Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is aware of strategies like influencer marketing and the ‘content for content’s sake’ approach.
But this is time we are moving to more complex strategies like automation and programmatic advertising. In this age of transformation, it’s important that we understand all of these elements as advertisers or agencies.
We have been weighing in on the hot topics in digital marketing that are in the process of becoming standard practices in marketing.
Let’s begin with checking out the list of marketing topics so that you know what’s in vogue and what’s losing touch in the evolving marketing environment.
1. Farewell to the marketing funnel; greet Flywheel!
The marketing funnel has indeed been the go-to marketing technique for so many years. Still, one thing that popped out in the recent research projects is that the funnel works to bring the one-time customers and doesn’t actually retain the customer.
That means unless the customer wants to make the transaction on his own again, he becomes obsolete in the funnel.
While marketing flywheel is customer-centered. The growth that is fuelled by the focus on customers, taking care of their needs, aspirations, and satisfaction, is permanent. This way, you are motivating your customer to become the voice or your brand- isn’t this what we call word-of-mouth marketing.
Customer service is a key part of the flywheel because when you address their issues and demands, you get them as a zero-cost advocate for your brand.
2. Branded Audio Content on the Rise
The crowd is gradually shifting from video to audio content.
Don’t get surprised to know that more than 100 million Americans are listening to at least one podcast every month, and people are listening to podcasts more than having Netflix accounts!
Clubhouse, an audio chat room app working on an invitation-only basis, should be given due credit for bringing millions of users to audio content. No sooner did the audience start shifting towards the audio content, all big platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, started rushing towards investing in audio content and launching audio features.
56% of American youth listened to podcasts monthly in 2021.
53% of the content marketers find audio content effective for brand awareness and engagement.
78% of Americans are acquainted with podcasting.
80% of professionals plan to invest in audio content in 2022.
Though it might be said that the monetizing features on the audio content platforms are not greatly visible, it still provides an excellent medium for brand awareness and customer engagement.
4. Nostalgia Marketing
‘Oh yeah, how did I used to be crazy about this stuff!’
Whenever we see something which takes us back to the period where we were so fond of a certain thing- a product or event, we feel an instant connection to it.
Brands are tapping into this positive and powerful means of connecting with their customers- that is, via the retro roots.
The music we were crazy about, a special drink, a complimentary gift when we bought something, the food we had- they made us feel a bond. Nostalgia marketing forges a connection between the beautiful past memories and the present.
Because people are already aware of the product or service or a style, it’s easier for the brands to strategize new campaigns building upon the trust and humanizing appeal.
To excel in nostalgia marketing, you have to delve deeper into buyers’ persona or what interests them or motivates them.
4. Conversational marketing
It’s been just 10 seconds after you opened up a website while surfing the internet, and there pops a friendly chat box waving ‘hi’ to you and luring you to ask them something.
Conversational marketing has an 80X better performance than a simple news feed or email. If I have to tell you about conversational marketing in a nutshell, it is a real-time one-on-one conversation for driving customer engagement.
When it comes to customer experience, this is a go-to strategy for its customer-centric approach to marketing.
Messaging apps and live chats are the means of personalized conversations which give instant responses to the customers. The best part of conversational marketing is that the customers don’t feel intruded upon. It’s totally upon the wish of the customer to start the conversation whenever they want and receive a personalized response from your service team.
The good news is the coming of the modern-day chatbots that have the ability to learn from the experience fed and adapt, removing the need for live chat.
Advantages of chatbots:
- Chatbots provide faster and instant solutions to customers around a broad spectrum of problem scenarios.
- The volume of the users can be easily managed by the chatbots if implemented properly, no matter how large.
- It reduces the cost of personnel training as the chatbots are able to learn by themselves.
5. AI in Marketing
We doze off, we forget, we err. But AI doesn’t.
No second go without artificial intelligence taking notes of your buying experiences and learning your preferences. On the basis of those advanced algorithms, AI shows you only what you might be interested in, at what time you might be looking for something.
The next course AI will be taking in the coming year is stepping into visual analytics- tracking how we use a brand, how we wear it, and not only what we say about it.
The Spotify Song Radio playing right now on your device is using AI, Google predicting searches is using AI. Whether you like it or not, AI is involved in our everyday experience.
In the marketing world, AI is not only enhancing our capacity to connect with people quickly and offer them solutions, but AI is also used in building systems for safeguarding brand trust or reputation.
It also helps in making data-driven decisions so there are fewer chances of campaign failures and the human efforts get simpler.
