Digital Strategies to put in your 2019 Marketing Plan

While there are many digital strategies for marketers, the ones that stand out, are rare the ones remembered. Your clients want to use the tried and true, but they always ask for the “innovative” tactic every year. However, innovative needs to provide ROI. Here are a few strategies (that don’t have the word blockchain in the title) that will be influencing your audiences, and stealing eyeballs. These strategies have been effective for several years, and will be for several more. I recommend you provide your clients with some of the solutions below:

  • Voice activated strategies

  • Influencer marketing

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Live Video marketing

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Voice Search

When you talk about change in digital marketing, search has got to be the most chaotic aspect of it all. The “Google algorithm updates” alone have kept marketers awake at night. Now with the entrance of Alexa and Google Home, search has taken on a whole new perspective. Voice search is rapidly gaining acceptance among consumers. Although still in its infancy, voice search is making a huge impact in how we get information, how we purchase products, and how we interact with our environment (home control). See how Merck is Alexa to interact with their patients.

60% of people have started using voice search within the last year.

Planning Ahead

According to ComScore, at least half of all searches will be made via voice query by 2020. That’s not so far away. And it doesn’t mean that we should ignore traditional SEO, either.

The rise in instant answers without search results will continue

You’re going to see a continual rise in instant answers. What is happening is that when a lot of these voice and conversational search queries are coming through, they tend to be longer, and they tend to be seeking out an answer that a device can quickly give you a direct answer to. Things like, what I placed here, and this requires some logic and some understanding from the machines, some contextual understanding, but it’s not that challenging, and the machines are doing a good job of this.

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Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing as a strategy has been growing in popularity for the past few years, but new and different types of brands are now starting to take notice. By using social media listening tools a marketer can identify individuals that will help a brand get the word out. There is a defined process to identifying these influencers, and understanding the online conversation around your brand is vital to choosing the right online influencer.

85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations – BrightLocal Survey

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84% of marketers planned on executing at least one influencer marketing campaign during 2017 – Inc.com

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is not new – in fact, you probably already interact with marketing AI when you see ads in search results and on social media. And, 57% of marketers already use AI. However, the use of AI for marketing is only going to grow as the technology improves. 

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Examples of AI in Marketing

  • Chatbots
    Chatbots designed to serve one or more purposes to the customers. For example, a chatbot operating in a chat screen of a website, or a bot operating in any social networking website’s chatbox. National Geographic lets you chat with Albert Einstein on Facebook messenger to raise awareness of the launch of its new original series Genius that dissects the psyche of the physicist Albert Einstein.
  • Data analysis
    One of the most useful examples of AI in marketing is data analysis. These days you don’t have to guess what will work for what audience. There are thousands of data points attached to the target audience that can be accurately analysed by bots to understand which message is going to appeal to whom.

AI closes the gap by moving far past human limitations to consume and analyze data on a scale no human can. The “intelligence” in artificial intelligence is the ability to think independently, to grow more knowledgeable from being exposed to more information and to adapt and adjust when things change.

  • Recommendations/content curation
    Predictive analytics allows Netflix to surface and finesse recommendations. This kind of clustering algorithm is continually improving suggestions, allowing users to make the most of their subscription.Uniting information from diverse datasets is a common use of AI.Under Armour is one of the many companies to have worked with IBM’s Watson. The sports apparel company combines user data from its Record app with third-party data and research on fitness, nutrition etc.The result is the ability for the brand to offer up relevant (personalized) training and lifecycle advice based on aggregated wisdom.
  • Content Generation
    A significant portion of sports and finance related articles are already written by machines, not humans. With AI marketing, this trend is poised to spread throughout various other industries. Finance and sports are traditionally numbers-heavy industries, which makes it easy for AI programs to understand the data and translate it into human-readable articles.
    A creative solution would be providing thoughtful answers in real time to customers. Check out Google Duplex coming soon.

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In 2017, marketing platforms collected and stored information such as site usage, browsing patterns, search history and content preferences to create customer profiles and behavior marketing strategies that help marketers create custom messages to address these prospects. But the next step is even more exciting.

Consider These Stats and Facts

live video

Live Video, because it’s Live – Instant Gratification

Like AI, live video is nothing new, but it’s growing exponentially. Everyone wants a piece of Facebook Live.

And, it isn’t just popular with marketers. People love watching live video too. In fact, 80% of users said they’d rather watch a live video than read a blog post, while according to Facebook, live video gets 3x more views.

Here are a few tips for getting started with live video:

  1. Use live video at events to give followers a behind-the-scenes look at the event.
  2. Show off holiday displays and sales in live video.
  3. Use live video to introduce your followers to your employees.
  4. Advertise an exclusive sale or promotion to anyone who watches your live video.

Consider These Stats and Facts

  • The $127 billion autonomous vehicle market is being driven by AI. That’s how much the self-driving car market is expected to be worth worldwide by 2027
  • 76% of smart home speaker users conduct local searches at least once a week—with 53% performing daily searches
  • Live video is more appealing to brand audiences: 80% would rather watch live video from a brand than read a blog, and 82% prefer live video from a brand to social posts.

How AI is changing Business: A look at the limitless potential of AI 

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