The leading companies in every industry and small businesses have something in common. They all need a specially crafted marketing plan to answer their specific needs which would subsequently bring more customers, more revenue, and more success.
In order to reach this goal, that shares both the management and the employees, a company must strive for a grand marketing plan.
Somewhat logically, digital marketing has conquered the traditional marketing ways and more conventional approaches, as it’s the most efficient way to get the word about your services out there and exposed to the highly relevant and specifically targeted audience.
Digital marketing is evolving fast, as the digital behavior of the customers and available technologies change dramatically over time.
The whole world is evolving and the digital era that we live in has no mercy for the old-fashioned approaches to business.
As 2018 moves towards its shorter end, the digital marketing landscape, largely built of PPC, Social media, SEO, and Content slowly fades away. These things became imperatives, rather than trends, while the new rising digital marketing trends pop up, ready to take the marketing world to a whole new level.
The secret ingredient to digital marketing trends of 2018 is innovation. What has worked before, may not work anymore. Even if it does, the results are not guaranteed. At best it will only maintain the current interest among customers. So let’s discover how to spice up your marketing strategy with four digital marketing trends that will pump up your business in 2018.
Age of Smartphones Asks for AI-based Smart Chatbots
Artificial Intelligence is one of those things that just sounded plain scary when it first showed up a few years ago. Luckily, since then the AI slowly became an integral part of our everyday life, as more and more companies started using it in many different sectors. It’s slowly developed towards predicting the customer behavior, making it one of the most important digital marketing assets of 2018.
Smart Chatbots are AI-powered computer programs that can conduct a conversation with people, using voice or text messages. The main advantage of the chatbots is that they provide assistance in the real-time, available throughout night and day.
Some chatbots have become real supporters: it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t know about Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google’s Alexa. On the other hand, Uber uses similar AI-powered chatbots technology to facilitate the car hiring process and communicate better with its passengers. They went a step further: it’s possible to book a car, over simple FB cat with Uber chatbots!
Don’t Forget Social Media Marketing
Big and small brands alike, agree that social media marketing has become crucial for their business. While it offers a good way for big brands to understand their audiences better, it offers an invaluable way for small brands to gain a loyal customer base.
Social media has become an integral part of everyday life: Facebook as a favorite communication tool, Instagram like a personal photo album, and Twitter for connecting with witty like-minded folks worldwide. This allows the brand to target their potential customers wisely and get the product advertisements displayed specifically to their desired community.
Social media even offers many ways to advertise for free or for a symbolic price. The most compelling way to show your product and services is video marketing, with rather short video previews that advertise the story behind your brand and product. Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram are currently leading platforms for the video marketing.
An example of successful social media marketing would be an e-commerce site PennySaviour which uses only the SM platforms to advertise its discounts and offers and appeal to more people.
Influencers Marketing
Influencer marketing is definitely one of the best practices when it comes to growing the online customer acquisition fast. It can help the brands gain more customers quickly and help to improve the brand awareness more than paid search and social media marketing.
In 2018, we witness more brands reach out to individual influencers and establishing cooperation. The influencers then share or write about the product or service of the business on their social media so that their followers get exposed to it, having much higher chances to buy, as they trust the influencer.
An influencer I not only a celebrity, it could be anyone really, a sportsman, a comedian, or a blogger having a large number of followers and a good reputation among these people. It became a common practice that big clothing and sports brands like Nike, Adidas, Channel, etc. send their new collections to influencers in order to get positive reviews through the social media.
Voice Search Assistance
The voice search is finally approaching its five minutes of fame in 2018. This digital marketing trend has existed since a few years back, but it’s only now in 2018, that it’s gaining popularity. This may go hand in hand with the popularity of the AI-based chatbots as the surveys record an increase in the use of voice search assistance through Cortana, Alexa, OK Google etc.
So to stay on top of the latest trends, and ensure a good response from voice-related searches, you should adjust your content accordingly. For example, using longer sentences or question-based sentences, or the frequently used keywords.
A Short Recap
2018 has proven to be an exciting year in the digital marketing world. Yes, staying in line with the latest trends is important in order to appeal to the ever-changing virtual communities, but combining the old approaches and evolving them through new additions is a winning combination. Try adding these four digital marketing trends to your marketing strategy in order to pump up your business in 2018.
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