Four Digital Marketing Trends to Watch

The digital marketing landscape of today is even more impressive when we look back at the amount of progress that has been made in the last decade. It would have been nearly impossible to imagine modern digital capabilities from a vantage point in the past. Emerging technologies make the digital consumer more efficient and ubiquitous, while marketing and advertising platforms evolve to become more intuitive. These evolutions break down the barriers to entry that once barred most marketers from taking part in the digital revolution.

With all the progress that has been made, one may wonder what types of new and exciting trends are still waiting to be discovered in the digital world. Here at CLM, we are always on the lookout for new ways to reach the right audiences for our clients. Keeping up with the latest trends in the digital marketing world is certainly difficult, however, it is incumbent on us as marketers to know which trends have serious potential for our clients.

Here are 4 digital marketing trends to keep an eye on in the near future:

Machine Learning

One of the most talked about trends in the last few years has been the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the marketing process. Digital marketing today is all about big data. In fact, the data is so big marketers need the help of machines to decipher important moments within a particular customer journey.

While employing artificial intelligence in marketing isn’t exactly new, the way it’s being used now and how it will be used in the near future will surely be on the forefront of marketing trend lists for quite some time.

Machine learning has the ability to pinpoint and track patterns for specific users, and then apply those patterns to users with similar demographic profiles to predict behavior. Having this capability in your marketing playbook can help guide strategy and optimize ongoing campaigns to achieve results.

Influencer Marketing

We have long known that a customer is more likely to purchase a product after a ringing endorsement from a trusted friend. But what if that endorsement no longer had to come from a friend, or even a person the customer knows personally? That’s where the power of influence marketing comes in.

The age of social media has opened the possibility for internet strangers with large followings to make product recommendations that are trusted implicitly by some consumers. Influencer marketing has become word-of-mouth marketing with an incredible reach potential. Finding the right person to recommend your brand can be a powerful way to drive awareness and sales.

Social Media Story Advertising

If we’re giving credit where credit is due, utilizing stories on social media was born out of Vine, a now defunct social media platform, and later perfected by Snapchat. Witnessing the success of Snapchat paved the way for Instagram to adopt the idea. These social media stories eventually made their way to Facebook, meaning that almost all major social media platforms have stories as part of their product offering in one way or another.

Social media stories allow a user to upload quick videos of their everyday lives that are watched by followers. The amount of growth platforms like Instagram have seen for users utilizing stories has been staggering.

Social media stories offer a very effective way for brands to advertise in a native format. Using vertical video can give brands a seamless way to introduce their products or services to millions of users around the world.

Micro-Moments

Google has long been at the forefront of digital advertising and is constantly inventing new ways to reach the right person at the right time. One of the trends coming directly from Google that has become increasingly popular is introducing micro-moments to catalog and describe digital consumer behavior.

A micro-moment is when and how a consumer takes a specific action during the consumer journey. Marketers can use micro-moments to deliver a message to a specific user at the correct time to inform or elicit a desired action. Since we are constantly being bombarded by advertising and promotions on the web, micro-moments seek to only deliver a message when it is timely and relevant.

This is again where machine learning and big data merge to place relevant messages in front of consumers that are ready to receive the message a company is promoting.

 

While these trends are just the tip of the iceberg when discussing emerging trends in digital marketing, highlighting some of the biggest changes in how we market to consumers online will make us better advertisers. It will also help us reach the right people at the right time.

Contact us to learn more about how we can use these trends to help your business!

CLM | Sep 6, 2018