When crafting your marketing strategy, you will want to consider current trends so as to succeed in promoting your brand. With this regard, technology is changing the way businesses do their marketing. For example, improving user experience with your product will always yield amazing results. While there are some things that remain constant such as the value your product give to consumers, there are things that keep changing. Here's what entrepreneurs, marketers and business owners think are the best marketing trends so far;
#1- Two major trends
Facebook ads are becoming more expensive as more people are mastering the ads platform and competing for the same audiences. I've also noticed a reduction in the success of email marketing, especially since all the noise around GDPR kicked off. Good email campaigns are now only achieving Open Rates of between 20-40% and in most cases, Click-Through Rates are less than 5% which is terrible. It's really not worth the investment of time now and so small business owners are looking at other platforms to invest their time and money in.
Thanks to Robin Waite
#2- Increase of content repurposing
One of the best marketing trends I've observed going into this summer is the increase of content repurposing across various platforms. Utilizing the opportunity to place your content in front of the same user multiple times will increase your digital marketing efforts exponentially. A great example is video marketing; if your audience enjoys video content, Facebook Live may not be enough, you must also consider YouTube.The idea is to get in front of the right audience multiple times.
Thanks to Stephanie Rubio, SoVerve Marketing Group!
#3- The return of long-form value-focused content
The best marketing trend I've observed recently is the return of long-form value-focused content. For many years, the focus in content marketing seemed to be creating as many pieces of content as possible, resulting in a crazy number of 500-600 word blogs that didn't do a good job of informing the reader about anything. I see so many brands and individuals returning to a focus on informing the reader on a given topic, whether that takes 500 words (pretty rare) or 2000 words. This is a great way to get people engaged with your brand. We're also seeing people embracing this shift get rewarded by the search engines in their SEO efforts.
Thanks to Kim McCumber, Floodlight Training & Consulting!
#4- Narrowing of the gap between sales and marketing
The biggest trend I see is that of the gap between marketing and sales narrowing, both in terms of closer collaboration and in terms of the time it takes from a marketing lead to get transferred to sales. One example of this occurs in my company's Instant Demos product, where marketing can embed a lead form on web properties, where the lead information gets captured easily and added to their CRM, but sales is also notified immediately and the system searches for a sales agent to call the prospect. Reaction times are an area where marketing and sales need to collaborate closely, to great benefit as research has shown a huge (21x and more) increase in the likelihood of qualifying a lead if you call them back within 5 minutes of them showing an interest in your products or services.
Thanks to Jói Sigurdsson, CrankWheel!
#5- Building a great product
Over the past couple of years, almost every marketing channel has become noisy and crowded. To stand out, you've got to have a great product that gets customers talking. When someone has a positive experience with your product, they'll post to social media and spread the word for you. This kind of word of mouth cannot be faked or paid for. It can only be encouraged by building a quality product that you are proud of.
Thanks to Benjamin Lakoff, Intelligent Trading Foundation!
#6- Launching a side business as a long tail marketing tactic
An interesting marketing trend I have noticed recently involves launching a side business as a long tail marketing tactic to draw attention to your existing brand. One of the best examples of this was when MailChimp launched their Did you mean MailChimp? campaign where they launched several completely unrelated but similarly named products like WhaleSynth, KaleLimp, JailBlimp, and FailChips. WhaleSynth, for example, is an app that lets you make music using whale noises and has no connection to MailChimp's primary offering which is an autoresponder service. These products were all very unusual and off-the-wall however managed to earn MailChimp a lot of attention and backlinks from major news publications.
Thanks to David Alexander, Mazepress!
#7- User experience design
Don't be shy about investing time and resources into user experience design, both on the digital side and, if applicable, in the physical experience of your product or service. UX has never been more important: Technology has trained us to expect everything to be fast and easy, but at the same time, we expect brands to intuit the variations in our emotions throughout our purchase journeys and surface comprehensive answers and information on demand, as needed. Smart UX design is increasingly becoming the solve for these complex expectations. Start by auditing your competition: Where are they faster than you? Where are they more helpful? What are the things no one is doing that will solve a problem or ease a task for your target audience? Next, use tools like FullStory, hotjar, and User Testing to identify quick wins for UX optimization on your website, and to hear straight from consumers how they search for and discover what you're selling, and what they really think of how you're trying to sell it.
Thanks to Jamey Bainer, PACIFIC Digital Group!
#8- Content Experience is the new Customer Experience
Remember when the mix tape was the ultimate expression of a personalized gift? It was a highly curated gesture that showed care, insight and understanding about the recipient. Fast forward a few decades later and in a very similar way today's marketers are trying to reach this level of personalization to meet the increasing expectations of their customers. But with the average ABM strategy encompassing over 4,000 contacts (600 accounts x 6.8 contacts), marketing leaders are left struggling to achieve this level of personalization at scale. The good news is that advances in modern marketing, including Artificial Intelligence, can help marketers pick the right content (just like those songs) to suit the tastes of their audience in both a scalable and measurable way. By focusing on the quality and relevancy of the content experience (vs. merely content creation), marketers will drive higher engagement and customer loyalty.
Thanks to Randy Frisch, Uberflip!
