34 Marketing Trends and Forecasts for 2019 From Experts – Do They Match Yours?

“Companies that speak in the language of the pitch are no longer speaking to anyone.” – The Cluetrain Manifesto

Today marketing is centered around personalization. It’s about having a one-to-one conversation with your prospects and customers through their preferred medium and their preferred time. That’s why more and more companies have started integrating technology such as automation into marketing to build a seamless customer journey and to hyper-personalize their communication.

With technologies and user behavior changing so swiftly, how does one stay current? What if a new competitor, a new technology, or tools cause cracks in your concrete marketing plans? To help you say razor focussed on your marketing goals, we spoke to these 34 top thought leaders in the business today. They’ve spoken about the changes in AI, the driving force for analytics, marketing automation, blockchain and everything else that will define the way we market in 2019.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

According to Capgemini, 3 out of 4 organizations implemented AI and ML and saw a 10% increase in the sale of new products and services. Marketers believe it would give them more clarity on the problems that customers face and help in improving customer experience. It will also revolutionize marketing by making it more interactive. Here’s what the experts in the field had to say about it.

I look forward to advances in AI that will help marketers gain deeper insight while automating more of our marketing work intelligently while maintaining complete control of our brand, content, and digital actions.  – Neal Schaffer, CEO PDCA Social, Forbes Top 5 Social Media Influencer

Consent before content. In 2019, companies will focus on their data management strategies and use modern data management technologies. – Ajay Khanna, VP Marketing, Reltio.

For 2019 interactive marketing will be popular.” – Karla Campos, Founder, Social Media Sass

Machine Learning will continue to drive better optimization and Artificial Intelligence will answer complex questions for marketers.” – Shreyansh Modi, Head of Affiliate Marketing, Flipkart

Analytics

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that analytics and marketing are inseparable. Marketers rely on analytics to analyze the performance of the campaigns, listen to what the data has to tell them, plan the next set of actions based on the data, and remove silos to build a unified customer experience.

The marketing silo will die. – Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CEO, Sociabakers

Companies will learn the art of listening.” – Rebecca Martin, CMO, Calabrio

Automation

According to a study, the marketing automation market worldwide is going to grow from $11.4 billion in 2017 to $25.1 billion in 2023. Marketing automation is no longer restricted to large enterprises; even small-medium businesses have started using it as it helps them in improving customer experience.

CX, essentially, is the: marketing strategy. The trends in tech are going to be around customer experience tools that use automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to deliver increasingly relevant results. – Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré, SaaS Consultant

For practical tips to automate business and scale quickly, read this article.

Blockchain

After making its way into banking and financial industry, marketers are finally paving the way for blockchain. Marketers believe that besides improving customer experience, blockchain will bring in transparency in ad buys and improve customer engagement.

Blockchain will gradually begin to be considered a fundamental component of marketing.”  – Sam Hurley, Founder at OPTIM-EYEZ, Speaker and Influencer

Content Marketing

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories, you tell.”, said Seth Godin, Bestselling Author, and Blogger. Marketing is a perfect example of how technology and creativity can work together without any interruptions. While marketers rely on technology to personalize the customer journey, they understand that it is content that will fuel the success of the journey. Content marketing has evolved from mere text to various other formats that aid the prospect at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Let’s look at some of the predictions from the experts.

The Hottest New Job Position: Chief Content Officer (CCO) – Jillian Smith,  head of content, SendGrid

The quest for relevance will see content producers utilize better technology, better analytics, and better workflows. – Diptakirti Chaudhuri, Head – Marketing, Manipal Global Education Services

Use of short videos with sub-titles, portrait mode videos, and voice will dominate 2019. – Erik J. Olson, Founder, and CEO of Array Digital, Award-winning digital marketer

Content marketing in 2019 will demand more brains and most of all more heart. – George Stenitzer, Founder & Chief Content Officer, Crystal Clear Communications. Co-Inventor of Message Maps

I look forward to larger adoption of voice tools at the consumer end in India. – Hardik Joshi, Digital & Social Media Head – Brand Marketing, Axis Bank

In 2019, marketers will shift more of their budgets to video production. – Jonathan Holloway, Director of Strategy, NoExam.com

In 2019, large players will begin the shift towards localizing content to suit culture. – Nikhil Kant, Head – Social Media and Digital Content, Uber

The industry will also get more creative with content formats. – Shane Barker, Digital Strategist, and Brand & Influencer Consultant

Organizations will increase their content marketing budgets and focus more on a meaningful content strategy. – Theodore Koumelis, Publisher and Digi.travel Conference Organizer, TravelDailyNews

Cross-channel Marketing

Google states that 90% of the users switch between screens to complete a task. Cross-channel marketing is no more a luxury; it’s a necessity that marketers can no longer ignore. It helps marketers to create a personalized customer journey and engage the customers through emails, push notifications etc.

2019 will demand retailers to create shopping experiences that are worthy for customers to invest their time and dollars on. – Nicole Leinbach Reyhle, Founder of Retail Minded

Customer Engagement

Today’s customers are more empowered than ever before. They have more choices and do not hesitate to change loyalty if they are unhappy with the services rendered to them. It’s essential to engage and create positive experiences to retain them.

