Welcome to our annual round-up of the top marketing tips for 2017. We’re well into the first quarter now and after answering questions from our clients about where to focus this year, we thought we should share some of this information that will continue to be important as the year rolls on.
Captain Obvious Does Marketing
Why yes, yes we are going to don our Captain Obvious underpants for a little bit here. Some marketing tips have been around – and top of annual ‘top marketing trends’ lists – for a while now. For good reason. There are certain marketing tools you need that should go without saying, and yet we are going to say something about them because so many people still ignore the signs.
1. Be Mobile Friendly
Why? Because 80% of all Internet users own a smartphone (Smart Insights). And because Google will punish you if you’re aren’t. Read all about it here.
2. Email Marketing for the Win
Why? Because email marketing is personal, measurable, cost-effective, unobtrusive, still old-school cool, and even a monkey can do it. (Oh, hey there, Mailchimp!) Be convinced here.
3. Video, Video, Video
Why? Well, video did kill the radio star… Ahem. More importantly, it’s been said that just one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words. Also, according to Syndacast, 74% of all traffic will be video in 2017. Enough said. Get started here.
(When in doubt, even a cat video is better than no video.) via GIPHY
Not So Obvious, But Oh So Important
Now for some of the slightly less obvious trends and tips to use in your 2017 marketing strategy. (For this we’re just wearing regular underpants, in case you were wondering.)
4. Big Brother – erm – we mean Big Data
Not entirely the next big thing, given that it was a next big thing a while back, but analysing data, and the tools we use to do it, is only going to get more mature, more integrated, more important, and, just, more. The value of analytics cannot be stressed enough. Understand what you’re looking at and use it to your advantage in 2017.
5. Pay (money and creative blood, sweat and tears) to Play
Paid content continues to hold organic content ransom. Even more telling though, is that paid content is almost holding itself ransom. Say what now? Well, you increasingly need to pay to get your social media content in front of your audience, but just paying isn’t enough anymore. Your paid content must look, feel and actually be your organic content. With algorithms making it harder and harder for brands to get in front of users, paid content needs to play like native content. Bonus tip: Just boosting your native content – on Facebook for example – won’t cut it either. Rather create your ads with quality, engaging content then use in depth targeting and other data available to target your business intendeds.
6. Personalize Everything with Automation
But not in a creepy ‘Big Brother’ is watching you kind of way. (Google, we’re looking at you…) And not just the standard plonking a person’s name into an email either. We’re talking a more invisible kind of personalization, if you will. Coca-Cola did a great job of this with their series of named cans, and Netflix does an excellent job of this using machine learning technology to customize a tailored service based on your viewing habits. How to be personal without being creepy? A basic approach to personalization would be using your email marketing system to serve timely messages to your subscribers when they perform, or don’t perform, specific actions. Example: User receives an email from you because you believe in email marketing. That user clicks on your offer but doesn’t complete the desired action (Goal). Use your email automation to send that user another email 24hrs from now, reminding them about how great your product is, how much you miss them, or leverage on FOMO (fear of missing out) by showcasing the great experience they could be having with your product by showing them a really cool video (see above point about how important video is). Keep the funnel going by sending a few other messages at the appropriate time.
And there you have it. No doubt in about three seconds the top marketing trends for the year will have changed again, but we’ll keep you posted!