Shownotes
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- Make sure you understand what your audience want so you can personalise your marketing more effectively.
- Use Alexa Flash Briefings to help cater for those that are using voice search to search online.
- Consider using Micro Influencers in your marketing strategy as we move in 2019 they’re going to become a much better investment than using larger, well-known influencers.
- Consider whether a chat bot is a great use for your business, it may be that you don’t need one.
- If your business relies on a location (a store, a salon etc) then you should consider looking experience marketing. How do people feel when they visit your business? How can you create more of an experience? Can you focus on the senses?
- How do you build a community around your business? 2019 will be the year of the community, so consider how you can build and nurture yours – no matter the size.
- User generated content is going to be a key way to create content in 2019. It’s more affordable and gives you a chance to share incredible and unique content, especially with Instagram.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
Marketers in 2019 will be come more open and honest, making the digital world a more transparent place. Businesses that show this honest will become favourable among consumers. With that in mind, consider how you can become more vulnerable with your followers in 2019.
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS
- Prediction #1 More Personalisation – 04:25
- Prediction #2 Voice Search – 06:40
- Prediction #3 Data Privacy – 07:55
- Prediction #4 Influencer Marketing – 09:08
- Prediction #5 Transparency – 11:39
- Prediction #6 Chat Bots – 13:50
- Prediction #7 Marketing and PR Overlap – 15:11
- Prediction #8 Experience Marketing – 16:48
- Prediction #9 Community – 18:41
- Prediction #10 Content – 21:50
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE
Transcript below
Hello and Happy New Year. This is the first podcast I’m doing of 2019 and I’m actually recording it on New Year’s Day because I was hoping to get more organized and do it over Christmas. However, you might be up to hear from my voice that it’s a little bit different because I’ve had a terrible cough and cold. If you’re like me what tends to happen is the minute I stop or slow down my body I don’t know what it does but basically it just goes “oh no I will make you ill” and it makes me then take time off. So my Christmas and my New Year were lovely but just a little bit under the weather which wasn’t so great but it did mean that I did stuff that I never do like I actually watched both seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale in about two days. I’m not kidding you literally back to back sat there all day all night for about two days and just watch that and it was amazing by the way if you are looking at something to watch. But I don’t normally do that because one of the things that I feel and get frustrated about is that I don’t have time for stuff like that. And what happens is I start watching it and I want to watch the next episode and the next episode and then I’m completely hooked and completely taken in by it.
So for me I tend not to start even watching stuff like that or otherwise HOURS OF MY LIFE JUST GET ZAPPED up when I could be doing much more productive things. So anyway I’ve put this podcast off for as long as I could possibly leave it to try and get my voice back to some normality and it’s getting there slowly. Anyway, let’s get on with today’s podcast and it’s gonna be a good one because I’ve chosen the new year and obviously all the good stuff that kind of happens at the beginning of a new year to talk about predictions for 2019. So I’ve got my crystal ball out with the help of Google and some experts and I’ve gone and found out what’s going to be happening in 2019 or what we can expect from not just the social media point of view but also from a digital marketing and a marketing point of view. So if you are a marketer in business an entrepreneur a social media person this is going to be a great episode for you because we’re going to cover all those good things off. But before I get started I just want to quickly talk about the fact that we’ve got some amazing guests coming up in fact next week’s guest is gonna be a really good one. Next week I have the pleasure of bringing you James Wetmore and he did not disappoint. You know I’m a huge fan of James. I love his stuff. I think he’s great for business people, entrepreneurs, marketers. He has some amazing things to say and we had such a good conversation. It was so so good.
And I can’t wait for you to hear that one later. Make sure you don’t miss it. Don’t forget to go and subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already. So you can head over to iTunes or Stitcher however you listen and hit that subscribe button to make sure you are notified every time there is a new episode. Or you can also come and find me on social media if you haven’t already. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. I’m most active on Twitter and Instagram. And again I always post when I’m doing a new episode so you’ll see that as well. But they come out every Monday as hopefully you know by now. Anyway let’s get on to today’s episode. We’re going to be talking about the 10 predictions that I’ve got for 2019. Things I think you should focus on or think about or if you’re not doing these things that may be just look into it and just see if it’s something that will fit with your business. Because not everything is going to work for everyone. But I’m going to tell you what I think is the kind of key areas that you want to be focusing on in 2019. Okay, so these in no particular order just 10 things that I thought of that we need to focus on. So the first thing I want you to think about is I feel like there’s going to be more personalization. Like this has been happening steadily over last year. But I think this is just going to get more important and we’re going to see much more of this.
