There is no shortage of year-end articles about marketing trends that marketers need to know or should “pay attention to” in 2019. Marketing experts and influencers have shared their insights and predicted marketing trends for this year, particularly about digital marketing, email marketing, content marketing, promotional products, event marketing, and the list goes on.
However, there seem to be too many trends to watch out for. If we’ll just follow them all, it might just distract us from achieving our goals. The question is, where should marketers begin?
I reached out to Chief Marketing Officers from Philly to ask about their top marketing advice to their fellow marketers who want to be more successful in 2019.
Instead of simply jumping on what’s trending in 2019, consider these powerful marketing tips from some of the highly respected and highly experienced CMOs from Philly:
#1: Make your brand’s mission the foundation of all your marketing activities.
The key to successful marketing is making sure your brand’s mission is the foundation of every strategy, campaign, product, and customer engagement.
Mission-driven brands create loyalty and tell their own stories through emotional connection. —Suzanne Harris, Chief Marketing Officer, Military Veteran Partners
#2: Ask your customers for feedback.
Ask your customers for feedback. If you do already, what have you produced because of it or how can you make the feedback even more valuable?
If you haven’t yet, set a goal to make customer feedback part of plans at least twice in 2019. —Erik Harbison, CMO, AWeber Email Marketing
#3: Don’t try too many new things at once.
There’s a lot of flashy and new ideas, but iteration is key to understanding not just what is working, but if it’s worth scaling.
For example, if you’re new to direct mail campaigns do a test run with certain accounts, before you scale to thousands. —Ashley Deibert, CMO, Videolicious
#4: Listen to your clients’ customers and prospects. Promote yourself voraciously.
1. Get back out in the trenches and talk to your clients’ customers and prospects before you begin anything. That voice of customer drives the bus and sets your stage for campaigns that boost business and brand.
2. Don’t forget to promote the promotion with the client’s inside and outside teams. Be as creative informing, involving and inspiring them as you do with their clients in order to get the best results.
3. Promote yourself voraciously, as feverishly and creatively as you do your clients. You must keep your own pipeline full while the plates are spinning so you have continual new business. —Mary Ellen Sokalski, CEO & CMO, The Scarlet Marketeer
#5: Develop a marketing operating system for your organization and implement it.
Just as your smartphone, your flat-screen TV, and even your car have operating systems, your marketing organization needs one too. This is one of the principal things we are helping clients with today and it is the key generating trust from your CEO and systemically meeting all of your marketing objectives.
At a basic level, your system should be able to show how your weekly and quarterly activities map to your longer-term business objectives and measure who is accountable for each. —Rich Smith, Chief Marketing Officer & Founder, Marketantics
#6: Fail fast and learn fast with minimal impact to marketing budget.
Testing is a key component to any marketing strategy. A/B testing is a must. —Tracy A. Wehringer, CMO, 5 West Strategy
#7: Create a compelling narrative and keep building on it.
Create a compelling narrative and keep building on it, people-centered stories always draw a lot of interest. —Laurie Actman, CMO, Penn Center for Innovation at University of Pennsylvania
Conclusion
Use these powerful pieces of advice to remind yourself that although other marketers and influencers have been talking about so many marketing trends to watch out for in 2019, the only trends that will matter to your business are those that align with your business goals and that help improve your customers’ lives because of your products and services.
So don’t get overwhelmed. Keep your focus. And enjoy the rest of the year implementing your marketing strategies and owning your success!
If you find this article useful, please SHARE with your network. Thank you!