Starting 2022 Off on the Right Foot with 3 Digital Marketing Trends
Hip, hip, hooray! The new year is here, a time for fresh starts, and the beginning of your revitalized marketing plan. This is the perfect time to rethink and reorganize your advertising budget and make sure you are getting the best ROI for your buck.
Don’t worry, you don’t HAVE to join TikTok unless you really want to, there are plenty of other ways you can stay in front of customers and potential clients — let’s take a look!
Time to Get Personal
It should come as no surprise that people do not respond very well to generic sales content. The simple truth is that personalized and personable experiences drive more engagement than any other genre. This trend towards personalization has been around for awhile now; a report from SmarterHQ found that 72% of consumers said they would only engage with uniquely tailored marketing messages all the way back in 2019.
With the pandemic, and many still working from home or feeling isolated, when people get online they are looking for connection and contextualized offers. Customers want to be treated as individuals and their expectations have changed. Traditional business models are quickly becoming obsolete and with the abundance of data and analytics, it is possible to provide hyper-personalized marketing. If you don’t, the competition will.
How? Of course there’s laser-targeted ad campaigns (more on this later), and the growing trend of humanizing interactions via direct messages, live chat, even chatbots. A whopping 94% of customers responded that they would be more likely to repeat purchase from a brand that delivered a satisfactory customer experience over messaging platforms, according to Conversocial’s State of Customer Experience Trends report.
Taking the time to build relationships with customers and potential future clients is worth every cent. Given the option between two equal products or brands, the company that won their heart will most likely get the sale. Another way to create a real connection?
Conversational Marketing
This is exactly what it sounds like, marketing that talks to consumers but in a way that takes traditional methods and makes them more interactive. Conversational interfaces fulfill the need for more human-centered interactions, drive engagement, and make conversions easier than ever before as it is the fastest way to move individuals through your sales funnels with the power of real-time conversations.
Instead of forcing people through endless steps (re: lots of email and forms) before a conversation can even take place, intelligent chatbots make it easy for people to connect immediately. This of course means happier customers, and a better bottom line.
Messaging and instant, well, everything is the reality of the modern world. People want everything right away, especially attention, answers, and information. The numbers back it up too, Twilio found that 90% of consumers want to use messaging to communicate with businesses—with the majority preferring it over email which usually takes much longer.
Basically, it boils down to chats over forms, understanding what the consumer wants, and recommending the next step all in minutes instead of days—thus shortening the sales cycle.
Location, Location, Location
Hyper-local marketing goes hand in hand with the increased expectation for a personalized customer experience. The increased use of geolocation data in marketing is not new, but it is positioned to become even more important as we move into 2022. Large global brands are already utilizing this tactic, with Google especially serving up local businesses in your area.
Smartphones allow potential customers to be targeted with marketing messages once they enter a specific zone or radius from a store or location. Geofencing lets brands deliver personalized messages to a concentrated set of individuals who are most likely to convert into customers. Your marketing spend will thank you as location-based marketing has been shown to be twenty times more effective than regular ads.
Tailoring content to specific geographic areas not only brings in local community members, it can also spark opportunities to collaborate with other local establishments. As I’ve talked about many times before, partnering with another local business is a great way to double your audience reach and connect with new people.
Location-based marketing has become widespread with eight out of ten marketers currently using location data in their marketing strategy, and 94% planning to do so in the future according to Factual. Because of its highly effective nature, you can expect this element to play an increasingly larger role in social media marketing from now on.
Get Ready
We all know what a fast WHOOSH the year can be once it gets rolling, in a blink it will be summer, then the year is over. Not having a plan, is a plan to fail, so at the very least try to have a clear outline of your goals and work backwards on the steps to achieve them.
Even if you decide not to put any of these trends into practice, the building blocks of success will always be: understanding the wants and needs of your audience, and communicating with them clearly and consistently. Quality content across all marketing channels focusing on the customer helps to establish solid relationships. It’s a journey, not a sprint — you got this!
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DasFort Media is a full service marketing and content creation agency. If you haven’t already planned out your 2022 marketing strategy—we can help! Let us tackle the personalization of your marketing while you do what you do best! Reach out today.