Last year in 2017, many companies saw big changes in ways that online businesses had to adapt their marketing strategies. As 2018 goes underway, huge changes will be expected to be seen with how experts approach SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing. Read more to find out what the team of experts at ExtraDigital give as their top predictions within the world of Digital Marketing.
The impact of Facebook's changes on Marketing
It will be interesting to see in 2018 if Facebook's recent changes will also influence Google to reduce paid ads in Search which would ultimately help Organic listings, keep SEO alive and make businesses pay more to become visible - or whether they will go the other way and show more PPC ads to a point where SEO and PPC merge into one, and all listings become paid for as is the case on YouTube, Facebook and others.
The influence of Social Media
This year we have seen the rise of Instagram as a influential platform for business. We can expect to see the growth in influencer marketing to continue the audience engagement within the Instagram social media platform.
As we recently also heard Facebook's anouncement to take a step away from business advertising and create a family friendly and personal platform, we can expect this to have a influence on businesses spending their money on other social media platforms such as Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram and forms of advertising.
2018 will see a shift in social media strategies.
A shift for ecommerce stores
The use of a more guided purchasing experience is meant to become more popular this year for ecommerce stores. An example of what I mean can be found on the http://www.sky.com/shop/ page. If you click the “Help me choose” button it asks you a series of questions to tailor a product to your needs.
The importance of Voice search
Voice search will continue to increase in importance. In 2017 55% of teens and 40% of adults used voice search. The growth in voice search will have a major impact on the way we implement content strategies and undertake keyword research.
A shake up for Web Design
For the past few years, at least, the trend has been for stipped back, minimal, flat design websites. 2018 marks a big change for web design with the realisation of the burgeoning trend of dimensional colours and gradients. Colour is no longer at a premium and will be used boldly and brashly.
This trend has been coming for awhile with brands like Instagram and Apple adopting it in its IOS.
Gradients can be a to add a little more impact on an image, or make is drop back as a passive background boldly coloured hero areas. A simple gradient background can also be the perfect on-trend solution if you don’t have any other images to work with.
Changes to User interface and user experience
Motion UI – while simple clean designs are most appreciated, sophisticated motion UI is becoming more popular.
Animations can add more style and distinguish from those sites with a static UI.
These animations can take the form of page header transitions, hover effects, animated charts and scroll effects.
Chat Bots - The prediction is that 85% of all customer interactions will proceed without human assistance till 2020.
This is a conversational interface transforming the way businesses interact with their customers. It lets customers feel like they are interacting with a human, but the bot is smart enough to answer questions or direct to the relevant page, Customers will prefer sites with appropriate assistance online.
Changes in Technology to impact PPC
In 2018 we will see how Voice & visual search will impact user behaviour before ads. It will be interesting to see how businesses will adapt their marketing strategies to suit changes in user behaviour.
The impact on Development Work
Larger business focus on security of customer data, and being able to demonstrate compliance to industry standards
Smaller business on urgent fixes for dealing with security breaches after failing to keep systems up to date.
The impact of GDPR
With changes to take place in May 2018, we can expect alot the new privacy regulations to impact how businesses interact with their customers. This will create a shift in how marketers are targeting their customers and will lead to companies reviewing their exsting strategies.
Take a look at our Blog for more top tips and industry insight.
