The digital world is hectic and unpredictable. So no wonder that at times you might feel like there is nowhere you can turn to for help. To assist you in navigating the digital space this year, we have compiled a list of top digital trends of 2019 that you should be looking out for.
The digital landscape is changing at an enormous speed. The tactics that were popular only a year ago have almost no value today, and at times it feels like there is no way you can keep up with the changes. The list of top digital trends 2019 shows that the upcoming year is no exception. It might feel unfair, but that is the world we live in, and there is no sign of slowing down. So either you need to learn to keep up, or leave the game altogether — there are not many other options.
In this article, we will present and analyze some of the digital trends 2019 has prepared for us, and attempt to predict what the upcoming year is going to be like in digital. It is going to pretty speculative since you can never know for sure what is going to blow up next. But if you want more practical examples of how powerful digital marketing can be, head to our recent article about successful holiday marketing campaign of the past. So, without any further ado, let’s dive right into it!
The first and probably the most unexpected of all digital trends 2019 has in its inventory is chatbots. This year they are going to take over and do the job that people do not like doing (and are bad at doing). They are efficient, obedient, and excellent at extracting patterns of behavior and improving upon their performance. And considering how good chatbots are getting at search pattern recognition and usage of data available in social media and other search engines we have no doubts that they are going to take over.
Chatbots are quick, easy-to-use, and do not demand as many resources as their human counterparts. In other words, they are the dream customer service employees. No wonder many e-commerce and service-oriented companies are jumping on board. It is definitely a trend that we are going to hear more about the upcoming year.
Personal observation: what I’ve noticed is that when communicating with chatbots people are concise about their inquiries. Since they are talking to a bot, they avoid unnecessary ‘pleasantries,’ and their questions become easier to answer and categories.
If you are not familiar with the term, programmatic advertising is like outsourcing of media buying to a software. The algorithms purchase ad spaces and deliver the advertisement to a specifically identified demographic through multiple channels.
Programmatic advertising allows analyzing large amounts of data about media spaces and rates retrieved from many different sources without human assistance. It is one of the most important media trends 2019 has to offer, especially the advertisement industry. In fact, the mechanism is so effective that experts say by 2020 around 90% of digital display ads in the US will be purchased using programmatic technologies.
Personal observation: the way media buying has been done all of those years have always seemed very inefficient to me. Not only it required a lot of time and investments, but also was almost impossible to track. Programmatic advertising solves all of those problems, and I’m excited to see how it is going to change the industry.
Video platforms have transformed the way we use the Internet and social media. There is no doubt to whether YouTube is here to stay — it certainly is. Around 72% of businesses say that the video has positively affected their conversions rate. The numbers here speak for themselves. If you want to get people’s attention (and keep it in the long run), then you should be creating videos.
The same goes for live videos. They are one of the most important digital trends 2019 will offer because are an even more interactive medium. The effectivity of video content doubles if you engage media influencers that that audience you want to target.
Personal observation: the problem I always had with video content is that looking through their content was almost impossible. To get traffic, you should have been very precise about your search queries. But with the popularity of video content, the SEO of video has also improved improving. Many companies now use text overlays and compelling descriptions to improve their SEO performance.
The consumer behavior discipline is not useless in the digital space. According to digital trends, 2019 is just going to transform the subject. When in the past it has been about studying the customers in their ‘real’ environment, now it about understanding customer’s behaviors in virtual settings. Google has named some of the most basic actions that people perform online ‘micro-moments.’ And it is certainly one of those concepts that we are going to hear more about in 2019. What customer’s want to see, buy, know is what business should be focusing on if they want to gain momentum.
To understand better what kind of micro-moments are there and how you can use the information you need to have a good grasp of what your brand stands for. As a brand, it is your responsibility to deliver an experience that your customers are looking for.
Personal observation: with micro-moments capturing the moment (obviously) is the most important thing. That means that brands need to learn to communicate more information with less. The companies that do it best use images, ratings, customer testimonials, short links, and actionable copies.
Probably the most talked about of all digital trends 2019 has to offer is voice searches. It is the next big thing in the digital industry — that much we can say for sure. The experts speculate that 30% of all searches the upcoming year is going to be voice searches.
Voice searches have been around for a couple of years, but only recently they started gaining the attention they deserve. The main reason for their ‘sudden’ popularity is the AI behind the technology. It has been drastically improved, and voice searching became faster, easier to use, and more accurate. The upcoming year many brands will be figuring out how to optimize their content for voice searches, but mostly it is an unexplored territory worth being traveled to.
Personal observation: voice searches are very comfortable. I was skeptical in the beginning, but now I easily see it taking off. The best thing about it – in my option – is that it removes action redundancy. You do not need to open YouTube, search a song, and then click — you can just assign the task to the virtual assistant. That sounds very lazy since the difference it makes is not more than a couple of seconds, but still, it makes me excited about what is yet to come.
The digital trends 2019 has to offer all show that the industry is moving towards automatization and simplicity. Its progression is not entirely unqiue — it repeats the established patterns of another medium if anything. In the world of confusion, all marketing campaigns seem to be moving in the direction of clarity and deliberation. The conclusion is… we have an exciting year ahead — there are no doubts about that.
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Armenuhi Ivanyan
Shaghik Gevorgyan
Maryam Israelyan