#9- Twitter is making a comeback
After the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica debacle, we've seen a renewed interest in Twitter from both marketers and business owners. We're big fans of Twitter. You don't have to pay to ensure your content gets seen (Facebook and Instagram), and you don't have to be a B2C brand to find success (Instagram and Pinterest). Additionally, a lot of Twitter chats we participate in have gotten livelier with more participants. If Twitter isn't a big part of your marketing strategy, now is the time to reconsider!
Thanks to Monika Jansen, Jansen Communications!
#10- Three trends
Here are the trends I am most excited about that are helping successful brands come to life and break through the clutter and noise: Using Artificial Intelligence to get your audience more engaged Finding ways to leverage Virtual Reality to get your messages to your target audience. Transparency and honesty in all communications to be a brand customers can trust, brand integrity is more important than ever before
Thanks to Paige Arnof-Fenn, Mavens & Moguls!
#11-Voice Search
Digital assistants on mobile devices will continue to dramatically affect the way consumers search in 2018. According to ComScore, 40 percent of adults use voice search once per day. Twenty percent of searches are currently voice-related, which means they are likely to trigger a position 0 result (particularly on devices like Google Home and Amazon Alexa). That means local/location-based retailers must rank in the near me searches while larger national brands should aim to own answers to common industry questions as thought leadership strategy. Owing position 0 means you've doubled your real estate in select organic searches. Not only that, but on voice-enabled devices like Google Home, position 0 is the ONLY answer/result. That means you are more likely to get a new customer now or in the future.
Thanks to Kent Lewis, Anvil!
#12- Discrete Social Media Marketing
The biggest trend we are seeing right now in Digital Marketing is “Discrete Social Media Marketing”. This trend focuses on businesses with applications that allow the brand to directly push out hyper-personalized content notifications without going through a traditional social channel like, Facebook or Twitter. Companies like Amazon are already ahead of the game with their discrete social network called Spark:”. Instead of paying to play in social networks, where it’s crowded and reach is limited – personalized content app notifications have a 100% reach and zero dollars to push.
Thanks to Nate Meadows, Digital Radar!
#13- Interactive content
Interactive content is a key component of conversational marketing which will continue to thrive and become a larger piece of an organization’s sales and marketing strategy. It's all about education and engaging when the prospect or customer is in the moment. Consumers across all industries want to align with brands that share an ethos and help address their problems. Building empathy into your brand changes how people connect with and share their experience with others.
Thanks to Domenick Cilea, Springboard Public Relations!
#14- Concretization of the purchase funnel
The most significant evolution of advertising is the concretization of the purchase funnel in the digital era. Before digital performance marketing emerged, an effective ad was measured based on what people said through surveys and focus groups, churning out top of the funnel metrics like ad awareness, ad perception and ad retention scores. Today, we can measure an effective ad based on actions. We can track impressions, click-through rates, add-to-carts, purchases, and so on. In performance marketing, it's all about growing the business. If your ads do not convert audiences into customers, you lose. As creative people, we are obsessed with the idea of an aesthetically perfect ad that exudes the brand voice and mission. However, if you want to grow your business, driving highly optimized and efficient sales are paramount. Aesthetics and brand agenda should be there to serve that goal, but not be its master.
Thanks to Kevin Simonson, Metric Digital!
#15- CMOs who think like CFOs
Measuring the marketing contribution to revenue will become more crucial than ever for both marketing practitioners and for the software companies that build reporting and analytics tools for the marketers. CMOs that think like CFOs, or at least have a finance-first mentality, will offer modern thinking around justifying their spend.
Thanks to Jenna Weinerman, Updater!
#16- Receiving rave reviews and Geo-Fencing
As for a Marketing Trend that we have observed is receiving rave reviews and that we are just now dipping our toes in is Geo-Fencing, both for digital push announcements and post-visit advertising. We have discovered that by Geo-Fencing our competition we can better determine if potential clients are shopping and comparing on price. For our clients, we have positioned Geo-Fencing for trade shows to promote and draw visitors to their booths. For law office clients we have Geo-Fenced hospitals, car repair shops and the courthouse, depending on their specialty. The ease of and specificity of Geo-Fencing really enables pin-point targeting and efficient budget utilization. For the most part you are presenting your ads to people that truly are potential clients. As this technology becomes more popular it will explode in availability and use. For now it is a trend that has yet to receive the attention it deserves or the level of utilization it can fulfill. This is a trend that is right now at the base of the marketing mountain with nowhere to go but up!
Thanks to Ed McMasters, FUSIONWRX!
#17-Out-Teaching Your Competition
Content marketing may be trendy, but not everyone is using it to its full potential. Businesses and entrepreneurs should strive to out-teach their competition. It’s not just about creating engaging content, it’s creating helpful content.. When you provide something your customers can actually use you build trust and credibility. After trust and credibility come new clients or customers. Examples of brands giving away great useful content include Moz, Hubspot, and CoSchedule. You’ll know you’re doing it right when you feel like you should be charging for the information.
Thanks to Brian Dooley, Independence Digital!
#18- Increasing role in chatbots for front-line customer service
You are going to see an increasing role in chatbots for front-line customer service and customer engagement. Customers and prospects are less inhibited to engage a bot with early stage questions. It feels like a lower commitment to chat with a bot than a human. Humans join the conversation at some point with context and are able to bring even more value to the conversation.. This will be most effective when companies focus their bots on serving their customers. Maintain the mindset of serving and your marketing will transform with the era of the bots.
Thanks to Craig Andrews, allies4me!