Considering Modern Trends in Digital Marketing

34 Abstract: The authors of this paper have analysed the current and future tendencies in digital marketing communications (DMC). Digital communications are an area of fast and frequent changes that lead to shorter communication between the message sender and receiver, thus speeding up the process and making it more complex. In order to survive in a dynamic environment, companies need to be visible and directly linked to their target groups. Moreover, it is vital that they understand well their digital environment and are prepared to take proactive steps to make their marketing communication successful. Acceptance and application of new trends in the field of digital marketing is a milestone in the business of an organization. The need for a proactive approach to changes is evident, as the organizations that first introduce the user-oriented innovations shall receive consumer attention and funds. A detailed and concise review of the current situation and the forecasts for the future are presented, to allow the expert and scientific public to plan future research in this field. An overview of the challenges and opportunities facing this innovative area provides a valuable insight and helps create a successful marketing communications strategy.


INTRODUCTION
Digital marketing communications, often seen as the process of online, web promotion or advertising through specific forms of digital/online media, became very dynamic in the last few years. Innovations and changes are conditioned upon development of new technologies and user's behaviour on the Internet.
Before the Internet and social media, organizations had plenty of time for systematic and methodological observation of the social environment and its behaviour (Slijepcevic & Radojevic, 2018). Now, that kind of luxury is lacking. Organizations must envisage and react accordingly to emerging disruptions. In general, they must engage with the target audience and interact with them. Different aspects were studied, from the impact of positive attitude of social media users' toward the social networking sites (SNS) on the creation of a positive attitude toward the social networking advertisements (SNA) (Mukherjee & Banerjee, 2019), to the effects of social media usage upon B2B customer loyalty (Zhang & Li, 2019).
Constant changes in the field of digital marketing -social media, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC) and more account for significant yearly shifts (some even quarterly). These changes cannot be ignored. Organizations need to accept the influence of digital landscape and find out the most effective time and method to market their audience online. Surprisingly or not, many social media users shop online. That is the main reason why social media should be a crucial part of digital marketing plans.
This paper is a result of the integration of the review made in academic literature of the digital communications, digital media and digital marketing, with a glance at the future tendencies within a digital environment. Currently, all organizations (both profit and non-profit) are facing big challenges to keep up with constant digital technology changes and the ensuing and continuing viral trends. The authors of this paper will present the most important current tendencies in the field of digital marketing communications and their forecast of future trends. Social media platforms occupy an important position in digital marketing plans, as their potential reach is extremely large. The 45% of the world's population -3.5 billion people are now social media users (Kemp, 2019). The Figure 1 below presents the global number of active users of top social platforms, based on monthly active users study. As one of the fastest-growing social media networks, Facebook is still the largest social network worldwide. In the third quarter of 2019, Facebook accounted for 2.45 billion monthly active users (Statista, 2019). Their users have the opportunity to share their own experience and, with the help of other users, brainstorm to develop an opinion on a product/service, company, brand, etc. (Akar & Topcu, 2011;Kim & Ko, 2012).
On the other hand, Facebook Messenger had 1.3 billion monthly active users in the same period (Sta-   tista, 2019). In just one year, the daily watch time for Facebook Live videos have quadrupled (Thomson, 2019). Moreover, these videos make six times as many interactions as traditional videos. Additionally incredible, the audience is kept watching three times longer compared to the recorded videos (Thomson, 2019). Customers are searching for different types of information about organizations, brands, products and services online. According to 2019 State of Conversational Marketing Report, 42% of customers expect an immediate response within 5 seconds, whereas 36% expect a response within 5 minutes, from chatbots (Kilens, 2019).
Usually, customers prefer reviews, video instructions, personal experiences of other users and open discussions among social media groups. Digital marketing institute states that 86% of female users consult social media before choosing a product. Other research reveals that 70% of active social network users, before making a purchase, seek additional information about the product or service on social media sites (Kim & Ko, 2012). According to research conducted by Wyzowl (2018), incredible 95% of respondents said that they have watched a video about products or services they were interested in buying and the number of such respondents increased to 96% in 2019 . Another research revealed that 94% of customers would remain with the organizations that communicate transparently and clearly (Denis, 2019).
