Top 8 Digital Marketing trends to follow in 2018

Digital marketing has created an immense impact in the whole face of marketing. With overpowering market strategies, the combination of latest technologies in Digital Marketing has increased the pace of business development. Online platform is a huge exposure for a wide range of data which is consumed by the people, making it an enormous platform for digital marketer to reach the relevant and targeted audiences.

With a new revised Google’s SEO algorithm, there has been an elevation of digital marketing trends in the year of 2018. This year has come up with meaningful techniques to play with like, Content, Social Media, Emails, Videos, Artificial Intelligence.

Appropriate digital marketing techniques can increase the success quotient of your business including the level of strategies that leads to higher income, high sales and a long term growth.

Current business trends either acquire digital methods for all their plans of action or magnifying subsisting market strategies with the help of techniques such as digital advertising or social media exposure. Below are the Top 8 Digital Marketing trends to follow in 2018 that will help you grow your business.

1.The Magic of Good Content

Without any uncertainty content has been the king in the world of digital marketing over the years now. The regime still continues but has evolved in a new form.

The absolute content produced by brands has often led to fallout because of the poor quality and mediocre contents in a hurry to mass-produce. Apart from this, the consumers have been provided with immense content and not being sure of where to look.

Again, the main goal comes down to providing meaningful content that lasts longer. The new strategy organizations have come up with producing one piece of significant content every month.

The main agenda for content is not only generating something that will just impart value to customers in today’s time, but in a year’s time or even further. The important factor is creating a content that can be bookmarked and read again over the years. Deliver a relevant piece of information, rules to live and tips and tricks that never go out of style. Editorial pieces that will remain with the consumers in a long period of time.

2. Customized marketing messages

Using comprehensive approach is not anymore enough to target the right customers. The business should have a goal to focus on personalizing their messages targeting social media using email funnels and customer grouping to gain a campaign that is modified to the individuals.

The personalized marketing messages works in a loop. First the consumers look at a brand being worn by a influencer being a part of paid online campaign. After looking at this post, the customer is more likely to visit the website of those brands. While browsing the web, later the customers sees a tailored advertisement on the sidebar of their favorite websites which showcases the specific brand of the specific clothing which the customer had encountered earlier.

After this encounter and encouragement, the customer visits the clothing website of their favorite brand but does not checks out.

The customer later is likely to receive an addressed to their name which sends a constant reminder of the clothing the customer left it the basket also including a few more items that may catch her interests. Finally the customer visits the websites and buys the product.

The personalized marketing does not limit here, now that we know what interests the customers, we can target them directly with new or discounted products. Emailing the customers on their birthdays, anniversaries by directly addressing their name and promoting the brands, this can surely increase in growth of sales and the possibilities continues immensely.

3. The power of Visual Search

Visual search can take the user’s experience to an absolute another lever, here users need to upload an image and can get more relevant results according to the image provided, making visual search a very strong search engine techniques.

Pinterest have adopted the Visual search method and they claim to have raised $150 million in venture funding at a $12.3 billion valuation to focus their efforts on visual search. They introduced a new visual search engine called Lens, allowing users to upload a photo of the item and they will be able to find similar products to buy online.

Another example of visual search engine is Google Lens by Google, that recognizes objects, landmarks and other things via camera app.

If you take a photo of a:

• Business card: You can save the phone number or address to a contact.
• Book: You can get reviews and other details about it.
• Landmark or building: You can get more details about it.
• Painting in a museum: You can get details about it.

CamFind is another effective example for Visual Search Techniques, enabling users to search for anything through their mobile by just snapping a picture of it. You can snap a picture of anything and figure out the similar images, price comparisons, shopping results etc instead of typing the quarries.

You can take a snap of a movie poster and CamFind will enable you with movie information, trailers, show times, and l theaters. Having an edge with their competitors.

Jumping on the visual search trend in 2018 will surely provide businesses with the growth of sales and having an edge with their competitors.

4. Voice Search

Today’s digital era makes it possible to find answers to all our questions through search engines. While the information is easily accessible, people don’t always have the patience to go through and read long several paragraphs. Voice search then starts to play vital role for giving away appropriate piece of information via audio content.

With the help of Artificial Intelligence, the errors have been drastically reduced making voice assistants like Google, Alexa and Siri in high demand.

Many organizations and brands have adopted voice search in their strategies of digital marketing to provide meaningful services to their services. Domino’s Pizza uses voice search technology as a method in increasing their sales, allowing customers to order pizzas through Alexa.

The increasing use of voice search has made it important for companies to rethink their digital marketing strategies in 2018.

• 50% of all searches will be voice searches by the year 2020
• 20% of mobile queries on Google are voice searches
• 25% of all Bing searches are voice searches
• 10% of Baidu’s search queries are made using voice

5. Making human conversations ; Chatbots

A computer program that does real time human conversations in its authentic format, which comprises of texts and spoken languages with the help of artificial intelligence proficiencies. Chatbots are mainly used for consumer services, engagements and general question requirements. Chatbots have been in a market for a long time but haven’t been very perceptible. But now a very wide range of business is using Chatbots for providing better services. The results given by Chatbots have been promising as they engage more audiences to the websites.

We can understand the chatbots by a very effective example of Starbucks, Starbucks made it extremely easy for their customers to place the order of their favorite drinks and snacks via their mobile app. The orders are placed by the customers through message interface or voice commands. Chatbots help in improvisation of customer engagements and loyalty. Once the customers are done with placing their orders, Chatbots also notifies them when their order will be ready and cost.

Starbucks says it has 12 million Starbucks Rewards members, up 18 percent from last year. With 8 million customers paying by mobile and a third using its Mobile Order & Pay technology, which helps customers place an order via smartphone and pick it up without waiting in line.

Chatbots are definitely an effective trend to follow to boost your business.

6. Mobification

Mobification has been in a serious trend since 2017. This is another shorter way to make your consumers aware about the product you’re selling. Off late, people have been using Google App on their mobile to make any kind of searches before PC, Tablet or I-Pad. Mobile has been the top priority and will continue to be in the coming years for marketers and business owners.

What’s important is planning a mobile strategy and engaging wide range of people with your prospects. Design a website which is mobile friendly for your business. The elements should include sending messages too. Sending weekly texts to customers for newly introduced discounts, offers and services.

7. Genuine value of Social Media

No matter what your business is, either it is service based or product based, the social media will never fail to give your business a boost. Whether you want to create awareness about your brand to your people or have a close look at your competitors in the market and have an overlook about what’s going on in the world, then social media is your answer.

Have your own social media channel, and deliver high quality content, keep the content authentic and helpful for your consumers, the content should be meaningful and well written. Your business will be on the top if there is best readable designed material.

8. The art of Artificial Intelligence

In the marketing process today, Artificial intelligence is placed in the high-priority list. AI has been proven to be extremely crucial as it can determine the behavior of the customers along with analyzing their search patter. AI utilizes all the data from social media and blog posts that helps the organization analyze and understand their users and explore their products along with their services.

Artificial intelligence delivers data, information and tips to consumers by having real time conversations.

“By 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed without the need for a human” – says Gartner

These listed trends will give your business a shape and improve the landscape of digital and social marketing in the year 2018. To be ahead in the crowd, you will need to constantly improvise and update the content strategy with the changing desires of consumers.

Whether you’re introducing Facebook live stream to promote the new launched products or using Chatbots for a convenient costumer services or making use of visual search, you’ll want keep a close eye on these developments when this year progresses.