SiteSpect Synopsis: Marketing Trends to Watch For

While it still feels like we were just looking ahead to 2018, the time has come to start reflecting and looking to 2019. This month is all about the marketing trends developing now, so that you can be ready to strike come Q1 2019. Here are some of the best recent reads that break down how to excel at mobile marketing, add a personal touch to your messaging, and understand your customers. Read here to get the important takeaways.

There’s Still Time to Adopt the Best Marketing Trends of 2018

Hubspot’s Allie Decker walks through the most important marketing trends of the year, and touches on just about every outlet for digital marketing. The trends she spots are:

• Customers are marketers too, keep them at the center of your business.
• You need content to make a sale.
• Get into video. Most people prefer to watch a video than to read an article.
• Native advertising is key, and it’s not just about promotion.
• Use social media to foster genuine relationships with customers.
• Build relationships with micro-influencers.
• Get into voice search.
• Get familiar with AI, VR, AR, and other up and coming experiential tech.

As Decker writes, “Staying up-to-date on (and ahead of) trends helps your company save precious time and money and ensures you’re marketing to the right people who are in your target audience… and ready to buy.” Read the full article.

And It’s Also Time to Think About Trends for 2019

In his article in Forbes, John Hall reflects on the question he’s most often asked: What trends should we look out for next year. Here are the five big ones he identifies:

• Consumers don’t like ads anymore, they want more content and more word of mouth — especially from influencers.
• Creativity is key. We are so inundated with information, that interesting delivery can really set a brand apart.
• Content production should be a cross departmental effort.
• Communicate on your customer’s terms, in the way they expect.
• Automation is great for a lot of things, but personal relationships with customers should still be a priority.

Ultimately, we’re seeing more of a push towards personal and individual communication with customers. Rather than using tech for automation, moving forward we should be looking to use it for personalization and building relationships. Read the full article.

DMN Says “Brands Need To Be Good Guys”

Coming off two major Boston marketing conferences, “Hypergrowth” and “Inbound,” writer Kim Davis reports on the trends connecting speakers and attendees. As consumers become more savvy about their data and more skeptical of the way it may be used, they are also paring down who they engage with. This, Davis explains, has bred a new tactic. Best practice used to encourage brands to stay middle of the road and silent about social and political opinions. However, consumers now have so many choices that we want to feel aligned with brands on a personal level as well. Now, confronting social issues allows brands to further align themselves with customers socially, as well as make connections beyond product utility. (See Nike’s Kaepernick campaign). As Davis writes, “This provides a compelling rationale for brands — especially high profile brands  — to come down on the right side of the kinds of issues which once they might have been well-advised to avoid.” This has implications beyond bottom lines. While there is a cynical take on this trend, Davis argues that it puts the humanity back into big brand marketing. Read the full article.

How to Get Your Mobile Experience Up to Par

In his blog, Brian Solis looks at some of the big points of friction customers encounter on mobile devices — namely the disjunction that occurs between mobile apps and mobile sites. He writes, “When customers reach for their smartphones to learn and make decisions, they begin a mobile purchasing journey that’s complex and incredibly fragmented. As a result, the lines blur between mobile sites and apps.” Solis recommends joining together mobile site and mobile app teams and prioritizing a mobile experience that offers value without creating dissonance between a mobile site and an app. Read the full article.

More Trends

• IDG: “Cloud’s Coming of Age”
• eMarketer: “Digital Banking Users Are Turning to Chatbots”
• Neil Patel: “Why Understanding Your Customers is the Only Marketing Strategy you Need”
• The Guardian: “Google at 20: how two ‘obnoxious’ students changed the internet”
• Hubstpot: “The Ultimate Guide to Blockchain”

Read Last Month’s SiteSpect Synopsis

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