A new year is coming up, and 2018 promises in many ways to be similar to this year. One important similarity is that digital marketing will continue to grow in importance, as online shopping continues to grow at the expense of brick and mortar stores.

This means that online marketing will be more important than ever before, and marketing is an ever-evolving battle whilst businesses look for new ways to attract customers. New changes in technology will affect how businesses approach their customers.

Here are some digital marketing techniques which will be particularly important in 2017, and how businesses can take advantage of them.

1. Video

The importance of Video advertising has continued to grow over the past year, with projections estimating that U.S. digital video ad spending will reach over $28 billion by 2020 compared to less than $10 billion in 2016. Video advertising has proven to be more effective at engaging consumers than mere text or images.

Note that video advertising does not just refer to viral videos; Businesses can make advertisements or videos which talk about their business, their history, and show the advantages they have over their competitors in a matter of seconds. With the expansion of options when it comes to social media advertising, video has become a particularly effective means of getting your message across, and one that the consumer is now used to; and very often more willing to interact with. Video advertising's advantage over text or images is that it can convey so much information, and businesses should use it to its full potential beyond getting a viral hit; but hey, you never know you could get one!

2. Chatbots

We may not have truly smart integrated AI in day-to-day marketing as of yet, but chatbots are becoming progressively better at imitating human conversation. Facebook announced in April last year that companies could use Facebook’s messaging platforms to make chatbots, and since then, the tech has to begin to spread with online retailers such as ASOS using the service to reach their customers in a new more integrated way.

Chatbots are critical from a business and marketing standpoint because they can speed up the process of customer interaction. When a customer heads to a businesses website, a chatbot can instantly start communicating and assist him with whatever he/she needs. In the process, the AI can also pick up information that will be useful for crafting future marketing strategies such as pages that cause issues or create questions and countries that may have particular recurring issues.

3. Personalisation

Marketers always face difficulties trying to tailor the message to hit as many different types of people and demographics as possible whilst seeming personal and non-generic. Creating the right message may seem to be more challenging as customers demand more advertising or products geared towards them specifically.

4. Big Data

Big Data has made personalisation easier. Companies do not have to be limited to knowing customer contact information. Instead, they can use social media and technology to find more useful information such as hobbies and interests and then tailor their business towards them. Even knowing what country a customer is in or languages they speak can improve the quality of marketing and ads delivered to them from a company, as they can send information at a time of day they will be more likely to see it and interact or in a particular language they may favor reading in and would therefore interact better with.

Marketers should essentially have a safe full of f information on their customers developed and improved upon, and It is up to them to utilise this information to their benefit.

5. Mobile

Every business should already have a mobile strategy and by now, it’s a safe bet to say most do. Ensuring a great customer experience is just as much a part of marketing as any ad, and the continued growth in mobile users means that businesses must ensure they have a pleasant experience browsing through your website or store, by now it’s well established that mobile comes first; not only in software development circles.

Some basic measures to attract mobile customers include creating apps and making it easier for customers to pay for your businesses services and products through mobile. Given how often customers check their phones these days, a business should give them an easy route to access their business access through an app that ideally can collect data used to further help personalise the ads they are served and other marketing interactions included in their customer experience.

Remember that all of these marketing techniques are interconnected with one another. You cannot just focus on emphasising mobile marketing without considering video, nor should you create videos that cannot be viewed by mobile users; they are all closely interrelated and when done correctly can boost the effectiveness of one another. If you integrate all of these techniques and look for ways to stay ahead in the marketing game, then 2018 could be an excellent year for your businesses attempts to attract more customers.

As always, Happy Small Business Marketing!