We are in the midst of a digital revolution that is having a huge impact on digital marketing. New and emerging technologies are being adopted so rapidly, that they are significantly influencing marketing strategies. Here are the most important digital marketing trends to pay attention to in the coming year.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Revolutionize – Everything

The growing consensus is that Artificial Intelligence is poised to revolutionize the marketing industry in the not-so-distant future. In its recent annual report, Salesforce stated that 51 percent of marketers are already using AI in some capacity, with an additional 25 percent projected to begin using the technology this year.

The growing prominence of AI in digital marketing comes as no surprise. It provides efficient and accurate data analysis and prediction, not to mention rapidly targeting the right audience for potential leads. As more marketers adopt Artificial Intelligence into strategies, the capabilities of the technology will improve.

The Friendly Chatbots

Perfect examples of AI technology are chatbots. Powered by AI automation, these little customer service helpers started to be integrated into websites in 2016. With chatbots ability to provide seamless customer service by quickly answering queries and fulfilling requests, it’s no surprise they’re a major trend that isn’t going anywhere.

According to a report by Grand View Research, the chatbot market is expected to reach $1.25 billion by 2025, with an annual growth rate of 24.3 percent each year. Because chatbots help visitors easily navigate websites and provide such exceptional customer service experiences, more companies will integrate them onto sites throughout a variety of industries.

Voice Search is Seeing Rapid Growth

One of the most important trends especially in SEO is voice search. Considering the growing prominence of voice assistants like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Home, this isn’t surprising. In 2017, voice-based commerce sales reached $1.8 billion in the US. By 2022, those sales are projected to increase to an astounding $40 billion in the US alone.

Suffice it to say, voice search is definitely a trend to pay attention to in 2019. Yet, with this search process, marketers need a different optimization strategy. Spoken questions are different from typed questions – in essence, a voice search is going to be completely different from how a consumer types it out. For this reason, marketers are ensuring that their content is optimized for a more conversational feel – to the point and easy to understand. Likewise, voice-activated search advertising is going to revolutionize the marketing industry. It will enable brands to customize ads more effectively to the precise information a consumer is seeking.

The Rise of Visual Search

Another search method that has emerged as an important trend in 2019 is the visual search. As visual search technology increasingly improves, its usage is rapidly growing across several platforms. Google has enabled reverse-image searches for an eternity now. Yet the company, along with Bing and Pinterest, now has search functions that make it possible for users to photograph an item, then either find more information about it, buy it, or search for similar items.

As with voice search, visual search is presenting revolutionary application capabilities. In fact, way back in 2017 the CEO of Pinterest, Ben Silbermann stated in an interview that “the future of search will be about pictures rather than keywords.” It would appear that he’s definitely onto something. After Pinterest launched its Lens feature in 2017, the company reported that users conducted over 600 million combined monthly searches with the new technology.

Digital Marketing trends constantly change in our fast-paced age. Yet, the aforesaid emerging technologies are poised to revolutionize digital marketing strategies.

Sarah Bauder

Sarah Bauder is a senior content specialist at Little Dragon Media. Sarah has a degree in journalism and has a decade of experience writing content at numerous renowned publications. She enjoys writing about digital marketing, business, entrepreneurship and more.