Why You Need The Help Of Marketing Strategy Technology
Because technology is the answer to coping with the future.
Following the current trajectory of the world’s events, I think it’s safe to say that technology is at the forefront of managing the ‘new normal’. Today, there is mounting pressure on businesses to adapt quickly in order to stay afloat and it is this developing trend the has many believing that a digital future is the only way to go.
It is critical now more than ever that special attention is placed on how businesses capitalize on existing market opportunities and take into account shifting buyer behavior, competitive landscape, and much more. But, this may not be possible without the help of artificial intelligence. And, many businesses are already catching on.
According to a recent study conducted by PwC, 72% view AI as a “business advantage”. Traditionally, marketing strategies took many months to develop and when completed, were considered outdated to the current market environment. Moreover, marketing strategies were limited by the intelligence of the marketing professional writing them, who in most cases would not be across all areas of marketing. For this reason, ‘early adopters’ like Oracle and SAP with large distribution networks saw the value in AI-based marketing strategy technology through real-time insights gained for strategic next steps.
Combining the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning, marketing strategy technology such as Robotic Marketer is able to deep dive into big data available on competition, customer perception, and existing market conditions to provide a comprehensive roadmap to strategically navigate the ever-changing market for sustainable growth. Information gathering is often limited by the tools at our disposal but with Robotic Marketer, you are only limited by the “universe”.
So, here are three benefits to having a marketing strategy technology write your next marketing strategy:
It’s Faster
The use of artificial intelligence in marketing enables businesses to innovate and go-to-market faster. Thanks to the dynamics of machine learning, marketing strategy technology is not only able to learn from the past but also prepare for the future by taking account of present conditions.
Organizations and agencies alike are able to leverage this value in order to help their clients succeed. What’s advantageous of utilizing technology like Robotic Marketer is that agencies can now self-serve to have a marketing strategy in place in a matter of days instead of months, which processes the data entered during a workshop in mere seconds rather than hours. Furthermore, with a multi-user functionality to enhance collaboration, teams are able to work alongside each other in real-time to ensure all relevant information is inputted across the board for a faster turnaround.
It’s Smarter
The human and machine combination could possibly be a match made in heaven. The exponential advances made in the digital sphere has meant that technology now has the precision and performance of a human, and dare say even better.
Marketing strategy technology is able to make sense of large sets of data with minimal manual work. The data gathered is then used to inform relevant marketing tactics with appropriate key messaging to be delivered to the right person at the right time. A robotics-based platform dealing with multiple strategies is able to learn to suggest ideal content most relevant to the target audience. Artificial intelligence takes over the most time-consuming tasks that businesses and their marketing teams struggle with to provide smarter solutions that work.
It Keeps You Ready
The unique ability of artificial intelligence to not only uncover new insights but also apply that to future campaigns through learning is key to maximizing outreach to the target audience in the most effective manner. AI solutions like Robotic Marketer deliver marketing strategies that are not only intelligent but also promote real-time decision making to be strategically positioned or ready for whatever the market has in store. It also increases the likelihood of converting prospects into clients significantly.
At the end of the day, businesses see value in understanding which marketing activities work and which do not, and a marketing strategy that is powered by AI-based market understanding is just the solution needed for an increased ROI and enhanced bottom line.
As many take the time to plan their next steps, having a marketing strategy for the next 12 months will be an essential conversation to have. While the benefits of investing in a marketing strategy technology are endless, the above three reasons highlight why even the world’s largest organizations choose to employ its help.
The 5 Benefits of Hosting An Influencer Event! (Post COVID-19)
More often than not, people are looking to voices they can trust for recommendations. Most influencers have spent years cultivating trust between themselves and their audience. When they recommend products, people listen. Influencer events are a powerful tool for brands that want to build a stronger relationship with their audience. With these events, brands invite influencers to participate in a gathering, getaway or other event in order to promote their products or services. These events are a great way to tap into the audience that influencers have built up and connect with people you may not have been able to reach otherwise.
Here are the five biggest benefits of hosting an influencer event — plus some tips on how to keep your event running smoothly.
1. They Build Trust
By inviting influencers to your event, you can benefit from the relationships they’ve established with their audience. Influencers attending your event and promoting your brand will lend a little bit of their credibility to your business. While this won’t create deep relationships with an audience overnight, it is a great way to attract an audience that is engaged and open to the products or services you have on offer.
