Digital Marketing Trends For 2019

Digital marketing, simply put, cannot be ignored. An effectively executed marketing and advertising campaign can serve the needs of any business and increase the demand for the product or service that they offer. But times have changed, and while the need for marketing is still essential, where that marketing is most effective has changed a lot.

If you want to go where the people are, you need to be active online. The influence of the digital landscape, or 'cyberspace,' has been steadily growing since the 1990's, and now, just a few decades later, it is a major virtual environment for the vast majority of people on the planet.

 So if you want to market to your audience online, how should you do it? In this article, we explore the top trends digital marketers should know or prepare to master.

1. Good Content Still Matters

Content marketing continues to be an essential component of digital marketing, although there’s an increasing emphasis on nuance in content. The quality is always going to matter a lot, but now there’s a renewed interested in looking more deeply into who the intended recipients are. Having a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of a targeted market and being able to target that market more precisely is a rising trend in more effective marketing.

So while general audience content was, is, and always will be important, specialized material for specific industries or experts can also yield impressive results. That, combined with improving techniques in measuring content effectiveness, keep content marketing relevant and moving forward.

2. Email Is Getting More Personalized

Email marketing is evolving, and generic marketing emails aren't as effective as they once were. It is now a combination of automation and, more importantly, personalization that makes email marketing important for 2019. When you can trigger your email marketing to something specific, such as a user browsing a particular product, and then follow up with a promotional price or demo video in a personalized email, this can be very effective. Email is often the final "trigger" to motivate an action, especially when combined with your re-marketing techniques.

3. Facebook May Be Peaking

It's important for future digital marketers to really look at who their target market may be, because Facebook may be very unsuitable for some campaigns, especially as it continues to trend downwards with younger demographics. Make no mistake, Facebook is still massive, and many Americans continue to check in on it, but be more judicious with who you're marketing to, and make sure they're still on Facebook, or you're targeting the wrong social media platform.

4. Instagram Is A Hit With The Kids

Fortunately for Facebook, their greatest threat is no threat at all since they bought Instagram. The image and video-based social media platform is optimized to make it very easy for users to share photos and videos from their phone, which is now the most ubiquitous computing device on the planet and rapidly growing as the computer of choice for the general public.

Instagram has already passed one billion users, an impressive achievement. That means it's one of the most rapidly growing social media platforms and, perhaps more importantly, much of its user-base is the coveted younger demographic, especially under 30, that Facebook is losing, due to its reputation as the social media platform for “old people.” 

5. Video Is A Must

Video digital marketing, in some ways, offers the best of both worlds. The actual budgeting and mechanics of video production are well understood and documented, since video itself is a 20th century medium. However, now video is paired with the incredibly accurate and valuable user metrics of digital media to provide much more useful data on how specific efforts are performing. Whether you're creating videos for Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or even your own website, it is a top-tier, incredibly effective digital marketing tool. You can capture and convey a lot of information and your brand's personality with video. As long as you stick to the fundamentals of good video production, you can make impressive gains. 

Can you think of others aspects of Digital Marketing that may be trending in 2019? Don't forget to mention them in the comments section below!

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