Influencers are today's first face of brands. Working with influencers is a new way of gaining more audience and spreading good electronic word of mouth (eWOM), particularly for small and medium enter-prises (SME). Different authors consider eWOM an influential marketing instrument ( (Vered, 2007) of other people. Influencers and companies can use different social media platforms to interact, communicate and engage with the target audience and facilitate and increase the outreach and influence (Arora at al., 2019). Most common are Instagram and YouTube, but the influencers also operate on the Twitter, Facebook, Linke-dIn, Snapchat and, more recently, on TikTok.
During 2018, the brands engaged nearly 590,000 influencers globally, who shared over 2.6 million ad posts on the Instagram with the total of 2.9 billion engagements generated from these posts (Buzzoole, 2019;Desreumaux, 2019).
The audience trust the digital opinion leader -the influencer they follow. They influence the attitudes, decisions and behaviour of their audience of followers (De Veirman, Cauberghe & Hudders, 2017). According to the Digital Marketing Institute (2018), 86% of female users consult social media before choosing a product. Hiring influencers in digital marketing communication can ensure a high return on investment (ROI) (Enke & Borchers, 2018). Moreover, it facilitates the SME to promote different products or services. Sproutsocial (2017) research revealed that the majority of consumers (86%) buy the brands that appear honest and friendly (83%). They want to see the companies using the social media, inter alia, as a customer care channel. As much as 60% of users say they discover new products on the Instagram (Instagram, 2019) and 70% of the Pinterest users use this network to find new and interesting products (Pinterest, 2019).
According to Sproutsocial (2017), 51% of customers claim they would unfollow a brand that annoyed them on a social media, whereas 23% would walk away from such a brand completely, vowing never to buy from it again.
Another study shows that personalized email campaigns receive 29% higher email open rates and 41% higher click-through rates than the traditional emails, with no personalization.
Primarily, the organizations need to make a clear and integrated digital marketing strategy. According to researches, almost 50% of organizations do not have such a strategy in place. In the online marketing, the lack of clear strategy and transparent goals leads to choosing irrelevant key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring organizational success or investing in the tactics that will lead the organization in the wrong direction.
Using social media networks, organizations can reach their target audience in a simple and fast way. Modern, online customers are seeking for more visual and interactive content, new experience and a higher level of interactivity. Interactive content is more engaging, stands out, grows awareness of a brand and keeps the audience present on the organization's website (Thomson, 2019).

PREDICTIONS OF FUTURE DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS
According to Thomson  Moreover, Dave (2019) says that soon artificial intelligence (AI) will become the driving force of a large number of industries. For the time being, it has been implemented in various areas, such as basic communication, product recommendations, content creation, email personalization, e-commerce transactions. Some companies use AI in chatbots for providing quick answers, resolving complaints, offering additional content, assisting with registration or requests (Musienko, 2019). By 2020, 90% of organizations that use online marketing will practice at least one shape or form of marketing personalization (Pemberton, 2018). On the other hand, almost half of the customers will disregard brands that are sending irrelevant advertisements (Briggs, 2016;Youn & Kim, 2019).
Scaling the personalization represents the biggest challenge in the personalization process. The tools for personalization that every organization needs include the analytics platforms (Google Analytics, Heap Analytics and Crazy Egg) and data management platforms (Customer relationship management software, Post-click landing page platform, Email marketing platform, Tag management platform, Demand-side platform) (Quick, 2019).
Segmenting the content into atoms and dynamic components for targeting and reuse, with a final goal to capitalize on personalized experience, will make organizations able for better uniting customer data with relevant content, and, finally, more competitive on the market (Pemberton, 2018).
