Passionate marketers conducted its first Webisode and Gaurav Mendiratta, the CEO of Sociosquares, invited Shana Steigerwalt (CEO, Modern driven media), and Arijit Banerjee (CEO, consumer 51) to discuss the digital trends of 2019.
Modern driven media is a HubSpot marketing partner and one of the fastest growing inbound marketing agencies in the greater Philadelphia region, whereas, consumer 51 is a leading digital marketing agency which has a presence in Pennsylvania and New Mexico.
After a warm introduction, Gaurav asks Shana and Arijit, their take on the bloopers of 2018.
According to Shana,
- Facebook was supposed to be a leading edge of everything but their major faux pas in 2018 was introducing Facebook stories.
Whereas Arijit expected
- Google to take off in the social media space, which it failed miserably.
On the other hand, one of the things which Gaurav thought didn’t fare well was
- IOT in marketing like appliances talking to other appliances. Which he thinks are being produced but not bought.
They moved the discussion forward by talking about 2019. According to Gaurav, one of the things which he has seen growing is Digital Assistants. Recently Bank of America launched Erica.
When asked whether this trend would pick up in the following year, Shana said that she very well thinks digital assistants would do absolutely great because of their convenience and user-friendly nature.
When asked the same, Arijit believes that Erica belongs to a specific brand, and he would prefer an assistant like Alexa which would be able to do everything like shopping, banking etc.
While talking about search, Gaurav asked Shana to share her views about the various aspects in search which are changing.
Shana instantly said that according to her Voice search has been relevant for a long time and is continuing to be progressive in 2019 where various brands are tapping in and people are learning to adapt their content strategy around it.
One of the several things that Shana is interested to see is how brands that have coined their industry are influenced in voice searches.
When Arijit was asked about search in shopping, he felt that it is a huge trend because people like to search what they buy. With Amazon and other E-commerce sites coming up, it is becoming essential for search in shopping to take off.
Gaurav added that statistics from Kenshoo, a leading advertising platform, stated that almost 72 percent of consumers search on Amazon for a product before they make a purchase.
Arijit had a very interesting take on Artificial Intelligence and said that AI is moving with a fast pace and is always one step ahead of the user.
He further added that AI is something that not everyone knows how to use as it has various forms and should be used to understand the consumer efficiently.
When Shana was asked how marketing automation is changing in 2019, she said that marketing automation is trying to bring every form of communication to its potential audiences and is personalizing the conversation to help target the customer.
While according to Arijit Hubspot would have a great influence in 2019 because of its well efficient content management system.
Arijit also added that consumer behavior has changed a lot over the few years, people are no longer in shock when they see a new gadget, they don’t react to pain and pleasure as they used to 20-30 years ago.
Since Shana is content expert, Gaurav wanted to know how influencer marketing would change in 2019, to which she said that the consumer has become really smart and they know what advertisements are scripted and which ones are genuine.
Bringing in influencers which actually connect to the audience would help in understanding them efficiently and have an honest impact on them.
When comparing Facebook lead generation forms to Google lead gen, Shana stated that Facebook had a quality drop but because of its convenience people don’t have to use other platforms.
They summed their session by discussing their favorite trend.
Arijit said that according to him story-telling should be something huge, he also added that nowadays one doesn’t need to invest in expensive advertisements but proper use of story-telling marketing can be helpful in connecting with people.
Shana agreed to Arijit’s point and added that producing content in a moment and looking at it as documentation would change the game as it helps the people to give instant and spontaneous feedbacks through Instagram stories or Facebook live. This encourages natural and unscripted reaction which according to her will set the market forward.
For Gaurav, it was more tech-oriented and according to him fake impressions in online advertising should be eliminated and value should be added in verifying that the clicks the advertisers are getting are genuine.
The second trend which Gaurav thinks could be huge is Omni-channel marketing and how growth hacking, SEO, content marketing and paid advertising would come together to enlighten the consumer.
To watch the full video click on the link. And let us know your views in the comment section below. Stay tuned for more such webisodes.
