What’s Trending in Marketing of April 2024

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Step right into our April 2024 edition of “What’s Trending in Marketing,” your portal to the freshest marketing trends and insights. Stay ahead of the curve with our collection of marketing trends and reports for the 2024 year.

Additions in AI Advertisements

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is making it easier for brands to reach consumers with AI-powered tools. They’re introducing new features to personalize advertising campaigns, like creating multiple versions of ads tailored to individual users. Additionally, they’re offering personalized product recommendations based on what users have browsed and liked. These tools are available on both Facebook and Instagram, aiming to make shopping experiences more seamless and impactful. Read more here. 

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Brands Values and Their Customers

To keep your customers happy, it’s important for your brand to reflect their values. Most shoppers want brands to share their beliefs. Many have stopped buying from companies whose values clash with their own. To stay connected with customers, brands will focus on showing what they stand for. A survey found that nearly half of marketers plan to invest more in creating content that highlights their brand’s values. Only a small minority will decrease their investment. This shows the increasing importance of authenticity and alignment in fostering lasting relationships with customers. Read more here. 

The Rise of Podcasts

Given the surging popularity of podcasts and online audio, marketers are increasingly recognizing the value and potential of these platforms for reaching and engaging with audiences. In a survey conducted on marketing trends for 2024, 82% of marketers expressed their intentions to either increase or maintain their investment in podcasts and audio content. This signifies a strategic shift in marketing strategies. More emphasis is placed on leveraging the power of audio to connect with consumers in meaningful ways. Overall, the continued growth of podcasts and audio content presents an opportunity for marketers to expand their reach and build brand awareness. It also allows them to foster deeper connections with their target audience in the evolving digital landscape. Read more here.

Learning Marketing Trends and Ideas

Interactive Email Marketing Trends

In today’s competitive online marketing scene, you have to stand out. To do this, businesses are turning to interactive email strategies. These interactive emails go beyond traditional text and attachments. They offer engaging features like animated GIFs, navigational menus, integrated forms, rotational banners, and sliders. Not only do these elements add visual appeal, but they also improve the overall user experience. This encourages active engagement and interaction with the brand’s message. Google’s enhanced compatibility ensures seamless viewing across devices, while emerging trends like key frame animation and cinema-graphs add even more excitement. Interactive emails not only catch customers’ attention but also streamline user experience, making them a vital tool in modern marketing strategies. Read more here.

Innovative Video Strategies to Transform Your Senior Living Marketing

Digital technology has revolutionized marketing for senior living communities, offering unprecedented opportunities to engage potential residents and their families. Video content, in particular, is a powerful tool for showcasing the amenities, values, and lifestyle senior living communities offer. As seniors increasingly embrace digital platforms, mastering video marketing is crucial. Videos can tell authentic stories, educate viewers, and provide virtual tours, all of which are essential for attracting and informing prospective residents. Leveraging digital strategies like SEO optimization and YouTube presence enhances the reach and impact of video marketing efforts, allowing communities to connect meaningfully with their audience and foster trust in the decision-making process. Read more here.

How Brands Market To the Different Generations

Generational marketing targets different age groups in order to better meet their unique needs and preferences. Each generation has distinct characteristics that influence their consumer behavior and how they interact with marketing efforts. Baby boomers, for instance, value quality and respond well to email and TV ads, while Generation X prioritizes convenience and brand loyalty, engaging with social media and video content. Millennials seek authenticity and personal connection, favoring social media and influencer marketing, while Generation Z, the youngest segment of consumers, prefers an omnichannel approach and values brand ethics and authenticity. Understanding each generation’s characteristics is crucial for creating marketing strategies tailored to their behaviors and preferences, which allows you to effectively reach and engage with them. Read more here.

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Nano- or Micro-Influencer Marketing

More brands are leaning towards collaborating with nano- and micro-influencers instead of celebrities or big social media stars because they charge lower rates and still generate high engagement. Reports show that marketers prefer working with small-scale influencers, with nano-influencers charging between $5 to $25 for a TikTok post and micro-influencers asking for $25 to $125. These smaller influencers also boast higher engagement rates, meaning their followers are more likely to take action based on their recommendations. To ensure a positive return on investment, it’s crucial to collaborate with influencers whose followers match your target audience. Read more here.

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Companies in Partnership Marketing

More brands are teaming up with others in their industry because it helps both parties achieve their goals. This collaboration can involve co-producing webinars, appearing on each other’s podcasts, or sharing each other’s social media content. For instance, Videowise partnered with other brands to promote their ebook. Partnership marketing allows brands to reach more potential customers by tapping into each other’s audience, connect with industry leaders for insights and assistance, and gain access to valuable resources like customer insights and industry data to enhance marketing campaigns. Read more here.

User-Generated Video Content

We’re likely to see more user-generated video content because potential customers trust it more than highly-produced brand videos. These videos, created by real customers who have used the product or service, carry authenticity that resonates with audiences and increases the likelihood of conversion. To encourage customers to share their experiences, brands can ask for honest reviews, host giveaway contests for video testimonials, or collaborate with creators who can provide genuine opinions in exchange for a fee. This approach saves time, money, and effort compared to creating highly-produced videos from scratch. By leveraging user-generated content, brands capitalize on the credibility and relatability that real customer experiences offer. This fosters stronger connections with their audience and drives engagement across digital platforms. Read more here.

