Marketing has come a long way in the last few years. With technology evolving at warp speed, there are now more ways to reach your target audience, whenever and wherever they are. To stay competitive today, you need to harness modern marketing to fully unlock your business capabilities and provide the best customer experience to drive additional growth and revenue.
With a whole new way of operating, marketing departments must be realigned to be more responsive, collaborative, and customer-focused. It’s all about transforming how marketing is done, rather than changing what it does.
TECH
Here’s a brief intro to the many ways tech has evolved marketing as we know it.
While making a decision on which one you should select, consider: ‘why’ do you want to use digital media in marketing, and ‘who’ are you aiming to reach with your marketing efforts? This will assist you in determining the best formats and channels to meet your goals.
Needless to say, there’s more than meets the eye, and we’ll continue to add to this list:
1. Digital Marketing
Any and all marketing activities that take place over the internet, including any forms of digital communication, is called (you guessed it!) digital marketing. It allows you to reach a broader audience than traditional means, targeting customers who are most likely to purchase your product or service. Furthermore, it is typically less expensive than traditional advertising and allows you to monitor progress on a daily basis and pivot as needed.
2. Social Media Marketing
The use of social media platforms to connect with your audience, promote your brand, improve sales, and drive website traffic is known as social media marketing. The benefits of social media include (and of course are not limited to); creating compelling content for your social media pages, listening to, and connecting with your followers, analyzing your outcomes, and running ads. When choosing which social media platform(s) you should be active on, consider where your customers spend the most of their time.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
One of the most effective ways to reach your target audience is search engine optimization. Optimizing your website and content for certain keywords and topics you’d like to be known for, can improve your ranking on search engines. This will result in growing organic traffic to your site, which means more leads to boost your sales.
4. Email Marketing
An important component of a great inbound marketing strategy, is email marketing. It involves building your emailing list, usually in exchange of a content offer, and sending emails to only those people who actually want to hear from you. This keeps them updated about your business and when rightfully timed, encourages them to buy your products or services.
5. Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Depending on your business objectives, pay-per-click ads or PPCs are a great way to get your message in front of the right people, at the right time and place. By bidding on certain keywords and placing ads on websites or social media, you can reach people who are already interested in what you have to offer.
6. Google Ads
Another PPC advertising platform that allows you to place ads in Google's search engine results pages (SERPs) is Google Ads. With over one billion active users, Google is the most popular search engine globally. By placing ads on Google, you can reach many potential customers quickly and easily.
7. Google Analytics
To track your website traffic and see how people interact with your content, Google Analytics is a great free tool. It gives you an extremely in-depth look at your website and/or app performance. This information can improve your website design, content, and marketing strategy – ultimately improving user experience, expanding your online reach and converting those leads into customers.
TRENDS
To stay competitive, it's important to stay up-to-date on the latest marketing trends. The marketing landscape is constantly changing, and if you're not keeping up with the latest trends, you will fall behind.
According to Hubspot, some of the trends ruling modern marketing are:
1. Influencer Marketing
Collaborating with influencers will continue to provide a strategic marketing advantage. Influencers are subject matter experts who play a pivotal role in converting leads, interacting with audiences, and increasing your brand’s awareness. They already have engaged followers who are interested in their material and are impacted by the information they deliver.
2. Video content
While long-form videos can provide consumers with in-depth information about a product, business or service, marketing will prove to be more effective with to-the-point short-form videos. This format corresponds well with the short attention spans of online users across a wide range of demographics. It implies that bite-sized thumb stopping video content will be vastly created, think YouTube shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok, and the like.
3. Mobile optimization
Consumers are spending an increasing amount of time on mobile devices. As millennial and Gen Z audiences' purchasing power grows, mobile-optimized digital experiences will become even more important to consider as a business owner marketing to these fast-paced, hyperconnected generations.
4. Evergreen content
Ephemeral content, which is typically published for 24-hours before disappearing (unless saved or archived), isn’t going away anytime soon – the best practice for growing brands is to publish more permanent or evergreen social media content. Standard posts, videos, and live events that appear on your platform's feed and can be viewed again days later, have proven to be more effective in marketing campaigns.
5. Social responsibility
Given the current condition of affairs, the modern consumer values social responsibility, ethics, and transparency. An earlier study from McKinsey projected that customers are more likely to support brands that display concern for all customers, employees, and shared causes. Meaning social responsibility, needs to be a top priority for progressing businesses.
6. Experiential marketing
As public spaces re-open, experiential marketing will make a comeback. Businesses will continue to invite their audiences to experience their brand in a tangible and offline way – demonstrating not only what they offer, but also what they stand for. With digital platforms becoming more accessible, these experiences have transformed into integrated campaigns, designed to engage customers online as well.
7. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The interest and demand for search optimization is on the rise – and rightfully so. Businesses today recognize that to compete for search traffic in their niche, they need to capitalize on search optimization opportunities. Brands will be investing in SEO professionals that can assist them with everything from search insights reports to multimedia optimization.
8. Virtual events
Marketing strategies will make room for more hybrid customer engagement opportunities – allowing audiences to embrace both virtual and physical events and conferences. Despite dwindling virtual event budgets, marketers will not abandon the virtual event arena anytime soon.
9. Audio content
In addition to the rise in podcasts, audio chatrooms like Clubhouse & Twitter spaces are being widely used to meet even new listeners. And while audio content may not offer excellent monetizing capabilities or conversion paths, they do provide the engagement and brand exposure that businesses require in order to continue investing in them.