2. They Help You Expand Your Audience
Influencers — and especially micro and nano-influencers — tend to fit into online niches and cultivate strong relationships with highly specific audiences.
By partnering up with influencers, you can gain access to the audiences they’ve built. Influence events are a great way to direct your content and brand to the specific people you want to target — often, even more effectively than with other targeting methods alone.
3. They Build Long-Term Partnerships
Some businesses can struggle to create long-term, authentic partnerships with influencer marketing. If you partner with an influencer for just one or two posts, it can be hard to create content that feels like a genuine and authentic promotion of your brand or its products.
By giving influencers a positive and memorable experience, you can foster a strong relationship that will last well into the future — and may even encourage the development of further campaigns and content.
4. They Create Content
Events naturally generate a huge amount of content. Users and influencers upload photos and videos from the event to social media. Influencers also usually create content leading up to the event and after.
While you won’t have much control over this user-generated content, it can be extremely effective at building buzz and extending the reach of your brand. If you’re struggling to create new content, or experiencing a lull in your content strategy, an influencer event can be a great way to keep up the momentum.
5. They Provide Value to Your Audience
Any effective content strategy relies on content that provides real value to its audience. Often, however, it can be hard to know exactly what your audience needs.
Because influencers know what their audience needs, these events are usually very effective at delivering value. As the event goes on, the influencers you partner with will create content that’s tailored to their audience — ensuring that it’s both relevant and valuable.
Tips for Hosting an Influencer Event Post-COVID
Running an influencer event will be a big undertaking. These tips will help you ensure that your event runs as smoothly as possible.
1. Communicate Early and Often
From the very beginning, communicate with everyone involved in the project. Keep influencers and staff updated on the venue and event schedule. Build a social media strategy that clues guests in on key information. If things change — you swap venues, move events or relocate registration — let people know as soon as possible.
2. Think About Housing
Your influencers will need somewhere to stay. If your event is held at a hotel, housing may be as simple as booking a few rooms — but things may not be so easy in other cases.
You should look for housing in the area that will be a good fit for your influencers. Serviced apartments, for example, are fully-furnished living spaces — and unlike some hotels, they’ll also let your influencers bring their pets. Room cleaning service in these apartments is also typically less frequent than service in a hotel, which can afford some extra privacy and room to decompress.
3. Take Advantage of Your Venue
When selecting a venue for their event, most brands go for unique and exciting destinations in order to make the event as Instagrammable as possible. Leading up to your event, you should show off the venue you’ve selected to build buzz and excitement.
You should also take advantage of any special certifications or amenities your event may have. Many venues, for example, have the new ISSA GBAC STAR accreditation — a credential awarded to venues that make outbreak prevention a top priority. These credentials can let your guests know that their health and safety are top priorities.
4. Create an Event Schedule
Part of your comms strategy should be a good event schedule. You want to make sure that there is enough going on that your event doesn’t lose momentum, but not so much that attendees feel overwhelmed.
Sharing this schedule with event staff and influencers will help keep your team on top of things during the event.
5. Follow the Conversation On Social Media
Keep an eye on what people are saying about your event once it’s kicked off. You can use social media to see how people feel about your event — providing you with instant feedback, information to tweak the event and suggestions about making future events even better.
Building New Relationships With Influencer Events
Influencer events can offer serious benefits for brands. The right event will help your company build stronger partnerships with influencers and reach audiences that can be difficult to target.
If you want to host an influencer event, planning and a strong communication strategy will help you keep the whole thing running smoothly. Be sure to also find the right housing for your influencers and keep your staff updated on the event’s schedule.
Guest Contributer – April Miller
The Importance of Digital Marketing in a Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing has the potential to transform the way that your business reaches and engages with customers.
While traditional marketing tactics require you to wait months to assess which strategies are working, digital marketing allows you to view results in real-time.
This gives you the chance to easily and quickly adapt your strategy and tactics as you go for optimum results.
But beyond strategy, digital marketing tactics offer the most cost-effective way to market your business.
Affordable digital marketing tactics can allow you to get more out of your marketing spend, allowing smaller businesses greater opportunities to compete with larger companies of scale.
