3 Trends to Put Your Digital Marketing Strategy into High Gear in 2019

With digital spending expected to touch a staggering $122B by 2020, it’s once again that time of the year when marketers need to take stock and think about the most important trends they need to milk in the upcoming year.

By far, it has been anticipated that marketers of every stripe need to raise their digital IQ by embracing Gen Z technologies such as Blockchain, Visual Search, Voice Search, and more.

So, without much ado, here are the three trends to put your digital marketing strategy in high gear this year.

 

TREND #1: Increased use of Blockchain

For all the buzz surrounding blockchain, the fact is, businesses are still trying to figure out this technology.

However, here are some ways blockchain is currently being used in the marketing industry, and your business could try them as well: 

For Authentic Impressions and Click-Throughs-Use Adchain

With click fraud becoming commonplace, there’s a blockchain solution to deal with that.

Adchain offers a trusted blockchain ad space that ensures your impressions and click-throughs are authentic.

For People’s Attention – Use BAT

With all the noise around, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get an audience’s attention in the digital ad space. But then, there’s a way out.

Enter BAT. BAT is a Basic Attention Token platform that businesses use to pay for people’s attention. It works on the Ethereum blockchain and is used to buy a variety of advertising and attention-based services on the BAT platform.

For instance, visitors can be rewarded for watching an entire brand video ad.

To Target the Right Customers – Use BitClave

As it turns out, 70% of digital advertisers are targeting the wrong audience because they are not using behavioral data.

However, with Bitclave, businesses can heave a sigh of relief. Being a decentralized search engine, it makes it easier for digital advertisers to target the right audience with the right message.

The best part of BitClave is the fact that it includes audience incentivization that rewards users who click the ads of interest.

Further, with blockchain platform data leaking, the misuse of personal data can be entirely prevented given that blockchain technology doesn’t allow a physical transfer of data.

You may have heard of the Facebook controversy recently. The social media giant was blamed for leaking personal data to advertisers. But blockchain, on the other hand, ensures that the information is encrypted and stored on the users’ device. So, there are no middlemen, no passwords, and no massive data silos to breach, which in turn, ensures data secrecy.

 

Trend #2: Increased use of Visual Search

If anything, the future of search will be about images rather than text. Visual search powered by Artificial Intelligence allows us to search through the input of images over text.

Despite its early stages, visual search is proven to be a gamechanger for the e-commerce and tech world.

Okay, you will find comments around the web that suggest that this tech isn’t that good. Fair enough!

But then, no matter what, visual search is here to stay.

And it’s predicted that online stores operating in the fashion and home decor space will be able to make the most of visual search right now.

Fashion brands like ASOS let shoppers capture an item they want to buy and find similar items on Asos.com. It’s the convenient use that’s propelling the growth of visual search.

Google Lens, powered by AR, is an app that doesn’t require you to click a button. You just need to point your camera to the product you want, and it will pinpoint different areas from where you could find similar products.

How to prepare your business for this?

Leverage visually-oriented ads for different platforms. Also, focus more on using quality images and image optimization as part of your SEO strategy.

 

Trend #3: Increased use of Voice Search

The act of talking to devices is becoming an essential part of our daily lives. According to a recent study, 40% of adults use voice search once per day. Digital assistants such as Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and Cortana have become commonplace, pushing screens into the corner.

58% of consumers have used voice search to find local business information within the last year. There will be 8B digital voice assistants in use by 2023, up from the 2.5B assistants in use at the end of 2018.

So, in a way, voice search should be factored in as the most crucial aspect of marketing going forward.

How to prepare your business for this:

• Optimize your content for Google Featured Snippets.
• Come up with more bullets, numbered points and tables.
• Fix your paras within 45-97 word length.
• Focus on 5 W’s — who, what, why, where and when.
• Research the existing featured snippets and make yours better.
• Focus more on long-form content. That is around 2500 words.
• Make use of the “relates search” button on Google for more idea