It is important for digital marketers to analyze the trends peaking in 2018 to determine what will carry over into 2019. If you want to stay abreast of trends and keep ahead of your competition, here are a few hot trends you should expect to find next year.
Hyper-personalized marketing
Customer-centric marketing has been around for a while, but the trend towards hyper-personalization is still going strong. With the amount of customer data available online, marketers can go deeper than ever into customers’ likes, wants, and fears and what motivates them to purchase. Thanks to demographics now available through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, you can know your target audience’s habits, activities, desires, and purchasing preferences. This helps marketing teams hyper-personalize messages to meet customers where and how they want.
Expect personalization to grow stronger as marketers learn to use data uncovered by AI and machine learning. They can customize ads, emails, social media marketing, and much more to help cut through the noise and get noticed by your customers.
Google AdWords
Google AdWords, like many of Google’s initiatives, has evolved. AdWords today uses machine learning to produce truly customer-centric marketing. For example, Google offers “smart display” which allows marketers to reach their customers at every stage of the buying cycle. You can specifically target those just starting their research into your product or service and those who are ready to purchase.
Using automation to optimize the process, marketers can bid, target, and create targeted ads placed where they will generate the most attention and conversion. These new optimization technologies will impact how Google places ads for the foreseeable future.
Native advertising
Unobtrusive native advertising helps promote your brand while blending in with the surrounding platform. Better than conventional ads, native advertising helps deliver an authentic engagement to your target audience more effectively than conventional digital ads. However, customers are demanding greater transparency and viewers are not falling for what reality TV stars are pushing in advertising.
The Federal Trade Commission sent out warnings to dozens of brands and influencers last year they must alert viewers they are being paid to promote brands and products. As a result, native advertising must change the way it displays sponsored content. Instagram has already changed the way they display sponsored content,andwe can expect others to follow suit shortly.
Voice search marketing
Adweek reports that homes and businesses will have 67 million voice devices by 2019, just in the United States. This exponential growth means marketers will need to adapt their marketing and advertising to appear in voice search results. To rank for voice search, you will need to make ordering your products and services easier. Next, marketers must create campaigns that allow customers to find the information they need and place an order simply by speaking.
“Marketers need to focus on the conversational aspect of voice search marketing to create content that matches the way their target audience asks for it. Expect your customers to become more comfortable in the next year ordering your products on assistant devices. This means you need to stay at the forefront of generating content and purchasing information amenable to voice searches,” says Sheila Kloefkorn, CEO of KEO Marketing Inc., a digital marketing agency based in Phoenix.
Digital marketing in 2019 will be more authentic and data-supported than it is today. Marketers will need to respond and adapt to the above evolving trends to create opportunities in the future. And those marketers who stay customer-centric by providing the best option for their clients regardless of the medium will flourish in 2019.
