Social media is constantly changing and evolving, so it is crucial for even the most successful brands to reevaluate their strategy from time to time to keep up. Social media helps with attraction marketing. Use these strategies to optimize your social media and to make sure that your brand is constantly staying on top.
Welcome to our August 2024 edition of “What’s Trending,” where we bring you the most relevant marketing trends and insights. Stay informed and ahead of the game with our curated collection of marketing trends and reports in summer 2024.
Subscription-based services have been becoming more and more common lately, and are expected to continue to grow in popularity. These services provide companies with recurring revenue. Subscription-based services also increase customer value, and can be used to incentivize higher engagement. Consumers especially value subscription offers that are tailored to customer preferences. Read more.
Lowe’s is rebranding. The home improvement retailer is now calling its retail media network “Lowe’s Media Network.” They will be launching four new channels this year: direct mail for install services, in-store audio, paid search, and email. Lowe’s will also be expanding placements on their app. Read more.
Neutrogena is hosting a Boost Bus pop-up event on August 31st and September 1st in Toronto. People will have the opportunity to talk with skincare experts to learn about skin vitality, protecting the skin, and hydration. The event will have games and prizes in addition to product samples. Read more.
Brand communication is how your company communicates with their current and future customers. Good brand communication builds and maintains brand loyalty among customers in addition to setting your company apart from the competition. It is a core aspect of a company’s strategy and is important to the company’s success. Click here to learn six tips for improving your company’s brand communication.
Display advertising is a kind of online advertising that uses copy, images, and other visual elements. They come in many different formats like banner ads, video ads, interactive ads, and more. The benefits of display ads include brand awareness, visual appeal, performance tracking, and targeting capabilities. Click here to learn five ways to improve your display ads.
Redesigning a website is a time to boost the brand image, refresh the look and content of the website, and update all the product listings and sales offers. Learn why copy should be refreshed on your new and improved website, and how to do it. Read more.
Due to their users’ concerns about data privacy and protection, Google is currently phasing out third-party cookies. This will be finished in 2025. Being able to use third-party cookies to track user behavior across sites has allowed for audience segmentation and the use of targeted ads. To keep gathering consumer data without third-party cookies, offer rewards to users who give you their information and keep utilizing first-party cookies. Read more.
Consumers’ desire for authenticity on social media platforms has given rise to user-generated content. Many customers do not trust advertisements, but they trust content made by real people. In the past five years, search engine interest for “user generated content” has increased by 200%. Read more.
Your product or service alone is no longer enough. Today’s consumers care about the values of the brand selling that product or service, particularly the values that pertain to social and environmental responsibilities. This has prompted brands to partake in and showcase ethical and sustainable practices. Read more.
The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) is allowing marketers to tailor digital experiences to individual consumers better than ever before. This personalization through AI will allow marketers to give consumers inclusive experiences. AI can also assist marketers in understanding their audiences and delivering content to consumers in local languages. Read more.
Brand communication is how your company communicates with their current and future customers. It influences customer relationships and shapes how the brand is perceived. Good brand communication can build and maintain brand loyalty among customers. It can also set your company apart from the competition. A good brand communication strategy will showcase your brand’s personality and your unique value propositions in addition to highlighting what it is that makes your products/services distinguishable from those of your competitors. It’s easy to see why good brand communication is important to a company’s success. Here are 6 tips for improving your company’s brand communication.
Consumers choose to buy products/services that will positively impact their life. Use testimonials or real-world situations that showcase other customers experiencing positive results. This allows potential buyers to envision themselves enjoying your product/service. Tell your customers how your product/service will help or benefit them rather than just listing off information about it. This will more effectively convince them to choose your product/service over your competition’s alternative. Many products/services offer similar features, but the way those features translate into tangible benefits for the consumer can set your product/service apart. Explaining how your product/service uniquely meets customer needs provides a convincing reason for customers to choose your product/service over those of your competitors. Making this differentiation is especially effective in crowded markets where there are a multitude of available options.
