Top 8 Digital Marketing Trends To Watch Out for In 2019

Marketing is about storytelling and Digital Marketing is about telling a story with Innovations to your target audience with the help of technology.

With the help of technology you can craft your messages beautifully and reach your audience making a high impact about your business. Technology can refine your targeting methodology, communication methodology and engagement methodology.

Here are top 15 Digital Marketing trends to watch out for in 2019 which you can adopt to boost your ROI

 

1) Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO)

Dynamic Creative Optimization is the process of serving ads through customized technology that automates your display strategy, personalise your brand communication to each user, recommends feeds through user interest, tracks the behaviour and then recommends products basis user engagement, plugins real-time data feed in your communication etc

Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) is an effective methodology compared to your static display marketing approach. DCO engine can actually help you to improve your performance across business verticals at scale with higher efficacy.

DCO is considered to be the future of Display Marketing because of it’s customization capabilities at every level of the communication journey. Many brands have started adopting DCO to scaleup their display marketing efforts and are experimenting it with different DCO variables to maximize their ROI

DCO can be used with different variable for your campaigns which are as follows:

  • Sequential Messaging
  • Real Time Data & Live Streaming Integration
  • Retargeting Personalized Information
  • Timer DCO
  • Weather API DCO

Example of Real Time Data DCO

This is from one of our campaigns for IPL (HotStar), executed with Hockey Curves technology. In this DCO variable live match event updates are triggered on the assets when the match is live. Events include sixes, player stats, score, wicket, hatrick etc are triggered in real time on ad sets targeting IPL interest users on web. This helps to bring in real time user acquisition and real time engagement for the campaign.

Real Time Dynamic Creative Optimization(Note: Selecting of variable will differ from business to business)

For more details about DCO Case Studies follow this link DCO Cases

2) Programmatic Advertising  

The ultimate goal of every business is to acquire users at low-cost. So in order to acquire users at low-cost, it is important to also buy media at an effective price and reach out to the relevant audience in lower cost. Using Google Display, we don’t have a control of the actual cost of a particular click or per thousand impressions, though we define it in manual cpc way.

Programmatic Advertising not only gives you an opportunity to buy media at a lower cost but also helps you to target your audience basis their behaviour on web, which makes the ad sets more relevant and engaging, helping to achieve higher ROI.

Lot of advertisers are moving from traditional display campaigns to Programmatic Advertising display campaigns due to its ability to be more precise in targeting and having an open pool of inventory for rich media ads with lower cost.

The global Programmatic Market is expected to reach 2,44,100 million USD by 2023 (ref Market Watch) including Search, Display and Video. The interesting part here is that you can also advertise on Social Media channels through Programmatic which is going to rise in coming years.

Crafting & Optimizing effective Programmatic Advertising campaigns is still a challenge as advertisers are still executing ad campaigns with different levels of experimentation. Also, the skills required in this domain is still at a nascent stage, which also gives rise to the rising demand for Digital Marketing professionals in Programmatic Advertising domain.

One of our programmatic campaigns we did for Fast & Furious 8 involved a strategy of studying the user behaviour of the users on the movie sections of the websites. Using data science and heat maps we identified the users who had interacted with our ad sets and personalized the next level of the communication for every user.

Fast Furious 8 Campaign Results

  • 90Mn+ Ad Impressions
  • 25Mn+ Unique Users Reach
  • 18Mn+ Trailer Views
  • 100 Cr+ Box Office Collections

Below are few ad sets of our campaign

Programmatic Campaign Fast & Furious 8
Fast & Furious Campaign India
To Download the Case Study – Request Here

3) Rich Media Ads

Rich Media Ads are ads which encourage users to interact and engage with the ads. Users can interact with the ads, the ads can expand, users can scroll the ads, watch in banner videos, you can create a website in a banner etc.

Static display ads don’t attract the users, rich media ads helps us to get the attention of the users and then engage them with the brand content. The ads can be display ads, video ads or HTML ads. Rich Media Ads have higher interaction rates, higher view rates and have high brand recall. Thus making it the right choice for high impact digital marketing campaigns. Below are few examples of Rich Media Ads

Rich Media Creatives With HTML

(Click here to watch Rich Media creative live)

VOOT Rich Media Creative

(Click here to watch Rich Media creative live)

HotStar Rich Media Creative

(Click here to watch Rich Media creative live)

 

4) Sequential Video Ads

Sequential Ads are storytelling ads, these ads allow you to tell a story in a particular sequence to a single user. (Sequential Display ads can be done through DCO as discussed above, click here to know more).

