Digital Marketing Trends to Look for in 2018
By Zach Stapleton-Jones
2018 is almost upon us and it’s about time to make some bold predictions about the upcoming year. With digital marketing continuing to expand ahead of television advertising, with customer retention and service being the focal point, it is expected to continue it’s growth for the foreseeable future. In the digital world engagement is king and that is what we believe will drive trends in the new year.
Goodbye Twitter
Twitter is struggling. In October of this year, Twitter admitted that it has been overstating its monthly active user numbers for years. The company hasn’t had a profitable quarter since it became a publically traded company four years ago. It will be a sad day to see them go, but 2018 may be the year to say goodbye to Twitter.
Instagram Growth
Instagram is hot. 2017 was the year for the insta-explosion. The Facebook owned company now boasts 800 million active users on its platform and it isn’t slowing down. They seem to be making all the right moves. Instagram Stories has almost doubled Snapchat’s user base since it’s launch. Advertising avenues are plentiful, with social influencer connections, direct-to-store product tagging, and highly targeted pay per click advertising, Instagram is a great place to launch and grow brands.
Machine Learning
Machine learning is the future. The capabilities of artificial intelligence is an exciting, yet daunting, prospect. Machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence where a program is able to learn and dynamically make decisions based on previous experience. There are already a few companies putting this technology towards digital marketing, Acquisio and Trapica being the two notable ones. It will be interesting to see the progression and implementation over the next few year. 2018 could very well be the year it makes a mainstream breakthrough.
Regardless of what happens in the future 2017 has been a great year and I hope we look back on 2018 as fondly! Cheers to a new year full of new opportunities!
https://www.recode.net/2017/6/20/15836248/instagram-stories-250-million-users-snapchat
http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/26/technology/business/twitter-earnings/index.html
