2019 Digital marketing trends

Digital marketing trends change quickly. Every year brings new strategies and user preferences that businesses big and small must be aware of and implement to stay competitive in an ever-increasing competitive landscape. Luckily, with a few mouse clicks, digital marketers can research trends to remain agile and savvy. Here’s a few digital marketing trends to help you understand the current state of digital marketing.

  • Digital ad spend worldwide: grown from 39.7% of total media ad spend in 2017 to 53.9% in 2022
  • Programmatic advertising: By 2020, over $65 billion (US) will be spent
  • Google: responsible for 96% of all smartphone search traffic and 94% of total organic traffic
  • Facebook: From 2016 to 2018, number of monthly active advertisers doubled
  • Twitter: When used for customer service, companies see 19% increase in customer satisfaction
  • Pinterest: Currently drives 25% of all retail website referral traffic
  • LinkedIn: 92% of B2B marketers prefer LinkedIn to other social networks
  • Product videos: About half of all online users search for product videos before making a purchase
  • YouTube: 60% of people would rather buy a product recommended by a YouTuber than one recommended by a movie or TV star
  • Email marketing: 50% of US marketers plan to increase email marketing spend, 25% significantly so, increasing spend to $3.07 billion in 2019
  • Segmented campaigns: Increases email revenue by 760%
  • Automation tools: Spending expected to reach $25.1 billion by 2023 (from $11.4 billion in 2017)
  • Content marketing: costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads

Small Business Marketing Trends

Content marketing most effective digital marketing technique in 2018

Content marketing, followed by artificial intelligence and machine learning, is the future of digital marketing. Social media marketing comes in at a distant fourth. Does your marketing budget reflect these trends?

25% of US-based B2B marketers spent 61% – 80% of total budget on digital marketing

These figures from late 2016 to early 2017 have likely increased as digital marketing continues to attract larger shares of small business marketing budgets.

Digital ad spend likely to grow from 2017’s 39.7% to 53.9% in 2022

Global advertising spend has continuously increased since 2010. Digital ad spend, in particular has risen rapidly, now competing with traditional mediums like television.

Worldwide digital advertising spend projected to reach $335 billion by 2020.

In 2016, worldwide digital ad spend reached approximately $194.6 billion. This 72% increase is driven by advances in technology and consumer preferences. In 2017, all digital advertising sub sectors recorded healthy growth trends of close to or more than 15%.

Digital marketing software industry reached $32+ billion in 2018.

The digital marketing software industry, which is essentially responsible for getting users to see your ads, has grown at a breakneck pace too. Fortunately, this massive investment is driving the kind of innovation that will ensure you get more for your small business marketing budget.

Infographics liked and shared on social media 3 times more than any other type of content.

Engaging and concise infographics present important, easily-digestible data, making them the digital marketing content of choice. To help your small business stand out, it’s worth spending time and effort on infographics.

Virtual reality and augmented reality markets to become independent, $162 billion industries by 2020.

Virtual reality and augmented reality ads deliver immersive brand stories that are likely to be retained much longer. Technology has evolved to make production of such ads cheaper and more accessible to businesses of all sizes – even small businesses.

$65+ billion will be spent on programmatic advertising by 2020

Programmatic ad buying, which relies on software to purchase digital advertising (as opposed to the traditional process that involves RFPs, human negotiations, and manual insertion orders), is the biggest trend in online marketing. There’s little doubt that this will be one of the dominating trends in the next few years.

Digital Marketing Trends Highlights — Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Google responsible for 96% of all smartphone search traffic, 94% of the total organic traffic

“Google” has long been synonymous with online search, and it continues to lead the pack by miles. In the case of mobile search traffic, Yahoo clocks in with only 2% and Bing scores 1%. And for organic traffic, Google remains by far the best bet for small business, with Yahoo accounting for about 3%.

Social media — Facebook has more daily active users than the population of China

As of September 2018, Facebook had an average of 1.49 billion active daily users and 2.27 billion active monthly users. However, while Facebook remains the most popular social media platform globally, the rate of growth of its active users has begun to saturate.

Video marketing — 50% of online users search for product videos before they make a purchase

Before making an online purchase, nearly half of all shoppers search the web for product videos. When customers are not able to see a product in person, as they would in a shop, there’s no better way for your small business to help them become more familiar with your offerings and ensure it’s what they want.

Content marketing — 53% of marketers say blogging is a top content marketing priority

Blogging is a top digital marketing trends of 2019. From lead generation to brand awareness, SEO to thought leadership, there are few areas of marketing that don’t benefit from blogging. No doubt your small business will reap the benefits. In fact, a majority of small business digital marketers consider blogging a more effective tool than several other traditional forms of digital marketing.

Paid advertising — 24% of B2C marketers report paid search has biggest impact on revenue across all digital tactics

Pay-per-click advertising has replaced guesswork with powerful, targeted marketing. 64.6% of people click on Google ads when they’re searching for an item. No wonder so many marketers, especially in the B2C segment, see a lot of value in using paid search as part of their digital marketing strategy in 2019.