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Soon you’ll be buying a new calendar for the year 2019. Okay let’s enjoy the summer first but here are 6 marketing trends that you should take under consideration already.

 

#1 AR

AR (augmented reality) got people’s attention at the latest when Pokémon Go hooked a lot of children and adults too. In marketing AR offers an opportunity to amaze, awaken feelings and create an experience that actually sticks in your mind. For example Pepsi made standing on a bus stop a level more exciting and now you can even find what you are looking for in a grocery store with the help of technology. With AR the world is our oyster.

AR is an ability to integrate digital data to a realtime experience and with the help of it you can take customer service one step higher. During year 2019 we will most likely see more use of AR in marketing. How can you amaze your customers with AR?

 

#2 VOICE SEARCH

Voice search will change the search engine optimization (SEO), because nearly half of all the searches will be voice searches by the end of year 2020. The new way of searching information have to be taken into account in the website’s contents. The way we form sentences speaking is different from writing them.

Machine learning AI-assistants like Siri and Alexa sort out all the relevant information online based on the voice search. There is a day coming when your office table and home is full of machines like Alexa and Siri that make life easier. Marketeers need to be ready to answer the question: How do I market to machines instead of people?

 

#3 CHATBOTS

AI is here and it will change marketing – This is what we have heard dozens of times. We have also heard that you should already be aboard with AI – this I don’t really buy yet but of course you need to know about the topic. The fact that AI is a part of marketing daily even in smaller companies, is not going to happen in year 2019. For example only 7% of year 2017 Cannes Lion's winner’s use AI in daily marketing.

Chatbots will become a norm in few years. Chatbots are conversational marketing and they are a positive step forward. Of course it is annoying to chat with a chatbot that doesn’t understand you but they will develop in the near future.

What about in Finland where most of the companies are small and middle-sized? Developing the chatbot takes up a lot of time, resources and investments – Where does a small company get these?

 

#4 PERSONALIZATION

Along GDPR the opportunities of targeted advertising got smaller. Ad blocking is more popular than ever - #adlergic is a trend. Sponsored content is not as trusted as non-sponsored. And the list goes on – People don’t like adverts. This is why advertising needs to be targeted, personalized and real. Personalized advertising offers the experience to the customer based on his previous behaviour. It can be completely unique to different people.

The future of email marketing is in real time, behaviour based and personalized communication. Marketing automation makes this possible. Automation technology takes care that the customer receives the right kind of content at the right moment. Automation technology works with triggers: It initiates after different actions (triggers) that the website visitor does.

When getting started with email marketing it’s easily forgotten that the actual goal of email marketing is to create conversation. And in modern conversational marketing the selling needs to be left on the background.

 

#5 PURPOSE

When the news of chaotic world dominate the news and social media, responsibilty , justice and purpose become a more important part of companies every day communication. When you do good, share the story! Today’s consumers assume that companies do a lot more than just offer their own services and products. Ethical, ecological and responsible operations are trending right now. Purpose will become one of the basis in marketing and something that customers expect.

 

#6 VIDEOS

According to one prediction more than 70% of webstreaming will be videos by the year 2020. Another prediction shows that more than 80% of webstreaming will be videos already by 2019. The importance of videos in marketing can not be highlighted more. Videos will eat the web. In Youtube, Facebook and Instagram videos are being watched more than million hours daily.

Because the popularity and production of videos has already been huge, you need to be creative to get people’s attention. For example adding a video to an email can lift up the click percentage more than 300%!

With videos we don’t only mean Youtube and fancy brand videos. In addition to these the realtime video services are getting very popular. People actually watch live videos 3 times more than edited ones. Along with algorithm change the organic visibility in different social media channels have come crashing down. Instagram Stories and Facebook Live help to tackle this problem and this way you can reach more people in social media.

Does it feel like the year 2017 happened in a blink of an eye. Yes, we do too. We gatherd together some trends that will definitely be seen 2018 in the world of marketing. Most of these you probably already know, but we think these trends will strenghten their status during next year. Here is a list of few marketing trends of 2018 to keep an eye on.

 

1. Data protection

GDPR (General data protection regulation) has been one of the most discussed topic of the year, in the world of marketing. GDPR EU’s new data protection regulation applies nerly every company, one way or another. GDPR comes into force May 2018 and by then every company needs to take it into account in every day work.

GDPR is not really a trend but it’s signification is so huge that it deserves it’s place in this trend list. You can read more about GDPR from our blog.

 

2. Content marketing

More and more companies have taken content marketing as a part of their marketing strategy, for a reason. Content marketing produces nearly three times more leads and is significantly cost effective than traditional marketing. The idea is to create content that intrests your target group, produces added value and helps your customers during different states of the buying process.

