Marketing is an ever-evolving element of modern business.
Strategies that have proved highly efficient and exceptionally popular in the last couple of years, and even months, are now fading into the background to make way for new, innovative ideas.
In a world where busy and intelligent consumers are continually looking for the next best thing, it’s imperative that marketers and businesses stay up to date with the latest trends. Today, we’re discussing some of the marketing strategies that will most likely shape the year 2020, and furthermore, how you can adapt them to your own business planning, positively impacting your personal goals and success for the year ahead.
Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Robots.
It was always inevitable that our future looked to be one that fully embraced the fascinating intelligence of technology but perhaps what we hadn’t entirely planned for is how that same technology would change the way we execute our marketing campaigns. Now, more than ever, there’s an increasing amount of us all using mobile phones, laptops and several other smart devices and for business to survive in a world where technology drives such keen interest, we need to be on top of technological innovations such as Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots. The merging of technology and marketing means that businesses no longer have to spend several hours typing and sending the same copy and paste email or newsletter to target audiences. Instead, we are now able to send several newsletters with the click of one button, freeing up time to create even better marketing content. The use of automation and AI means that turn-around times for completion of projects is likely to be much sooner than we would have seen maybe just three to four years ago. Automation and AI can be significantly beneficial in helping us to better understand our target audience as well as being effectively used for more intelligent searches, smarter ads and more refined content delivery.
The use of Chatbots has more recently taken business’ by storm, with robotic-led technology now being able to answer repetitive questions and common queries from consumers, engaging in an almost real time conversational exchange with customers. People, now more than ever, are choosing to make contact via social media channels and messaging apps, as opposed to a traditional telephone call and Chatbots can significantly make this a faster and more efficient means of customer-to-business contact.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is set to remain one of the most solid marketing strategies for 2020, so much so, that an impressive 97% of marketers are now using social media. The core principle of social media marketing is relationship building. It is a fantastic and creative way to build reputable and trusted relationships with your clients, consumers and target audience.
In doing this, your business should reap several other benefits, including the increase of brand recognition and brand loyalty and generating conversation built around your brand and business. The use of social media marketing can benefit your business by diverting traffic to your main website and if used effectively, should improve your search engine rankings. It can help you to capitalise on opportunities to convert customers and create a way for your business to provide a friendly and interactive customer experience.
Video marketing
Video marketing strategies have always been popular. You’ll perhaps still fondly remember your most favourite childhood advert, or the ever popular and much-loved Coca-Cola adverts, for example. So, while video marketing isn’t new – what’s really changed here is how much video marketing has evolved and essentially, dominated social.
It’s official – people are loving video and the explosion live video features on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook are proving to be more popular than some of the traditional marketing methods. The interest and success of Insta-stories has soared in the last year, making it one of the most preferred video marketing strategies to use, today. Statistics show that people prefer video marketing more than email campaigns and businesses can see higher conversion rates with the inclusion of video content on their landing page.
Advancements in technology mean that for some of us, even our regular mobile phone is capable of capturing high-quality, impressive video making it more accessible for us to provide consumers with the content they really want to see. Make it a mission to consider video in this years’ marketing plan.
Micro-influencer marketing
In the age of digital marketing, influencer is a term you’re likely very familiar with already, but you may not understand the importance and benefits of Influencer marketing, and more specifically – micro-influencers. Typically, a micro-influencer is someone with a small but still considerably impressive follower count and they are people who are generally considered ‘experts’ in their respective niche. They are the people who are dominating social media platforms, gathering likes, shares and audience engagement. Followers trust them, because they portray an expert level of knowledge about the content they share, and this makes them a great tool for marketers and businesses wanting to reach bigger audiences. It’s a great strategy to see a boost in sales or interest in your brand or business. It’s important to research properly and choose the right micro-influencer, to ensure the collaboration will benefit your marketing campaign.
SEO and dynamic content delivery
Here it is, the most trusted and reliable form of marketing strategies yet – or at the very least, the one we’ve all known about for years. SEO isn’t an out-dated fashion though and is still an effective method to help SME businesses in particular, to create fast, search engine friendly websites that will essentially direct traffic to their business page more efficiently. Strong, solid SEO and focus on keywords can really enhance a brands’ success by seeing them rank higher in search engine results, bringing potential customers and clients to their website first. It’s a time-consuming effort but one that will nearly always present itself with excellent lead generating results, if done well.
Remember, while a solid SEO plan can dramatically increase website visibility, it doesn’t necessarily create conversion result – creative, dynamic and original content delivery is much more likely to do this, so combining both methods together should see your business take off to a great start this year.
User-generated content
Finally, on the subject of content – occasionally, someone else really can say it better; and this is where user-generated content has made a big impression on businesses and brands in recent years. User generated content is content that comes in all kinds of forms such as video, blog posts testimonials, reviews and social media posts created by clients, consumers or service users that promote a brand, rather than self-brand representation. While generated content helps a brand or business to better understand their target audience, it also increases audience engagement and perhaps, most importantly, it instils a sense of trust for potential new consumers and clients, and further strengthens trust with your existing ones.
If you want your marketing game to be at its best this year, focus on implementing some user-generated content into your planning.
At Ouma, we are experts in delivering strong, solid and strategic marketing for a variety of businesses. We understand the importance of keeping up to date with the latest trends and have the expertise and knowledge to execute your ideas into content that drives results. If you’d like to start the conversation about enhancing your marketing plan for this year, the team would love to hear from you.
Comments