4 Significant Digital Marketing Trends to Know About in 2019

2019 is right around the corner and we are excited to see what it has in store for the digital marketing world! Since it's our specialty, we always like to stay on top of the latest marketing trends. We are sharing 4 significant digital marketing trends that we predict will become pivotal in 2019.

1. Voice Search

Michelle's 2019 Digital Marketing Prediction: SEO for voice will become a key part in your SEO strategy.

Show of hands, who’s performed a search on their smartphone via Siri or Google Assistant? And who owns an Amazon Echo, Google Home, or the like? I am sure you raised your hands to at least one of those two questions, because 24% of US households own a smart speaker and 68.4% of the US population uses a smartphone.

Plus, smart speaker like devices are on the rise as both Google and Facebook introduced their new hands free video-based device to make voice-centric data consumption even more prevalent in all of our lives and homes. Because of this, web browsing sessions performed by voice will increase significantly in the coming year.

Gartner predicts that by 2020, 30% of all web browsing will be performed without a screen. I am sure after Google and Facebook launched their new hands-free device that incorporates a screen, they would update that prediction to say that those 30% of web browsing sessions will be performed by voice. All of this to say, SEOs and digital marketers must take voice search seriously in 2019. If they haven’t already, they need to make it a key part of their SEO strategy in the coming year.

2. IGTV

Jasmine's 2019 Digital Marketing Prediction: We'll see more companies create content for IGTV which will make it a necessary component for content marketing on Instagram.

Instagram introduced IGTV in 2018 as a way to share long-form, vertical video content on their platform. IGTV is similar to a television experience because a video will start playing as soon a user clicks on the icon to open IGTV and you can “flip through the channels” to view other videos. Watching videos without having to rotate your phone and (currently) without ads makes it enticing for Instagram users to check out this latest feature.

IGTV allows users to see longer videos (up to an hour) from their favorite accounts. While the concept sounds similar to YouTube or other video-sharing apps, what makes it unique is that is integrated in an already successful app. While newsfeed posts and Stories are still effective ways to promote content on Instagram, companies can get creative on IGTV and make long-form video content for all stages in the buyer’s journey (how-to videos, product comparison videos, testimonial videos, etc) without having to lead their followers to another app.

Earlier this year, Instagram reached 1 billion monthly active users. With that kind of engagement on Instagram, there isn’t much companies can lose by trying out IGTV. I don’t think that IGTV will completely kill off SnapChat or YouTube in 2019, since it’s still relatively new. Plus, each of those other social platforms has unique features that meets its users’ needs.

I do predict that IGTV will become an important component of Instagram content marketing that companies will need to participate in to not only stay up-to-date, but to receive even more engagement on the app.

3. WordPress 5.0

Jacob's 2019 Digital Marketing Prediction: WordPress will gain momentum with the release of WordPress 5.0 and the new Gutenburg editor.

Gutenberg has been somewhat controversial within the WordPress community, but at the end of the day, I believe it is a step forward for WordPress. Change is often turbulent, and Gutenberg is no different, but it will set WordPress up to better compete with the likes of Wix and Squarespace.

There is certainly much to learn, as with any new piece of software, but users have much more control over their content. With all of the developmental possibilities opened up by Gutenberg, we will be able to innovate with WordPress in ways that weren’t possible before. I believe this added functionality will convert many users to WordPress and we will see overall growth in WordPress usage, which is currently at 32.4%.

4. Facebook Decline 

Justin's 2019 Digital Marketing Prediction: Facebook will struggle because their users will continue to drop and their stock price will suffer.

2018 had to probably be one of Facebook’s worst years ever. When everything came out about the Cambridge Analytica, where millions of users data were collected for the use within a political campaign, everyone became suspicious of what Facebook has on us and what others can access about us. Also, during the 2016 U.S. Presidential race there was plenty of fake news that flooded the Facebook news feed and other areas which brought backlash against the company. Over the last years, even decades, Facebook has continued to have a decline in the U.S.

Pew Research Center even noticed a large decline, 42%, since March 2018 all because of the data breach. With all of the negative press and issues going on with Facebook, I believe that the social media giant will struggle in 2019.

There are many aspects that will change in the digital marketing world next year, but these are a few of the ones that we thought were significant enough to change the game! Keep these trends in mind when creating your organization's 2019 digital marketing strategy. 

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