2019 in Review: Marketing
2019—what a year! As this year starts drawing to a close and our minds and time start to focus on goals for the upcoming year, let’s take a moment to review 2019. Building marketing strategies upon information from this year will help prepare new strategies to be effective and efficient. To start your research, refer to this blog post for the mid-year check in on marketing trends this year. Review if your marketing utilized any of those trends. If so, did they work? Or do they need tweaking? Next, go over this quick list—2019 in review: marketing—a guide to what was going on in the industry this year.
2019 in Review: Marketing
A continued rise in content marketing:
Content has ranked highly in popularity in the last few years. In a lot of marketing circles, content marketing is expected. This is different from past expectations because, until a few years ago, content marketing wasn’t used widely. This seems a little weird to us now, because it’s widely used on social media channels, websites, and other digital marketing platforms.
The marketing funnel is changing its shape:
The marketing funnel (previously focusing on everyone at the beginning stage) is transitioning to a more personalized process. The process now has an even more specific target audience in mind: the top of the funnel is targeted and specified. In addition, the funnel is a continuous cycle. This is especially clear in B2B buying processes, as the buying cycle is longer than in B2C transactions. However, ethical and societally-concerned buyers have been more interested in longer and more connected buying cycles recently.
Data-driven marketing is still useful:
Data-driven marketing is still a useful tool in current marketing. Research, analytics, and data apply to decisions you make throughout the marketing funnel/buying cycle. Analyzing trends and customer responses is a solid way to check in on how your company’s marketing is doing. This allows you to report back to those in your company who want to know the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. In addition, it allows you to see what’s going well and what’s not. Since it is so useful, in 2019, data-driven marketing still stood strong.
Social media platforms are evolving in demographics:
Social media platforms’ demographics evolve year after year. Currently, Facebook’s demographic is in the 50+ age range, with declining use in younger ages. Instagram is used by all ages, not only the young demographic it appears to center on. In fact, 71% of US businesses use Instagram, proving that Insta isn’t just for young teenagers connecting with friends.
A focus on ROI left out brand building:
A focus on Return on Investment left brand building on the wayside. Focusing mainly on immediate ROI dismisses the work that brand building can do for your company. While emphasizing ROI is not a bad trend in itself, it should be added to a comprehensive plan for brand building. In our content-focused marketing situation, building a brand and an online presence should be vital in 2020.
Video continues to grow:
This year, video has continued to grow in importance and use. Video is sticking around. Combining persuasive tactics of verbal communication and visual communication, video ups the ante in marketing. People are more likely to watch a video than they are to read the same content in written form. For social media use, vertical video popped up this year. With IGTV’s feature on Instagram and stories on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, vertical videos are useful now. This orientation can diversify video content and add variety to social media.
If you’d like to learn more about marketing and communication strategies, contact us at RedMoxy. We’ve been successful in serving our clients to becoming impactful in their industry. Click here or call (262) 303-4238.