10. Inbound marketing
Tried and tested inbound marketing will continue to be a great asset in creating brand awareness and building trust digitally. Businesses will prioritize refocusing their marketing strategy to drive customers to seek out their content with high-quality, relevant content targeting their audiences’ buyer personas and needs.
11. Immersive experiences
Technology in marketing has led brands to create and offer digitally immersive experiences for their customers. Viewing a computer-generated, lifelike scenario is virtual reality (VR), and viewing the real-life environment with visual, haptic, olfactory, or visual enhancements is augmented reality (AR). As VR & AR availability improves, more businesses will be adding it to their marketing mix, to enhance and improve customer experiences both online and offline.
12. Account-based marketing
While account-based marketing (ABM) is not a new concept, it is increasingly gaining traction and recognition among startups and major corporations alike. Dubbed ‘smarketing’, it’s when marketers use information about prospects and customers offered by sales teams to tailor campaigns to them.
13. Native Ads
When a business pays to have its content included on a third-party website, it’s called native advertising. More brands will be exploring this genre, as it allows them to blend in and introduce your business to a new audience who would not otherwise be aware of it. It can be found on social media, in search engine results, on content recommendation platforms (those links at the bottom of the page to read more about or connected to the issue), and in campaigns.
TIPS
While marketing strategies and approaches differ by industry, these ten pointers have broad applicability:
1. Keep the spotlight on your customer
It starts with listening to and understanding the needs of your target customer. Modern marketing offers additional ways to listen to your customer, such as evaluating data, observing behavior, tracking social media sentiment, and determining intent. Brands that stand out, connect market research to consumer analytics, and create extensive customer feedback programs to supplement their business objectives.
2. Adopt technology in your marketing
Marketing technology is all about getting more out of your business’s marketing activities. Slight changes to your marketing strategy, organizational structure and its processes, will ensure that you are catering to your customer’s needs seamlessly. Today, without marketing technology it is hard to compete, and MarTech is only becoming more important.
3. Invest in your brand
Customers are increasingly seeking brands that provide a positive experience and demonstrate shared values. While branding is crucial at all times, businesses with a strong branding strategy, especially ones that create emotional connections with customers, stand out. Your investment in branding is similar to an annuity – it serves as the foundation for marketing strategy and delivers a return for many years to come.
4. Expand your inbound marketing efforts
A strong inbound marketing campaign can reduce your dependency on list acquisition and paid media (or advertising) costs, in addition to enhancing your marketing performance. It is one of the least intrusive forms of marketing, in that it pulls a customer to your brand and requires their permission to meet them wherever and whenever they are. Examples include, social media, content marketing, SEO (search engine optimization), and influencer marketing.
5. Let your data do the talking
Marketing technology enables businesses to collect, connect, and compare new data sets. These data capabilities are so formidable that they can fuel decision making across your business. In addition to identifying opportunities, data highlights attention to diversification and reprioritization. Marketing can become more accountable by defining activities in terms of what it costs to deliver and what income, or other value, it generates.
6. Build your dream team
For businesses to succeed, it is critical to build a cohesive team to get behind your vision and mission. Make sure your team is well-balanced, by including both analytical and creative people. Marketing is becoming more specialized, and you will need to evaluate which areas require, and can afford, devoted professional skills. Implement hybrid marketing frameworks that balance internal and external knowledge, to fill in any gaps when it gets too difficult or costly to hire a highly specialized professional.
7. Integrate your marketing activities
Traditionally, marketing has been segmented by channel or team. Modern marketing now integrates marketing and communications activities into a single comprehensive strategy. For a campaign, direct marketing is supplemented by advertising, social media, PR, and sales support efforts. Consider investing in marketing planning processes and tools that aid in the management of integrated campaigns across expert teams.
8. Bring agility in your operations
In today's marketing, agility and speed are crucial. To remain flexible in an ever-changing, still-uncertain future, businesses are now required to provide the strategy, structure, and technologies that enables teams to thrive no matter where they are in the world. Becoming agile in your business operations significantly increases your capability to redirect your resources and priorities towards creating value.
9. Future proof your business
A successful marketing plan strikes a balance between short-term objectives and long-term strategic goals. Conduct an audit of your marketing activities to analyze how your business maps to the competencies required to maximize their effectiveness. Reskilling, automation and working with remote teams are excellent examples which accrue value in the long run.
10. Collaborate to resonate
Form strategic alliances and collaborations in order to broaden your reach, complement each other's service offerings, and connect with businesses that share similar values and goals. Co-branding is also an efficient strategy to grow your business, increase exposure, and enter new markets, while being mutually beneficial for all parties involved. Because in a competition, only one person or party wins, whereas with a collaborative effort, everyone wins.
Modern technology continues to revolutionize the way we work. Combined with modern marketing provided remotely, it not only allows you the flexibility, efficiency and savings your business needs to grow; but also unlocks future readiness and eco-friendly opportunities.
When done correctly, it proves to be a significant cost-cutting, competitive-advantage-enhancing, and growth-enabling catalyst which facilitates organization wide digital and strategic transformation. There are now more ways than ever to reach your target audience, and it's important to stay up-to-date on the latest marketing tech, trends and tips to stay ahead of the curve.
In the comments below, let us know:
How are you marketing your business?
What trends do you foresee shaping the future of marketing?
Care to share any marketing tips which worked well for you?
댓글