Online Marketing is a very dynamic and forever changing field. It is marked by innovation and provides an edge to businesses to win and stay ahead in today’s competitive market. Brands must be able to reflect the developments in latest marketing trends to grow their businesses. Failing this can lead to loss of potential customers and sales, or worse. By building a close relationship with the audience on the internet, companies can build a much relevant user base.

Online marketing has been one of the top priorities in recent years for small to medium businesses, following the success of larger companies and brands around the world. In 2018, several online marketing strategies such as Personalized Content continue to gain awareness. Here are 7 online marketing trends that you can leverage upon to grow your business.

1.     The future with Big Data

Our world is going through a rapid phase of transformation, with a revolution in technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data powering up online platforms. Big Data is one of the latest marketing trends even though it is still a subject of heated debate. It is all about collecting, storing, optimizing and searching a large amount of data in order to create more value for the customers.

Although, Big Data is a tool for the large corporations, recently, small to medium-sized brands have started utilizing its resources to grow their businesses.

2.     Leveraging multiple platforms

Until a few years ago, promotion via social media was limited to Google and Facebook. Companies would talk about how they have customized their apps and blogs for mobile, in order to target each and every user. These days, if you are not covering a certain social media platform, you are not doing enough.

Competition is fierce, and there is no doubt that the companies that are missing promotion via Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, etc., are losing many potential customers to their competitors. Highly sophisticated technologies are being developed, and a large amount of online marketing budget is being spent to cover any available platform on every possible device.

3.     Relevancy is the key to increase ROI

Internet users want to constantly filter out what is really relevant and interesting to them. If the content delivered to them is irrelevant to their interest, they will not hesitate to click ‘Hide the ad’. Serving irrelevant ads or content to your audience can hurt your brand value and your marketing budget.

Several online businesses like AustralianWritings are using highly relevant ad serving engines to market their services to the right audience. Websites and mobile apps that can serve the most relevant content to their audience will be able to generate the maximum ROI.

4.     Brand awareness

Earlier, companies would spend money to only to for online lead generation and sales. However, in recent years, companies have increased their focus on Brand Awareness to produce an invisible ROI. To get recognized and to stand out among the peers, businesses are spending more budget on brand awareness.

A brand is what is being communicated to a person, who may turn into a potential future customer. Businesses are using more advanced and complex strategies to increase brand awareness.

5.     Live Stream is trending

Over time, we have seen many emerging trends, but live video streaming remains popular recent trends in marketing. The importance of live streaming for brands continues to increase. Since the launch of Facebook Live, for example, online brands have found more creative ways to launch their products. Smartphone companies have gained a boost in their product launch reach, using Facebook Live. You can effortlessly use Youtube’s live streaming to boost your business online.

6.     Personalized Content for better user experience

According to the research website Statista, 30.1% of the internet users are using ad-block to block ads entirely on all of their connected devices. Unfortunately, this figure has doubled since 2014. This is the result of online brands considering revenue generation over the user experience. Internet users consume digital content in the form of articles, videos, and info-graphics, before making an online purchase. Brands are focusing on personalized content that is aimed at content, which is tailored specifically to their customer. 

7.     Machine learning powered advertisements

Machine learning for advertising is certainly the healthiest of all online marketing trends. It helps in organizing and evaluating information about the customers, in order to serve them the most relevant ads. You can use machine learning powered platforms to increase sales and boost your business.

The intelligent machine learning algorithm will allow advertisers to probe deeper into the user engagement, to learn which products and services appeal to them. Machine learning helps brands in distributing their content targeting the right customer, thus increasing sales and decreasing user acquisition costs.

About Ryan Bronson

Ryan Bronson is a young talented writer and editor at Fundera and Envato Tuts+ specializing in marketing. Having a degree in Digital Marketing and Online Advertising, Ryan creates strategies, content for advertising emails and landing pages. Bronson is really proficient in creating copy that converts and is capable of giving consultations for real estate and online technologies businesses. Also, he provides consulting on business forums.