As digital trends evolve every year, marketers must be well-aware of all the latest trends that can help their efforts to promote their businesses. When marketers are aware of the emerging technologies in the digital world, they can find new ways to generate new leads and help their companies to generate more revenue.

As we approach the back half of 2019, let’s take a look at some of the latest digital marketing trends that marketers must be aware of to contribute better to their companies’ growth on their group.

1. Chatbots

Chatbots and live chat aren’t new to the online world by any stretch, and in the years to come, they will continue to be an important part of digital marketing.

Chatbots play an imperative role in improving customer experience and letting companies engage better with their clients – without increasing their human effort. Through chatbots companies can offer real-time assistance to their website visitors, meanwhile help companies easily understand what problems their clients are facing. And with the improvements in artificial intelligence over the years, chatbots now can hold a human-like interaction with visitors and carry the capability to answer most-asked questions just like an average human customer representative. It’s a lot cheaper than a customer support person and efficient in answering questions immediately.

In a recent study it was found that by 2020, 80% of savvy businesses will be using chatbots to interact with their customers. And by 2022, chatbots will be going to help businesses save over $8 billion per annum, especially in the services sector.

Here are some potential benefits of chatbots which are attracting most digital marketers:

• Ability to provide 24/7 customer service
• Gives instant response
• Answers all simple questions
• Resolves complains quickly
• Makes communication easy
• Offers good customer experience

In the years to come, I’m expecting more and more websites with chatbots. And there is no reason why you shouldn’t consider this marketing strategy as well.

2. Video Marketing (Live Videos)

In recent years, we’re seeing an increase in videos on social media platforms, websites, and blogs. By 2021, 82% of internet traffic will be through video – according to Cisco Systems, Inc. That means people will be spending more time watching videos than anything else on the internet.

According to another in-depth analysis into the world of video conducting by a tech company:

• 70% of consumers said that they have shared promotional videos of brand
• 72% business say promoting products and services through videos improved their conversion rate
• 52% of consumers said watching videos of products gave them more confidence in making their purchase decision
• 70% of marketing professionals admitted promotional videos helped business conversions than any other content

These above figures show the importance of incorporating videos in your digital marketing strategy, where businesses are found to be in a lot of advantage using videos to market their products and services on the web.

It’s also worth mentioning that studies indicate people spend more time in watching a live video instead of a pre-recorded one. The primary reason for that is live videos enable people to know what’s going on behind the scenes, learn how products are made, view product features live, ask questions from the broadcaster in real-time, etc. Cisco reports that by 2021, live videos will be going to take 13% of the entire video traffic compared to 3% in 2016.

Here are a few key reasons why live videos are more engaging and expected to grow:

• They are authentic
• They are cheap to produce
• They activate FOMO

All-in-all live videos give you a good opportunity to get up close and personal with your audience and enable them to learn more about the products and services you are offering.

3. Mobile-First

With over 1.2 billion people using mobiles to access the internet, there is no doubt mobile phones are a priority for people to connect with the online world.

We now live in an era where more and more people are interested to access all the information at the palm of their hands through their mobile devices, so it’s safe to say we now live in a mobile-first world. And for marketers to maximize their efforts for our mobile-first world, they need to draw strategies for promoting their business well on all types of mobile devices.

One of the most important mobile-focused marketing strategies they should adopt is developing a mobile-friendly website for business. The biggest reason for that is around 60% of search engine traffic comes from mobile devices. That means to make visitors stay on the page, companies must have mobile-friendly websites. Not only is this crucial to enhance visitors’ experience on your website but having a mobile-friendly website will also help to improve your ranking on the search engines.

Accelerated mobile page (AMP) is an additional factor to keep in mind when it comes to design a mobile-friendly website. With AMP pages on your website you can gain multiple benefits:

• Faster website loading time
• Improved website experience
• Quick online purchase through a mobile device
• Eliminates app development costs

4. Content Marketing 

A common phrase in the digital marketing world is content is king. Though it’s true from multiple aspects, however, the real truth is that it’s the engagement which rules. Content marketers can produce large volumes of content but if the content isn’t engaging enough it won’t help in bringing customers towards your business site and boost sales.

Effective content marketing involves developing and sharing engaging content with the audience and importantly using the same content to turn them into buying customers. For that, businesses must have a deep knowledge of their target audience and apply their content strategy wisely.

