Just when you start believing that you understand your audience well, a new trend, a new technology, a new behavior, or even a new section of the audience alters everything. In this ever-changing landscape, it is difficult to predict which technique or method will connect you with your customers most effectively. Digital is a fast-evolving space where the techniques that worked great yesterday, will not work at all tomorrow. To survive in such kind of environment, an entrepreneur needs to be incredibly adaptable to the emerging trends. Today, digital marketing is a vital tool for every organization to reach out to their customers.
10 Digital Marketing Trends All Entrepreneurs Need to Pay Attention to
Here are the top ten digital marketing trends all entrepreneurs should pay attention to; to succeed in this fast-paced world.
1. Content continues to be the king
In the current landscape, content is everything. You need to tempt your audience, instigate them and provoke their thoughts through engaging content. The idea is not just to put content before your audience and hope that they will respond to it, but to encourage them to buy your products, leverage your services and solutions and share the content with others, who can be your potential customers.
2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to rule
AI is taking over simple and monotonous jobs which were earlier managed by humans in almost every sector and will continue to do so. AI algorithms are efficiently predicting behaviour patterns by analyzing huge amounts of data. It also helps in providing a personalized experience to customers. Today, more and more businesses are leveraging AI to boost their performance and customer relations. Coming trends suggest that AI will decide the channels for promotion, will write content and make buying options. Even if you choose not to adopt AI, however, it is smart to pay attention to whether your competitors use it and how consumers respond to it.
3. Chatbots continues to make things easy
Customer support is essential for businesses of industries like electronics, IT, e-commerce etc. But are all your customers comfortable in talking with your customer care agents? Do they all have time for it? This is where chatbots come in. These are little AI-based assistants integrated into websites and are capable of answering questions and fulfil requests very quickly.
4. Voice Search is loved by netizens
Voice search has taken the netizens by storm. Researches claim that one-third of the total number of searches made in Google is grabbed by voice search. Virtual assistants are making lives easier and with time, their efficiency will increase.
5. Influencer Marketing is becoming more impactful
Influencer marketing is a hybrid marketing tool. It’s a collaboration between brands and digital influencers for the promotion of products, services, solutions, or ideas. It’s not a new concept, but in this content-driven market, its impact is more than ever. Digital influencers like YouTubers and bloggers possess huge and diverse followers. Entrepreneurs can easily tap into this crowd with the help of influencer marketing.
6. Videos are on the rise
In this digital world, videos are imperative. Earlier, it used to be a small part of your digital marketing strategy, but today, you require to develop an entire strategy just for one video. With 4G and the advent of 5G, buffering is not a concern anymore. Netizens spend countless hours watching videos on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Netflix, Amazon Primes etc. However, the trend is towards shorter videos these days.
7. Visual Searches are becoming more popular
Besides voice searches, there is another type of search method which is taking off rapidly these days. It’s Visual search. As Google has enabled image search and the new camera technologies have made it even more effective, people are clicking pictures of different things in the real world and uploading them to Google to find information about them.
8. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are the new realities
Virtual Reality (VR) is an artificially crafted environment that allows your users to believe that it is real and immerse into several experiences and emotions. Today, businesses are leveraging VR to create brand awareness through innovative digital campaigns. Augmented Reality (AR) allows customers to insert objects into a real-life setting and view how it looks like with the object. With international giants like Amazon and Ikea rigorously implementing AR for product visualization, this trend is being accepted by many companies and is not going away anytime soon.
9. Email Marketing is more efficient now
Email has always been a popular tool for reaching customers. But today, it went to an all new level with the help of automation tools. Now, in seconds, marketers can send diverse emails to different customers/subscribers based on their interests. Personalization has made email marketing more effective than ever.
10. Geofencing & Mobile Marketing help on better targeting
The increasing adoption of smartphones and other digital devices by users has made Geofencing a must-have for businesses looking for capturing the attention of their targeted audience and staying on the radar of their target market. One can send targeted messages to a group of audiences within a particular geographic area through technologies like RFID, GPS and Bluetooth.
In this digital age, marketing is becoming increasingly complex day by day, so a smart entrepreneur should always keep an eye on the emerging market trends, technologies, tools and patterns to acquire and retain more customers.
