Digital Marketing Trends To Keep An Eye On In 2018

The online world is increasingly becoming more visual and automated, and marketers are equally responding. And as the start of 2018 is clearly in sight, it is vital to take a glimpse into notable trends that will take over the digital marketing space.

1. Live video

In 2018, we expect a sharper shift towards live video in digital marketing. For some time, popular belief has been that ‘’content” meant blog posts, and while blogs still have their place in digital marketing, it is very crucial to invest in video content. Live video is gaining more momentum on almost every other social media platform, and marketers are responding. In fact, according to research conducted by Cisco , by 2021, there will be a 15-fold growth in live video streaming.

In practice, live video tends to bring the raw, unedited faces behind your brand, in a more candid way that viewers find more engaging than the passive reading of blogs. Another plus is that in live video, the content has an immediacy aspect to it, making your audience more glued, and in effect building trust.

2017 has seen an evolvement of fake news, an aspect that has not augmented well with audiences seeking genuine information about brands and products. It started in politics and soon affected the corporate world. However, with the increasing live video trends, expect 2018 to be action-packed with substance over superficiality, content that is genuine and more humanized. Also, expect B2B brands to come up with length copy real-life experience stories rather than some corporate hogwash.

In this respect, there will be a rise in video marketing services that will help correspondent with the demand for live video editing tools. These tools will be better fashioned to work on interfaces of the leading social media sites led by YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter.

2. Social messaging apps will dominate social networking

Social apps are used by an estimated four billion users on each day and in 2018, it is expected that over two billion messages will be sent through over-the-top apps (OTT).

It is true that today the most popular social messaging apps have gained the upper hand over the most popular social networking sites. This shift was initiated in 2015 and will be even better utilized in 2018. Brands are now coming to terms with what this means to the overall customer experience.

The main reason for this unprecedented shift is that messaging apps offer an immediate, private or more personal approach than posting on a company’s social media site such as Facebook or tweeting on their page on Twitter. It gets even easier, as businesses no longer need a programmer to build a chat platform; apps such as Facebook messenger chatbox do not require one to have any unique skills or software to operate.

3. Customers will change how they search your business

There has been an enormous growth in the development of search technology in the recent past. Search technology is now catching up with users’ demand for a technology that accommodates text, image queries, and voice. This change in digital marketing trends is something that marketers will have to be ready for, as this advances will significantly change where and how customers will interact with your business. We have seen digital assistants such as Siri by Apple, Alexa by Amazon and even Google’s Google Home increase their popularity as far as search is concerned. This should tell you that soon, customers will start relying more on voice search as opposed to the traditional web search.

Furthermore, we have seen a rise in visual search notably championed by Pinterest, thanks to its Lens feature. Amazon has also come up with its CamFind platform that allows customers to snap a photo of the item they want and quickly locate it in real-world from the massive Amazon’s products inventory.

Other notable trends that are slated to take proper shape as digital marketing trends in 2018 will include mobile-first indexing, which has already been rolled out. In the recent past, Google’s indexing has been shifting towards ‘’mobile-first” algorithm, something that is prospected to be completed in 2018. For proper internet marketing in 2018, as a business, you need to consider optimizing your site for mobile devices, just in case you haven’t already done so.

In conclusion, 2018 will be the year that digital marketers have to be more innovative, especially in coming up with customer-centric content. This is because there is expected to be an even increased scramble for customers by businesses and the ones that stand out will be the ones that fashions and personalizes their advertising to suit customers. Indeed personalized ad content is an excellent way to attracting new customers, retaining them or even wooing back the departed ones. More than ever, consumers are demanding for more streamlined customer experiences, richer content and more transparency from brands. Digital marketers should hence keenly watch these trends in 2018.