Here are the digital marketing strategies you need to know for 2018

December is already here and in a few short weeks, you’ll be celebrating NYE with your family and friends. However, if you’re a marketer, this is a rather hectic time of the year. After all, there are a lot of things you have to take care of to prepare for the following year.

Preparing for major changes

A hectic schedule is nothing new for a seasoned marketer. In fact, things would probably be a little bit strange without it. There’s a ton of things you have to be aware of.

You have to keep in mind that, every single day, there are more than 2 million blog posts published. Every minute there are more than 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube and 350,000 Tweets posted. The World Wide Web has been oversaturated with content for quite a while.

Despite this, last year, the use of various ad blockers rose by roughly 30% in the UK and organic visibility on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is seriously starting to decline.

All of this means that, if you want to remain competitive in today’s frantic world of digital marketing, you have to be on top of the latest trends and be ready to adapt to them. As CEO of Databox, Peter Caputa explains traditional approach to online marking just isn’t working anymore.

Strategies that will dominate marketing in 2018

Unique customer experiences

Nowadays, customers are seemingly doing as much research as marketers. For instance, more than 50% of B2B customers primarily rely on research to guide their shopping decisions. What’s more, 47% of them review 3 to 5 pieces of content before they contact a sales representative. By now, everyone knows that content is one of the most important aspects of every campaign, but we’re seeing the evolution of content before our very eyes.

Your content needs to connect with your target demographic, of course. However, if you want to connect with people, you need to work on more personalized content. The main reason for this is that personalized content simply works better. According to HubSpot research, personalized content works more than 40% better than non-personalized one.

Utilizing IoT and voice search

Although this may not be so apparent, lots of people now use voice search. As a matter of fact, according to Google, around 20% of their searches are now conducted through voice searches. And by the end of the decade, the search engine giant predicts that that percentage will reach 50%. So, it’s safe to assume that voice will have a huge impact on SEO during the next few years.

On the other hand, we have the Internet of Things. In recent developments, Google added their Assistant to more than a few IoT-capable home appliances. The IoT gives you a perfect chance to start innovating and experimenting with your content. Some marketers are already doing it.

More charity work

While this is not a digital strategy per se, it’s still a major trend so we cannot ignore it. The sad reality is – we live an age of tragedies – and customers are now showing loyalty to brands that truly care. According to a recent survey conducted by Deloitte, , more than 90% of millennial consumers say that they would change a brand to one associated with good causes and charity.

The current political climate is changing the way people spend their money. Naturally, they want to be associated with companies that share their care for the world. It would be wise to partner up with a local charity or work with a marketing agency to organize a campaign for a good cause.

The bottom line

This is the right time to wake up and smell the roses – people are already trying different things to engage potential customers. Facebook’s ad revenue in second quarter of 2017 surpassed $9 billion, which is a 47% increase compared to 2016.

As we already established, in the following years, digital marketing will have to adapt to the consumer preferences. Partially thanks to Google, consumers are now more informed than ever. They’ve learned that they can access any information they want with no more than a few clicks.

And that’s why brands that fail to deliver the goods will be left out of the race completely. Personalization and innovation are key, and brands that manage to modify their strategies will earn consumers’ attention. This attention will eventually turn into profits.

The future developments in the marketing world are approaching at the speed of light so this is definitely not the time to rely on strategies that worked in the past. Start planning and implementing new strategies as soon as possible, and sooner or later, you’ll reap the benefits.