Digital Advertising Trends You Need To Watch In 2018

Digital advertising trends for 2018 center on machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI). These innovative technologies are driving the biggest digital advertising trends. Use the following list of top trends to select solutions and initiate strategies that will boost your results in 2018.

1. Integrate marketing strategies

Digital marketing strategies are more complex this year than in years past. To integrate your enhanced marketing strategies with advertising, use customer journey mapping and other techniques to find your ideal personas. Then define the most relevant way to reach your target audience at different stages in their buying process.

For your business and industry, think from the customer’s viewpoint on how to improve your digital marketing. You want to create a marketing strategy that integrates this perspective into all of your communications, platforms, and experiences. In particular, use techniques like persuasive, personalized messages and retargeting.

2. Integrate personalization

Integrate personalization throughout the customer journey to increase relevance and responses. Several industries use website personalization in their e-commerce transactions, including retail, travel, and financial services. To stay abreast of digital advertising trends this year, personalize your messages at every point in the customer lifecycle.

When it comes to website personalization, you have choices, from integrating it into your content or commerce management system to analytics solutions or a Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) platform. A handy way to consider personalization is:

• Optimization. A/B testing of your optimization strategy helps you make sure your personalization tactics are hitting the mark. Once you’ve optimized your personalization, you can move on to the next step.
• Segmentation. Next, target site visitors by groups using specialized content. The goal is to increase relevance and conversion with each piece of content. 
• Individualized personalization. Finally, use AI technology to personalize your customer experience. Once you have established a solid foundation, you can scale your digital advertising strategies exponentially.

3. Integrate machine learning

Your marketing automation should incorporate machine learning to personalize the customer lifecycle. More than half of marketers surveyed in the State of Email marketing report do not use targeting or segmentation, and less than a third use basic segmentation. Gain an advantage over your competition by integrating machine learning and automate your targeting to personalize your visitors’ website experience.

Machine learning also lets you create automated emails with dynamic content to deliver at all points along the customer journey. Get a step ahead by integrating AI and machine learning to get attention and convert leads.

4. Integrate video

No digital advertising strategy is complete in 2018 without video. Fueled by social media, YouTube has surpassed Google in popularity as a search engine. According to a March 2017 study from comScore, 42 percent of Google’s audience engages with them via YouTube, while only 40 percent are acquired through Google Search.

Statistics like these are hard to ignore. Respond to this trend by using video marketing throughout your customer lifecycle. Consider how you can use ads in YouTube, or informational videos on your website, and even how to retarget prospects using video. When you plan your content marketing, elevate video as a must-have strategy for 2018.

5. Integrate content marketing

While not a new trend, your content marketing efforts, including video, should focus on the customer journey from end to end. Creating a holistic customer engagement strategy will give your digital advertising efforts the biggest boost in the new year.

Content should be viewed as a strategic resource, and your customer engagement strategy should use different media for different audiences at each stage in the buying process. Use personas and content mapping to drive your customer engagement strategy and make sure you test and analyze your techniques, tweaking them and enhancing as necessary.

Be sure to take advantage of any digital advertising trends mentioned above to get a head start on the competition. When you manage your digital media, technology, and available data, your marketing and advertising strategies will integrate into a seamless digital transformation.

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