2019

Digital Marketing
Trends.
 A Look Ahead.
2018 has been a bumpy ride for Silicon Valley CEOs—but will 2019 be any
better for the other major social networks?
This year, trust in social media companies began to
erode at a breakneck pace after news of several large
data breaches and Russian interference in the 2016 US
presidential election broke.
According to Edelman’s 2018
Trust Barometer, 60% of
respondents no longer trust
social media companies.
And although the Senate’s probing of Silicon Valley’s
biggest players (absent Google’s Larry Page) didn’t
reveal much, their intention surfaced an important
point: social media plays a much larger role in society
than previously thought.
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
From who we vote for to what we buy, our choices
are being influenced by the social media platforms
that we spend over two hours a day scrolling through.
And with consumers more cognizant of the fact that
their behaviors are being changed in response to
this technology, the brands that use these platforms
to communicate are being challenged to overcome
concerns around data privacy as they try to establish
more authentic relationships with consumers.
2019 will be an exciting time for the consumer-
brand relationship as marketers update their digital
marketing strategies to reflect changing consumer
desires and opinions. So, what type of changes do
marketers need to prepare for? Let’s take a look.
2
 Join Our Social Media
Trends Webinar!
January 24, 2019

During the webinar we’ll walk you through the trends

TJ Kiely
covered in this handbook and how you can utilize them
in your marketing strategy next year. Register today to Content Marketing Manager
start preparing your marketing strategy ready for 2019. Falcon.io

Join us to learn about:

Norbert Sauter
• The social media trends you need to be watching
• The changes to expect from major social networks Strategy Advisor for Social Media
• The way brands are already leveraging these trends Falcon.io

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Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends 3

 Content.

5 Chronological Feeds 20 Micro-Social Networks

6 Social Ecommerce 21 Search Engine Optimization
7 Private Messaging Apps 22 Optimizing Social Advertising

10 Social TV 25 Martech Stacks

11 Vertical Video 26 Augmented Reality
12 Podcasts 27 Purpose-driven Marketing

15 Time Well Spent

16 Chatbots
17 Privacy Battles

Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends 4

 Chronological Feeds.
Will turning back time bring back user engagement?

Back in the early days of social media,
new posts showed up at the top of users’
feeds—simple, right?
Over the past few years, however, major
social networks like Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter have been more focused on
ordering feeds based on what their algo-
rithms predict individual users might like.
As a result, many users have complained
that algorithmic feeds have too much
control over the content they see.
In 2018, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram
responded to this criticism by updating
their feeds. Twitter’s now giving users
the option to see the newest posts first
and Pinterest added an extra feed to let
users see content in chronological order.
Meanwhile, Instagram updated its algo-
rithm to weight timeliness more heavily
when giving posts priority.
More timely feeds are likely to help
brands on social media, as less interfer-
ence from feed algorithms means brand-
ed content won’t have its reach limited
compared to user-generated content
as much. These updated feeds will also
require brands to focus more on find-
ing the best times to post for maximum
reach and engagement.
In 2019, chronological feeds may con-
tinue their comeback as users become
increasingly skeptical of content being
delivered by algorithms. Expect to see
other major social networks like Face-
book and LinkedIn introducing features
that give more priority to new content—
just like the good ol’ days.

Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends 5

 Social Ecommerce.
The social media feed has become the new storefront.

Instead of scrolling through a company’s
website for the perfect pair of shoes, cus-
tomers are busy scrolling through their
social feeds.
Pinterest has introduced buyable pins 1 in 4 people have now
that allow users to purchase the prod-
purchased a product or
ucts they’ve pinned without having to
leave the platform. service via social media.

