Photo by Elio Santos on Unsplash
How well did your marketing campaign work this past year? Even if you’ve had the ROI and leads you were hoping for, don’t get too comfortable with that plan. Marketing trends change all the time, especially in the digital marketing industry. You need to keep up if you want to enjoy the same or more success for another year.
Find NEW Audience Needs
When a global catastrophe strikes, such as a recession or a pandemic affecting many industries, it’s always remarkable how brands manage to reinvent themselves. This can be to suit people’s newly surfaced needs or target a different audience since your existing audience have other priorities and you need to boost sales.
A smart move of many businesses over the past year was to transition to eCommerce. This enables you to sell to a larger target market. Even under normal circumstances it works since more and more people are shopping from home.
Simply be smart about marketing so you have momentum from the start. For example, for your Johannesburg based company that you want to make popular in Cape Town, you may need to outsource to a company who does SEO for businesses in the Western Cape. Such a company will know best how to be relevant to this specific community that differs much from consumers in Gauteng.
Update Your SEO
Speaking of SEO, when last did you look into your Search Engine Optimisation matters? Search engines like Google change their algorithms often. This could lead to your pages that were created according to older trends starting to rank lower.
Research new trends or check with your SEO agency to see if they’re putting in the effort to ensure you stay on top.
Automate to Stay Ahead
One thing you need to realise is that you need to outperform your competition in all ways possible to draw customers. There are so many service provider options these days that your amazing product isn’t enough to ensure sales. Consumers prioritise customer care, prompt replies to queries and many other factors. Automation is how you can outperform others in many areas.
For example, have you automated emails to leads? This effortlessly guides them through your sales funnel. And what about automating the sending of a thank you gift the moment a customer reaches a certain sales amount? With automation this won’t rob you of time so you outperform without neglecting other responsibilities.
Going Audio and Visual
Using audio and visual has been on the cards for a while, and it still needs to be top priority. For example, experts have been telling us that voice search is vital for SEO, so you need to use very particular words in your content. And of course you know that consumers respond well to quality images and videos.
Now take it one step further and use tools like VR to showcase your products or your company in an authentic way. You prove you’re staying ahead of the game and you’ll draw younger consumers by impressing them with modern tech.
There’s no need to see the changing trends as a drawback, because perhaps you find a more practical approach to marketing. Show your audience you move with the times and try something new!