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Inbox Influence: Mastering Email Marketing for Brand Success

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Getting your email marketing strategy right can be a game-changer for your business and your brand. Email stands as the cornerstone of direct marketing tactics, offering a personal touch that many other platforms struggle to emulate. The key to success lies in understanding the intricacies of email marketing and leveraging them to your advantage.

email marketing

The Foundation of a Strong Email Marketing Strategy

Before diving into the nuances, it’s crucial to establish a strong foundation for your email marketing strategy. This involves several pivotal steps:

  • Understanding Your Audience: Knowing who your emails are targeting is the first step. This involves segmenting your audience based on their preferences, behaviors, and past interactions with your brand.
  • Crafting a Compelling Subject Line: It’s their first impression. So make your subject line count by being clear, engaging, and intriguing without resorting to clickbait.
  • Personalization is Key: Tailoring the content of your emails to fit the interests and needs of your recipients can significantly increase engagement rates.

Content That Captivates

Once the foundation is set, the content of your emails is where you can truly shine and make an impact. Here’s how to ensure your content is captivating:

  • Value-Driven Content: Ensure every email you send packs a punch of value for your audience. This could be in the form of expert insights, exclusive discounts, or compelling narratives that resonate with their interests and needs. Aim to enrich their day or offer solutions to their problems with every interaction.
  • A Clear and Concise Message: Clarity is king in the realm of email communication. Your email should serve a distinct purpose, whether to enlighten, convince, or amuse your recipients. Craft your content to be straightforward and accessible, eliminating any potential confusion and making the key takeaway immediately apparent.
  • Interactive Elements: Elevate your emails from static messages to dynamic conversations by embedding interactive features. Polls, surveys, and clickable links not only make your emails more engaging but also serve as tools to gather insightful feedback and preferences directly from your audience, enhancing the personalization of future communications.

Design That Delivers

The design of your email is just as important as the content. A well-designed email can enhance your message and encourage readers to engage with your content.

  • Responsive Design: In today’s mobile-centric world, it’s crucial that your emails look flawless across all devices, especially smartphones. A significant number of your audience will be reading your messages on the go, so optimizing for mobile ensures a seamless and engaging experience. Responsive design adapts your email’s layout and content to fit various screen sizes, preventing formatting issues that could detract from your message’s impact.
  • Use of Images and Videos: Integrating images and videos can transform your emails from plain text to captivating narratives, but balance is key. High-quality visuals should complement and enhance your message, not distract or detract from it. Be mindful of file sizes to ensure your emails load quickly, maintaining a smooth user experience and keeping engagement high.
  • Whitespace and Layout: The strategic use of whitespace and a thoughtful layout can significantly improve the readability and overall appeal of your emails. Whitespace helps to break up text, making your content more digestible and less intimidating, while a well-organized layout guides the reader’s eye through your message, ensuring they focus on the most important elements. This thoughtful design approach can turn a potentially overwhelming email into an enjoyable read.

Testing and Optimization

An effective email marketing strategy is not static; it evolves. Regular testing and optimization are crucial for continued success.

  • A/B Testing: A/B testing, or split testing, is a critical tool in refining your email marketing strategy. By creating two versions of your email, each differing in one key aspect like the subject line, call-to-action (CTA), or layout, you can send these variants to a small segment of your audience and measure which performs better. This data-driven approach removes guesswork. It allows you to understand your audience’s preferences and optimize future communications for better engagement and results.
  • Analyze and Adapt: The power of email marketing lies in its measurability. Utilizing analytics tools to monitor the performance of your emails gives you insight into what captures your audience’s attention and prompts action. By examining metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, you can identify strengths and areas for improvement in your content and CTAs. This continuous cycle of analysis and adaptation ensures your email marketing strategy remains dynamic, responsive to audience needs, and aligned with your overall business goals.

blue email marketing web

Leveraging Automation

Automation can take your email marketing strategy to the next level. It allows for timely and relevant engagement with your audience without requiring constant manual effort.

  • Welcome Emails: Crafting an automated series of welcome emails for new subscribers is a pivotal first step in nurturing a lasting relationship with your audience. These initial communications should warmly introduce your brand. They should also highlight the value of your offerings and set the tone for future interactions. Tailoring this series to gradually educate and engage your new subscribers can significantly enhance their connection with your brand. It will also encourage continued engagement.
  • Behavior-triggered Emails: Leveraging behavior-triggered emails allows you to send highly relevant and timely messages based on specific actions your users take. For instance, if a user abandons their shopping cart, an automated email can remind them of their incomplete purchase. This email could offer them a discount or answer potential questions related to the transaction. Similarly, showing interest in a particular product could trigger an email providing more detailed information or related items, thereby personalizing the user experience and increasing the likelihood of conversion.

The Art of Engagement

In the end, the goal of your email marketing strategy is to build and maintain a relationship with your audience. Engage them with stories, involve them with interactive content, and always provide value. Your emails should feel like a conversation, not a sales pitch.

Beyond the Inbox

To wrap up, perfecting your email marketing strategy is about much more than just sending out emails. It’s about creating a comprehensive experience that starts with a compelling subject line and ends with a satisfied customer. By focusing on your audience, crafting captivating content, designing for impact, testing and optimizing, leveraging automation, and prioritizing engagement, you can turn your email marketing efforts into a significant asset for your brand. Remember, in the vast sea of digital communication, your emails are your ambassadors. Make them count!

