Marketing Trends 2019
Updated: Feb 25, 2019
There's never a dull moment in the marketing and communications space, what with issues around transparency and privacy, brand faux pas, and the ongoing power play off between consumers and the media giants.
Although I should have written this in January, it has been interesting to see how things have been progressing so far this year, and I think now is an important time to think about what marketing trends and tactics your business can capitalise on. Perhaps the dust has settled after a frantic New Year, and you are now starting to be clear about your marketing goals for the year ahead. Well here goes, some food for thought that should hopefully help you to put the goals into action.
social media
If you've already invested quite a bit into your social media presence, then good news, social is not going to go away. Advertising revenues are continuing to rise on social media platforms, and social media is still a great way to discover new customers and engage with existing ones. The "Stories" features on Instagram and Facebook are becoming more important, and there will be less traditional advertising in the form of banner ads and pop up videos. Businesses will have to get native, as in create advertising that fits the style and form of that particular social media channel. The key will be to build and maintain genuine engagement with your target customer groups in a way that they understand and are interested in. Influencer marketing will continue to be important and the good news now is that influencers have to state if they are being paid to promote something, which means consumers are going to be more trustful of the brands involved. Enterprise Nation have written a really useful guide on influencer marketing for small businesses.
With social media, remember, you don't have to be on every platform, choose one or two that are most relevant to your business and focus on those. Do not waste time on a platform that is not suited to your target audience.
VOICE SEARCH
Google and Amazon have brought voice search devices to millions, allowing you to search and order products with your voice via digital assistants. Gartner has predicted that 30 per cent of all web browsing sessions will be made by voice-activated searches by 2020. Therefore now is the time to start optimising your website for voice based searches. Think about how a request via voice will differ to a keyboard inputted one. For example, if you are a print business in Birmingham, rather than optimising solely for a phrase like "print services Birmingham", you may want to optimise for "Where can I find a print business in Birmingham" which is more likely how someone will request this information when speaking.
content remains king
This is nothing new. If you want to engage and reach out to new and existing customers then your content has to resonate with them. While articles and press releases will still be important, you might want to focus on some beautiful imagery and impactful video content to showcase your products and services.
Equally, perhaps you can create some useful infographics, or a blog to engage with a new audience. It is now becoming easier to track user behaviour with visuals. Cookies, which are used to track user visits activity, can now be used to track behaviour when interacting with images, so it will become easier to see the impact of using such a content form.
personalisation
Rather than have a one size fits all approach to advertising and marketing, more and more brands are personalising their campaigns to speak out to individual sets of customers. So instead of creating one big campaign, they may produce lots of little campaigns to appeal to a more diverse audience. Social media certainly allows for this, and with more advanced analytics, it is possible to understand the impact of such campaigns and tweak new ones accordingly. Once you have developed a following on social media, you can better understand the preferences of your potential customers and what they are interested in which will give you a better chance of offering them something they want or need.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
There is increasing evidence that more people are enabling location based services on their mobile devices, so 2019 is the time to make sure you are optimising your website for local based searches as well as the more general keywords and phrases. Additionally, keep up the good local press stories, as the more coverage you get by local media, the more likely you are to get found for location based searches in your area. It's funny how so much actually hasn't changed in the marketing world, despite all of the latest technologies. Old school techniques of engaging with your local communities and creating interesting and engaging content are still as vital as ever.
chatbots
Chatbots are set to come to the fore this year. If you haven't already heard about them, they are computer programs that can mimic human interaction using AI techniques and are used most frequently in customer service scenarios on a website or on social media pages. They do have all sorts of applications, however, and many fast growing media companies are starting to develop them for customers. Some have partnered with FaceBook in order to use its Messenger service. "They include the market-leading Russian-based company Chatfuel, which has enabled thousands of organisations to build Messenger chatbots, including headline acts such as the NFL and the Labour party, and a number of smaller operations such as Berlin-based Spectrm, which has created Messenger chatbots for the likes of CNN and Red Bull." (The Guardian, 2018). Chatbots are potentially not something smaller businesses will be implementing just yet, but they are certainly something to be aware of and we will see more big brands making use of them.
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