6 Marketing Trends and Developments in 2019 for Small Businesses
6 Marketing Trends and Developments in 2019 for Small Businesses
Marketing strategies that worked last year for small businesses may not work this year as new technologies continue to evolve.
In order to stay ahead of your competition and to stand out, it’s important that you keep up to date with the latest digital trends, to capture your target audience’s attention and increase your company presence on both search engines and social media channels.
In this article we look at some of the top Marketing trends and developments in 2019 which will help you to take your business to the next level.
Instagram users pass 1 billion
In 2019, Instagram is set to become an even bigger focus for those businesses who target the younger audience. If you’ve not quite grasped Instagram yet, now might be the time to download the app and explore the opportunities.
There are an ever-increasing number of brands and businesses looking to tap into the rapid growth of this image-focused social platform.
As mentioned, Instagram isn’t for all businesses, with 90% of Instagram users under 35 it might not be a social media platform for your target audience.
You may have heard of IGTV. If you haven’t, it’s Instagram’s recent development to creating the next generation of video and it’s becoming big!
Instagram quotes…”Longer vertical video on Instagram makes it even easier to get closer to your audience and be discovered by new people.”
Live Video
While video is a valuable tool, one of the fastest successes in digital marketing in 2019 is the use of ‘live video’.
If you can publicise your businesses using video, then now is the time to get recording and sharing your services or products with your target audience.
What is video marketing?
Video marketing is an interactive way to deliver your brand’s message, showcase your brands personality and grab the attention of consumers. It can help to increase engagement across many social media channels.
Facebook users spend 3x more time watching a live video, compared to pre-recorded videos, so if your audience are Facebook users you might want to consider spending time posting video on this platform. What’s also worth noting here is the biggest age group of users on Facebook are now the over 55’s so if you market t the older generation get your business on Facebook and start sharing!
LinkedIn say that video is the fastest-growing format on its platform alongside original written work, shared news and other content. In February 2019 it launched live video, giving people and organisations the ability to broadcast real-time video to select groups, or to the LinkedIn community. Launching in beta first in the U.S we hope to see this feature become available to UK users very soon.
FYI – You can create videos for Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and your own website.
Vlogs
What are vlogs I hear you say…A video blog or video log, usually shortened to vlog, is a form of blog using video. It’s one of the most popular forms of online video content today – especially on YouTube.
If you’re looking to beef up your social media presence, there’s nothing quite like a video that gets people’s attention and showcases your brand.
In order to create a vlog, all you need is a video camera, an Internet connection, and a good idea!
Email Marketing
A combination of automation and personalisation are key to email marketing campaigns in 2019, generic emails are not as effective as they once were.
Businesses should now be looking at triggered emails that send when someone browses a product for example and then a follow up personalised email with an offer can be very effective.
You may or may not have heard of an email sales funnel – it’s a productive process to win new business and keeps existing customers engaged. An email sales funnel is a series of emails arranged together with the aim to –
- Nurture a relationship with an email subscriber
- Educate a potential customer on the benefits of a service or product
- Nudge them to make a purchase decision.
You can do the above successfully using a marketing automation tool and many email marketing tools like Mailchimp can help manage these processes and workflows. The Marketing Boost team of experts can also help set this up for you.You can even “tag” contacts based on actions they take (or don’t take) on your website based on which type of lead magnet they opt-in to.
As an example, you can place customers into different email follow-up “buckets” based on which lead magnet they opted into.
Some businesses have seen email subscriber engagement increase by over 200% from implementing a sophisticated email sales funnel.
Email marketing is also often used successfully in businesses as a final motivation to buy a product or service, especially when combined with marketing via other channels, like social media and direct mail.
This year it’s all about integrating email with content marketing at the right time in the customer journey across omnichannel touchpoints.
Voice Search
You may have purchased an Alexa which is sat in your kitchen and used to play your chosen songs by voice? As technology evolves to a simpler way of finding information, voice search has also become the way to search, shop and discover new things. Siri, Google, Alexa and several other smart devices are leading the way to changing google search results when used.
Voice searches are very different from typing in a query search into Google and quite often come up with different results so what does this mean for businesses in 2019?
Small businesses need to become more digitally savvy when optimising their websites to increase their search engine results for voice searches, especially as text-based searches display one page of results at a time and voice searches may only give one or two choices.
It’s going to be one area of digital marketing that can’t be ignored because people are relying on it now more than ever.
Social Messaging Apps
With 1.3 billion monthly users active on Facebook Messenger and 2 billion messages sent between people and businesses on Facebook Messenger every month, social messenger apps should not be ruled out of your marketing strategy.
The above statistics show the huge potential for businesses to market their services where their potential customers spend most of their time.
Social messaging apps can be very useful in sending messages to customers directly, as they allow personalisation (another trend) and add value to the users’ experience.
If you’d like to discuss any of these Marketing developments and how to grow your business in 2019 please get in touch.