Sequential Video Ads are now available on YouTube! Below is a screenshot which shows the option, you need to select while defining video ad sequencing through YouTube

YouTube Sequential Video Ads

With YouTube video ad sequencing, you can communicate with your audience with a brand story in a sequence you define to a particular user. You can use video sequence to also communicate a particular theme of a brand, seasonal campaign of a brand, series of communication of your brand campaign etc.

Sequencing in Google Ads YouTube campaign, the sequence step has to be selected at the campaign level. Below is the option where you need to select the sequence step.

Create Video Sequencing AdsBelow is an example of YouTube Video Ad Sequencing campaign we did for Evolve Back Resorts. Our sequencing campaign had 3 Videos for the brand Resort in Kabini. The first Resort video is a teaser video about Kabini Resort which is of 15 Secs, the second video is a trailer of Kabini Resort which is of 30 secs and the last video is a brand film about Kabini Resort and the spirit of Kabini. Below are the videos in which the sequence was scheduled.

First Video Ad in the Sequence

Second Video Ad in the Sequence

Third Video Ad in the Sequence

Video Ad Sequencing is a good way to consider which look at brand aspect campaigns and brand consideration campaigns.

5) Personalised Remarketing

We all know personalised remarketing is an effective way to follow-up with your audience. But what if I tell you, that you can highly customise and personalise your remarketing campaigns to each user basis their requirement?

Yes, this can be done!. This will increase the chances of product consideration, engagement and also it will increase ROI of your marketing campaigns. So let’s understand with few personalised marketing campaigns we executed for few brands.

Here is an example for GoDaddy campaign. As we know a lot of users search for domains on godaddy and few of them actually buy it. I challenge was to convert these users once they move out of the website. So here we used personalised remarketing variable to define the campaign wherein if an users moves out of the website, the user will be followed by the same domain name which he/she was looking for on Godaddy. Watch the video to understand how it worked

Static remarketing does not encourage the user to come back to the website, where as personalized remarketing not only encourages the user but also helps in converting and reducing cost per acquisition for your campaigns.

6) Voice Search Optimization

With the increasing search queries on voice search, it has become important for businesses to rethink on search strategies Voice Search Optimisation 2019

  • As per comscore, by 2020 50% of the searches will be voice search
  • On Google 20% searches are voice search
  • On Bing 25% searches are voice search

With the help of Artificial Intelligence used by Alexa, Siri and Google, voice search is also being used to make purchases, order food, book tickets etc, which is encouraging users to go for voice search compared to manual search. Also the voice word accuracy rates are increasing rapidly, helping users to get relevant results on voice search.

It is important for brands to optimize their websites with voice search, the reason being, there is a difference between manual search queries and voice search queries. For Eg: If someone is looking for mba colleges in pune, the user’s manual query would be “Mba Colleges in Pune” but if someone is doing a voice search, the users query would be more defined like, “Mba Colleges in Pune with Best Placements”. 

Key aspects you should consider while optimizing your website for Voice

  • Schema Metadata
  • Use Long Tail Keywords
  • Make sure your website is mobile friendly
  • Keep Your Google Business listing updated for “Near Me” searches
  • Define your content strategy with what the user is looking for!

Once you have optimized your website with above aspects, you are ready for voice search!

7) Social Media Stories

Social Media stories are the next thing in Social Media. Stories format was started by Snapchat, then Instagram followed stories and now Facebook also allows stories. It’s an interesting format which allows you tell stories in a form of short videos on social media.

This format is one of the most engaged format so far compared to social media posts and users are using stories more than posts. You can also use stories to live stream events, shows, seminars etc. Brands are looking forward to social media stories as users can also interact, tag users, check in on stories, use hashtags on stories and much more.

Instagram has also come up with many filter options which users can use while uploading stories on their profiles, making it more engaging to the users in real-time. Brands can also probe users, get votes on stories, get views on stories etc. Instagram also allows to advertise on stories format, this also gives brand an opportunity to increase visibility and reach of their stories.

Here is an example of Instagram story we did for Jumangi campaign

Jumangi Instagram Story

Instagram Jumangi Story

Jumangi &Flix

Jumangi &Flix Instagram

8) Omni-Channel Marketing

Omni Channel Marketing has become one of the important channels to engage with your audience and convert them during your sales funnel.

Omni-Channel Marketing refers to the shopping experience creation across all channels in a seamless, consistent and engaging way. It’s about creating beautiful experiences to your audience helping them engage and transact during the communication journey.

Building an effective Omni-Channel marketing strategy is important to make it successful for any business. Below are the factors you should define effectively to make sure your strategy works.

  • The Product USP’s
  • Audience Segmentation
  • Channels Used
  • Communication Strategy
  • Creative Strategy synced with all channels
  • Interaction Touch Points at different levels of Communication
  • Measure each channel & Optimize