Top 6 Digital marketing trends to look out - Infographic

What are the digital marketing trends in 2018? Digital marketing is always evolving industry, and the trends are constantly changing. You have to stay up-to-date and you need to learn every day. Remember that if you are sleeping in the world of digital marketing definitely you will be left behind.

This guide brings you the latest trends that could dominate digital marketing in the upcoming years. It will help you to stay ahead of the game in developing marketing strategies for your business. Here I have listed top trends that are going to dominate the industry in 2018.

1. Video marketing
2. Chatbots
3. Content marketing
4. Storytelling
5. Mobile Friendly site
6. Social media

1. Video marketing

The demand for videos is growing at an extraordinary rate. The users are more attracted to videos than other forms of content. Videos educate and build trust much faster than the text contents. The videos are dominating content marketing more than never before. In 2017, 90% of Users shared video content through social media and other platforms. A recent study from wyzowl shows that,

• 80% of traffic comes from a video in the year 2019.
• 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. It was 63% in 2017
• 82% of businesses feel the videos are an important part of their marketing strategy.
• 81% of people have purchased a product or service after watching a video.
• 65% of businesses who don’t use video now say that they are intended to start using it in 2018.

Now it is the time to adopt visual content into your marketing strategy. As per a recent report, live videos have 18% of the compound annual growth rate. Check how to build a video marketing strategy?

2. Chatbots

Chatbots are an example of the marketing automation process. A Chatbot is a computer program that interacts with your customers like a human via voice or textual methods. They help customers to leave feedback and order products quicker. Many brands are already using chatbots in ordering processes for their business.

It is estimated that 30% of interactions in 2018 will be conversation-based and it will be the year of voice bots. According to oracle's survey, 80% of brands plan to use chatbots for their customer satisfaction in the year 2020.

Some advantages of chatbots

• Chatbots are available 24/7, 365 days on your customer satisfaction.
• It provides 100% satisfaction to customers.
• It increased customer engagement.
• Chatbots can solve your customer care problems in multiple languages.
• Implementing chatbots is much cheaper than hiring employees.
• Chatbots will help you to collect consumer data.
• Chatbots can handle as many queries as required at once.

3. Content marketing

Some content marketing trends in 2018 are,

• If you’ve made video content, you will notice that engagement is high when compared to text content. Videos get 135% more organic reach than others
• In 2018, offering personalized content will be important. Personalization offers customer experiences of the product or service. Customers trust one another’s opinion more than ads. 66% of customers trust other customer’s opinions.
• 50% of all search queries will be voice search by 2020 which means you will need to improve your content with long-tail keywords.
• Add reviews and testimonials to your website.
• Your content should be original and high quality.
• You have to use Interactive content through polls and surveys for engaging your visitors.

4. Storytelling

I would say that the year 2018 is a big year for stories. Storytelling is an effective way of marketing brands, products, and services. Most businesses are creating stories of content to promote their businesses. Your stories must be personal and it should ensure to educate your customers in a way they understand and value your products. Creating entertaining content will help you to attract more visitors. Storytelling appeals your customer emotionally and it will help you to build relationships among your customers. It also helps you to increase your website traffic through which it could help to generate leads.

5. Mobile Friendly site

Nowadays most people use their mobile phones for their searches instead of their desktop computers. The percentage of people using a mobile phone is expected to reach 5 billion by 2019. In 2015 Google announced their mobile-friendly update on SEO ranking criteria. In 2018 indexing and ranking of the websites are based on a mobile-friendly version.

According to the zenith, 83% of all traffic in the US will happen through mobile phones by 2018. Mobile marketing needs to become a marketer’s top priority in 2019. According to Google’s mobile page speed study, if your site’s loading time increases from 1 second to 10 seconds the bounce rate will increase by 123%.

Artificial intelligence is going to be an industry dominator in 2018. AI-based mobile phone apps are expected to grow high in number by 2018.

It is estimated that videos have 80% mobile phone data traffic by 2018, so it is necessary for you to update yourself with the latest responsive web design or mobile-friendly website trends.

Tips to Create Mobile-friendly websites

• No Zooming or scrolling for mobile usability.
• Create mobile-focused Ad copies
• Remove annoying pop-ups
• Your CTA buttons need to work with touch screens
• Your pages need to load quickly.

6. Social media

Social media is one of the best ways to reach your target audience. With social media, you can reach millions of audiences worldwide. Each day the number of social media users is increasing. According to Statista, there will be 3 billion social media users in 2021.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing (SMM)

• Enriches Customer service
• Increases Website traffic
• Increases brand awareness and loyalty
• Higher conversion rates
• Share content faster and easier
• Cost-effective
• Access to a local and global audience

Social media is one of the profitable digital marketing platforms that can help you to improve your brand awareness. It is a good way to interact with your customers and it will also help you to increase your website traffic.

These are the things you need to pay attention in 2018 and the coming years. Good luck!!!