 

Enhancing Creative Output in Your Advertising Strategy

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In the fast-paced landscape of advertising, standing out is not only an advantage but a necessity. Achieving higher levels of creativity in advertising can set a brand apart, fostering memorable campaigns and engaging potential customers in meaningful ways. Therefore, creative advertising is crucial. This article details what makes an ad campaign truly unique, and offers practical tips for enhancing creativity within your advertising team.

The Imperative for Higher Creativity

Creativity in advertising is the catalyst that transforms ordinary ideas into captivating marketing messages. It allows brands to differentiate themselves in a crowded market and connect with audiences on an emotional level. The benefits of increased creativity include:

  • Differentiation: Creative advertisements cut through the monotony of traditional marketing by presenting something unexpected. These ads stand out vividly against a backdrop of standard content, captivating the viewer’s attention instantly. This not only avoids the trap of blending in but also significantly amplifies your brand’s visibility in a saturated market. The result is a distinctive presence that can dramatically improve market penetration and consumer awareness.
  • Engagement: Unique and imaginative advertisements capture and maintain the viewer’s attention well beyond the initial viewing. This sustained engagement keeps potential customers focused on your brand for a longer period, enhancing both the impact of the message and its retention. Such engagement is crucial in converting interest into desire and ultimately, action, as it keeps the consumer mentally and emotionally connected to the brand.
  • Brand Recall: Creativity serves as a key differentiator in advertising, making ads more memorable and setting them apart from the competition. When advertisements are creative, they create lasting impressions that make the brand easier to recall. This is especially important in competitive markets where being top-of-mind can significantly influence consumer purchase decisions. Effective creative ads thus become synonymous with the brand, enhancing recall and loyalty.
  • Emotional Connection: Ads that are not only innovative but also creatively engaging have the power to resonate more deeply with audiences. By striking an emotional chord, these advertisements go beyond mere visual or auditory appeal to forge a stronger, personal connection with the audience. This emotional engagement not only enhances immediate response rates but also builds longer-term brand affinity and loyalty, driving consumer behavior in a more sustained manner.

colorful bursts around thinking robot

Unleashing Uniqueness in Campaigns

To foster uniqueness, consider these strategies:

  • Challenge the Norm: Encourage your advertising team to critically evaluate and question established industry norms. By challenging conventional approaches and brainstorming unconventional strategies, your team can develop creative campaigns that truly stand out in addition to capturing market attention.
  • Embrace Risk: To achieve groundbreaking creativity in advertising, foster an agency culture that supports and rewards calculated risk-taking. Encourage bold, innovative ideas that may seem daunting at first. These can lead to the most memorable and effective campaigns.
  • Leverage Multi-Disciplinary Insights: Enhance your creative processes by integrating diverse skills and perspectives from different fields. This collaboration across disciplines can spark unique ideas and solutions that a single-focus approach might never uncover, leading to richer, more effective advertising outcomes.

Tips for Cultivating Creativity

Improving creativity in advertising isn’t about enforcing more rules but rather about creating an environment that nurtures innovative thinking. Here are some actionable tips:

  • Regular Creative Workshops: Organize workshops that emphasize not just idea generation but also the development of diverse thinking skills. These sessions should encourage creative problem solving and out-of-the-box thinking, equipping your team with the tools to innovate consistently.
  • Invest in Creative Tools: Employ a content integration tool that merges data analysis with content creation. This technology facilitates a seamless workflow, enhances productivity, and leads to the generation of fresher, more relevant advertising ideas.
  • Inspire with External Creatives: Engage creative consultants from outside your agency to infuse new energy and perspective into projects. External creatives can see things your team might miss and bring invaluable insights that radically transform your campaigns.

Incorporating Data and AI

Integrating technology such as AI and data analytics can dramatically enhance creative outputs. These tools provide insights that are not immediately obvious. They can also predict trends that are about to take off:

  • Data-Driven Marketing: Utilize data-driven marketing techniques to harness insights into customer behaviors and preferences. This strategic approach enables the crafting of targeted and innovative campaigns that are finely tuned to audience needs, enhancing resonance and engagement.
  • Transforming Digital Marketing with AI: Implement AI tools to automate routine and repetitive tasks within your marketing processes. This frees up your creative team’s time to concentrate more on strategy development and innovation, thereby enhancing productivity. It also fosters more creative outcomes.

AI digital marketing

Elevating Creative Standards

To consistently achieve high levels of creativity in advertising, it’s essential to foster an organizational culture that embraces creativity. It is also crucial to provide the tools and training needed:

  • Cultural Reinforcement: Actively recognize and celebrate creative achievements within your team to cultivate a culture that values innovation and originality. By highlighting and rewarding creative success, you boost team morale and encourage a continuous pursuit of innovative ideas. This cultural reinforcement consequently helps sustain a high standard of creativity and drives the team to consistently push the boundaries of conventional advertising.
  • Continual Learning and Development: Encourage your team members to continuously evolve by offering them opportunities to learn new creative skills and adopt the latest technologies. Provide access to training sessions, workshops, and seminars that specifically focus on emerging trends in the advertising industry. Consequently, this commitment to continual professional development helps keep your team at the cutting edge, ensuring that your advertising strategies remain relevant and effective.

Ready to Innovate?