6. Content remains at the core
In this cutthroat marketing world, the one thing which will sustain you in the market is the – content you provide. The Internet has already leveled the playing field; every big and small business knows how to bring in customers with information available out there. It is the content that positions you ahead of your competitors.
But should content be the only focal point?
Of course not; our aim is not to cater to the audience only with content but to create content that compels them to share and engage. Such content creates your utility, cements your presence, and a good connection to build up rapport and trust with the customers.
This is how good content helps your brand-
- Create brand awareness which translates into band trust and credibility
- Cost-effective, sustainable, and multiplicable
- Generate leads and revenues
- Something genuine and unique to offer the audience
7. Data-driven with infographics
What could be the best and easiest means to make everyone understand quickly and leave an everlasting imprint on their minds – a picture or infographics?
Undoubtedly, it is infographics that come packed with data and written information. Besides, they come with very exciting and engaging visuals; they help us grasp the information and remember it.
Today, marketers embrace data-driven infographics. They find content enriched with infographics better and easier to reach to a large customer base. 82% believe that colors in visuals increase attention rate in the audience, 39% found that information in color is remembered more than in black and white, 55% love to read messages in color – predicts research.
Here are stats related to infographics that you might find interesting.
- 86% of businesses find it an important strategy for 2021-22
- 41% of content creators rate it as an important content marketing strategy
- 32% of marketers find visuals core content of their business strategy
- 62% of content marketers print visuals 2 times a week
- 65% of businesses spend at least 10% of the budget on infographics
- 67% of B2B marketers use the tool
- Infographics increase content readership by 80%
8. Focus on Social media
Since its inception, the use of social media has never gone out of vogue, and the number of users has been just increasing. Despite concerns of privacy and security breach, cases of instigations, fake news, etc., which are uncontrolled, the social giants are alive and kicking.
Social media platforms are undoubtedly the best pastime tool (Umm, is this true for you too?). A larger chunk of the public spends time surfing on social media, even when it’s binge-watching a totally out of the context video.
Around 223 million Americans were using social media in the year 2022. Approximately 70% of Americans have a social media account.
That’s why every business eye focuses on social media to expand their customer base. It helps them to reach their customers and, most importantly, by using an effective and engaging marketing strategy that can align and sustain a large number of customers through social media.
When it comes to the number of social media platforms a company should use, each one has its own right place. Around 11% of the total users surveyed use two social sites, 7% use around six or seven sites, 64% use three to five sites.
Have a look at some data, maybe?
- Total number of active social media users(worldwide)-3.96 billion
- +10.5% or +376 million annual active user growth
- Around 70% of the U.S. population uses social platforms.
- Approximately 75% of the population between 18-24 uses Instagram.
9. The Age of Death of Cookies
As we move into 2022, we are also moving into an age of cookieless digital tracking that means a move into a hybrid world of measuring ad effectiveness.
Cookies are dying as Google just accelerated phasing out the third party cookies out of concerns for privacy and regulation of the data collected by the websites. This puts an extra load on the advertisers and ad publishers to keep looking out for the dynamic shifts in campaigns effectiveness and targeting measurements.
Half of the companies that are worried about this upcoming shift due to the end of cookie-based targeting are yet not prepared. What has followed in the background, however, is a rise in digital ad spend, especially in online videos.
But no need to panic.
Since Safari and Firefox started ad blocking, the third-party cookies-based ad was already weakening, and the publishers, data engineers, and advertisers have been actively looking for alternatives and solutions.
Contextual advertising is one such alternative that allows you to publish PPC ads on the websites ranking for similar keywords as your ad. This way, you could have your PPC ads show up on, suppose stylish shoes oriented websites of you’re selling shoes.
Marketers are considering strategies that help leverage the first-party data.
But what’s more important at this stage is to keep yourself updated with the news regarding third-party cookies and the moves around privacy concerns that take the shape of a policy.
10. Short Videos
Consumers are watching more and more videos, and you know this. That’s fine, but merely producing video content is not going to be enough.
As an advertiser, you have to understand what type of video content is gaining popularity.
If we talk about short video ads, it very well solves the problem of the lack of attention time on the part of the consumers. And this was very well leveraged by Tik Tok and then Instagram that spurred the trend of video marketing with Instagram reels.
All this sounds very good, but it can’t be denied that brand promoters sometimes get lured by the ‘trend’ in videos that don’t even align with the voice of their brand.
So if you manage to find and keep a fine balance between what’s trending and what your brand message is, your authenticity will be maintained.
Our team at McElligott Digital Marketing has been carefully reading changes in the marketing world in every nook and corner. And we have helped our clients with evolving strategies to adapt to market changes.
We would love to help you out with your digital marketing initiatives. Just drop us a text!
