Marketing is a very fluid environment. With a plethora of technology advancements year on year, new trends and developments are inevitable. This is why it’s important for businesses to stay on top of these trends to make sure they don’t fall behind the pack. As such, we thought we would share with you some of the upcoming trends that we think are likely to make an impact.

Privacy as a Selling Point

Both security and privacy online, have been hot topics this past decade. Although governments often find themselves exempt, there has been a substantial emphasis on the amount of control corporations have over user data. If you don’t already know, the European Union has put through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is being regarded as “the most important change in data privacy regulation in 20 years. In short, it’s a set of new regulations that give EU residents more power over their personal digital data held by corporations inside and outside the EU. This means a plethora of businesses around the globe will have to comply, and many will likely promote being GDPR compliant as a competitive advantage to support their services. 

Data Driven Growth

Quantitative marketing is already a major practice for many businesses around the world. Companies are becoming more and more data focused, and user information is being collected and recorded on virtually everything. Many organisations, if they aren’t doing it already, will be looking to implement more data driven marketing to grow their brand. However, expect a push-back such as the likes of the GDPR, as governments tighten up regulations and give users more ownership over their personal data. 

Ambassadors vs Influencers 

The old model of having a select few celebrity brand ambassadors for a product are over. With the likes of Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, more and more companies advertise their products through a network of influencers based on their number of followers. It all comes down to engagement and no other social media tool achieves this better than Instagram.

Voice Search

Although you might not be aware, the percentage of voice based searches is increasing. It is expected that by 2020 up to 50% of searches will be through voice-activated applications. As the nature of written and voice searches is different – short vs long phrases – marketers will soon have to optimise their content not just for text based searches, but for voice searches as well. 

Machine Learning and Automation

As mentioned in one of our blogs, automation is close to becoming prevalent among many business sectors, and marketing is no different. Already there are live-chat website tools across the internet and this trend will only increase as the technology improves. This will also shake up the marketing industry as machine learning platforms become more efficient than their human counterparts. Expect many businesses to pick up on this trend. 

Augmented Reality

Previously, we mentioned the many uses of AR and the potential it has to totally change the way we live. As a marketing tool, it will be no different. Not only will the technology become widespread once more sophisticated HUD’s enter the market (e.g. smart contact lenses), but already there are agencies that have started creating AR ads for mobile games. Considering the majority of people around the globe use a smart phone, its safe to say this is a trend to look out for as we approach the end of the decade.    

All and all, there are some seriously cool technologies being developed that are likely to change the digital marketing environment. Although these are not all set in stone, a change is definitely coming.