At each of my last three keynote address­es, I was asked this sim­ple ques­tion: “What do you think is going to hap­pen with mar­ket­ing in 2019?” It’s still only sum­mer, but peo­ple are already try­ing to look ahead and see what’s around the curve. And I under­stand why: The world is chang­ing a mile a minute, and it’s hard to scale, dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self, and main­tain trust in the ever-chang­ing mar­ket­ing world. The more you can plan ahead, the bet­ter equipped you feel to man­age those changes when they happen.

Here are some midyear thoughts about what you need to keep an eye out for in 2019:

1. People are putting more trust in others they know and reputable content, not ads.

We knew years ago that peo­ple were run­ning away from tra­di­tion­al ads. A Nielsen study from 2015 showed that the top four most-trust­ed sources of adver­tis­ing were: peo­ple you know, brand­ed sites, edi­to­r­i­al sites, and reviews. Ads are near the bot­tom of that list, and that fact hasn’t real­ly changed.

In fact, 30 per­cent of all inter­net users are expect­ed to be using ad block­ers by the end of this year, mean­ing tra­di­tion­al ads now won’t even reach 30 per­cent of pos­si­ble tar­get audi­ence mem­bers. So, does this mean mar­keters should aban­don ads com­plete­ly? Not necessarily.

I hon­est­ly feel there’s still a place for some ads, but they have to be more rel­e­vant and valu­able to the con­sumer. This is why we see more mon­ey going to con­tent mar­ket­ing, influ­encer mar­ket­ing, refer­ral part­ner­ships, and oth­er meth­ods that are designed to deliv­er actu­al val­ue to audi­ences. This shift isn’t going to stop until ads start being more valu­able for the consumer.

2. Creativity, not conformity, will set successful marketers apart.

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. Now, I’m not advo­cat­ing that busi­ness­es should try to res­ur­rect print mar­ket­ing or do some­thing only because it’s uncom­mon and not because it res­onates with their audi­ences. But they should con­sid­er inte­grat­ed cam­paigns and cre­ative dis­tri­b­u­tion tac­tics that focus on ways to engage audi­ence mem­bers that their indus­try com­peti­tors might not be considering.

3. Winners won’t be concerned with internal barriers.

In my first point, I talked about the need to cre­ate engag­ing con­tent rather than just adver­tise­ments. This engag­ing con­tent doesn’t just help mar­ket­ing. It can enable your sales team and be ben­e­fi­cial to recruit­ing, investor com­mu­ni­ca­tions, inter­nal train­ing, and just about every oth­er area of your busi­ness, too.

Every time I do a keynote pre­sen­ta­tion, I have peo­ple come up to me and say “John, we just can’t do this stuff! There’s too much red tape with oth­er departments.”

My response? Com­pa­nies that put up bar­ri­ers between depart­ments will fail in the long run. Lead­ing com­pa­nies are built on depart­ments that work togeth­er. Cre­at­ing engag­ing con­tent isn’t just a mar­ket­ing con­cern. Great con­tent can fuel oth­er parts of the com­pa­ny, result­ing in bet­ter tal­ent, low­er costs, and improved rela­tion­ships with investors.

4. Understanding how your customers communicate is vital.

Tech­nol­o­gy has evolved tremen­dous­ly over the last sev­er­al years. Recent­ly, my 4‑year-old daugh­ter picked up my old Timex watch. After play­ing with it for a few min­utes, she dis­cov­ered that the face of the watch lit up when she pushed a but­ton on the side. She grew excit­ed and told the watch: “Call Grand­ma Hall!” Need­less to say, my mother’s face did not appear on my aged Timex, which dis­ap­point­ed her greatly.

Cus­tomers aren’t unlike my daugh­ter. They expect that com­pa­nies will com­mu­ni­cate with them in the ways they like. That’s why it’s so impor­tant for mar­keters to be aware of their cus­tomers’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion preferences.

Experts out there are mak­ing some big pre­dic­tions about how cus­tomers will oper­ate in the future. Some ana­lysts say they think close to 50 per­cent of all search­es will be made through voice search by 2020. I’m not sure how accu­rate pre­dic­tions like this real­ly are, but I do know that my daugh­ters and the gen­er­a­tions that will come after them are grow­ing up in a world where smart­watch­es and smart speak­ers are the norm.

5. Helpfulness and authenticity will combat relationships lost through tech and automation.

There’s no stop­ping mar­ket­ing automa­tion and tech­nol­o­gy. These advances help mar­keters scale more effec­tive­ly, make bet­ter deci­sions, and save mon­ey. How­ev­er, these advances some­times come at the expense of the rela­tion­ships those same mar­keters have typ­i­cal­ly built with mem­bers of their audience.

Although automa­tion might cov­er basic tasks, it’s impor­tant to do your best to add a per­son­al touch or offer direct help when pos­si­ble. I was recent­ly speak­ing to some con­tacts at a con­sult­ing com­pa­ny that had done an amaz­ing job scal­ing mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but they still made a rule to vis­it their clients in per­son once every year to see how they could be help­ful or improve the rela­tion­ship and get to know the peo­ple bet­ter. They said that when they do this, the clients stay longer and spend more money.

These are just five trends to look out for as you think ahead for the end of this year and into the next. Remem­ber, there’s not a sin­gle “right way” to build a mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, but these five tips can help you achieve any mar­ket­ing goal.

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