2018 Digital Marketing Review – What’s in and out?

It’s that time of year again when we look to the New Year to see what trends will be coming over the horizon for a 2018 digital marketing review. With that we will also say goodbye to a notable number of pleasant surprises that we saw in 2017, such as live streaming and Snapchat, but we’ll talk about those in a moment.

If you’re expecting huge fireworks from a 2018 Digital Marketing review, then you’ll probably be disappointed, but that’s not to say that there won’t be any surprises along the way. Big Data was a high riser in 2017 and I’d eat my non-existent hat if we don’t see a continued rise in 2018. Knowledge is power and with Big Data you can’t have enough knowledge.

What’s in?

Video Content ✓✓✓

Video Marketing was highly anticipated by many in the marketing world and didn’t let us down. A recent poll by Hubspot found that the two most in-demand services for 2018 are YouTube and Facebook Video (48% and 46% respectively). Video content is an effective way of differentiating your business by showcasing your skills but it is also a great tool for social engagement.

“Video marketing is like pizza, even when it’s bad it’s good” – Somebody on the internet Share on X

It’s not just a flashy gizmo either, as 83% of businesses believe that video gives them a good ROI. When you apply this to Inbound Marketing, Video Content helps to position your business as a provider of genuine quality information and does it in an eye-grabbing and unique way too; no-one else in the world has anything like your video.

Mobile Marketing ✓✓

Year-on-year, the number of smartphone users has grown and is forecast to do the same in 2018. This year, on record there are 2292.5 million smartphone users and in 2018 it is predicted this number will increase again in 2019 to 2480.4 million. The chart below showcases a case study’s traffic level in 2016 vs 2017. Mobile traffic has overtaken desktop in the last year as the main traffic driver for the website, coming up to 57.5% of all visits.

(Traffic by Device: Blue = Mobile, Green = Desktop and Orange = Other)

When people talk about mobile marketing, it’s not just smoke and mirrors. Mobile is having a real-life effect on the marketplace and how users are searching online. This makes tools like GeoTargeting (the ability to target mobile users by geography) evermore effective and timely. One to watch…

Voice Search ✓

The Stone Temple survey showed that Voice Search is now the second highest function for voice commands on a mobile device, after making a call. However, participants actually stated that they wanted Voice Search to give them fewer results to choose from and wanted to be sent directly to an answer, rather than clicking a website/app. Whilst it’s not there just yet, 2018 could see some real landmarks for Voice Search.

What’s Out?

Email Marketing ✘✘

Before you jump to any conclusions, I will say that there is still hope for Email Marketing, but with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into play, the email marketing game will change forever. Already 74% of businesses anticipate that GDPR will have a medium or big impact on their business. One thing that we do know at this stage is that there will be big cultural changes and processes in place within businesses like yours to make sure you stay compliant after May 2018.

Twitter ?

One thing Twitter will always excel at is the ability to send snippets of information almost instantaneously to people around the world and, of course, it brought us the beloved hashtag (#memories). Unfortunately for Twitter, it is somewhat a victim of its own success. With so many people tweeting, ‘noise’ becomes a big issue. How can you communicate your key USP to your target market when it disappears into the proverbial abyss?

Twitter won’t be going anywhere this year, but will we see businesses navigate away from arguably the most famous social media platform in history? Only time will tell…

Digital Marketing Review Recap…