How Digital Marketing Will Change In 2018: 15 Top Trends

The move into 2018 also comes with a shift in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. New trends are enter­ing the mar­ket­place and your com­pa­ny needs to pay atten­tion or you may be forced by the way­side. With the need to become more vis­i­ble and reach more cus­tomers, the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing of tomor­row offers advance­ments in emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies as con­sumers demand a more inte­grat­ed experience.

Fif­teen mem­bers of Forbes Agency Coun­cil share what they think will be the major dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing trends of 2018. Here is what they had to say:

1. Augmented Reality Integrated Through Social Media

As our mobile devices become more pow­er­ful and social apps bet­ter inte­grate with AR, brands will use AR to bet­ter engage with con­sumers. For exam­ple, using your loca­tion, brands could trig­ger spon­sored AR con­tent, which can only be accessed at that spot, at that time. Poké­mon Go was the pio­neer with this idea, and I feel Insta­gram and Face­book will soon be inte­grat­ing this tech into its plat­forms. — Chris Carter, Rep Interactive

2. Collapse Of The Influencer Market

Brands pour mil­lions of dol­lars into influ­encers now, but by and large they’re either not mea­sur­ing or not see­ing the results they could get from alter­na­tive mar­ket­ing spends. The mar­ket will col­lapse as brands zero in on a few select indi­vid­u­als who dri­ve results or move to organ­ic grass­roots pro­mo­tion, and away from high-cost, mid­dle-tier influ­encers who dri­ve aware­ness but lit­tle ROI. — Craig Grei­we, Rogers & Cowan

3. True Understanding Of Customer Journey

Data-dri­ven mar­ket­ing is a pow­er­ful tool, but how that data trans­lates to the cus­tomer jour­ney will be para­mount in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing suc­cess in 2018. Strive first to use data to know where your con­sumers will be on every step of their pur­chas­ing path, learn what appeals to them, and design your mar­ket­ing to touch them all along their jour­ney. — Katie Har­ris, Spot On Solutions

4. More Targeted Ads With Specific Purpose

Peo­ple already have min­i­mal atten­tion spans and get served with so many ads on a dai­ly basis. I think ads will become more sin­gu­lar­ly pur­posed in nature, with a very spe­cif­ic goal and goal con­ver­sion place in mind, whether it be a mobile or desk­top expe­ri­ence. I also think that the mobile ad plat­forms will show major growth in 2018, includ­ing Face­book, Insta­gram, Snapchat, etc. — David Kley, Web Design and Company

5. Professional Live Video

Video will con­tin­ue to be a trend in 2018 but not just video, pro­fes­sion­al live video. Every social media plat­form is jump­ing into live video and adding new fea­tures month­ly to their plat­forms. Live video is a great way to con­nect with your audi­ence, and the shaky, hold­ing-a-phone-in-your-hand live video won’t be accept­able any­more. — Thomas Brod­beck, Site Strategics

6. Conversational User Interfaces

Con­ver­sa­tion­al inter­ac­tions, such as Ama­zon’s Alexa, Google’s Assis­tant, Microsoft­’s Cor­tana, chat­bots and oth­ers, will con­tin­ue to find their place in con­sumers’ dai­ly rou­tines and lives. Con­ver­sa­tion is the orig­i­nal user inter­face. It’s extreme­ly nat­ur­al and will allow for brands to nat­u­ral­ly inter­act with con­sumers that want infor­ma­tion, or to trans­act, or just to be enter­tained. — Andrew Howlett, Rain

7. Video Marketing

Video is becom­ing the most pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial form of dig­i­tal con­tent for busi­ness­es today and if done right, it can have a very pos­i­tive impact on your busi­ness. As our atten­tion spans decrease, mar­keters are heav­i­ly rely­ing more and more on cre­at­ing video con­tent to boost search engine rank­ings, increase engage­ment and web­site traf­fic rates, as an exam­ple. — Solomon Thi­mothy, OneIMS