With a dedicated shopping channel in
its Explore feed and shoppable tags for
posts and Stories, Instagram has become
an ecommerce destination for many us-
ers. And with the expansion of the social
network’s native payment feature, users
(or should we call them shoppers?) are
able to buy items directly within the plat-
form. But Instagram is not the only social
network trying to circumvent retailers’
websites.
Additionally, Snapchat now allows users With retail ecommerce sales worldwide
to shop products on Amazon by simply growing from $2.84 trillion to $3.453 tril-
taking a picture of an item or an item’s lion in 2019, marketers should be trying
barcode via the Snapchat camera. Pinter- to capturing a larger percentage of these
est’s Lens tool lets users complete a sim- sales via social networks.
ilar action, finding related visual matches
on its platform. Both Facebook and Pin-
terest have in-platform product catalogs
that enable these in-app purchases.

Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends 6

 Private Messaging Apps.
Private messaging apps are redefining
the ‘social’ in social media.
Adults in the US spent an average of three hours,
35 minutes per day on mobile devices in 2018—and
a significant portion of that time was spent on mobile
messaging apps.
There’s a shift occurring in the way users are
communicating online, and the major social networks
are paying close attention. On a recent earnings call,
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented on the
growing popularity of mobile messaging apps, saying,
“our biggest competitor by far is iMessage.”
He supported his claim by mentioning research that
suggests people are sharing less content publicly:
"People share more photos, videos and links on
WhatsApp and Messenger than they do on social net-
works," he said. And according to Facebook,
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
80% of smartphone users will be using a mobile mes-
saging app by 2020. But already now, these apps com-
mand a large percentage of users’ time.
According to one report, people spent
2.8x the amount of time in
WhatsApp (85 billion hours) than they
did in Facebook (30 billion hours) from
during a three month period in 2018.
The ongoing transition from public social media to
messaging apps reflects a huge shift in consumers’
mindsets, and could also change the way that
marketers think about connecting with their
customers online.
7
 Private Messaging Apps.
Continued
Companies like Adidas have already begun using
WhatsApp to build hyper local communities in cities
across the world and adopting a one-to-one messaging
strategy rather than one-to-many. However, the
majority of marketers and brands are not taking pri-
vate messaging apps seriously.
This lack of interest is surprising because the top four
messaging apps have a combined total monthly active
user (MAU) count of 4.1 billion, which is more than the
top four social networks combined.
To make it easier for marketers to begin leveraging
dark social, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and
WeChat are introducing assistive tools for businesses.
For example, Facebook Messenger offers display ads
in the Messenger inbox, sponsored messages, and
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
click-to-Messenger ads. Facebook Messenger also lets
businesses install chatbots that can help improve cus-
tomer service.
And with the release of the WhatsApp business API in
August 2018, the messaging app will soon become a
major player in the social customer service market-
place. Although users might not be excited about the
possibility of chatting with brands or seeing their ads,
it seems to be the way these apps are headed.
In 2019, marketers should aim to at least explore how
these messaging apps can be used for building a re-
lationship with audiences, and even used to get your
audiences to share and recommend your brand to
their friends and families.
8
Around 80%
of the world’s active
internet users are
social media users.
Source: Statista

