In the digital marketing industry, we have learnt that consumers are not fans of being actively sold to, no matter how brilliant the product or service is. In fact, if they feel that a piece of copy or even an expertly crafted graphic design feels too much like an advertisement, they will actively avoid it. Thanks to this, the way in which we market digitally has changed, with some interesting digital marketing trends emerging in 2019.
When you are working on a digital marketing strategy it is important to keep the consumer in mind at all time. This has been shown throughout 2019 by many brands to be a success, and so with the year drawing to a close, we take a look back at some of the major digital marketing trends of 2019.Â
Conversational Social Media
Now, we know that social media marketing is nothing new, but this digital marketing technique became significantly more conversational in 2019. Previously, there was a large volume of “canned content” being created for social media platforms, and consumers began to tire of this form of content marketing.Â
So, digital marketers needed to become creative, which lead to social media marketing posts becoming more conversational and even interactive. This involved looking at data about what their consumers were truly interested in and which products were being bought the most and creating targeted ads and content. And many brands began using popular hashtags in their content to make it relatable, relevant, and to improve their visibility.Â
Modernised Video Marketing
Video marketing has become one of the shining stars of many digital marketing strategies in 2019, especially with videos being shared more than both written and other forms of visual content combined. Video marketing has grown in popularity because they allow people to easily connect with a brand and consume visual content in an exciting manner.Â
Mobile apps such as Instagram have cottoned on to the fact that consumers prefer video content and created their own IGTV platform, allowing users and brands to create long-form video content to share with their followers. Live streaming has also become immensely popular over the course of 2019 due to it being highly interactive and spontaneous. Video content allows brands to reach a wider audience while also improving their online visibility.Â
SEO Shapes Up
One of the most noticeable digital marketing trends of 2019 was that SEO (search engine optimisation) became more intuitive. Recently, Google released its BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) update, and while this might sound like a mouthful of technical jargon, it can be understood simply as an algorithm adjustment to better understand natural speech patterns.Â
What this means is that, when people pose questions to the search engine, Google will show the most relevant answers. In terms of content marketing, your website now needs to have hyper-relevant content on it in order to rank for and to appear in these search results. Having more specific content will also help, especially if you sell products or offer services. The manner in which the content is written can also play a part in its ranking.Â
Exciting Email Marketing
When working with a digital marketing agency, you have likely had some experience with email marketing. However, in 2019, email marketing hit a veritable boom and became more personalised than in previous years. Automation and personalisation combined have lead to email marketing becoming a powerhouse in terms of SEO and digital marketing.Â
Email segmentation is a popular method of creating personalised emails and this has grown in popularity in 2019. Artificial Intelligence and automation have become major players in the field of email marketing, especially in terms of data collection and analysis. Marketers can use this data to further segment email lists and to create targeted content that will resonate with their consumers.Â
#Trending
With 2019 drawing to a close, looking back on digital marketing trends can help you to make the most of the last stretch of the year. This is especially true of your holiday marketing campaigns and for any brand awareness campaigns you might wish to improve. Social media has become more conversational and video marketing has grown exponentially throughout the year.Â
With SEO becoming more intuitive and email marketing picking up, it has been an exciting year for digital marketing. There are still innovations that are being released even now, and this will continue into the next year and beyond. If you would like to make the most of these digital marketing trends during the last push of 2019, contact NetMechanic today to find out how we can help you.Â
