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7 marketing trends to take advantage of in 2019

7 marketing trends to take advantage of in 2019

The world of marketing is constantly changing, especially in the modern era of social media, automated ad tech and audience analytics. Brands need to stay on top of these changes to successfully reach their audiences, especially as consumers become savvier and more skeptical of advertising. 

  • Interactive Content 

Many brands, especially in the B2B space, have relied on blog content or PDF content (white papers and guides) to generate leads as part of their content marketing strategy. This year, you can expect interactive web experiences to take the lead in engaging visitors – experiences that display thought leadership content in more compelling, animated and visual ways. 

  • User-Generated Content 

In the next year, consumers will crave authenticity from brands. Our recent survey showsthat 86% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they support, and 60% say user-generated content (UGC) is the most authentic form of content. By integrating trusted and engaging UGC throughout their multichannel marketing efforts, brands can win consumers’ hearts and wallets 

  • Chatbots 

Chatbots are popping up everywhere, both in Facebook and other live chat solutions. As chat-based AI takes off, I expect to see more chatbots being utilized in everything – answering FAQs, placing orders and getting in touch with customer service. Marketers should be on the front lines embedding sales material and messaging as their company rolls them out to ensure they drive real value. 

  • Account-Based Content marketing 

Account-Based content marketing will help B2B companies target unique personas as individuals within a company. Marketers now have the opportunity to steer away from a one-size-fits-all advertising approach to a highly targeted, unique user experience, leveraging a customized content journey with micro-sites, landing pages, images and/or calls-to-action. 

  • Educating Consumers 

As decision makers are being inundated with data – and we all know that data is different from knowledge – we must as marketers strive to be educators. Buyers are creating their own paths to purchase, and we have the opportunity to showcase and highlight key objectives and knowledge base points for the end consumer. By making content easy to understand and locate, we can capture mindshare. 

  • Experiential Marketing 

Experiential and event marketing are seeing a big resurgence, and brands will lean in even more to those types of marketing activations. I think that music tour sponsorships will have new life because of this – brands can do even cooler venue activations that audiences interact with, and they’ll get broadcast out to a much larger digital audience. 

  • Influencer Marketing 

Influencer marketing has been trending up and was the marketing buzzword and hot topic in 2018. In 2019, I expect job openings to surface specifically for in-house influencer marketing, and for influencers to act as the new media buy at a more efficient cost. It will take some time to nail it, but you might as well start now.