Visual branding elements help create the specific feeling and experience you’re trying to evoke from your brand. Keep your visual branding elements consistent across your social media posts, website, and all brand communication to increase brand recognition and build a cohesive brand identity. Visual branding elements include your logo, typography, imagery, color scheme, and more. Brand recognition can increase by 80% when you use a signature color. Having your visual branding differ across brand communication can confuse customers and look sloppy and unprofessional. The lack of cohesion can make it more difficult for customers to develop a distinct and lasting impression of your brand. It can also weaken your brand’s credibility.
Conversely, uniform visual branding elements create a sense of familiarity among customers. It also fosters trust and increases brand recognition. In order to maintain consistency when it comes to visual branding elements, you should create and follow a brand style guide that includes your logo, typography, imagery, color scheme, and any other necessary specifications. Doing so will make sure that your external partners, as well as your own team members, produce consistent visual branding elements to represent your brand.
Brand communication will do you no good if it is not distributed properly. When distributing brand communication (emails, posts, etc.), it is important to consider two things. One is the best way to distribute the content itself. The medium you utilize for disseminating your brand communication should align with the kind of content you are sharing. Social media should be used for sharing visual content, LinkedIn is best for sharing professional content, etc. Match your content to the appropriate platform to guarantee that your message is delivered in the most effective manner.
The other important thing to consider is the best way to distribute the brand communication based on who it is for. Understanding your audience is necessary to select the best distribution methods, as different demographics have different preferences receiving brand communication. For example, the best way for your brand to communicate with Baby Boomers is different from the best way to communicate with Gen Z.
What would make you want to buy a bag of chips more, a picture of a bag of chips or a picture of someone with a huge smile on their face while eating some of the yummy chips? Images that feature real people create an emotional connection with your audience. They also help your potential customers picture themselves using your product/service. To show consumers that your product will make their life better, show them pictures of people enjoying your product rather than a picture of just the product. An additional reason to use images that feature real people is that it makes customers more likely to perceive your brand as trustworthy, which fosters a stronger brand connection.
Make your headlines compelling and clear in order to catch your audience’s attention. The ideal headline length is approximately 6-8 words. Headlines that are too short can be vague and confusing. Headlines that are too long are often skimmed over by readers, or ignored all together. A headline that is too long and packs in too much information also leaves nothing for the subheadline to do. This brings us to our next point.
A subheadline should support the headline, and include details that expand on it. Again, do not go overboard with the length. If your subheadline is too long, you risk overwhelming your readers, causing them to skip over it entirely. The ideal headline length is approximately 10-30 words. This range keeps the text readable while also allowing you to provide details. Remember to avoid redundancy. Your subheadline should expand on your headline, not repeat it.
Brand communication is a core aspect of a company’s strategy. It influences customer relationships, shapes how the brand is perceived, and sets the company apart from their competition. Use the 6 above tips to improve your company’s brand communication.
Display advertising is a kind of online advertising that uses copy, images, and other visual elements. The terms “display ads” and “banner ads” are often used interchangeably because display ads usually were banner ads back in the day. Currently, however, display ads can come in many different formats in addition to banner ads, like video ads, interactive ads, and more. The benefits of display ads include brand awareness, visual appeal, performance tracking, and targeting capabilities.
Brand awareness: display ads expose customers to brand messages and visual elements across many touchpoints, building brand awareness.
Visual appeal: display ads can capture attention more effectively than text-based ads alone because they feature graphics and images.
Performance tracking: display ad’s performance metrics allow advertisers to monitor clicks, impressions, and conversions.
Targeting capabilities: display ad’s targeting options allow advertisers to reach different audience segments with messaging tailored to them.
Now that you know their benefits, here are 5 ways your company can improve their display ads:
In order for your display ad to be effective, your audience must be able to understand what it is trying to communicate. Therefore, all copy used in your display ad must be easy to read. Readability can be affected by font, size, and color. Some easy to read fonts are Arial, Georgia, and Helvetica. Your text should be large enough that it can easily be read on various screen sizes. Vary your font size to create a hierarchy of information. The headline should be the largest, the body text should be the smallest, and the subheadline should be in between those two sizes. The color of your copy should contrast with its background color so the copy stands out and is easy to read. Use color combinations that are visually appealing, and avoid using bright colors that are hard to read.