Increasing creativity in advertising requires commitment at every level of an organization, from junior designers to top executives. It demands a shift towards a more integrated, data-informed, and technologically equipped workflow. By embracing these changes, agencies can ensure that their creative output not only meets but exceeds the demands of modern audiences. This structured approach delineates the pathways towards increased creativity. It also integrates advanced tools and methodologies that can redefine how creativity in advertising is conceptualized and executed.

To discover how we can help your brand reach unparalleled creative heights, Contact Us for a free consultation.

 

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Five Reasons To Hire An Advertising Agency Versus Staffing In-House

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Marketing and advertising are essential for the success of any business. As your company grows, you will eventually be faced with the difficult decision of whether to build your own marketing group or to outsource to an advertising agency. Here are five benefits to hiring a full-service advertising agency. Read more

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Optimizing Your Advertising Budget: 5 Essential Factors for Success

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The media landscape is constantly changing. New technologies and trends are emerging rapidly and existing platforms continue to evolve, providing more ways to spend your advertising budget. Today’s media plan looks far different than even last year, with more media channels, more devices, and even more opportunities to connect with shoppers. How do you find the most effective balance with an advertising budget and media plan that make sense now? Read more

Choosing Your Advertising Agency Partnership

Choosing Your Advertising Agency Partnership: Key Considerations for Success

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Selecting the right advertising agency can significantly influence the success of your marketing endeavors. These agencies possess exclusive proficiency, ensure cost-effectiveness, facilitate scalability, deliver industry insights, and produce quantifiable outcomes. Consequently, forging an advertising agency partnership can enable you to efficiently engage your intended audience, foster brand recognition, and generate sales. Nonetheless, with numerous agencies available, ensuring the most suitable agency partnerships for your business can be a daunting task.

In this article, we will delve into essential markers to consider when choosing an advertising agency that aligns seamlessly with your business objectives:

1. Location

When choosing an advertising agency, you should deliberate on its geographical location and relevance to your target market. While numerous agencies can operate remotely or cater to a global clientele, opting for an agency with a physical presence in your target market holds certain advantages. Firstly, a local agency exhibits an enhanced understanding of regional market dynamics, consumer behavior, and cultural subtleties. They can effectively utilize their local expertise to craft advertising campaigns that deeply resonate with your intended audience’s specific preferences and needs.

Additionally, a nearby agency allows for easier and more efficient collaboration. Engaging in in-person meetings and conducting on-site visits can foster a more profound comprehension of your business and cultivate robust collaborative partnerships. Such interactions allow the agency to immerse themselves in your brand’s ecosystem, acquiring firsthand familiarity with your offerings and effectively harmonizing their creative and strategic endeavors with your overarching goals.

Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that geographical proximity is not always a decisive factor, particularly in the current digital era. With advanced communication tools and technologies, agencies can effectively collaborate and deliver results regardless of their location. It ultimately depends on the nature of your business, target market, and the level of personal interaction and local knowledge you prioritize.

2. Expertise and Industry Knowledge

While evaluating prospective agency partnerships, thoroughly gauge their industry-specific experience and proficiency. Seek out agencies that possess a proven track record of accomplishments in collaborating with businesses like yours. Their expertise should extend to a comprehensive understanding of your target audience, prevailing market trends, and competitive landscape.

An agency equipped with extensive knowledge will contribute invaluable perspectives and aid in formulating customized advertising strategies that align with your unique objectives. Moreover, evaluate the agency’s proficiency across diverse advertising channels, encompassing digital, print, television, radio, and outdoor platforms.

3. Track Record and Portfolio

Review the agency’s track record and portfolio of past work. Reviewing the agency’s track record and portfolio allows you to assess their past performance and success. Request case studies or examples of campaigns they have executed for similar clients. Pay careful attention to the outcomes they have attained, including increased brand visibility, amplified conversions, or enhanced sales figures. By examining their portfolio, you can gain insights into their creativity, strategic acumen, and capacity to deliver results that harmonize with your objectives.

4. Range of Services

Take into account the breadth of services provided by the advertising agency and assess their compatibility with your marketing requirements. Certain agencies specialize in distinct domains, such as digital advertising, social media marketing, content creation, or traditional media buying. Evaluate your specific needs and ascertain that the agency can deliver a comprehensive range of services to fulfill your objectives. Opting for a full-service agency can guarantee a holistic approach to your marketing endeavors and maintain consistency across diverse channels.

5. Communication and Collaboration

Effective communication and collaboration are key to a successful agency partnerships. Evaluate their communication style and responsiveness during the evaluation process. Are they attentive to your ideas and concerns? Do they actively seek your input and provide feedback? Clear and open lines of communication will facilitate a productive working relationship and ensure that your objectives and feedback are understood and incorporated into the campaigns.

6. Creativity and Innovation

Creativity and innovation are crucial elements in successful advertising campaigns. Look for agencies that demonstrate a track record of creativity and innovative thinking in their work. Review their previous campaigns to gauge their ability to come up with original and impactful ideas. A creative agency will bring fresh perspectives and unique concepts to your campaigns, helping your brand stand out and capture the attention of your target audience.

7. Budget and Costs

Consider your budget and the agency’s pricing structure. Different agencies may have various fee structures, such as hourly rates, retainer fees, or project-based pricing. Have an open discussion about your budget constraints and ensure that the agency can deliver the desired results within your financial parameters. While it’s important to find a cost-effective solution, remember that quality and expertise should not be compromised solely based on cost.