The Importance of Digital Marketing
In today’s digital sphere the importance of creating and using a digital marketing plan to support digital transformation and generate company growth is paramount.
What is still very common among many businesses today is the challenge they face knowing how vital digital and mobile channels are for acquiring and retaining customers.
Yet for some reason, they don’t seem to have an integrated plan in place to grow and engage their audiences effectively.
Bottom line if your business doesn’t have a plan in place you will suffer and most often lose out to your more tech-savvy competitors.
How To Begin
When people start thinking about strategic planning there is a fear that a massive report is required.
Sure for any strategy to be a success, planning is paramount but a clear and concise digital marketing plan no longer then three or so pages is all that may be needed.
Lean Strategy is Key
A huge report will just bog you down, your digital marketing strategy can be best summarized down into clear concise tables linking digital marketing strategies to smart objectives. A lean strategy will allow you to implement your digital plan more rapidly to gain traction.
How to Get Digital
An endless amount of digital marketing techniques exist ranging from search, content, social media marketing to website design and optimization.
Having a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your strategy will allow you to define a more manageable number of digital marketing activities that cover your full customer journey.
For digital marketing to be successful businesses must take a strategic approach to digital. Before pushing ahead with some wishful idea of how you want to digitally transform your business, first creating a plan will suggest a way forward.
Start with a digital marketing plan that’s separate from the overall marketing plan. Aim to define the transformation needed and make sure any changes to your strategy are made clear.
This step provides an important opportunity to identify any potential problems, allowing you to map out a path through setting goals and specific digital strategies.
Integration is Key
While at first creating a separate digital marketing plan is key make sure it’s not packaged entirely separate. Digital media works best when integrated with traditional media.
Following the clear definition of your digital marketing initiatives, develop an integrated digital marketing strategy that is part of the overall marketing plan.
Integrating your digital plan into a fully aligned marketing plan allows it to become a core activity that becomes part of business as usual.
Without a doubt, digital marketing offers the best way to reach your customers right where they are during the moments they may be online searching for brands just like yours. Make sure before you leap into an unknown world of digital marketing you have a sound digital marketing strategy in place. Having a clear idea of what it is you want your business to achieve overall is important. From here you can create digital marketing goals that align with these objectives.
How to Grow Your B2B with Email Marketing
With an average of $44 ROI on email marketing there is no denying it’s benefits to expanding your business. However, capturing those clients and ensuring they are making the click to consume can be hard. Let’s have a look at how you can convert your database and maximise your efforts.
Welcome Emails
This is one of the most consistently successful tactics. With the average rate of clients opening a welcome email at 82%. There is no denying that this is a highly enticing number, but it doesn’t end there. If you have 82% of subscribers opening your welcome email you have to make sure that the content, you are delivering is enticing making them want to continue their subscription. It’s also a way to say thank-you to your subscribers and show you care.
Source: Hubspot
What makes this so great? It’s bold, relevant and lets subscribers know what they are going to receive. It also has a call to action by allowing subscribers to ‘grab a seat’ and buy a ticket.
Try Testing Different Campaigns
This technique can work wonders because you can see how your subscribers respond to different content. If a particular approach was unsuccessful you can immediately stop sending emails and work on a more successful approach, as opposed to always sending the same format or style of email and wondering why it’s not generating leads.
By using an A/B tester, you can also test many different elements such as a call to action, subject line, personalisation, or the body of the text. Then determine how to accurately reach your goals.
Personalising is a Trend That Works
Whilst everyone wants everything personalized from phones, bags to throws, that doesn’t exclude emails. When an email has a personalized subject title it can generate a 50% higher open rate. You don’t just have to personalise through the subject title, you could mention their name in the opening line of the text or send out a birthday email.
These sorts of techniques will increase customers opening the email but also increase click-throughs which will then generate leads and stop customers from unsubscribing. It will also help your email stand out in their inbox.
Use Interactive Content
Don’t just bore your subscribers with dumping heaps of information on them. Try using a different way to capture their attention. You can use a varied method of showcasing your work through, visual content such as videos and imagery. People are 85% more likely to purchase a product after viewing a product video. It is also an opportunity to deliver different content whilst keeping customers informed.
Source: Vyond
You can also work tactically by incorporating polls, surveys, and reviews of their customer experience. This enables feedback on any issues that your clients are having with your business or your marketing methods and you can work on those mistakes.