The average human attention span is 8.25 seconds. That’s not a lot of time, so your display ads need to be simple in order to quickly catch your viewer’s attention. Make sure you’re not cramming too much information into your display ad. You should also avoid adding an excess of design elements. Finally, only use one image in your display ad to keep it clean and simple.
Including your logo in display ads will improve brand recall and recognition. It will also help maintain overall brand consistency. Remember to not place your logo over an image, and make sure that your logo is cropped correctly. A logo that is too big can overwhelm the display ad, but a logo that is too small can be difficult to see. Therefore, it is important to size your logo so that it is visible without diminishing the display ad’s overall design. Position your logo so that it does not cover any important elements of the display ad, and make sure that the logo integrates smoothly with the display ad’s layout and design.
Your display ad’s call-to-action (CTA) is what will make people click on your ad. Ensure that your audience will act fast by creating a sense of urgency for your offer. Whether your offer is only available for a limited time or if there is only a limited amount of product in stock, try to include that in your display ad. Doing so will increase the likelihood of your display ad getting clicked on. To incorporate a limited-time offer into your display ad, you can include a countdown timer or use deadline phrases like “only for a limited time” or “offer ends soon.” To incorporate a product/service’s limited availability into your ad, you can include a count of how many products/services are left or use a statement like “almost gone.”
Choosing the correct keywords will make sure that the Display Network shows your ad to the proper audience(s). You should select between 5 and 20 keywords that are related to what you are advertising in your display ad. These keywords should be related to the websites that your customers frequently visit or use.
By making sure that the copy is readable, keeping things simple, using your logo when possible, creating urgency for your offer, and using keywords, you can significantly improve your display ads.
Successful inbound marketing depends on your ability to engage your leads and to nurture them through their buyer’s journeys. However, you’re going to have to attract leads first. Because technology keeps evolving and the way that people use the Internet keeps changing, it’s vital that you continuously update your inbound marketing strategies so that you can continue to attract high-quality leads.
With that in mind, the following are a few inbound marketing strategies you should consider implementing this year:
Although you can still attract a lot of high-quality leads by ranking first through third on Google’s SERP, it’s no longer the first thing that users see. Instead, the first thing that appears on Google’s SERP is their featured snippets. Websites listed in featured snippets tend to get a boost in organic traffic since searches often click on the website links listed on the snippets.
Social media influencers have massive followings. This means that if they highlight your brand on their channels, it could significantly increase your company’s exposure. However, such social media influencers tend to have broad audiences, which means many of their followers may not fall within your target audience. On top of that, it can be difficult for a small to a mid-sized company to get the attention of such an influencer, much less to convince them to promote your business.
Instead, you should consider finding micro-influencers. These are influencers with smaller audiences that focus on more niche subjects. You’ll have a better chance of building a relationship with a micro-influencer — and their audience will probably have greater overlap with your target audience as well.
Although long-form video content is certainly effective, it tends to work better as an engagement tool rather than an attraction tool. Short-form video content does really well on social media especially. People are more likely to watch through the entire video and share it with others on their social channels if it’s on the shorter side. Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok also focus on short video content, and those sites have skyrocketed in popularity over the years.
Potential leads are often discouraged from converting through opt-in forms if there are too many questions. If they feel like the offer isn’t worth the information they have to give up, they’ll just leave your site without converting. You can solve this issue by using progressive forms. Progressive forms require that leads fill out a new form every time they download a new resource instead of asking for one form to be filled out upfront. The advantage of doing this is that you can just ask for a couple of details each time so that it doesn’t feel like they’re providing that much information to you.
Voice assistants, such as Siri and Alexa, have drastically increased the number of voice searches performed over the past few years. While text-based searches are still the most popular way to perform a search online, voice searches continue to increase. In 2019, a third of the U.S. population used voice search. As such, you may want to begin optimizing for voice search. You can do this by adding a voice search snippet to your blog posts. You can also begin writing content in a more direct and conversational way.
