8 Digital Marketing Trends That Are Ruling The Online Businesses

8 Digital Marketing Trends That Are Ruling The Online Businesses Businesses who are successful with digital marketing in 2018 are customer focused when it comes to these 8 tactics that are more than just digital marketing trends to watch.

Every business knows that marketing is of great importance, especially when trying to reach out to the target consumers.

Digital marketing is no exception!

Every successful brand has a marketing strategy in place that makes sure ‘the brand’ is at the heart of their consumers.

For a brand to always stay a step ahead of their competitors, they always have to assess, update and deploy new digital marketing strategies to increase sales, a larger client base, and growth of the company.

With that said, the following are the digital marketing trends that are standing the test of digital time;

1. Making sure that the needs of your consumers are a priority

Many brands have endorsed digital marketing.

Why? Because it works.

Well, at least when you keep your consumer’s needs ahead of your own.

Whenever you try to build the reputation of your brand online, you should be conversant with the needs of your customers. Most of the brands that are dominating the top of search engines have achieved those positions because their online presence is customer focused.

Brands are succeeding BIG in search.

We’ve recently talked about how ‘Brand Building Should be the Primary Objective of SEO Today‘ and it’s because search engines are all too aware that customers have their own needs. Consequently, brands who are focused on understanding those needs and building campaigns around them are being rewarded.

By understanding consumer behavior, you too can stay a step ahead of your competitors.

2. Always Keep Your SEO in Check

When we talk about digital marketing trends it’s hard to not mention ‘SEO’.

Search engines are where customers do their research about products and businesses.

The majority of consumers consult search engines to get the information they need prior to making a purchase, which is why SEO is of great importance when it comes down to marketing strategies.

You need to make sure that your SEO process is heading in the right direction and not in a way that’s going to get your site buried even further in the Google SERPs. Check out these 9 SEO Tips Every Entrepreneur Should Know.

Suppose, you are running an e-commerce platform and you sell cream for skin lightening, you’re going to have to do a LOT more than simply throw up a product pic and a lame description.

You’re going to need to come up with a product landing page that sells and scores high with search engines.

Check out this Guide on How to Create Killer eCommerce Product Pages.

3. Video Marketing

Video marketing is quickly becoming one of the most effective additions to any business marketing toolbox.

Social media, sites such as Facebook and Instagram are putting more emphasis on video, even allowing live streaming.

Through the Facebook Live feature, you can offer your consumers real time brand messaging. This type of consumer engagement has already been proven to increase conversion rates as well as reach.

It’s not surprising that 2018 is going to be a big year for video, as social media platforms have recently introduced new features of native videos to help marketers expand their strategies. But what about using video on your website or blog to make that striking first impression and grasp your visitors’ attention?

Video can be a very powerful tool, for which you will want to understand the pro’s and con’s for your business.

4. Blogging

Blogging has long been the standard of online content delivery for digital marketing trends.

In this case, the content generated solely depends on the various products and services of interest.

If you’re not using blog posts to boost your SEO strategy – you are missing out!

Just like with SEO, blogging is a bit of an art form with some technical aspects thrown in.

For you to gain a higher SEO ranking, you need to come up with various professionally written blogs that HAVE TO capture the attention of your audience.

Over the years, statistics have shown that blogging is a benefit to companies marketing products.

For Example;

Marketers who prioritize blogging efforts are 13x more likely to see positive ROI (Source: HubSpot)

Companies that publish 16+ blog posts per month get nearly 3.5x more traffic than those that publish 0-4 monthly (Source: HubSpot)

Companies that publish 16+ blog posts per month generated 4.5x more leads than companies publishing 0-4 monthly. (Source: HubSpot)

Furthermore, most successful advertisers engage in blogging as a way to market their products. With that said, it is evident that blogging guarantees a return on investment. Far from that, blogging will also make sure that your brand has gained the recognition and popularity that it deserves amongst the target consumers.

5. Use of Social Media

Social Media connects people on a global level, creating communities of information sharing that happens at lighting speed.

Savvy business have tapped into the power of social media communities to effectively promote their products.

Though we do see Big Brands dominate in the social space as well as in search; social media networks, unlike search engines, make it easier for small businesses to reach a larger demographic on a smaller budget.

How?

Social media allows small businesses to manage time more effectively. For these small businesses, using social media to leverage marketing efforts provide small business owners with an opportunity to build brand awareness and engage an active and highly targeted community quickly and relatively cost effectively.

In short, when we talk about marketing, reaching more of your audience is important.

6. User-generated content should be held with high regard

It is crucial for brands to engage their customers in a way that allows the customers to voice their opinions about their experience with the brand ie: User Generated Content.

User Generated Content is defined as any type of content that has been created by unpaid contributors – your customers. This type of content can come in the form of pictures, videos, testimonials, tweets, blog posts, and everything in between and is the act of users promoting a brand rather than the brand promoting itself.

Why is UGC important to you?

Well,

UGC-based ads get 4x higher click-through rates and a 50% drop in cost-per-click than average.

More than 50% of consumers want a brand to tell them what type of content to create and share, but only 16% of brands actually do.

Brand engagement increases an average of 28% when users are exposed to a combination of user created product videos and professional content.

There are many different ways to incorporate user generated content, just take a look at this infographic:

7. Hosting high-quality live events and webinars

We already touched on the importance of video in social media for digital marketing, expanding on that idea you can engage your audience through the use of webinars, live events, and podcasts.

Companies like TechWeek, use webinar software to reach a broader audience, streaming live events from local cities to the offices and living rooms of people around the world.

• Create your own webinar channel where you can host, record, store, embed, and build your audience around webinars over time.
• Engage, measure, grow – Stay connected with your audience between webinars. Keep the conversation going.

8. Use of Chatbots

Being available to your customers 24/7 isn’t easy.

We all need to rest, but in doing so we may be missing out on timely responses to high value customers.

What is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a program that simulates conversation with human users to complete some sort of service, most commonly used to:

• Complete buyers’ purchases
• Offer buyers product recommendations
• Provide customer support

Chatbots not only make life easier for you, the site owner, they are becoming increasingly more relevant to your customer.

Venture Beat recently published an article on how important chat bots are to customers with some pretty amazing stats;

51 percent of people say a business needs to be available 24/7

45.8 percent of customers would rather contact a business through messaging than email

49.4 percent would rather contact a business through messaging than phone

Happy customers are hard to argue with.

Summary

Digital marketing has outpaced traditional forms of marketing. Unlike traditional forms, digital marketing changes at a rapid pace making it essential to keep up with the Digital Marketing Trends That Are Shaping Online Business.

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by Chris London of Pixel Productions Inc. The Everything Design Company