At the beginning of every year the marketing department of every company on the planet are thinking about a new strategic marketing plan… or at least they’d better be thinking about one (as quickly as possible).
The phrase that says “if you do not have an online presence, you do not exist” is very true, BUT it’s not sufficient in 2019. You need to know what channels are better to focus on, what tools you need to use in order to attract new clients this year.
This is the 5th consecutive year when Hot in Social Media is asking some of the most experienced marketers around the world about their opinions on the 2019 digital marketing trends. Also, this year is the first time ever when we’ve asked and received video answers from top marketers, and we’ve succeeded to make the only digital marketing video roundup for 2019 with all the 18 answers we’ve received.
If you want to keep up with digital marketing trends in 2019, you’ll have to monitor the web far and wide with a dedicated tool like Brand24. Thousands of companies are using Brand24 to get instant access to online mentions about their brand, but also track the most important marketing trends, detailed statistics, and data all year round.
Without any more introductions, I want to say a big THANK YOU to all the marketers that spent a few minutes to record and send me their opinions, and if you are serious about digital marketing in 2019… you’ll have to watch the video below right now.
What are the Most Important Digital Marketing Trends in 2019?
Neal Schaffer
CEO, PDCA Social
For digital marketing in 2019 chatbot technology on websites will become mainstream, so learn to leverage or better utilize this technology.
Miri Rodriguez
Storyteller at Microsoft
Artificial Intelligence will integrate itself more in digital marketing and help us provide a more simplified and personal customer experience. But empathy will drive the H2H connection when we share the brand story.
Jason Falls
Director of Digital Strategy
Connecting the dots of data to the outcomes of marketing initiatives.
Jessika Phillips
Founder & Relationship Marketing System
2019 will be the Year Companies embrace using social media to build a better relationship with their audience.
One thing is for sure, the trends of Digital Marketing will continue to change. New shiney social media tools and apps release almost daily so the key isn’t to focus on your technique, not the tool, app or trend.
Your approach each and every year is to focus on building better relationships with your audience but this will be exceptionally true in 2019 as social media sites and Google reward better content, engagement and overall relationship marketing practices through showing brand that follow these practices more in the newsfeed and penalizing brands who try to cut corners.
To build a better relationship marketing approach in 2019 you can; Take a look at your goals, identify your ideal audience, then decide how you can use Social Media and online marketing to better serve that audience.
The goal is to out C.A.R.E. everyone in your space.
C-Capture attention through helpful, engaging or entertaining content.
A-Articulate your message
R- Relationship approach to serving your audience, collaborating with like-minded people within your space,
E- Experiences that are -Exceptional is the brand goal. You do this through engagement on and off your website. Pretend that each person dealing with your company will be the spokesperson for your company. What would you want them to say, what kind of experience would you like them to have on your website, searching on Google to find you, engaging with you on social media.
Use this outline to plan out your year of what you want to accomplish within your goals, who you want to work with and then take a look at the top social media sites that audience will be hanging out on. Focus on putting the “social” back in social media.
Jeff Korhan
Keynote Speaker, Author & Founder of Landscape Digital Institute
Marketing is a conversation. When digital marketing encourages conversations the business learns how to serve its audience. That engagement produces useful data that reliably predicts future buying behavior.
Ted Rubin
The Rubin Organization
If brands are hoping to stay relevant and keep up with the content creation phenomenon, 2019 needs to be the year of Empowering Employees to Power your Brand.
It’s plain and simple—employee censorship on social channels is a disaster for brands. We can no longer control the message folks. The social framework is “bigger and stronger” than our puny frameworks. Instead of fighting it every step of the way, USE it to your advantage, or you’ll pay a steep price in diminished return. Your employees are the best way to humanize and personalize your brand… and truly the best way to scale relevant, contextual content creation
Did you know that employee created content (ECC) receives eight times more engagement than content shared from the company itself? On top of that, employee content extends brand messaging by over 500%. Crazy, right? So why aren’t more companies getting employees engaged in content creation? It’s well known that companies with engaged employees outperform their peers; involving employees in content creation can help to create a sense of common purpose.
The truth of the matter is that the social evolution is a business evolution. Only by changing our old frameworks can we possibly hope to succeed—because social has completely altered the business landscape. #ROE… Return on Employees.
Empower your Employees and they will Power your brand.
#RetailRelevancy… #NoLetUp!
Ingrid Kibler
Sr. Social Media Manager
With technological advancements like 5G and AI, our world is becoming faster and more personalized. That’s what our customers are quickly becoming accustomed to, and that’s what they’ll expect from brands.
From both the digital and social media marketing perspective, that means even more seamless integration among systems, closer collaboration among teams and evolving our language, creative and delivery to become more personalized and conversational.
Matei Psatta
Co-founder TPS Engage
3 main trends – Comprehensive PPC reporting with more focus on business impact rather than social metrics, automation for customer support – especially in Telecom, Banking, Retail, and a more “funky” personality for brands targeting youngsters (since it’s clear that the old approach is not working)
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer
Less traffic. Or at least less traffic from search. Or at least lower clickthrough rates from organic search results. The better Google gets at keeping their visitors (adding features, increasing CTR for ads and Google products, creating no-click SERPs) the less traffic they’ll be sending to high ranking pages. This trend started long ago and will continue forever.
