Digital Marketing Mid-Year Review 2019

If you have decided to get clued up on digital marketing and want to know how it will work best for your business, this review could be of some help. It’s important to be up to date with the latest digital marketing trends since this industry keeps transforming at a phenomenal pace. Not only are there a magnitude of online digital marketing apps, but they are now being integrated for even more user-friendly qualities.

What’s happened in the last six months and what will happen to the end of the year?

Across the board, there are 8 vital digital marketing communication strategies, known as:

• Content Marketing
• SEO (organic search)
• Paid Media (Google Ads Programmatic display)
• Social Media Marketing
• Email Marketing (Marketing Automation)
• Multi-channel Analytics
• Integrated Planning (Always-on + Campaigns).

In the latest Managing Digital Marketing Report, Smartsights.com asked their users which tactics marketers think are most important. The results reflected that Content Marketing was favoured at #1 – and has been regarded in the top 3 for some years. It’s no wonder, since content marketing can be utilised by all types of businesses, no matter its size. Along with the right strategy, it can make a good first impression that supports communications throughout the entire customer life cycle.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning was favoured at #2 and is the way of the future in the digital world. It proposes that marketers foresee a good return for installing the latest AI tools that supports many marketing applications for AI. It might become the most popular strategy as personalisation and marketing automation will be enhanced, especially with regards to Marketing Automation and Email Marketing.

Like content marketing, marketing automation and email marketing are reliable marketing strategies for any business type and size. While more experienced companies will make enhancements through the use of AI, other less experienced businesses will see improvements with the relevance and timing of their emails by utilising rules-based automation and personalisation.

Digital Marketing: From multichannel to ‘omnichannel’ marketing

There is an expansive trend in marketing known as ‘omnichannel communications’ which concentrates on the customer and expands on marketing strategies:

• ‘Omni’ is based on a Latin expression meaning “all, every, the whole, of every kind” and – in terms of digital strategy – it seeks to reach and interact with customers across contact points in all channels.

While multichannel is an operational view on how you let the customer complete transactions in each channel, omnichannel marketing observes the experience through the customer’s eyes. It coordinates the customer experience across all channels so that it is unified, integrated and consistent.

Social media companies constantly work to integrate their online function into, and share data with, third-party applications and their accounts. This trend of omnichannel strategies is expected to continue, in addition to social platforms becoming even more incorporated with other services. It will assist social media companies to preserve their dominance, retain more information about customers/users, and provide better services for smaller websites and apps.

Multimedia Trends

There are so many social media platforms that offer an array of multimedia functions that entertain Internet users for hours. By now there are subcultures of top influencers on every channel. 2019 Statistics reflect that live video streaming is becoming ever more popular, especially where viewers can interact on the portal via the comments section and presenters can effectively interact with their audience.

In 2019, chatbots are expected to take over and we’re already encountering it in South Africa. Chatbots will be present in sectors where you can order a pizza, choose a mobile contract, or book hotel rooms, for instance. We already interact with chatbots on big companies’ caller-redirectory systems, like Vodacom or Telkom.

South African Digital Marketing

As a third-world country, South Africa might not be 100% on par with the rest of the developed world’s digital trends. However, the same digital development in South Africa is bound to follow suit in due course. It’s never too early to stay current on what’s hot in digital marketing all over. In fact, it can help you stay on top of new developments locally and keep you one step ahead of your competitors.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

The Digital School of Marketing’s Digital Marketing Course is a unique educational offering in the digital marketing space that is backed by the MICT SETA, among others. It provides the most comprehensive tuition on digital marketing and will allow you to use this exciting medium for your own business. For more information about this and our other online digital marketing courses, visit our website.