Digital marketing is a fast-paced industry, that changes and evolves quickly. It can be hard to keep up with what’s hot and what's not, and to ensure your business is focusing on the correct marketing activities to achieve maximum return.
Here we look at the key digital marketing trends for 2019 so that you can keep on top of new developments.
With mobile web browsing increasing year on year, and search engines driving a huge amount of this traffic on the web, it is more important than ever that a website is optimised for mobile usage. AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages and aims to increase the speed of web pages loading on mobile to decrease bounce rates. AMP pages can load a web page in less than 0.5 seconds!
If you want to find out more about AMP, read our recent blog post here.
The Facts:
78% of the population now use a smartphone compared to 17% in 2008. (Source: The Telegraph)
1 in 4 adults spend 40 hours on their mobile phones a week! (Source: The Telegraph)
40% of adults look at their phones within 5 minutes of waking up (Source: The Telegraph)
92% of adults say web browsing on their phones is crucial, with only 75% using them for voice calls. (Source: BBC)
An estimated 77% of UK web traffic comes from mobile and tablet devices. (Source: SEMrush)
60% of search traffic on Google comes from mobile devices. (Source: Search Engine Land)
Ecommerce sites can benefit a 32% increase in organic traffic with AMP. (Source: Search Engine Journal)
Marketing Tip: When was the last time you checked your website on your mobile? If it isn’t set up properly for mobile use, you could be neglecting over 75% of traffic coming your way.
With smart speakers and voice assistant devices being more affordable and many more households owning them, this brings about huge marketing potential.
People can now search for information or play music using their voices on home devices like Amazon's Alexa, Siri on Apple, or Google Home. With 20% of all mobile searches on Google now being invoice format (Source: Search Engine Land) it is likely that advertisement options will be developed soon. Some companies are already using voice search to increase business, with Dominos in the USA allowing customers to order pizzas through their Amazon Echos.
Voice search is convenient, allowing people to talk to their devices whilst on the move, and save time as we can talk quicker then we can type. You want to make sure your web pages are optimised for voice search, to make sure you are ranking well for this new search trend.
1 in 8 homes now have a smart speaker. (Source: BBC)
58% of smart speaker owners use it to ask general questions. (Source: yougov)
9% of people with smart speakers use it to order products online. (Source: yougov)
Marketing Tip: Make sure your SEO is optimised for long-tail keywords as many voice searches are longer than typed searches, and that all content has correct meta-descriptions and alt-tags.
Video marketing is not just about YouTube - video can be used on other social media platforms, email marketing and on websites to boost engagement. It’s the perfect media to use for marketing your brand's story, interviews, product demos, behind the scenes, events or how-to guides.
Consumer engagement is often far great if a page contains a video, driving traffic and helping increase conversions.
The Facts:
92% of mobile video consumers share videos with others. (Source: RendrFx)
55% of people watch videos online every day. (Source: Digital Information World)
YouTube reports mobile video consumption rises 100% every year. (Source: Hubspot)
Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined. (Source: SmallBizTrends)
Including a video on a landing page can increase conversion rates by 80%. (Source: Unbounce)
After watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online. (Source: Hubspot)
Video in an email leads to 200-300% increase in click-through rates. (Source: Hubspot)
Companies using video enjoy 41% more web traffic from search than non-users. (Source: SmallBizTrends)
If you are not sure where to start with video marketing, Blue Frontier now offer a full video production service, helping clients to create targeted and impactful videos for their brand or organisation. Read more about how we can help you with video production, from concept to creation.
You are sure to have noticed the rise in popularity of live videos or ‘stories’ on platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. Live Video allow brands to create content that is authentic, where their audience can see events or tap into behind the scenes content as it happens in real time. It allows the audience to develop a relationship with the brand, where they get to know the faces behind the business, reinforcing brand trust and identity.
Where video production is often planned, professional and edited, live video is not only cheap to produce (a mobile phone and internet connection is all that’s needed), but it's quick to do and results in a massive engagement level. Stories will often generate more impressions than newsfeed posts.
