The biggest trends of 2017 will help marketers engage consumers more directly by eliminating communication distractions and improve their marketing reach. These tactics fascinate the fundamental aspects of human nature. Thus, they can help marketers to create carefully coordinated campaigns and conversations where brands and consumers coalesce into a shared experience.
1 Go Native or Go Home
Joe Pulizzi, a content-marketing expert, calls native advertising the gateway drug to content marketing. Smart marketers will jump into the speed of native-advertising train. The total ad spending for native advertising will reach USD 7,9 billion this year and USD 21 billion in 2018. Marketers love this form of paid media for they are targeted and organic. Native advertising does not interfere with the reading experience of the users so that the audience can not distinguish between paid content (ads) and the integral part. Native content is usually beneficial, attractive and targeted to specific audiences. The three things make it one of the best platforms to launch a marketing campaign.
2. Content Marketing
The core part of Native advertising is content marketing. Native advertising is just another way for marketers to distribute content. Content marketing is a strategic marketing technique for creating and distributing relevant information to attract a target audience. This is an ongoing process that is best integrated into the overall marketing strategy. The key is to be consistent and to build a strong character for your brand. If the communication content is smart, charming and funny, your target audiences cannot help but be engaged.
3. Find Your Target Influencers
We are now in the midst of an influencer-marketing gold rush. While “influencers” have always been a key element in marketing, they are quickly becoming one of the most effective ways to reach your customers and clients. That’s especially true in social media. Influencer marketing gives brands the opportunity to create word-of- mouth buzz through personalities that are liked and admired by consumers. When influencers are used effectively, they will create natural ways to lure a target market.
4. Try Live Streaming Video and Visual Storytelling
Video can connect brand directly to the audience, convey emotions and messages in much more impressive ways than just static words. Live streaming video allows you to do this all quickly. You can consider the popularity of video-sharing sites such as YouTube. More than 1 billion people use YouTube regularly. In April 2016, Facebook helped launch Facebook Live. Now the broadcast capabilities are placed on your fingertips.
5. Learn How chatbots are Changing Conversations
Chatbots are a major game-changer that improves real-time, 24-hour engagement with consumers. Advances in artificial intelligence and programming allow chatbots to answer customers’ questions. It is able to provide reasonable responses because it is based in data on how the human brain works. A chatbot is basically the sales associate that never sleeps and is always ready with a quick answer.
6. Provide Expiration Date for your Social Content
Snapchat fans know when there is something compelling and addictive on a content that will be lost in a certain time period. The decreasing attention span of generation Z makes expiring social content becomes more important. The premise is simple: Look now, or lose your chance forever. Influencers who are deft in using this form of communication can help marketers integrate expiring social content into an overall strategy.
7. Make Personalization a Priority
A daily dose of information overload has made people become immune to advertising. Consumers can pass or turn off the pop up ads which they regard as distractors. To attract the attention of the customers, marketers must reach them with personalized, relevant content. Tracking consumers’ habits, interests and histories is key to creating strategies that make them closer to the sale and purchase the services.
8. Automate Your Efforts
Marketing automation grows at an impressive rate, as many as 71 percent of companies currently use this technology. Using a software platform designed to put repetitive tasks automatically, this tool can provide solutions for email marketing, social media marketing, SMS and digital advertising. 91 percent of the most successful marketers agree that marketing automation is “very important” to their overall marketing success in all channels.