Does Your Marketing Strategy Address These 10 Hot Digital Marketing Trends?

By Juliet Jones

To be competitive, it's essential that small business owners stay on top of the latest marketing trends. However, with constantly changing technologies and marketing practices, it can be difficult to track what's new in marketing or is no longer relevant. To help companies create effective marketing strategies for today's marketing landscape, let's take a look at 10 hot digital marketing trends and how to start using them right away.

Today's 10 hot digital marketing trends

1. User-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) refers to any content created by customers instead of brands. Many brands will share the content on their social media—Instagram is a primary platform for sharing for many brands—to increase brand authenticity, build customer trust, and influence buying decisions.

Start by developing your brand persona for better UGC. First, build demand and promote the content to loyal customers. Share tagged posts on social media, but always ask for permission. Give credit and offer something valuable in return.

2. Leveraging social proof

Social proof is another form of UGC that proves how happy customers are with your product or content. It builds brand loyalty and improves conversions. It increases your customers' trust in you when they are making a purchase, and can help you gain many new customers.

Leveraging your social proof starts by choosing the right platform. Be where your customers are. Reach out to customers after they've made a purchase and ask for their reviews. Add a review page to your website and put it where it's easy for your customers to find. Promote your reviews on social media.

Building positive social proof requires time along with frequent and consistent updates. You, therefore, need to be fully committed to it to have effective results.

3. AI chatbots

AI chatbots enable smart customer interaction. Businesses can use chatbots to nurture leads, maintain positive customer satisfaction, increase team productivity, and show the company's commitment to putting customers first. Moreover, 74% of users prefer getting answers to simple questions through a chatbot.

4. Mobile-first design

Mobile-first design is a significant trend due to the high percentage of mobile internet traffic. It’s also a ranking factor for search engines.

With a mobile responsive design, you'll get the benefits of improved website accessibility, better website indexing by the search engines, and you will avoid a slow-loading website. Get started by taking inventory of your current content. Then optimize your content by compressing images and writing concise copy. Test your website's mobile friendliness with Google's Mobile-Friendly Test Tool.

5. Personalization

Personalization in marketing is about paying attention to your customers and making them feel appreciated. It’s a psychological method which allows customers to feel more comfortable with your brand and create a more positive user experience.

One effective personalization strategy is to include your customers' names in emails when sending out promotions, replying to questions, and interacting on social media. You can also create tailored content through behavior-based data you have collected.

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6. Storytelling

Storytelling is an effective way to present your brand's personality and create personal connections. It's also a great way to advertise your business without appearing like you're overselling. Create teaser videos and post your story on Instagram Stories. Adding visuals to your content will increase its effectiveness.

7. Going green

Nowadays, people are more environmentally-driven, and they care about and prefer brands that prioritize green marketing. Understand that going green 100% isn't an instant change, it’s a process. However, you can start by doing the smallest things.

Start by researching the market and overall demand. Pick a green energy supplier; opt for recycled materials. Customer-wise, demonstrate social responsibility and promote your cause. Consider learning and emulating the practices of big brands, such as Patagonia.

8. Optimizing for voice assistants

Technology plays a big role in today's digital marketing trends and this includes using voice assistants. According to Juniper Research, the use of voice assistants is expected to reach 8 billion by 2023. Among the many benefits of using voice assistants is it enhances e-commerce marketing, improves customer support, and automates work operations. It also supports business success as a reliable scaling-up strategy.

9. Minimalist web design

Benefits of a minimalist web design include a faster download speed, a website that's easier to maintain, and higher conversion rates with customers. Format your content layout with lots of white space or visuals to take breaks from walls of text. If you use a site builder, choose a responsive template that will display your website appropriately across a large array of devices.

10. Interactive content

With interactive content, companies can boost user engagement from the interaction alone and increase overall satisfaction. Create interactive content that fits your audience; for example, develop a product-based quiz that will help your customers gain product awareness, or develop an interactive map or an online quiz. Check out tools like Contentools or SurveyMonkey for help getting started.

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