Facebook Messenger bot, used by MasterCard, applies natural language processing (Siu, 2019) software to communicate with customers like a human. In addition, AI is implemented in programmatic advertising. Programmatic demand-side platforms apply hundreds of targeting signals to automate ad buying, so that a company can target more specific audience. Using AI to match customer's skin tone with a foundation, personalizing shopping experience through the virtual make-up testing in AR represent the regular activities in Sephora's endeavours to focus on their customers and make the shopping experience personalized for them (DeNisco Rayome, 2018). Predictions are that by 2020, 85% of customer relations with a business will be managed without any human interaction (Gigante, 2019; Baumgartner, Hatami & Valdivieso, 2016).
It is expected that, in the next year, the shoppable post, interactive content, AR and VR will be more popular and more frequently used in digital marketing campaigns. Allowing the customers to purchase directly from an organization`s post on Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram is a new, fast-spreading trend, that should be placed on the top of digital marketing plans.
Already, top brand companies are using AR to reach the target audience in an innovative and very immersive ways. Companies such as IKEA, Coca-Cola, Zara, PEZ, Lacoste, Converse, Tesco, Cadbury, BIC Kids, New York Times, Petron Tequila, MTV and the like are endeavouring to strengthen their brands by engaging the customers using AR (Paine, 2019).
Whether through the customers visualization of how products might look in their homes while shopping online or through offering the opportunity to superimpose viewers with their favourite music star, taking customers on a virtual tour of the place where their favourite brand is made, a possibility to see how different models of shoes might look on their feet (Paine, 2019) the augmented reality leads the marketing at the next level. Making more interactive experience, increasing involvement and strengthening connections with their customers, those companies are pioneers of augmented reality marketing.
Furthermore, connecting with the target audience through sending personalized email, offering personalized experience, can lead to a higher engagement and more conversions (Thomson, 2019). Engaging and a high-quality content enables the organizations to communicate as experts with their target audience. More than that, it makes messages more visible in search engines. The axiom of digital marketing, content is a king, must be followed.
Another important digital marketing tool for the next period will be video, especially the live video, that keeps the audience engaged three times longer than a recorded video. New Google Ads updates, announced by Google, will lead to automation and smart bidding. Being No. 1 is no longer the main goal, because the position zero -the top spot in SERP -will be the first result that the users view (Thomson, 2019). Position zero is a featured snippet of text appearing at the top of the search result pages (Denis, 2019). It provides brief information on the key points related with the search on a link. To optimize bids, Google Ads starts using machine learning. This change has introduced new opportunities for maximizing conversion rates.
Several authors made some interesting predictions. Srivastav (2017) predicted that the global growth of the digital software industry will reach $74.96 billion until 2020. Furthermore, Mitchell (2018) predicts the increase in digital marketing budget that will account for incredible 87% of all marketing budgets by 2022.
Using voice as a brand and marketing advantage is new and up to date and moving from voice search to voice engagement is expected soon (Abramovich, 2018).

CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES OF USING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN DIGITAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION
One of the biggest challenges of new digital communications is the lack of fundamentals and basic elements of personal connection such as empathy, personal touch, eye contact and the like. Digital and social media addiction is a disease of the new age. Designing for the addiction and ethical aspect of this topic are considered both by engineers and public (Newman, 2019). Changing algorithms is a must. Issues that must be considered in further researches refer to the harmful impact of digital media -how ethical it is to use notifications that are dripping with dopamine or showing the content that misleads the consumer. Also, the need to better know the importance of 'digital well-being' will push a new wave of articles about this topic. A large number of people feel pressure to delete their social media accounts to preserve their real-life and mental health. The development of new software and dashboards for maintaining social media and digital addiction requires full attention of the academic community.
The moment when influencer marketing become mainstream made a big change at that scene. The collective micro-networks become powerful with an individual's reach and scale (Schouten, Janssen & Verspaget, 2019). Companies need to change the old habit of working with just a single influencer and switch to a network of relatable peers (Greenwood, 2019).