Also in 2019, the fake part of the internet will exponentially. I expect a spike in fake clicks, fake likes, fake views, and fake visits. Look for lots of lawsuits. Advertisers will expect better data from platforms like Facebook.
Virginia Zuloaga
Social Media Specialist for Industrial B2Bs / Founder of Brieffin Consulting
There’s an invaluable exchange of online information and data between consumers and brands, and we must take this opportunity to evolve and improve towards consumer’s demands with strategy, consistency
Julia Campbell
Chief Digital Storyteller
One of the most important digital marketing trends going into 2019 is a complete mindset shift around tools first to community first marketing.
Brands that focus on their audience and their communities as their priority, rather than the specific platforms they want to use, will flourish.
Marketers get fixated on specific platforms, tools, and shiny new objects – without taking the time to figure out what their online community needs and wants.
Tools and trends come and go. Companies and brands need to stop asking what the tools can do for them, and start focusing on how to use the tools to provide value to their customers and supporters.
Gini Dietrich
Founder and Author
Is it meta to say that video is one of the most important digital marketing trends of 2019 because I’m doing a video talking about video as a trend? Yes, it’s going to continue to increase. We certainly have seen it this year, but that’s going to be something that just continues to rise up.
I think the statistic is something like 67 percent of us are visual learners, so the giving people the ability to learn visually on video versus the written text or even audio is the way to go. Plus it really provides an interesting human aspect to context and body language to all of your content. So video, video, video, make sure you’re doing it.
Viveka von Rosen
Chief Visibility Officer
When it comes to digital marketing and digital sales in 2019, I think it’s crucial that we begin to think about how to blend the two departments. Especially in the digital space.
Sales professionals are going to have to start thinking like marketers, and marketers will have to star feeding sales the content they need in order to start conversations with their prospects.
The alignment is absolutely crucial.
What we’ve done at Vengreso is transformed our Content Marketing department into a Content for Sales Enablement department. We now focus on creating exactly the right content that our sales folks need for every step of the buyer’s journey. Without a sales department, marketing doesn’t have a job, but without the right content, sales can’t position themselves as advocates and as thought leaders within their industry
Marji J. Sherman
Founder, Sherman Social
Digital Out of Home is one of the most important digital marketing trends for 2019. It is a perfect way to capture a large audience while they are bored at the grocery store, doctor’s office
Ravi Shukle
Social Media Coach
Deliver personalized content to your customers. Understand their interests and needs and target content to meet those needs.
Sandra Clayton
Founder Conversion Minded
More companies will use chatbots to engage with their customers and compliment email marketing. Live videos, strategic partnerships
Anna Bennett
Founder White Glove Social Media Marketing
Let me frame this answer in the context of Pinterest.
The use of a tool called Lens is one of the most important trends for 2019.
Remember Pinterest is a search engine. Lens is just another way to search using Pinterest.
Pinterest rolled out its first visual search tool called “Lens” in 2015. It’s a real-time visual search tool embedded in the camera of the Pinterest App. It allows you to discover products anytime you point your phone camera from your Pinterest app at something.
What’s the big deal about the Lens?
Did you ever spot something you loved but couldn’t find the words to describe it? Pinterest has solved that problem with the Lens. Let’s say on your last trip your eye was drawn to the lighting fixture in the hotel lobby. You thought to yourself I love that! I gotta have it! Well, all you need to do is open the Pinterest app on your mobile device and tap the camera icon in the search bar. Next, take a picture of the item in question by tapping the white circular button on the screen and Pinterest will then show you images of those exact or similar products.
The Lens has been a big hit on Pinterest with searches on Lens increasing 140% between February 2017-2018. What that means for businesses is to keep the Lens tool in mind as you set up your Pinterest accounts and make sure the pictures you take of your products are shot from the front and center because it will deliver better search results for the shopper.
Another ambitious visual search tool Pinterest has produced is called “Shop the Look” and it is specifically designed for fashion and home decor products.
Shop the Look pins have white dots hovering over the different parts of an outfit or a room. Therefore make sure your product images are shot from the front and center. When people tap on the white dots Pinterest will show the exact or similar products featured in the pin. When they’re ready to buy, your customers click the pin and go to your site to buy.
Visual search will be huge in 2019. Take advantage of it to drive more business.
Flo Le Mens
Social Media Advisor, Social media coordinator for QUT, Social Media Freelancer, Blogger
Voice search. Page two of Google is not the place to hide a dead body but result 2. Search behaviour changes with a question and user expects one best answer. Longer and more specific search queries will prevail.
It’s important to stay on top of digital marketing trends, but also remain sane when dealing with so much social media. Hot social media software is good for both. We’ve tried many and recommend you try the ones we’ve tested as well, to see which one can help you stay on top of your game.