Email Frequency
The ideal email frequency depends on your type of product or service and the amount of content you have. If you don’t have enough content or nothing to say don’t send anything out. The last thing you want to do is send a pointless email and have people unsubscribe. You need to find balance because you also don’t want to send emails overloaded with content. A happy industry median is usually weekly, fortnightly, or monthly. Just remember, you want to be remembered but not annoying.
Finally remember content is king. This cannot be stressed enough. Always use emails as your stage that your product or service is performing on. Highlight the best features, benefits, and assets in an enticing way. See what resonates with your audience and be sure to change the direction of your emails to avoid going stale.
4 Useful Strategies To Nurture Leads
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
Are you having trouble converting your leads? It might be because you don’t have a lead nurturing process in place. Establishing strong lead nurturing tactics is crucial to growing your business. Without these processes, there is nothing to impact or influence the customer’s decision to make a purchase. To truly nurture leads, you need to provide relevant information at multiple points throughout the beginning of their relationship with your business. Below, we have 4 tactics to effectively nurture your leads.
- Leverage targeted content
Your approach to nurturing leads will change depending on what the situation calls for. There is never going to be a one size fits all approach, because no two leads are alike. While your content will likely be interesting to multiple leads at a time, don’t assume that everyone is looking for the same information. Using targeted, specific content to nurture leads will significantly improve your conversion results. Once you understand each unique buyer persona, your team can begin to create content that speaks directly to their journey.
- Focus on multiple touches
Your prospects should receive multiple touches throughout their customer journey. The most successful lead nurturing strategies deliver content that helps prospects progress to the next step in their customer journey by providing relevant information and answering questions along the way. The best touches use a blend of social media, blogs, white papers, or an email campaign. Your prospects should be able to ask any of the questions they need answers to.
- Follow up with leads
Setting up an automated system for lead nurturing is a great way to cast a wide net for large groups of prospects, but there is nothing better than following up with interested leads in a timely, well-planned manner. Whether they have reached out to your company for more information, or they’ve just visited your website and clicked on a specific link, there are few approaches more effective than just following up with interested prospects. Timing is everything, and if you wait too long to reach out to them, you could completely miss your window of opportunity.
- Send personalized emails
Personalizing emails for prospects adds the perfect touch to increase engagement with your audience. The important thing about personalization is that it goes much further than just including the prospect’s name; most personalized email campaigns are targeted towards customers that have performed a specific action like clicking a link or downloading a whitepaper. It’s all about getting the right information to the right people at the right time, creating a greater opportunity for conversion later.
How Marketing Eye Can Help
Marketing Eye is a marketing agency that is committed to the success of our clients. We help to establish new and creative approaches to your everyday processes, including lead generation. Our team provides the best in class approaches to optimize your lead generation and lead nurturing strategies. Contact Marketing Eye today to learn how we can help your organization convert better leads for the future.
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
5 Reasons Why Webinars Are Great for Your Business
In an era, post-COVID-19 the internet is taking over. Now a necessity to humans, companies are looking for newer ways to establish a long-lasting connection with their consumers over the internet.
Webinars are taking the business world by storm. A way to connect with your consumers, business partners, and employees in real-time, it breaks geographical barriers. According to the State of Webinar’s 2019 report, 79% of the people admit that a brand’s video has influenced them to buy a product. Now that this trend is back on the marketing brand wagon, here’s why your business should be a part of it!
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On a budget? Webinars are the way to go!
Many businesses are looking for cost-effective ways to up their marketing game in the economy today. Webinars are an inexpensive way of connecting with your desired audience. With tools like Youtube, Google Hangouts, Instagram live, Facebook live and so many more, you won’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to book a venue. You’d be surprised how much a stable internet connection, a working computer with a camera and good content can do!
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Build that database:
The beauty of webinars is that it will allow you to build an audience from any part of the world. It’s a great way of expanding your current database or even conducting a survey for your next big product launch. Every new guest has the potential to be an advocate of your business and if the guests on your webinar have their followers, get ready to serve a new pool of audiences for your business.
