The digital revolution is upon us, impacting marketing at every turn in the road.
New technologies from smartphones to digital assistants are constantly shaping new digital strategies like conversational experiences and voice search SEO. And as consumers’ attention continues to be strained, companies will need to wrestle for their attention online.
Here are 4 trends digital marketers need to be using to engage customers now:
Shorter Form Video Ads
Videos ads are going shorter, like down to 15 seconds or even six seconds. Shorter formats are becoming more prevalent in the digital landscape.
Video is expected to account for 85 percent of total online traffic in 2019 – both live video and video ads. It has grown quickly over the years and is expected to continue growing. However, consumers have many platforms that consume their screening time today from sources such as Netflix, Hulu, and Facebook Live that their attention for watching video ads is beginning to dwindle. Plus, businesses everywhere have clearly caught on to the video marketing trend, with 65 percent of ad impressions on Instagram currently stemming from video content.
The result is a diffusion of customer attention, making it harder for brands to get customers to pay attention to their ads. As consumer-watched video advertising minutes become scarcer, brands need to embrace shorter ad formats to ensure their ad dollars produce the results they want.
Increase in Messenger Ads and In-App Ads
We’ve been talking about it. The increase in mobile phone users is spectacular with billions of users already. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp offer advertisers captive consumers, which of course, is pretty exciting for marketers.
Companies of every size should be interested in not only the ad piece on these platforms, but also what an essential communication channel it is for businesses.
This is the place to be – this is where your customers are having conversations.
Facebook is making it easy to integrate ads with Click-to-messenger ads, Messenger home placement ads, and Click-to-WhatsApp ads. Facebook ad tools offers marketers not only integration tactics, but also tracking between the two platforms, ensuring a strong overall engagement strategy.
Voice Activate Search Grows
Marketers need to be looking at ways that voice integration affects their SEO strategy. Voice search queries are more conversational in nature and often longer than their text counterparts and companies need to consider how this will impact search results for their products and services.
Voice interfaces continue to improve and consumers have embraced the technology. They use voice commands in their home, car, office, or out and about to get tips and advice as they would from a human. Smartphones’ and digital assistants’ voice search capabilities are learning to manage conversational flows and assess the context of what people want and how companies need to respond to promote actions from consumers. Marketers need to start considering these user interface platforms and include this work in their SEO strategy.
AI & Automation Become More Valuable
Artificial intelligence is becoming essential in most every category of marketing technology. It has found its purpose for understanding contextual data and will soon be used to optimize ad creative images as well. Platforms are beginning to recognize consumers’ intentions and cater the creative messaging and imagery to deliver better customer experiences.
It’s all about efficiency and being able to provide optimal marketing communications to customers at the moment of maximum influence.
A recent Gartner report finds that in the near future 55 percent of multichannel marketing messages will be completely automated. Automation is being tied in with AI, and applied to behavioral data and company customer persona data to create real-time personalized communication. Brands need to utilize this technology to create the dynamic offerings consumers are expecting from their everyday interactions.
Digital marketing today is about being responsive, authentic, and analytical on current and emerging platforms. It grows more complex every year, requiring new levels of sophistication and knowledge to produce the meaningful results necessary for companies to stay competitive in every industry. If you need help keeping ahead of the race, contact Modern Marketing Partners today.
