Explore Some Interesting Marketing Trends for Your Business in 2018

Published on: 01 August 2018 Last Updated on: 01 August 2024
Business Marketing

How effective is your business marketing strategy? Have you been successful in staying abreast with the latest marketing trends? Have you been implementing effective strategies for measuring your success? If the answers to the above questions are no, do not lose heart. You are certainly not alone on this count. Several small businesses and SMEs do not even bother to find out if at all their business marketing tactics are working successfully. Here we would be examining some of the latest business marketing trends that are dominating the scenario today. You are advised to follow these strategies for gaining incredible business success.

Tune Your Market Strategy :

Tune Your Market Strategy

A small segment of business owners is aware when their market strategies are tanking. This could happen due to lack of planning, poor planning, haphazard attempts at success and no foresight. Successful digital marketers know that a large portion of their budget must go into content marketing on blogs, social media, and emails and so on. Good content must be created and promoted so that the business is noticed and can take off.

Plan, Plan, Plan

Plan, Plan, Plan

Less than 40% of businesses have effective content marketing strategies in place. Some fail due to poor quality content, others because they don’t target their audience properly. A good marketer always tracks activity through each stage of the funnel and ensure that the strategy is fine-tuned when things go wrong.

Tracking & Measuring :

How to gain marketing success digitally for your SMEs could still seem to be a mystery for many of you. A huge percentage of small business entrepreneurs, as much as 46 percent to be precise, actually do not have any idea if the marketing strategies for their businesses are effectively working or not.

Thanks to the present cutting-edge technologies, you are in a position to keep on tracking all your marketing returns, expenses, and debtFor example, you could today find out exactly how much it would be costing your business for acquiring a new customer. You must consider all dollars diverted toward various areas of marketing including social media, website, blog writing, trade shows, direct mail, paid social, etc. you must consider factoring in all you have already spent on all these important marketing elements and then divide the amount by the number of new clients you acquire every month. Moreover, you must find out from exactly which marketing channel you are able to get new clients and more inquiries. It is imperative to consistently track ROI.

Social Media Marketing Is Currently the Rage :

Social Media Marketing

As per a recent study, it has been predicted that 2018 is surely going to be the year of intense social media promotion and marketing. Among the SMEs, an impressive 71 percent is expected to gain new clients by using social media platforms effectively for marketing their brands.  This present marketing trend must be given a lot of importance and most entrepreneurs are appreciating and understanding the effectiveness of social media marketing. Social media is certainly one of the hottest business marketing trends.

Facebook is obviously the prime choice for small businesses as 79% of entrepreneurs would be using Facebook in all their marketing endeavors. Will your business be benefitted if you incorporate the social media marketing plans into your business strategy?

According to some Facebook exponents, Facebook success is all about going mobile.  If you wish to maximize the impact of Facebook in the marketing and promotion of your business, you must dedicate all your efforts at generating and delivering everything mobile-friendly.

Virtual Reality Is Common :

Virtual reality is gaining importance by the day and is, therefore, becoming a common marketing tool for both small and big brands. The actual challenge would be to utilize Virtual Reality or VR in such an effective way that it really makes sense for both your target audience and brand messaging in general. VR marketing actually is an emerging trend and now is the right time for exploring the options that are available to you and getting well ahead of the competition.

More Dependence on Interactive Content :

Several brands, particularly in the B2B sector are relying heavily on PDF content or blog content for generating leads as an integral part of content marketing tactics for their organizations. 2018 is going to be the year of interactive web experiences which ultimately help in boosting engagement. These experiences would be demonstrating amazing thought leadership content definitely in more impressive, visual, and animated ways.

Pinterest :

Pinterest

Pinterest is actually regarded as a niche social networking site. However, it is forecasted to be a huge success. The best way of grabbing marketing attention is by utilizing Pinterest Lens and its versatility and functionality for engaging effectively with consumers and showcasing your mind-blowing style, products, and services.

Artificial Intelligence :

Early exponents of AI or Artificial Intelligence have categorically realized the efficacy of AI in boosting user engagement. However, incorporating AI into any site’s chatbox such as the Facebook messenger could be creating more creativity and it also helps you to understand clearly the target market of the brand. Artificial intelligence would be addressing consumer needs and issues with perfection and the same degree of efficacy as a human agent. Remember it would be quite effective and helpful if the artificial intelligence experience absolutely delights your customers in basically lighthearted and fun ways.

Conclusion :

This year marketing trends have focused on honesty and authenticity. The latest marketing trend is to focus on stark reality or brutal honesty and this marketing trend is winning a lot of acclaim and appreciation. Marketers could discuss their products and explain clearly how advantageous those products or services are. They must, at the same time, tell their target audience the scope for improvement and the flaws that may still exist. All these statements could be supported by truly objective customer reviews. Authenticity for brands is the hottest marketing trend today. Around 86 percent of the customers feel authenticity is of utmost importance while deciding and evaluating the brands. Around 60 percent of consumers believe that user-generated content is the best form of authentic content.

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Video Marketing

How To Execute An Effective Video Marketing Campaign

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marketing presence

Third-Parties And Supporting Marketing Presence

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Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing Tool to Move from Local to Global Market

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You make a proposal that they will develop a special scheme and Discounts only for their followers and in return, they do the marketing with a fair compensation paid of course. Once that is done and a brand starts getting a response, move out to other areas with the same strategy and spread the market. This is a long term approach but it has minimal risk and you ought to spend less. The best benefit is the brand won’t be dependent only on one Influencer and if they think the influencer of one specific region is not worth the investment, they can stop doing marketing for that area. So the only loss of business you suffer is from one area and others are still productive. 2. Difficult and Creative Approach to hit a nation or globe: This approach is unique and is totally based on how well you execute the strategy of marketing the approach. The thing is all a brand needs to do is come up with a cause that is sweeping the nation or the globe and start to think creatively in that area. Develop a challenge and form a campaign for the same, now hire a single influencer and ask them to pitch the challenge to other influencers and all you got to do is somehow link your brand with the challenge. This way the influencer will promote your challenge and then all you got to do is sit and enjoy the word spreading across the nation or across the world. The cherry on the cake could be if you are able to profit from the campaign. That can be done by making an announcement that if people who support the cause buy their product, the company will donate some part of the profit to the Government for the eradication or betterment of the cause. The best example is the Ice Bucket challenge, think of one viral challenge and you are done. 3. Third is traditional approach: This is the option where a brand does the traditional approach and contacts an influencer to do the marketing, but there are certain things that need to be taken care of in the campaign. Make sure the campaign is backed with a unique and relative hashtag and the influencer specifically pitches the brand, not just a few tags and messages. Nowadays in platforms, like Instagram people are not concerned about who the Influencer tags but, the effect will be prominent if the Influencer is seen with the product or the person associated with the brand and pitches the brand for sales purpose. Another thing that needs to be kept in mind is the approach to an Influencer is much different than that of a normal sales and promotion approach. Many influencers don't care about the money much but about fame and image more. Make sure to present with something that is beneficial for both the parties. And it is not the sole responsibility of the Influencer to do the marketing of the product. Brand marketers also must put in some efforts and share information on their own social media accounts both personal and professional. 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