Marketing thoughts for 2019

Published 21 January 2019

No matter what industry you’re in, things are changing fast; and how people find customers is changing with it. The fear of being left behind is driving lots of new developments in how we all communicate and connect with and deliver everything.

So here’s some musings over what’s going to affect marketing in the coming months.

 

The war of social media platforms will intensify

Each platform is trying to keep relevant and build their users – some more successfully than others.

Instagram is continuing to expand on its audience by being ‘the place to be’ for brands. However, as Facebook tries to integrate itself more with Insta and develop its successful advertising platform to fit with Instagram too, there is a chance its favourability will start to wane.

Snapchat is starting to become more mainstream as youngsters who used it back in the day are growing older with the ability to buy as well – plus us old fuddy-duddies are signing up to see what all the fuss is about.

Advertising costs on Snapchat dropped significantly in 2018, so it’ll be interesting if its targeting develops to match the new audiences it’s gaining and whether it keeps those all-important regular users.

 

Free speech versus content censorship

The biggest challenge facing media today is deciding what level to censor content. The fine line between allowing free speech and protecting users is fuzzy at the best of times, so how each platform deals with this will greatly impact their ability to keep their users engaged.

With more and more content bombarding our timelines, algorithms are going to become key in making sure people see the best quality and most relevant content to them.

 

Businesses still want easy advertising

While ideally advertising would be free, most companies accept that it’s a cost of doing business, yet they rightly want to see a return on investment.

Digital advertising is easier to track than ever before, which is good for business, though can be bad for social media sites.

All advertising systems are continually being updated; Google AdWords rolled out more changes at the end of 2018 and Facebook has adapted its complex, 4 stage advertising set up. The challenge for businesses is to stay up to date with these changes, otherwise F.I.S.T.Y. (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube) will need to offer a much better customer service experience.

As a side note, it’s been interesting to watch Facebook developing its advertising customer service and advice capabilities. It’s worth keeping and eye out for more of their offers and tips on your Facebook Pages.

Having gone on about digital a lot, we suggest keeping your hand in with a little printed marketing as well. Much as digital is faster and takes less planning, it’s also often shorter lived. Giving people something printed, that’s inventive, that they can also take away is still of value.

 

Building relationships

And finally, while the media will have you believe we’re all on the way to a WALL-E-esque universe where no one exercises or talks to anyone, remember that culture is cyclical and a backlash is always on the horizon.

In amongst all the talk of A.I.s taking over everything and kids doing nothing but talking in emojis, the staunch set still want to talk to someone, still want to ask for advice and still want to feel like more than a number.

How they want to talk to you is evolving though… live chat is becoming more popular among small business who want to be more accessible.

Get your free live chat box quote today via our contact page.

You can now even text with the Samaritans when you need help. Remember, making it easy for customers to converse with you is always the best option.

 

So while all these challenges face us marketing bods, what it means for your small business is that potentially you’ll be able to get better clients more cheaply through digital marketing.

The downside to all this is that staying on top of content guidelines and how each platform works may become difficult for the average business owner who isn’t on there every day.