7 Digital Marketing Trends Worth Adding To Your 2019 Strategy

The new year is ripe for breathing new life into age-old tactics. As a small business marketer, your templated emails and social media posts from last year probably need to be refreshed to keep pace with consumer expectations and generate funnel activity. But, you’re in luck. There’s one thing that marketing is never short on – new trends and tactics. So, we’ve curated seven digital marketing trends for you to try that are easy to execute but still effective:

 

1. Strong Digital Content

Content has been and will always be king. Relevant and well-timed content boosts brand visibility, builds credibility (trust), and can have a major impact on your audience’s decision-making process.  So, serve your audience a slice a P.I.E. Persuade, inform, and entertain and you’re sure to win them over.

 

2. Artificial Intelligence

Although artificial intelligence sounds complicated and as if it landed from outer space, there are many ways small businesses utilize it. One way, in particular, is the use of AI’s ability to analyze consumer behaviors and search patterns collected from social media networks, websites, and blog posts. This data helps you learn more about your current customer base so that you can personalize their experience.

 

3. Personalization

Consumers want to be treated as individuals, not the masses. Personalized marketing is your way into their good graces. Using data (see #3) to create unique experiences cultivates a more meaningful relationship with your audience through more targeted content and tailored touchpoints. As most brands are blasting out the same content to everyone, your more nuanced approach will be noticed and appreciated, giving your business a competitive advantage.

 

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing still outperforms other forms of digital marketing and is a lot less expensive. With personalized content and a segmented contact list, an effective email campaign can reach the right person with the right message at the right time leading to an increase of leads and improving sales. But perhaps even more appealing is the return of investment email marketing has shown. A study by Campaign Monitor found that every $1 spent on email marketing equaled a $44 ROI.

 

5. Video Marketing

In 2018, video made a significant impact on digital marketing and will continue to do that in 2019. Simply put, it is an effective way to engage with your audience across most social platforms. And frankly, your audience is expecting it, so give them what they want. With personalized and powerful content, video marketing helps create connections in ways other marketing formats cannot. The proof is in the numbers. Ninety percent of consumers say video helps them make buying decisions. Just mentioning the word ‘video’ in an email subject line can increase open rates by 19%. And in 2019, 80% of all internet traffic will come from video.

 

6. Social Media Stories

Beginning with SnapChat and followed by Facebook and Instagram, social media stories
gives marketers the opportunity to increase brand awareness and engage with followers through
storytelling formats. With Stories still being relatively new to the digital marketing game,
now is the time to take advantage of all the benefits they have to offer as everyone is
learning how to best use them.

 

7. Visual Marketing

Good digital content doesn’t always come in the form of words on a screen. In fact, visual content marketing is fast becoming one of the most popular forms of digital marketing. Infographics, memes, gifs and other attention-grabbing images are not only essential to boosting the reach of written content but can also stand on its own. For example, in an experiment using their Twitter account and built-in analytics, Buffer took 100 of their tweets and compared results of those with images and those without. Tweets with pictures got 18% more engagement, 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets. With many free design platforms to create eye-catching images, visual marketing is a great way to generate more views, clicks, and conversions.

 

Adding new digital marketing ideas to your online strategy is like playing a game of chess. Think of each trend as a chess piece. Masterfully move each one with purpose and persistence, making the occasional adjustment to the strategy along the way. If the focus stays on the end game of building brand awareness, generating leads, driving customer engagement, and delivering unbelieving customer experiences… well, checkmate.

Do you need help with your digital strategy? Give us a holler.