The landscape of digital marketing is constantly shifting. While the general direction it takes often gets dictated by the latest technological improvements and trends, it more or less always goes towards a better user experience (UX).
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As for the digital environments, the greatest changes are expected to come in the fields of voice search, customer lifecycle, and micro-interactions.
Apart from this, there are a few more changes that are expected to be huge in the following year.
With this in mind and without further ado, here are several digital marketing trends that are expected to play a huge role in 2018.
1. Voice Search Is Still Going Strong
A couple of years back, Google voice search was one of those features everyone knew about yet no one actually used, while today things are completely opposite.
About 41 percent of adults and 55 percent of teens use this feature on a regular basis.
Now, there are two main factors that influenced this shift.
The first one is a rising number of mobile users, which find it much easier to utter the question rather than to type it in.
The second one is the improvements that people from Google made in their voice search algorithm.
The major upset that this caused in the world of digital marketing is a different approach when it comes to keywords, which are now structured in the way in which they are spoken in a live conversation.
Image Source: Pixabay
2. Customer Lifecycle
The next major difference we can see here is more of a shift in a point of view, rather than an actual trend.
You see, even the person who is most likely to become your customer (a low-hanging fruit) is unlikely to do so right away.
At very least they will try to look for a different offer they can use as a point of reference or take some time to ponder on what you have to offer.
In any case, present-day digital marketing might use trends such as big data and business intelligence to make a more accurate estimate of where your potential customers are in this cycle.
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3. The PPC Strikes Back
To be fair, it’s not like PPC was ever out of the picture, however, recently the rivalry between Google and Amazon has hit its peak, which caused a major upset in this field.
Think of it as the U.S.A. vs. U.S.S.R. Cold War-era space race, without the impending nuclear Armageddon. As a result, there are so many new ad-programs, powered by highly sophisticated data-driven strategies.
Now, while some of these programs are specifically targeted at inexperienced, first-time users, for the ultimate ROI it is still advisable to look for a specialized Pay Per Click Agency.
Therefore, in 2018, we can see a massive increase in the amount of money for these services.
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4. Micro-interactions
One of the Google’s most important ranking metrics is the issue of visit duration on the website.
What better way to make people pay closer attention to what you’re presenting to them than to offer them an option to interact with your content.
Before we carry on, a lot of people are picturing pop-up surveys, which, more or less, do the opposite nowadays that everyone has an ad-block.
What we actually have in mind is something like a rating system, a poll, a quiz or something as simple as Facebook’s like system.
These are the so-called micro-interactions which are made even more compelling by the fact that one no longer has to wait for a page to reload after clicking them.
We are talking about the ultimate low-effort tool of visitor immersion that can significantly improve both your engagement efforts and your conversion rate. A clear and undeniable win-win scenario.
Image Source: Pixabay
In Conclusion
Of course, the above-listed four trends are far from all that we’re bound to see in the following year, seeing as how previous two years set some pretty high standards in regard to the augmented and virtual reality trends.
Nonetheless, in comparison to the volume of content in use and money invested in these trends, the above-listed four as still expected to reign supreme.
As for any other major upsets that might happen during the Q3 and Q4 of the year, we’ll just have to wait and see.
