How to make your brand unforgettable and ahead of the curve with digital content in 2018.
Learn how to market your brand in 2018 with the best digital marketing tips.
“By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.” Gartner Research.
Successful marketing connects with genuine human emotions.
Storytelling taps into our brains. Readers love to hear and see a great story that connects on an emotional level. Increase conversions with telling a story on your landing page.
Can “You” Do It?
Create an actionable tagline. For example Nike uses “Just Do it “
The usage of hashtags in social media creates a two way bridge by forming a connection and community with the fans. For example #nikewomen.
Visuals create a lasting connection. Anyone can create great videos with an iPhone- Don’t let fear hinder you to get creative and tell a story. Here is one to get you inspired.
Remarkable Ways to Start Getting Market Share for Your Business
Prove value first.
Don’t put marketing automation first. No amount of fancy technology can fix or fix a sub-par marketing strategy.
Be knowledgeable about where your products fall into the spending stages of people lives, and the company’s timeline for purchases.
Get in front of people. Know the way to find being in the right place in the right time, fulfilling customer’s needs.
Watch to see if the companies you are targeting are hiring. Measure the growth rate and see where you fit in.
Where are businesses in the spending stage at the corporate level?
Watch the world outside your business. What are people doing and how are they doing it.
Develop campaigns that sell to niches in your market. Don’t dilute your message and market to an overly broad audience.
Don’t forget you are selling to a person and not just a company.
With the help of predictive analytics you can use data mining, statistics, modeling, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze current data to make predictions about future.
Perform statistical research to adjust your campaigns according to statistical data.
There are so many ways to obtain information. It can be as simple as using Google Trends and as detailed as using Gartner and Forrester Research.
Leverage collective data with strong analytics. Utilize Buzzsumo. You can learn more about Buzzsumo at my previous article here for content marketing indicators.
Make use of AI to learn what people do at certain ages in their lives and how that is relative to the spending habits for the products and services offer. This works well for the B2C market.
Educate yourself about key indicators to learn the persona of the buyer and their buying stages. Plan your marketing campaigns around what you have learned and apply it. This is very advantageous for the B2C companies looking to approach new clients.
A company called Optimove has the ability to help you translate customer’s behavioral patterns with data science. Optimove is a data company that collects data based on emotional intelligent communication. They implement data to analyze and reduce a company’s churn rate, as well as increase conversions. Check them out. They do some really cool things.
People Drive Trends: Demographic Trends Are Key
Hey big brands and local businesses, cable advertisers are losing visibility as cord cutting accelerates. While television is a very effective way of advertising, consumers are now on mobile devices that ever before.
If you are a restaurant you can get more business with a listing on Yelp. But if you’re a drug company selling to consumers, you will shine on CNN.
If you’re a wholesale business or a B2B company, marketing within industry associations are excellent ways to attract new customers.
Exposure is Everything. You Need To Be Listed on All Platforms
.
Smaller and medium size manufacturers and distributors do well on these three platforms.
All of these platforms utilize cloud computing and big data, to maintain a competitive edge. These companies practice predictive analytics to power up recommendations that the platform upsell, providing you with more sales.
Start accepting orders and update your legacy systems by setting up your business on a B2B marketplace exchange in your vertical. It will open your business up globally. Buyers can connect directly with the manufacturer. Larger companies can look www.opentext.com/ that enables B2B exchanges manage their supply chains and data.
B2B companies mostly use email and LinkedIn to acquire new customers. LinkedIn has proven to have the best results for B2B companies looking to shine their brands successfully targeting their audience with the use of demographics. Social Media is on the rise for B2B companies.
Love- Share- Get Aware
Engage with customers on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and use sponsored ads to bring brand awareness into targeted social feeds. Re-tweet their posts, show a like, share a user’s content, follow your audience and incentivize the communication with an influencer.
The consumer is now in control. Your social media stats are very visible to customers such as reviews, complaints, raves, customer engagement and what content is getting shared- all in real-time.
B2B businesses are now adopting online media to procure customers. They utilize performance of their products with software intelligence and automation. Businesses need to refresh their content on the web daily, hourly, or a few times every week.
Personalization for your clients within your business portal will provide ease of ordering, and accurate pricing.
The content can be customized around the client. B2B buyers want a harmonious purchase experience across channels.
Well-crafted content includes:
Instructional guides.
Video guides.
How to guides.
Digital Learning Centers.
Good Content Equals Brand Popularity That Leads to Dominance in the Marketplace.
Hubspot reports that B2C companies that blogged 11+ times per month got more than 4X as many leads than those that blog only 4-5 times per month. (HubSpot, 2015) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
Social Media moves faster than a speeding bullet. Your media gets outrun in your news feeds every few seconds. We see videos in our feeds as a forceful way to grab out attention. We click, we love, and we buy.
In today’s world there are many distractions. Most of your clients and potential clients participate in social media. With an abundant amount of advertising in our feeds competing with your products and services, you need to make your brand stand out against your competitors.
What does that mean for you? More competition.
You must be consistent. Big brands, and small brands are not made overnight. Be on all platforms from web, to podcasts (people listen in their cars), and produce videos on social sites like Facebook, Twitter. Instagram, LinkedIn, and your own website.
Why Pod Casts are Amazing
Low cost to produce. Advertiser friendly.
Don’t have to stare at a computer screen.
Mobility of listening. You can listen in the car, and on your mobile phone –headphones are portable, they go anywhere. Yes, listen while multitasking.
Takeaway from Steve Mulder, Senior Director of Audience Insights at NPR article -The IAB Tech Lab study done in coordination with Edison Research says 65% of listeners out of the 1,000 that took part of the study prefer products mentioned in advertising on the air from the host as opposed to pre- recorded ads. You can see the entire research study here.
