4 marketing trends to look out for in the coming year
The digital marketing world represents a flood of opportunities, tools, and trends, which are either kill or cure when it comes to driving business results. Here are some of my suggestions as to what trends marketers should look out for in the new year.
Influencer marketing
Generating an authentic feel for your product on a platform with thousands of followers.
Sounds too good to be true, but it isn’t. Influencer marketing puts effort into specific individuals that can reach the consumers in places, where your company might not. It is a valuable way to generate consent with your brand, as influencers have huge groups of followers, which are more likely to buy a product from the trustworthy human profile. Especially social media influencers such as Instagrammers or personal bloggers have risen in recent times. Influencers need the product to match their persona for it to become authentic, so make sure to choose them carefully.
Marketing automation
Why should marketers do the same thing over and over again, if the process can be automated? Small business owners usually don’t have the time or manpower to create individual emails for instance. Marketing software solutions such as HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, or Klaviqo allow us to automate marketing activities. Not only does this make us more efficient, but it also saves us resources and encourages company scaling, which is why marketing automation makes it onto my list.
Mobile Marketing
Customers’ online activities are going mobile, and so should our efforts within marketing. The company website, the content, and advertising activities all need to be properly optimized for mobile devices. Comparing prices on products, reading the news while using public transportation, or just chatting with our friends - everything happens on the go nowadays. If your business isn’t (mobile) user-friendly and fitted to the device that we all carry, you are missing out on a huge opportunity.
Chatbots
As more and more consumers communicate with companies through social media, the expectations of an immediate response have grown remarkably. Based on artificial intelligence bots that are programmed to chat can meet this demand. Think about it: A live interaction with the potential customer – when the customer sees fit. The customer no longer has to wait for the response of an email or sitting in line on the phone, as the chatbot engages in the opening dialogue. This is the future, and the future is just around the corner.