What You Need To Know About Digital Marketing Trends!
What You Need To Know About Digital Marketing Trends!If there’s one thing you can take for granted about Digital Marketing, it’s that it changes all the time. What worked well six months ago probably doesn’t give you the same results today and if you find something that does work for you right now, chances are in a few months everyone else will have caught on to that too.
Don’t Sell!
Digital Marketing is not about sales. Instead, you need to promote your business more subtly, through offering value to your audience in the form of information, asking questions of what they want and need from you, or answering questions about your industry. The more value you’re providing, the people will pay attention.
Think Mobile!
As of this year, the UK has more people accessing the internet via mobiles and tablets than via computers. You need to think of ways to get your message to your audience on their phone, and not just hope that they will spontaneously navigate to your website to see what you’re up to. Social Media is a great way to get your business in front of people, particularly on their mobiles.
Personality Counts!
So much has been said about the importance of Social Media, but the most important message that so many brands fail to maximise is that you need to show who you are. You need to be human, not just a machine sending out blog updates twice a week. Let your audience get to know the face behind the brand, use a storytelling kind of style to build up a picture of your brand or products. Also, make sure that even if you are posting your own content on Social Media that you also post a mix of other content too. Tag relevant people or brands, and above all, be consistent!
Re-Think Your Social Media Strategy!
You really can’t underestimate the power of social media, and if you don’t think social media works for your business then you are definitely doing the wrong thing. Even if you had a clear picture of your ideal customer last year and a clear strategy to reach out to that person, as I mentioned earlier the trends change so quickly that you are probably not reaching that ideal customer any more. 
You also need to keep in mind that social platforms change at the drop of a hat. A year ago no-one had heard of Periscope, but now quick thinking business owners are using it to show their audience live behind the scenes updates and question and answer sessions. Again, this fits in with the culture of showing the personality behind your brand and of course, it’s mobile.
Video Is Becoming Increasingly Important!
Who would have thought a year ago that we’d be saying that video has moved on from Youtube? While YouTube is still the main platform of choice for any video that you want to keep around for a long time, Facebook, Instagram and of course Periscope are all proving to have a strong hold on the rapidly growing Video space.
Worldwide, there are more than 4 billion video views on Facebook every day, and video uploaded directly to Facebook rather than embedded from YouTube will play directly in a user’s newsfeed meaning they get a glimpse of the action to entice them to click through. This has allowed creative thinking businesses to take advantage of the opportunity to grab people’s attention with the first few seconds of footage and entice new fans to their brand.
Periscope offers a different format again, the idea being live video streaming that anyone can join in to watch and ask questions. The video is saved on Periscope for 24 hours, but can also be saved to YouTube if you choose.
Analytics Can See What You’re Missing!
With so much going on in the Digital Space and so many different ways to reach your target audience, it is simply impossible to be everywhere at all times. The good news is that your analytics will be able to show you exactly what is working and what isn’t, and you should make sure you monitor everything you do to understand what works, what works better, and where you really need to focus your energies.
Automation Is Your Friend!
Marketing automation is not a new tool, but with the ever growing online tool kit, it really is a huge benefit to take advantage of. Automation means you can schedule your blog posts in advance, have your social media updates go out when the most people will see them and allows great access to tracking tools and statistics that I mentioned above. By automating posts in advance you are also able to free up time as you won’t constantly have to go back and post individual items, you can find and post all your updates at once. Just remember that you still need to comment and reply to your audience, consider logging on at certain times twice a day to respond to any comments or questions that might have cropped up.
You Must Be Eye-Catching!
In order to stand out online, beautiful visuals are now one of the most important criteria to fulfil. Sites such as Pinterest and Instagram are built on images, while pictures and video are the most liked and shared type of post on Facebook. Even business who don’t consider themselves to be image based should invest some time in figuring out a “look” that represents their brand visually.
What Digital Marketing tactics are working best for you at the moment? If you have any favourite tips or insights then let us know in the comments.
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