2019 Marketing Trends We Loved
As 2019 comes to a close in just a few short days, let’s reflect back on Marketing Trends we loved this past year. Oftentimes marketing is misunderstood and thought of as the team that makes the “pretty pictures” or “wordsmiths” everything - when that is simply not the case. Marketing is a lead generator just as much as sales with less emphasis on instant gratification and a focus more on planting seeds and patience. Marketing’s efforts often go unnoticed as they deal with the “back end” of things a lot and are a gradual process...basically, marketing efforts don’t happen overnight. Just like with anything, marketing deals with ever-changing trends. What’s hot in marketing 6 months ago, may be dated today. So, let’s dive in shall we?
CRM’s- Are CRM’s a trend? We don’t know but we sure do love them! This year at ApplicantOne we began integrating HubSpot as our CRM of choice and haven’t looked back since. It’s improved our Sales and Marketing efforts and we’ve only just begun. If you’re new to marketing you may be wondering “what is a CRM?” To put it simply, CRM stands for: Customer Relationship Management. This software/system allows for easier interactions between a company and its clients/customers, both current and potential. For example, our CRM, HubSpot is a full stack of software for marketing, sales, and customer service with a CRM at its core. CRMs also allow for a more omnichannel strategy as it brings together Marketing and Sales in a way that allows them to work more in unison as one department rather than two differing departments operating on two different planes.
Chatbots- Chatbots are often overlooked but they’re a huge benefit to the marketing team as well as a company site. If you’re unsure of what exactly a chatbot is - we’re sure you’ve experienced one before - but they're automated messaging pop-ups that appear on websites and simulate a human interaction. It’s important to note that chatbots are not for full-purpose chatting, rather, they have a very specific goal, messaging system, and target. For example, if you’re on an airline’s site, a chatbot may appear and say “Have questions? I’m here to help!” If you need help, you can click the chatbot and say “I have a question about my upcoming flight”- the chatbot will then direct you to a human in reservations and voila - easier than calling and waiting on the phone and gets straight to the point too! If you haven’t considered a chatbot for your marketing site - now’s the time!
Influencer Marketing- With the rise of social media comes the rise of the influencers. If you’re unaware, social media influencers and business-related influencers have a ton of pull over their social platform(s). They typically have a large audience full of business hopefuls waiting for that beautiful pearl of knowledge to fall into their lap at any given moment. With all this being said - influencer marketing has sky-rocketed. Many brands and companies use influencer marketing to promote their brand, campaign, or upcoming event. It proves beneficial for the face of an influencer to promote a brand as it proves the brand to be trustworthy, worthy of purchase, and popular to those in power and of high esteem. Haven’t considered influencer marketing yet? Perhaps it’s time to try.
Personalization- You may read this and think, “what does personalization have to so with marketing?” Well, marketing is the face of a company, the liaisons between the public and those within the company and it’s vital to a company that a personalized brand and marketing strategy be put to use. Personalization is also key when dealing with clients as it allows a tailored response to their needs, issues, or concerns. Instapage has this to say on the subject:
Marketing personalization, also known as personalized marketing or one-to-one marketing, is the practice of using data to deliver brand messages targeted to an individual prospect. This method differs from traditional marketing, which mostly relied on casting a wide net to earn a small number of customers. With billboards, cold calls, mailings, and more, traditional marketing emphasized quantity of messages over their relevance. Later, analytics became more sophisticated and data on individual prospects grew. Today, marketers take advantage of both to deliver prospects the most relevant message at the ideal time.
Video, Video, Video- A major trend we saw this past year and a trend we expect to continue to see is the use of videos. Videos have been proven to be more effective as it’s more eye catching and allows for visuals as opposed to a simple photo or infographic. HubSpot’s Blog says: “Video has absolutely dominated social. According to a recent HubSpot Research report, four of the top six channels on which global consumers watch video are social channels. Why is this important? If you aren't creating video, you're likely falling behind. But don't fret. For most videos, the more simple and raw it is, the more authentic the content seems … and that's what really matters to your audience. Better yet, video production is more cost-effective than ever — you can shoot in high-quality, 4K video with your smartphone.”
Social Media Stories- These days, most social networking platforms contain some sort of “story” option such as Facebook, Instagram, and obviously, Snapchat. Stories are a great way to grab someone's attention if they aren’t seeing your posts in their feed due to analytics or algorithm. Stories are where you can be informal, test engagement, share video, gifs, creations, etc. It’s a useful tool that will definitely help widen your audience and boost the views of your social postings. Check out these interesting stats from Socially Sorted regarding social stories:
Snapchat, Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status represent more than 450M daily active users combined.
47% of Snapchat story users who've already created Instagram Stories now prefer Instagram Stories.
The most popular stories for a brand on Instagram are based on Merchandise content. This is followed by social media stories that give an “Inside Look” or involve a Guest Takeover or those that showcase an Event.
The most active industries on Instagram are Fitness (73%) and Fashion (70%). This is followed up by Retail, Technology and Airplanes!
The number of Sponsored posts on Instagram should reach more than 32M by 2019.
SEO A/B Split Testing- Did you know that marketing takes part in hundreds of experiments every single week? If you didn’t, you do now! Marketers are constantly involved in a process of trial and error - trying to uncover what does and doesn’t work every single day. Some things skyrocket that were expected to fail and some things fail that were expected to skyrocket. One experiment that marketers conduct is called an “A/B Split Test”. This is a random experiment with two variables (A & B) and has two hypotheses or outcomes that they expect to perform better or worse. For example, a marketer may use an email campaign as apart of this test. They may send out two versions of the same email, tweaked a bit, and see which one performs well. Typically, something minor such as a statistic at the beginning or an interesting grab line. You never know what test will perform better than the other so consider A/B testing next time you’re sending an email and see what happens.
What was your favorite marketing trend this year? What do you hope to see in 2020?