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Marketing 101: Increases brand awareness
The main aim of every business is to increase brand awareness through engaging marketing tools. Having a webinar will allow audiences to get a visual feel of your brand, resulting in getting your brand in the buying consideration set. You can do it through aggressive marketing or engage your audience in some knowledgeable information about your brand.
81% of marketers claim that videos help them to acquire new leads for their companies, according to Click Meetings, state of webinar report. You can reach your audience, live, and afterward!
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Invite a social media influencer or your business partner across the globe
On-demand webinars are convenient because everyone just needs to have an internet connection to access it. Conducting webinars can allow you to connect with your desired audience at the comfort of their own home.
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Webinar engagement converts to brand engagement!
The beauty of scarcity is one of the greatest assets of the marketing community. If you are conducting a live event and do not plan on leaving any digital footprint of it, and if your audience shows up late, they miss a part of it. If they don’t show up at all, they miss all of it. The power of scarcity forms the foundation of the webinar campaign, leaving a feeling of FOMO.
With webinars, your audience gets a voice, they can provide you with real-time insights, ask questions, and chat. When the conversation starts, it’s a snowball effect for brand engagement.
How To Use Live Broadcasts For Your Company
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
Implementing a live video experience for your brand is an incredible opportunity to bring your audience together. Whether you are filming product demonstrations or a roundtable interview, your audience can use your live broadcast as an opportunity to stay informed on what your business is doing. There are plenty of platforms available to produce your live broadcast, so it’s easier than ever for companies to do this. Below, we have a few pointers for businesses to consider before implementing a live video experience.
Content creation
Live streaming is an opportunity to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. While a professional, polished video is certainly a good look for your branding, live video requires you to be creative on the fly. It’s a raw and off the cuff experience that’s a great showcase for your authenticity. Deciding what you want to talk about is the crucial first step. An easy way to get started on creating your live content is treating your broadcast like a case study. Pick a common pain point in your industry and discuss how your company has navigated situations like this. Whatever topic you choose, it needs to be accessible to current customers and prospects. Effective videos don’t alienate any segments of your audience.
Content promotion
Once you’ve done the hard work of creating your live video content, the next step is making sure that people see it. If you’re broadcasting on social media, the option to share that content is already built into the platform. After you’re done recording, take the time and effort to reshare that video content to grow your audience. Organically, you can share your live broadcast via social posts, your website, or even an email campaign. It’s typically best to announce that you’re going live with the date, time and appropriate links, but it never hurts to share after you’ve gone live.
Engagement
When you’re choosing a platform to broadcast your video, make sure that there are features that allow your audience to be a part of the conversation. Audience engagement is a massive opportunity for companies who choose to use a live broadcast, and your viewers may want to weigh in on the ongoing conversation. Engagement goes both ways, so it’s important to respond to the questions and comments as they come in.
Data collection
The biggest advantage of using a platform for your live video broadcast is the ability to track and collect data. With a basic platform like Facebook or LinkedIn, you can observe metrics like views, shares, and comments to give a better idea for how your video is performing. But if you want the good data, invest in a live video platform that will find you deeper insights about your audience. With a platform like this, you can track each viewer and know exactly when they have tuned into your broadcast. Deeper insights can help to push your audience to make purchases down the road.
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
How to Up Your Inside Sales Capabilities
Unlike traditional forms of sales, inside sales representatives are highly trained individuals who are required to identify, nurture, and convert leads into customers through remote systems.
This virtual form of selling is made possible with the rapid evolution of technology and is becoming highly dominant within B2B, technology, and high-ticket sectors. However, to remain competitive in this emerging system of sales, inside sales representatives must be educated on the tools necessary to drive favorable results.
Just like you wouldn’t attempt to repair your car without the relevant tools, you shouldn’t try to take on inside sales without the relevant skills.
There are numerous strategies that all successful inside sales reps employ to close more deals and create more satisfied customers.
All of these skills can be quickly learned and implemented into your toolkit to help you achieve better results.
Below we’ll cover our top 5 tactics you must include in your inside sales strategy.
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Develop a mastery of product knowledge:
Contacting a prospect and gaining their interest is the most difficult step of the inside sales process. However, if a product related query is asked and the sales rep cannot answer it, the prospect will almost instantly lose interest.
All successful inside sales reps must develop extensive knowledge of their company’s products. Through in-depth training, sales reps should have the ability to answer any question, whether basic or advanced; technical or practical.
