7 Digital Marketing Trends to Follow Anytime

Is digital marketing helpful today? Until we’re all working in the metaverse, it’s safe to say digital marketing is beneficial and an essential strategy for small businesses to grab some market share quickly.

Startups and small businesses understand they must be early adopters of technology and use it to do more with less. For example, small businesses need higher productivity and more conversions using fewer resources than their larger competitors.

Digital marketing is one area where they show their mettle using solutions incorporating blockchain, AI, machine learning, and all new tech associated with Industry 4.0.

For marketers, their job got a lot more rewarding; now, they can spend less time recording leads and more time on creative campaign content due to AI and automation in just about everything relating to data capture, recurring campaigns, and advertising.

What other digital marketing trends are worth following anytime?

Chatbots

Today more than half of all online businesses use a chatbot. Plus, chatbots are not just for B2C operators, SaaS (software as a service) providers are effective uses of chatbots. Any operation that needs to provide 24 hours of customer support will use a chatbot, so there will be businesses wondering how they managed their first-line customer support before chatbots. 🙂

With improvements in NLP and predictive analysis, chatbots do a lot more than present users with a list of common FAQs. AI-powered chatbots have changed how business interacts with customers: by enhancing brand awareness, managing campaigns, automating sales, and lead generation.

Since they can answer real-time conversations quickly and even at odd hours, they can help a customer make a faster decision. Many companies like ManyChat have started to leverage chatbots to assist in growing businesses. Chatbots are not restricted to specific industries but can be used for enhanced customer experience in fitness, food ordering, automating payments, parenting, and e-learning.

Augmented Reality

Immersive technology like Augmented Reality (AR) has recently gained popularity. Despite being in use for more years, its counterpart, Virtual Reality will be eclipsed by AR in 2020 and the following years. The main reason for this spurt is the increased use of mobile phones.

While VR requires headsets, AR is more accessible and affordable. AR-infused advertising will revolutionize how brands have been advertising their products to customers.

Brands like IKEA, who have used AR to visualize their products in any space, have started using it in advertising. When sales materials are designed with AR, they can also give customers a more straightforward way of seeing the products. Topshop, an apparel brand, has used AR to create a virtual experience of fitting rooms that helps its clients to select clothing. These kinds of innovative experiences will also create a buzz around a brand.

Personalization

Personalization is going to stay for years. For marketers who fail to deliver good content, despite having data to meet their customers’ expectations, this will help grow their business. Amazon already does this by analyzing the behavior of its customers. They then promote products based on their past purchase history. The customers can see all the products that they might be interested in. This personalization element has helped the business upsell.

More marketers leverage it because they realize personalization is the best strategy to increase conversion rates. It also gives control to reach a particular group of customers.

There are many ways to promote your brand with personalized content. A few include collecting user data through surveys, in-store traffic, studies, and online marketing analytics. These can be used to analyze the users’ personas, and any content reflecting the users’ interests will capture their attention to the brand.

Podcasts

Podcasts have become ubiquitous on the internet. Therefore, its relevance in marketing cannot be overlooked. Did you know it can drive traffic to your website with engaging audio content? The demand for podcasts is growing, and there’s a preference of audio recordings over words on the page content. Users love listening to engaging audio content compared to lengthy articles.

Make sure your podcast campaigns are given the same importance you would give to your other marketing strategies. You’ll want to know how to create successful podcasts before you interview an expert.

In your research for new insights on trends to follow, consider collaboration with another marketer and promotions through advertisements on social media platforms. The options are endless.

Voice Search

Voice search statistics show that 50% of online searches in 2020 will be voice searches. This trend will continue to expand in the coming years, with more and more homes getting Alexa, Siri, Amazon Echo, and Google Home in their everyday lives.

Consumer behavior toward ordering or shopping has also shifted to this new-age technology. Since businesses have just started to optimize their content for voice search, it is possible to beat the competitors in this technology.

How to optimize for voice search

Apart from optimizing your website content for search engines, it would help if you started optimizing the content for voice searches because when customers make a voice query, they sound more conversational than when they type a text query.

You can also capitalize on the increase in voice search by focusing more on the semantic or logical search and long-tail keyword phrases and tailor your content for voice SEO by looking at the queries of previous customers.

Plus, did you know that using speakable structured data can also optimize your website’s content for voice search? We can all benefit from an exciting development as website owners and visitors.

Personalized Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a technique used by brands to use the name and fame of an influencer to increase brand awareness and exposure.

An influencer’s colossal following can be leveraged to induce actions from potential customers. Traditional celebrity endorsement is a forerunner to this marketing technique.

Several studies show that influencer marketing is better than PPC campaigns and celebrity endorsements due to its personal touch. However, not all industries would be better off choosing influencers. According to Statista – the top sectors that do well with influencer marketing include:

• Beauty and personal care
• Clothes and accessories
• Food
• Cars
• Electronics

Suppose your small business is in an industry not mentioned above, but you know your audience is online and frequents a social media platform like Instagram. In that case, influencer marketing is for you.

Before choosing your influencer, it is essential to define your goals, fix your budget, and, most importantly, list influencers who would fit your needs.

There are influential individuals in every industry, and the trick is to establish your authority and uniqueness through your influencer’s reach.

Interactive Content

88% of marketers use interactive content to differentiate themselves from their competitor brands, and it is the best way to engage your users.

At the same time, they scan through your content because it requires the reader to do more than just read or watch. Using this engagement makes content exciting and a favorite strategy of marketers.

For industries that may not churn out a lot of interest, interactive content is the way to go about it. Quizzes, polls, personality tests, tutorials, contests, and surveys are all being used by marketers to engage the audience.

Digital Marketing is continuously evolving so much so we have another business blog post on more marketing trends for you to read should you still be wondering – is digital marketing useful!