2017 just left us & we warmly welcomed 2018. As we had discussed trends in 2017, its now time to discuss what new business will have to explore in 2018. As we know technology is highly dynamic business now needs to be flexible enough to withstand the dynamic technology changes.
So here are few new trends that one can experience in this new 12 months.
1.AI & Machine Learning:
Artificial intelligence is not new to the market. For a fact it’s therein market since long & is expected to grow this year too. People are using it too for example when people see ads in search engine its again an AI only. 53% marketers already use AI today.
So now AI for marketing is only going to grow as marketing trends evolve more. It is expected that 53% more growth in usage would take place in coming few years.
- Heavy Investment in Influencer Marketing:
Influencer marketing can be fruitful for both B2B & B2C marketers. According to Forrester, the average consumer engages with 11.4 pieces of content prior to making a purchase. As we know that social media has got a huge impact on the customer’s overall path to purchase, thus presenting a clear opportunity for influencer marketing to make an impact throughout the customer journey. We see vloggers, Instagramers, and YouTubers carving their own niche with tens or hundreds of thousand followers. They may be celebrities, YouTube sensations, Facebook or Instagram heroes. Marketers possess great opportunity to tap these influencers for promotional activities. The trust factor is the key to Influencers with which they can promote your product or service to a large audience and get the results. The investment in influencer marketing is sure to increase with the kind of reach and influence they can provide in terms of the target audience.
- SEO beyond keywords :
As we know presently it’s only searching by words, but very soon we would be searching for voice & images. Till 2020 it is expected that 50% of the searches are likely to be voice & image searches.
Content marketing will make optimising for this searches a little easier as here there won’t be a usage of keywords as it is now in blog writing. So here it would be easy for both the parties to optimise their searches.
4.Videos:
Apart from YouTube ruling the video world, 2017 saw online networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram becoming prevalent video publishing platforms. Autoplay has helped marketers to grasp the audience’s attention quickly.
- Personalized Content:
In 2015, technology market research company Gartner published a prediction with major implications. Their study of the market prompted them to argue that companies that have “fully invested in all types of personalization” will outsell other companies.
6.Customer Experience Marketing:
Firstly let us know what is customer experience marketing with an example, when one searches for a business name & finds out two different listings, or if they receive bad customer service they will never visit your business again. So this has to be the main focus of the marketer.
68% of marketers say their business is increasingly focusing on customer experience in marketing. Creating a great experience for your customer helps a marketer built up loyal customers.
- Big Data:
Big data is one of the most commonly heard terms in data management that comes with a number of questions. Due to the massive amount of data involved and its heavy emphasis on different digital marketing cultures like segment marketing, personalized marketing, native marketing, etc., its implementation into marketing strategies is quite complex and impossible to cover in brief.
- Visibility with Native Ads:
Native advertising is essentially a paid advertisement. But it’s a paid advertisement that functions a little bit differently than a traditionally paid advertisement.
Using written content, native advertising is essentially an ad that’s disguised as original content by the platform. Think of it the same as a traditional PPC ad on the Google SERPs. Though they clearly say ad, they are interspersed with other non-ads in the results.
Advertisers have found that these ads are extremely profitable, nonetheless. Plenty of people continue to click on those ads and buy those products.
- Voice Assistant:
A voice assistant is a digital assistant that uses voice recognition, natural language processing, and speech synthesis to provide aid to users through phones and voice recognition applications.
Voice assistants are built on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and voice recognition technology. As the end user interacts with the digital assistant, the AI programming uses sophisticated algorithms to learn from the data input and better itself at predicting the user’s needs.
- Increased Investment In Social Media Management:
It has become easy for the marketers to attract more market through social media channels. So it is expected that in coming more & more investments would be done to improve presences on social media channels. People will now outsource people to handle their various social media pages so that business can remain in constant touch with their customers & keep them updated of various modes of business. This will help to improve transparency of the business to the customer.
11.Live Streaming:
This new trend which is already there in the market is expected to gain more popularity in this year. Here the marketer needs to be quite conscious while going live as one cannot edit live videos. So here every word used needs to have proper weight age. This further help to add up transparency to the customer about the business. It would also give the customer a brief idea about what is going on in business & helps business to build up close relationships with their customers.
- Augmented Reality:
Augmented reality (AR) uses digital technology to overlay information in video, text or image format onto everyday objects in the real world.
As per AR Influencer Jan Barbosa, Augmented Reality technology was brought back into the spotlight by early September Apple news that iPhone 6S to iPhone X would become fully compatible with AR. Be it in the games, fashion, education or retail sector, AR is sure to make its mark especially in the world of marketers. To quote an example, one of the firsts to take advantage of augmented reality was Snapchat which won millennial over with AR filters, followed by Facebook and Instagram. Even fashion & beauty products brands like L’Oreal and Shiseido are using augmented reality to help users find out how cosmetics will look on their faces before they buy.
AR generates a “wow” factor, getting your customers and the media speak about your brand. With top-notch companies like Google and Facebook continuing to develop AR viewing technology and app developers continue to refine the software, it is likely that AR will soon become an established and vital tool of any digital marketing campaign. It is by far clearer than those who exploit augmented reality technology in their marketing efforts gain a clear victory over those who don’t.
So above are the few new trends one would see growing & capturing the market in 2018.