It is ideal for companies to plan for their yearly budget ahead of time. Through proper planning, they can foresee prospective income, expenses, and investments. Part of this planning is to identify the budget that goes to their marketing and advertising initiatives. As a professional in this industry, we have been aware of how the marketing industry have evolved through time.
In the older days, predicting the advertising budget is easy because the programs are scheduled and identified. In the modern days of marketing, you can no longer stick to the basic modes of reaching through your target audience. Apparently, organizing trade shows, buying billboards and other ad placements, and traditional advertising is no longer the best way to go. Thus, many brands are opting to invest and dedicate their marketing initiatives to digital campaigns.
For sure, many of you have already laid out the budget plan for their marketing campaigns at this point. But if you want to make sure if you are spending your money correctly, you might want to check out this list of digital marketing trends in 2019 where you should be investing more this year.
1. Content
There is no doubt about this. Content Marketing is still, and will be for a long time, the core of digital marketing. The changes that happened in the last couple of years in terms of creating and producing contents will continue to flourish in 2019. More than just the traditional way of content marketing such as blogs and articles, make sure to feature more creative output and invest more on video, graphics, and engaging contents.
Instead of directly targeting conversions, your content tactics should focus on capturing the audience’s attention first. Users can share your contents through their personal platforms and channels. Through that, you can have a wider reach with no additional expense. It’s the new way of reaching the target market organically. Produce quality contents that many users can relate and you’ll have more returns in your investment.
Creating different types of contents is also beneficial since there are new and alternative ways of searching for information. While voice search is already on the rise, Google is starting to implement how a visual content can be useful for search. It’s something like this: a user can take a picture of the product or thing that they want to buy and search using that. Google will then show results related or similar to it so the user can know what the product is and where it is from. For businesses, it goes hand in hand with properly tagging your photos and videos. Content marketing nowadays needs a smarter SEO.
2. Security and Data Privacy
If you are dealing with customer information, or other private information in that matter, make sure to invest more on having a strong security and data privacy tools. Last year was a memorable one when it comes to security breaches. Because of a series of events that occurred in the past, consumers are now talking big about online security and protecting their personal information.
Many users are declining to proceed with online shopping or purchasing because they are afraid that of providing information online. To make sure that you avoid these conflicts with your consumers, spend a little more on securing your online data. In that way, you can gain your customers’ trust and you can build a better relationship with them.
3. Smart Chatbots
Contrary to popular belief, chatbots is actually a good investment – that is if you do it well. Many business are now resulting to actual human interaction when dealing with their customers since many consumers do not actually like the idea of talking to machines. However, with the availability of the latest technology in studying your market, you can create chatbots that legitimately help with the needs of your customers.
For instance, you can use your website analytics to identify the most common topics concerning your business. Through chatbots, you can have quantify the result of your enquiries while providing sensible solutions to customer problems. One of the biggest mistakes, however, of using chatbots is having specific resolutions.
Many chatbots are just like an automated FAQs. To avoid that, make sure to provide a breakdown of issues or common enquiries and provide accurate and specific answers.
4. Diving into the trends
The thing is, many brands choose to dive into the current trends just to be the talk of the town. Many businesses tend to relate themselves with the current news or trends just to contribute to the noise. But as a marketer, you also need to be aware that consumers are smarter now. They know if you just want to be part of the bandwagon or if you legitimately care about them.
Yes, of course, it’s necessary to create digital contents that is within the current trend or within the current events but you have to make sure that the campaigns flow smoothly to the core values of your brands. Remember, if an philosophy of the current trend is not really fit with your brand, no amount of marketing initiative can salvage it. Your campaign will just look tacky and irrelevant.
After all, less is more
Marketing will never be free. It will always come with expenses. It’s only a matter of how or where you will spend it that matters. Regardless of however you want to proceed with your advertising and marketing campaigns this year, surely you will have to plan it in the most effective way possible. Thus, it’s important to make sure to know where you should you invest your marketing funds.
But, honestly, instead of spending too much in advertising or marketing your business, you can allot more budget in improving your products are services. A good brand doesn’t need to pay for advertising; it will be its own campaign.