In order to be at your best in terms of marketing and search engine visibility, you must be abreast of current trends affecting each. Both digital marketing and search engine marketing concepts have evolved over the years, embracing new tactics and shedding past strategies as platforms such as social media, email and search engines have adapted.

Fundamentally, one can find new and emerging trends in each new year related to search engine marketing and digital marketing purposes. What exactly is changing right now is directly relevant to a brand’s long-term potential for success.

As such, let’s examine the current trends that are shifting strategies in digital marketing and search-related queries.

Influencer Marketing

It’s not surprising that brands with budgets are increasingly relying upon the fan-bases of others to attract attention. While such endeavors may not involve pinging users from your own brand directly, those who are providing products and services are increasingly relying upon influencer marketing to get the word out about their offerings.

Influencer marketing involves the use of existing platforms via blogs, email marketing and social media where dedicated followers and audiences exist. Rather than spend large sums of money to develop connections with these audiences, brands are increasingly choosing to pay select individuals for the opportunity of pitching directly to their brands. The effects this is having on marketing and search engine usage alike is quite substantial.

Chatbot/Automated Functions

While some people perhaps thought that chatbots and other automated functions for customer service were going to be an ill-fated trend relegated to fad status, this is not the case. In both search engines and digital marketing at-large, chatbots are increasingly becoming popular as a way to funnel responses, generate leads and help audiences get access to the information they require.

It might surprise some to know that roughly half of all websites in existence are now using one variety of chatbot or another. This basic concept is highly customized and programmed with the ability to adapt to individual questions, making it an ideal choice for brands who cannot be online 24/7 and who don’t want to hire expensive outsourced customer service solutions.

Increased PPC Automation

Pay per click advertising is a huge aspect of digital marketing, whether it be via search engines or social media. Yet the days where brands had to manually manage their campaigns are long gone: a variety of software solutions now exist to help deploy, monitor, pause and otherwise create campaigns without any persistent input from marketing managers.

Whether it be through Google Ads or another platform, PPC campaigns are being increasingly driven by automated solutions. These software suites are pinging users with content and copy that is optimized based on past and present performance, helping to optimize campaigns in real time and avoid wasted budgets. Many platforms are adapting to this reality, offering variations of smart bidding or dynamic campaigns.

Now more than ever, a variety of trends impact day-to-day search engine and marketing performance. Through concepts such as ad automation, chatbots and influencer marketing, brands need less know-how than ever to make the right impression. While a professional knowledge base is still valuable, current trends are increasingly investing decision power in the hands of others.