When going beyond the basic blog post or traditional marketing, any business can make huge strides towards greater brand adoption and awareness. Take a few notes from some of the plays made by the biggest and most successful brands in the market and keep ahead of your competitors.
M-Commerce
M-Commerce stands for mobile commerce, which is shopping on your mobile, and this envelops the smartphone market. More and more apps are supporting direct sales, with others at least implementing business-friendly features. Brands are jumping on this growing trend, and wisely so, with predictions that it could reach upwards of 45% of e-commerce done in the US market, this year.
Geofencing Marketing
You may be asking “what is geofencing marketing?” It has got to be one of the most exciting marketing innovations in recent memory. Using the latest tech to define a geographic boundary, a brand can set up certain triggers when someone enters that boundary. These triggers can then send messages via a range of mediums, such as a text message, app notification, or email alert. A successful example of this is Snapchat’s use of on-demand geofilters.
Micro-Influencers
You have inevitably come across the term “influencer” recently. These are social media giants who partner with brands to share brand info and advertisements with their millions of followers. Queue the rise of the “micro-influencer”. While they may not have the larger audiences that full influencers have access to, partnering with a micro can sometimes make more sense for your brand. They have smaller, but often more engaged audiences that may be a bit more niche, allowing you to achieve better brand penetration via a cheaper and more targeted campaign.
Behavioral Targeting
Behavioral Targeting is a method that employs users’ web information to reinforce advertising campaigns. It gathers data from a diverse set of sources about the shopping and browsing habits of a customer. This information is then used to customize advertisements that are more likely to attract the user.
Digital Customer Experience
As nearly half of commerce is now done online, paving the way for a smoother and more enjoyable experience will enable higher customer engagement and retention. Close to half of big brands surveyed in the States have implemented some form of digital experience management, focusing purely on the digital experience of their customers.
Snapchat & Messenger Marketing
A new and novel way for better brand awareness, Snapchat is rated as the third most popular social media app for the 18 to 34 year old demographic. Taking advantage of Snapchat’s evolving business features is something that most businesses need to consider. Through Snapchat and similar messengers, brands can connect with audiences directly, but can also use the platform as a tool to monitor trends amongst the competition – and stay ahead.
Choosing what trends to focus on can be difficult as the last thing any brand wants is missed revenue. Begin with picking one or two methods that would be best suited to your business and focus on building your presence on these platforms as strongly as you can. Once your audience on these platforms begins to plateau, begin looking at the next platform for you to spread your brand to. Inform your existing audiences of any new social media initiatives to get them to help you jump-start the engagement of the new site.