Learn To Utilize the Listicle
Companies sneak brand awareness into our lives without us even realizing it. Listicles can be used by brands partnering with other content.
The title can consist of:
100 Great Email Subject Lines for Newsletters.
10 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Enterprise Software.
Things You Should Really Know About Dunkin Donuts.
The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2017: The Full List of Winners.
The list will have links referring out to companies, or experts in the business niche related to the article. People love to share listicles. They are fun and lighthearted. This can be an icebreaker to a potential client giving your brand exposure.
Think about publishing you own listicle to get some attention. The headlines for listicles are a sort of click bait, but they gain clicks and attention.
The Effective Advertorial
Your written content is comprised of subtle key information about your company in the context of the article. The content can come in the form of an educational article about an interesting topic the reader wants to know that is related to your industry. The informative copy is interwoven with a few, or just one placement of the promotional copy. It can also take the format of a mat release.
The Way The Mat Release is Written and What They Do.
Mat Releases are an effective ways to gain market share, by creating great content your customers will love. You must keep then constantly engaged with the right message aligned with your mission statement.
Mat releases are different than press releases. Features of the mat release are as follows.
Visually pleasing infographic.
Visual images attract attention.
Product messages are subtly integrated within the story of the article.
Images of your company with a link to your website resulting in good traffic source to your content.
Target key audiences.
Reshape your brand.
Educate the reader.
The content should have a specific topic, not a broad one.
Introduce new products and services.
Ability to introduce on social media and your website, and print placement.
Craft and editorial, not an advertorial.
Once the person clicks on your URL, videos on your landing pages can get 50 percent more traffic and can gain page one on Google. Video viewers are over 80% likely to buy from you.
What is One of The Ultimate Lead Generators” to Identify Customer’s Personas.
You can interact with your customers on social media, by hosting informative live videos with Facebook live. Additionally, invite them to an informative live webinar about your products and services where they can interact with the host and converse with other peers that have the same interests.
From your participants you’re gathering valuable data from them by letting them ask questions. Make sure to ask them what their challenges and goals are. You’ll learn about their concerns, objections that they are looking to fulfill. Better yet, you may gain insight to what your competitor is not doing right and why. This is the “Ultimate Lead Generator” for you.
Today’s Consumer Has a Small Attention Span. People today are multitasking more than ever before.
You have to send a signal to people that makes them go Yes -“Wow.” I can relate. I want to see more.
What do you do to become the expert?
Raise awareness.
Building trust is about being human. Develop trust before touting you’re the expert.
Build trust.
Be knowledgeable.
Present a challenge.
Offer a solution.
Stop selling in the pitch and market within the content to build value and credibility. Well written content will lay out a foundation for your present and future, giving your brand a unique personality.
Developing brand identity has always been a key driver in consumer trust. Tell a memorable story that readers would want to share. Make it heartwarming, factual, and educational. Keep on message with what your company’s mission statement is .
You have to send a signal to people that makes them go “ Huh? Yeah” Wow, I can relate to that. Good branding that taps into emotional connections becomes memorable.
How do you develop trust?
Offering top notch user experiences. Make it easy for them to do business with you. Provide top notch customer service. Be empathetic. Make it easy for them to call you and respond to inquiries quickly.
Be transparent . Be responsive on social media. Post videos of employees taking part in company events that are fun and social. Show any charity causes and community involvement.
Don’t Underestimate Influencer Marketing for B2B
The trend in marketing today is to get your products or services adorned by an influencer. It can be a celebrity, a colleague in your field of business, a client, or even a customer who has a large fan base who can attest to your brand.
Whether your B2B or B2C brand, anyone can benefit from this type of marketing. There are many companies out there that place influencers with brands that have a particular budget. I view that is a bit of pay to play. The influencer should come with honesty and no monetary incentive. That is the real test of sincerity. How do you get that? You ask. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.
The influencer does not have to be the VP or CEO. In fact it can be the gatekeeper on the team that helps make the decision along with the staff to do business with you. It can be someone from accounting, an administrative or someone in marketing in sales that uses the product or service. It also can be good viral content within your niche. If you can get a current customer to do this, it also increases their brand visibility, and who what company would not like that. (Sub influencer).
The content can come in any form such as white paper, landing pages, educational content, social media and videos.
Spread your good word. Try one of these for your customers. Just ask them and they may just say yes!
Stop selling just in the pitch. Bring awareness in your published the content to build value and credibility. Be human. You don’t have to just tell people you are the expert- you most importantly must build trust.
If you are a consumer goods company in the B2C space, you are more likely to sell to your customers on reliability, well made products, fair pricing and great customer service. Personalization is the key. You should be forming your newsletters, email marketing and content for your website with sitting in the consumer’s chair.
Consistency Across All Platforms With Your Visuals Creates Recognition
Video Advantages
Ability to touch people from a larger base.
Enhances your social media presence.
Easy presentation to market your brand.
Yes! You Should Be Looking at What Your Competition is Doing.
Compete campaigns are a way to interrupt a prospect’s path on a competitor’s funnel, and get them into the top of your funnel.
Conclusion
For 2018 you should be focusing on creating more quality content and less of it. Make what you create really count instead of putting content that does not truly resonate with your audience.
Content becomes part of your overall marketing strategy, Inform and entertain to hold attention. Don't buy love in your campaigns. Make sure they align with your brands causes and and mission statements.
#contentwriting #onlinemarketing #howtomakeavideo #howtomanagecontent #howtomarketyourbrand #howtowritealisticle #predictiveanalytics #machinelearning #DemographicTrends #LinkedInMarketing #Facebookvideo #B2Bcontentstrategies #Listentopodcasts #Howtomakeapodcast #Advertorialmarketing #CustomersPersonas #Solutionselling #consumermarketing