8. Client References and Reviews

Gather client references or seek out reviews and testimonials from previous clients. By doing so, you can obtain invaluable insights into the agency’s standing, level of professionalism, and client contentment. Connect with present or past clients to gather firsthand insights into their experiences collaborating with the agency. Inquire about their satisfaction levels, the agency’s adherence to deadlines, and their overall impression of the agency’s performance. Client feedback serves as a valuable resource for obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the agency’s capabilities, strengths, and areas for improvement.

9. Cultural Fit

Consider the cultural fit between your company and the advertising agency. Evaluate their values, work ethics, and company culture to ensure compatibility. A strong cultural fit will foster a harmonious and collaborative working environment. Establishing a shared understanding and synergy between the agency and your brand’s vision, values, and target audience facilitates the creation of campaigns that authentically embody your brand’s identity and strike a chord with your audience.

Bottom Line

Partnering with the right advertising agency carries immense weight in determining the success of your marketing efforts. By meticulously assessing these pivotal elements, you can make a well-informed decision when selecting the advertising agency that best aligns with your business.

Remember to consider the agency’s expertise, track record, range of services, communication style, creativity, budget, client references, and cultural fit to ensure a successful and productive partnership.

 

 

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Strategies and Trends for Effective Digital Advertising

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Every business, regardless of its niche or size, relies on marketing to build brand awareness, reach a target audience, foster customer relationships, and increase sales. But marketing is broad and relies on several networks, platforms, and systems. Digital advertising, for instance, is a form of marketing that is constantly evolving and proving to be quite effective when combined with other forms of digital marketing.

What is Digital Advertising?

Before a customer purchases a product or service, they often go through three critical stages, namely: the awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the decision stage. During these stages, they take their time to understand the business, the team behind it, and how that product or service stands out from the competition.

If a prospective customer doesn’t know of your product or service, you can bet they won’t consider you for business. Therefore, digital advertising plays a critical role in the awareness stage. It ensures that your product or service has a name in the market.

Digital or online advertising relies on various platforms such as social media, search engines, mobile apps, and websites to build brand awareness, engage audiences, and drive desired actions or conversions.

Digital Advertising vs. Digital Marketing 

Many people use the phrases digital advertising and digital marketing interchangeably. And while the two are related, they mean two different things. Simply put, digital marketing is an umbrella term that encompasses all marketing efforts using digital platforms or channels. It involves various strategies and activities to promote business, build awareness, and drive conversations.

Digital marketing may include offline and online tactics such as Search engine optimization, email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, influencer marketing, etc.

Digital advertising, however, is a subset of digital marketing, specifically focused on promoting products or services using online advertising channels. It often involves paid placements or ads designed to reach a specific target demographic.

If you are keen enough, you have probably seen a steady change in how businesses advertise their products and services. These changes or trends are no accidents or coincidences. Rather, they are a result of careful adaptation to the evolving digital landscape and the ever-changing consumer behaviors.

Today, for instance, you will find personalized, five-seconds video ads instead of random 5-minutes videos. Ads are also becoming more dynamic, with some incorporating variables such as the current weather, location, or time of day to enhance the user experience and increase the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. Here are the other digital advertising trends to keep an eye on:

  • Interactive ad formats: This is a technique where you involve users or viewers in the ad experience. Standard procedures include incorporating polls, quizzes, interactive videos, or mini-games to encourage user engagement and participation. Another advantage of interactive ads is that you can collect critical data and insights into the audience’s behaviors and preferences.
  • Behavioral targeting: Random ads aren’t effective in engagement and conversion since they don’t speak to the interests and preferences of the target audience. By tracking online interactions and user actions, such as previous purchases, website visits, and search history, it’s possible to deliver personalized and more effective ads.
  • Mobile dominance: The number of mobile users in 2023 is estimated at 6.8 billion, representing an average annual increase of 4.2%. These figures are pushing marketers to rethink their ad campaigns with a specific focus on optimizing them for mobile screens and utilizing mobile apps.
  • Intelligent advertising: AI and automated algorithms are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in digital marketing. Today, AI in digital marketing enables cost-efficient ad placement across multiple channels and allows for precise user targeting.
  • AR and VR Integration: Several companies, such as IKEA, Adidas, and Volvo, increasingly embrace AR and VR technologies in their advertising campaigns to demonstrate products and provide virtual try-on experiences. These technologies increase engagement and boost conversion.

Ways of Advertising Online

Digital or online advertising comes in various forms. However, they are often categorized into two main groups: display ads and native ads. Display ads are the digital evolution of flyers and billboard ads. They feature an ad copy, images or graphics, and a CTA. Examples of display ads include:

  • Popup ads: These are often considered very annoying since they interrupt browsing and require the user to take the specified action or manually close them. Popup ads are still in use, but there are ways you can make them less disruptive.
  • Video ads: include video commercials, TV ads, and Facebook and YouTube ads. Modern video ads across social media channels are highly engaging, personalized, and interactive.
  • Banner ads: These are image-based ads often displayed to the side or above the web content.
  • Rich media ads: Rich media ads may feature text fields, scroll or swipe functionality, and even 360-degree rotatable images.

