There will be many new trends coming to digital marketing in 2018. We think it’ll be valuable for marketers to be aware of these trends, and use them in their marketing campaigns.
Digital technology is now affecting all marketing strategies. Even those industries that were slow to adopt new technology are now seeing the benefits of using digital technology. It helps you ‘future-proof’ customer conversion. Over the years we’ve seen a shift from a focus on mass media to user-generated content to personalised marketing. The next phase in marketing will require marketing to focus more on engaging individual customers.
To succeed in the digital age, marketers need to become the voice of the customer. They need to work across different departments to improve the customer’s experience from the pre-sale, to the product development and to the post-sale.
Engaging the customer
There are now a lot of new services out there. Same-day shipping, voice assistants and on-demand content. All of this means that marketers need to find new innovative ways of engaging their customers with almost-instant service.
There will be more focus on creating engagement through your website. That involves spending time analysing bounce rates, page traffic reports and your click-through rate. User experience is important for your website. And higher click-through rates mean higher rankings, which is important for your sales.
You’ll need to understand what your customers need, as well as how they’re interacting with your website during every phase of their purchase. You really need to focus on optimising your website for each user’s individual experience – rather than the collective experience of millions of users. Links are always a significant ranking factor. The better your link acquisition strategies are, and the more focus you place on mentions, the more context and relevance you’ll add to your business.
The year ahead is sure to bring many unexpected marketing surprises. Based on present trends, marketing will possibly be more analytical, with more emphasis placed on marketing through social media, voice and organic search. Additionally, there will might be new content formats such as in-car advertisements and augmented reality making their way into mainstream marketing. Who knows?
What marketing trends do you think we’ll see this year?