Customer Capital is the New Currency. 2019 will be the year brands leverage their social capital with consumers to help drive sales, answer questions, act on the brand’s behalf in times of crisis. – Katherine Calvert, Chief Marketing Officer I Lithium + Spredfast A Vista Equity Partners company

Winning and retaining customer trust will play a significant role in the success of companies in 2019, both in the technology industry and beyond. – Zander Lurie, CEO, SurveyMonkey

Stop Focusing on Transactions and Start Thinking about Customer Lifetime Value. – Scott Gifis, President, AdRoll

Data-driven Marketing

Globally, marketers have spent over $20 billion on data despite the growing concerns about data privacy. Data-driven marketing equips marketers with insights on the trends that dominate their respective industry, the behavior of the audience, and enables them to make strategic decisions.

Data-Driven Creativity Will Be A Strategic Differentiator In Customer Experience. – Stacy Martinet, VP of Marketing Strategy and Communications, Adobe

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing has evolved. Today, marketers combine multiple marketing strategies such as social media marketing, Virtual Reality (VR), paid ads etc. to offer personalized content to customers. According to marketing experts, digital marketing will evolve further and use different methods such as interactivity and immersion to connect with the audience.  

Customer Voice Will Grow in Value. – Noah Jacobson, VP of Corporate Development, Tap Clicks

Interactivity and immersion will become key to connecting with audiences – Peter Arvai, Co-founder and CEO, Prezi

Experiential Marketing

After operating digital and offline marketing in silos; retailers, e-commerce giants and marketers have finally accepted that the integration of digital technology and offline marketing is the best way to create a hyper-personalized customer journey. Experiential marketing bridges that gap between the two to establish a connection. Marketers expect a surge in demand for experiential marketing in 2019.

2019 will see a huge upsurge in how digital technology will integrate with offline retail to provide personalized user experiences. – Joy Chakravorty, Head- Digital, E-Commerce and Brand Retail, MTR Foods (a subsidiary of Orkla, Norway)

Gaming

A less-explored part of marketing, gaming is one area that has potential especially for a brand that targets generation Z. Marketers are expecting more cross-over partnerships and brand sponsorships in online gaming in the future.

Brands will make major strides with in-game and e-sport sponsorships and related advertising opportunities. – Kent Lewis, President & Founder, Anvil Media, Inc.

Mobile Marketing and Advertising

A study by eMarketer revealed that marketers would spend $20 billion more on mobile ads ($93 billion) than TV ads ($69 billion) in future. With consumers spending more time on smartphones and internet giants like Google declaring mobile-first indexing as an important factor for SEO ranking, marketers have started taking mobile marketing and advertising seriously.

Offline to Online (O2O) will be the biggest driver for mobile acquisition. – Amjad Puliyali, CEO, GetBaqala Inc.

As our smartphone screens increase in size, so do the options and benefits of mobile advertising. – Richard Shapiro, President, The Center For Client Retention, Keynote Speaker, Retail Futurist

Instead of generic app install campaigns, advertisers should choose to run mobile marketing campaigns based on in-app action. – Sumon Chandra, AVP – Marketing, HouseJoy

SEO

SEO has come a long way from ranking websites that practiced keyword stuffing to ranking based on user intent. The last year’s Google medic update served as a reminder to marketers that the content on the website has to be relevant to the objective of the website and the keywords have to be chosen wisely. Besides content, experts believe that the speed of the website, the CDN, and mobile-first indexing will play an integral role in improving SEO in 2019.

CDNs will play a key role in SEO. – Nate Masterson, CMO of Maple Holistics

Social Media Marketing

Brands will move away from posting frequent social media updates to posting quality updates and will focus on select platforms instead of broadcasting on multiple social media platforms. Experts believe that 2019 will be about quality over quantity in social media marketing.

Brands will whittle down their social media marketing efforts from broadcast to engagement. – Julia Campbell, Digital Storytelling Consultant, and Speaker

Subscription Services

An analysis by McKinsey reveals that 15% of online shoppers have subscribed to one or two subscription services to receive products in a certain interval. Online sellers have to eventually shift from the traditional business model to a subscription model to keep pace with the changing demands of the consumers.

Subscription services will out-perform the traditional business model. – Chris Lueck, CEO of FastSpring

Visual Search

As search engines get better at understanding visual components, experts believe that marketers will use visual search especially to describe products that cannot be explained through text alone accurately.

2019 will see increased adoption of visual search for product discovery. – Anubhav Jain, Product Owner, and Growth Hacker, Decathlon Sports

Websites

Websites developed on Angular and React frameworks are getting popular due to the less load on the browser and servers. Experts believe that Single page applications and dynamic websites will gain more popularity in 2019 due to its focus on building customer experience.

Dynamic websites will continue to be trendier than ever. – Drew Burns, Group Product Marketing Manager, Adobe Target.

I hope these trends will help you understand the tenets of marketing in 2019. I’ve compiled these and 67 more in-depth insights here. Do take a look if you’d like to learn from 101 top marketing leaders about the definers of 2019.

 

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