With the New Year quickly approaching it’s time for your company to lay out its marketing strategy for 2017. Visibility is one aspect of marketing that will not change, regardless of the year. Business owners are looking for ways to keep customers focused on their brand, create conversations around their brand and increase conversions. Below are 6 key marketing trends that your company should look to follow and employ in order to cut through the “noise” and position your brand atop the competition.
-
Personalization
A form of targeted marketing, personalized marketing entails creating “personalized” messages of interest to individual consumers. For example, have you ever noticed when you are conducting a Google search and it quickly fills the information that you are searching for before you’ve fully typed it out? Or do you see personal advertisements of interest to you when you are scrolling on Facebook? These are examples of automated personalized marketing strategies that utilize special software that understands your interests and crafts individual messages or brand placements. By offering consumers products they are interested in, businesses are far more likely to convert online visits to sales. (infographic: https://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/personalization-is-a-big-challenge-for-digital-marketers-infographic/631517
Email us to inquire about a personalization strategy for your business.
-
Video/Live Video
Video Marketing is the fastest growing online trend. Cisco predicts that by 2019, online video will account for 80% of the world’s Internet traffic! The demand for video is so high that YouTube has become the 2nd largest search engine (behind Google), bigger than Bing, Yahoo, Ask and AOL…combined!! Although social media posts on Facebook and Twitter are key to communicating with your customers, video marketing is grabbing the attention of many people. As more video content becomes available, consumers will begin to look for quality content and attractive video productions. Also, as consumers are spending increasing time on mobile devices, video should be made to be compatible. Technology is projected to evolve to where video marketing will replace traditional text marketing such as blogging or white papers. Finally, video marketing has now become interactive through live video. Live video is opening up the opportunity for brands to communicate with customers in real time. Here is a fun video project we produced that went viral
-
Wearable Devices
Wearable devices are not something new to us. We have been hearing about the Apple Watch and Fitbit, however wearable devices, albeit going by different names, have existed for decades. From Walkmans to Pagers, people have been using wearable technology for years. The difference in 2016 is that wearable devices are now backed by the Internet of Things (IoT) and have communication capabilities, along with screen technology, that allows for the distribution of messages and dissemination of content.
IoT is THE major next evolution in the relationship between brands and consumers. Through the use of machine to machine (MTM) technology (a.k.a. smart devices), brands are now able to deliver relevant and meaningful messages in real-time to consumers, while consumers are provided with on-demand access to the products and services that they want and need. As brands aggregate and analyze patterns in individual consumer behaviors, they are better able to offer products and services that meet the needs of consumers. Brands can use this intelligence to further engage loyal customers, and combined with market and empirical data, they are able to design strategic messages that promote changes in consumer behaviors. With access to individual consumer data and the technical means to directly communicate customized messages, IoT will enable brands to develop personal relationships with consumers and influence how they feel about their brands.
-
Infographics Content
If you haven’t caught on to a consistent trend here, it’s that consumers’ average attention span is shortening. Therefore, when you need to really grab your targeted audiences’ attention, consider presenting the material on an Infographic. This visualization tool is an innovative way of displaying content that can attract the attention of your targeted audience and can be easily understood by them. Instead of telling them your story through words, present your message using visual tools with innovative design elements that will truly give your audience an awesome visual experience. Here is an example of one of the info graphics we have designed:
-
Visual Storytelling
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then virtual reality must be worth a million! The key to visual storytelling is providing a user with the sense of being immersed in a virtual visual environment regardless of their physical location. 360-degree cameras provide the videographer with the opportunity to catch everything around them at the same time. The user can then view 360-degrees of a picture by moving their mobile device or computer mouse. Click on this link to see a sample of a 360-degree video that we filmed on a radio interview with Ms. New Hampshire.
-
Betting Reporting/Analytic Tools
We spend a significant amount of time focused on site metrics and web analytics reports in order to see how our sites are performing and engaging with customers. You may have even heard of the term “visitors” instead of users or customers. Software analytic tools can track how many people are visiting your website, exactly who is engaged on social media, and what keywords help your website to show up in searches. This information can be used to better understand what marketing strategies are working. There are many analytic and reporting tools out there, some that work and some that do not. It is important to make sure that you work with a company that understands reporting and analytics tools.
