2018 was a big year for Digital Marketing in many ways including Social
Media platforms offering businesses more functionality than ever before, the
continuous rise of Video Marketing, the introducing of Mobile First Indexing by
Google and of course the introduction of the dreaded four words we all love to
hate General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).
For Digital Marketing, we can
expect Social Media interaction with customers to continue to grow and develop.
Video Marketing will continue to dominate and grow rapidly with user generated
content through Instagram, Youtube, Facebook Live etc. Businesses are striving
to create ‘Positive Social Proof’ as someone customers can deal with and have a
great experience with.
2019 promises to be an interesting year with the introduction of new technologies being used as part of the Marketing Mix.
Here are three key trends to keep an eye on in the upcoming year:
Chatbots: There are no such thing as opening hours online, customers have access to your business, its website and Social Media 24/7. Chatbots are becoming more and more important to deal with your customers queries on demand.
Frequently used on Facebook to help customers communicate with your business Chatbot usage is expected to rapidly grow.
Chatbots can be integrated in a website, app or on your business’s social media accounts, they can act quicker than humans in dealing with customer requests and can provide a more personalised service by gathering user information that can later be used to tailor your businesses Marketing campaigns.
VR/AR: Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality are seen by many as a Sci-Fi like future, but they are very much here and slowly creeping their way into businesses Marketing activity. This is still at very early stages and for the foreseeable future will begin to grow exponentially but it’s a great time for businesses to invest and explore the options.
VR/AR gives your customers the chance to be both engaging with your products/services and actively participating in your Marketing activity in ‘another reality’ putting them at the heart of your business.
Voice Search: 2019 is widely expected to see a significant growth in voice searches & queries - almost 1/3 of the 3.5 billion searches performed in 2018 were carried out by voice assistant devices such as Apple Siri, Google Home & Amazon Alexa leading the way.
This is expected to grow to almost 50% of searches in 2019. Your online presence needs to consider optimising content specifically for Voice Searches, focusing on ‘Position Zero’, Local SEO and creating content around questions your customers may ask.
