The Top Digital Marketing Trends Of 2019 As Predicted By Industry Experts

Nearly every business knows the importance of digital marketing by now, but knowing which digital marketing strategies are most effective can be a bit more challenging. The best methods are always changing to keep up with evolving technology. You can easily get left behind. Stay on top of the latest digital marketing tactics by knowing these important predictions from digital marketing experts.

Optimize Mobile Sites

Smartphones have become consumers’ lifeline to the online world. If your SEO isn’t tailored to mobile-first indexing and your website design isn’t optimized for mobile users, businesses will be missing out on a ton of traffic.

“Consumers shop and search on their mobile devices now more than ever. With over 50% of your audience visiting your site with their phone – you’d better do whatever you can to make their shopping experience enjoyable. Plus – let’s not forget that Google has gone on the record saying that mobile rankings are the new status quo,” advises Bryan Driscoll from Think Big Marketing.

When consumers use their mobile phones to search, they also expect lightning-fast results.  Along with lightning-fast results, they also want the website design to be aesthetically pleasing. Kelsey Halvarson from Roadside Dental & Medical Marketing stresses the importance of finding the right balance in your mobile-friendly website.

“With mobile first indexing in full swing, a responsive website is a must, but so is a fast website. People like fast (just think about 5G networks!); everything is related to speed and instant knowledge,” Halvarson says.

As you optimize a business’s website for mobile use, just think of the type of results and experience you would want if you were searching for a term. Once you’re in the consumer’s shoes, you’ll be better able to cater your site to them.

Adjust To AI

Artificial Intelligence tools are quickly becoming a staple of digital marketing strategies. These tools allow marketers to enhance the personalization of their advertisements and automate more marketing tactics. SEO optimization expert and digital marketing strategist Mike Khorev from I Know SEO says it best.

“A.I. has tremendously helped in the field of behavioral analytics in 2018, and with the technology rapidly advancing, we can expect it to be even bigger in 2019: we can save a lot of time and costs in understanding our customers with the help of A.I. We see applications like A.I.-driven content curation to programmatic advertising placements that will continue to rise in popularity,” says Khorev.

Google gathers a ton of data via platforms such as Google and Android.  Brian Winum of MAXPlaces sees Google continuing to utilize this data to enhance search results.

“I expect the growth of hyper-personalized search results to continue to evolve in 2019 and beyond. Several years back we all saw the explosion of “near me” searches and optimization tactics. Google invested big in finding out “where we are” to provide more relevant and personalized results. Now I expect that trend to evolve into learning “who we are” and translate that into hyper-relevant search engine results. We all know Google gathers tremendous amounts of data via Chrome, Android and other platforms and will obviously use that data in shaping future algorithm updates. Instead of searching for “womens clothing store near me” the newer searches may be more along the lines of “what is the best winter coat FOR ME” – a not so subtle nod at hyper-personalization.”

And as Franco Valentino from Narrative SEO points out, the new focus on AI is a major departure from a previous concentration on Google’s changing algorithms.

“As Google and other search engines enable machine learning and AI, traditional SEO practices become less effective given the complexities of these systems,” says Valentino. “Instead of chasing the latest algorithm update, digital marketers can improve user experience and the SERPs will notice. The basics matter more than ever, so making your users happy by speeding up your website, providing trust by adding a security certificate, and optimizing historical content to maximize value to the user consistently provides gains in organic traffic and conversions.”

Keep Your Content Relevant

While these first two trends focus on the importance of fitting your website to technological innovations, they both need your website to have excellent content in order to work. High-quality content in 2019 will mean that you are predicting consumer searchers and giving them relevant information that they want to keep reading.

“Be the Mind Reader,” advises Partho Mondal, CEO of Wisitech. “Your content must anticipate your reader’s queries and answer them with clarity, bullets, heading tags for easy readability. Your text, images, videos, metadata must leverage Google’s great tilt towards machine learning and voice search.”

To bolster up your website’s excellent content even more, Matt Fenn of Jumplead emphasizes the importance of creating link outreach opportunities.

“Yes, you need to create content that answers your customers’ needs but at the same time you need to be driving linkable content and putting the outreach in place to support it. The successful SEO strategies in 2019 will be the ones that marry these two realities,” says Fenn.

As these digital marketing experts say, the content that once got you leads isn’t going to cut it anymore. Be sure to keep your content on trend with that of your competitors, or else you will be left behind.

Focus On The Client

Digital marketing agencies have the challenge of implementing highly technological SEO practices while pleasing the exact desires of their clients. This gets even tougher when clients don’t know what they want. Amie Marse from Content Equals Money stresses the importance of finding a client’s pain points, which are the specific problems their prospective customers are experiencing.

“Spend the time to find your clients pain points behind the pain points. And then build your SEO strategy from there. It will help your content speak directly to your clients’ needs and will have a byproduct of helping your business overall,” suggests Marse.

The best digital marketing agencies of 2019 will not only find their clients’ pain points, but they will know the right metrics to measure their success. Lui De Luna of Networking Bizz discourages agencies from focusing on vanity metrics such as engagements, likes, and reach and instead advises turning their attention elsewhere.

“Such [vanity] metrics are easily misinterpreted and do not necessarily correlate to the numbers that really matter such as cold hard sales or foot traffic KPI’s. Digital marketing agencies should be focusing more on actionable metrics that have direct results on your business. Let’s create true value!” says De Luna.

Wrapping It All Up

Without following these key digital marketing trends of the upcoming year, businesses will not get the results they are looking for. And if you think you can rely on the same trends you’ve been using for years, think again. To sum up the importance of staying on trend, we’ll leave you with the words of Janice Wald, blogging expert and creator of Mostly Blogging.

“Digital marketing is growing at a rapid pace, in fact, around 75% of people think digital marketing has changed a great deal in the last two years. Digital marketing carries across channels so, if you’re not into digital marketing, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to boost your ROI.”