The digital marketing industry has always been known as a rapidly evolving field. New technologies, platforms and approaches are constantly changing the digital marketing strategies used by businesses to reach their target audience and grow their brand. But despite rapid change being the norm in our industry, it seems like this evolution has been on hyperdrive over the past couple of years. The emergence of AI tools has spearheaded many of the changes we’ve been seeing over the past couple of years, and it has forced digital marketing professionals to rethink the way they approach their craft in many ways.
Each year, we write a blog post highlighting the upcoming trends in digital marketing for the next year. This piece typically takes a short-term view of what is going on in our field so that you can understand how your business will be impacted as you plan your strategy for the next year. But we thought it would be interesting to take a longer-term view of this evolution to look ahead and see what changes may be in store for our industry over the next three years. By staying on top of these changes and planning ahead, you can ensure your business maintains a competitive edge in your industry.
AI’s Continued Impact on Digital Marketing
We recently did a deep dive into how much the AI revolution has already changed digital marketing. To briefly summarize, it’s changed a lot (we recommend you check out the post for a detailed discussion). But we’re just scratching the surface with AI’s impact on digital marketing. This technology is advancing at rapid rates, and new AI tools are constantly being released that enhance the ability of marketing professionals to achieve exceptional outcomes. Three years from now, this is likely to be even more pronounced.
So how are we likely to see AI’s impact on digital marketing grow over the next three years? There are several important ways that are worth highlighting.
Hyper-Personalization of Marketing Campaigns
AI tools will increasingly be used to increase the precision with which you can target your audience. In particular, your ability to provide more personalized content, messaging and recommendations that address the specific needs of each customer will grow tremendously.
AI algorithms and tools will be able to analyze vast amounts of data, including purchase history, online interactions and browsing behavior in order to predict customer preferences and allow you to tailor your content to their specific needs in real time. This level of large-scale personalization will allow you to improve customer satisfaction and build stronger brand loyalty.
Automated Content Creation
AI has already made an impact on content creation, and we should see this impact grow over the next three years. To be clear, you shouldn’t expect AI to be producing all of your marketing content within the next few years. Instead, AI will provide your content creators with a variety of tools that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the content marketing process.
The content creation process has always been very labor intensive, requiring highly skilled content professionals who can perform a wide range of tasks from keyword research, topic creation, subject matter research, content creation, publishing content and optimizing it for search. AI tools will help streamline many of these efforts, allowing you to generate highly engaging content that is on brand in much shorter amounts of time than has previously been possible.
Over the next few years, you’ll see the use of AI tools in the content creation process become standard practice in a variety of ways. These tools will help you streamline:
- Keyword research
- Topic generation
- Subject matter research
- Content outlines
- Rough draft creation
- Content optimization (i.e., creation of title tags and meta descriptions, etc.)
A human touch will still be required to ensure all content is factually accurate, on brand and addressing the needs of your audience. But by using these tools, you’ll be able to significantly reduce the amount of time required to produce individual pieces of content. These tools will be able to assist with the creation of a wide range of content types, from blog posts to ad copy to social media content, ensuring a consistent voice throughout each of these content channels. These tools will also make it easier to repurpose a long-form content piece on other channels, allowing you to maximize the impact of each piece of content.
Advanced Analytics and Predictive Insights
The ability to leverage data has always been one of the greatest benefits of digital marketing compared with more traditional marketing approaches. However, this data can be a double-edged sword. While it provides you with massive amounts of information that can refine your efforts and improve your marketing results, it’s easy to become overwhelmed when sifting through all this data to glean the actionable insights you need.
AI is already starting to play a role in data analysis, and its use will have an even greater impact in this process several years from now. You’ll be able to use AI tools to analyze large quantities of data faster than ever, providing real-time insights on campaign performance that allow you to make data-driven adjustments to your marketing efforts quickly.
These tools will also improve your ability to make predictive insights regarding future trends, changing customer needs, and many other items that will help you proactively adjust your digital marketing strategies to maximize the ROI of your efforts.
Task Automation
One of the greatest ways AI is starting to impact digital marketing lies in its ability to automate a wide range of tasks that previously had to be performed by your team. These automation abilities will become even more robust over the next few years. Repetitive tasks such as scheduling email marketing campaigns, posting social media content and paid ad placement will all be automated by AI tools, freeing up your marketing team to focus their time and energy on strategic initiatives that require their expertise. This will improve overall productivity and allow for more scalable marketing efforts.
Optimized Paid Ads
Paid ads play an important role in the marketing efforts of many businesses, making it easier to reach their target audience. Over the next few years, we expect to see this component of digital marketing campaigns significantly improved by the use of AI technology. AI algorithms will be able to analyze vast amounts of data to ensure your paid ads reach the right audience at the right time. AI will automate bidding for your ad campaigns and identify the most relevant platforms for ad placement. This will allow you to achieve a higher ROI on your paid ad campaigns.
Significant Changes to the SEO Landscape
Search engine optimization (SEO) has long been a critical component of every digital marketing strategy. Effective SEO is one of your most powerful tools to increase your visibility among your audience and ensure your website ranks for relevant searches associated with your offering. While SEO isn’t going away anytime soon, it’s likely that this aspect of digital marketing will look very different in a few years.
The shift towards an increased focus on long-tail search terms is expected to continue. People are using voice search tools with increasing frequency, and this has changed the way people search for information. Search queries phrased as a question are becoming increasingly common, and SEO efforts will need to target the most commonly asked questions in addition to the basic keywords associated with your industry.