There are now billions of smartphone users in the world today. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile use, it’s going to hurt your search rankings. Additionally, mobile users who do stumble onto your site are going to have all kinds of trouble navigating it. This is because a site not optimized for mobile use won’t display correctly on smaller screen sizes.
Topic clusters are a more organized way to create content. Essentially, you create a pillar page on a certain topic, then create separate pages (such as blog posts) that cover related subtopics. These pages are then all linked to your pillar page, creating a cluster of content. The reason this is so effective is that it leads to a higher number of internal links. As such, visitors have an easier time navigating through relevant content, while search engines have an easier time identifying context, which can lead to boosted rankings and more organic traffic.
Finding new ways to attract your target audience is critical to your inbound marketing efforts. Because people change the ways that they use the web as they adapt to new technology, it’s important that you continually revisit your inbound strategies. As such, consider implementing some of these inbound marketing strategies to attract new leads in 2021.
The decision to redesign a website marks a major milestone in the growth of a business. It is a time to boost the brand image, refresh the look and content of the website, and update all the product listings and sales offers. Interestingly enough, although refreshing your website content is often ignored during the website redesign process, it should actually be near the top of the list.
Copying over existing content from an old website to a new one seems like a good way to save money. However, it can actually end up costing you more in the long run. Instead refreshing your website will benefit your company in the following ways:
With so much riding on your website redesign, you need to make sure to hire the best people for the job. A copywriter is a critical member of the team who brings a specific skill set to the project. A good copywriter should be able to present a company’s benefits and key selling points. They should also understand the ins and outs of search engine optimization and know how to develop copy that search engines will love.
Developing copy begins in the earliest stages of website redesign. The site map, developed during the design phase, organizes each page on the site and identifies the content needed for each page. This is where the copywriter’s job comes in.
While the website designer works on wire frames, the copywriter begins developing content. Eventually, the two come together, marrying the design elements of the website with the copy contained within. This stage gives the team the ability to see how well the new design showcases the content, and vice versa.
After design approval, production begins. This is when the copywriter develops final copy and applies it to the new web page at the appropriate time. Although refreshing your new website’s copy may take work, it will pay off soon enough and give you a leg up on the competition.
Success depends on marketing. It doesn’t matter how big or small your business is, you cannot survive or grow unless you market your brand. Marketing does require a lot of time and effort to do effectively. Unfortunately, few businesses have the resources needed to maintain an in-house marketing team. That’s why many of them rely heavily on outsourcing to a professional marketing agency.
The following are a few reasons why you should strongly consider working with a reputable marketing agency:
At first glance, the monthly rate of a marketing agency might seem expensive. In fact, many companies make the mistake of thinking it’s an unnecessary expense, especially if they think they can handle their marketing needs on their own. However, when you add up the costs of running a successful in-house marketing team, you’ll realize that it’s much more expensive than outsourcing to a marketing agency.
A comprehensive marketing strategy requires a lot of different skill sets. You’ll need marketing managers, strategists, researchers, analysts, copywriters, social media managers, SEO specialists, web designers, graphic designers, and more. Each one of these specialists costs a significant amount of money to hire full-time. The costs of hiring a marketing agency for a year are often less than hiring just one full-time marketing specialist.
Because a marketing agency is focused solely on marketing, the majority of their investments are going to be in the technology needed to stay on top of the latest tech and trends. As a result, when you work with a marketing agency, you’ll have access to all of the latest marketing tools, many of which can cost an arm and a leg to purchase or subscribe to yourself.
Trying to put together an in-house marketing team can be very difficult in part because you’ll need to know who to hire. If you get stuck with someone who lacks the necessary experience or skills, it can hinder your marketing efforts. A marketing agency makes sure that it hires only the most qualified marketers out there. This means that you can be safe in the knowledge that your team has the experience and skills needed to help implement an effective marketing strategy.