We now have the tools and technology to personalize things to make our messages very succinct and direct to the people that we’re talking to. So I think we’re going to see less a mass marketing campaigns and many more very individual, small, specific marketing campaigns. For me one of the ways in which I will do this is I will use technology such as infusion soft where I can track what people are doing. You can also use things like click funnels and drip but I’m going to use these technologies so that I can see where people are downloading things where they’ve interacted with stuff, if they’ve opened emails closed emails. I’m also going to be using a survey tool soon and the first part of my 2019 is going to be aimed at trying to understand my audience better. So it’s great that I’ve built this audience up through lead magnets and building my email list but now I want to really understand who you are and what you need from me because ultimately I want to be able to serve you better and provide you with the things that you want. And I would like you to think about this for your customers. Do you know them? Don’t presume you know them because as we’ve talked about before this is so crucial. Speak to them. Survey them. Ask them questions. Get to know them better and then split that data up. Make sure that you have a way of dividing that data so you can market people with the things that they’re interested in. Now I feel like we get less tolerant.
We have less time we’re busier and therefore we haven’t got time to waste on marketing messages that aren’t serving us or aren’t talking to us in the way we want to be spoken to. So the personalization is really going to help. So it’s really about dividing that data splitting it up and focusing on those small groups rather than mass marketing. The next thing that I feel is going to get even bigger in 2019 is voice search again. This has been getting more increasingly popular in terms of how we’re using technology. We all have a Lexi’s in our house. We have series on our phones and we are using voice search more and more. It was actually predicted I read somewhere that 30 percent of all web searches in 2020 are predicted to be voice activated searches. So using things like Alexa briefings is another way in which you can sort of get into this market. Now I’m going to put in the show notes. There’s a lovely lady that I follow on social media called Chelsea Heights and she has put together a YouTube video on how you can create your own Alexa flash briefings. So I’m actually going to put that in the show notes are linked to that so that you can have a look at that. If this is an area that you think want to work on but it’s just another different way in which we can market to our audiences and depending on the type of thing that you want to do or the type of business you’re in a flash briefing might be a great way for you to get your message out there. Okay. Prediction number three is less of a prediction and more of a certainty.
So if you are in the US or marketing to the US they are going to be bringing in their data privacy bill in 2019 which is going to be very similar to what we did here in the UK and in the EU in terms of GDP. So obviously data is still really important. It’s still a huge focus on data how we’re looking after it. What we’re doing with it because of obviously a lot of stuff that’s been in the press last year obviously Facebook came under fire a huge amount and what they’re doing is obviously the US are just bringing themselves to the level that the EU act as well. So if you are in the US do look out for that now. I am not an expert. I am obviously not in a position where I can give you legal advice and in fact I have not done any research on it yet. I just know it’s coming however because it’s so similar to GDP. I’m hoping personally because I do obviously market to the US. I’m hoping that the efforts that I’ve gone to to be GDP compliant will actually still be covered and will tick the box as it were for this new US data policy that they’re bringing in. So keep an eye out for that on in 2019. Prediction number four: This one I think we’ve seen grow huge amounts and is going to keep getting bigger and its influencer marketing. But I’m going to stick my neck out and I’m going to say that I feel micro influencers are going to be even more powerful and become more prevalent than they ever have been influencer marketing.
If you don’t know what it is I’m sure you do and we’ve talked about it for but it’s basically where you get someone who’s got a good following on social media and has a presence to have your product or your service and talk about it and put it on their social media and therefore their followers will come along and go wow that looks great. And they might use it as well. So for instance a good example is Weller. A few years ago she teamed up with W H Smiths to do a book club and some of the books that she mentioned reported increases in profit by up to 11,000%. Insane. So although that’s wonderful and amazing and so obviously is doing amazingly well. She’s really expensive. She is not an influencer that most businesses can go to unless you’ve got massive budgets however for Zoella there must be millions of micro influences that have really decent reaches that have an influence over their audience but don’t cost the earth and don’t cost a lot. Zola costs so I really think that the micro influence market is going to grow. So basically these obviously just smaller people, smaller profiles but you’re not paying huge amounts of money to get your product featured with them. And I also think that and I think this is needed not just a prediction that obviously the rules around influencer marketing are going to get a bit stricter. And also I think that businesses and consumers are going to become more savvy to influencer marketing. I definitely think they are going to be thinking more about are these people genuine? Are they real? Can we trust their figures?
