If you’ve been around the digital marketing landscape for long you know the drill.
As soon as the new year approaches there’s going to be a new digital marketing trends that everybody’s going to be talking about that’s the hot new thing.
But the truth of the matter is these trends have been around for awhile, they’re just becoming more prevalent as more and more people are using them.
Which means that you are going to need to get super comfortable with some of these trends to stay ahead of the curve.
So with that said let’s take a look at some of the new trends that are really working as the end of 2018 hits in the beginning of 2019 starts.
Chatbots
Let’s face it there’s nothing that has really changed the way that people interact with pages that they follow more than chatbot.
Chatbots allow you to interact with a Facebook page or a reader in a way that feels more like a personal friend reaching out to another friend.
By allowing these interactions to take place inside of Facebook messenger instead of through an email inbox it feels more like a one-on-one interaction especially when you add personalization into the mix.
Studies are showing that many customers prefer interacting with chatbot as they are responsive, they give answers quickly, they can recall your entire buying history and they don’t lose patience, unlike an actual customer service representative.
They are without a doubt the perfect virtual assistant.
When used properly, that is.
Of course there are always going to be people who abused them and turn them into spam which is what caused the “Great chatbot crash 2018”.
But if you keep to the rules and make sure that you’re interacting correctly everything should slow well for you.
There are over 1.4 billion people using chatbots every single day.
What are the best uses a chatbot in business history happens to be the Nat Geo special about geniuses.
Users were prompted to open up their messenger Bots and interact with such Geniuses at Einstein and Pablo Picasso.
Upon entering the but they got responses and prompts similar to what they would experience if they weren’t actually interacting with people like Einstein.
The bach created amazing engagement sometimes including up to six to eight minutes per conversation, 11 replies per conversation and 50% return engagement.
It created such a feeling of one-on-one conversation that when the special aired people tuned in because they had so much fun interacting with the but they couldn’t wait to see their ‘new friend’ on TV.
Another great user case is Duolingo.
Have you ever tried to learn a new language and wish that you could speak to someone in that language without having a lot of judgment around it?
Duolingo solve that by creating an amazing Facebook Messenger chatbot.
It connects users with an AI inside of its app that speaks the language that they’re learning.
So instead of freezing up in a conversation when connected with a native speaker of the other language, the learners were able to have free and open conversations with the new chat bot.
It was a judgment free way for them to practice having conversation in the language they are learning and create an experience where they felt more comfortable when actually interacting with users of their language.
This made learning through the app not only more fun, but it also gave people a different way to practice their fluency in the new language.
User cases such like this show that chatbots can be a brilliant thing when used appropriately.
Video Marketing
Let’s face it videos have been a long time coming.
Almost every article of “digital marketing trends” from the past 5 years talk about the prevalence of video.
So it’s no surprise that it would make it into today’s topic of conversation.
Videos and that’s not really a surprise to anybody that’s been around for a while.
And it’s not just YouTube that is really pushing the video marketing.
Facebook and Instagram now have a live feature that people are absolutely loving and they tune in regularly to watch their favorite people go live.
Video is becoming ever important in SEO as well.
Go look up anything in a search engine especially on Google and some of the top results that you’ll see our YouTube.
It’s important to keep this in mind when you’re creating content for your user base because let’s face it the majority of people search something out on a search engine primarily Google or Pinterest before they look at any other option.
So by consistently putting out at least decent quality videos you’re going to be ahead of some of the other competitors in your Arena who aren’t doing any video whatsoever.
Think of it this way, over 50% of consumers say that watching product videos made them more confident and buying something online, and 72% of businesses have say that that video has improved their conversion rate.
Statistics like that are not easy to ignore.
Visual Search
Visual searches are becoming more and more prevalent every single day.
With the invention of things like Pinterest and Instagram and basically any social media platform we’re becoming more and more visual people.
People see you something and they want it and often times people are taking pictures of things out in public and uploading them to look for it.
