Digital Marketing Trends You Need to Know in 2019

Are you wondering how to make your brand even more successful this year? Unquestionably, the landscape of digital marketing is changing at a rapid pace. And not only is there a lot of new techs available to people, but there’s also an entirely new approach to marketing to people.

And that approach is personalization. It seems that one of the more prominent digital marketing trends in 2019 is personalization. The idea of delivering content to users in a personalized way.

While such practices have existed for a reasonable number of years, only now, with the help of AI, is it possible for everyone to personalize their digital marketing efforts.

That said, personalization is not the only thing influencing marketing this year. So, if you would like to learn more and understand some of these trends in-depth: please keep reading as we narrate the most exciting digital marketing trends thus far.

Artificial Intelligence is Taking Over

It’s a scary thought, to think that within the next 50 years — a lot of the current jobs could be replaced by computer intelligence. But this seems to be precisely the direction in which we are heading. Now, it doesn’t need to be or sound all negative, either.

At the moment, AI is prominent within digital marketing because it helps to analyze and understand data better. Imagine having millions of database records, and having to analyze each one individually. This would take not only an endless amount of time to swift through but also a substantial workforce doing all the work.

So, with AI — it is possible to analyze data solely by using computing power. There are a ton of great examples of AI in marketing, too. Chatbots have become almost mandatory for business websites. And the advertising industry is using AI to help deliver ads that are more in-line with the user seeing the ad.

Furthermore, AI helps to personalize user experience on any given site. By shifting through every endpoint automatically, AI can deliver results that are more satisfactory with the users’ needs and wants. Facebook and its News Feed is a great example of this.

Multichannel vs Omnichannel

Another massive shift happening in digital marketing is the accessibility of information for the end-user. Traditionally, this was done through the ‘multichannel‘ approach. Ads and promotions were posted on individual channels, without much correlation between each listing.

Whereas now, as information is becoming more accessible and things more connected, we’re seeing a steady rise in omnichannel marketing.

Omni-channel marketing seeks to create a seamless experience at all stages of the buying cycle. Think of it in terms of your customer’s journey. How do they discover your product or service? Do they do research, and if so, how? Are there a lot of substitutions or direct competitors? How do they view the differentiation in quality, price, or features between your product or service, compared to the competition?

GD Media

By being consistent in your promotion across all marketing channels, it’s easier for you to track how and why you generate leads. As such, it gives you much more direct access to understanding your customer and their origin.

If you would like to implement omnichannel marketing — it’s highly recommended to look into high-quality CRM platforms. A CRM platform such as Salesforce can oftentimes reduce your workload by up to 90% whilst letting you garner all the necessary customer data.

Brands Are Getting Comfortable With Video Marketing

There’s no need to look at any statistics to notice that video marketing has become extremely popular amongst brands. Is it because people enjoy watching stuff as opposed to reading? Is it because more people spend their time on their mobile devices? It’s a mix of everything.

Lest we forget, video marketing has been talked about for more than a decade, but right now it’s an undeniable and a highly lucrative digital marketing trend to follow. Whether it’s doing video-based podcasts or simply using Instagram stories to push your brand further — more and more people are engaging with video content.

Here are some interesting stats to digest:

• 70% of consumers say that they have shared a brand’s video. (Wyzowl)
• 72% of businesses say video has improved their conversion rate. (Wyzowl)
• 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions. (Invodo)
• 65% of executives visit the marketer’s website and 39% call a vendor after viewing a video. (Forbes)

There are also reasons to look beyond traditional, static video marketing approaches. Platforms like Twitch, Facebook & Instagram Live have changed the game entirely.

People are able to connect with their customers, their audience, in a split second. And be able to do it whenever and from anywhere. Live Video helps you develop an audience, which in due time you can turn into a profitable marketing opportunity.

Have you thought about video marketing already this year?

Optimizing for Mobile Performance (AMP/PWA)

Speed is everything when it comes to customer satisfaction in browsing your website or mobile app. And, thus far, it is Accelerated Mobile Pages and Progressive Web Apps changing the landscape of optimal performance.

In fact, mobile is so popular that more than 60% of all Google searches are done using a mobile device. This is a tremendous statistic if you think about the total number of searches done on a daily basis. But, the most important factor here is performance and how it correlates with SEO or Google rankings.

Google itself has been extremely vocal about speed as a ranking factor. In fact, it is also applying the same factor to its advertising program.

When real users have a slow experience on mobile, they’re much less likely to find what they are looking for or purchase from you in the future. For many sites this equates to a huge missed opportunity, especially when more than half of visits are abandoned if a mobile page takes over 3 seconds to load.

Google

So, what can you do and how can you improve your site’s performance?

First and foremost, you should look into AMP. This is an initiative started by Google to improve the overall performance of the pages that you serve. In other words, AMP removes almost all JavaScript and gives your visitors an almost-static version of the content page.

If you’re using WordPress, then AMP can be implemented in less than a few seconds through a plugin. For custom sites, the official AMP website provides plenty of resources to get you going.

One last thing, not everyone shares the opinion that AMP is good. In fact, many are voicing their concern by saying that AMP is a “curse” on the open web.

And here is why:

• Links are served through Google’s own caching system. This means that visitors have to click on your website’s link in order to be redirected there.
• You won’t always be able to display all of your content because of the limitations that AMP imposes. This is mostly related to dynamic content, whereas photos, videos, and basic text should work just fine.
• Last but not least, you’re at the mercy of AMP’s default design structure. You can do a few modifications of color here and there, but nothing major.

