Seasons come and go, and so do trends, ideas and key principles of marketing. It’s an ever-changing landscape and one that you need to evolve with in order to keep up. Here are a few of the biggest trends from this year.
The Sales Pipeline Is a Wheel, Not a Funnel
Previously, we have always considered the sales pipeline as a funnel, whereby targets and prospects travel through the marketing stage, through the sales stage and then the end result is a customer. But we need to stop ignoring or forgetting about our existing customer base. Instead, the sales pipeline is now considered a wheel, with marketing, sales and service surrounding the customer at the centre of everything.
Content Marketing
It’s huge, it’s everywhere, it’s what marketing is all about right now. Forget flashy adverts and ineffective messaging; companies are now all about providing their consumers with quality content that will engage and attract them. Be it written, imagery or video.
Native Advertising
Following on nicely, advertising is no longer about being in people’s faces. It’s about integrating it subtly with high quality content across a number of platforms. Sure, customers will still know that it’s an advert, but it’s been proven that they respond much better to this soft approach.
Voice Search
More people than ever are using devices like the Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa or Cortana and as well as asking the standard questions like ‘who played Lorelai in Gilmore Girls?’, they’re also asking things like ‘is there a cafe near me with wifi?’. Businesses need to rearrange the framing of their information so that it can not only be picked up by the standard Google algorithm, but also to this new question-style of search.
Mobile Optimisation
More people have been using mobile over desktop in 2018 than ever before. 48% of consumers start their mobile research with search engines and the first position search result has a click-through rate of 31.35%. When it comes to SEO, you need to be focusing your marketing efforts on mobile to ensure better results.