Page 4 - Marketing Predictions and Trends for 2019

Voice search

With more and more households owning Alexa, Google Home, and similar products, voice search
and artificial intelligence (AI) are here to stay. Around 65% of users say they don’t see themselves
getting rid of it anytime soon.

Estimates show that approximately 67 million voice devices will be in homes and offices in the US
by 2019. Predictions show that by 2020, voice search queries will make up 50% of all queries. So, if
businesses are not already factoring in voice search in reference to their marketing mix, now is the
time.

The shift to more natural language in written content can help with this. However, voice search will
change results and potentially starve some sites of traffic, because the way a person asks a question
can be very different from the way they type in a query. Think semantic support and marketing
content should be highly discoverable.

Predictive / Intent data

Google and Facebook search have enhanced their algorithms in relation to predictive and intent
data. What do people want to accomplish when they run a particular search?

Unless someone is operating in incognito mode, every search they run is giving these marketing
giants information in order for them to then determine the intent of a search and what will be of
most interest to people. They can even aggregate data from other sites to predict interest.

The trend is most obvious on mobile. If a person is out of their home (which the GPS locator will
determine) and types in "coffee", the assumption will be that they need a café to go get a cup. A
second option might be to list a local coffee and tea shop, or a supermarket. Bricks and mortar
businesses need to make sure they have robust listings in Google, so they will be as discoverable in
local search as possible - especially on mobile.

Mobile search is booming

Around 50% of all searches are carried out on mobile devices and that number is sure to rise as the
latest generation of smartphones have more computing power than the desktop computers of just
a few years ago.

Amazon, YouTube and Facebook are search engines too

Gone are the days when people used to go to Google for everything. Amazon is now a vast product
search engine, with the ability to turn browsers into buyers in an instant with the help of their 1-
Click shopping. If companies want to make products more discoverable, they need to be on Amazon.

YouTube is the largest video sharing site in the world, and growing larger with every passing second.
Studies have shown that 75% of searches are related to how-to content. If a business doesn’t
already have a channel and playlists with these types of content, they re missing out on the chance
to market their business effectively to people who really want to know what they do.
Facebook has demonstrated the rise of social search, with users avoiding search engines completely
as they search for information about products, services and topics within the Facebook interface.