In this article we will have a look at the newest marketing trends of 2017, and touch on how companies can take advantage of these trends and techniques.
Nowadays a variety of digital channels are being used for marketing efforts, and the majority of them put the consumer as the protagonists allowing two way communication.
With a consumer-centric model, companies that know who their consumers are, can leverage on this knowledge and gain competitive advantage by increasing the quality of digital content and target their customers at the right time.
With the rise of the smartphone and cheaper, more affordable data plans, we are getting used to being connected at all times. Data is literally at our fingertips! Moreover smartphones are not only being used by younger generations but also by older people who are becoming more tech-savvy and starting to appreciate the advantages of being always online.
As a result, ease of browsing, retrieving information and making online purchases through our mobile devices is becoming a key factor of our online experience. Therefore optimizing the website for mobile devices is a necessity for a business, looking to enhance its mobile presence is newest marketing trends. This can be achieved by using responsive design (fitting the website to different screen sizes), making content simple to navigate and faster to load. If your audience is primarily on mobile, make sure to provide an AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) version of your content.
Customers are seeking an enhanced browsing experience and this is an opportunity of converting their traffic into sales. Customers will not think twice of moving to the next website if your website is not fast to load or if it is unfriendly to use.
Moreover being always online enables impulsive purchases. How many times have you bought something spontaneously online whilst idling the time waiting to be served?
We’ve already mentioned that the rise in smartphones and cheap data plans has increased our time online. But it is also revolutionizing how we interact online, with video becoming more and more popular and people preferring short clips rather than textual content.
The availability of video and live streaming on social media platforms such as Twitter’s Periscope, Facebook Live and YouTube live has contributed to an increase in this trend
The level of engagement is different to traditional broadcasting, allowing the audience to interact and influence the live stream itself. Social media platforms are making it much easier to generate such content, which can be used by businesses to market their products, whilst giving a personal touch and making the experience more human.
Many businesses have a lot of data about their customers but analysing it and using it to generate more conversions is a different matter altogether. Leveraging such data will make your campaigns more targeted, because it removes some unknowns, and allows you to mould your offerings around your customers’ requirements.
Data analytics will help you create a personalized experience for your customers. Personalization together with the ability to push such content to your customers, wherever their location and whatever their device, will ensure a more homogenous experience and increased loyalty.
Data will give you real time insights allowing you to understand the customer needs better, and target specific campaigns for specific segments of your customer base.
In order to offer customer value, it is therefore important to use non-conventional data sources, such as social media information, search information and consumer transactions.
Social media posts can be used as a way of subtly advertising your brand or business without being blatant about it. Social media marketing can be done by sharing your content on your own social media channels. This is free and easy to do. Additionally, most social media networks allow paid advertising, allowing you to display adverts to particular user groups e.g. based on demographics. But probably the most valuable social media marketing happens when your audience shares your content with their networks.
Posting smart and interesting content which attracts attention is a great way of getting people to know about you and become accustomed with your brand. Moreover posting consistent high quality content will earn you an online audience, which would be willing to share your content on other social media platforms. Apart from exposing your content to a wider audience, this will also help your SEO strategy, because traffic from social networks will cause your website to climb much faster in the search engine results pages.
Social media marketing requires a lot of listening to help you understand what your customers or potential customers are talking about and what they are interested in. Engaging in discussions will help you learn what is important for them. Therefore data gathered from social media channels will give you valuable insights into your customer’s’ behavior as it allows real time interaction.
Adding value by creating good quality content and building relationships are key social media marketing strategies.
The example below demonstrates Nike’s excellent customer relationship through social customer care.
As defined by The Content Marketing Institute,
“ Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. ˝
Content needs to be valuable, high quality and consistent in order to get customers’ attention, and more importantly to keep customers interested in your brand. We live in a world which is constantly bombarding us with information, such that we have learnt to filter out whatever doesn’t interest us, sometimes even automatically. Thus, content needs to capture your audience’ interest by promising something in return for their attention.
There are many forms of content – as discussed above, video and live streaming are becoming a very engaging and important form of content. Think about GoPro and their content strategy – they started generating content in the form of short high quality videos, by partnering with top athletes and travel brands. It didn’t take long for their customers to get inspired and start generating content of their own, tagging GoPro and creating a vast amount of user generated content.
Newest marketing trends of search engine optimization involves many techniques which will help search engines find your website and direct traffic to your website, increasing your chances of conversions. These techniques include, amongst others:-
Search engines are crawling and indexing loads and loads of information on the Internet everyday! SEO techniques are crucial in helping you rank better, giving you a much higher probability of converting traffic to sales. According to MOZ :-
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