The power of contents is bigger than you would imagine and the value of content marketing is going to grow even more in the near future. Only during last year there was about 200 milliard euros spent on content marketing and by the research of Technavio (2017) this number will grow up to 400 milliard euros during the next four years.

 

3. Personalization

Marketing communicating is becoming more and more personalized and the experience of the received marketing communication can be very unique to different people. Customers are more demanding and press the unsubscribe- and hide- buttons way more easier. Everything for everyone just doesn’t work anymore and if your content isn’t targeted to the right person, it might loose the whole meaning. The personalization and targeting of the contents is possible to do with a technique like marketing automation. Marketing automation has been a slowly growing trend for a long time know, and we believe it will keep growing it’s popularity in 2018.

Marketing automation is definitely the word of the day in marketing. Automation techniques are constantly developing towards more powerfull and usefull tools for sales and marketing to use in every day work. The results of marketing automation can be seen in the amount of the warm and quality leads. By combining efficient content marketing and marketing automation, you get the most out of your automation.

 

4. #nofilter

The world is done with the polished images, and photoshop. People want to see more authenticity. Autenticity will most likely become one of the keys in marketing. The contents will become more real, which you can already see in the growing popularity of live streaming. Brands need to find the courage to be #nofilter.

5. Videos

Researches show that video contents, get a lot more attention online and get more views, reactions, clicks and shares than other published contents. Youtube is the second most popular website in Finland, so it’s clear that videos are very efficient way of marketing.

Facebook live, Snapchat and Instagram stories. Does your company use some of these already? In addition to traditional videos, different videoservices are becoming more common all the time. People watch livevideos three times more than traditional cutted videos, but 2016 there was only a tiny fracture of marketeers exploiting this. Videos will become more common, even though this trend has been seen in marketing for years now.

 

6. AR & AI

Augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence have made their way into popular tools in marketing. Game industry has exploit the augmented reality for years now, huge thing for AR was Pokemon Go. Same kind of use of AR will most likely bee seen more in marketing in 2018.

Also it’s appearence in the field of marketing has done artificial intelligence. You can see this in the personalization of content and communication. AI is most seen in Chat services. Instead of having a person helping the customer in the chat, there is an always ready AI on the other side of the screen. Now is the time to get on board with artificial intelligence because it will grow it’s popularity during next year.

 

7. Instagram and LinkedIn

There is a lot going on in social media channels these days. The number of Instagram users is growing fastly and ”Stories” overtook Snapchats number of users in less than a year. Snapchat has experienced a huge downturn with the number of users and with the value of the stock. It has been said, that Instagram will become more popular social media channel than Facebook, also in B2B marketing world.

Twitters number of users didn’t grow in 2017, because the service has been focusing on getting more users instead of developing itself. Opposite from Twitter, LinkedIn’s popularity is growing constalty and it’s becoming a very efficient tool for B2B marketeers. It’s also developing all the time. Whilst Twitter is dying slowly, LinkedIn will strenghten it’s position as an powerfull tool for B2B marketeers to use.

 

 

Does the year 2018 still seem to be so far away? We both anyway know that we'll find ourselves sending Christmas cards and making New Year's promising sooner than we could imagine. We think these 5 would be the most interesting digital marketing trends for SMes in 2018. Pay attention at least for these 5: 

 

#1 VISUALITY

"A picture is worth a thousand words" quote is coming more and more important in digital marketing. Communition between a customer and a company is more and more visual: Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook are necessities. According to a report released by CISCO, even 80% of all consumer Internet traffic in 2018 will be from consumer video traffic. Videos have been trending lately and their popularity is still increasing. Also live streaming is getting more popular day by day (also Instagram started on this area with My Stories). 

ABout 20%  of our brain only prosesses visual data and we process visual data much faster than text. Your website is very often the first impression of your company - What kind of first impression you want to give? Visuality is more important than ever but also remeber that visuality itself it is not enough. You can read our previous blogpost of that topic. 

#2 HUMANIZING BRANDS

Social media has humanized brand lately a lot. Behind all that beautiful visuality people are interested of authentity: Be you, be sometimes also #nofilter. Speak as a human to human. Tell a story and let your brands personality shine everywhere. Instead of bought pictures fros stocks, use real pics of real people - your colleagues. Also with live streaming you can humanize your brand. Be funny and be real. 

#3 CUSTOMER-CENTRIC CONTENT

 

In digital marketing we are goind towards customer-centric and personal content. This is a step ahead from campaign or target based marketing. Communication for one customer can be an unique experience. Marketing automation is the tool behind this and the importance of marketing automation is getting bigger and bigger. It takes care that all different customers are treated the way they should. Communication happens based on the behavior of a customer. Read more about start package.