Native ads, on the other hand, are designed to blend seamlessly with the platform or content used. And as the name suggests, native ads should speak to the audience in a way that makes sense to them. Examples of native ads include:

  • Paid search ads: As a website owner, you pay Google to rank your web pages on the first pages of the Google Search Results Pages (SERPs).
  • Social media ads: You pay your favorite social media platforms, such as Facebook or Instagram, to get posts to rank higher in the platform’s algorithm and appear in the feeds of non-followers with similar browsing or shopping habits.
  • Promoted listings: You pay a listing site to rank your business at the top of the platform’s search results page.
  • Sponsored content: You sponsor a podcast or video, and the owner features your business or displays an ad letting the audience know about your business.
  • Influencer partnership: You pay or partner with a social media influencer who creates awareness for your brand. This technique is powerful, but you need a solid influencer marketing strategy to make this work for your business.

Bottom Line

Now that you know how online advertising works, its examples, and its benefits, it’s time to put everything into action. Typically, you want to have a plan or strategy for how you’ll drive your digital advertising campaign.

This involves understanding your goals and KPIs and knowing your target audience, distribution channels, content materials, and budget. If you are new to digital marketing and online advertising, seek expert help from an experienced and reputable digital marketing firm.

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Emotional Advertising: How Brands Use Feelings to Get People to Buy

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Emotional advertising uses emotions to connect with consumers and encourage them to buy a product or service. This type of advertising appeals to the heart rather than the head, and it can be quite effective in leaving a lasting impact on customers. Informing your audience is important. You want potential buyers to understand what their problem is, and how your products or services can solve that problem. Unfortunately, people don’t generally make purchases based on information alone. It turns out that people are more prone to making emotional purchases than informed purchases. It’s why commercials consist of much more than an explanation of a product’s use. Instead they use emotional advertising to target the viewer.

It’s effective, and it’s why connecting with your audience on an emotional level will benefit your marketing strategy.

The Benefits of Emotional Advertising

emotional advertising

Targeting your audience’s emotions through your advertising efforts makes it easier for your audience to connect with your brand on a personal level. Purely informational advertising can be difficult for people to connect with. One of the issues with that kind of advertising is that the audience might remember the information you’ve provided, but not the brand itself.

Connecting to your audience using emotional advertising is important. Whether you’re pulling at their heartstrings or making them laugh, this makes your brand more memorable. Your audience is more likely to trust you if you appeal to their emotions because it makes your brand more relatable. It means that they’re more likely to engage with your brand, resulting in stronger customer loyalty even after you’ve closed the sale.

Not only does emotional advertising make more of an impact on audiences, but it also makes your content more shareable. Nobody is going to share a video or a blog post that is purely informational. However, they will share something they find funny or uplifting. It makes it easier to increase brand awareness.

 

Read more on Integrating Storybranding With Your B2B Marketing Strategy

Examples of Emotional Advertising

The following are just a few examples of how different emotions can be used to connect with your audience:

  • Happiness
    Making an audience feel happy is a good way to develop brand association. It also makes them more likely to share your content. They will want to share that happiness with their friends and family. Coca-Cola has been running campaigns that make audiences feel happy for decades. From their iconic “I’d like to buy the world a coke“ to their “open happiness” tagline, Coca-Cola is a great example of this type of marketing.
  • Pride
    Appealing to your audience’s sense of pride makes them feel good about themselves as well as about your brand. A great recent example is of Nike’s Kaepernick ad, the tagline of which read “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”
  • Fear
    You don’t always have to appeal to the emotions people like. In some cases, fear can be a very effective emotion, especially if you’re trying to drive audiences to take immediate action. The WWF created a campaign using fear to drive the importance of stopping climate change. The ad read “Stop Climate Change Before It Changes You” and showed a man with the head of a fish–a terrifying image.
  • Anger
    Anger is an emotion that brands can use to get their audience to side with them over an issue. You’ll notice many political campaigns focus on generating anger for emotional advertising. They highlight aspects of their opponents their audience should be angry about, thereby aligning their audience with them.
  • Greed
    We live in a consumer society. As such, people tend to want the newest and latest of everything. Although greed tends to have a negative connotation, it’s an emotion commonly leveraged by businesses by advertising limited editions and collectible items as well as using short-term promotions and sales. Such a strategy incorporates both greed and fear since people will make a purchase based on both desire and fear of missing out.
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How To Implement Emotional Advertising

Getting your audience to feel a certain way can be an effective way to engage them. However, eliciting specific emotions can be more challenging than you realize. First of all, just because you’re targeting a certain emotion doesn’t mean that your audience will feel the way you want them to.

Secondly, if you go too far (especially when it comes to anger, fear, and sadness), it can backfire. Your audience could end up becoming upset with you as a result. Take for example Pepsi’s infamous commercial with  Kendall Jenner. The idea was to elicit feelings of hope and happiness in the audience. Instead, it resulted in controversy and outrage towards Pepsi.

With that in mind, if you plan to use emotional advertising, you should keep the following tips in mind:

1. Understand Who Your Audience Is

You can’t elicit real emotion from someone unless you know who they are. For example, you can’t just go up to a stranger on the street, tell them a joke, and expect them to laugh. You don’t know what their sense of humor is like, after all. The same goes for advertising. You need to understand who your target audience is. It’s why you should develop buyer personas.

Buyer personas help you pinpoint the fears, needs, desires, and demographics of the various segments of your audience. If you know what their specific fears are, it becomes easier to create ads that leverage those fears. Knowing who your audience is will also make it easier to identify what makes them happy, angry, and sad.

