3 Marketing Trends to Follow TODAY
Let’s start off by clarifying that there’s no fixed formula to achieving marketing success. In this industry, nothing is set in stone, and what works one day might not work another. Trends come and go so quickly, but it’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s what makes marketing so challenging and exciting for us.
Instead, what you can do is to use these trends as a starting point to help you plan your campaign and tweak accordingly. For the best results, you should choose the trend that best plays up to your product and tailor it accordingly. Ready? Let’s dive right into the top three marketing trends that have stood the test of time.
Trend #1: Going digital
This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many companies have not yet introduced digital transformation programs to tap on the benefits of digital marketing. This especially applies to companies who have been around since before the Internet Age, where traditional media marketing through outlets like newspapers, magazines, and mail probably brought them roaring success.
Another category of such companies is those with really excellent products that sell themselves, without the need for an extensive marketing strategy.
However, time has told us that proper digital transformation is needed for all companies, including the two kinds listed above. On top of that, many have the misconception that digital transformation is equivalent to creating a social media page, or building a website. There’s actually much more to a true digital transformation. Here’s are the two main facets:
Optimization
Going digital should streamline processes for the company, not create more work for everyone involved. Granted, there’s likely to be an increased workload during the transition period, but all in all going digital should help to increase efficiency.
For marketing, this helps as you no longer need to use manpower on data collection. With digital tools, data is now automatically collected and processed, so you can put the additional manpower to better use in strategy or creative departments.
Communication
Going digital means that both internal and external communication should be streamlined. One of the ways digital marketing comes into play in this area is to facilitate data transfer.
There will no longer be a need for manual collection and analysis of how audiences respond to an advertising stint, and no longer a need for data to pass through hands in the company. Instead, all departments should have equal and instant access, allowing marketing teams to produce or adjust campaigns faster than ever before.
As you can see, going digital has immense benefits for your company, especially in terms of marketing. Many companies have already started their digital and marketing transformation, one of the trends which has since granted them much growth and success.
Trend #2: Using natural language processing
For many years even before natural language processing (NLP) was brought to mainstream consumers, using conversational marketing has been a key strategy.
What this means is that instead of taking a formal approach to marketing, companies have sought to make their marketing voice more personable and to meet consumers eye-to-eye. For example, instead of using scientific jargon to sell vitamins and supplements, many companies decide to use layman and simple terms to appear more relatable.
Now, NLP and the artificial intelligence that drives it is becoming more widespread, and it is slowly making its way into just about every tech-savvy household. Not only is it fun to observe this new technology, but it’s also useful in opening new doors to this segment of the population — and takes conversational marketing to a new level.
If your company has the bandwidth, tap on such conversational marketing technologies, from smart speakers to NLP that’s built into phones like Siri and Alexa. The more the artificial intelligence mimics human dialogue, the more likable it is to humans, and the more likely your product will sell to them.
One concrete way you can tap on this emerging trend is by ranking on Google or Bing for commonly said words, such as “play”, “weather” or “music”. They may not be directly tied into your business or any specific business in particular, but you can tap on those commonly spoken words to guide users of smart speakers to you. So the next time they ask to search for the weather, with the right programming, they can be led right to your website and product.
Trend #3: Thoughtful use of insights
Insights-driven marketing is not a new concept. Even before the Internet came about, companies were conducting ad testing to make sure that their marketing strategies work. Now with the Internet and digital marketing tools, insights are the new buzzword. You can easily collect and analyze metrics like traffic, response rate, bounce rate, click-through rate and so many more.
However, as this becomes more common across the board, it’s no longer enough to have insights-driven marketing. Now, using the insights thoughtfully has become paramount. A key paradigm you should remember to keep you on track is to respond rather than react.
For instance, it’s very easy to react to a dip in numbers like website traffic and impressions. A reactionary response would be to immediately pump more money into paid advertising on search engines. However, a thoughtful response, in this case, is to look beyond the obvious and see the insights in context. Perhaps you’ll find that traffic is dipping because the keyword you’re trying to rank for has become saturated, or that a related event has happened that is causing news sites to rank for the word instead.
As such, by reframing the problem, you can come up with a much better course of action. For instance, you could wait out the event or even come up with quality content about the event that will draw more views. Alternatively, you could try to rank for a different keyword altogether. Now, any of these two strategies will work better than the reactionary response, which doesn’t match true user intentions and will give you less results.
To conclude, these three marketing trends have proven to be key indicators of success in terms of marketing, and we predict that this will be the case for the next decade or so. Utilize them well, and you’ll be at the top of the curve in no time! However, if you find it challenging to master these trends on your own, we’d recommend giving us a call to help navigate these waters.
Source Credit: https://fingerlakes1.com/2020/04/15/the-3-marketing-trends-you-need-to-follow-today/