When you’re brainstorming a new campaign or strategy, it feels like marketing moves at the speed of light. All of a sudden, a new approach or a new technology release changes everything. And then you are back at square one!
It’s difficult to stay up to date with so much going on in the digital marketing space. It changes the way we attract, connect with and even market to our audience. Every month is different in the world of digital marketing. Whether it’s a new app, an algorithm update or changes to social media advertising policies, staying up to date with the changes is time-consuming and sometimes frustrating!
This said it’s critical to stay updated with the new updates and trends as it’s information that’s relevant to your brand and how you make the most of your digital strategies. But doing it can be a full-time job on its own, which is why it helps to have the right tools and resources available to make things easier.
Here are the top 7 digital marketing trends to watch out for
- Content Marketing
- Blogging
- Posting and sharing on social media
- Participating in online discussions on social media and other relevant information sources
- Guest blogging
- Community building
- Brand awareness campaigns
- Chatbots and Messenger apps
- Video marketing
- Live streaming
- Facebook marketing
- Mobile Marketing
Aside from being a vital part of a successful strategy, content marketing is more than just a buzzword. By creating impactful content and optimising its distribution across a wide range of channels and customer touchpoints, you can engage specific market segments at the precise time they are ready to buy. Understanding where your customers are in the buying cycle and what motivates them to buy can get a result quickly.
Paid advertising on social media has been used as a reliable strategy to gain new customers for some time now and many business owners use this approach. But modern-day consumers want to learn about a company or product organically and from there, they will determine whether it fits their needs at their own pace. This one reason paid ads are becoming less effective. People know they are being sold too. They want to investigate on their own time and when they are ready to buy.
So what is content marketing?
Content marketing is defined as any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers.
Marketing activities can include:
Every brand craves visibility. If you are looking to grow your market share, you should definitely have a content marketing strategy to build awareness of your brand. Brand marketing is not a short time option. It needs to be long term and continuous. Social Media advertising, like traditional advertising on radio, works well because it’s cost-effective and you can get your message across more often. When you are chasing reach and impressions these two forms of advertising works best, but it’s the engagement that excites your customers and that’s your content!
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Many businesses nowadays are choosing AI chatbots as part of their customer service team. There are several reasons for that. These chatbots can answer simple questions without the need for human interference. We can always use them in association with sequences to get information from a potential customer before the ‘human’ steps in and takes over. As business people, we are always searching for ways to increase reach, leads, and conversions. Chatbots is a fast way to respond and lead a potential customer to buy
As a business owner, your business corporate image depends on the customer service you provide. A client that is not satisfied with your product, is unlikely to use your product again. That’s why you should take every opportunity to deliver a great customer experience and one of the best ways to do this is to make sure your client gets a speedy reply – automate your customer service with AI chatbots.
With the tap of a few buttons on your customer’s phone, chatbots will be able to make a dinner reservation, order a takeaway and book a cab ride, order flowers to be delivered to the dinner table and even buy tickets for a show.
All of these things are now possible, not through a custom-built app for each of the businesses, but through Facebook messenger. Chatbots can answer customer’s inquiries cheaply and in real-time.
What are the advantages of using AI Chatbots in your business?
Lead generation – A chatbot can improve a customer’s experience by helping potential customers move forward in the sales pipeline, getting their information ahead of time, so a ‘human’ salesperson in the company can contact them and know exactly what they want information about.
Real-time answers – Chatbots can work 24/7 and they don’t need to sleep. They can immediately tackle issues regardless if it’s 4 am or 9 pm. This is crucial for your business customer service. Customers are not all equal. Some are patient enough to go through your customer service process and some are not. This allows you to improve customer support and customer experience.
User management – Chatbots can help bridge the communication gap between you and your audience. Just like the Facebook messenger apps, chatbots will give your customers the ease of use and fast results from the effective use of modern technology.
Limited errors – While answering customer inquiries, AI chatbots make fewer errors compared to human agents. Why? They interpret customer’s responses and provide accurate automated answers using their cognitive technology. A lot of memory reduces the chances of misinterpreting a query or offering an incorrect solution.
Saves Money and Time – Since AI chatbots are automated and independent apps, they will make your work easier. This will allow you to focus on other more important tasks. By introducing support flows and automated response, this can reduce the pain in your sales and customer support departments.
