What did 2019 bring compared to the plan and what remained for 2020?
Last year, I created the Digital Marketing Trends YearCompass evaluation for the first time, thus with this second edition, I am almost creating a tradition. In this writing, I will examine what the trend predictions for 2019 were, and among them, what has actually materialized and what may still be pending. My list contains a completely unique selection based on the sources I have read and become familiar with, so I would not call it universal, but rather a unique perspective. I tried to select such Top 3 trends that engage multiple brands and marketers, so it may be generally more interesting.
2019 was the last year of the first decade of the 2000s, thus a turning point for many. It could simultaneously bring closure and open doors to completely new things. For this reason, an additional trend has been added to my Top 3 list, a trend that we have been waiting for years, but has not really "hit" yet. My 3+1 list is fundamentally based on the 8. Forbes, 7. , the Smart Insight and the Digital Marketing Institute early 2019 "predictions.".
So here are the digital marketing trends of 2019:
1. The rise of micro/local influencers
More and more people are proclaiming that influencers have „seen better days” and brands are starting to turn away from larger celebrities and „star” influencers. One direction of this turn is that they either start to „nurture” and support their own micro-influencers or look for smaller, local, or thematic influencers/voices who are more active in communities, with whom more authentic and long-term collaborations can be established.
2. The golden age of video content will be the year, and the popularity of Live Video is increasing.
The video is predicted to be the most successful marketing tool of 2019, as the average attention span of consumers is shortening, and more and more prefer to watch a video rather than read a blog post or article. Within this, the use of live video will be one of the fastest-growing stars of digital marketing.
3. The strengthening of voice-based interactions and searches
Thanks to Siri, Google, Alexa, and many other "smart" systems, verbal interaction with devices continues to grow. This process is not surprising, as speech is one of the simplest and most preferred ways of interaction. By 2019, machines will catch up to how people want to search, shop, and discover new things.
+1. Artificial Intelligence promotes behavior-based, personalized marketing
Last year, everyone was talking about artificial intelligence (AI), but few understand it, and even fewer practice it. Perhaps by 2019, it can grow into a more general trend!
„Marketers need to examine how they can use AI to understand what content a potential customer consumes, whether it's marketing-created content, support or technical documents, or user-generated content, which allows for a more personalized user experience and high customer satisfaction.” (Lisa Matherly, VP of Content Marketing at McAfee).
What has been realized and what is still pending?
In summary, the predicted guiding strategies for 2019 clearly show that the themes still revolve around content and personalization, increasingly utilizing and strongly building on digitalization. To track the trends, I called on Google for help and searched for easily accessible data for the above predictions. So, let's see what has been realized from these?
- Disproved. For now, it seems that while the market is definitely moving towards clearer and stronger commitment-driven influencer activities, in many cases this is still alongside „star” influencers with a significant following base. Instagram is already testing the success of like-free profiles (even in our country!), but for now, it seems that strength still lies in the numbers. Később it is expected that in 2020, the establishment of this deeper relationship with smaller players will become more characteristic.
- Confirmed. Both statistically and intuitively, the increase in video content in the marketing toolkit can be proven. The Emarketer data shows that the viewership and completion rates of video ads are continuously increasing. At the same time, the proportion of live broadcasts is indeed increasing. Part of this is due to the spread of streaming services, thanks to channels like „Twitch,” which allow people to easily stream their use of video games, or even devices like the Sony PS4 gaming console, which have built-in live streaming capabilities. Live streaming works particularly well when used as part of influencer activity.
- Disproved. The complete explosion is still awaited, but more and more people are ordering some voice-controlled device (e.g., on Amazon), and 41% of adults use voice-based search according to the DBS Interaktív site. However, the real rise of the trend is predicted more for 2020 or later, especially in light of the fact that there is still room for development in this area. This means that preparing for voice searches requires a different approach that should not be overlooked. For example, the meta descriptions of websites should be optimized in a way that reflects how we would express ourselves in speech, as opposed to the drier style used for strictly text-based search approaches.
+1. Confirmed. The use of Artificial Intelligence-based tools is continuously spreading and the Emerj According to their research, marketers use some form of personalization or automation technology. A specific example: „Our agency uses AI daily. For instance, we work with many preschools, kindergarten, and childcare centers. In order to help them grow their enrollment, we want to target the right type of prospects. What better way to find the right prospects than analyzing current and past enrollments? We download their customer data and leverage AI to determine which zip codes and neighborhoods to target, and even the common characteristics of parents. In the past, the analysis took days.”.
About half of last year's trend predictions came true when looking back at 2018. I predicted a similar ratio for 2019, and lo and behold (due to the +1 trend), it turned out that way. Essentially, there were 2 defining trends: the rise of video content and the spread of solutions using artificial intelligence. The good news is that we still have plenty of „tasks” for next year, and we can focus more on micro-influencers, voice-based search, or based on browsing further 2020 trends, visual search and customer data security. You can read the further predictions here:
- Think With Google (English content)
- Smart Insights (English content)
- ContentPlus (Hungarian article)
I hope you found this little year evaluation exercise useful and perhaps got inspired to create your own company or personal Yearcompass as well. Or simply to put together a plan-implementation analysis!
I wish you much success and good results for 2020 as well, in this wonderful new decade, which is increasingly embraced by technology and digitalization. Next year at this time, we will see how much!