One of the biggest challenges businesses face is attempting to scale their marketing efforts to keep up with their company’s growth. If you find that you suddenly need more personnel to keep up with the demand of your business, you’ll have to go through the hiring process. This process can take a long time. Not to mention that the marketers you hire will have to be onboarded. When working with an agency, you’ll never have to worry about your marketing team falling behind. An agency will be able to scale your needs by simply adjusting your strategy and assigning more of their marketers to your team when needed.
Even if you have an in-house marketing team, one of the things that can hinder your team is the fact that their perspective of your brand can grow scale. Being able to stand back and look at the overall picture can be difficult sometimes. A marketing agency will be able to do this since they have an outsider perspective. Their experience working on other strategies and campaigns can also bring valuable insight to your team.
Read More: Five Reasons To Hire An Advertising Agency Versus Staffing In-House
Even if you have in-house marketing personnel, working with a marketing agency can be hugely beneficial. Most smaller to mid-sized businesses won’t have a full-fledged marketing department. This means that the marketing personnel they do have are often forced to wear multiple hats. This can result in them becoming overworked and overwhelmed, thereby hurting their job performance.
By working with a marketing agency, you can ensure that the marketing personnel you do have in-house can focus on their core responsibilities. The marketing agency can provide the personnel needed to fill in the gaps, thereby complementing your existing team.
Having a team of experienced, professional marketers to help promote your business is a must. While you may not be able to afford an in-house team, attempting to leave the marketing strategy up to a handful of individuals at your company is not a good idea — especially if they have multiple job responsibilities. Instead, you should strongly consider outsourcing your marketing efforts to a reputable marketing agency. The benefit of hiring a marketing agency for your business helps to develop, execute, and monitor a marketing strategy that works for you.
Your marketing strategy is not something that you should take lightly. After all, the success of your business, whether it’s big or small, is going to depend on your ability to generate customers. Without effective marketing, it’s going to be very difficult to grow your audience, not to mention your customer base. However, if you do just a little bit of research, you’ll quickly find that there are two main types of marketing: inbound marketing and outbound marketing. The question is, which should you use for your business?
Outbound marketing is the more traditional form of marketing. The main strategy of an outbound marketing campaign is to get your company’s message to an audience that consists of potential customers. For instance, running commercials on TV or radio, placing ads in magazines or newspapers, or putting up billboards outside. These are all forms of outbound marketing. The idea is that people who need your product or service are, hopefully, exposed to your ads and will come to you as a result.
Whereas outbound marketing involves forcing a message to an audience, inbound marketing focuses on putting your business in the position to be found by your audience on their own time. Most inbound marketing efforts are digital. For example, setting up a website and a social presence, writing content aimed at your target audience, and optimizing your content for SEO (search engine optimization). The idea is to make your brand easy for potential customers to find or stumble upon when searching for relevant information online. Once found, you can then nurture them through the sales funnel at their own convenience.
Read More: Why Your Website Redesign Would Benefit From An Inbound Marketing Strategy
Inbound VS Outbound Marketing are different from each other but you should choose one as per your business requirement. Which type of marketing better suits your business is going to depend on various factors, such as what your budget is and what your goals are (are the more short-term or long-term?). However, as a smaller to mid-sized business, inbound marketing is going to be your best bet. It’s much more affordable and allows you to steadily grow your business over the long term. But that doesn’t mean that you should ignore outbound marketing. Outbound can still be incredibly effective, despite the fact that some mistakenly think that it has become obsolete with the advent of inbound.
Outbound marketing tactics can still be incredibly useful. There’s a reason why businesses still run large ad campaigns in magazines or on TV. There’s a reason why it’s so expensive to run a commercial in a 30-second slot during the Super Bowl. That reason is that outbound marketing still works. It’s a great way to increase brand exposure if you know what you’re doing.
Even if you don’t have a massive budget to work with, outbound marketing can still be effective, especially if used in conjunction with your inbound marketing strategy. After all, you can use outbound to market your online presence. For example, you can put your website or social media handles up at the end of your commercials, on your print ads, or on your billboards. You can even put QR codes on your print ads that people can scan with their smartphones.
