The Future of Digital Marketing

The concept of digital marketing has dramatically changed and improved that it has almost been impossible to envision a future without it. Digital marketing has actually a lot to offer when it comes to industrial opportunities. It takes pride in its "never-seen" technological aspects during the past two years despite the backlash it earned from social media users. 

However, even the biggest and most impactful innovations have limitations too, but these limitations undeniably cannot surpass the positive impact it brings. Without further ado, here are some digital marketing predictions that might take place in the upcoming years:
 

Influencer marketing 

This word-of-mouth marketing technique has already been increasing company sales during the past years and will continue to take effect in the future. Influencer marketing focuses on benefitting from the fame of influential artists, leaders, and content creators in order to amplify the brand's message into a wider market. 

Influencers can post their advertising content anywhere on the internet depending on what social media platform they are most famous in. For example, YouTube superstars would surely upload their marketing content in their YouTube channel to urge their viewers to use the same products they also use. By benefiting from an influencer's social channels, a brand can attract more potential customers and increase its sales.

Since influencer marketing has generally been considered more authentic compared to corporate ads, 63% of customers trust an influencer's views about a particular product, especially when the influencer seems to be very transparent with their experience. Also, 58% of customers bought a product during the past six months because of being persuaded by an influencer's testimonials.  
 

Chatbots

Well, chatbots will indeed become a standard for customer service. Chatbots will also begin to replace live customer service agents depending on what suits the BPO industries best. Although this is disheartening to call center agents, the owners, management, and clients will experience improved progress and quality. Again, there will always be an unavoidable downside when efficient technologies intervene (or even surpass) manpower. 

Chatbots have been widely applied in companies these days because of their spooky accuracy and ability to absorb complex algorithms. Marketing nowadays becomes more personalized and conversational as chatbots enable clients to benefit from their functionality even without straining their resources and, as much as possible, manpower.
 

Voice-powered assistants

This generation's assistants no longer wear office attire and complain when stressed. The industry has gladly welcomed and embraced the existence of smart speaker assistants. This hands-free technological innovation will indeed result in an increasing standard as to how users choose to communicate through their devices. 

Although the entirety of smart speakers just took off during 2017-2018, Google Home and Amazon Alexa have been continually impacting the market today and will continue to foster business developments in the near future. There is no good reason why this mobile trend will stop growing because it literally has served approximately 50% of all user searches. 

Yes, you heard it right. Approximately 50% of the total internet searches have been completed through voice search.
 

Video marketing

This is actually one of the essential components of successful marketing. This marketing trend will remain impactful and transformational not only today but also for the next five to ten years. Refer to the statistics below so you can visualize the essence of incorporating videography into your marketing strategy this 2021:
 

• 70% of customers admitted that they view and share some brands' videos.

• 72% of business owners reported that videos had upgraded their rate of conversion.

• 52% of customers admitted that viewing brand videos encourages them to make online purchases.

• 65% of business executives access the website of the marketer, and 39% contact a seller after watching a video. 
   

The conclusion one can make out from the above-mentioned details is videos are by far considered a popular way to encourage consumers to know more about new products and services. Nevertheless, we are not only referring to those videos played before watching the main video on YouTube. There are many ways to improve customer engagement through video marketing, such as posting short clips on Instagram, Linked In, or going live on Facebook. 

One of the many issues faced by marketers in the past years is the gradual shift to smartphones. The impact of lengthy sales emails sent during the previous years is fading because these traditional means of marketing are already considered "difficult to read" compared to the most recent innovations. 

Well, if smartphones have never existed, these emails will remain the most understandable and reader-friendly material on the internet.
 

Advanced artificial intelligence technology

There is this one major trend when it comes to the industry of digital marketing. This trend might have already been the talk of the town as the developers of these products have begun to actualize this entire concept. We are referring to AI opportunities. An AI-driven marketing strategy will be realized in the upcoming years. 

Yes, artificial intelligence is not already considered the biggest marketing innovation nowadays since forward-thinking and future-oriented businesses have already been looking back at AI-driven techniques they've been utilizing for years in order to optimize their smart technology. However, this is something pioneering industries should also consider.

If 50 to 70% of a company's content goes unutilized, artificial intelligence will start to urge people to reconsider the same exact creation (of course, reasonably) to recycle functionality. People can't deny the massive expansion of AI's benefits and positive impacts in the digital marketing world, and it has been quite a long time now since content creators witnessed an exponential growth in the marketing efficiency caused by AI technology. 

Thus, marketing strategists just can't wait to see what AI is actually capable of for the upcoming years. 
 

Final thoughts

For every marketing strategist, it is extremely important to make constant change a part of the plan. There are plenty of unfounded, undiscovered technological opportunities in the upcoming years that might not have been foreseen as of now but will eventually rule the market in the future. 

Thus, if you're a business owner, you need to keep your eyes on the prize by embracing the existence of new tools, strategies, and technologies for you to become more competent in this fast-paced market. Also, by being flexible to change, you will earn an advantage over your brand's competitors.