5 Digital Marketing Trends You Should Follow in 2018

5 Digital Marketing Trends You Should Follow in 2018

In past few year focus of marketers has shifted from product centric approach to customer centric approach for marketing. Now customer retention and loyalty is more important than customer acquisitions.

Before getting involved in the discussion on five digital marketing trends, I would like to make one thing clear that to stay updated and understand what people are expecting from you. Watch how people change their needs and in what way they express those needs, tweak your communication to resonate your brand. Be inspired, steal some ideas swirling around you and integrate all these choices as possible potential opportunities in your marketing plans. Give your audience knowledge and answers they are eagerly seeking by sharing stories in the voice of your brand. But don’t buy those trends. This approach of digital marketing will make your marketing timeless. Years may go by, but your brand will be at the top of the mind. So, my humble advice to you is to stay timeless. Watch trends like a meandering river of new ideas, but be quality be style because the style is something which is eternal as well as enduring.

Quick Overview of Digital Marketing In 2017

We are in the third quarter of 2017. Marketers have initiated planning of marketing strategy and budget of 2018. 2017 was a fantastic year for online marketers, but this field is dominated by those who are capable to foresight a plan, anticipate changes and jump on the trends before competitors. Therefore, it is important to take notes of those trends and get prepare for them. You are not required to integrate all of them into your marketing plan, but awareness about their existence is important to remain competitive in the industry.

Everybody is talking about VR (Virtual Reality) or even AR (Augmented Reality). Even these two concepts are becoming a significant part of our digital marketing campaign, but I think we are still too far from seeing these two concepts in reality. Other than that immersive marketing, live video streaming, native advertisement and use of big data are few trends dominating digital marketing industry in 2017.

To develop a top notch digital marketing strategy for your business in 2018, go through the five trends explained here and incorporated them into your planning process. We will go through all the best strategies for acquiring leads, customer conversations and engagement for your brand.

5 Upcoming Trends in Digital Marketing

1. Prominence of Mobile Phone and Other Smart Devices over Laptops

2017 was an era of laptop, desktop and PCs. All these means were used for manipulation of computing or browsing experiences. Whereas, 2018 is considered as an age of smart appliances. These smart devices are full of most recent technology features to help ordinary users and marketers to satisfy all the digital requirements with one gadget.

It is considered that there will be the complete dominance of smartphones over laptops for making money or for generating online traffic. Our forecasting for the year 2018 not only include the dominance of smart devices and smartphones, but it is also predicted that usage of specialised mobile apps will shoot up in the coming years. People love to use the internet on their smartphones. This trend is influencing brands to introduce downloadable mobile apps for their sites. It will not only enhance the user interest in Application usage, but it will also help marketers to be the number one highly preferable choice of the potential as well as targeted customers.

2. Significance of High-Quality Content Boosts

Certainly, this year content marketing is on the rise. High-quality content is the core focus of the marketers. To devise a particular marketing plan and to run hand in hand with important goals, personalised experience for every customer is important. The most efficient way to personalise customer experiences is to share high-quality customer centric personalise content with your them. It is important to drift away from traditional static content and try to share dynamically rich content with your clients. The best way to do so is to create a dynamic website, a smart marketing automation plan to deliver top quality content to clients. It will create a unique brand experience for the custom tailoring to their needs and preferences.

Just imagine a new visitor navigates your website. The message you want to communicate with that particular customer is different from the message or content running on the site for existing customers. For that new visitor, a standard message with a ready-made snapshot of your offerings and a chunk of engaging content would be useful. In case of a current customer, you can send individualised message about their needs, it will help in retaining and pulling them back to acquire new products being offered by you.

3. Promising Improvement in Video Advertisements

In 2018 all the exciting and informative things will be online. A couple of kitten playing, a baby laughing or a top commercial featuring a traditional model, there is always a visual medium to market all of them. The video advertisement is getting popularity just because there is a deeper level of acceptance and attachment among consumers for that. Usage of visually rich and interactive content depict proper message and story in the field of digital marketing. Now brands are capitalising on the introduction of highly engaging videos on different social media platforms. Moreover seizing this opportunity means you are differentiating your brand from competitors.

Recent stats suggest users are spending more time on their smartphones and video advertisement is gaining popularity among them. According to a reliable source, YouTube register 18 or more than 18 years old audiences during peak TV hours. Recently Facebook revealed out of 1.65 billion active users approximately 8 billion spend time on watching videos each day. According to another research, visual on-screen elements account for deeper attachment between customer and brands than anything else. Massive popularity and the trend promoting high-quality video content is going to soar high in future.

4. The Rise of Social Media Platforms

A great increase in usage of social media for promoting things over the internet have been reported in 2017. It is also forecasted that this scale will skyrocket for sure in the upcoming years. Most of the time, highly reputed as well as small or medium sized organisations utilise social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, etc. for branding and promotion. Most companies use social channels for promotion of their own as well as client’s business websites, products and services. General public and firms also use social media platforms to do branding of their accomplishments and daily updates in front of the whole world to make them aware of discoveries in different domains.

Online communities not only have to attract prospects, but they are also no longer destined to attract company-consumer conversations. All digital marketers are required to do is, to provide opportunities to increase conversion rates. Same thing goes for e-commerce and lead generation websites. Therefore, they utilise social media channels as conversion channels and offer tools to convert prospects into buyers. It would be a glaring question to ask what future hold for social media marketing. It’s a perfect time to sit back and reflect on social media landscape to know what is important for your digital marketing on social media to stay ahead of the competition.

5. Hacking Will Continue to Evolve

Growth hacking is here, and it will continue to develop further in future.

Digital marketers are going to grab the attention of their audiences through social media channels, viral marketing and organic ads in upcoming years and it will take growth hacking to the next level. Growth hacking is the process of identifying the most practical and efficient ways for increasing growth of the business. It is a set of conventional and unconventional marketing strategies to enhance the growth of the firm.

All digital marketing practices particularly the most fascinating once are continuously demonstrating that there is the enormous potential of growth hacking in upcoming years. To remain at the focus of the user attention and to be a search engine giant digital marketers are required to alter their digital marketing strategies. Hence, it is important for marketers to open their eyes and follow the best digital marketing practices to keep ahead of the innovative curve in the field of digital marketing.

Final Words

Sophistication and global acceptance of digital marketing and digital technology are on the rise. The scope of digital marketing for different business and brands to engage and interact their target market is boundless. Up till now, 2017 was considered as the most productive year for the digital marketers. Therefore, it is the right time for companies to start incorporating digital marketing trends in their strategic planning processes for 2018. You are few months ahead of the actual execution but getting well-prepared beforehand will give you a competitive edge over other players in the market.

Posted by Victoria Ashley

Victoria Ashley
Hi, I am Victoria Ashley. A professional content writer always seeking different opportunities to write on. Associated with a logo design agency as a content analyst!

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