Digital channels, where companies cannot accurately track shared content (private messaging apps, SMS or emails) are called "dark social" (Valentine, 2019). Sending copied URL via an instant messaging or email or switching from a secure (https) to a non-secure (HTTP) site, the generated traffic is presented as direct in the majority analytics programs (Van Loon, 2019). According to research, the share of dark social as a percent of on-site shares accounts for 84%, globally (RadiumOne, 2016). Consumers usually share content and information (in 63%) using dark social channels (20% share only via these channels), compared to 54% that use open social media platforms (Glenday, 2019). The global, as well as local companies, must target and optimize online content to run simultaneously ATL awareness campaigns and easy-to-share digital content that can be used and shared at any time privately (Errmann, Seo, Choi & Yoon 2019). Furthermore, direct interaction with customers, more relevant and sharable content will be highly appreciated by customers (Valentine, 2019; Mayrhofer, Matthes, Einwiller, & Naderer, 2019).
Even though the YouTube is recommended after the age of 13, the children younger than that age are using it and have their own YouTube channels (Tur-Viñes; Núñez-Gómez & González-Río, 2018). This topic requires an additional research. Advertising recognition is crucial for all audience, especially for children. It is crucial because of further activation of children's associative networks, which subsequently help them critically evaluate the advertisement and prevents them from being subconsciously persuaded by advertising (De Jans et al., 2018).
As 83% of companies state, that video content has increased their conversion, furthermore 96% of customers are sure that the video helps them to understand the product/service and finally, 65% of viewers visit the site, and 39% contact the company after viewing the video . Companies must provide highly-personalized experience for their customers across the board because they expect the brands they engage with to enable them that.
Around the world, young adults are among the most active social media users, spending 170 min per day in North America, 232 min per day in Latin America, 180 min per day in Europe and 165 min per day in Asia (Mander, 2019). According to the Pew Research Center, 80% of the US adults aged 18 -29 use Facebook, 71% use Instagram, 78% are on the Snapchat and 45% say they use Twitter. Usage rates for all these platforms, except for Facebook, are higher among the younger than the older adults, who have not abandoned Facebook (Smith and Anderson, 2018). The American Internet users aged 16 -24 spend 165 min a day on social media networks/services, while those between 35 and 44 spend only 105 min a day using social media (GlobalWebIndex and Statista, 2016). College students in the United States are particularly active social networkers. In particular, 47% of college women and 34% of college men spend more than six hours per week using social media (HERI, 2016).
For an organization to be competitive, it has to focus on various digital communication channels for integration and stimulation of customer loyalty. Therefore, the research of needs, preferences, habits, wishes and demands of the current and potential customers and ways of keeping them engaged, must be the primary activity of all companies.
Retaining customers helps increase the revenue, because when you maintain your existing customers, they tend to tell their friends and give you referrals. Also, loyal customers are likely to be more direct and honest about any issues or problems, giving you a chance to improve your brand.

CONCLUSION
Digital marketing as a process of fulfilling marketing and business aims by using digital technologies, must be prioritized in the marketing plans. In order to improve customer experience by responding to their needs, organizations around the world have realized how important it is to keep up with and apply new digital marketing trends. Merging digital and traditional methods for more accurate fulfilment of customers' needs makes organizations more competitive and stronger on the market. New market opportunities are created with the introduction of new digital technologies and companies, in order to stay competitive and survive on the market, must adopt and implement them in their daily routine.
Digital marketing's reach and boundaries are so dynamic that strategic content delivery requires a rising number of platforms and channels. Virtual and augmented reality remain an area that many companies still have to research.
Digital marketing communications represent the most important modern concept that may be considered a fast-changing part of new technologies. In the process of attracting high-quality customers, the adoption and evolution of fast digital marketing changes will make a difference between a successful and unsuccessful organization. Target audience and customers are online, using different forms of social media. This represents a great opportunity for companies and for the fulfilment of their KPIs, given they can collect and analyse customers online behaviour.
In today's digital market world, consumers want to be guided in making informed purchasing decisions and not marketed upon. That's why personalization, content marketing and interactive content are important for attracting consumer interest, lead the consumers on the purchaser's path and enhance business outcome.
Engaging and interactive content is expected to become increasingly important for gaining consumer interest and enhancing customer experience. While digital marketing evolves with the consumer's expectations and desires, these developments are the start of new industry changes.