Not just that content personalization has become critical than ever before in the content marketing strategy. It adds a lot of value to your content marketing strategy and assists in boosting user engagement rates. However, content personalization does require visitors’ data to deliver relevant content. Geographic, demographic, and behavioural attributes are a must-have for targeted calls to action to convert them more effectively.

With over 70% of marketers saying that content marketing is helping to increase engagement and assisting to generate a higher number of leads, it’s worth utilizing it to engage more people and build online relationships in 2019 and beyond.

5. Artificial Intelligence 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already everywhere we go. It’s beginning to take over our jobs, at least the simpler and basic ones.

AI analysis consumer behaviours, interest, purchase patterns and more, through utilizing data from multiple sources including social media and other platforms. It helps businesses to understand how users and customers find their products and services. A good example of that is the Facebook messenger that helps you automate and optimize your customer service.

According to a customer survey report, 25% of customer service will use chatbots by 2020 – a 22% increase from 2017.

AI is enabling businesses to save costs, accelerate growth and getting an edge over their competitors. It’s a technology that marketers must be aware of and take its benefit in this year and beyond.

6. Facebook and Instagram Ads

The number of social media users worldwide is around 3.5 billion which means almost everyone using the internet has a profile on at least one social media platform.

Fortunately, social media giants like Facebook and Instagram have brought a lot of ease for marketers to promote their business. Paid social media ads are one of them. Businesses today are focusing more on Facebook and Instagram ads than other social media platforms. They are planning to increase their ad expanding on these two platforms than any other social site. 30% of brands on Instagram are currently using ads. Meanwhile, ads on social sites such as Snapchat, Pinterest and Twitter are becoming slowly obsolete, which means marketers don’t find much benefit at ad spending on these platforms.

Both Facebook and Instagram are managed by a single parent company; therefore businesses are allowed to manage ads on both of these social sites in the same place. Moreover, ads can be easily created to target the right audience, based on one’s business needs.

So what does it all mean?

It means if you are a marketer who is actively seeking an opportunity to promote a business. You must spend on paid ads on these two formats and experience the good results yourself. Or at least try them to experience the benefits it provides your business, after all, you can start advertising on these platforms from just a $1.

7. Voice Search 

With the advancement in voice recognition technology, voice searches have become better and getting increasingly popular. We now have smart speakers that can be used to order items and control home appliances through our voice commands.

The increasing use of voice searches by the public is making companies their digital marketing strategy this year. In different reports it’s been found:

• By 2020, 50% of completely searches will be voice searches
• Currently, 20% of Google queries on mobile are voice search
• Currently, 25% of Bing searches are voice searches

The above statistics show that the number of people using voice commands to search for things online is increasing by day by day. All thanks to Artificial Intelligence which is reducing the number of errors in the voice search and making them smarter every day. Virtual assistant Siri, Alexa and Google talk has seen significant improvements in recent times.

Global pizza retailers, Domino’s Pizza has already integrated voice search technology in the ordering system to increase sales, hence allowing customers to order pizzas through Alexa.

Moreover, in a study conducted by OC&C Strategy Consultants, voice commerce had a share of around $200 Million in the UK and $1.8 billion in the United States, both expected to grow to $5 billion and $40 billion respectively by 2022.

Two major reasons why voice search is getting increasingly popularly in both these regions is because it’s easier and faster – suiting the dynamic lifestyle of people living in this era. I predict its one marketing trend that will continue to be beneficial in the years to come.

8. Social Messaging Apps

Social messaging apps were once only considered to chat with friends and relatives, however, things have changed recently. These apps are now utilized by businesses to better connect with their current and potential customers.

Take a look at the following statistics:

• Facebook messenger as over 1.3 billion monthly active users
• Over 2 billion messages are sent on Facebook messenger by businesses and people
• 1.3 billion people are active on Whatsapp
• Over 55 million messages are sent on Whatsapp every day

The above statistics clearly show the increasing popularity of social messaging apps for business purposes. Businesses are sending personalized messages to their target audience to add value to their promotional content. And in return, they find their audience much more interested to interact with their business.

Conclusion 

These latest digital marketing trends have all the capability and capacity to attract more customers to your business and satisfy them. They can boost your marketing efforts to help your business grow over time. However, being a digital marketer in increasing business competition you need to work a lot to stay ahead of others. You need to recognize new technologies and learn how to utilize the best for your marketing advantage.

The above list of trends isn’t mere predictions or trends that are just mentioned for the sake of it. Several studies have already been carried out on their solid impact on the digital marketing world. So it’s safe to follow these trends if you want to be successful.

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