Warwick Boulter’s top 5 marketing trends for 2019

By Warwick Boulter (left), CEO of Collaboro

As we enter 2019, certain trends are becoming more pronounced in the marketing industry. Technology is enabling more intelligent content to be created, while consumers are demanding more information about purchases and spending more time online. Here we discuss the Top 5 content marketing trends for 2019.

Trend 1. Automated personalised marketing

The rise of the data science is enabling all organisations to read their customers better and tailor their offerings. It’s as simple as that. The increased ability to mine data from consumers has provided marketing teams with an increased understanding of what their customers want and to deliver personalised messages to them. Importantly, data science can be used to measure the outcomes of the marketing campaigns and content creation.

Never before have we had access to such insights and been able to leverage data to engage, market our goods and make sales. So if you aren’t analysing data to deliver insights and relevance to your next campaings, get a data scientist on deck.

Trend 2.  Influencer strategy and engagement

The rise of the D-list celebrity will become more pronounced in 2019. Already, online influences such as Instagram stars, sporting heroes, and voices of Twitter have greater reach with audiences than some traditional media.  They’re famous faces that we know, but can’t remember why we know them or for what purpose.  Yet their reach is invaluable.

Just take a look at Carrot Top or Dustin Diamond, or closer to home, Adelaide star Kayla Itsines, a personal trainer, author, and entrepreneur.  She built her fitness empire via the power of Instagram and continues to be an influencer of fitness and health. Businesses are likely to enlist D-list celebrities in the future to endorse and market their goods, and maybe it’s something for yours to consider.

Trend 3. More educational content

Educational content about products and services fosters a greater understanding of why we need something. Reviews have become an integral part of the buying process, and so has the increased the ability to learn and fully invest in market research before purchasing. So more and more, savvy businesses are informing consumers about their goods and services.

Take a look at Medibank’s educational marketing strategy which involves releasing approximately five videos per month to foster an understanding of health, fitness and what private health insurance really is. It’s a winning campaign and it isn’t just spin. Medibank’s ‘Medibank 100’ campaign involves conversations with diverse Australian and includes facts and figures which can help people make better and more informed decisions about whether they need private health insurance.

Supplying educational content is just another way to distinguish your brand and earn it some additional credibility.

Trend 4. AI used to create personalised content

Artifical intelligence (AI) will be used increasingly in 2019 to create personalised advertising campaigns that can multiply the effectiveness of online advertising. An example is Pencil, which is a creative AI tool that enables brands to craft massive personalised ad campaigns, multiplying the effectiveness of online advertising.

AI will also enable organisations to research and develop crucial marketing aspects, such as keyword searches, trends and current audience response, which all means faster campaign ability. AI-based algorithms on websites can also match how each user best responds to marketing material.  We are just seeing the beginning of machine learning and AI to market goods, so it’s now’s a good time to get on board and fire up your marketing team with tech experts who can write the algorithms.

Trend 5.  Storing it on the cloud

The rise in intelligent content depends very much on the existence of the cloud. Imagine a business has hundreds of pieces of digital media, each with different elements, all tagged using scene, facial and object recognition. If this data is stored intelligently on the cloud, the business can rapidly deploy and share owned assets, taking the advantage in channels with less structured workflows than traditional marketing channels.

Let’s consider the true value of unlocking every piece of content a brand has ever created. It means time and budget isn’t wasted reshooting footage a business already has (or did have once upon a time). Smart-sharing and collaboration means the right teams can get access to the right media assets anytime, without calls to production partners and without wasting time and resources searching through USBs, hard drives and servers.

Connecting this content library to marketing teams, agency teams and their relevant digital marketing platforms is core to being agile, efficient and ready for the acceleration of 2019.