Marketing Tip: Spend an hour or two creating a rough live video strategy, what do your customers want to see?... office tours, product info, events, how-to guides, tips? Keep videos engaging, fun and short!
Instead of marketing your product or service directly to your consumers, influencer marketing is all about working with key leaders in your field to promote and drive the message to a larger audience via social media channels, most often on Instagram and YouTube.
Key leaders or ‘influencers’ are sometimes celebrities but more often successful bloggers and social media stars, that have a significant audience on their social channels. Influencers work so well because people often trust other people’s opinions over company advertising. Influencers have also created a life on social media that their followers aspire to and want to recreate within their own lives, so products or services they use are often more appealing for their followers to buy into.
The Facts:
More than 50% of internet users say they follow some sort of celebrity or influencer account on social media. (Source: Hubspot)
86% of women use social media for purchasing advice. (Source: Digital Marketing Institute)
49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations. (Source: Digital Marketing Institute)
There are multiple ways a brand can work with an influencer from paid collaborations, where you pay the person to highlight your product, or a gifted product, where you send the influencer free products without any obligation of promotion, but hope they will mention your brand if they are impressed with the gift/s!
Marketing Tip: Make sure you are aware of all the legalities around influencer marketing and have a proper written agreement in place, this will ensure you know where you both stand, to guarantee your product or service is marketed in the correct light.
Augmented or Virtual Reality may sound like something from the future, but the future is here and AR / VR has already begun to become a strong marketing focus for many companies. If you’re still not sure what either really means, here is a quick breakdown:
Augmented Reality: Add objects that aren’t really there to real-life locations.
Virtual Reality: Generates a completely new environment to experience.
Using this technology within marketing can be a powerful tool for allowing your consumers to visualise products in a setting they recognise. For instance, AR could be an image of a new sofa in their lounge that they can style, or a new housing development produced in VR before being built to market to potential buyers.
It’s thought that by 2023 AR and VR will have a market size worldwide of 209.2 billion. (Source: Statista)
Marketing Tip: Augmented reality doesn’t require a complex headset, you just need an app, and a business that can benefit from this approach.
Chatbots are simple to set up on a website and act as a digital assistant that answers simple enquiries based on opening hours or stock items, through to more complex enquiries. When the chatbot doesn’t know an answer, it will store that comment or enquiry and let an actual human know to follow up with the potential customer.
Although chatbots have been around for a number of years, the recent developments in artificial intelligence have improved their ability to hold ‘basic conversation’. This allows people to get information when they are browsing a website during out of office hours, or busy customer service periods, and hopefully go on to make a purchase.
The Facts:
47% of shoppers are open to buying items from a chatbot. (Source: Hubspot)
48% of consumers would rather connect with a company via live chat than any other means of contact. (Source: Hubspot)
21% of consumers see chatbots as the easiest way to contact a business. (Source: Ubisend, 2017)
Marketing Tip: Chabot’s can lead to a better customer service experience due to more data being delivered to the support team and a reduction in customer wait time.
Wherever technology takes us, keep watch of all potential areas and see where your focus may have the most significant impact. These may all be trends in digital marketing for 2019, but it certainly doesn’t mean your business or organisation should be trying to use all of them within your strategy. If you think one, in particular, resonates well with your business goals and audience, 2019 may be the year to try it.
One of the best things about digital marketing is that results are almost instant and data can be used to determine what works well. Blue Frontier offers an end to end digital service and can help you discover the best digital marketing avenues for your business.
Digital Marketer
Amy started at Blue Frontier in 2018. After graduating with a degree in Fashion Promotion & Illustration, she worked as a Graphic Designer. Favouring the fast-paced nature of Digital Marketing, she now specialises in content and social media. Amy brings a hugely visually creative aspect to her work and enjoys delivering engaging digital marketing solutions for her clients.
Content Creator
Nick has worked in Imaging for most of his life. His work has been seen in print, TV and video for (among others) Co-op, Canon, London Zoo, Rolls Royce, IBM, Explore Travel and various county councils. Nick specialises in people, product, food and travel and has followed the IT and camera industries closely.
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