It’s almost 2019, and with this year, like the years before it, comes a wave of predictions and technologies to help brands reach their consumers in new and innovative ways. We’re not quite at the level of hologram marketing yet, but we’re close.
Marketing changes fast. Some advice does not. There are a handful of rules that hold no matter how many new channels and mediums land on the pile. Below are a few of the trends everyone is chasing this year, then the advice worth keeping as you wade into AI, machine learning, voice activated search, and the rest.
Growing Trends in Marketing in 2019
Everybody is talking about AI right now, and marketers are the loudest of the bunch. The pitch is real enough: software that sorts through customer data in real time and tailors what each person sees. Machine learning has gotten good at picking the moment, so the right message reaches the right person when their behavior says they are ready. This year also brought its share of ethics concerns about how companies use customer data, and those questions are not going away. Neither is AI. It will be a major tool in the marketer’s toolkit for years to come.
According to data collected by Think With Google, voice-based commerce sales in the United States reached $1.8 billion in 2017 and are projected to reach $40 billion by 2022. Couple this with the fact that 72 percent of voice-activated speaker users say their device is a part of their daily routine, and we see that this presents a massive opportunity for marketers to understand how to reach this large segment and ensure their products are optimized for voice search.
Video has been a key player in brand marketing strategies for years now, but it’s never been more important than in 2019, especially mobile-optimized vertical video. Nielsen reports that the average adult now consumes six hours of video per day across live or time-shifted TV, smartphones, and tablets. Additionally, with the launch of totally new ways of consuming video, like IGTV, consumers have more options than ever, and so do marketers.
Regardless of Trends, Stick to This Marketing Advice
All of this gives marketers more ways to reach customers than they have ever had, and more ways to burn a budget doing it. The temptation is to chase every new trend before deciding what you are trying to accomplish in the first place. Resist that. Channels and tools turn over fast. The advice below has not.
It’s all about the relationship. Your relationship with your customers is your most valuable asset and is the lifeblood of your marketing, so when you’re thinking about what new marketing trends to try out, consider how they may affect, enhance, or hurt your customer relationships. This is especially important when you consider how your customers feel about the privacy of their information and their data. A cool new marketing tactic may not be worth it in the long run if it jeopardizes your customers’ trust.
Know your customer. You may be over-the-moon excited about trying out a new voice-optimized search strategy for a new product, but if your customers aren’t yet using these devices, it won’t do you much good. Just because something is trendy doesn’t mean it fits your customer segment. Do your research and understand how your customers are interacting with these new technologies before you commit.
Deliver real value. When adults are consuming upwards of eleven hours of media a day, you have to cut through the clutter and get their attention in a way that is compelling, informative, and creative. Today’s customers are savvier than ever, and they know when they should be skeptical, so focus on delivering real value through your marketing, not just flashy gimmicks using new technology. Value could mean a lot of things depending on who your customer is, it could be a behind-the-scenes sneak peek of your brand using IGTV, a product suggestion on your website based on their past behavior, or even just a simple and informative Amazon product description.
- Keep it simple. This piece of marketing advice may be the hardest to follow in the midst of all these shiny, complex new ways to reach potential customers. But the great David Ogilvy once said, “a good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself." If people are excited about your ad, your chat-bot, or your fancy new video, but don’t actually know more about your product, it won’t deliver the results you’re looking for. Keep your marketing streamlined, even when experimenting with new channels.