Part 2: The Future Of Digital Marketing
For some time, the mantra was that ‘content is king.’ Fair enough but the focus is now drifting towards a focus on a well-developed strategy that includes quality link building, relationship outreach, voice, mobile, and the ability to capture attention from influencers.
The digital marketing landscape is changing constantly. That why it’s crucial to always stay ahead of trends and implement the same in time. Metrics used to measure digital marketing and the level of interactivity involved have come to create new opportunities for marketers.
For some time, the mantra was that ‘content is king.’ Fair enough but the focus is now drifting towards a focus on a well-developed strategy that includes quality link building, relationship outreach, voice, mobile, and the ability to capture attention from influencers.
Customer experience, functionality, micro-moments, targeted advertising, etc., are just some of the trends we are seeing as AI and other technologies continue to shape the digital marketing environment.
Here are some of the important trends digital marketers should follow and integrate into their own strategies heading into 2020:
1. A shift in Social Media
Social media is going to change. People are watching more videos and other media than to interact with peers. They want less ad-focused entertainment and new technology like virtual reality instead of socializing. Moreover, blogs, websites and instant messaging are becoming less popular.
The social media trend seems to be here to stay. Americans are using social media more than ever before. According to Statista, there are expected to be more than 246 million social media users by the end of 2019—that’s about a third of the US population. What digital marketers need to do is come up with implicit ways to collect customer information that would help direct their advertising strategies for the future
If you’re using your social media campaigns to convert leads or for sales, then you’ll also want to pay attention to clicks, conversion rates, and ROI.
You can manually track these metrics using spreadsheets and analytics directly from each platform. It might be easier, though, to work with a social media management tool. These services will monitor your social analytics and allow you to schedule posts and respond to user mentions or concerns.
2. Video Marketing
Video Marketing is already big today and nothing is scheduled for a change in the years to come. Video is easy to the eye, interactive, and fun way for brands to communicate with their consumers. Sometimes they can communicate more through a 15-second video as opposed to a 1000 word blog article. This trend is one for the future as well because the popularity of on-demand video is all set to keep increasing. Then there are social media videos which are perhaps the biggest sensation going around in the world right now.
Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat have laid the perfect foundation for brands to make the most of their marketing and advertising endeavors through the ‘Live Video feature’. The biggest benefactors have been e-commerce brands as they can promote product descriptions, and demo tutorials in a more effective way.
3. Influencer Marketing
Influencers have taken over social media because of their followers. Digital marketers must consider building relationships with influencers as they can help market your products and services as well as build your brand. Influencer marketing is likely to grow more so into a continuous strategy than focusing on a single product or service. There’s a distinct advantage here as you get an established audience, which means you can build quality leads very quickly, and cheaper than traditional marketing.
Influencer marketing has been around for several years now, and it’s not going away any time soon. Influencers used to be huge celebrities or “internet celebs” with tens of thousands of followers but now, companies are turning to people with much a smaller social media following to be influencers. Leveraging influential people on social media allows you to reach their audience with a voice that they trust.
Brands that leverage influencers to spread their message see an ROI 11X higher than they do with other digital marketing methods.
4. Machine Learning
Visual search is becoming a powerful competitor to interactive SEO and giant brands like Pinterest and Google are already presenting personalized product recommendations to their users. If buyers increased the use of virtual assistants creates tremendous marketing potential, one can only imagine the marketing possibilities of visual search. When a consumer conducts a visual search, they use an image with the desired item in it, and they are provided with other pictures related to their initial search. This is done via machine learning, which is fully capable of recognizing an extensive array of patterns, sizes, shapes, and colors the way our human mind does.
About the author
Hi, my name is Rick and I thank you for reading this article!
I explore to learn new stuff every day and here I will share all my experiences and thoughts with you.
You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram. :)