The Latest Trends in Digital Marketing

Every year, new technologies are coming up and these affect the future of social media marketing and digital Ads generally. Therefore, marketers need to watch the social media marketing space keenly or their competitors will overtake them. For instance, Twitter Hashtags has been a good marketing approach for a long time now. However, this technique will soon be overtaken by AI-guided targeting techniques that allow businesses to skim through social media and identify the most suited target audience.

These technological advancements change the way you have been marketing. Ideally, the current social media marketing trends are becoming less popular as the target audience prefers the latest trends. For instance, a business that targets generation Zers should make sure they adopt the new trend that Gen Zers are attracted to. If you continue using only the marketing approaches that favor the past generations, you will not catch the attention of generation Z. Note that this is the generation whose buying power is higher compared to other generations.

In this article, we focus on the latest technological advancements that are changing how businesses market on social media. Is your business staying in line with the latest technology when it comes to social media marketing? Check out the latest social media marketing trends that we found for your business and decide how you can take advantage of these trends to improve your social media marketing campaigns.

1.     Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Are Changing Influencer Marketing.

Influencer marketing involves targeting a popular social media superstar to drive your brand marketing campaigns. In the past, the influencers posted text content and their photos featuring the brand’s product. Influencer marketing has also been common in traditional marketing. For instance, marketers engaged influencers on live televised shows and the same show was made available as an uploaded video on social media platforms

This is set to change with the onset of AR and VR in social media marketing. For your information, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality involve enhancing or expanding the real world in some way through the use of virtual elements. The AR devices use display, input device sensors and processors to overlay virtual objects on real physical objects creating an illusion that they are in the same space. So how will AR and VR influence the future social media marketing trends?

We have seen brands taking advantage of VR and AR to enhance influencer marketing on social media. For instance, in the fashion industry, AR is being used in fashion shows where brands target social media influencers in the social media and feature them in the VR and AR-driven fashion shows.

Ideally, the social media followers are able to envision themselves in the front row of fashion show sitting next to a social media superstar they follow on Instagram and other social media channels. This brings the social media followers closer to the superstars that they follow. Businesses that take their social media influencer marketing a step further through taking advantage of VR and AR will have a competitive advantage.

2.     The Use of Artificial Intelligence to Improve Social Media Listening

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have become important technologies in social media marketing. Businesses want to track social media mentions so as to respond with appropriate marketing content. Social media listening is, therefore, a strategic method of achieving leads in business. To ensure effective social media listening, brands are shifting from traditional approaches. These traditional approaches included employing dozens of employees as social media observers so as to study and respond to what people are posting on social media.

Using Artificial intelligence to drive social media listening offers the best approach that businesses should take advantage of.  To begin with, AI and ML systems don’t need to take a break and therefore business can follow what is happening on social media throughout. This leads to cost cutting as you also don’t need to spend more money employing shift workers.

Therefore, businesses should take advantage of AI to ensure they effectively deploy social media listening. This will ensure your business will not miss on any brand mentions and you can also effectively monitor what is happening throughout on social media.

3.     Video Content Has Expanded its Wing With Introduction of Live Video

Think of features like Facebook Live and Facebook Watch. The leading social media platform, Facebook, has brought a new dimension in social media marketing. Brands are using live video feature to reach their target audience. Could this be the new content marketing approach for businesses? Statistics show that video content attracts more traffic than text and still images.

As businesses start to use live video it is expected that this will help to increase engagement and therefore leading to higher ROI. Businesses should be able to take advantage of this latest feature which has gained popularity. This helps to strengthen customer loyalty as the clients feel closer to the brands. Social media platforms have introduced the live video feature and so far the uptake is encouraging.   We have Twitter Live, YouTube Live, and several other social media platforms have announced their intent to introduce the live video feature.

4.     Increased Participation in Real-time Messaging Apps

Brands are shifting away from the customer engagement approaches that required clients to wait for hours and sometimes days before brands reply to their concerns. Chatbots and voice assistants are being used by brands. These use Machine Learning and are able to understand the client and in turn respond to the client concerns.

Consider that businesses are competing to satisfy the same customer. Therefore, the business that is quick to respond to clients will have a better advantage in business. In this regard, it is important to make sure that your business invests in the modern real-time messaging apps.

These are some of the latest social media and digital marketing trends. Your business needs to take full advantage of these trends to effectively reach modern day clients. Contact the Dill Design for a strategic approach to adopting the latest digital marketing trends.