2018 Digital Marketing Trends

Digital marketing trends seem to change constantly. So what is 2018 looking like for marketing? How can businesses get the most out of what they spend on advertisements? Here’s a quick list of the things that are becoming big in the marketing world in 2018.

Mobile

Mobile marketing: hot stuff right now. It’s been hot since, well, whenever smartphones became a big thing. Yet we’re still seeing websites that aren’t catering to mobile devices. What’s the deal with that? Mobile marketing trends point to an increase in phone use every year, and that’s probably gonna keep going up. What’s that mean for businesses? It means you should be catering your ads and your website to mobile platforms and mobile formatting. As smartphones become more advanced, people can access the internet from anywhere. But here’s the thing. No one wants to buy a product when they can’t properly navigate a site from their phone.

Live Chat

Here’s another thing companies aren’t taking advantage of. It’s called live chat, or chatbots. These are little bubbles or boxes on your site that connect a user to customer support. Why’s that important? Consumers crave this kind of immediate and hands-on support. Here’s the catch: it doesn’t even have to be an actual person they’re talking to. If it’s integrated well enough, customers won’t be able to tell the difference between a computer and a person.

We’re seeing a lot of websites do this, but most of them haven’t implemented it well. And when it doesn’t work, it drives business away. Take time to incorporate a chatbot that isn’t awful, so you can see an increase in revenue for your company.

Digital Influencers

We hate using buzzwords, and this one seems to be the king of all buzzwords. But the meaning behind it is important. Digital influencers are those people or brands who are already popular online, who will do the heavy-lifting in promoting your product or service. The biggest influencers are on social media like Twitter or Facebook, but no two influencers are the same.

A growing digital influencer hub is YouTube, where goods and services can shine especially because consumers are more attracted to quality videos than written content. This is all to say that we’re seeing more and more businesses create private contracts for digital influencers to get their brand in front of a specific audience. It’s also very relevant when influencers that are in your field go on to review your product or service in front of an audience they’ve already cultivated.

Affection

The last thing on our list isn’t really as concrete as the others, and requires businesses to change how they’re pushing content. We’re talking about affection, or how genuine you come across to a potential customer. How valuable you appear to them is one of the most important buying factors. If you’re regularly publishing content that is, at face value, irrelevant or disingenuous, your customers will take notice.

Building emotional credibility is as important as your product or service in 2018, because consumers are being hit with constant artificiality online. They’ve become hyper-aware of what kind of content is coming from the heart, and what is created just to get to their wallets. Be the former.

We hope this has been enlightening for parsing through digital marketing trends in 2018. Want to learn even more? Check out what we’re doing over at LumberPress.com to change the way businesses are attracting consumers.