THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL MARKETING: 3 EMERGING TRENDS

Introduction

Digital marketing is constantly evolving. The landscape is changing and businesses need to adapt, which means continuously learning and thinking about new ways to market themselves. With the ever-changing digital space, staying on top of trends, innovations, and research is important. Because at the end of the day, any digital marketing planning is a cycle. It constantly changes and evolves depending on what’s new, what’s hot, and what tactics provide businesses with the best results. This post highlights three emerging digital marketing trends that are set to change and shape the future of the digital marketing industry over the next few years.

Top 3 emerging digital marketing trends

With the popularity of smartphones, mobile apps, and digital advertising, it’s hard to imagine a world without digital marketing. Its influence is pervasive in every area of life, from personal finance to politics and even business. But like any trend, digital advertising can run its course before it goes away for good.

That said, some trends are clear winners now and will only get stronger as time goes on. Here’s our list of the top three emerging digital marketing trends :

VR and AR advertising

Virtual Reality (VR) is a whole new way of experiencing technology that blurs the line between real life and virtual reality. VR systems allow people to interact with computers through their senses. Ultimately, this will allow people to experience things in ways they’ve never been able to before, especially when it comes to marketing your products or services.

Similarly, Augmented Reality (AR) has been around for a while now but is rapidly becoming more popular among consumers, thanks to mobile technology. These new forms of advertising work by overlaying images or videos over what people are seeing in real life. This could involve anything from your company logo popping out of an AR advertisement to a VR experience.

As our relationship with technology grows more intimate, we’re starting to see more and more of our lives recorded by cameras or stored in the cloud for easy access. The possibilities for such technologies are limitless, so why shouldn’t digital marketing get in on the action?

Optimized visual content and the rise of video marketing

The rise of video marketing has been a long time in coming. Visual content is sweeping the market and fueling the growing usage of video in marketing, a trend driven by the move to mobile devices and a preference for short-form films over long-form videos. Video marketing is not a new concept, but it is swiftly becoming an important element of the marketing mix.

When you consider that more than 60% of consumers watch video material on their phones regularly, you can see that video marketing is gaining traction with customers. Finding the best AI video generator can be a game changer for organizations trying to capitalize on this trend since it streamlines the development process and ensures high-quality material.

And it doesn’t stop there. Nearly 75% of businesses plan to increase their investments in visual marketing over the next year, according to a recent survey by Brightcove, one of the largest providers of video content management solutions.

However, video is expensive and time-consuming to produce, but it retains the highest ROI of any type of content. Video marketing is also an effective way to reach customers effectively, with high rates of engagement, and comes with the added benefit of being shareable on social media platforms. 

The growing popularity of influencer marketing

With the rise of digital marketing and influencer marketing, brands are using the power of the ‘influencers’ to promote their products. This method of advertisement increases the reach of the brand and is becoming more popular than traditional advertising.

Influencer marketing has been around for years, but it’s starting to gain steam as the number of social media users continues to rise. It is a marketing approach that leverages the credibility and influence of an influential person or company to promote a product or service. Influencers use their status, authority, and connections with consumers to create buzz and drive sales.

According to Forbes, influencers can command a price well into the six figures for a sponsored post, with brands paying $50,000-plus for the privilege of being included in an influencer’s post.

To sum up, the main goals of an influencer marketing campaign are to build trust between the brand and its target audience, increase brand exposure, reach a new group of consumers who may not have experienced your brand yet, and engage your target audience in a way that helps you reach your business objectives.

What makes a trend “emerging”? 

This is high time to start brushing up on some of the newest trends in digital marketing, as these are sure to be hot topics in the coming decade. But, before we dive into these three trends, it’s important to ask: what makes a trend “emerging”? We define emerging trends as those that cater to a new or untapped segment of marketers, are crossing into more mainstream marketing tactics, and are still believed by many to have a high rate of growth moving forward.

Hence as stated above the new aspects of digital marketing include influencer marketing, which involves the identification and use of key opinion leaders and advocates within a specific field. This method is already being used in the traditional advertising industry, so it is only natural that it continues to hold prominence in the digital marketing sector. Aside from influencer marketing, other trends include; marketing automation, AI, and analytics. These are just a few of the many developing trends in digital marketing. All these developments are meant to increase the reach of businesses further while saving them time and money in the long run.

Wrapping up

Digital marketing has come a long way in recent years. From the 1990s when Google was young and healthcare ads were on Yahoo to today when we have targeted ad retargeting campaigns and niche influencer marketing, the industry has seen a lot of change. Yet with all these advancements, it is not the actual tactics that will change digital marketing but the approach we take towards it. Through a balanced mix of artificial intelligence (AI), behavioral science, and cognitive computing, the future of digital marketing is bright. 

Overall, the three digital marketing trends stated above are likely to remain consistent with the ones that appear today. These trends revolve around data collection and analysis, storytelling, and personalization. They will not disappear overnight, despite the inevitable appearance of other emerging digital marketing trends in the years to come.