The end of 2018 is in sight. Now it is time to look towards the New Year and what 2019 has to offer us. While this can seem daunting, especially when digital marketing is a fast-moving, fickle machine, 2019 offers many great digital marketing strategies that’ll bring your brand more exposure.
It’s time to filter through the noise, though. Here are the top digital marketing strategies to bring into 2019.
Digital Marketing Strategies for 2019
Continue with SEO and PPC advertising
SEO and PPC will continue to be prosperous next year. However, you will need to target more natural and relevant keywords. Why? Because, by doing so, you are offering a more trustworthy and transparent service. Plus, younger generations are turning to more natural keywords, rather than caveman talk. For instance, we would ask Google “What is the best Thai restaurant in London?” instead of “Best Thai food London.”
It is important to target the correct keywords then. Enlist the help of a trusted PPC agency, and speak to SEO professionals so that they can bring across an effective strategy into 2019.
Authenticity wins
People want to know who they are speaking to, the way a business works, and whether they are deserving of our hard earned money. Therefore, businesses need to prove themselves more than ever before.
86% of consumers state that authenticity is important when deciding which brand to supports. You can build an authentic and transparent brand by producing content that is completely tailored to your customers rather than for profit, have a genuine personality, offer brilliant customer service, and being honest.
User Generated Content (UGC) should have the customers in mind. It should be to engage and entertain. Take GoPro, for example. They post hundreds of videos of people using their product. By doing so, the content is completely catered to their customers, while fuelling their passion for adventure. While competitors will simply explain the lenses they use and the best features of their product, GoPro excel by showing rather than telling.
Add voice search to your campaign
Siri, Alexa, and Google Home changed the game in internet searching. Rather than Google on their phones, people will speak to their home hubs in order to gather the information they need. Human speech is incredibly important, but so is ensuring your local business is registered with a Google My Business (GMB) account.
GMB is a great tool for business, as it allows you to fill in your business’s most vital information, while also improving your business’s search engine ranking. Businesses can also benefit from messaging, photos and much more.
Social media
The reign of social media isn’t over. In fact, it seems to be growing in popularity each day. More time will need to be spent on your social media marketing campaigns, ensuring your content is reaching the right people, you are being engaging and have the correct details available. You will also want to have a strong customer service team on social media so that they can diffuse of any fires before they spread.
2026 Update: What I Would Tell My 2019 Self Right Now
I wrote this post back in 2019 with the best intentions, and honestly some of it has aged reasonably well. But a lot has not, and I would be doing you a disservice if I left you reading it without flagging what has changed. The digital marketing world in 2026 looks almost nothing like it did seven years ago, and the strategies that were cutting-edge then are now either table stakes or outright obsolete.
The biggest shift I have seen is that AI tools are no longer a novelty you bolt on to your existing workflow. They are the workflow. I use tools like Claude, Perplexity, and a handful of specialist content platforms daily, and my clients do too. The question is no longer “should I use AI in my marketing?” It is “how do I use it in a way that still sounds like a human being with an actual point of view?” Generic AI output is everywhere now, and audiences can smell it. Your differentiation in 2026 is your voice, your experience, and your specific opinions, not your ability to produce volume.
Search has changed significantly as well. AI Overviews in Google, plus the rise of AI-native search tools, means that a chunk of your potential traffic now gets answered before anyone clicks through to your site. This is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to create content that goes deeper than a summary can. First-hand experience, case studies, specific numbers from your own work, and genuinely strong opinions are what still earn clicks in 2026. Thin informational content is largely dead as a traffic strategy.
Social media strategy has also shifted considerably. Organic reach on most platforms is brutal unless you are producing short-form video consistently. LinkedIn is still the strongest platform for B2B if you are willing to write with personality rather than corporate polish. Threads has settled into a solid niche for conversational brand building. TikTok remains powerful for reach but the algorithm rewards consistency above all else, which is a real resource commitment.
My honest advice is to read this original post for the foundational thinking, which still holds, but treat the specific tactics with caution. Come back to my newer posts here on lilachbullock.com for what I am actually recommending to clients right now. The principles of good marketing have not changed. The tools, the platforms, and the expectations of your audience absolutely have.
