Key Digital Marketing Trends You Should Adopt in 2018

Everybody knows about that famous theory of Charles Darwin— species that adapt for their survival are not necessarily those depending on the strength. The world and everything it entails has been evolving; the strategies and platforms are also developing, and customers are allured by different brands on multiple platforms that were never there some years ago.

Competition is getting tougher than ever and modern marketer needs to be agile, extremely agile. However, while change engenders creativity, the marketing adjectives remain constant. An employer staffs a marketer to convey the right message at several stages of the funnel, improve brand awareness and loyalty, draw traffic and customer engagement, and execute methods that lead to sales and conversions.

Mentioned here the main trends in marketing to gear up for 2018: 

Social Marketing

Generally speaking, social marketing is an affordable, high ROI approach. Serving as one of the emerging tactics is to support stories on Facebook’s News Feed for gaining favorable coverage, the approach usually involves avoiding publishers and going straight to the social platforms to gain exposure.

One more way is to provide social users with offers (like discounts and/or cash) to advertise the brand’s products and services. Such as, a restaurant could offer a 20 percent discount if customers are sharing photos of their dining experience over the social media. The main reason is to get new mediums that provide more traffic and awareness, and not to rely on traditional outlets like news websites.

The Talent Gap

In digital marketing, talent gap has been considered as the main reason for unsuccessful campaigns. It spawns unfitting financial plans, data misinterpretation and ad expenses on techniques that don’t work any longer. Classically trained advertisers can assist their brands to surpass the noise using new digital skills. Whereas the amateur, newbie practitioners can enhance their marketing efforts by getting their feet wet with the basics of marketing in order to apply the core principles creatively.

Expect more marketing firms to get the right balance between hiring generalists and specialists—and essentially, expect companies to increase training opportunities in digital marketing for both. In order to capitalize on the impact of budgets, the practitioners can improve their capabilities further in growing areas including content marketing, location targeting, analytics, mobile, programmatic, SEO, social marketing, in-store marketing, customization, and Omni-channel integration.

Many online providers are there to provide authoritative certifications in digital marketing. In order to appeal and preserve talent, HR managers may need to customize compensation for personnel who constantly provide high ROI in the digital realm.

Video Marketing

A YouTube vlogger, in 2014, installed a Go-Pro camera on the back of his dog to better understand how it behaves when he leaves the house. The viewers, too, got very curious and his video went viral. The pet food companies are considering that it’s not necessarily heavy budgets that have won the day, but rather amazing ideas that may need low production costs.

Expect more businesses to employ marketers who can get the best out of social networks in well-informed ways — marketers who are aware of the psychology behind what entices audiences to watch video on their devices. The business and brand would be prudent to shrink the talent gap in this particular area.

In-Store Marketing

It demands a well-skilled staff to pull off a productive in-store marketing campaign as it needs to merge skills in brick-and-mortar promotions, location technology, analytics, mobile, and classic marketing.

Mobile in-store updates are aimed at increasing a shopper’s awareness of present promotions along with increasing the amount of time you buyer spends inside the store. They can also suggest products depending on your purchase history. There are many proximity-based apps that have been taking in-store marketing to a whole new level.

Nearly three-fourths of millennials claim that they’re willing to get location-based mobile alerts, as stated by Digital Marketing Institute, and as per ANA, the buyer marketing is expected to raise up to $18.6 billion by the year 2020.

The Middle East has positioned itself firmly at the center of the world’s fastest-growing markets making Dubai, particularly, to turn itself into an international hub for marketing possibilities and thus an opportunity-stacked ground for digital marketing service providers.

To Wrap up

The age-old exercise of marketing needs people who know their work. The modern marketer needs to be eager to try new things, change gears and whenever required, defy convention. While the current digital ecosystem features cutting-edge tech and innovation, great talent remains key to acquiring ROI. Programmatic needs manual intervention for finding the right parameters, analytics require sound interpretation, location-based promotions involve circulating the right offers at the right instant, video marketing demands a solid understanding of targeted audience — and so forth.

Trends, strategies, and platforms are evolving, including analytics, native ads, social and video marketing, in-store mobile offers, programmatic, content marketing as well as other digital techniques, yet what remains the key for long-term success is ‘to adapt’.

Written by: Alice Watson is a creative writer; she works in an IT house. Alice loves researching new trends and share them in her writing pieces. A writer by day and a party animal by night. Alice holds a dual degree in Creative Writing and Marketing.