Strengthening Your Digital Plan with These Driving Forces

The digital marketing trends I highlighted in my last post were just a few of my predictions on what will be hugely impactful in your 2016 efforts. In case you missed 1 through 3 read them here. Let's take a look at a few more insightful trends that will support a healthy media plan on a deeper level.

4. Solid Relationship Marketing is Built on Trust

The shift away from mass-target approaches for short-term customer acquisition is a huge opportunity that should not be overlooked. Relationship marketing is a process over time, not single unconnected events. As in any happy relationship, the ability to touch on positive emotions is key. This means using your behavior-driven data to personalize and develop powerful, emotional connections with your audience, resulting in stronger loyalty and longer term engagement. For instance, Coke and Hershey each this year made major strategic shifts to unite all products under a masterbrand campaign. Creative Director Tim Flood said this has led Hershey to stir up “emotional stories that wind up drawing you in”.

Trust is also integral to the foundation of any healthy relationship. Consumers buy products, reflective of who they are or who they want to be, from companies they trust. Maintaining transparency between your brand and your consumers is absolutely essential for gaining and strengthening a long term relationship.

By building trust and creating positive associations with your brand, you’ll find that the meaningful relationships that you build with consumers produces loyalists and brand advocates who then go on to share your message virally and drive word-of-mouth through their communities … which is priceless.

5. Ephemeral Marketing Makes Investment Easier

With ephemeral marketing, campaigns are shorter and more to the point which makes users who are pressed for time feel connected. There’s nothing worse to a consumer than to feel like your ads are in the way of content they want to digest. Perhaps a direct result of shortening attention spans and less free time. The point here is to think “less is more”. Joe Liebman recently said if brands made ‘snackable’ branded video the way their consumers do “they would find much more success”.

Snapchat is a great platform to deliver exclusive content in real time, especially for the younger generation of consumers. Several brands, like Amazon and Taco Bell are pulling in heavy influencers to overtake the brand’s Snapchat channels. Or consider Pepsi, who at times is riding the wave of popular celeb snaps without spending a dime on premium ad space. We’ve even seen Gatorade and others use sponsored lenses to put their brand alongside a person’s face … essentially bonding to and enhancing real content. Looking forward, remember that your products, hard work, and investment means nothing if you aren’t measuring and learning from them. Adidas makes it clear they analyze data to stay efficient in their Snapchat communication. So to uniquely reach and engage you need to be organic, speak their lingo, and just cut to the chase.

Overall Trend: Mobile is a Necessity

Mobile is now the primary screen for most people. It’s expected that in 2016, two billion consumers worldwide will be smartphone users. As marketers, we need to become more mobile-centric and shift our focus towards content that’s easy to read, proper calls to action, visible contact details, and the functionality of capturing email leads. Last year, we saw the effects of Google’s release of the “Mobilegeddon” algorithm update which phased out sites not responsively designed for mobile.

A few can’t miss opportunities that will strengthen your mobile game are: advertising on multiple, local business directories, and creating a mobile-optimized website. Research from a 2014 Google study found that 50 percent of consumers visited a store within a day of searching on a smartphone. This highlights the significance of listing your business on local directories (Google+ Local, Foursquare, Bing Places for Business, Yelp, Local.com, Superpages, etc.). They are your new digital business cards, your brand’s first impression. Make sure your NAP information is consistent across all sites and you’ve completed all content sections (descriptions of products, services, images, videos, and reviews). To optimize your website as mobile-friendly with responsive design consider creating simpler, more focused product pages, emphasize important features and layouts that are popular, and curate mobile-only deals/promos. As desktop traffic fades, your new focus will provide a better visual experience, and ultimately sell your brand. Keep in mind, utilizing mobile not only builds your brand, but enhances your image as well.