Deep product knowledge enables sales reps to transform their pitch around each individual prospect, by specifying how the product’s features will provide value and satisfy the unique needs of the potential customer.
Knowing how each product works, the value it can provide, and its strongest features separates the top 1% of sales representatives from the rest.
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Learn how to listen:
Inside sales revolves around the needs of the prospect, not the sales rep. Better results will be achieved once the representative focuses on the unique needs of the prospect, rather than their own desire to close the deal.
Inside sales reps should begin by listening attentively to their prospect’s needs and difficulties. In doing so, they can delve deep into the unique issue and develop personalized questions and suggestions that cater to the situation.
By putting yourself in the shoes of the prospect, you can determine which features and benefits are most important to highlight, based on what will provide them with the most value.
Rather than listing off all the product features and capabilities at once, this approach allows representatives to deliver a more ‘customer-centric experience’.
Since the benefits sought by each customer will vary, basing the value of your product on the needs of the individual will build a more favorable relationship.
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Embrace the marketing team and research your prospects:
Marketers work to generate interest and demand for a product. Once leads begin appearing, inside sales representatives take over to close the deal. Clear communication between marketing and sales teams is crucial in finding qualified leads that are likely to be converted into customers.
Drawing insight into prospects enhances your ability to dictate the likelihood of closing a deal. An effective strategy to uncover these key details is to utilize social media platforms such as LinkedIn to research your leads. In doing so, you can learn about the prospect’s position in the organization, their capacity to make decisions, and other valuable information that can assist the sales process.
With this insight, inside sales reps can tailor their conversation around the prospect, providing for a more personalized and customer-centric experience.
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Communicate clearly and responsively:
It’s not about what you say, it’s how you say it. The way you communicate your message is a vital sales skill and can help prospects relate with you when conversing.
We can make others feel comfortable by mirroring their actions – the same goes for their tone and style of voice. Matching the way in which a prospect communicates can go a long way. If they are speaking in a serious tone, do the same. Conversely, if they are using informal language, the same principle applies.
Actively listening and responding with follow-up questions shows that you are focused on the needs of the prospect, rather than concentrating only on what you are going to say next.
Base the conversation around the prospect to emphasize that you are not selling them a product, but rather, trying to provide them with a solution to their problem.
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Remember to follow up:
It’s awfully easy to send the first e-mail or make the first phone call, however, following up can be daunting. One week passes… no response. One month… still nothing. Should you move onto the next prospect?
Research by The National Sales Executive Association showed that 80% of sales are made after the fifth call and 92% of salespeople give up before that.
To succeed as an inside sales rep, you must be persistent and confident. Eliminating the fear of rejection will differentiate yourself from 92% of people competing for the same position and will put you in a better position to gain the client’s attention.
5 Common Mistakes To Avoid When Building Your Influencer Strategy
While it is evident that Influencer Marketing can reap various benefits for a business, it is imperative to consider the potential mistakes brands make when utilizing this tool.
Influencer marketing is not as simple as choosing a popular Instagram account and throwing money at them. If used incorrectly, this approach can cost you thousands of dollars, however, if you avoid these common mistakes, Influencer Marketing can skyrocket your brand.
A recent study by Tomoson reported that businesses are making $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.
Avoid these 5 common mistakes to be among the businesses reaping these enormous benefits:
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Choosing the wrong influencer:
Brands will often select influencers based on their follower count. While in some cases, more followers means more engagement, this is not always true. The influencer should be chosen based on their values, personality and fittingness for the brand. Researching different influencers in the same niche will give you a better idea of who you should choose for your brand.
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Focusing on one social media platform:
Focusing solely on a single social media platform will hold your brand back from reaching a new audience. While it is natural to place greater emphasis on the platform where you have built the greatest presence, you are restricting your brand from reaching an entirely new demographic. Using influencers to direct attention towards platforms where your presence is lacking can be a good strategy to connect with new people.
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Making short-term collaborations:
It takes time to build trust with your consumers; don’t expect too much too soon. While you may experience some short-term gains, steady progress will often yield the best results. If the influencer campaign has achieved favourable returns in the short-term, focus on building a long-term relationship to achieve sustainable growth.