The primary reason why advertising your inbound efforts on your outbound efforts is so effective is that most people are using a smartphone, tablet, or laptop while they are watching TV — or have one on hand when they pass by a billboard or are flipping through a magazine.
There’s no reason to choose just one. Both inbound marketing and outbound marketing strategies have their pros and cons. Inbound tends to be a more long-term strategy, while outbound is more short-term. As such, using them together allows you to run a more comprehensive omni-channel marketing strategy. The more complete your marketing efforts are, the greater the odds of success will be.
A successful business depends on your ability to strengthen your brand reputation and generate brand awareness. To do that, you need to develop a strong brand. Your brand consists of a lot of different elements. Those elements combine to create a brand identity that separates your business from your competitors. Brand development is the ongoing process of creating and maintaining that brand identity.
Brand development is a process of creating and differentiating your company’s image, products, and services from your competitors. It is like creating a promise to customers, and consistently delivering on that promise. With that in mind, the following are steps you should take to develop your brand:
If you don’t know your purpose, neither will consumers – and that’s not going to help you when it comes to generating brand awareness. In order to set brand goals and to evaluate how your brand is performing over time, you will need to have a clear understanding of what your brand’s purpose is. Exactly why does your brand exist? What problems does your brand solve? Why should consumers care about your brand? A strong brand needs to have a well-defined purpose.
One of the things that define the strength of your brand identity is your ability to differentiate it from other competing brands. If consumers can’t tell the difference between you and your competitors, it means your brand is weak. Develop your unique selling proposition to help your brand stand out in a crowded field. Doing so will also help you craft your message. Being able to stand out is arguably one of the most important facets of a successful brand.
Read More: Developing A Brand Marketing Strategy By Determining Your Company’s Make Or Break
The success of your brand will depend on whether or not you reach an audience that engages and relates with your brand. However, if you’re targeting the wrong audience, you will fail massively when it comes to building a strong brand identity and establishing a stellar brand reputation. If you don’t target a specific audience (as in, you attempt to reach everyone), your message won’t reach the right people. If you know who your audience is, you’ll be able to create content that’s more helpful and relevant to them, which will only help to boost your brand awareness and brand authority.
There are many ways that you can identify who your audience is. Use the information that you’ve collected from your opt-in forms and from previous customers. Use your social media data. Request customer feedback. All of this information can help you figure out the demographics of your audience as well as their wants and needs. Use this data to develop buyer personas, thereby allowing you to address every different segment of your target audience.
Your brand needs to be relatable to your target audience. As such, you need to incorporate what you know about your target audience’s demographics to develop your brand voice. The voice is the personality that you create for your brand to communicate with your audience. For example, Uber’s brand voice is considerate and direct. Old Spice uses a masculine and humorous voice. Nike has an inspirational voice. As you can see, the voice a company uses in all of its marketing and communication efforts defines a big part of its brand identity.
The look of your brand needs to be recognizable as it will help to make your brand identifiable. The log is an important part of this. Some of the most successful brands in the world are recognized by their logo. For instance, the Nike swoosh or Apple’s apple with a bite taken out of it. These logos are so well known that they don’t even need the company name to accompany them. Keep in mind that aesthetic doesn’t just refer to the logo — it also refers to the type of font used to display your company name as well as the color combination associated with your brand. For instance, Facebook is associated with blue and McDonald’s with red and yellow.
The biggest mistake you can make is to make adjustments to your branding based on the channel you’re on. For instance, taking on a more serious tone on LinkedIn and then using a more informal and joking tone on Twitter. Or using different visual elements on social media than you use on your website. Such inconsistency will hurt your brand identity because your audience will become confused over who you are.
The importance of Brand development plays a pivotal role in the success and sustainability of a business. These are the steps that you will need to take to develop your brand. Keep in mind that brand development is a long-term strategy. Every marketing decision you make affects your brand and contributed to your brand’s identity, reputation, and awareness. As such, you need to take these steps to ensure that your brand development starts off with a strong foundation.
