6 Digital Marketing Trends to Adopt
With a shift in how we approach digital marketing and as new trends emerge, businesses and brands must be prepared for the future and build their strategies accordingly in an ever-changing marketing landscape. Below are 6 digital marketing trends and how you can use them to your advantage.
Invest in Influencer Marketing
A form of social media marketing, influencer marketing involves a brand collaborating with an “influencer” (a person or organization who has a significant level of knowledge or social influence) to endorse and promote their products. With an estimated market share of $21.1 billion in 2023, leveraging influencer marketing to improve brand awareness and drive purchasing decisions can yield substantial results.
Conducting extensive research on potential influencers before involving them in a campaign is critical for success. Instead of selecting someone simply based on their follower count, be sure to evaluate their audience demographics, the typical products they promote, and their engagement levels. In doing so, you can ensure brand alignment and maximize the effectiveness of your campaign. For example, a small restaurant providing meal kits may want to partner with a local family-oriented lifestyle blogger. Their niche audience would match the key demographic for someone wanting to purchase meal kits. Additionally, people are often more trusting of a micro-influencer which can lead to a higher conversion rate than using traditional marketing tactics.
Create Short Video Content
While longer videos provide an opportunity to showcase comprehensive information about a brand or product, short videos are proving to be more effective and have a higher engagement rate. Videos shorter in length not only highlight the fast-paced nature in which we live our lives but also send a call to action before the viewer has time to become disinterested. This alone has led to marketers attributing 90% of their lead generation successes to video content, according to Forbes.
Integrate SEO Meaningfully
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a trend that has been around for a long time and has proven itself to be a wildly successful marketing tool for businesses. With algorithms evolving to evaluate content on a contextual basis, integrating SEO into your entire user experience is a trend that will continue to gain momentum. SEO is more than answering simple search inquiries in your posts, it’s now about providing a meaningful experience. You’ll want to continually invest in improving your SEO by ensuring there are high-performing keywords embedded throughout all your content, that all your images and videos use alt-tags, in addition to other optimization tactics.
Optimize Mobile Experiences
As the buying power of Millennials and Gen Z continues to grow, so does the percentage of consumers who are making purchasing decisions from their mobile devices. With more than half of annual online website traffic coming from mobile devices, targeting mobile marketing and optimizing your online presence is critical.
Mobile optimization begins with your website. Is it fully functional? Does it have an intuitive user experience? Have you adjusted your content to ensure users have a similar experience regardless of what device they are using? These are best practices for mobile optimization that need to be assessed and implemented in order to ensure excellent user experience and brand loyalty. To take it one step further, consider optimizing for mobile by creating applications, introducing ads based on geolocation, integrating text message promotions, and creating a strong presence on social media.
Consider Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing may not be a new trend, but with its proven marketing success and the dwindling effectiveness of outbound marketing, it is a tried-and-true tactic to continue.
While outbound marketing pushes your content in front of audiences like with ads or cold-calling, inbound marketing attracts customers by creating valuable content that organically spreads brand awareness and creates trust. Producing content, like an informative blog post, will likely engage someone far more than a paid advertisement. By keeping your customers at the centre of your inbound marketing efforts rather than as an afterthought, you will create loyal relationships with your customers who can in turn advocate for your business as well.
Prioritize Social Responsibility
Social responsibility and transparency are extremely important to consumers. Non-profit activities have a massive positive impact on brand awareness. People care how businesses are stepping up during challenging times and want to support brands that truly care how they’re treating their employees and the environment. Additionally, companies who have a strong sense of social responsibility typically get better reviews and are more likely to be recommended by word of mouth.
With this in mind, many digital marketers have begun to highlight their inclusive practices and causes they support. While this doesn’t translate into product sales, it often will turn a lead into a customer over time by building company trust in a thoughtful and effective way. This is one of many reasons why 89% of global marketers plan on investing in social responsibility, according to Statista.
Assessing how you can best take advantage of these digital marketing trends can be cumbersome, which is why working with LRO Solutions as your marketing partner ensures you stay ahead of your competition and move your marketing in the right direction. Visit www.lrosolutions.com to learn more about our services and how we can propel your business forward.
