Digital marketing trends change very quickly as the digital landscape changes. Current digital marketing trends are effective but smart business owners are always looking forward so that they can catch the coming wave of new digital marketing trends as they happen. If you haven’t updated your digital marketing strategy yet by embracing the top digital marketing trends of 2018 here are a few of the ways that you can take advantage of current trends while getting ready for new trends.

The Top Digital Marketing Trends For 2018

2018 is well underway so now is the time to shift your strategy to include the best digital marketing trends. 2018 is all about personal engagement with customers in real time. Nearly everyone these days has access to a smartphone. And consumers are using their phones to do research before purchasing, connect with brands and influencers, and share their purchases with their social media followers. One of the most important current digital marketing trends is making sure that your website is optimized for mobile viewing and sharing. More consumers are cell phones to surf the Web and shop than desktop computers or laptops. Smartphones and tablets are what your customers are using, so it’s important that you make your content mobile-friendly. There are a lot of web solutions companies in Toronto who can make responsive website design.

Influencers Are More Important Than Ever

If you haven’t started approaching influencers to promote your product or service you need to start now. Brand influencers are going to be a huge part of the digital marketing landscape in 2018 and beyond. Influencer marketing combines the trends of personal level interaction and reputation that are very important to consumers. Influencers who have a large reach on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook can expand the reach of your brand to niches that you never had access to before. And since consumers, these days are much more likely to try a new product or service when a social media influencer they trust recommends it you should be actively cultivating relationships with social media influencers.

Using Multi-Media to Boost Engagement

Adding videos and gifs to social media posts and on your website is one of the best ways to boost engagement. Statistics show that users are more engaged when they see videos and other multimedia on a site or social media platform. You should be adding videos and multimedia tools like gifs to the content on your website and using them to boost awareness of products. Adding a YouTube channel to your social media marketing is a great way to post more videos to boost engagement without using up bandwidth. You can post videos to YouTube and then easily embed those videos into posts on your website or into your social media feeds. Creating interesting videos that will catch consumer’s attention is critically important for successful digital marketing.

Personalized Content

Content has been king when it comes to digital marketing for a long time. And content is still important, but the nature of the content that you need to have has shifted. Now content needs to be focused on personal engagement. Case studies, testimonials, and other personalized content that is designed to create an emotional connection with readers or watchers is the most effective way to use content for marketing. Consumers expect to see real-world examples of how your product or service can make their lives easier or make their lives better. When you deliver personalized content that shows them how your product or service can provide a solution to a problem they have they will be more interested in the product or service.

What’s New In Digital Marketing

Now that 2018 is in full swing experts are starting to speculate on the trends in digital marketing that will be coming in 2019. Future trends in digital marketing are focused on the increased personalization of technology and AI as a form of innovative digital marketing. Privacy is also going to be playing a role in future trends in digital marketing as consumers become more wary and concerned about the ways in which their data is stored and shared.

Convenience and Speed

As technology increasingly integrates into the daily lives of consumers, convenience and speed are going to play larger roles in digital marketing. Consumers will expect to be able to receive products quickly and pay for them using advanced technology like smart home speakers and retina scanning payment methods. Being able to deliver goods quickly and use existing delivery methods to make deliveries faster will have a big impact on how customers perceive your brand. Modern life is getting faster and consumers expect businesses to keep up. Embracing the latest technology and focusing on providing a seamless and convenient buying process is a trend that smart companies will start preparing for now.

AI Influencers

One of the most exciting future digital marketing trends is the use of AI created influencers. This will make it faster and less expensive to take advantage of the reach that influencers have. By creating a unique brand influencer and using that custom AI created influencer to market your brand you have more control over the marketing process and can spend less to get the same reach.

Targeted Social Media Marketing

Social media platforms rise and fall in popularity so you need to be able to adjust your digital marketing strategy on the fly to account for changes in the popularity of platforms. Each year the most popular social media platforms vie with each other to make upgrades and changes that will boost user engagement and bring more users to the digital table. And some platforms are going that better than others. Twitter has been falling off in popularity for a while and Twitter is quickly falling behind the other popular platforms. While Twitter is good for personal engagement with users statistics show that other platforms like Instagram and Facebook which are constantly updating their toolset bring in much better returns for companies. LinkedIn has recently gone through some serious upgrades that will make LinkedIn a better option than Twitter when it comes to social media marketing.

Personalize Service Fast

Great customer service has always been part of the success of a business. But these days phone trees and IVRs that keep customers on hold for a long time are a huge turn off to buyers. The most successful companies are going all in on digital customer service. Having customer service reps available to deal with problems, answer questions and directly connect with consumers on Facebook Messenger, Twitter and Instagram is one of the things that consumers really like. Marketing your company as having 24 hours a day customer service online through popular social media platforms gives consumers that personal connection they want to have with a brand. They will feel like they are important to your company and with our 24/7 society they will appreciate being able to get help around the clock.

Smarter Content

Another innovative digital marketing tool that will be trending in the next year is smarter content. Generic content designed to promote your product or service isn’t going to cut it with today’s super-connected technology-savvy consumers. Smart content is designed to provide added value to the consumer by showing them how a product or service can fit into their lives and why they need it. Today’s consumers are very savvy to marketing and they can see through a generic hard sell pitch a mile away. Consumers are out there, on their phones and tablets, ready to buy products and services. Nevertheless, they want to see how those products and services are going to benefit them in a real-world example or two before they buy.

So creating smart content that can appeal to consumers in a wide range of backgrounds is going to be a big trend in digital marketing. Smart content creators should be able to identify your target market and then create content that will show your customers different ways that your product or service can be used to solve specific problems or provide answers to specific questions that they have. The more personalized and specific the content is the more it will connect with the consumers who are reading your website and interacting with your social media influencers.