Want to Be Better at Marketing This Year? Here’s How
The competition never lets up, and neither can you. Even if your marketing got decent results last year, why rest on your laurels? Incorporating proven tactics and trying one some new ones expected to take off will help position your business for even more success this year. Here’s what you can do.
Put your customers first
This should become your company’s new mantra. By putting your customers first and generating optimal experiences for them will help you drive better results across your marketing channels. What used to work — operating in an advertising silo and communicating with customers in a non-interactive way — just won’t cut it. Forbes advises marketers to use integrated tools to track customer behavior, monitor engagement and measure loyalty to get better results. Even if the face of lots of information, customers will still be drawn to business that truly engage and speak their language.
Yes, you must use social media
Social media marketing is becoming more centralized to their businesses. No longer is it that thing you do on the side. It must become a fierce leader, its own channel, in your marketing strategy. Using social media to support your broad range of marketing tactics is the way to go. Just don’t depend on social media alone to be your marketing savior.
Tell stories
Marketing is about telling your brand’s story, and better yet, honing in on key aspects of your customers’ journeys. Interactive stories in particular, like The New York Times T-Brand Studio, gives life to a clever mixed-media approach to audio, video, photography and editorial pieces. Businesses that want to boost their marketing should think like brand journalists, instead of strictly in terms of marketing.
Automate your marketing
With the importance of content in marketing, businesses are spending more and more of their time creating programs and deliverables. Enter marketing automation, and you can greatly simplify your approach while scaling effective practices. With an automation platform, you can schedule email newsletters, segment buyers, easily automate social media content and track customers through your marketing funnel. It’s designed to help your business be a lean, mean marketing machine — without sacrificing the quality experience you’re giving customers.
Know the location
Location-based marketing is helping businesses key into the local market. If you know the location of your prospects, you can ping them with special offers, enticing them to come into your local store or event. Push notifications, messages and news puts your business in touch with customers in real-time, when they’re looking to or are ready to buy.
Get into wearables
The Internet of Things is marching forward, with nearly one third of people in the U.S. adopting some form of wearable this year. This is good news for marketers, because wearables allow you to glean data from them. Valuable data that you can use to inform marketing campaigns. Get ready to create marketing materials based on customer behavior. You’ll need a way to collect and evaluate data, and then use it to tweak marketing offers and programs.
These exciting marketing trends for 2016 have a lot to offer businesses that grab hold of them. What is your team waiting for? The secret to success lies in putting your customers first and using social media as a marketing channel, not a tactic. Your brand should tell stories with its marketing, and automate the process so that you can scale and monetize efforts. Finally, incorporate location-based marketing if it fits your business and get ready to grab hold of data from wearables to inform campaigns.
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