Marketing has come a long way since newspaper and television advertising only days. Shoppers are searching for products and services more and more on the internet, and some search exclusively on mobile devices. In fact, it’s hard to keep up with the changes and innovation in technology because it changes so quickly. But the truth is, if you want to stay competitive and beat your competition, it’s important to learn about and implement the newest trends in digital marketing in 2019.
1. Profiling Buyers with Artificial Intelligence
Remember when we were all watching science fiction movies about the robots taking over and laughed because it was such silly idea? Well, it’s not so silly anymore. AI is being integrated on the marketing side and the production side of businesses these days. And if your industry hasn’t yet seen these innovations, it will very soon. While there is a question of how much AI is too much, currently AI is displaying on chatbots to help narrow down customer wants and needs, on advertising that shows ads related to your recent searches and in other customer segmentation areas. A study by Blueshift noted that 28% of marketers are using AI for product recommendations and 26% are using it for campaign optimization. AI has the capability to increase your revenues and help your customer service interactions.
2. Using Chatbots
Chatbots are cheaper than hiring a customer service person, and they can segment your visitors with a basic conversation that seems like a real person. Answers to basic questions can be programed into the chatbots, and they can also record each interaction verbatim. This capability makes it easier to figure what each visitor wants, and how to move them through the sales funnel. Additionally, recorded conversations can help the customer service department develop better answers for the chatbot. And like Amazon’s Alexa proves, chatbots are very popular.
3. Increasing Omnichannel Marketing
Entertainment is going through a developmental change today, and we can see that every time we go home and turn on our televisions. Instead of the three TV stations many of us grew up with, users can now view an unlimited number of media platforms and stream almost any program from at least one of them. Advertising that used to and still does appear when watching standard TV, has now begun to appear on all the media channels including social media videos and clips. Research by Invesp states that businesses with omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain an average 89 percent of their customers as opposed to a 33 percent customer retention rate for companies who don’t.
4. Adding PWA and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
About 60 percent of Google’s queries come from mobile devices. And websites that load faster are given preference on Google’s mobile search because searchers prefer sites that load faster. To help with this issue, Google initiated the AMP project in order to speed up websites when loading on mobile. AMP pages load in 0.5 seconds. Progressive Web Apps (PWA) is a middle ground between a mobile app and a responsive website. It eliminates mobile app development costs with most of the benefits and few of the drawbacks.
5. Initiating Voice Search
A study by OC&C Strategy Consultants reported that voice commerce was a $1.8 billion retail segment in the U.S. and $200 million in the U.K. in 2017, and it’s predicted to rise to $40 billion in the U.S. and $5 billion in the U.K. by 2022. Voice search is very new, but it’s growing rapidly which is seen by the popularity of Amazon’s Alexa. It’s especially popular because you can use it when your hands are full, while driving a car or even if you are a young child. With the advent of smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo, Apple Home, and Google’s Assistant, 39 million Americans currently own smart speakers and are using them to search and shop.
