#SMTrends2019: 75% leading businesses are strategising to use chatbots by end of 2019: Sahil Chopra, iCubesWire

Sahil Chopra, Founder & CEO, iCubesWire looks into the crystal ball to share with us the digital marketing trends he thinks will dominate in 2019.

Social life has got a different perception now. Group Chats became our social rites, and our day ends on the same note.  I think the best example of how digital is changing the shape of our search; as well is the shift from ‘Hello’ to ‘Ok Google’! Consumer habits are getting growingly more demanding to be independent of anything offline as well as with optimised in terms of time and ease.

So what can we anticipate to see in 2019 as the next stage of this revolution?

Content continues to be on the throne

Experts are assuming that content will be trusted more by users instead of the ads by 2019. As the key element or pull factor to grow traffic towards the market, content creation will keep leading the way. The best content created and optimised will continue to be the key to staying in the top search results. The searcher looks for creative and relevant content to meet his or her problems curiosity.

Tech-based Personalised Marketing will be the key to user experience

To stand out in 2019, one must offer personalisation as a service, and that means personalised products, emails, ads, interactions, and experiences. Personalisation will be the key to building a loyal customer relationship. Brands like Netflix and Amazon are already leveraging the power of personalisation not only to increase potential subscribers but also to sustaining their existing ones. Right from the start of your tap to log in - they provide you with the banner, artwork, text, carousels all personalised for your unique experience.

OTT will take over TV

The newest trend today is the ‘Over-the-top Advertising’ that basically refers to any device or service used to stream digital content to a TV or similar device. It is much like advertising on TV but delivered through streaming media on OTT platforms. The technology is expected to vastly improve in 2019 and to offer marketers the best of both worlds—the benefits of programmatic, as well as the growing reach of streaming services. With OTT ad revenue set to increase because of the increasing subscriber success rate, Tech-based advertising leaders who are adopting OTT early are expected to reap its benefits very fast due to the following advantages:

• Scope of targeting customers precisely
• Decrease in spend over TV Ad-buys
• Monitoring or managing viewership in real-time
• Enhanced control at every step enables better revenue

Voice Search will become a normal thing

According to an estimate, almost 25 to 30 percent of the searching and browsing activities would be preferred off-screen, hands-free. The voice technology, more empowered with AI is going to rule user experience across media verticals. Day to day use of Voice search will include cooking help, driving, tips, locating, and many more. Speaking and listening to makes it much easier than texting at any given situation.

Internet will tune in with Television

Research shows that internet will catch up to television in 2019 in terms of hours watched. According to the study, people will spend 2.6 hours a day online and 2.7 hours a day watching the tube in 2019. 45 minutes of an average person’s internet time will be spent watching mobile video.

We predict that companies will spend less money on television ads and more money on web video, social media, and web ads in the New Year.

Also Read: #SMTrends2019: 50% of searches by 2022 to be driven by voice: Himanshu Arora, SocialPanga

AI will make Chat-bots and Programmatic control every action  

Reports already have revealed that the use of AI has inclined to 61% compared to 2017. Consciously or unconsciously, every consumer will use AI in everything he or she does – the enabler of decisions at multiple levels across the day. On the other hand, marketers will be able to create products that learn from the feedback of their users.

Chat-bots in 2019 will be available to be developed with advanced features of accessibility, personality analytics, pro-activity and more. It won’t be wrong to assume that above 75% of leading businesses are strategising to use chat-bots by the end of 2019. Quite naturally because market surveys clearly show that 1.4 billion people are already interacting with chat-bots. Chat-bots will be of the biggest help, especially for the banking and healthcare industries.

AI is expected to change the game by automating ad buying in targeting more audiences.  Real-time bidding is a type of programmatic ad buying that will be powered by more speed and efficiency leading to higher conversions and lower customer acquisition costs. The main areas where AI will be heavily used to harness its many benefits are Budget Management Decisions, Advanced Customer and Marketing Insights, Dynamic Creative Optimization, Predictive Analytics (as Facebook is already leveraging), Upgraded Targeting, and Higher Ads Conversions.

Analytics and Reporting will have single point access

It’s ‘Actionable Analytics’ that has the power to cater to the needs of the coming year and beyond. Systems such as Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics are relatively static in terms of reports and functionality. For me, one of the main trends here is using softer measures to get customer feedback.

Another trend is the adoption of dashboard reporting and analysis systems. At our organisation, we have adopted Delta for our monthly and weekly trading reports.

Up-gradation in Search Marketing to meet expectations    

Google is the undisputed leader driving the results from Search Engine Marketing. Out of the changes, Google started working on in 2018, many will be deployed in 2019. The most obvious change is the launch of the Google Marketing Platform which saw AdWords renamed to Ads and the Doubleclick ad platform and analysis tools like Google Analytics, Data Studio, and AB testing through Data Studio more tightly integrated.

For organic search, I would like to look forward to the updates in Google’s Speed Update which was built to penalize slower sites and was released after months of experiments. This is expected to initially affect only the slowest sites but I would expect Google to make changes to affect more sites that don’t improve their speed within time. One more thing to keep an eye on will be the evolution of Google's Search Snippets.

Trends also show that almost all the site addresses will switch over to secure sites and help increase trust among users. As a result visits and engagements will shoot up notably.

Social Media will enable business analytics & strategies

Within Facebook, increased use of Messenger is an opportunity. The latest statistics from Facebook show the importance of Messenger with approximately 1.4 billion people using Messenger every month right now.

For B2B marketers, LinkedIn is likely to keep on growing in importance. Although Twitter’s future is often charted negatively, according to my predictions, it will still be crucial for engaging across relevant B2B and B2C audiences. The latest Q2 2018 reports show daily active user growth of 11% and a revenue increase of 24% YoY.

Last but not least, in an era of fake news, it’s important for CEOs and other top executives to be social. This boosts your company’s reputation, helps build trust with your users, and even makes your company more appealing to job applicants.

According to data from OkToPost, in 2016 only 40% of CEOs were active on social media. Of those users, 70% only used LinkedIn.

Undebatably, creation of mobile responsive website designs for the dominant use of smartphones will be considered mandatory for every case. In a nutshell what is going to takeover digital marketing in 2019 is Future innovation in designing experience in areas of speed, personalizatio, and conversational user interfaces.