Digital Marketing Trends to Follow in 2019

Recently, India celebrated its first ever Digital Marketing Day on the 16th of December, 2018. This reiterates the extent of growth in this field here! With the onset of the Digital Marketing revolution in the country today, the way online marketers have operated until now is about to change in a massive way. Technologies like Artificial Intelligence have transformed the way things worked until now.

Moreover, the way tech giants like Google and Facebook are tweaking their algorithms every now and then, it’s imperative to forecast the trends that are most likely to affect the online marketing game in the coming months.

Below are a few key scenarios that are going to majorly impact the Digital Marketing domain in 2019…

The Increasing Use of Voice Search

Most of the gadgets that we use nowadays have the feature of voice command. Also being seen is the burgeoning popularity of personal assistant service like Alexa, Google home etc. From a Digital Marketing perspective, it’s imperative to gauge the type as well as the number of keywords to use for Search Engine Optimization.

Voice searches are mostly lengthier (8-12 keywords) than how people usually type and search and most of these searches are queries. So get ready to tweak your keywords to suit voice search queries.

Focus on Quality Content

Content will still be king, as people are increasingly veering towards the web to get information for their decision-making process. However, content created should mostly focus on the intent of the user and answer likely queries. Even Google is now focusing on evaluating the quality of content.

If your content is just to keep the blog alive, it is highly likely Google will rank it lower in search engine results. To make your content better, make it answer frequently asked questions and add rich snippets or tags that can help search engines navigate to your page more quickly!

Nevertheless, technical SEO will still play a major role in optimization.

A Revolution in B2B Marketing

Just a few years back, B2B companies relied mostly on Linkedin and Twitter for their marketing needs. That era is soon to be over now, thanks to Google, who has gone lengths and breadths to make ads more user-friendly for the average marketer.

Therefore, Google Adwords has now become the most effective tool for B2B marketing. With the recent news of Facebook reintroducing Search Ads, we should all be prepared for a revolution in B2B marketing solutions.

Focus on Mobile-First Indexing

The dominance of laptops is soon to be over, as people are more hooked to their smart phones than ever before. In such a scenario, Google is more interested in mobile indexing. The tech-giant has lately tried to make the web more mobile-friendly keeping user trends in mind.

Hence, the mobile version of the site is a basic factor based on which Google will determine search engine rankings. Although the desktop site will still be included in the index, a mobile-friendly experience is bound to better your rankings in search results.

Increase in the Efficiency of App-Marketing

With more than 90% of the population using smartphones, the popularity of websites has gone down quite significantly. Google and Facebook, the two major players in the game, is now focused on creating the perfect marketing funnel for all online business, especially app marketing.

Hence, you can expect app-marketing to become more efficient for businesses.

Use of Subtle Baits

Other than the hackneyed social media platforms and Google search, it’s time to move your ads to other alternative platforms- mainly apps! These are subtle ways to reach your audience.

Targeting your audience through popular apps, that your user base is hooked to, is the best way to reach them! In fact, popular influencers have personal apps for the followers where you can put more effective ads.

Increase in the Importance of Schema Markup

Schema is a vocabulary of tags that help improve the Google bots read and understand your website better, in order to rank better in SERP’s. With the tweaks in Google’s algorithms, it is imperative now to choose your schema markup more wisely.

The Rise of Influencer Marketing

Influencers have revolutionized the marketing game in India lately. Marketers are now highly interested to target the niche audience of these influencers to market their products/services. Gradually, influencers are moving towards building their own apps as it’s an efficient way to stay ahead of the competition!

Greater Role of AI Chatbots

The trend to integrate artificial intelligence in our daily lives has increased lately. Be it for social media or websites, AI Chatbots for query management or the backend tools for automation are getting more popular with time.

AI focused strategies will have a greater role to play in later 2019.

Increasing Use of Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is comparatively new in the Indian Markets. However, with the budding craze for this technology, it may prove to be a game changer for the Indian Digital Marketing scenario as well. Naturally, a marketing campaign with digital overlays of augmented reality is bound to stand out among other campaigns.

AR can help the Digital marketing domain by interlinking the traditional and digital marketing channels to churn out a marketing campaign that is way more attractive and effective.

With the rise in smartphone and Internet usage, the risk of user data security has become a nightmare for many IT companies. With many cases of cyber attacks, businesses have taken extra caution for data security. In such a scenario, security concerns will also play a decisive role in online marketing.

The Digital Marketing domain is increasing exponentially in most parts of the world. In India, the growth has been around 25 to 40% annually. The onus is now upon Digital Marketers to take advantage of the amazing dividends!