That said, AMP and even PWA’s are worth looking into if you’re unable to optimize your performance without them. These days, there are countless ways to optimize the performance of your WordPress site without the use of external tools like AMP.

Personalization in Email

The landscape of email marketing is also rapidly evolving. Traditionally, marketers would send one big campaign to their entire email list. And this would suffice to spread news, promote products, or do any other relevant announcements.

These days, email marketing is much more sophisticated than this. And in part, because of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Take for example GDPR, which requires that every single one of your subscribers has given clear consent to being sent email campaigns to. Of course, this is not hard to execute in practice. Simply ask your subscribers to ‘tick a box’ and you’re covered. But, not following the rules can have dire consequences for your brand and even for you personally.

The above statistics showcase the different techniques for personalizing an email marketing campaign. Among which, the number one technique is email list segmentation. Think of it as a means of slowly understand each of your individual subscribers.

• Which emails do they open the most?
• Which content do they interact with most frequently?
• What are their email opening habits, like time of the day or which type of email?

Fortunately, all this data is readily available to you through your favorite email marketing platform. It’s not just a trend as such, but an entirely new industry standard through which to view email marketing as a whole.

Think about it, wouldn’t you want to receive emails that actually make sense to you personally? Because otherwise, you’re left with generalized campaigns that don’t get you anywhere. So, personalization in email leads to better open rates, and ultimately, better conversion rates.

If you are lacking inspiration or simply want to see what other top brands are doing, then I highly recommend looking at the Really Good Emails website. The site features email campaigns from brands in every industry, with every audience size. Seeing what others are doing might inspire you to make similar choices.

Content Marketing Is As Dominant As Ever

You don’t need to look far to see what content marketing is working for brands. It’s the bread and butter of digital marketing, and we’re seeing a lot of maturity evolve in this field. It’s no longer feasible to create or post lousy content pieces that get the user nowhere.

As such, it’s time to embrace the fact that people do want to read content, but only if the said content is actually good. And creating good content takes time, patience, great writers, and even greater ideas.

So, what can you do about your current content marketing strategy to ensure it delivers not only readership but also sales and brand exposure?

Get clear about your goals

What is your goal with content marketing? Are you looking for readership alone? Would you like to promote a specific product? Without a goal, it’s hard to execute a content strategy that delivers promising results.

Once you decide on your goal, of which there can be multiple, you can start planning your content calendar around that specific area. For example, if your goal is to promote a ‘book on vegan recipes’ — then it only makes sense that your content would reflect information related to veganism, healthy eating, recipes, and food in general.

Hire a writer or two

You’re not going to get very far if you try to do all the work yourself. These days, most top companies have an external team of writers who analyze and produce content as needed.

Not only will hiring a writer lift weight off of your shoulders, but you’ll also benefit from their experience in producing likable and informative content.

If you’re lost as to where to start, here are my two recommendations:

• Find blogs where you know the content is absolutely top-notch! Afterward, see if you can reach out to individual writers on the site and ask them if they’re available for more work. Sometimes, you can get really lucky this way and find a great addition to your team.
• Post a job offer on the ProBlogger Jobs board. It’s extremely well-known amongst professional and experienced writers, and finding great candidates for your project shouldn’t be a problem.

And if you have the capacity, then start looking for an in-house team of writers. This is also an approach that many brands have taken.

Diversify your content on multiple platforms

Alright. By now you have your goals, you have a writer, so what’s next? My advice is to not limit yourself to your blog only. Expand upon your content, and populate it elsewhere.

Whether it’s in the form of social media content, or perhaps video content — making your content more accessible means that more people get to see it.

As I like to think of it: a blog post is like a movie script, it can be turned into a film, but also a documentary and other types of reading materials.

Voice Search Is a Thing

Another extremely popular SEO trend is voice search. Voice search is a term used to define the type of Google searches that are done using a smart speaker or a voice assistant on a smartphone. There are an estimated 500M+ activate smart devices worldwide.

This is a number that you simply cannot ignore. So, it begs the question, how to prepare your content for voice search and what other tips you need to know?

The number one thing to understand about voice search is that users are asking direct questions. As a result, your content should reflect direct answers to those questions. In other words, to succeed with voice search — you must focus on content that’s conversational and engaging.

When a smart device reads your content out loud — it needs to be easily understood by the person asking the question. The moment you introduce difficult jargon, that’s the moment when Google will look past your content as a source for voice-based search queries.

Also, you can explore the possibility of producing content that’s more long-tail. Long-tail keywords are keywords that go deeper on any given subject.

For example, someone is searching for “best pink shoe brand”. This would be considered as a standard keyword by all SEO professionals. A long-tail keyword would sound something like “best pink shoe brand in California”.

As you can see, the difference is massive. And you can apply this concept to pretty much every part of your content. Get more intimate with how you write your articles, and focus on delivering answers to questions that go beyond the traditional norm.

Conclusion

It is an exciting year for all digital marketers. There is a lot to learn, and there is just as much to gain. We’re going to be seeing massive changes in marketing as a whole because of the rapid growth of AI and ML (Machine Learning).

So, keep an eye out for apps and tools that give you access to this wonderful technology. Also, as emphasized in this post — it’s critical to focus on content that’s engaging and informative. It doesn’t matter the format in which you publish it, but the intention behind everything needs to be engagement.

We would love to hear from you personally to learn about your digital marketing techniques in 2019. While this post touches on some of the most crucial trends, we know that there’s a lot more to learn. So, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or get in touch with us directly. We’re here to listen!