The rise of AI-powered search will also change the SEO landscape dramatically over the next few years. AI-powered search engines such as Perplexity have already begun eating into the market share of traditional search engines such as Google and Bing. These traditional search engines have responded by launching their own AI-powered search results which are now placed at the top of the page on Google and Bing. AI-powered search results provide long-form answers to search queries that often eliminate the need for users to visit individual websites providing this information.
This phenomenon has led to the rise of a new tactic among marketers – Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). While traditional SEO helps your website appear higher up in organic search rankings, AEO helps your website appear in the AI-powered search results that an increasing number of users are relying on to acquire the information they seek. Over the next few years, marketers will need to strike an effective balance between SEO and AEO tactics to achieve the best possible results.
Visual Search Strategies Will Play a Larger Role in eCommerce Social Media Marketing
Visual search is poised to play a significant role in the future of digital marketing, and it has the potential to revolutionize the way consumers interact with brands and products online. Visual search technology provides a more intuitive and efficient way for consumers to find products. It leverages machine learning, AI and image recognition technology to search for information based on pictures or videos that are input into the system to make online shopping experiences faster, easier and more engaging.
By enabling users to identify the items they want to purchase more effectively, visual search can significantly shorten the customer journey. Consumers will be able to quickly find the items they’re looking for without the need to continuously refine their search queries, which can provide an enhanced experience that boosts conversion rates.
Social media platforms are also starting to leverage visual search capabilities to provide a better experience for their users. Pinterest has been one of the earliest adopters of advanced visual search features, and Instagram is starting to roll out these tools on their platform as well. Over the next few years, the use of visual search in social media will enhance the impact of shoppable posts and expand the role social media plays in ecommerce.
A Shift from Third-Party Data to First- and Second-Party Data
Google has already begun phasing out third party data (information collected by data brokers or aggregators who don’t directly interact with consumers). This has forced businesses to pivot towards using first- and second-party data to obtain the actionable consumer insights that drive their decisions:
- First-party data refers to information your business collects directly from users that interact with and conduct transactions on your website, apps, POS systems, CRMs and other proprietary systems you manage.
- Second-party data refers to information that isn’t directly collected by your business but is shared with you by another company that is typically a trusted partner. For example, a hotel booking website may partner with an airline and use data collected by the airline to target potential guests who book flights to their city.
While this transition to first- and second-party data was largely initiated out of necessity, it provides businesses with significantly more reliable information than can be achieved with third-party data. This will improve the effectiveness of the targeted ad campaigns you implement and improve your ability to provide personalized content and recommendations to your audience.
Most businesses aren’t able to compile a large enough supply of first-party data to address the void left by the phasing out of third-party data that was previously harvested from data brokers. This makes collaborative partnerships where businesses share second-party data essential to leveraging the benefits of targeted and personalized content.
Moving forward, businesses will need to invest in the following tools and infrastructure to safely, compliantly and effectively collect and share consumer data:
- Newsletters, subscription offerings, gated content, and other tools that will supplement the first-party data obtained from product purchases
- Customer data platforms that integrate with your other systems and help consolidate your user information in a centralized location
- Data clean room platforms that allow you to access external data from the businesses you partner with for purposes of data sharing
Getting out in front of this trend will give your business a competitive edge over the next few years, as this will allow you to more effectively leverage targeted content and personalized recommendations to grow your customer base and increase your revenue.
New Ethical Considerations Will Significantly Impact Digital Marketing
The increasing role of AI in marketing and the shift in data sharing practices will create several new ethical considerations that will impact digital marketing practices over the next few years:
- Data Privacy and Security – Data privacy and security measures will become more important than ever. Businesses will need to implement robust encryption methods, anonymize data and regularly audit security protocols to protect consumer data. In addition, businesses will need to be more transparent about their data collection practices and obtain explicit consent from users before they capture and share their personal data.
- Combatting Misinformation – While many businesses are using AI-content generation platforms as a tool to make their processes more efficient, there are some businesses that are simply using these tools to churn out their content for them. One of the biggest problems with simply having AI tools generate your content is that it often results in inaccurate information entering your content. Content marketing professionals must be diligent with fact checking when using AI content tools to ensure the statistics and claims in their content are factually accurate.
- Responsible Targeting Practices – The ability to more effectively use targeting to provide your audience with personalized content and recommendations that will resonate with them can significantly improve your ability to grow your customer base, but this practice also creates opportunities for unethical misuse. Businesses must be committed to using responsible and ethical targeting practices that protect vulnerable populations such as children and the elderly. It’s critical that your strategies don’t unfairly target or exploit these vulnerable groups.
Webolutions Can Help You Prepare for these Changes in Digital Marketing
While it’s important to be aware of the changes on the horizon in the world of digital marketing, this awareness doesn’t necessarily translate into the adjustments necessary to maintain your competitive edge. At Webolutions, we’re constantly keeping our finger on the pulse of the latest digital marketing trends, and we can ensure your business keeps up with the times.
Our transformational Intrinsic Multiplier™ Approach was created to help you grow your business smarter, faster and easier. This unique approach to digital marketing focuses on helping your leadership team view your business through the lens of the value you deliver to your customers and the transformations you create in their lives. This is your true market differentiation, and it allows us to craft messaging that grows your brand and helps your audience view you as an industry leader.
This market differentiation will drive every aspect of your digital marketing strategy to ensure consistent messaging across every platform you use. In addition, we’re always monitoring the latest developments in the field and ensuring our efforts reflect industry best practices. As the world of digital marketing evolves over the next few years, our team will help you navigate these changes to ensure you achieve the superior marketing outcomes necessary to grow and thrive.
Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. Webolutions serves businesses nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.