Both Pinterest and Google have come up with their own visual search platforms, Pinterest Lens and Google Lens.
With Pinterest Lens you’re able to upload a photo of something that you see and you will be getting a slew of pins, boards and items that match your items to find and purchase.
Google lens is even more powerful than Pinterest lens, when it comes to user case scenarios.
Especially when it comes to things like a business card.
You can now take a picture of a business card and save the number and address to a contact that you have in your phone.
you can snap a picture of a book in a bookstore and and get real-time review is another details of it.
It’s even coming in handy in places like museums and landmarks.
Snap a picture of a photo in a museum and to get more details about it like who painted it and when.
Or you can grab a picture of that cool Landmark you see every time you drive by the interstate and figure out I need more details about that.
Visual searching is the wave of the future and it’s something that you need to keep in mind when you create visuals for your brand and for your product.
Smart Devices
When was the last time you watched a TV show for any length of time and didn’t see an ad for some sort of smart devices such as an Amazon Alexa or Google home.
Especially now that Facebook is coming out with a smart device of their own in the Portal.
Smart devices are increasing in popularity every single day with more and more homes owning them now than have ever had in the past.
39 million Americans, as of this writing, use smart speakers and 65% of them say they wouldn’t want to do go back to without having one.
Because of this you need to keep that in mind creating a SEO or any other content for your brand.
Make it conversational make it something that people would search for using their voice.
As a matter of fact this entire blog was written using my voice and a Google Drive.
By keeping everything conversational I’ve noticed that I’m sir showing up higher and higher in Google search results.
20% of all mobile searches on Google are done using their voice.
And Google estimates that by 2020 at least 50% of all searches will be done using the voice.
producing audio content to get more brand awareness is a great idea especially with the prevalence of voice devices.
Many people estimate that at some point in the near future devices such as Google home well answer your query and then give you some more information with a word from our sponsor.
It’s only a matter of time before adds creep into the smart device space so get prepared now so you can be ahead of the curve.
Social Media Stories
Social media stories are the big-ticket item of the year.
Snapchat was the first to do it with the concept of my story which you could add to repeatedly over the course of 24 hours.
People love to seeing little bits and Snippets and everybody’s day especially their friends while they were out doing something even as simple as grocery shopping.
It created a more personal connection and let everybody feel like a I’m actually there with you.
So it was no surprise when Facebook and then Instagram hopped onto the bandwagon and started creating stories of their own.
And it was even less of a surprise when YouTube came out with the same thing in their own story format with Reels recently.
The common theme between the story is among every single platform is one thing they disappear after a set amount of time.
This creates lots of FOMO for a lot of people.
If there’s one thing to be said about human nature, it’s that many don’t like to miss out.
So if you have something that maybe would not necessarily get you a lot of views if it’s a regular social media posts such as a quick 30 second interview with your virtual assistant put it on your story and see how many people you can drive to it.
Especially on Instagram, stories are becoming more and more popular with marketers because once you get verified you can add links to your story and that’s something that you can’t do with a regular Instagram post.
Working hard on creating a great social media presence and now if so that way you get enough followers to become verified on multiple platforms is a great idea when you think about the benefits and perks to having these verification such as now links on Instagram stories.
Listen I can drone on and on with what the next big hot thing is going to be in 2019.
But I think we all know what’s going to be happening.
Social media, as always, will be the “big thing” of the year
And it’s going to be topping TV here soon as what people spend most of their time watching/looking at.
So the big “media giants” such as Coke and Pepsi and Budweiser are going to be putting more and more of their focus on social media advertising vs. TV advertising.
Just keep that in mind when you go to start popping in your ad budget.
A lot of what I told you is stuff that can be done organically and if I were you I would work on that now.
Get your organic views high, make sure that your engagement is high and make sure that you’re actually paying attention to the people who are following you listening to what they have to say and engaging with them in such a way that they’re going to want to be a fan for life.
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