The Future of Digital Marketing

The Future of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing can be defined as the marketing of products and services using digitalized marketing channels such as social media platforms so as to promote buying of your products and services by consumers (Ryan, 2016). The digitalized marketing are Content marketing, Social media, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Email marketing, Affiliate marketing, Display marketing, and Video marketing. Digital marketing is differentiated from online marketing due to the use of non-internet digital channels such as call-backs, mobile phone SMS, and televisions (Chaffey & Ellis, 2019). Globally, digital marketing is shifting drastically from traditional digital marketing channels to high-tech digital marketing channels and channels such as SEO, paid media, content marketing, and other channels are experiencing tremendous changes due to significant development in digital infrastructure as a result of technological developments, and apart from digital marketing benefits such as global reach of consumers, digital marketing has posed challenges to marketers such as how effectively they are using consumer behavior data as well security and privacy of the data (Chaffey & Ellis, 2019).

The Future of Digital Marketing

Due to constantly changing technology, traditional digital marketing channels are undergoing drastic changes necessitating marketers to keep up with these changes and revolutionize their channels to high-tech digital marketing era, and this is the future of digital marketing as discussed below:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Marketing is embracing Voice Optimization and AI

Marketers using SEO marketing channels are now optimizing their websites to recognize voice searches enabling speech recognition, and this is attributed to the significant transformations in technology and a need for consumers’ preference recognitions. Therefore voice search optimization is now a key in SEO marketing. Transformation in the technology has led to the introduction of Google Assistant, Cortana, Alexa, and Siri, and this has enabled user voice search recognition, and this means users are able to speak their searches directly into these devices and receive instant answers reflecting their voice searches instead of users typing manually. Most of the users are enjoying these new technologies since most of them the way they speak is different from the way they type and most of them are making voice search assistant as part of their daily routine and these users are expected to grow in number, and by the year 2020, it expected that 50 percent of the searches would be voice searches. To optimize voice search, marketers will need to focus on optimizing their site to target conventional long-tail keywords and phrases, optimize their website for Position Zero (P0) search result, and incorporate local searches on their websites to connect with local voice searches. The best example is Amazon Alexa, which recognizes voice search, and the moment the user speaks directly to it recognizes his or her speech and instantly given answers. Furthermore, there is the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which enables marketers to supercharge their SEO content to appear more in user search results, and this has enabled marketers’ ability to assess consumer behavior and purchasing experience. All these new technologies are shaping the future of digital marketing.

Paid Media Marketing shifting to the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Paid media involves buying advertisements on search engines by marketers, enabling them to reach internet users. An example of paid media includes Pay-Per-Click (PPC), which entails marketers paying every time their advert is clicked on or when their advert is displayed. Marketers use dedicated professionals who help them in deciding the best platform such as Bing, Google, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in displaying or showing their ads basing their decisions on the platforms that will attract more customers. Due to changes in technology, marketers using paid media are shifting to programmatic advertising by embracing the use of AI, which enables them to buy advertising space automatically and use data in determining target consumers or audiences effectively and efficiently. AI has led to the automation of paid media. Therefore, users will be able to get freshly updated content and helps in having seamless web traffic, efficiency and accuracy in paid media as well as lowering customer acquisition costs and expected by end of 2020, 86 percent of all digitally displayed ads will be automated leading to the shaping up of digital marketing and more is anticipated when it comes to paid media.

Conventional Content Marketing is shifting to Personalization and Video Content

Content marketing involves the use of content to reach customers by publishing such content using tools such as blogs, online courses, podcasts, webinars, infographics, and eBooks and promoting them on platforms such as social media, SEO, paid media, or email marketing. Due transformation in technology, which has led to SEO and voice search optimizations, has prompted shifting of conventional content marketing to the personalization of content marketing and introduction of video content leading to more engagement of customers hence boost in customer relationships. Personalizing marketing content reflects customers’ preferences, and this improves customers’ loyalty and satisfaction. This is a result of technological transformations, which has enabled marketers to have big data and in-debt information of customers. The use of video content is now becoming the most preferred tool for marketing, and it makes up to 80 percent of global web traffic since it captures audiences’ attention, and this encourages them to spend more time on your website. Providing differentiated tailored made video content in your site helps to capture more customers and is unique from your competitors.

Social Media Channels shifting to the adoption of Automated Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing involves the use of influential people in advertising your products and services through social media platforms such as YouTube, and today influencer marketing is becoming equivalent to the use of word-of-mouth marketing. This is because audiences or people are trusting information from influencers than information attached to a brand itself. Adoption of AI in influencer marketing has eliminated challenges associated with selecting the best influencer to use in your marketing since now the process is automated, and AI is able to select the best influencer from a large pool of influencers in seconds based on the specified provided characteristics. As well AI is able to analyze how the post by the influencer was received and how well is the brand and the influencer matching. Furthermore, AI is able to predict the best incentive which encourages influencer to post and prediction the right time for the provision of such incentives, and this has boosted greatly the brand-influencer relationship hence influencer marketing becoming faster, better customer experience, and minimal resources required in marketing.

Conclusion

The technology controls the future of digital marketing, and thus technological transformations such as AI end up in defining how brands communicate with the customers. Therefore, marketers need to have flexible marketing strategies to keep on updating their strategies with these technological trends so as to stay competitive in the market.