Digital Marketing trends for 2018

Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and at the right time. Today, that means that you need to meet them where they are already spending time: on the internet. Digital marketing can work for any business in any industry. Regardless of what your company sells, digital marketing still involves building out buyer personas to identify your audience’s needs, and creating valuable online content.

Digital marketing -- in other words, any form of marketing that exists online.

And the best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each asset or tactic supports their overarching goals. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the most common assets and tactics:

• Blog posts
• Ebooks and whitepapers
• Infographics
• Social media channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)
• Online brochures and lookbooks
• Branding assets (logos, fonts, etc.)
• Search Engine Optimization
• Content Marketing
• Pay-per-Click

Here are five examples of digital marketing done right:

#EducateTheGirlChild

Nestle India joined hands with project Nanhi Kali on Teachers' Day with the aim of providing primary education to underprivileged girl children in India. They launched a touching digital film and informative visual content to help build awareness for the cause. They also used Twitter's Periscope to live-stream an interaction with the girls of Nanhi Kali.

#SmileMoreForAGoodDay

Britannia Good Day launched their campaign #SmileMoreForAGoodDay with Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone to spread the simple yet very important message of smiling more often. Good Day spread the word with the help of engaging visuals and social influencers who amplified the new brand philosophy in their own unique style.

#Kurkure Family Express

Kurkure launched India's first food train in its bid to bond with Indian families. The Kurkure Family Express hosted 40 families over an eight-day journey across India. Popular food enthusiasts Rocky and Mayur entertained the families, and the digital team traveling with the families created real-time content for their digital fans.

#DellAntiRoteDay

Dell India took up the strong initiative of eradicating rote learning from our education system by building awareness about its dangers. The brand celebrated 10th June, 2016 as Anti Rote Day with a micro portal, a digital film, and stunning visuals. They also ran engaging contests that invited users to share their own 'ratta stories'.

#KeepItPersonal

Godrej Security Solutions used humour in its content pieces on social media for the launch of India's first personal locker. The brand's digital team designed quirky content in the form of GIFs and visuals that showed compelling reasons to buy the locker.

 Top trends in digital marketing for this year will be:

1. Mobile marketing rate will increase. Just several years ago no one could have imagined that mobile apps might become so popular. But that fact is - it has become! And what is more interesting it becomes more and more popular. Why is it so? Apps are easier and faster to use. Users can carry their phones with them but carrying computers and large gadgets is not convenient. They say, that the same ads work better on mobiles than on computers. So, the development of using mobiles is beneficial both for those marketers who create new apps and those who advertise their products/services via apps.
2. Another marketing strategy that is becoming increasingly popular is social marketing. Various statistics show the growth in social media usage. And even without following any statistics, just only scrolling the timeline on popular social media such as FaceBook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and many others, one can see how thinks roll. Particularly for digital marketing.Videos are everywhere with some carrying direct CTA and ads and some others use videos for indirect advertising.
3. One of the top modern trends is and will be video marketing. More and more people are going for “ data visualisation”. Just looking around one can easily notice that videos are everywhere. Particularly large is the usage of explainer videos. Most users and potential customers will prefer watching an explainer video to reading a whole article. And besides visualised products inspire more trust and emotions that anything else.

Ms. Smriti Dua

Assistant Professor

Dept of Management Studies