The world of search is perhaps one of the most important worlds to marketers. It filters their audiences down to help them determine exactly what they want. And when you know what your customer wants, you can give it to them. Search is constantly evolving, and at our digital marketing firm, we believe there are a few trends that are on the rise:
Voice Search
Vocal search assistants like Siri, Google Now, Cortana, and now Alexa (for Amazon) are being used more and more by marketers and consumers alike. According to LSA Insider, 60% of adults have begun using voice search in the last year, and 41% of them began just six months ago. While we can’t yet decipher a voice search from a text search, that discovery could one day be very informative and could help marketers hone in on what their audiences want.
Social Media Advertising
Advertising via social media channels like is nothing new, but it definitely has grown. In fact 94% of B2C marketers say they use Facebook to distribute their content (according to the Content Marketing Institute). And if you haven’t noticed, both Twitter and Instagram have stepped up their advertising offerings; Twitter now has 130,000 active advertisers and Instagram is predicted to make $2.81 billion in advertising by 2017. It’ll be no surprise is if this type of advertising continues to grow.
More of a Google Shopping Presence
Since Google launched its Google Shopping platform, it has proved to be pretty successful. In fact, Google’s Product Listing Ads accounted for 38% of retailers’ search ad clicks in the fourth quarter of 2015 (according to Merkle). Now that Google has improved its mobile results visibility and is growing its search partner base, we could see Google Shopping results getting bigger and maybe even a shift toward paid local search.
Cross-Channel Paid Search
Like social media advertising, cross-channel marketing is nothing new, but it’s also on the rise. When marketers are able to reach their customers through multiple different channels, they have a better chance of converting them. We’ve already seen things like ads from recent product searches pop up on a random website, but with technology ever growing, integrations like these and the ability to advertise on different channels will likely continue to expand.