Today, the single most important strategy in content marketing is video. Whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or youtube. If you don’t have a video marketing strategy for the biggest video platforms, you are going to lose to your competitors who are video ready or video savvy. No matter what you’re selling, no matter what your company does, you need video, to brand your business or set yourself up as an expert in your field.
Video is a powerful asset to consumers and is fast becoming the preferred way of consuming content online. A survey from syndacast.com shows that 78% of people are watching videos online every week and 55% of all people, every single day.
Right now, social media videos are at an all-time high. These platforms are introducing more and more features every day. The social opportunities for video are growing too with consumers posting on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin, creating live videos, stories, and virtual reality. This flexibility is great for marketers too as it allows you to pinpoint the exact content and distribution method that reaches your audience the best.
Related article: How To Stop Your Customers From Scrolling Past Your Content
Live streaming is the most interactive mode of digital communication that brands can use to connect with the masses right now. It enables end-users. Since 2015, It’s proven to be the fastest way to grow an audience base as live videos gain far higher traction compared to other mediums.
To connect and keep relevant to end-users, brands should most definitely consider live-streaming in their next marketing game plan.
For several years now, Facebook has been the supreme ruler of social media platforms and still the number one social media platform with over 2.27 billion monthly active users. Facebook has the most number of users over the age of 30. Although, The number of teen Facebook users has been decreasing in favor of other platforms like Snapchat.
Facebook connects people with people, and people with ideas. The reason why identifying it’s marketing potential is easy and it now plays a very important role in every business’s strategy to generate leads and convert them into customers.
Facebook can also help you engage (if you have the right content) with your potential customers. Shares, likes, comments and other interactions on your post lead to a strong connection with your prospects. The stronger the connection, the higher the conversion rate. But again, word of mouth and referrals also expand the reach of your brand.
Facebook has 2.32 billion active visitors available, so it’s up to you how wide or tight you set your parameters! Like Google, Facebook offers high targeting options so that you can find your potential audience on the basis of interest and other factors. Also, there are a number of features like the page and group settings that lets you connect with customers and show them your work organically as well as with the paid service.
One of the important factors in growing your business is lead generation. And Facebook plays a big role in building a web presence through social media profiles even if you don’t have a website. You can reach your valuable customers, connect with them and provide them with the details about your business fast.
Related article: 5 ways to increase Facebook engagement
LinkedIn is the world’s largest database of business professionals and the size of opportunity becomes clear when you break this down into actual numbers. According to Linkedin, they have 500 million business professionals on their network. 100 million of those are active daily. Business decision-makers count for around 40 million.
It means there are 40 million potential targets that are in a position to make business and buying decisions. While many people view Linkedin as the ultimate networking tool or others see it as a waste of time. Business people know that they need LinkedIn, but find that once they’ve joined, little of value actually happens. LinkedIn is a platform that used effectively can lead to big results but can be initially confusing to market to.
Linkedin is a fantastic way of raising your profile or business page because you can join groups in key communities. You can engage constructively within these groups. Such as through blogging and relevant posts. By doing this on a regular basis, you build trust and be able to connect to influencers on those communities. If you know how to work it, you can end up with some quality prospects primed to become your paying customers.
With so many people using mobile to access the internet, it is evident that phones and tablets have a big impact on marketing. There are more than 1.2 billion people worldwide that use mobiles and spend an average of 2.8 hours on mobiles daily compared to 2.4 hours on desktop computers./p>80% of social media time is spent on mobile. Within 2 hours of use, 88% of users use it to search for a local business. So what is mobile marketing?
Mobile marketing is all about promoting your brand and reaching your audience via a handheld device or otherwise untethered devices such as smartphones or tablets. Strategically it puts a company or brand in direct contact with their target audience while they are on the move and it’s typically a single component of a multi-channel marketing campaign.
As consumers become more independent (and mobile) the need for a clear and separate mobile marketing strategy will definitely increase. You’ll have to deliver your marketing message quickly, clearly, and in a way that capitalises on your ability to deliver what they want, when they want it.
So start developing your mobile marketing strategy now and you will be ahead of the curve and in front of your competition.
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