 

#4 FROM NEWSLETTERS TO CUSTOMER MAGAZINES

Even though many companies try to get rid of emails,, ”inbox zero”, email is still one of the best ways to get in touch with decision makers. It it one of the most udes tools within companies. But you only have such a tiny time to get the attention of your audience with an email. Instead of special promotions and campaigns, give your audionc valuable informations - customer magazine is a new newsletter. Why someone would like to receive emails from you voluntarily? Tell your best stories compactly in your customer magaine and send it regurlarly - for example once a month. 

 

#5 AR & VR

AR eli augmented reality and IR virtual reality seem promising in digital marketing. Game industry has takes advantage of these already for some years and for exampke Pokémon Go is a great viral example of AR lately.  How could you take an advantage of AR and IR in your business?

A trend or a fad? How do you know which one is it? If you start planning marketing strategy based on fads, you're in trouble. We have seen QR codes, Pokémon Go and Periscope come and go. Fads like Fidget Spinner, come popular very quickly but they disappear as fast as they arised.

But of course you can also create value with fads. For exampke Norwegian used Brangelina's divorce for promoting cheap flights to LA with slogan "Brad is single" and Ice Bucket Challenge was hude deal globally. But if you start thinking fads like they were trende, you'll lose your investments for that. Energy, time and money is wasted if you make decisions based on fads.

Trends instead are worth the investments since they grow in time. They don't reach that big audience in such a sort time than fads but their popularity grows in time. They come from customer needs and actually consumer behavior leads the way for trends. For exampke we can say that social media is now a trend and selfies are a fad.

 

5 digital marketing trends in 2018

Fads come and go but trends grow and stay. Pay attention for at least these 5 trends in digital marketing 2018:

 

#1 VISUALITY

#2 HUMANIZING BRANDS

#3 CUSTOMER-CENTRIC CONTENT

#4 FROM NEWSLETTERS TO CUSTOMER MAGAZINES

#5 AR & IR

 

We think these 5 are the most important trends for SMes in digital marketing 2018. Read the blogtext from here or send whole report to your email (in Finnish):

 

a saamme lisämaustetta arkipäiväämme.

Marketing trends 2017

We picked the most important topics of marketing trends for the year 2017. We believe these six issues are something you should at least concider when planning the year of marketing 2017.

 

Change has become permanent. The cornestone of marketing, 4P, is not disappearing but it has to cope with the changes digitalization brings. There are two type of trends: short ones (like Pokemon Go) come and go and more permanent ones stay and grow. We hope more customer focud, social and responsible marketing. Videos, automation ja mobile usage continues stronger than ever. 

 

VIDEOS

The trend of using videos in marketing continues even stronger than last year. Videos are especially watched with mobile devices: 50% of people watch videos with their mobile phones at least once a week. Short videos work well and opporunities for video marketing increse. For example Marks&Spences listed Koskenkorva based on the brands new videos.

Video live streaming is also getting more and more popular. Snapchat and Periscope focus on live streaming and Facebook Live and Instagram stories launched their live streaming opportunities last year.

 

MOBILE

Mobile devices are more used than desktop in many services. For example more than 50% of search engine searches are made with mobile devices and more than 90% of Facebook usage is made mobile. Use of desktop is decreasing and potential customers spend their time in web more and more with mobile devices.

Also the amount of apps is increasing day by day. There are plenty of opportunities od companies to utilixe apps in their business.

 

MARKETING AUTOMATION

The cloud services in digital marketing, like marketing automation, are becoming more popular. The services of marketing automation become better all the time and there are many different options for different kinds of companies. It will become a necessity in business within a few years.

 

MORE PRECISE SEGMENTATION

Marketing, sales and customer service are becoming one and the customer experience is in the middle of all the actions. Getting your message through in this jugle of too much content in the web is difficult. There has been created more content in the web in two year more than there has ever been.

The best way to reach potential customers is to create unique and personalized content and segment target market more precise. The significance of unique content is becoming huge and more precise segmentation is needed to reach the target market. 

 

SOCIAL SELLING

Even three out of for Twitter users are waiting an answer for their question in social media within an hour of time after asking. It'se time to fix your customer service, sales and marketing in socia media. Social media is part of daily life and important channel for customers. Companies need to be present in social media and social selling is becoming a norm. 

Social media is changing all the time too. Especially the youth are using more restricted social media channels (for example Snapchat and Whatsapp). Reaching target market is more difficult but same time this creates an opportunity for more personalized dialogue with potential customers. 

 

RESPONSIBILITY

When the events of chaotic World are domitaning the news and social media, responsibility and equity are becoming more important in the daily base in companies. And if you do good things, don't forget to tell! Use those responsible acts in your marketing communications too. Ethicalness and responsibility should be a base for all the other acts.