2019 Marketing Trends To Keep An Eye On

1. Artificial Intelligence
According to “AdWeek,” you had better make AI your best friend if you hope to survive 2019. Article author Ben Plomion urges marketers to embrace holistic media buying behaviors and using AI to make sense of the data you are analyzing and tracking.

Notify your copywriter that in 2019, AI is going to earn some cred as a creativity booster. Further, market intelligence is going to make it easier for brands to trigger greater ROI for myriad reasons.

2. Chatbots
This technology is a jewel in the crown of next year’s marketing trends because real-time, 24-hour chats have become hard wired into the brains of people and there’s no letup in sight. Chatbots are already the favorite child of big brands like 1-800-Flowers, Sephora, H&M, Disney and Casper (the mattress not the ghost).

These clever software programs that mimic human conversation will be utilized by 80-percent of businesses by 2020, notes Oracle. Don’t care about human conversation? No problem. Chat up a pooch: https://bark.co/barkgoodpartners/barkbox-launches-twitters-first-dog-bot/.

3. Influencer marketing
Once upon a time, influencer marketing was known as word-of-mouth marketing. The updated descriptor requires marketers to pay influencers to spread the news about new products, services or ideas. Grapevines are good; influencers are better.

Every business will be asked to define “influencer” differently. Some will pick a well-known blogger while others want a celeb. Your budget may drive your choice, but always pick someone who oozes trust and your chances of success increase.

4. Micro-moments
Few concepts are as intriguing on our list of 2019 marketing trends as micro-moments. You’re no stranger to this concept; your marketing lingo just needs updating. Micro-moments dovetail with contemporary behavior. It describes the seconds it takes for a marketing message to register in a consumer’s brain.

Typical of micro-moment types are “I want to buy,” “I want to go,” “I want to do” and “I want to know.” Your challenge will be to answer those questions, aligning your company with heavy hitters like Google and Amazon.

5. Personalization
If you find yourself in the company of like-minded marketers, you may want to broach the subject of personalization and let everyone have at it. The personalization/privacy debate remains as hot as ever in the face of a society so willing to give away secrets, Facebook will forever remain a treasure trove of sensitive data.

That stated, Salesforce analysts say the tradeoff is a no brainer for consumers who expect personalized service, discounts and treatment. “The desire for personalization is morphing into expectation,” Salesforce marketers note.

6. Social Media Stories
It’s as ingrained in mankind’s genes as is eating, sleeping and breathing. The desire to tell and listen to stories can be at the heart of our humanity. Storytelling is positioned to be one of the prime 2019 marketing trends simply because no matter our age, social position and economic strata, we crave hearing tales.

It’s relatively easy to promote engagement and drive a brand forward by using stories. Snapchat claims credit for introducing this strategy (https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/a/my-story). Since then, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and more have jumped on the story bandwagon.

7. Transparency
You wouldn’t be the first person to read this buzzword and wonder what the heck it’s doing on our list of 2019 marketing trends. Whether your marketing efforts are focused on consumers or businesses, brand name alone is no longer standing up to “loyal fan scrutiny.”

Blame it on younger, savvy consumers and entrepreneurs. The desire for value associated with honesty is at the heart of marketing decisions because companies will be expected to be transparent. For example, socially responsible food brands will have an easy time competing when forthright about “field-to-factory-to-kitchen” processes that insure health, safety and well-being.

8. Video marketing
The numbers don’t lie. Video marketing had become such an important piece of the marketing puzzle, clients are starting to expect it. If you don’t currently recommend or produce these spots, what are you waiting for? On average, 70-percent of consumers say that they share video produced by a brand they like. That number is higher for business-to-business where conversion rates average 72-percent.

Adding this marketing tool to your mix excites clients, and if you pair your production with a “slice of life” twist or humor, consider yourself a 2019 marketing genius. If the numbers don’t add up for you and you don’t have a grasp on video marketing, head for https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/video-marketing-in-2019-infographic. Perhaps these pictures will do the trick.

9. Visual recognition
According to Neuroscientist Dr. Matthew Walker, whose best-selling book, “Why We Sleep” has unlocked many a mystery, “Humans are predominantly visual creatures. More than a third of our brain is devoted to processing visual information.” Is it any wonder visual recognition has appeared on so many 2019 marketing trends lists?

Abe Smith, President of Cision’s EMIA marketing platform, says that 3 billion images are added to the Internet daily. As a result, the cookies once planted to track user visits are now used to track behavior when people see pictures show up on their devices.

10. Voice search
Here’s another statistic to wow you: Gartner predicts that 30-percent of all web browsing will be driven by voice-activated searches by 2020. Whether consumers fall in love with Siri, Alexa or any of the other women lurking behind voice search technology, use of voice commands is escalating.

Prognosticators say that by 2020 50-percent of all searches will be via voice, reason enough to up your digital marketing strategies in the year ahead. Can Alexa predict names that will be added to the roster? Not yet—but error rates are declining, so ask away and you shall be rewarded by adding voice search to your 2019 marketing trends menu. Memo to copywriters: keep the tone conversational. Just because those voices come from cyborgs, that doesn’t mean the messaging they spew should sound like it came from a far-distant planet!