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Lacking authentic communication:
Cliché statements and captions will appear unauthentic. Using personalised messages and giving influencers an opportunity to voice their personal thoughts on the product will be perceived as more authentic and trustworthy by the audience. Finding an influencer that truly believes in the product will make this process significantly easier.
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Not having a proper strategy in place:
Implementing an influencer campaign because it is the ‘in-thing’ is the wrong approach to be taking. Before reaching out to an influencer, it is vital that you have a well-developed plan in place. To keep your brand on track, outline the end-goal of the campaign, whether it be more impressions or followers, then formulate a strategy to reach these goals. This will help determine which areas were effective and which areas need work for the next campaign.
While influencer marketing campaigns can reap various benefits for your business, it is vital that you avoid these basic errors to achieve the results you are seeking.
What does marketing mean in 2020?
The marketing landscape is constantly evolving, meaning marketers must continually adapt to stay competitive.
The past few years have shown just how quickly consumer behavior trends and advancements in technology can shift the way in which marketing teams must approach their campaigns. However, this year has already brought about many challenges impacting the way in which marketers must adjust their strategies to meet changing needs.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic beginning in December 2019 has forced brands to think, operate and strategize in new ways to adjust to the changing needs of their consumers.
In just a few months, we have seen many countries shift into a temporary ‘survival mode’, with social-distancing measures keeping most at home. As a result, the behavioral trends and attitudes of consumers has drastically shifted, giving marketers a new challenge to deal with.
How has COVID-19 affected marketing?
With social-distancing measures forcing people to stay home, many new behavioral trends have formed.
We have seen people choose television, radio and newspaper for their main source of reliable information over social media.
We are witnessing exponential growth in online video chats; with work, lectures and social engagements being done exclusively over the internet. Social media usage, gaming applications and video streaming have also experienced a significant rise in usage, as they have become the primary source of entertainment for most.
E-commerce channels have been in high demand in proportion with the elevated need for physical goods. Inconsistent supplies at grocery stores and the fear of community transmission has driven many towards online channels to purchase their essentials.
While many of these trends may reverse once normality returns, brands must stay aware and adapt to the changing conditions.
How are marketers reacting to these changes?
Marketers must continue tracking trends to gain a clearer understanding of how consumer behaviors are evolving.
By closely observing trends, opportunities and potential threats through conversation across social media platforms, marketers will better adapt to the evolving landscape.
As people move beyond social-distancing requirements, it is unlikely that their newly adopted behaviors will merely revert back to original.
The mix of media platforms being consumed by consumers is constantly changing; however, these changes have been tracked and observed by marketers during this crisis. For example, with digital entertainment mediums spiking, marketers may consider adjusting their strategy to appeal to this change. i.e., display more advertisements on social media or game consoles.
How should marketers plan for normality?
Marketers must also understand which steps to take once business returns to usual. As well as continual focus on the experience of the customers, great emphasis should also be placed on the internal marketing functions of the brand.
By understanding customer experience from the perspective of the consumer, marketers will be able to better connect with them and mitigate the effects caused by the crisis.
Beyond the changes resulting from the outbreak, we are also anticipating the following 5 trends to take over the marketing industry in 2020:
- Customer Experience and Personalization: Advancements in technology, as well as increased access to information has allowed businesses to better personalize their customer experiences. Personalized marketing will forge a real connection between you and your consumers.
- Strategic Marketing Transformation: Knowing when, why and how your strategic plan should be transformed will ultimately benefit customer experience. Altering your brand’s functions and procedures depending on the external environment and consumer trends will increase revenue and profits.
- AI/Automation: While the human aspect of marketing is still important, new technologies are capable of enhancing your marketing efforts. AI can replace boring and repetitive tasks to give brands more time to focus on a better customer experience.
- Focus on customer loyalty: Recurring customers are more valuable than new ones. Building a loyal customer base will reduce the impacts of crisis events such as the COVID-19 outbreak, since it can cost up to five times as much to attract new customers.
- Live Video: Live video is becoming increasingly popular on sites such as Facebook and Instagram and it is a great way of making your audience feel involved. People spend 3x longer watching live video than they do watching pre-recorded video.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic beginning in December 2019 has forced brands to think, operate and strategize in new ways to adjust to the changing needs of their consumers. Beyond this, we are anticipating various other changes in the marketing landscape.