Lights, camera, IGTV! Social media networks are
trying to change the way we consume TV.
It’s hardly news that video content is in-
sanely popular on social media. YouTube
is nearing 2 billion monthly active users,
while Facebook users are watching over
100 million hours of videos on the plat-
form daily.
What is new, however, is the rise of social
TV platforms like Facebook Watch, IGTV,
and YouTube Originals.
Facebook Watch in particular has been
generating a lot of buzz going into 2019
by launching a reboot of “The Real
World” and several other high-profile
shows.
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
Social TV.
Watch’s new strategy is twofold: snag
big-name talents and existing franchises
that can get off to a “hot start” on the
platform, but also serve as a launchpad
for show creators hoping to eventually
get picked up by a major TV network, as
“More in Common” was by ABC.
IGTV, on the other hand, has widely been
called a flop by users and content cre-
ators who don’t see its value when com-
pared to YouTube or Snapchat. However,
there may still be hope for the long-form
vertical video platform to get a new lease
on life if it pivots to a subscription model
and funds high-quality series designed to
be viewed on mobile.
Finally, YouTube is expanding its premi-
um offerings of original series big time
in 2019, launching 50 new shows in 17
markets featuring celebrities like Adam
Levine and Robert Downey Jr.
All in all, it looks like 2019 will be the year
we find out if social TV can compete with
major network programming.
80% of what we consume
online will soon be
video content.
10
 Vertical Video.
If you don’t have to rotate your phone, will you watch
By 2019, users are expected to spend
more time looking at mobile devices than
at TVs.
Not only that, but over 60%
of all online video views
now take place on mobile.
With those facts in mind, it’s no surprise
that video content is getting more and
more optimized for smartphones.
One of the biggest steps toward mobile
becoming the new normal is the rise
of vertical video. This layout intuitively
makes more sense for smartphones,
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
more video content?
since users hold their phones vertically
94% of the time.
Several social networks have already
realized that it feels unnatural for mobile
users to turn their phones horizontally to
watch fullscreen videos. The increasingly
popular Instagram Stories format, for
instance, has seen great success among
users and advertisers with its portrait
layout.
Building on that popularity, Instagram
laid out a vision for a dedicated vertical
video platform with the 2018 release of
IGTV.
IGTV has struggled to grow, but may-
be that’s because it’s ahead of its time.
After all, YouTube seemed to be taking
cues from Instagram when it released a
new vertical video ad format a couple of
months after IGTV’s launch.
Though YouTube previously resisted the
vertical layout for videos altogether, it
can now display videos in portrait mode
on both smartphones and desktops.
As smartphones become the top way
consumers watch videos, more and more
video sharing platforms will introduce
vertical video display options and ad
formats.
11
 Podcasts.
Commercials people actually want to listen to?
Branded podcasts have captivated consumers.

Podcasts were once seen as a niche interest without interests in an intimate, immersive format that feels
much commercial appeal—but no longer. like a personal conversation with the hosts.

44% of Americans have now listened to at least one
podcast, with one in three Americans under 55 listen-
ing to podcasts monthly. For those keeping track, that’s
an audience of over 124 million people in the US alone.
Podcast fans are seriously engaged,
From true crime sagas like Serial to deeply personal
interviews with comedians on WTF, enough podcasts
now exist that anyone can find content suited to their
tastes. That’s a big part of why the number of podcast
listeners has consistently grown over 10% per year
since 2013.

too! In fact, the average weekly listener Advertisers have taken notice of the trend, and year-
now consumes over 6.5 hours of ly podcast ad revenue is expected to double to $659
podcasts a week. million by 2020.

So why are podcasts on the rise? From the listener’s For marketers, the highly-focused topics of most pod-
perspective, podcasts speak directly to their niche casts mean audiences essentially segment themselves.

Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends 12

 Podcasts.
Continued
Plus, over two-thirds of podcast ads are read by the
hosts, building audience trust and engagement much
like influencer marketing. And it seems to be working:
A recent survey found that 67% of listeners were able
to name specific promotions mentioned in podcast ads.
A major reason many advertisers steered away from
podcasts in the past was that there was no reliable
standard for measurement. But with Apple finally
offering a podcast analytics feature, marketers can
now track crucial metrics such as the percentage of
users that finish an episode and how many listen to
the ads.
Not only will podcast advertising keep expanding next
year, but branded podcasts themselves are also be-
coming more and more normalized. In the last few
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
years, major brands like Tinder, Microsoft and even
McDonalds have successfully jumped on the podcast-
ing train, prompting others to follow in their tracks.
These branded podcasts all have one thing in com-
mon: they focus on entertaining or informing their
audiences about something related to their industry
without getting too promotional. By building a follow-
ing organically, they essentially become long-form ads
with highly engaged audiences that are actively choos-
ing to listen to them. Think of them as content market-
ing with a devoted fanbase.
It’s easy to see why podcasts, both branded and un-
branded, are set to become one of the hottest mar-
keting trends of 2019. The only question is whether
they’ll continue their steady rise in popularity or reach
a tipping point and start growing exponentially.
13
 Social Networks by Number
of Monthly Active Users.

