With a number of articles, journals and research findings getting published by different companies about the upcoming marketing trends and best practices, it has become a challenge for marketing leaders to sieve through it all and determine what exactly they should focus on that can help them generate useful marketing results.
After doing our research and study and after reaching out to a few key influencers in marketing, we bring to you a list of top marketing tactics for 2018 that are not only going to shaping the future of marketing in 2018 but will also be widely used by different organizations to enhance their customer experience.
Read more about the core concepts of marketing
Have a look at 4 main marketing tactics for 2018 that can help you boost your marketing strategy:
1. Creative Automation:
Everybody talks about automating the email marketing, social media marketing or marketing analytics with:
- 73% of companies already using automation within their email process
- 63% of companies implemented web automation in their strategies
- 47% of companies already using an automation system in their CRM integrations.
- 33% of companies have already implemented automation in their social plan.
But this is 2018! There must be something different which is a step above this type of automation.
In 2018, the next wave of revolution in the field of automation is Creative Creation Process Automation. Automating the process in which creatives are being created by the agencies through automation software.
One would no longer require graphic designers to design their emailers and website banners.
Here are two main fun facts about automating the creative creation process.
- 66% of time reduction in creative creation process
- 50% decrease in marketing budget (less dependency on the creative agency, hence money going out as a retainer fee to the agencies)
Companies in 2018 will be able to create their own creatives (emailers, banners etc) by simply clicking 3-4 buttons on their software and in 1/3rd of the time that it currently takes to get creative from a creative agency.
2. Chatbots:
In 2018, every other company is using bots to cater to their customers. And these chatbots are not only confined to web, they have entered our homes as well in form of Amazon Alexa or Google Homes
In the age of bots, the decision is yours…..
Use this power for good or evil.
By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships without talking to a human.
There are different purposes for which chatbots are being used:
- Customer support
- Product suggestions
- Providing latest news
- Making payments
- For searching and tracking flight schedules
- Scheduling a meeting etc
Businesses have come a long way considering the usage of chatbots in their marketing objectives, the question is what is the future of chatbots and how will they change in 2018
Following 4 critical ways, chatbots will transform marketing in 2018
- Increase customer engagement which is way beyond the CTRs
- Chatbots will be able to provide much deeper insights about the customers through the level of interactions that they will have with them.
- Deeper insights will provide way more opportunities for personalization for businesses which they can use for retargeting, mailing and for display ads
- Chatbots will bring out the brand personality to life – Chatbots will become a “live entity” that will infuse personality into conversations.
3. Influencer marketing: Say hello to INSTAGRAM !
The aim of Influencer Marketing is to identify the influencers in your niche and make them work for you by promoting your brand.
Facebook/Instagram and Youtube emerged as a clear winner for influencer marketing in 2017, with a majority of big brands turning up to these channels for promoting their brand.
And in 2018, it is just going to touch new heights. An influencer marketing survey conducted by Collective Bias involving 14,000 respondents in US, reveals this statistic.
- Businesses are making $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing
- Facebook and Youtube are the two most preferred channels for influencer marketing with 19% and 18% of consumer purchase decisions being influenced by Facebook posts and Youtube videos.
- A mere 3% of consumers are influenced by celebrity endorsements in their product purchase decisions.
- 30% consumers are more likely to buy a product recommended by a non-celebrity blogger. They can relate more to these influencers and value their opinions more than that of celebrity influencers.
The trick of the trade to crack influencer is to find the right type of influencer for promoting your product and the right channel. Define your target audience and then choose the desired influencer.
Read more : What is customer persona and importance of customer persona in marketing
4. Thought Leadership:
According to new research from LinkedIn and Edelman Digital.
- Over a third of c-suite execs and decision makers surveyed—39%—said thought leadership content had influenced them to ask a vendor to participate in the RFP process, and 47% said such content had a direct impact on awarding business.
- Over 80% of business decision-makers said thought leadership has increased their trust in a vendor organization
- Nearly 50% of business decision-makers said thought leadership has directly led them to award business to a company
From the above stats, it must be pretty clear as to how much importance the Thought Leadership holds in the businesses success.
2018 is stated as the year which will be driven by great content so the trick of the trade now is to learn this art and master it. Following things will be seen shaping up the thought leadership sphere.
- Personalization will swoop in with B2B content – We will have Atomised content that targets particular roles, sectors, company sizes and locations, within a key account or across multiple companies, will provide a much more relevant experience for audiences. In 2018, we expect a continued shift away from the one-size-fits-all content. Based on an audience’s preferences for topics and themes, we may even start to see companies offering a tailored content capability,
- Thought leadership will become a key lead generation tool
- Content analytics will be a vital tool for optimizing thought leadership output
- The influencer network will become a key distribution tool
Also read more about the 4p’s of marketing and their importance in forming a marketing strategy.
Read more: How to build a marketing plan for business