos/releases, live Q&As, etc are very valuable to your customers.
There are two key action steps to play the strings with live video.
- Have a robust content strategy. Everyone wants to have loads of content to deliver to their viewers and readers. One strategy that has consistently worked for me is to simply sit for an hour or two or for an entire business day, grab your laptop or a pen and paper, brainstorm and map out content ideas that your customers would find useful, helpful or fun.
- Pick the “ONE” platform your target audience is on and focus on it. Facebook Live and Instagram Live have been hot sauce for us and we are advising our clients to focus on those two platforms for LIVE Video Success as well as YouTube Live. Just be sure to keep your videos fun, engaging and relevant. Make sure it creates a transformation along the way.
A short piece from Single Grain…
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.
And don’t just think YouTube. To witness higher engagement with your video marketing, you can make a video post or start a live broadcast on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.
3. Voice interaction and the Human factor is going up
All in the same vein of AI but with the human touch.
Thing is, it’s so much easier and faster when you just say what you want and it happens immediately.
This makes the transaction between clients and business owners so much faster and stress-free.
Again from Single Grain, “The increasing use of voice search has made it important for companies to rethink their digital marketing strategies in 2019.
50% of all searches will be voice searches by the year 2020
20% of mobile queries on Google are voice searches
25% of all Bing searches are voice searches
Voice search plays an important role in providing all the relevant information that people are searching for through audio content.
Artificial Intelligence is getting smarter and the number of errors made by voice assistants like Alexa, Siri and Google have reduced.”
Many brands have included voice search in their digital marketing strategies to deliver value-based content effectively to their customers. Domino’s Pizza uses voice search technology as a way to increase its sales, thus allowing customers to order pizzas through a robot.”
So that been said, for your marketing to stay relevant and authentic, the human element should always be in view and evaluated. There is always the warmth from a smile or a handshake, the assuring voice on the other end of the line, telling you that we are always here to serve.
4. Email and Automation Marketing
Every business owner, prospect and current customer all have one thing in common and that is, the desire to have a mobile device with a stretching distance from them. If that is so, why not look for ways to foster engagement with people who want to do business with you.
The truth is that “People spend an average of 3 hours, 35 minutes on their smartphones every day, and this year, mobile devices will be the medium that gets the most minutes in the U.S. (finally surpassing television).
This is changing the way brands must work to capture buyers’ attention.”
Hence, Email is important but messaging that gets read straight from the phone is much more important.
Upcoming and mature businesses will benefit from improving the relevance and timing of their emails by using rules-based automation and personalization.
5. Readers love good content
With the above said, trends do not replace good content marketing. I have a knack for stressing that consistency in providing relevant content for your target audience, be it a prospect or current customers, makes them become raving fans of your brand.
One of my mentors said this, “The three best ways to stand out from a crowd are to build your brand, tell a great story and provide helpful, authentic content. Do those three things consistently and leverage the latest trends and it’s game over (in a good way) for you and your business.”
Content marketing can be applied by all types of business regardless of their sector or size. If the right strategy is followed can make an impact that supports communications across all touchpoint of the customer lifecycle. It fuels all digital channels from search, AI, email and social media marketing. This makes having a defined content marketing strategy essential to competing in many sectors.
We will serve you with these this year and we believe it will impact many of your businesses in a positive way.
“Brands will break down the walls between marketing and care in 2019. They’ll use insights from customer care engagements to personalise how they market to them. The key to the perfect seamless customer experience lies with brands learning from the data they already have.”
Let’s hear your comments on the trends you will implement this year.