Marketing is one of the essential things for running your business successfully. The content marketing done right connects you to your customer and becomes one of the most helpful business tools. It provides you instant and relevant feedback, statistics and can become the key part of defining your long-term business strategy. As a brief example, starting a successful and consistently updating blog may attract 55% more traffic to your brand’s website.
So, let’s look through the most promising marketing patterns and strategies of 2021.
Vlogging is the new black
It’s truly impossible to overestimate the importance of video content in your marketing campaigns. The recent studies showed that 43% of customers wish to get more video content from the businesses they are interested in. Providing a stable amount of high-quality and relevant video content can make people return to your site and, probably, place an order, rather than forget it after the first visit.
The most obvious and reasonable way to start vlogging is to check your average posts’ statistics. Find the most successful ones and turn these topics into videos with vivid details and extra information about your products or services. Try to get interactive, invite your customers to discuss with you in the comments, start a contest or flash mob or simply go live, talking to your clients in real-time.
One good tip is to do a webcam test and see if your other equipment works properly.
Don’t forget to share your videos via social media, they are one of the most effective sources of new leads and new purchases.
The rise of the webinars while events are out of play
The pandemic crisis is a game-changer. Now, while all the real-life events are either canceled or postponed, the webinars affect the broader and broader audiences. They are a quick, effective, and relatively cheap way to communicate with your audience and share the information you need them to know. Also, lots of people get bored of social distancing, and webinars (disregarding the actual topic) become the new way of socializing for them. Now they are definitely one of the best things to invest into.
Surely, webinars can’t affect as many people as blog posts or videos do, but the sheer possibility to learn, interact and ask questions directly always attracts people. Webinar making may be expensive and exhausting but firing at least one in a month will boost your sales and brand awareness.
User-generated content: let your users do the job
The internet is becoming more and more cynical, and customers give less and less attention to the marketing tricks. Even the most aggressive and creative marketing campaigns may get an eye-roll reaction from the target audience and become just a waste of budget. You may make a truly perfect video with professional actors and interesting product placement but it will hardly reach your customers. But people still tend to believe other people. Your clients can advertise your brand by themselves via sharing their experience. Their videos and photos may be less-than-stellar, but they will be real and will show their everyday lives. That’s what people truly love to watch.
User-generated content provides a strong trust level and connects potential customers into a solid community. In fact, social platforms are an integral part of building social trust and brand awareness. For example: if your brand doesn’t exist in TikTok, Instagram stories and posts and doesn’t respond to the social media comments, it may miss a big chunk of the millennial audience.
Go-Pro and its videos can be the best example of UGC marketing. It is the only and incredibly successful way of promoting their products. Go-Pro makes awesome cameras, its customers shoot not less awesome and often extreme videos, tag the company and the magic happens!
Socially conscious marketing
According to Forbes, 88% of consumers want to support brands that have social causes aligned with their product or service. Consumers are becoming more socially conscious, and they’re looking to engage with businesses that share their values.
They want to buy from companies that take mental health, social justice, inclusivity, politics, and climate change very seriously. Gone are the days when brands could get by on merely paying lip service to these issues. You need to speak up, take a stand, and take action to attract and retain this crop of customers.
For example, Uber launched a widely praised anti-racism campaign across its digital and traditional media assets to commemorate the anniversary of the march on Washington and MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech. They also set in motion and supported other initiatives to further this cause.
Data-driven content – make your customer a person
In a nutshell, data-driven content is analyzing the customers’ profiles and creating the personas to make the marketing strategy more effective. The famous question “Will Lucy buy it?” is exactly that. The marketing strategist needs to create a full portrait of “Lucy”, the average member of the most promising target audience, and cater to “Lucy’s” needs. You’ll never meet most of your customers in person, but you may collect as much information as possible to “personalize” them.
This is where JotUrl comes in handy. This all-in-one platform helps both tracking (views, clicks, conversions, etc.) and analyzing your data (brands, campaigns, channels, sources, landing pages, etc.). The process starts with using JotUrl’s smart links which save the needed marketing information and then, utilizing those insights for creating data-driven content based on the information about your audience. This way, JotUrl allows you to learn your audience better (like their location, age, or devices they use) as well as to understand which content performs the best by seeing a number of different metrics.
Such an approach can make your marketing strategy more effective, and, at the same time, make your clients feel more valued, feel people your brand has relationships with. Provide memes and entertaining content for the younger audience, infographics, and researches for the professionals, etc. Different “Lucys” mean different approaches and all of them will pay back with more sales!
AI-powered content. The rise of the machines
AI is making lots of work already. It collects data, processes it, summarizes, and provides ready-to-use statistics. AI-powered systems have already proved themselves as a valid investment. But, in the year 2021, AI is capable of more and may even become a long-term marketing trend. It may look too much sci-fi or even scare you a little, but computer science marches on and the marketing technologists have predicted it years ago. Now lots of people want to give it a try and see the effectiveness of such a cutting-edge tool.
Wrap-up
Content, feedback, and brand awareness were, are, and will be the pillars of your marketing success. No matter what year is now and what technologies are popular they will always affect your sales and audience size positively. Use the latest trends, conquer social media, grow your incomes. If your products are truly great, they deserve to be renowned!
By Anastasia Kotsiubynska
Bio
Anastasia is an online marketing specialist who watches the newest trends and shares them within the marketing community. She believes in data-driven marketing and content as a powerful source of a business. Connect with her on Linkedin.
