The Digital Marketing Trends (3 V’s Approach)

You will find what’s currently in demand by consumers today: more voice, more video, more

personalization and more seamless experiences — and they want it all as fast as they can get it.

Consumers are live in the moment and they expect brands to keep up. In fact, their expectations

are so high, they are willing to drop a brand that can’t keep up. Experts say customer experience

will be the key competitive differentiator by the year 2020. In this article, I’ll share three easy-to-

understand categories on voice, video and visual, otherwise known as the three Vs and share ways

in which you can evolve your digital marketing to stay current.

The First V: Voice

Have you held up your phone and asked it to find something for you, whether it is the score of the

big hockey game or the closest Thai restaurant? If so, you’ve used voice search—and it’s becoming

much more commonplace. Remember, consumers want things easy and they want it now. Plus

with in-home virtual assistants such as Alexa and Siri, they are getting used to using their voices

at home, on their phones, on the road—any time all the time. As a marketer, view this from the

consumer perspective: Voice search is much faster than typing into a search bar! People don’t have

to stop what they’re doing to do voice search and it fits with the consumer’s in-the-moment

behavior who want instantaneous results. The question is how popular will voice search be? It’s

predicted that 50 percent of searches will be voice searches by the year 2020. That’s next year!

For you to keep up with this trend in 2019, you’ll need to understand that voice searches change

how search queries work—and how you should approach your SEO to adapt to this change.

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The Second V: Video

You probably already know consumers love video—and that marketers should love video because

it is so much more engaging. In fact, people spend 5 times longer on video than static content.

Cisco predicts video viewing will account for 82 percent of all IP traffic by the year 2021. When

it comes to digital marketing trends in 2019, video will play a big role. Some trends we’re seeing

video include:

Making video part of your marketing strategy: Video is an effective way to engage consumers

and get content shared. On YouTube, over 1 billion hours of content are viewed every day, and

consumers are more likely to buy plus more likely to spend more money after watching

demonstration videos. They are also more likely to share: Viewers share video content 1,200

percent more than text and images combined.

Treating YouTube like the search engine it is: As a search engine, YouTube is second only to

Google in size and traffic, but it works differently. You can rank well on YouTube without ranking

well on Google. The key takeaway here is to make video part of your SEO strategy by using

YouTube – and optimize your videos for Google as well. You’ll get two different types of results,

for double the results.

Going live on Facebook: Live videos on Facebook have an engagement rate of 4.3 percent

compared to 2.2 percent for non-live videos. Users will spend three times longer watching live

video compared to not live. If you’re doing video on Facebook, consider going live.

Using video on Instagram: Instagram has increased the duration of videos posted to their platform

to meet consumer demand for video. If you’re already using Instagram for marketing, consider

adding video to your strategy.

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Using video for B2B marketing: Don’t think video is for B2C marketers only! Almost 70 percent

of B2B marketers are using video, and 82 percent say it works.

Using immersive or 360 degree video: With immersive videos, the whole 360 degree view is

filmed at the same time, and the consumer can use their mouse or finger to see the whole view. I

imagine this could have huge implications for the entertainment, travel and real estate industries!

The Third V: Vernacular

The premium now is on learning. Learn very fast and keep re-learning or you are toast. Noting that

around 400 million users are online monthly, and corporate CEOs who do not understand digital

are likely to fail. In order to harness the power of the World Wide Web and to reach out to non-

English speaking web users, marketers would need to make ads in local languages. Today, there

is a 50 per cent probability that if you are showing an English ad, the person who is watching it

does not understand it.

What is also important is vernacular digital assets? The website, app, landing page or transaction

page has to be in the local language to gain traction with the consumer. This is bound to double

conversion rates.

According to a recent study, internet surfers in vernacular languages have grown from 42 million

in 2011 to 234 million in 2016, highlighting that nearly 70 per cent of Indians consider local

language digital content more engaging. By 2021, it is estimated that over 201 million Hindi users

— which form 38 per cent of the Indian internet user base — are expected to be online and nearly

90 per cent of them are more likely to respond to a digital advertisement in their local language as

compared to English ads.

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 You cannot afford to do away with Visual

People are visual creatures, as the increasing popularity of video shows, and we absorb visual

information much more quickly than we do text. That visual preference shows up in searches and

according to Search Engine Journal, almost 27 percent of searches on Google were for images.

And yes, visual search is a digital marketing trend you should be aware of and integrate into your

digital marketing strategy.

Visual search is not new, but it is increasing in capability. Pinterest is a decided leader in this arena.

If you’ve been on Pinterest and seen little dots show up on a picture, letting you click to see similar

items for sale from online retailers, you’ve seen the feature known as “Shop the Look.” Pinterest

also offers Lens, letting consumers take a picture of something in the real world, then find related

pins. Although Pinterest is dominating the visual search arena, Google and Bing are in the space

as well, and major brands are already using it. The takeaway here is if you’re a retailer, you should

be looking at visual search capability.

Compiled by: Dr. Vikas Gautam

For academic use only