19 for '19: Marketing Trends To Watch For

No introduction needed. Here are our 19 marketing predictions for 2019.

Customer experience is more important than ever.

Businesses large and small will adopt conversational marketing, making it a must-have to remain competitive. People not only want instant answers to their online searches, they want one-on-one service as they're evaluating products and services. –Anne Shenton

Customer service will continue to be a competitive advantage for companies. Increasingly, businesses will be judged by their ability to communicate and resolve issues with customers, especially since automation technology continues to improve. At minimum, customers expect companies to be easy to contact and responsive. Evaluate what real-time chat and call tracking can do for your business. All in all, the customer experience plays a pivotal role in a company's overall success, and this will only intensify in 2019. –Gretchen Elliott

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform many sales and marketing functions. For example, marketers are already using AI to optimize blog content and emails to increase conversion rates. Sales reps can use AI-driven playbooks to receive tailor-made feedback during their sales process. –Anne Shenton

Video is the new normal.

Broadcasting "Live Events" on social platforms will continue to grow in popularity. Your audience retention rate is higher when utilizing live video and it gives your company authenticity. –Greg Block

Consumers are watching almost the same number of hours of television online as they are via a traditional screen, and this gap is expected to close in 2019. As a result, we'll see marketers shift some existing ad spend from broadcast TV to web and social. –Gretchen Elliott

360 and VR videos will be pushed to consumers, but will not take hold. We are still a few years away until that type of video delivery is widely accepted by consumers. –Greg Block

8k/6k consumer cameras will be announced. –Greg Block

You can't overstate the power of video. We'll continue to see video be one of the most effective ways to convey messages quickly and effectively. –Steven Carter

Square video will be the norm when creating content for social media. With mobile users at an all time high, the screen real estate square video provides is invaluable for consumer engagement. –Greg Block

Dev and design have to work together.

More developers will move away from jQuery and adopt vue.js –John Fuller

WordPress Gutenburg will cause it's developer community to decline due to poor implementation and backwards compatibility. –John Fuller

More websites will become single page apps. –John Fuller

Slight eye-catching animations, called micro-animations, will continue to be a great way to engage users. Creating small and subtle transitions that take place when objects load or a visitor takes action on your site (such as mousing over a button) contribute to the overall user experience on your site. –Steven Carter

There's more to SEO than keywords.

SEO will continue to be a crucial component of a business's marketing strategy. The businesses who succeed with SEO will have valuable, well-structured content and a strong website architecture centered around topic clusters. –Anne Shenton

Flat, clean designs will be seen more and more in website design. Not only does it look great, the fast page loading speed can help improve SEO, too. –Steven Carter

Similar to Greg's prediction about VR, voice search will be pushed to marketers and consumers alike, but we're still at least a couple years away from wide adoption. Companies should understand that voice is a part of the larger shift to a search journey that is conversational and answers—rather than results—driven. Take 2019 to explore a voice optimization strategy and get ready for voice queries. –Gretchen Elliott

Successful marketers will be technical.

Adaptability will be the key trait for successful businesses. We'll see the companies that are able to anticipate the needs of their customers, adjust processes and offer what's wanted leap ahead of their competition. It could be as simple as delivering the same product or service in a slightly different way, or making sure your brand is available across social platforms. –Gretchen Elliott

Marketers will get further in tune to their audience's activity and preferences and deliver personalized content accordingly. For example, emails will be delivered based on the time the individual recipient is most likely to open it. –Anne Shenton

76% of subscribers make purchases from an email marketing message. Email isn't going anywhere, but on any given day, a typical US consumer interacts with 11 brands through email. To make it through the noise, businesses will need to hyper-segment their audiences and only send targeted, relevant messages. –Gretchen Elliott

Check back this time next year for another round of predictions.