Mobile marketing in 2019
As we herald in the beginning of the New Year, savvy marketers are on the lookout for the ways web and mobile marketing will be shaped in 2019. Each year we see new technology emerge, meaning the industry is forced to stay alert and agile to keep up with new trends, particularly in the B2B sector. Below, we’ve compiled the top three trends to keep an eye out for in 2019.
1. Video content
Video and visual content has been continually rising in popularity for years thanks to platforms like YouTube and social media, forcing agile companies to jump on board and maximise this trend. While the most forward-thinking businesses are already taking advantage of the video format for marketing, 2019 will see another jump in video content. It’s even been predicted that by 2021, video will represent a staggering 82% of all web traffic.
Why is this? It’s pretty simple. Marketers are seeing real results when adding video content to their strategy, and across the board, brands are using video to support two key business goals.
Increase website traffic: Companies are not only finding that videos drive new traffic to the website through short social media clips, but also keeping users on the site for longer. Videos are fantastic for creating and telling a brand story, sharing customer testimonials, demonstrating the product in use and explaining key benefits and features of the product or service.Video content
Educate users: Particularly useful for companies that sell SaaS (System as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service), educational and instructional videos give customers the opportunity to learn how to use the product in their own time with help from the video. Not only is this a very customer-forward approach, it also frees up your sales and support staff from spending valuable time running through multiple demos and training for relatively simple tools.
It’s also well-worth noting that video content is by no means limited to your website and social channels. Companies are making use of MMS through bulk messaging platforms to engage customers directly on the device they use most - their mobile phones. Check out these clever uses for MMS for more insight into how engaging video content can be sent via a text messaging platform.
Don’t forget to keep ‘mobile-friendly’ at the forefront when designing and creating videos for your marketing strategy. Here are a few tips to ensure you’re mobile-ready.
2. Voice search
From a consumer perspective, it probably won’t come as a shock that voice activation for mobile is on the rise. While ‘Hey Siri’ used to have a monopoly on voice search queries, it's now common to hear ‘Okay Google’, ‘Alexa’ and ‘Hey, Cortana’ in your day to day life.
Our in-built assistants are becoming a larger part of our lives and regularly used to play music, get directions, make phone calls and send text messages - but it doesn’t end there. Voice search queries are fast catching up to manually typed searches, with an estimate that by 2020, “half of all search queries will be voice-based”.
This is an important shift in the way marketers will need to approach their strategy, particularly from an SEO perspective. When a term is typed into a search engine like Google, hundreds of page results will appear and users can scroll to choose which is the most relevant. However, when searching through a voice assistant, only a few answers will be provided and most often, only one. For SEO specialists, this means that the fight for top spot on search terms is more relevant than ever, and marketers must adapt their SEO strategy accordingly. In order to stay ahead, successful marketers are consistently evaluating their keyword targets to align with the shift to voice search, thinking about how users speak as opposed to the way they type their search terms. As is always the case in digital marketing, being agile and able to adapt is key to success.
3. Artificial Intelligence
The emergence of artificial intelligence as a tool for marketers has been discussed heavily over the past few years. But the days of AI marketing ‘emerging’ are over - it is now a staple for any successful digital marketing team. With larger volumes of big data available than ever before, marketers have been able to predict consumer behaviour more accurately. Machine learning has made interpreting these patterns and trends more efficient. From content generation to sales forecasting and ad optimization, AI marketing can be implemented across the entire customer experience journey. AI is the perfect partner for mobile marketing. Businesses can now deliver more personalized mobile advertisements and also implement automated processes into their mobile apps. The rise in e-commerce, especially on smartphones, has made it necessary for businesses to implement AI into their mobile CX. The use of chatbots on mobile devices continues to rise and with smarter algorithms, this technology is able to deliver human-like responses with more accurate solutions.