The evolution of technology, consumer demands, and markets has prompted businesses to adopt new marketing strategies. Without adapting to these changes, one cannot survive the competition. Moving over traditional marketing, big brands, small companies, mom and pop stores and commercial enterprises are turning to digital marketing. This kind of marketing using internet and social networks facilitates reaching out to people spread across the globe in a better way. According to Statista, the total revenue in digital advertising market amounts to US $266,238 million in 2018. While the forecast is that digital ad spending is going to see a growth of 11.2% in 2019. These point to the fact that both brick and mortar stores, as well as online retailers and everyone else in between is utilizing digital marketing to grow, engage and earn.
Having said this, we are going to explore how your business can benefit from digital marketing in 2019.
How can your business benefit from digital marketing in 2019?
Digital marketing per se is the use of internet technology to reach out to millions of people across the globe. Traditional advertising avenues like giving ads in newspaper, radio, TV, or displaying banners cannot reach out to as many people as it is possible to reach out through internet marketing. In addition to reach, digital marketing has a bearing on the cost as well. For example, according to fitsmallbusiness.com, local papers may charge $12 for a 12 per inch for a black and white ad while a 4 inch by 10 inch ad would cost $480. National papers on the other hand, may charge $10,000 or even more for the same ad. However, the costs of online marketing start for as low as $260 and the medium has the ability to reach a wider audience than a local newspaper. .
Let us take a look at the online marketing trends that will dominate 2019
Long Tail Keywords and search terms will dominate- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in 2019 is going to be a hard nut to break for marketers everywhere. As more and more businesses resort to marketing online, the competition gets stiffer making ranking through organic means even more challenging. Given the current circumstances, it is still possible to rank your website using SEO. But marketers in 2019 need to put their audience first instead of focusing on just ranking in search engines. To do this, SEO services need to identify those keywords that people are actually searching for. If you start looking at the keywords, you may want to choose the one which has a higher search volume. However, if you start with these keywords, you will notice that ranking is harder to come by. The reason is that more people are using these high volume keywords. In your digital marketing strategy, you should search for related keywords or synonyms to these high volume key terms along with a few of the popular ones. This will help you rank faster and find that your website has started appearing in search results for even the high ranking keywords. One of the best tools to do this is Google Correlate. Once you enter a keyword, it shows you all the terms that people are searching for on Google that is similar to your search term. You are shown a list of queries with a similar trend pattern to the main keyword you aim to rank for. You can also use the LSI keywords or Latent Semantic Index keywords that appear below the Google search results to find out the related key terms. There are other tools like Ubersuggest, AskThePublic as well as a handy browser plugin called Keywords Everywhere to help you identify long tail keywords that people search for. Once you identify the keywords, you can create promotional content using those keywords. This will help you to rank faster and also give you a better opportunity to be found when people are searching for keywords related to your product and services.
Omnichannel Marketing – Cracking the marketing game in 2019 is going to be tougher with more and more businesses adopting digital marketing for promoting services and products. The best way to stay afloat in this competitive space is to utilize all the online marketing mediums to get your message through to your audience. Omnichannel marketing exposes your business to new audiences and markets. Create a website, utilize social media marketing services channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, or write blog posts and articles and share it on different sites. Create podcasts, market to your email lists and keep your audience engaged at all times.
Increasing use of voice search – It has been stated that one-third of the 3.5 billion Google searches are done using voice. Contrary to popular belief, voice search is not only done through mobile devices but also through desktop computers and smart speakers. Geomarketing reports that 65% of people using Google Home or Amazon Echo cannot imagine going back to not using their smart speaker. This brings us to a new era of marketing where we need to reach not only those who are searching using text but also using their own voice. This means when we write content for our websites, it should not only be one that can be read well but something that sounds appealing to those listening as well. Optimizing a website for voice search is tricky. It is because for text-based searches a user is given a lot of choices from which he/she can choose what they want to read. While when it comes to searching something by asking Alexa or Siri to reply, a user gets to hear only one or a few results. This means webmasters are competing for a tougher spot to appear in voice searches. When someone asks a question, they expect an answer instead of being stated the number of websites that answer the question. Therefore, websites need to have content on most of the commonly searched queries akin to their products and services. Using long tail keywords in the content is the key for making it to the voice search results.
User-Generated Content (UGC) – User Generated Content is a marketing strategy wherein a brand uses the user reviews and testimonials in its promotion to reach out to other potential customers. This has been known to give brands a better engagement rate when compared to those that do not use it. The reason simply being the fact that when people see others using products and services from a brand, it makes them want to buy from the same brand too. Reviews and ratings by other users are valued more in establishing a brand's authenticity rather than the brand's own claims. One of the best examples of a brand using user-generated content in their marketing is GoPro. This camera company uses videos on their social media pages that have prompted a massive following of 14.7 million in Instagram and over 10 million followers in Facebook. In 2019, user-generated content will determine how new users view your brand and how they engage with you.
Micro-moments marketing – Google defines micro-moments as the moments when a user turns to a device – most often the mobile phone to take action on what they need or want. These can be categorized as the “I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-buy, and I-want-to-do” moments loaded with intent, context, and immediacy. These range from texting friends, booking a cab, looking for a place, or shopping to posting photos. Marketing to these various moods is how a marketer can win in 2019. Marketers are still catching up with micro-moments marketing which gives you a better chance to explore it. A mix of images, texts, audio and videos posted at the right times can effectively capture the attention of your customers. Say someone wants to buy a beanie and your ad appears in their Facebook timeline at the same time. This will prompt them to click on it and check out your product. Micro-moment marketing is challenging but something businesses should strive for in the coming year.
Micro-Influencer marketing – Influencer marketing has been one of the many sought-after techniques that several brands have been using for a few years now. Though it has been known to generate good revenue for some, for others, it has just added to the additional costs with no beneficial returns. The reason for this is the fact that top influencers with a lot of followers do not always have a higher engagement rate. In economics this is what you call the law of diminishing returns, where even if the influencer gets more followers, there is necessarily no higher engagement for the brand. This brings us to the micro-influencers who with a modest following still has a higher engagement rate. So if a brand hires 5 micro influencers with moderate to high following, there is a chance that it can reach out to more people than spending money on one influencer with a huge following. If you are a brand or agency that wants to use influencers in your digital marketing strategy for 2019, do your research well before striking the deal. Micro-influencers will save you a lot of money and get you more sales than one big influencer.
Conclusion
It is therefore established that the strategies of yore won't work for you anymore in 2019. With artificial intelligence coming into play, changes in the algorithm and the tendency of search engines like Google to place the searcher before everything else, marketers need to let go of their old ways. Keeping your customers in mind and planning your digital marketing services for 2019 will give you better returns on your investment.