The digital marketing landscape is ever changing, and businesses can no longer ignore this. Many companies just stick with what they know best in terms of marketing, but in order to stay current in this ever-changing world, it is a good idea to consider the current key trends. Here are four digital marketing trends that are becoming hard to ignore:

  1. Content

Every time that you post content you are communicating, so it is important that you communicate in the right way with the right audience. It is important to get to know your target audience and take notice of the other content that they are viewing online. Once you know this then you can develop content that will interest your audience. When creating this content, there are a few key points to remember; it is important to stay true to your brand i.e. just because your audience is going crazy for a certain post on social media, does not mean that be recreating content like this will benefit you. If this content does not reflect the type of business that you are, then you will confuse your audience and send them mixed messages; show that you are not a machine i.e. your audience will respond in a much more positive way to you if you build a relationship with them. Creating content that is on a personal level will allow you to engage better with your audience; Be Consistent i.e. your audience needs to know that each post is you, therefor your will be able to develop a unique voice.

  1. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make machines intelligent or capable of solving problems as well as people can. – Marvin Chow VP of Marketing at Google.

So, the question is how AI helps you with your digital marketing needs. AI can analyse consumer behaviour and search patterns, utilizing data from social media platforms and blog posts to help businesses understand how users and customers find their products and services. Businesses adopting AI in 2018 will be able to save costs and accelerate growth, getting an edge over their competitors.

  1. Influencer Marketing

Partnering with influencers is a key part to marketing success. It is highly unlikely that you will ever be able to reach a large enough audience using only your own social media accounts, partnering up with key influencers that are popular with your target audience will mean that your content will reach a wider audience. Influencers can be anyone from well known journalists, to celebrities and YouTuber’s or Instagrammers.

  1. Voice Search

With the wide range of new technology such as Siri and Alexa taking the world by storm, it is becoming increasingly important to understand voice technology. Voice search is a way of getting the relevant information that you need, without reading page after page, as the information is provided through audio content.

  • 50% of all searches will be voice searches by the year 2020
  • 20% of mobile queries on Google are voice searches
  • 25% of all Bing searches are voice searches.

These four trends can help you to create engaging content, and reach a much larger audience, using some the of must cutting edge technology available to digital marketers. There are new opportunities everyday to be the first to make the next big trend in digital marketing work for you, however although it is important to keep up with these trends, it is also important that you do not lose focus of your overall digital marketing strategy. So, stay focused, and keep an eye out for that next big trend that may help you to gain a competitive advantage.