8. Personalization Along All Stages Of The Sales Funnel

Imper­son­al­ized email blasts and ads are going the way of the fax machine. Becom­ing hyper-tar­get­ed and focus­ing on per­son­al­iz­ing every inter­ac­tion is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant. Per­son­al­ized land­ing pages should be con­nect­ed to every one of your adver­tis­ing cam­paigns. Atten­tion is a cur­ren­cy, and build­ing a per­son­al­ized con­nec­tion with prospects will be crit­i­cal for dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing in 2018. — Twila Gris­som, Acorn Dig­i­tal Strategy

9. Contextual Targeting Strategies

In the con­text of Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (GDPR), we can expect that it will be more com­pli­cat­ed for ad tech ven­dors to track user behav­iors with cook­ies. Audi­ence tar­get­ing strate­gies will be pro­gres­sive­ly replaced by con­tex­tu­al tar­get­ing strate­gies and it will be manda­to­ry for adver­tis­ers to under­stand what each page con­text is all about, for tar­get­ing and brand safe­ty pur­pos­es. — Julien Verdier, Adyoulike

10. Cost Per Experiment As A Leading Metric

Smart dig­i­tal mar­keters will con­tin­ue to get clos­er to a true ROI on their work by iden­ti­fy­ing all the old met­rics rolled up into a cost per exper­i­ment — those old met­rics like CPM (impres­sions), CPC (clicks), CPL (leads) and even CPP (pix­els) the advanced mar­keters were track­ing. With too many chan­nels and even more martech tools to con­sid­er, mar­keters must run exper­i­ments and mea­sure out­comes. — Todd Ear­wood, Mon­ey­Path Marketing

11. Native Advertising

Com­pa­nies seek­ing to enhance mar­ket reach, brand rel­e­vance and improve over­all engage­ment can ben­e­fit great­ly by imple­ment­ing native adver­tis­ing into their dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Engag­ing with your audi­ence by uti­liz­ing native lan­guage and your pro­pri­etary tools increas­es the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand viral shar­ing and can lead to devel­op­ing a more involved rela­tion­ship with your tar­get mar­ket. — Tim­o­thy Nichols, Exact­Drive, Inc

12. Digital Integrated Into Offline Experiences

I believe that in 2018, dig­i­tal will no longer stand alone as a sep­a­rate dis­ci­pline. We will see it become more inte­grat­ed into real-life expe­ri­ences and the two will become seam­less. We have start­ed to see this in pro­fes­sion­al sports and are­na events where the online expe­ri­ence begins pri­or to the event and con­tin­ues dur­ing the event. I expect to see mar­keters exper­i­ment with this in 2018. — Lisa Alloc­ca, Red Javelin Communications

13. Voice Marketing

Google says that 20% of its mobile queries are voice search­es, and that num­ber is only going to increase as con­sumers get used to ask­ing Alexa, Siri and their smart fridge for insight on what to buy. Mar­keters need to pre­pare by cre­at­ing con­tent that cap­tures these types of search­es, and adver­tis­ing in non-tra­di­tion­al places (like spon­sor­ing smart-fridge rec­om­men­da­tions). — Brett Farmiloe, Markitors

14. Predictive Algorithms

Appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming inter­faces are open­ing for machine-learn­ing algo­rithms, nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. This is enabling any size busi­ness to bet­ter pre­dict its mar­ket­ing spend to opti­mize its over­all bud­get. This is a huge advance­ment, giv­en that mar­keters are often biased in their method­olo­gies. — Dou­glas Karr, DK New Media

15. Different Kind Of Content Marketing

With new for­mats evolv­ing every day and the pop­u­lar­i­ty of video, con­tent mar­ket­ing is no longer about writ­ing blog posts and lis­ti­cles. Voice search will alter a lot of con­tent strate­gies to aim more for fea­tured snip­pets or present inter­ac­tive tuto­ri­als that can be spo­ken to peo­ple as they com­plete mun­dane or com­plex tasks. Con­tent will be more inter­ac­tive and inte­grate with oth­er UI fea­tures. — Kristo­pher Jones, LSEO.com

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