The digital world seems to move faster and faster every day. You can blink and suddenly a new group of trends is making waves and changing how the world operates. The same is true of digital marketing. 

The best-practices that allowed your marketing campaigns to excel in the past may not be so fruitful in the future. The digital landscape is constantly shifting and shaking. If you aren’t paying attention to these changes and trends, then it is easy to be left behind.

Thus, great marketers always keep a watchful eye on the future. When you know what trends are beginning to boil to the surface, ready to erupt, you can better align your marketing strategies to match the future landscape.

Here are 4 trends that will dramatically shape the future of digital marketing.

AI Makes Marketing More Competitive And Harder Than Ever

Artificial intelligence is irreversibly changing the digital marketing game, and not entirely for the better.

Sure, AI is making it easier to perform certain marketing tasks because it automates the more tedious steps in the process. But that ease extends to all marketers, thereby making these activities more accessible than ever.

With more and more people producing AI-empowered marketing strategies, the competition is going to heat up. Successful digital marketers will have to produce even more creative and unique campaigns if they want to stand out from this crowded competition.

Cohesive, Omnichannel Marketing Strategy Is A Must

Marketers operate across an increasing number of channels. The multichannel approach necessary in today’s Digital Age has been on the rise for a number of years. As each new channel emerges, however, the need to deliver a cohesive marketing experience becomes more challenging, but also more critical.

You can think of each marketing channel as its own island. You have a cluster of islands that represent your PPC marketing, and here it is important to tell A Complete Rundown of Google Ads Format Types and your pay per click marketing islands for social media, ecommerce platforms, etc. Delivering a cohesive multichannel marketing strategy means pulling together all of these separate islands into one, contiguous landmass.

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When a customer or lead moves from one channel to the next, they don’t want to feel as if they are island hopping. Instead, they want to experience a continuous journey. When channels are kept as islands, it disrupts the customer’s journey and detracts from your overall marketing strategy.

The Personalized Touch Is More Than Just Name Recognition

Personalization is in the same vein as a cohesive multichannel strategy. It’s about producing a better and more memorable experience for clients and customers. Businesses have long reaped the benefits of being able to remember a customer’s name when they walk in, but the Digital Age aims to go even further.

Thanks to never-ending streams of data, a business has all of the tools and information they need to make a personalized experience for every customer. They need only the patience and ability to listen to that data and pull actionable insights that help guide their personalized marketing strategy.

In other words, customers expect that you know their name now. That expectation is growing to also include what they like to order, what offers they are most interested in, how much or how little they like to be engaged, etc. When personalization is done right, the customer’s next moves are anticipated and met almost immediately, which produces a fluid experience.

Personalization Brings Data Security Dangers And Concerns

It is inescapable that you collect data on your customers. It’s just a fact of doing business in the Digital Age. However, with more and more headlines about data breaches and lost customer information hitting the screens of customers, your audiences are becoming increasingly aware and weary of where their data is going and how it is being used.

This creates a dangerous tightrope-walk for brands looking to increase their personalization. When you push the personalization envelope too far, customers begin to feel that too much of their data is in your hands. 

Where that line exists is different for every customer. Thus, businesses need to be open and forthright with their data gathering techniques and give customers the chance to opt out.

Conclusions

In the future, digital marketers need to tread carefully and precisely. With increased competition and growing concerns about data security, businesses need to market themselves creatively and appropriately, especially if they want the rewards of having a cohesive, personalized marketing experience.