Understanding marketing trends can be the driving force to a brand or business’s success, whereas a lack of key market insights can lead to its demise. As marketing practices shift from personal to online, personalisation becomes key to cut through.
With the introduction of the internet, we have more access to the intricate details of consumer behaviour, personality traits, and data. No matter what business you are in you can bet competitors from all around the world are taking advantage of this information to personalise their marketing plans and tactics to suit individual consumers.
To avoid falling behind the competition, here are some effective tips to ensure that you are staying ahead of the curve in this ever-evolving space.
Vertical Videos
According to digital marketing firm Zephoria, 91 per cent of Facebook’s advertising revenue in Q2 of 2018 was from mobile devices.
This means that people are scrolling through content on Facebook in portrait mode, so, unfortunately, your awkward landscape video is only taking up ⅓ of the screen – and consequently – only one-third of their attention.
Having a landscape video is like paying for a full page ad and then only using the top one-third of the space you have paid for.
If portrait videos are just simply out of the question, the next best alternative is square videos.
Bonus tip: Videos on Facebook autoplay without sound, meaning if the speech in your video is the hook, they aren’t going to hear it unless they choose to unmute you. Always add captions to your video to make sure you get your point across and hook your viewers in. Audio transcribers Rev offer video captions at $1 a minute, and they have a relatively quick turn around of only a few hours.
No more B2C or B2B – Just H2H (Human to Human)
Businesses need to inject personality and story into their social media – otherwise their media isn’t social at all.
Senior Director of Marketing Operations at LeanKit, Kristen Wendels says that “engagement is the new form fill”.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if the end recipient of your product is a business (B2B) or a customer (B2C) – the entire selling process occurs between humans (H2H). That is until we get too clever about AI and the robots take over. Or, hopefully, alpacas.
People don’t trust companies – there is so much bad media about companies that it’s almost impossible to. However, people trust people.
Some of the most successful brands in history were driven by a face, not a logo:
Tesla – Elon Musk
Apple – The late Steve Jobs
Virgin – Richard Branson
Microsoft – Bill Gates
User-Generated Content
This links back to our previous point about H2H marketing.
H2H marketing involves telling a story – and your story involves the other humans using your product or service.
User-generated content isn’t about you selling your product – it’s your customers selling your product for you.
Robert B. Cialdini’s third weapon of influence in his best selling book Influence, is social proof. The fact is that we are pack animals, and we have a primal instinct to fit in with the herd.
Taking user-generated content a step further – Influencer Marketing is still going to reign supreme in 2019.
It works so successfully because they incorporate:
- Huge online followings (impressions)
- Promoting your product for you (social proof)
- Reaching an audience that already trusts them (trust)
- Being a cost-effective, usually cheap option (ROI)
Case Study: Frequency H2O
Founder and CEO of Frequency H20, Sturt Hinton, made over a million impressions for $0.00103 each through the use of influencer marketing.
“I wrote a 500 character script, gave it to a VA in the Philippines and asked her to contact anyone within New South Wales, Queensland or Victoria with between 6 thousand and 600 thousand followers. 110 [influencers] accepted, with a total following of 3.5 million. I’ve sent out 77 boxes with 6 bottles each of Frequency H2O – the total cost of each box – including VA, stock, box and delivery was $14 each. I measured impressions for posts at 30% for each influencer following, and 10% for stories. So far I’ve had 48 posts and 107 stories from it which equated to 1,078,809 impressions at $0.00103 cents each. The program is still going and it’s only getting cheaper!” – Sturt Hinton
ChatBots
The three most effective ways to optimise your business are automate, delegate and eliminate.
Chatbots let you automate your sales process by running your customers through the choose-your-own-story of digital marketing. They can sell products, answer questions or simply build rapport and nurture your audience for you.
Focus on Generation Z
Generation Z (born from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s) is starting to enter the workforce, which means they’re now active consumers with an income to spend. “Yeet”! (You’re going to need to learn what that means if you want to talk to them).
Aged 22 and below, they grew up with technology, as opposed to us who merely adopted it. According to a report by Response Media, Gen Z are checking on their social media an average of 100 times a day.
They use different social media platforms for different purposes. They use Instagram to show off, SnapChat to showcase real moments, Facebook to get information (and memes) – and if they’re in the US – Twitter to get their news.
According to Fast Company, Gen Z are expected to represent 40 per cent of all consumers by 2020 – so understanding how to connect with and communicate with this generation is of vital importance.
Although the pressure to reach mass audiences may seem overwhelming, that expectation is in place because it is entirely possible if you just know where to look.
Embrace the next generation, new media over traditional, automation services and modern marketing practices – although the modernity may leave you feeling apprehensive, these key tactics are not only cost-efficient, but entirely effective.
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