With another year almost behind us now, upscaling your online business has become the need of the hour. Of course, our usual marketing strategies like social media marketing, conversation rate optimization, SEO, continue to have their prominence; but as digital trends evolve, advertisers should be aware of the changes to adapt to the arising technologies and stay in line with their competitors; hence providing them with competitive advantage.
Have a look at the most trending digital marketing strategies
- Voice search: Without a doubt, voice search is getting popular by the day. According to ComScore, 50% of all the business queries shall be voice-based.
Basically, there are two types of voice searches; the one implemented by smart speakers like Apple, Google Home, Amazon’s Alexa and Cortana which provide users with immediate answers to their questions and those that are installed on desktops and smartphones such as Google Assistant and Siri which show written search results.
Top brands are continuously figuring out ways to deliver their promises using these voice search devices as they are cost-friendly and also, provide great features.Using strong handy tools like SEO to create content, businesses should concentrate their outreach efforts on enhancing voice search optimization. This puts them to think about what their target audience may use in their query, whilst keeping the focus more on long-tail keywords as users tend to be much more specific while they ask a question. For example, a user can ask for information about the price, location, features, time which may sound quite heavy for display search queries.
Advertisers can use these opportunities to deliver more targeted content which in turn can increase their CTR (Click-through rates). - Smart Chat: In the loop for quite a few years now, Chatbots still persist in 2019.According to a recent research, 45% of users still prefer Chatbots as a means of communication in the customer service department. Chatbots play a major role in improving the customer experience.By providing real-time assistance, driven interactions, and dedicated support, Chatbots help marketers interact better with their audience.For example, when a visitor is landing on a website, he is contacted via Chatbots and asked if he needs further assistance or needs more information about the product/ service. If he selects the first option, he will be redirected to a representative for help and if he chooses the second option, he might be redirected to their blog or moreover, FAQ page.Another recent trend is WhatsApp Business Messaging, turning into one of the most used messaging apps worldwide. It is used by businesses on a daily basis for their daily activities.
- Micro-moments: Advertisers leverage micro-moments to get their audience’s attention. When a customer looks for something, or searches for something nearby or maybe finalizes a purchase, marketers use this opportunity to create targeted content and advertising. In this short time period, consumers are drawn towards a brand that can deliver according to their needs. Brands need to optimize their location on websites and apps. They can also go ahead and create ads for the store location or featured products to enhance visibility and target the right customers at the right time.
- Augmented and virtual reality marketing:Augmented reality ads involve bringing unreal environments into a realistic into an interesting realistic experience, integrating the offer with the buyer’s reality.
In order to create brand awareness,many brands have been using augmented and virtual reality marketing.
Brands like Starbucks, Volkswagen, and Nivea have successfully adapted augmented reality. For example, brands like L’Oreal and Ikea have enhanced their consumer experience by allowing them to visualize the products before buying them. The market size for these trends is expected to reach new heights worldwide within a period of 4 years. - Live stories: Due to remarkable waves in the last few years, live content has proved to be one of the fastest-growing segments of internet video traffic; thanks to YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Live streaming is extremely effective; it is free, takes a short time to produce and generates real-time customer engagement. It also holds the ability to generate high impressions as compared to newsfeed posts. Live streaming allows marketers to reach a wider audience, improves their customer relationship, helps engage with leads in a quick way, and also boosts their social media traffic.
- Al and machine learning: Al and machine learning helps advertisers anticipate customer’s future probable patterns based on the data collected. Using this data, marketers then analyze how to engage better with their prospective buyers with the help of different channels namely, sales outreach, direct mail, or digital advertising. Al is used by many ongoing sectors like e-commerce, healthcare, food and beverage, etc. For example, many food retailers use this data to determine the delivery slot for their products. This is done post collecting data from various sources such as temperature, weather, road traffic, etc. It also helps determine the effect of these factors on the quality of food.86% of the consumers feel personalization is an important aspect when it comes to their buying decisions, mainly in the e-commerce industry. These companies use big data to predict their consumer’s behavior and demographics so that they can create a personalized shopping experience, like customized discounts or emails for re-engagement.These trends are likely to penetrate various other sectors like finance, banking, accounting and even jobs like teaching.
- Email marketing: As email marketing is getting smarter by the day, marketers have started to care more about the active subscribers on their list. If a user highly engages with your emailers, he should be daily nurtured and updated with content about the company until he turns into a loyal customer for the company. A marketer needs to identify all lead behaviors so that they can send the right email to the right user at the right time.HTML style emailers have detailed graphics which increases the probability of spam; hence marketers are adapting to plain emailers as they help improve the engagement rate and address the needs of the user.
- Browser push notifications: Since push notifications are moving into the realm of technology, companies use them to reach their lead audience more effectively and communicate with them in a more powerful way.
Another major role they play is, improving their business conversion rates and retaining their customers. For instance, e-commerce companies use browser push to retarget their users who abandoned the cart and tempt them to complete their purchases with them. - Personalized content: The need for content personalization has become more critical than ever, as customers these days need total relevancy. Customizing content for the audience relies on the visitor’s data; implying the displaying of landing pages based on criteria such as geographic, behavioral and demographic attributes with targeted CTAs in order to convert them effectively.For example, Groupon asks its site visitors to generate their locations so that they can deliver accurate geo-targeted offerings to their customers. Today, 44% of users who have a personalized shopping experience are likely to become repeated customers, eventually turning into loyal consumers. This trend is expected to gain its importance before the year
About The Author : Lovetto Nazareth
Lovetto Nazareth is a digital marketing consultant and agency owner of Prism Digital. He has been in the advertising and digital marketing business for the last 2 decades and has managed thousands of campaigns and generated millions of dollars of new leads. He is an avid adventure sports enthusiast and a singer-songwriter. Follow him on social media on @Lovetto Nazareth