2. Use Storytelling To Create Emotional Engagement

For an audience to feel a lasting emotion, they need context. For example, a picture of a baby might make people feel happy, but they won’t know what they’re happy about. As such, that feeling will be fleeting. However, if you tell a story that provides context, it will make a bigger impact.

For instance, maybe the baby was adopted by a couple who have been trying to have a baby for over a decade. Within that story, you present two main characters (the couple), a conflict (inability to have a baby), and a solution (they adopt). Audiences will relate to those characters and their conflict. As a result, they’ll feel an emotion that they understand and that will last.

3. Make Sure You’re Being Authentic

Nobody likes it when someone is trying to manipulate the way they feel. Audiences are smart and they can see through companies that are inauthentic.

Again, consider the previously mentioned Pepsi ad. Audiences immediately felt that the ad’s message of “can’t we all get along” was inauthentic and tone-deaf, especially at the time it ran. If you want to elicit authentic emotions from your audience, you need to be authentic yourself.

As you can see, emotional advertising can be extremely effective when done right. This means using attraction marketing and story branding ensures your audience will emotionally connect with your brand.

Want a complete guide of story branding?

Creating Advertising Strategies That Work

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Advertising is an integral ingredient of building a successful business. It’s how you make your business, products, or services known to your target audience. You must devise creative advertising strategies if you want your customers to choose your products or services over the competitors’.

While there are many ways to advertise, your chosen strategy must fit your brand objectives. This post looks at some advertising strategies and guides you on creating one that works for your business.

Defining an Advertising Strategy

An advertising strategy is an action plan that aims at the following:

  • Building brand awareness
  • Attracting new customers
  • Inviting existing customers to make multiple purchases
  • Increasing sales.

Your advertising strategy is part of your comprehensive marketing plan. They must align with your company goals and objectives and can be a mix of digital and traditional marketing channels. These are the two broad categories of advertising strategies. Traditional marketing entails using media like:

  • Television ads
  • Billboards
  • Prints ads
  • Direct mail
  • Street teams

Digital advertising tactics include the following:

  • Social media marketing
  • Email marketing campaigns
  • Content marketing
  • Search engine optimization
  • Pay-per-click advertising
  • Social media marketing
  • Influencer marketing

Steps to Creating Effective Advertising Strategies

Having the most effective advertising strategy takes time to achieve. You must continually fine-tune your approach to determine the advertising methods that best engage your customers.

If you’re starting or want to overhaul your current advertising strategy, here’s a template you can use:

1. Identify Your Target Audience

Your advertising strategy should be about reaching out to the people interested in purchasing your products or services. Consider the specific demographics of this target group, including the following:

  • Their gender
  • Age
  • Attitudes
  • Personal values and attitudes
  • Income levels
  • Occupation.

With this information, you can create a buyer person or a fictional representative of the target customer base that your business wants to reach. The consumer profile of your target audience can give you an abstract idea of what your customers want. You can use this to shape your advertising message.

2. Determine Your Advertising Objectives

Once you identify your target audience, ask yourself why you want to advertise. There could be different goals to achieve through advertising, such as boosting sales, promoting newly launched products, or increasing website traffic. It could also be to create awareness about a product’s benefits.

Having clarity of purpose is a crucial step forward in the direction of creating an effective advertising strategy. Your marketing objectives can also inform your choice of advertising platforms, as different channels have varying outcomes.

3. Create Your Advertising Content

Once you determine what you want to achieve through your advertising strategy, it’s time to create content that helps you achieve this goal. Some factors to help in your content creation strategy are the following:

  • Having an SEO strategy such as voice or video search for local and mobile SEO
  • Keyword research for more insights into what your customers want to see
  • Having a blog or website that you regularly update with relevant, educating, and engaging content
  • Creating attractive landing pages that trigger a sales funnel for your business.

Influencers and content marketing agencies can help you craft relevant content that enables you to put your brand message out there. Forging partnerships with these professionals can help you reach your target audience in ways that automated content advertising strategies cannot.

4. Choose Your Advertising Platforms

In choosing your advertising platforms, consider those most helpful in reaching your target audience. In this digital era, only a tiny percentage of businesses will consider traditional marketing channels as their primary platforms. Digital advertising platforms are more likely to reach a broader audience and have a greater return on investment.

Consider incorporating a mix of advertising channels to test their viability for your business. Online marketing provides an array of advertising strategies, as previously mentioned. However, if you’re new to advertising, you’d rather stick to a few channels first.

Once you accumulate enough analytics and data from the channels, you can determine their effectiveness and consider branching out to other platforms. After testing the results, you can create a vibrant mix of responsive media for an effective advertising strategy.

5. Audit the Results and Keep Improving

Launching an advertising strategy is only the beginning of your business promotion strategy. You must also analyze and refine the various advertising methods you use. A/B testing is one of the approaches you can use. It entails showing different types of ads to similar customers. Then, you can gauge the messages with better click-through rates. Investing more in ad messages with higher click-through rates can yield better returns for your business.

Your marketing team should constantly be on its toes to review marketing campaign metrics. Consequently, it should engage in relevant targeting to reach a broad audience. Assessing and refining advertising strategies is an ongoing process as long as your business operates.

