Three Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in 2019

By Andy | Jan 2, 2019 (4 min read)

With the start of a new year comes new challenges and new opportunities. Digital marketing is one area of business that is always evolving, and each business must be aware of what is coming over the horizon. If you are not aware of the latest digital marketing trends in 2019, then you are getting left behind.

You can think of digital marketing as the way people discover and connect with your business. Recent studies show that over 80% of consumers go online before buying a product or service.

If you know what is working, and how to use it in your digital marketing, you can stay ahead of the curve.

Here are three digital marketing trends for 2019 that are worth adopting for your business:

Voice Search is becoming the default

Siri and Alexa used to be uncommon names until about five years ago. Today, most American households know them as the digital AI assistants that live inside our devices. Even Google has tried to cash in on the trend by introducing the ‘Ok, Google’ function to most of its devices.

Over 30% of homes in the US own an Amazon Echo or Google Home, and over 98% of people have tried using Siri on their phone to make searches.

What does this mean for your business? The better you can prepare your content and search metadata for voice; the more likely the search engines will rank your site highly.

Using language that matches the voice search criteria is essential. So you must understand how your audience speaks about your products. What words do they use to search? What is most important when they ask Siri or Google questions?

Instagram is now a dominant force

There is no denying that Instagram has become the most important social media platform during the past year and a half. While it still trails behind Facebook and Youtube in terms of the number of users, it has huge amounts of engagement.

As of June 2018, there were over 1 Billion Instagram users, with over 50% of the users logging in at least daily. That is a tremendous amount of attention and interaction. With the implementation of Instagram Stores, IGTV and a whole slew of advertising tools, Instagram is now the go-to platform for brands and individuals who want to engage.

On top of all this, Instagram seems to have the trust factor. Facebook suffered a huge blow last year with the privacy scandal, and both Twitter and Snapchat have suffered from decreased use in 2018. Instagram meanwhile has grown from strength to strength.

If your business is not using Instagram, then you are missing a huge opportunity, As a platform, it is by far the most engaging, and has the most upside potential for people looking for new products and services.

Live Streaming is taking over

Perhaps the biggest sleeper hit of the past two years has been live streaming, It has now become a part of almost every platform online, and with services like Twitch reaching critical mass in 2018, the ability to live stream to an audience has enormous potential.

Using live stream events on either Instagram Live or Facebook Live is also rewarded by the platforms themselves. Both the live stream and the video recorded is given more attention by the platforms for the first 24 hours after.

Live streaming is also a great way to humanize your brand. It requires the real people in your company to speak directly to the users who follow you on a platform. It can build trust and relatability between you and your ideal customers. Doing a weekly live stream sharing some basic ideas and concepts can be a great way to engage with those who follow your brand, or who might be interested to see what you are about.

These three digital marketing trends for 2019 are just the beginning. With new technologies are developed every day, and user behaviors are adapting faster than ever, one thing is certain. You must be willing to adapt your digital marketing in 2019 to match consumer behavior. Doing this puts you ahead of the curve and directly in front of the people who need your products and services.