The complex world of marketing is constantly evolving. New trends come and go every year, and 2019 is no exception. Some strategies will prove to be more successful and long-lasting than others.
Here are four marketing trends that will matter to businesses this year.
1. The Customer Experience
Today’s discerning consumers crave personalization. They want brands and companies to know and understand them. For many years now, the customer experience has been at the forefront of marketing strategies.
In 2019, it will be more important than ever to know your audience and their intent.
Does your audience prefer images, text, audio or video? What do they expect to find when they search for a word or phrase?
Content specialists need to be focused on the user intent of the keywords they target when creating content. The goal now should be to answer the questions your audience is asking through search instead of just trying to rank for broad keywords.
Let’s say that a Toronto SEO company was working on a new online marketing strategy for their business. Instead of just trying to rank for broad keywords, like “SEO” or “digital marketing,” they may focus their content on answering the questions of people who are already knowledgeable and in the buying mindset.
For many businesses, this means moving down the sales funnel to focus attention on people who are already knowledgeable and will be more interested in what they’re selling.
2. Structured Data Markup
Marketers have been talking about structured data for years, but it’s now becoming an increasingly important topic of focus.
Simply put, structured data is organized data. Structured data markup essentially helps the search engine understand the content, which helps with relevancy signals.
Structured data also allows websites to benefit from enhanced results in the SERPs in the form of rich snippets, carousels, knowledge boxes and rich cards.
Metadata, information architecture and tags have been used for years to help search engines understand a site’s content. Now, structured data markup will play an increasingly important role in understanding content and relevancy.
3. Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness (E-A-T)
Another key trend that businesses will focus on in 2019 is establishing their expertise, authority and trustworthiness (or E-A-T).
Credibility has always been an important factor in both online and offline marketing. In the digital space, search engines want to know that a business has the expertise and knowledge to back up their claims.
Instead of hiring ghostwriters, businesses are connecting with authors who have a known presence in their respective fields, and they’re having more employees get involved in blogging and speaking engagements. Businesses now have to ask themselves: how can we become the go-to source for journalists in our industry?
Marketers have been talking about the importance of establishing yourself as a leader in the industry for years. Now, that idea is coming to head and becoming more important than ever.
4. Branding
Branding has always been important, but in 2019, it will matter for ranking signals as well. Brand mentions – not links – are also considered in Google’s algorithm.
Unlinked brand mentions tell Google that your company is an entity, and it also gives the search engine a better picture of your authority in the field. Through the context of your brand’s mentions, Google can determine whether your company has a good or bad reputation as well as your trustworthiness.
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