I know and I’ve talked about it before I’m sure that you can buy followers really easily. So when I see a really large following on a social media profile thing I go and look at is the engagement. Are they getting real engagement that I would expect to see for that number of followers. So I do think that obviously we’re going to see an increase in the use of micro influencers but businesses are going to become way more savvy in terms of making sure they’re picking the right influences. No. What are we on one two three four five. Number five on my predictions I should a number of them. This next one follows on really nicely from the one we’ve just talked about and this one is all about transparency. It’s about basically being more open and more honest. As marketers as advertisers as business says it’s about showing people basically what it is you’re doing and how you’re behaving and the way in which your marketing. I think we can all agree that we’re the things that happened last year in the year before in terms of advertising and Facebook and the elections and all that kind of thing that people are starting to not trust things as much as they did. And also there are some businesses out there and some people out there who aren’t as ethical as they probably should be. So I feel like they’re definitely going to really embrace businesses consumers are going to embrace businesses that show that transparency that show that honesty and at the end of the day there’s nothing wrong with trying to sell to someone. If your products and service aid does what you say it does and B helps them.
No one is going to mind the fact that you’re trying to say hey I’ve got this course coming, I’m selling this product, I’m doing this service and it can help you in these ways. So no one is going to mind you selling to them and therefore I don’t see it being a problem that we need to be more transparent. Now one of the ways that transparency has already started is Facebook are introducing add transparency on pages so if you have a Facebook page and you advertise on that page or using that page then as a consumer or a viewer I’m going to be able to come onto the page and view what ads you’re currently running. So that’s going to be a really interesting one. Now how many people will use it. I don’t know. But maybe if someone was being unethical this might make them think twice about it. So this is rolling out now. I haven’t seen it in situ yet but obviously I’ve read a report about it and I’ll link up to that in the show notes as well. Okay. Number six. Again it’s something that’s around currently but I think it’s going to get stronger and that’s chatterbox. Now I haven’t got a chat bot and I really feel like I should. I’ve dabbled in looking at it and I’ve gone in too many chart and I’ve worked out how to use many charts that I can help other people but I’ve not actually done it for me yet. So that’s definitely an area that I think I need to think by.
But again you’ve got to think about how is a chat bot going to serve you what is it going to do. Now one of the ways in which I’ve seen a really good use of a chat bot is for an event and obviously people do tend to ask the same questions at an event or there is certainly a large number of questions that overlap. So is there parking is that disabled access is there Wi-Fi whatever it might be. So actually if you’ve got a good chat bot that can answer those questions for you then you can save yourself a lot of time. So it’s not just about marketing it could be about service as well but chat bots I feel are definitely going to grow and we’re going to see more of it. But again it’s got to be good. This isn’t going to replace people. This isn’t going to replace customer services. It’s just going to help speed up some of those processes that you repeat all the time that may be a chat bot might be able to take over for you. So again just have a quick think about the 2019 prediction number seven. Now this one is a bit more of a woolly one I guess it’s not a specific as the others but I’ve been reading a lot about this and I agree with what people have been writing that they feel that marketing and PR are going to become even more overlapped than they have been. Now back in the day when I started marketing marketing and PR were two very separate things two different skill sets two different parts the business and actually unless you were in either marketing or PR people often got them confused.
And I have had clients in the past who will refer to me as a PR person and I know I have not come from PR background. My background is solidly marketing. However with the introduction of things like influencer marketing and working more with consumers and understanding consumers more, I do feel like there is more of an overlap in terms of PR and marketing and I feel like these are going to continue to get closer and especially when it comes to things like social media because actually I’ve seen this with some people that I’ve worked with and and people I’ve consulted for that sometimes they’ve had PR people do their social media and it’s kind of a sticky point in terms of where that sets. Now don’t get me wrong there are definitely an element of PR that is great on social media. However, there’s also a huge element of marketing. So for me having those two merge a bit more is definitely going to help. Platforms such as social media so until number eight and this one might be a bit of a surprise because I’m talking about bricks and mortar companies so businesses that have a physical location where someone goes to visit them or shop or eat or drink or whatever it might be. And I feel like if you are bricks and mortar one of the things that you should be focusing on is experience your marketing is the experience because even though digitally we can do so much. There is something that we can’t physically do we can’t physically walk in and touch and feel the material on some clothes.
We can’t physically have a face to face contact with someone or talk to someone face to face, we can’t smell things and touch things and taste things online whereas we can when we go in somewhere. So for me if you are bricks and mortar one of the things I would be focusing on is how can you create more of an experience for people attending your location. How can you bring in those different senses like is it the smell and the touch and the listen and the taste and hey can you make more of it and bring in some emotions around those experiences? Now I read a report ages ago I can’t remember who it was or where it’s from so it’s going to sound like I’m just making this up I apologize. But basically they talked about consumers in their 30s I think it was would much rather spend money on an experience than an actual thing. So if you can create these experience says then that’s a way that you can bring people in. And I do feel that loyalty will be paid off here. So if you are looking after those people coming to shop you’re giving them that experience then I feel that you will still get a loyal customer base that will keep coming back to you even if...
