new marketing trends

What’s old is new again for 2019

It’s late October so every marketing guru and thought-leader is currently busy writing up their 2019 business trend forecasts. I enjoy this time of year because there’s no better time to see what the wizards of marketing see in their crystal balls.

The top marketing trend lists for 2019 are just beginning to emerge (article links below). Early predictions include more reliance on content marketing, marketing automation, artificial intelligence (chatbots), voice search (think Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home) and of course, video. Most of these trends are highly sophisticated requiring more services, programming and specialists to implement, which calls for more budget and capacity. So what can a nonprofit or business do to rise above the digital clutter while staying within their marketing budgets and not overtaxing staff?

An unexpected marketing trend you can easily implement in 2019 is using print more regularly. But first let me take you back four years…

In 2015, Forbes contributor and author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing, Roger Dooley, wrote an article titled “Paper Beats Digital in Many Ways.” In it Dooley states, “Science clearly shows paper can be more impactful and memorable than digital. Digital, meanwhile, offers its own huge advantages, including instantaneous access, localization, powerful personalization and targeting, audio and video, and more. Rather than an all-digital world, it appears that a multi-channel approach that leverages the unique benefits of paper with the convenience and accessibility of digital will perform best.”

Four years later is Dooley’s premise still relevant and believable?

Yes, Print Marketing is Still Relevant!

In June 2018, another Forbes contributor, John Hall, wrote, “Creativity, not conformity, will set successful marketers apart.” He goes on to say, “People have been saying for a long time that print is dead, but I recently came across a company that used software to obtain physical addresses for clients and started sending them print newsletters. Imagine that. In the age of MailChimp and HubSpot, this company went against the grain and spent extra money to do it the old-fashioned way. I was also surprised to find that its campaign was extremely successful — but why? Simply put, everybody else had gone digital, and this company saw an opportunity to do something different.”

Print marketing is a great way to break through the digital noise and powerfully complement your online marketing efforts. Imagine your donors or clients receiving a brochure or newsletter that they can hold in their hands and (bonus!) it’s scientifically proven to be more memorable. Even better, the content can then be repurposed over your social media channels. When working with a creative professional, designing a quarterly print newsletter is no more time-consuming than creating your e-newsletter.

What’s the Latest Cutting Edge Trend?

So now that you’ve got an old school marketing tactic to easily implement, how about one that you probably can’t, but is super interesting? The latest cutting edge trend that’s emerging in branding is something totally new to me: in Brandingmag’s article titled “Earcons and Love Notes,” contributor, Alex Normanton, says, “We are at a new age of sonic branding. When it comes to defining (or redefining) a brand, creatives usually operate in the visual and verbal, often overlooking the audible or considering it as a bolt-on at the end. But what if we followed a similar process for defining brand sound as we do for defining its visual aspects? And what if we considered the benefits of sound on brand experience from the beginning of the creative process?”

Normanton’s mission is to inspire creatives and branding professionals to incorporate the use of sound and music within the strategic brand design process. Sound as a matter of brand expression is definitely outside my wheelhouse, but that’s why trends are interesting—they represent a general direction to where something new is developing, and as a creative professional I am eager to learn what’s next.

If you need help with developing an integrated campaign, or just want to chat about your marketing challenges, please contact us. We love helping organizations, so let’s brand together!

2019 Marketing Trend Article Links

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhall/2018/06/17/5-marketing-trends-to-pay-attention-to-in-2019/#4168c00a60f7

https://www.marsdenmarketing.com/blog/5-digital-marketing-trends-for-2019

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhall/2018/10/14/5-content-marketing-trends-to-watch-in-2019/#464752971202

https://www.bemedia.com.au/top-digital-marketing-trends-2019/