2019 is less than 2 months away and for digital marketers and businesses engaged in online marketing, this means it’s time to look over the successes and failures of this last year (2018) and look towards future trends and strategies that will help bring in more traffic, engagement, and conversions in the upcoming year.

But before getting into the exact technological mechanisms which seem to be reinventing the way businesses and online advertisers market to online users and consumers, it might be helpful to list a general guideline here that although not quite a recent trend, it is an evergreen strategy that the big boys like Google & Facebook cherish highly – Trust (i.e., be authentic).

More than ever, online users are demanding that there be a face to the “pitch” or at the very least an online presence (i.e., social media profiles and established websites) to prove that the brand being touted is legit.

The last few years have seen a rise in influencer marketing in both engagement and ROI and the sole reason is that people trust people and not ads or landing pages.

Therefore, think about using a personal touch in whatever content you choose to advertise to bring an air of honesty and authenticity to your campaigns. This will be the foundation of the following three significant digital marketing trends of 2019, without which these three significant opportunities cannot be capitalized upon to their fullest extent.

Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented Reality (AR)

It has been talked about for years in marketing conferences across the globe but has only been implemented in short bursts within the digital marketing arena mainly due to the initial high-cost of using such ground-breaking technology, yet 2019 looks to be the year that VR & AR products and software become more widespread due to lowering costs.

Online consumers today want to play a more active role in online marketing as well as brand messaging, and there is no better way to let them fully participate in these processes than through VR & AR technology.

Big name brands have already started incorporating these technologies within their marketing strategies to create higher engagement rates among current and potential customers.

Some of the big-name companies who have already implemented VR & AR technology within their marketing campaigns include the following:

• Ikea
• Amazon
• Starbucks
• Volkswagen

Ikea, for example, has been using a VR shopping app where customers can see how furniture would look inside their house before they purchase it and take it home.

Amazon has used Oculus Rift in the past to encourage consumers to try out products in the virtual world and see if they like it before they buy it. The result, many of them were unable to distinguish the virtual product from the real one.

Now, from the examples above it may seem that most of the companies who are already using VR & AR technology are product-based businesses but many service-oriented companies are jumping on board the VR & AR marketing train as of late and finding creative ways in which to engage their audience through these realities.

There is not just one reality anymore when it comes to digital marketing, so take advantage of this increasing trend to stay ahead of your competition.

Micro-Moment Marketing

While VR & AR are becoming more commonplace on the digital marketing scene and Artificial Intelligence (AI) merely a necessity for digital marketers and businesses to gather relevant data and implement sound marketing decisions with break-neck speed, micro-moment marketing seems to be flying under the radar when compared to these more technology-based marketing strategies.

This is good, however, for those who not only spot this trend but implement it before others catch on.

Those who begin using micro-moment strategies by next year will cut through all the marketing noise – ads, emails, & push notifications – and take advantage of when and where users are looking to do something.

The following are some examples of a micro-moment:

• I want to do the moment.
• I want to buy a moment.
• I want to go moment.
• I want to know the moment.

So far, it seems that only Google and their content marketing team have been the only ones doing serious research on these patterns and developing strategies on how to capitalize on them.

For Google, micro-moments are the future of online marketing because they engage the user in the exact moment they are ready to perform an action, which leads to instant decisions.

It all boils down to providing the online user with the right information at the right time, which will increase engagements and conversions in an almost seamless fashion.

If a brand, company, or digital marketer can engage the consumer in the exact micro-moment they are in; they can follow them through the entire buyer’s journey and meet their needs and expectations when they desire it the most.

Voice & Visual Search

While voice search has been around for some time, visual search is relatively new but gaining more ground, especially over the last year or so. With voice searchers, users use longer queries to get more detailed information on what they need (hint: great micro-moment), visual search users use actual images to find text-based content.

The visual search may sound a bit weird, after all, who would want to use an image to find text, yet psychology has proven that human beings respond to images better than words, so why not allow them to ask their question in the most comfortable way they can, with a picture?

If that is not enough reason to optimize your online properties and marketing campaigns for visual search, consider that over 90% of consumers regard visuals as the most decisive factor for their purchasing decision!

As far as voice search is concerned, it continues to gain steam as people continue to connect to the internet more & more through their mobile devices. It is just simply more comfortable to speak something than it is to type it on a small mobile screen.

Those marketers who are willing to create their content geared around voice search are going to have an easy time keeping their target audience happy in 2019.

Some of the ways business & digital marketers can make their content more voice search-friendly include the following:

• Target longer phrase keywords and entire questions within the material.
• Make content more conversational to answer detailed questions better.
• Create “Local SEO” content as most voice queries usually deal with a specific question geared towards a particular locality.

Conclusion

Digital marketing continues to change year by year, and only those marketers and businesses who know how to spot long-lasting trends and implement them before the rest of the pack does will be the ones who can take advantage of them and get the best results in both the near future and over the long haul.

The above three significant trends for 2019, along with some basic strategies on how to implement them, have been given so that you can get more engagement and conversions for the upcoming year.

The best part is that they will work in almost any niche, vertical, or industry, so no matter what your business may be, they will help in your online marketing endeavors.

If you would like more digital marketing tips, mainly if you operate or work at a law firm, Serp co. shares their marketing tips on a regular basis to keep you not only in the loop but ahead of the digital marketing curve.…