Effective Advertising Strategies Are Crucial to Your Business Success

A business without a well-structured advertising strategy will fail because it lacks a systematic method of reaching its customers. An advertising plan creates brand awareness and tells your customers why they should choose your products or services, not your competitors’.

Creating a strategy that works and withstands the test of time can be complex, but the steps above can help you get started. With time, you can fine-tune the plan to add more steps depending on what works best for your business. You should eventually be able to automate your advertising strategy and reap from the investment.

Digital Advertising Trends!

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Regardless of its niche or size, every business must position itself in the market to become profitable. And with digital advertising trends coming up every now and then, it takes considerable effort, time, and resources to design an ideal marketing strategy that will work for your unique business.

As a marketer or business owner, digital advertising is crucial to the continuous growth of your products or business. But many do not know that keeping up with the most recent digital marketing trends often means spending your resources to update processes, upskill employees and acquire new systems and inventories. This explains why marketing takes a significant portion of the budget in most companies.

If you are considering updating or revamping your digital advertising strategy this holiday season, there’s a lot you stand to gain. Besides staying ahead of the competition, you also have the potential to reach new customers while building brand awareness. Here are some digital advertising trends you can implement in your business.

Personalization is Key

Before advertising any product or reserve, you must know who you target and why. Most businesses often run their digital advertising campaigns in silos without a keen understanding of their business, customers, and marketing goals.

For instance, if you advertise some digital products, you must first highlight the goals you want to accomplish. These goals should complement your overall marketing goals and be detailed enough to show who you want to target, when, and how often.

To streamline your digital advertising campaigns, you should have a personalization plan. Personalizing your digital ads means giving your prospects what they want when they want it. This helps optimize your campaigns and increase the chances that your prospects will take the desired action.

But how can you incorporate personalization into your digital advertising? Here are a few tips to consider:

  • Create in-depth customer profiles. Before you can target any of your prospects, you should group them accordingly. You can use AI technology to implement lead scoring and effectively segment your target market for proper personalization.
  • Leverage user data. A lot is nested in the user data collected in the various prospects’ touchpoints. A simple site visit, for example, can give many clues and insights into how the prospects interacted with the website and what needs improvement. You can then use these clues to create a winning video advertising campaign.
  • Use dynamic retargeting to re-engage your audience. Modern personalization techniques allow marketers to show certain ads to certain visitors, increasing the accuracy and effectiveness of digital advertising.

Video Ads are On the Rise

Video ads don’t particularly fall into the category of digital advertising trends since it’s been on the market for quite some time. However, this isn’t to say that video advertising is no longer relevant. In fact, recent statistics from Wyzowl show that 91% of businesses will use video as a marketing tool in 2023, up from 86% in 2022.

If you are wondering why the numbers favor video ads, you must first note that videos have a higher engagement than any other piece of content. Most people love visuals, and marketers are rethinking their digital advertising strategies to reflect this trend.

It’s worth noting that video advertising isn’t simple and often involves lots of creativity and expertise if it’s to make a huge impact. Here are some video advertising tips you can deploy to take your marketing to the next level.

  • Ensure the videos are relevant. You can have the best video ads in the world, but if they are irrelevant they will not convert. Relevancy in the digital advertising niche means different things to different people. But you can simply put it – the videos should speak to your prospects’ problems in a relatable, timely, and persuasive way.
  • Use user-generated video ads. Incorporating user-generated videos into your ads may seem impractical, but it’s easier than you think. All you need to do is ensure the video is edited for length and relevancy.
  • Use first-person experience videos. As the name suggests, first-person videos do away with voiceovers and spokespeople, centering the experience on the customers, business owners, founders, etc. The goal is to showcase some sense of presence, ownership, and authenticity of the brand.

Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is one of the digital advertising trends of 2023 that’s proving quite effective in the content marketing niche. With more people using their smartphones to access the internet, it’s becoming increasingly necessary for marketers to adapt their techniques to reflect this trend.

The other reason why a mobile-first marketing strategy is crucial is that new technologies such as AR and VR are predominantly app-based, making smartphones and mobile experiences the absolute winner.

By optimizing content for mobile, marketers and business owners can increase the visibility of their products and brands, helping drive the conversation. Using video content as an example, here are a few mobile optimization techniques you can implement:

  • Use square and vertical videos. Most videos with an aspect ratio of 4:5 are ideal for smartphone users and would work best for social media channels like Facebook and Instagram. For YouTube videos, an aspect ratio of 16:9 is ideal.
  • Keep the videos short. The video ads should be short and engaging.
  • Feature the brand or product message early. Since the video is short, ensure you feature the brand early enough. This ensures prospects know what you are promoting as soon as the ad plays.

Make Digital Advertising a Breeze

Digital marketing is one of the highly dynamic fields, and as a digital marketer, you need to stay up to date with the latest digital advertising trends. The three tips we highlighted above are just a few of the many, so feel free to research and try different techniques before picking the best.

Besides being on the lookout for new digital marketing trends, it’s crucial to constantly review your digital marketing strategies to know whether they are effective. You can seek expert help when monitoring your digital marketing strategies to ensure you have the upper hand.

 

Dan Gartlan helps companies of all kinds drive their business initiatives and achieve their goals. He does this with strategic marketing programs that deliver results. As President of Stevens & Tate Marketing, he has over 20 years of experience across various industries. He continues to share and build brands nationwide.