2.2 billion 1.9 billion 1.5 billion 1.3 billion 1 billion

335 million 330 million 303 million 291 million 250 million

Source: Statista
 Time Well Spent.
Tech addiction is a serious problem, and now the
It's easy to make light of the issue, but
social media and device addiction are
real. And nothing recognizes this fact
more than the ‘time spent’ functions
recently released by Apple, Instagram and
Google. These exist purely to monitor
your screen time and can be set to notify
you when you exceed your chosen limit.
“Apple really cares?” you ask. Well yes.
Sorta. The tech giant was pressured by
shareholders to introduce the Screen
Time update to combat iPhone addiction
among young users. Zuckerberg and
Co. followed suit with “Your Activity” for
Instagram and “Your Time on Facebook,”
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
tech giants “want” to help.
positioning it as another development in
the cause of “improving engagement.”
This development also recognizes that
consumers are becoming more con-
scious of how and where they spend
their time. A third of millennials say they
have quit or taken time off Facebook and
Twitter this year—with “wasted time” or
“negativity” cited as the reasons.
And it seems people of all age brackets
are curbing their social media usage,
with one study stating that Facebook has
experienced a 24% decline in time spent
on the app.
Considering the years and millions these
companies have devoted to keeping
people on their products, time spent
features represent a significant paradigm
shift. But hats off to the tech compa-
nies—they are adapting to changing con-
sumer behavior with a speed few other
industries can match. It will be fascinat-
ing to see how this shift develops in 2019
and beyond.
15
 Chatbots.
Artificial intelligence is how brands
can become more “human.”

Chatbots have long been called person-
alized marketing’s next big thing, and
2019 could be the year they live up to the
hype.
Gartner predicts that 85%
of customer interactions
will be managed by chatbots
by 2020.
The accelerated uptake is driven by
how well chatbots hit the sweet spot in
modern consumer behavior. Today’s
consumers demand frictionless, 24-hour
communication from companies and 1:1
personalized service. Furthermore,
nine out of 10 consumers prefer to
use messaging apps to communicate
with businesses.
The good news for businesses is that
chatbots are now smart enough to do all
this and a lot more. Aside from improv-
ing the customer experience, the number
one value for brands is the cost-savings.
Implementing chatbots into your busi-
ness strategy can lead to cost savings of
up to 30%.
One major trend that will define chatbot
and AI development in 2019 is conversa-
tional user experience (CUX).
This employs the machine learning capa-
bilities of chatbots to fast-track users to
their desired goals.
It may seem counterintuitive that AI is
how brands will deliver the more “hu-
man” and “meaningful” interactions that
consumers crave, but this transformation
is well under way. Every business should
be weighing up their chatbot strategy in
2019.

Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends 16

 Privacy Battles.
The backlash against big brother continues—yet consumers
may be inviting him in like never before.
The issue of digital privacy came crashing into our col-
lective consciousness in 2018. It seemed to be every-
where. The Cambridge Analytica leak dominated head-
lines. Google announced it would be shutting down
Google+ in the wake of its security bug issue.
Trust in Facebook is down 66%,
according to the Ponemon Institute.
Meanwhile, companies doing business in Europe have
had to adjust to the EU’s General Data Protection Reg-
ulation—welcomed by many as a signal that the days
of the “digital wild west” are over.
In 2019, there are likely to be some drastic develop-
ments. The Democrats now hold the US House of
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
Representatives, giving them the platform to make
their pledged Internet Bill of Rights a reality. At the
other end of the spectrum, Google may be returning to
China—jumping through some censorship and surveil-
lance hoops to do so.
However, even though trust in digital technology has
taken a beating, 2019 will see the increased adoption
of products that many believe to be one of the biggest
privacy threats of all: voice-activated smart speakers.
It is believed that 48% of US homes will own an Ama-
zon Echo, Google Home or Apple HomePod by early
2019. And not all of those smart speaker owners may
be fully aware of the fact that these products store the
data they collect on their manufacturers’ servers.
17
 Privacy Battles.
Continued
65% of new smart speaker owners say
they don’t know enough about the
functionality of the device.
Companies like Google and Amazon provide ample
argument that smart speakers are less susceptible to
hacking than other devices (being purely server-based,
hackers have to get past the company to get to you).
At the same time, they have been busy blocking the
inroads hackers have found to install eavesdropping
software and even hijack the voice function.
Users’ tolerance will be further tested in the near
future: in March, The New York Times reported that
Amazon and Google are seeking technology patents
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
that will enable their smart speakers to gather even
more audio data for ad targeting and recommenda-
tions. At least Facebook has added a cover to Face-
book Portal—a conscious nod to those with tape over
their computer cameras.
2019 may well mark a turning point on the question of
digital privacy. While consumers are more conscious
than ever of privacy risks, we have come to expect a
level of personalization that hinges entirely on person-
al data. We are also becoming addicted to the ease
and convenience our gadgets allow. Ultimately, we will
need to decide where the trade-off lies.
18
 Average time spent on social media apps
increased by almost 60%
between 2014 and 2018.

30 minutes 47 minutes
a day in 2014 a day in 2018

Source: Ericson
 Micro-social Networks.
Some of the smallest players are putting pressure on
the biggest names in social media.

Social networks come and go...and some
come back again like Vine, whose found-
er is re-launching the app in 2019 under
the name Byte. (YAY!)
Many may not be familiar with Vine, but
the 200 million people who used the plat-
form were not merely users, they were
loyalists. And when the niche short-form
video network was shut down in 2016,
for them a little piece of their love for the
internet died, too. However, its legacy
lives on in social media sensations like
Charlotte Summer, Lele Pons, and Logan
Paul, all of whom got their start on the
platform.
And just as these social media stars be-
came mainstream, so too are the niche
networks where they got their start.
Networks like TikTok, Path and Vero are
becoming a part of the daily vernacular,
especially among Gen Z.
LinkedIn is one of the few niche networks
to have made it big, but in order to truly
scale, the network is beginning to inte-
grate features like hashtags found on tra-
ditional networks to many users’ chagrin.
And even if direct advertising isn’t avail-
able on these platforms, these micro-so-
cial networks can be used by brands to
conduct research or connect with
micro-influencers.
Some brands are even building their own
social networking apps like The Rolling
Stones.
With reach declining on the traditional
social networks, brands need to find new
places to connect with consumers, and
these smaller networks are a great place
to look in 2019.

Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends 20

 Search Engine Optimization.
Today, brands need to understand that searchability
quickly translates to profitability.

All marketers know to keep a close eye
on Facebook’s and Instagram’s algo-
rithms, but how many are watching
Google’s just as closely?
More than 90% of all
internet searches take
place through Google or
one of its subsidiaries such
as YouTube.
So if you want to get your products or
services in front of potential customers,
you need to make sure your website is
optimized according to Google’s algo-
rithms—especially on mobile pages.
In 2018, Google began its mobile-first
index rollout, which meant that if your
website had both a mobile and desktop
version, Google's systems would only
consider the mobile site for ranking and
indexing.
Additionally, Google’s algorithms have
begun favoring cluster and pillar content,
which is why many say 2019 will be the
year the keyword dies. Slower sites can
also expect to be penalized next year.
But besides Google, brands also need
to take search on sites like Amazon into
consideration. 46.7% of US internet users
start product searches on Amazon
compared with 34.6% who go to Google
first, according to Adeptmind. And with
50% of all searches predicted to be con-
ducted via voice on devices like Amazon
Echo and Google Home by 2020, market-
ers have a lot more platforms to optimize
for than ever.
Marketers should be paying close atten-
tion to search in 2019, especially since
search engines like Google are now
driving more referral traffic than social
networks.

Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends 21

 Optimizing Social
Advertising.
Will Facebook’s new ad formats be worth the price?
Advertising on social media has massively grown
over the last few years. In fact, advertisers will
spend nearly $68 billion on social ads worldwide
by the end of 2018—and that’s projected to grow
to a jaw-dropping $185 billion by 2022.
Facebook in particular just keeps selling more
and more ads. In Q3 of 2018 alone, they generat-
ed over $13 billion in ad revenue across all their
products, a 33% increase since 2017.
That growth comes on the back of a larger trend
on social: brands are finding it increasingly diffi-
cult to get their content seen organically due to
recent algorithm changes and are scaling up their
paid content to compensate.
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
For example, the 2018 Facebook algorithm change
aimed to show users more posts from friends and
family and less content from Pages. As a result,
one case study showed average Page reach declin-
ing by 50%. That’s a major reason brands will need
to focus on paid and promoted posts in 2019.
Of course, marketers wouldn’t be raising their so-
cial ad budgets if they weren’t seeing positive ROI.
Even though average ad prices have been increas-
ing on social media over the past few years, social
media marketing will keep being profitable for two
reasons: optimization and improved targeting.
Major networks like Facebook and LinkedIn are
continuously evolving their analytics to provide
a wealth of data for optimizing ad campaigns.
22
 Optimizing Social Advertising.
Continued
Meanwhile, targeting will continue to become
more advanced in 2019, letting advertisers
pinpoint their ideal consumers and get higher
conversion rates that justify higher spend.
At the same time, the increasing complexity
of native advertising on social media is driving
more marketers to third-party social advertising
platforms like Falcon’s.
Finally, social platforms will keep pumping out
exciting new ad formats and features next year.
In 2018, Instagram introduced carousel ads to
Stories, LinkedIn finally added video ads, and
Facebook majorly expanded Messenger ads.
The continued release of fresh ad types will offer
advertisers innovative ways to reach users, and
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
brands that master them first will get ahead of
their competition.
As the platforms begin to run low on ad space
in their traditional feeds, they’ll be looking to
monetize features like Stories and messaging
more, giving digital marketers more options than
ever to find the ideal place for their ads.
Marketers will need to focus more and more on
social ads next year, but that doesn’t mean who-
ever has the biggest budget will dominate the
networks. Instead, those who create compelling
ads, target relevant audiences and optimize their
campaigns will come out ahead—with more cash
in hand.
23
Out of the 10 most popular
social media platforms of
2008, five no longer exist and
only two remain among the 10
most popular in 2018.

Source: Ericson
 Martech Stacks.
The only way companies can keep up with
consumer expectations.

According to research and consulting
firm Frost & Sullivan, 2019 is the year
that customer experience will overtake
price and product quality as the key
differentiator for brands.
This makes a fully-integrated marketing
technology (martech) stack a brand’s
most important strategic investment in
the coming year. Without one, compa-
nies simply won’t be able to match the
expectations of increasingly connected
customers.
What goes into the best martech stacks?
According to the Walker Sands State
of Marketing Technology 2018 report,
respondents put email, social media,
content marketing and CRM tools at the
top of their wish lists.
The goal is to enable the free flow of
information throughout the organiza-
tion so channel-agnostic customers have
the same seamless experience at every
touchpoint. The challenge is that with
soooo many martech tools to choose
from, assembling that elusive ‘best-in-
breed’ stack is harder than ever.
To achieve that, organizations should
start by considering their customer
journey and strategic goals. Consider
how various tools can complement one
another—for example, can your CRM
tool integrate with your social media
management platform so you can keep
your profiles updated with social data?
It will be the companies with the best-
tuned martech stacks that will reap the
best marketing ROI in 2019.

Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends 25

 Augmented Reality.
Expect big and exciting things from
Virtual reality hit the scene a few years
back but, from a marketing point of view,
it has yet to live up to the (awesome)
expectations. Augmented reality (AR),
however, has picked up the baton—and
it looks like 2019 could be the watershed
year for the format. In fact, a study by
Statista, IDC and Goldman Sachs projects
that there will be more than a billion AR
app users by 2020. Not bad for some-
thing that many still only associate with
Pokémon Go.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has called AR “a big
idea, like the smartphone,” and both his
company and Facebook are leaning in
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
this tech disruptor.
with major investment. Apple released
its ARKit 2.0 AR developer platform this
year, while Facebook has the similar AR
Studio alongside a growing host of AR
filters and other features.
Why are these tech giants so sold on AR?
It’s immersive, allowing users to experi-
ence brands in an almost sensory way—
but without having to cut the rest of the
world off as you do with VR. The most
recent smartphone releases all support
the format, so there is no doubt that
augmented reality will soon be a normal
part of our everyday reality.
A few forward-thinking brands have been
blazing the trail here, notably IKEA. Their
AR “IKEA Place” digital catalog app has
been downloaded two million times since
its September 2017 release.
The future of AR is enormous, entirely
open and extremely exciting. When
Jaguar and BMW are experimenting with
smart windshields that support AR, you
know we’re dealing with a technologi-
cal disruptor. It’s likely that in 2019 the
magnitude of this disruption will become
apparent.
26
 Purpose-driven
Marketing.
Brand messaging that manages to cut through the clutter.
Brands have been taking a stand—or a knee in the
case of Nike’s choice to support Colin Kaepernick—on
important issues like racial equality, gender equality
and sustainability.
And as polarizing as some of these corporate messages
may be (evidenced by some Nike customers’ choice to
burn the company’s products after the release of the
Colin Kaepernick ad), the majority of consumers seem
to be supportive of this new generation of corporate so-
cial responsibility: 78% of customers say they are more
loyal to purpose-driven brands than traditional brands.
So, what is purpose-driven marketing? Well, let’s start
off by saying this is not about a company’s employees
volunteering to plant trees or spend the day at a local
food bank. While those initiatives are extremely
Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends
important, a purpose-lead company’s impact can be
felt year round.
Purpose-driven marketing communicates the reason
why a company exists and how it improves the lives of
customers, beyond just its products’ features.
For example, Patagonia’s raison d’etre is to save the
environment—and the company is even willing to
sue President Trump to do so.
Companies like Adidas, IKEA, McDonalds and
Starbucks have also made their environmental
commitments more clear this year by announcing
initiatives to eliminate or reduce their use of plastic.
Purpose-driven marketing messages like these have
been proven to cut through the noise: 68% of people
27
 Purpose-driven Marketing.
Continued

said they are more willing to share content from pur-
pose-driven brands with their social networks than
content from traditional companies.
When Allan Askov Christoffersen, Global Partnership
& Activation Director at momondo / KAYAK, shared the
results from momondo’s The DNA Journey campaign
at Spark, he confirmed this stat, saying the campaign
video “attracted over 600 million video views, 97% of
which were organic.”
Then there are companies like Ripple Foods, which
makes a non-dairy milk alternative, and has adopted
a self-imposed “Earth Tax,” meaning it donates 1% of
sales revenue to nonprofits.
Even PepsiCo, a company best known for hawking junk
food, has introduced a new sustainable growth plan.
Strategic changes like these aren't just socially motivat-
ed, they’re also financially motivated.
In one EY survey, companies that prioritized purpose
marketing reported seeing significant revenue growth
over time, while those that did not reported seeing
revenue decline.
It is clear consumers are favoring mission-driven
brands; 79% say they prefer social purpose-driven
brands and would be more likely to purchase from
them. Next year, companies would be wise to focus on
more than just profits—otherwise they risk sacrificing
their bottom lines.

Falcon.io - 2019 Digital Marketing Trends 28

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