Do you know which digital marketing trends you should include in your business strategy for 2018?

In the digital marketing world, it seems like a year is the equivalent of a decade’s worth of information, updates and innovations. Everything is constantly evolving, making it difficult at times to detect patterns. However, we can agree that there are certain aspects or behaviors that determine a trend that becomes generally accepted.

One thing is true, companies who are able to keep up with the ever-evolving industry and implement new strategies will reap the benefits. Here are 4 digital marketing trends that have grown in 2017 and will keep evolving in 2018.

Videos and live streaming will rise to the top

Even though this type of format isn’t new, especially since the video format should already be part of your online marketing strategy, it seems that every year the amount of time people watch videos increases, whether it be on desktop, mobile or tablets.

The numbers don’t lie, 55% of people watch videos online every day. Not only that, but emails with the word “video” in the subject lines increase their opening rate by 19%.

It’s only a matter of taking a quick look at the past to understand that videos have evolved and now live videos and stories are the latest in content marketing and social media.

Back in 2016 Instagram announced the launch of “stories”, a popular format first introduced by Snapchat, which enabled ephemeral content available for 24 hours after posting it. Following in the same footsteps, Facebook adopted the feature in early 2017 and in November of that same year, Youtube launched its own version of stories called “Reels”.

Just like stories, live video streaming is gaining more attention and brands are recognizing its potential to capture their audiences’ attention. In fact, 82% of users prefer live video from a brand to social posts. Also, live videos are a powerful tool to help “humanize” your brand, because it lets your brand create a more authentic and natural relationship with your audience, enabling interactions in real time and creating more engagement.

Voice search will continue to grow

One of the digital marketing trends to watch out for in 2018 will be voice search. The road for voice search has not been an easy one and it’s been a long process to get to where they are now.

Even though they haven’t achieved a definitive position in consumer behavior, statistics are confirming that the use and evolution of virtual assistants like Ok Google, Alexa, Siri and

Cortana has been growing progressively over the last years. According to Mary Meeker, by 2020, voice- and image-based searches are going to make up at least 50 percent of all searches.

On that same note, digital assistants have gone beyond just smartphones, which will undoubtedly result in a change for SEO and content marketing strategies. For the holiday season in 2016, Amazon’s Echo products became their most popular product and in 2017 Google launched Home, it’s voice-activated speaker powered by Google Assistant.

This change in user search behavior will be a key factor for brands when creating an SEO strategy; including long-tail keywords with a natural tone will be important to match the users conversational tone. At the end of the day, voice search should be focused on helping people in their daily issues, especially in those key “micro-moments” where they reach for their phone and look for effective and quick answers.

Influencers are here to stay

If you didn’t hear the words influencers and marketing in the same sentence in 2017, you were probably living under a rock. 2018 will see more brands reaching out to influencers to promote their product, service or message in order to get their name out to a larger audience and land more sales.

As traditional marketing efforts slowly take a backseat, influencer marketing has positioned itself as one the big alternatives to convince and persuade audiences to consume brands’ products or services.

“Influencer marketing was rated as the fastest-growing online customer-acquisition channel, beating organic search, paid search and email marketing.” – Tomoson

Micro-influencers will keep playing an important role in this new trend as more brands realize that even though they might have fewer subscribers or followers, they have a more authentic and real relationship with their audience, which is critical at the moment consumers decide to purchase something.

In fact, HelloSociety, which was acquired in March of 2016  by the New York Times, has found that “micro”-influencers, or accounts with 30,000 or fewer followers, are more beneficial for marketers to work with.

The following image shows some of the reasons why micro influencers achieve a better engagement with their audience.

On that same note, 2018 will see the growth of instagram influencer marketing. Since 2011, Instagram has been one of the fastest growing social media platforms, with 800 million monthly active users, and showing no signs of slowing.

According to Mediakix, Instagram influencer marketing could reach $2 billion by 2019, turning Instagram one of the most quickly developing segments of the growing influencer marketing market.

Chatbots and AI will keep innovating

Now more than ever, brands are using chatbots to provide marketing, sales and customer service. Companies that still don’t see them as a priority need to start designing and executing actions to include them in their strategies this year, not only because they were one of the most relevant digital marketing trends in 2017, but also because they play an important role in the future of marketing.

As more people trust their mobile devices to carry out other activities, the use of chatbots will be a determining factor when users interact with customer service representatives, especially in those “micro-moments” where they need quick answers.

“The global chatbot market is expected to reach $1.23 billion by 2025” -Grand View Research

In a world that walks, or rather runs into the arms of artificial intelligence, customer service is jumping on the bandwagon. One of the most innovative aspects of AI is the e-commerce functions integrated in chatbots. The idea is to allow people to buy items with a conversational bot that can offer them personalized shopping recommendations.

From Domino’s chatbot on Facebook Messenger to Ray Ban’s Chatbot, which helps customer not only pick sunglasses, but also try them on through their virtual mirror, it’s safe to say that AI has evolved to a point where having engaging and human conversations is possible.

How is this possible? Chatbots use natural language processing to communicate with humans. They process the buyer’s request through personalized keywords and use machine learning to determine the best products to help users.

Micro-moments can’t be ignored

The use of smartphones has forced both consumers and marketers to change the game when it comes to interactions. Never before have consumers had the luxury to get the information they need at the touch of a button or voice request.

According to Think with Google, micro-moments are intent rich moments when a person turns to a device to act on a need – to know, go, do, or buy. When users have questions, like what’s the best Italian restaurant in city or where they can buy tools for their next home renovation project, 96% of them reach for their smartphones to get answers.

Conclusion

Now that you know which digital marketing trends you need to pay attention to in 2018, the next step is to evaluate which ones are the most appropriate for your business, depending on your needs, goals and budget, in order to implement your digital marketing plan.

About the Author: Tyler Stavola is an SEO Practitioner, Digital Strategist, and experienced Digital Director at OWDT with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry.