Top 6 Digital Marketing Trends You Need to Be Prepared for in 2018

I’ve already covered the social media trends for 2018, so I will focus on a more general approach in this article. You can also check the 2017 digital marketing trends here.

In a nutshell, it can be said that the pervasion of technology in digital marketing is getting more and more visible at all levels and in all industries. As I argued in an article for MarTechExec, today’s marketers and copywriters can’t afford NOT to be techies anymore.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we’ll have to build robots and code our chatbots on our own. But it does mean that we need to understand tech trends even if the brands we work for aren’t in the technology space. Every year, it gets clearer and clearer that tech trends influence marketing ones.

And it couldn’t be any other way. After all, Generation Z, the first digital natives, are all grown-up now. Marketers need to speak to them on platforms that feel natural and comfortable to them. For this generation, technology comes natural. When they adopt a new device, gadget, messenger app or social media network, marketers have to know how to reach them there.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that most digital marketing trends for 2018 have a tech component. Let’s take a closer look at them:

6 Digital Marketing Trends for 2018

1. Personalization Is Key to Every Campaign

Three out of four users get frustrated when the messages they receive are irrelevant to their interests. This is, perhaps, the most compelling find to guide digital marketing in 2018.

Aside from being incredibly tech-savvy, Gen Z are also demanding personalized communication even more than their Millennial predecessors. As marketers, we need to go way beyond the usual “Dear Jane” email.

The good news is that social media analytics and web analytics also get more and more sophisticated by the minute. As we gain more insight into the interests and behaviors of our buyer personas, we also need to come up with ways to communicate adequately.

2. Instant Messaging Is a Must-Have

Remember when it was considered acceptable to answer an email even later than 24 hours? Well, those days are long gone. Along with personalization, speed is the second most important of digital marketing trends for 2018.

1.3 billion users are active every month on Facebook Messenger. And if you think that that’s just a platform to chat with friends or for businesses to respond to client inquiries, think again.

Neil Patel’s recent Facebook Messenger campaign saw a staggering 86% open rate, along with a 56% CTR. Yes, chat bots are gaining terrain. Most importantly, so are clever uses of technology by marketers.

If you don’t use chat bots yet, it’s high time you looked into them!

3. AI Is Going Mainstream

Last year, I predicted that AI would be a part of digital marketers’ daily lives. And here it is (to stay!). Better yet, it’s no longer a trend.

At Inbound17, HubSpot announced that machine learning code will be built into their content strategy tool. Chat bots will also be integrated with the HubSpot platform.

But there are some tools that have already integrated AI into their functionality. Atomic Reach can tell you what to write and when and where to publish. In order to optimize your reach, of course. Phrasee claims to be the AI that writes better subject lines than humans.

Yes, AI is not mature yet. But just think about how fast it evolved this far.

4. Content Marketing and SEO Will Be Integrated

I’ve said this countless times, on the Idunn blog and on all the other platforms I write guest blogs for. Content writing and SEO work together, not separately.

Google bots are growing more “human” as we speak. There is no more distinction between content that Google likes and content that your customers do. If you write for humans, search engines will also reward you.

I recently wrote an article about great writing. It was initially a memo to the writers at Idunn, designed to remind them whom they should write for first and foremost. Hint: it’s not Google and it’s not the client, either. It’s the reader.

This is why, when I hire SEO copywriters (a term that might disappear altogether soon), I focus on their marketing abilities. I’m more interested in their abilities to grok buyer personas quickly and adapt their tone of voice when needed than I am in their abilities to stuff articles with keywords.

5. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and User Experience Become Focal Points

The ability of a website and its content to convert readers into paying customers is no news. If we’ve been toying with A/B testing and analytics reports so far, it’s time to get serious about them.

You may have noticed an overarching trend: most of the digital marketing trends for 2018 have one thing in common – they are customer-centric. And not just theoretically.

Marketers are struggling to come up with ways to put the user in the center of every experience. Personalization, machine learning, AI – all these are tools to offer each individual the perfect experience.

In my work with the Idunn clients, I also noticed a closer collaboration between professional copywriters and web designers. Even when a company outsources content writing and web design to different agencies, there will still be a collaboration between the two.

The days when writers received the site map of a new website and were asked to fill it with words are (thankfully!) almost gone. Today we know that user experience is made of both words and graphics, so we work together to create a coherent look and feel.

6. Integrated Strategies Are the Winning Ones

Irrespective of the size of the marketing department, it’s no longer acceptable for the Social Media Manager to know nothing about the Content Manager’s activities. And why would it be? After all, they should work together for the same business goals.

We will also see and even closer collaboration between sales and marketing. The first will rely on the latter for materials and tactics. Conversely, marketers will rely on sales reps for fresh customer insights that no analytics platform can provide (yes, we still have some of those).

Looking for help in mastering these digital marketing trends for 2018? We have helped hundreds of companies stay ahead of trends through smart, integrated and out-of-the box strategies and campaigns.