Now that the holidays are over, we are getitng ready for the new year. Have you already started making your new year’s resolutions? We gathered some of the most promising trends for the coming year that you might want to keep on your radar. .Do you know what the trends for 2018 are going to be? 

Chatbots

There is an online marketing phenomenon that will certainly finally make the big breakthrough: the Chatbot.
If everyone from your company is enjoying his or her day off or during the weekend, there are still people who surf on your website and may even have an urgent question. Chatbots makes it easy for web shops and websites to provide customer service 24/7 Look at the bot as if it were some sort of a helping community manager who can not only answer generic questions, but also, and more importantly, can become more intelligent through artificial intelligence. Studies have shown that many consumers appreciate this service, because in most cases they can still be helped directly. In 2017 many companies have implemented a successful Chatbot: When are you getting yours?

Live streams and short live content

The new year will also bring a lot of videos. Figures and forecasts show that in 2 years 87% of marketers will embed videos in their campaigns and that 80% of Internet traffic will go through video. Many companies are already using the live video feature for online seminars and product presentations. But did you know that many websites use the short live content of Facebook stories and Instagram stories for branding and KPI sales? Your brand with your target audience: targeting through social media is super effective.

Augmented Reality (AR) & virtual reality (VR)

Sounds almost like a something out of a scifi movie, but you probably remember the hype of Pokemon go, whereby millions of people went on the streets to virtually “catch” pokemons through the AR function. How can this be of interest to your business? For example, get inspired by Funda (the Dutch equivalent of primelocation.com), who use VR goggles to take potential buyers through “a house” to get a first impression of the housing. Very useful!

Online Communities

Your potential customers are only looking for relevant and trustworthy advice when they are looking at your product and/or service. The many fake-news and the increasing advertising costs on the social networks (to get more and more reach) do not really help. For this reason, many organisations (e.g. PCMG and Greenpeace) have decided to establish their own platform. In the end, do you want your products to be praised by your own community of experienced users, or not? Think of virtual web.Word-of-mouth advertising. Get inspired and enlightened by an online community tool like www.inspired.com.

B2B Influencer Marketing

Many companies swear by the B2C area of influencer marketing. Take for example a pop star or a professional athlete who is promoting a brand among their social media followers. But now there is also the B2B influencer marketing. This is basically the same principle, but through the B2B social media channels such as LinkedIn, Xing, YouTube or other locally relevant social networks. However, here you can build a nice bridge to your own online community: Why not use your own employees or customers for this? IBM showed current users of IBM who (via different channels) tell what they think of the e-mail service, which in turn resulted in almost 50,000 new applications. At the end of the day: Satisfied customers and employees are your ambassadors and thus the best marketing tool for your company. Use it too!

Customer Journey Mapping

The majority of online marketers drowning in their daily work: SEO campaigns that have to be set up, social media that needs to be taken care of, advertising campaigns for Google that have to be optimized and the sales department wants to add a last-minute online action. This is something many entrepreneurs underestimate. Especially because marketing is the sales engine nowadays. Furthermore, if you tell the same businessman that he loses many potential customers, because those visitors and users are not monitored enough on his platform, then his ears should be on you. Why would you not want to implement online marketing well? At the end of the day, as a marketer, you want to bring relevant content to the right target audience at the right time. You can do this only if you do customer-journey mapping. There are many professional tools and specialized companies that can help you with this. So you will learn how not to lose a single customer in 2018.

Payment with a digital wallet

Did you lose your bank card? Did you have your credit card stolen? In 2018 this is no reason not to buy anymore, because more and more smartphones are now equipped with a digital wallet. Cryptocurrency (e.g. Bitcoins), but also simple banking apps (e.g. Rabobank) or the popular app Tikkie are becoming the new baseline for financial transactions. Physical shops where you can hold your smartphone against the counter or the payment with Bitcoins from a digital wallet on a webshop. These are the things you have to put up against as an entrepreneur. How? Currently there are, for example, petrol station owners who, for security reasons, reward these forms of payment with discount codes. That’s smart internet!

Same day delivery

In the early years of e-commerce, delivery times of about five days were no problem for the consumer. In 2018, this is no longer the norm. Consumers are ready to wait up to 2 days for the delivery of a product and otherwise go to a competitor. Forrester recently published a report that said 30% of consumers are willing to pay extra for same day delivery ‘. Same day delivery was only reserved for the big players on the market for a long time, but now it is possible and payable for smaller companies. Take a look at Local Express (TNT Post), local delivery on the same day.

Do you know any other trends that will be hot for 2018? Let us know in a comment down below. For now, we wish you a Happy New Year and see you again next year! Cheers!