Top 15 Digital Marketing Trends in 2018

Top 15 Digital Marketing Trends in 2018 and How You Can Use These for Your Business

Without a doubt, we live in a digital world that changes and moves constantly. Before you can even blink, mobile devices have already taken over desktops and marketing efforts has taken a mobile shift. What new things would take over the digital world in the coming days?

Can you hear the New Year bells ringing? There are but a few days left in the year and for every digital marketer, knowing the latest digital marketing trends which will affect their businesses in the coming year. As the year 2018 approaches, several marketing trends are seen to make a great impact on every business. Here are 15 trends to master in the coming year:

1. Customer Relationship Management Trends

It is expected that in 2018, companies will dedicate their resources enriching the customer experience, with a full team to specialize on that. This team will be responsible for designing and collecting feedback to make better end-to-end experiences.

CX leaders will be embracing more of emotion and humanity so they would be turning to soft data, behavior, and emotional connections. Business leaders will rely on anecdotes to illustrate customer’s trust. It will be a time where the biggest heart wins over the biggest data.

2. B2B Digital Marketing Trends

In 2018, it is expected that content marketing will still take the top spot in B2B digital marketing trends 2018. The engagement fuel powers almost all aspect of digital marketing – from search to social to email marketing to website creation.

Other current digital marketing trends like data and AI will retain their spots as techniques that will help fuel digital marketing efforts in the coming year. Marketers should tap the potential of using data and AI to help in deciding which technique to choose.

3. Social Media Marketing Trends

In 2018, Instagram will become more commerce driven and it is expected to rake in bigger revenue for brands. With its shopify integration, Instagram is expected to up the revenue game. People are expected to convert off of Instagram campaigns especially if brands run on multiple platforms.

Brands will be able to see more conversions by placing campaigns on multiple platforms like Facebook and Instagram. These platforms are best used in retargeting campaigns and for cold traffic.

4. Influencer Marketing Trends

The year 2018 sees the rise of micro-influencers, as part of new trends in digital marketing, they will be creating professional media kits through sponsored fees. Influencers will be living off in promoting brands.

Brands can tap influencers to give them hard metrics, prior case studies that reflect impressions, engagement, and click metrics to evaluate their audience reach.

5. Content Marketing Trends

Expect to see more and more brands seek a boost in rankings through content clustering strategy. This strategy is proven effective in SEO and content marketing.

Establishing a content cluster is dependent on the internal links that brands use. It helps to produce a lot of articles in the clusters to establish credibility. Also focus on more human connections to tie up with customer relationship efforts.

6. Web Design Trends

In 2018, web design will be all about balancing aesthetics with functionality to increase user engagement and conversion rates.

Mobile is still a priority as the bigger chunk of website traffic worldwide is generated through mobile phones. Mobile-friendly design should always be a priority especially that Google will be rolling out the Mobile First Index which places great importance on the mobile version of a website.

Website designs should ditch the grid layout theory and should embrace irregular grid layouts for an ultra-modern design style. A touch of bold fonts and bright colors are also great elements to include in your online marketing trends in 2018.

7. Big Data Trends

Big data will continue to evolve and is seen to create huge leaps of growth for businesses. The year 2018 will see a massive increase in the variety, volume, and velocity of data that will leave indelible marks in different industries. Among the emerging trends in online marketing, big data is seen to have the greatest effects in the industries that rely on it.

8. Internet of Things Trends

Internet of things will be at the center of data analysis especially with more and more people accessing digital contents through mobile devices. For digital marketers who have invested in IoT, the sensor based analytics data they will yield will also impact business and client relationships.

9. Mobile Marketing Trends

As discussed above, Google will be rolling out its Mobile First Index which puts great weight on the mobile design of a website for it to be shown first in search queries. It is also vital for marketers to tap the potential of Accelerated Mobile Pages, an open-source coding standard that allows publishers to load their sites faster on mobile.

10. Paid Search Marketing Trends

Better audience targeting is given great importance in 2018. Advertisers should start investing in social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The bigger surprise for marketers – shifting their focus by adopting machine learning especially that Google is updating smart bidding technologies, ad rotation settings, and smart display campaigns.

11. Search Engine Optimization Trends

SEO should be more organic by integrating voice search, digital assistants, organic link building, improved user experience, snippets, and quick answers among others.

Voice search technology showcases a big opportunity to use better long-tail search keywords and natural language to match the user’s tone. In terms of user experience, people are likely to stick with websites that offer good user experience. Featuring snippets and quick answers lands website in position 0, a rank that instantly appears after search queries are entered. Finally, links will still prove to be a vital part of SEO especially as it entails organic links.

12. Integrated Marketing Communications Trends

While integrated Marketing Communications is not always focused on, this remains a handy tool for customer journey mapping and defining the most relevant communications and experiences throughout their journey. Through ICM, brands can look through things from the customer’s viewpoint of the communication opportunity especially throughout the customer lifecycle.

13. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Trends

AI and machine learning continue to dominate headlines especially with different industries depending on technology to improve their processes. For digital marketers, AI and machine learning are most helpful in the creation of personal assistants who can help brands foster stronger connections between products and their users.

14. E-commerce Trends

If you thought that email marketing is dead, you are wrong. It is seen that 2018 will rely greatly on emails to market products and services. The conversion of emails is also foreseen to increase.

Other departments also have to work together for ecommerce efforts to be more fruitful. Think of social media, PR and content departments to work more in improving user experience and engagement.

15. Analysis & ROI Trends

Work hard in removing broken links from your site as your SEO efforts will suffer. Master the art of traditional methods and you will never stray far in 2018.

Are you excited for the year to come? Which of the 2018 digital marketing predictions are you most excited to implement? With digital marketing trends to look forward to, your efforts to improve your business revenues will bear great fruits.