Biggest Marketing Lessons to Take Away From 2018
2018… what a year! It’s hard to believe that 2019 is already here so as we gear up for another exciting year at Clickhouse Media, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the major marketing mistakes we have seen and opportunities 2018 brought.
Lessons Learnt in 2018
So, here’s a summary of what you can learn from the past to prevent similar mistakes from happening in 2019.
1. Influencer marketing may backfire on a brand’s image
Influencer marketing has been such a hot topic in 2018 and it’s only set to continue growing in popularity in 2019. We have seen many brands attempting to give it a go, however not all campaigns were executed properly. For example, brands were paying influencers to promote a product on their social media, but that particular influencer wasn’t a good fit with neither the brand nor the promotional message.
Lesson: Anyone with a few thousands of followers can be an influencer, but their efficacy varies depending on industry and your marketing objectives. So, next time try to be more selective with your affiliations and only leverage those that best fit your brand. Simply, don’t choose a travel influencer if you are a beauty brand.
2. Customers found new ways to discover and consume content
Voice search was on the rise in 2018. Both Amazon and Google sold millions of Echo (Alexa) and Google Home (Google Assistant) devices so it is important that all marketers pay attention to this new trend. Studies show that voice search will not only be used to learn about the weather and nearby restaurants or hearing what’s the next step in a recipe while cooking and setting an alarm, but soon 50% of all searches will be carried out via voice.
Lesson: Marketers have a real opportunity to stay ahead of the trend by taking steps to optimise their website content and SEO strategies for voice searches, i.e. use long-tail keywords, optimise website for mobile devices, improve the mobile user experience and more.
3. Protecting customers’ privacy is of utmost importance
Facebook was fined £500k over Cambridge Analytica data breach a few months back because contact details of Facebook users, including names, email addresses, telephone numbers and credit card details were accessed by a third-party application. It seems that social media platforms, as well as poor web security measures, are easy targets for hackers so, every business has a responsibility to make it harder for hackers to penetrate its networks and steal data.
Lesson: Data breaches can cause damage to your brand, reputation and trust so considering that we live in an era where privacy is extremely valuable, you should take steps to standardise online privacy protections for your customers, as well as avoid reaching potential customers without their permission.
Stay tuned for our next blog where we make predictions on what we expect to see in marketing and branding in 2019!
