With the new year, comes new trends in digital marketing. The ever-changing market saw many different changes with more and more technologies entering the market. This has forced marketers to improvise and adapt to ensure they are staying at the forefront of the latest trends. Today we are going to look at 7 digital marketing trends to watch for in 2019.
#1. Voice Search Growing Faster Than Ever
As one of the fastest rising trends in 2018, voice search is going to be one of the most popular digital marketing trends of 2019. With voice activate technology such as Alexa and Google Home, voice search has found a home in millions of homes around the world giving you access to multiple search engine at the sound of your voice.
So what does this mean for marketers? In a world where advertisements are usually found in text or media form, marketers are having to find a way to optimize their ads for voice searching rather than text in a search bar. People tend to speak questions much differently than they type so marketers are having to adapt to much different search terms. This will introduce the factor of user intent as long tail keywords become more of a focus.
#2. AI Is On The Rise
AI, short for artificial intelligence, is on the rise in many businesses that are data-driven as AI technology can process large amounts of data very quickly and accurately. AI can be used from anything from doing deep dives into your database to collecting information from your customer lists to build lookalike audiences to help with your marketing strategies.
AI is a very common term as it has picked up a lot of steam in 2018 but 2019 is going to be the year where you want to find it exactly what it is and how you can use it to streamline your businesses processes. Every day more and more AI companies are popping up ready to assist you with your tasks. This is going to be something you are going to want to look at investing in going into 2019.
#3. Social Media Is Still The Go-To
Even with the big Facebook fallout over data breaching and sharing, social media is still the largest holder of a market share in the digital marketing world. Nearly everyone you know and every business that you interact with has some type of social media profile whether they actively use it or not.
Due to its popularity, it is the perfect platform for marketers to reach potential customers as the consumers are spending most of their time on the networks. It is important to develop both an organic and paid advertising strategy to reach new customers and stay in touch with your current customers. Many consumers turn to social media to review businesses and ask questions about products. This is the perfect opportunity for you as a marketer to be there and provide the solutions.
#4. Visual Search Is Making Waves
One of the newest technologies to hit the scene in 2018 is visual search. We believe that this will only increase throughout 2019 as more and more companies develop wearable technology. Visual search can be found in technology such as Lens which allows you to scan products and run a type of reverse image search to find information about the product.
What does this mean for marketers? Marketers must ensure that their products have very clear photos and are optimized correctly to appear in image searches. This is going to give a competitive edge to those in the e-commerce space who have their image SEO up to date. Users will be able to easily find their products quickly and easily with the snap of a photo which will take them directly to their store.
#5. Featured Snippets
While it is not a new technology, featured snippets are going to continue to be one of the biggest factors for those who are trying to drive traffic to their site organically. Features snippets come in all types of shapes and sizes from recipe cards to
rich answers. These are found at the top of a search engine page above all other organic results and take up a lot of real estate above the fold.
Being in this top spot allows you to answer the question the searcher has while allowing you to be viewed as the authority for that topic. By taking up more real estate, you push your completion further down and will see a great increase in site traffic. Optimizing your content for these types of results requires a little knowledge of schema but can easily be done.
#6. Influencer Marketing
With the popularity of ad blockers increasing and the fear of privacy growing, more and more people are wanting to opt out of ads. This also is compounded with the shift in consumers not wanting to be advertised to by a company. They would rather trust a fellow friend or family member on their experience or review.
This is where influencer marketing comes into play. Influencer marketers are people who have a large following, usually on social media, who you can have try, review, or market your products. People put trust in these influencers and will gravitate toward products that they use and mention. This is an inexpensive way to get your name in front of many new potential customers very quickly.
#7. Digital Privacy
Lastly, but if no surprise, is digital privacy. 2018 was the year of the big Facebook data scare and new laws going into effect to protect any digital information being stored by companies. This is going to change the way companies operate and build out their marketing lists. By restricting what information criteria you can use for marketing, many digital marketers will have to abandon old habits and learn new ways of reaching these customers. This is something that will affect many of the aforementioned trends as digital privacy is going to greatly affect each one of these 2019 trends. If you would like to keep it simple and leave it up to a professional, you can use this company to help your company stay ahead of the competition.