Is your company’s promotional plan old and outdated? Do you feel like the rest of the industry is leaving you behind in the dust when it comes to promotion? Do you feel that your strategy towards marketing could be savvier? The new era in marketing online was ushered in seemingly overnight. The diminishing returns of the tactics of the past have been the cause of alarm for many marketers.
Thousands of companies spanning over nearly every sector are scrambling to gain some type of marketing foothold. Executives and administrative staff for companies around the world are looking for that magic strategy that will energize their promotional campaigns.
Truthfully, there is not a one-size-fits-all formula for marketing in today’s digital climate. If there is one rule for innovating your marketing campaigns, it is to stay abreast of ever-changing marketing techniques.
The concept of innovation is to essentially think of things that haven’t been thought of or to take and improve on existing innovative ideas. The only way to improve on what is out there is to find out what currently exists. To give you an idea of the present direction of marketing strategies, we will highlight to most prominent emerging and influential forms of marketing today.
Special Offers and Promotions
Special offers and promotions are traditional marketing techniques that have withstood the test of time. These campaigns can take on many forms but are always focused on offering a limited-time special at a reduced price. This tactic works with every industry.
Some companies choose to have special offers structured around the nearest holiday. These sales can range to encompass everything from President’s Day to Christmas. Other companies will run a sale of some sort on a monthly basis. Decide what incremental time frame works best for your industry and clientele, and implement a consistent strategy.
Percentage cuts are a very popular type of promotion for many marketers (e.g., 50% Off, 25% Off, and 15% Off). The buy-one-get-one-free and buy-one-get-one half off are also widely used in some sectors. Hosting the offer for a limited time migrates your sales to a set period of time, by using expiration dates for specials.
Special Offers and Promotions in your mobile phone
Social Media Marketing
Social media is the beast that a majority of companies would like to tame. This elusive prey has made a fool of many over-aggressive hunters. Largely due to the constantly-changing nature of promoting in this space, the popular strategies used here resemble moving targets.
The first inclination was to grow a following by being semi-social; the next strategy was to become an influencer, then placing ads became the go-to tactic to use. Now multi-media stories seem to be emerging as the newest marketing element of social media. A healthy mix of these principals will yield organic growth among the users of these platforms.
Video Marketing
If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine the value of video. With the decade-long push of video hosting sites like YouTube and Vimeo, video has become wildly popular among marketers online. The formats to choose from is diverse; there’s the vlog (video blog), infomercial, standard commercial, and now short-form (60 seconds) social media stories.
When it comes to style and quality, it is like the wild west. Always aim for the highest quality possible; on the other hand, amateurs are crushing it in this space with limited equipment and no formal training. You have to gauge what your target audience is looking for.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the fastest growing marketing solution in the world today. Once thought of as purely science-fiction, AI is changing the face of business. The objective of AI is to use software, systems, and machines to automatically perform routine functions without human intervention.
Some AI marketing applications include the collection and analysis of consumer data, personalizing campaigns, automation, and chatbots. The chatbot is the most recent form of AI that is making a lot of noise in the industry. There are hosts of companies searching to discover the best AI chatbot.
Artificial Intelligence and chatbots for marketing strategy
Email Marketing
Contrary to the beliefs of many, this marketing throwback is still viable in the day of social media. While people may change profiles or even the social media platforms they use, it is unlikely that a person will change their email with the same flippancy.
Email marketing involves building a list of subscribers that opt-in to your email mailing list—usually for a free report, an e-book, video, or the like. Next, you target your audience with special offers sent to their email inboxes. This strategy remains highly effective and does take some time to build up.
Billboards
The advent of digital marketing has eclipsed some of the time-honored methods of marketing. The rise in one marketing format does not negate or eliminate the effectiveness of another. This is the case with local billboard advertising. Whether you have a brick-and-mortar or website, billboard advertising is still just as viable as it always has been.
While an unadvertised website is hiding among billions of webpages on the internet, a billboard will bring awareness to those in the real world that your brand exists. Also categorized as outdoor marketing, billboard marketing has the potential of reaching hundreds if not thousands of views weekly. Companies tend to believe that billboard marketing is too expensive, when, in fact, smaller billboards in certain markets can be purchased for under $500 per month.
Direct Marketing
Direct marketing deals with products and services that are sold directly to prospects; sales are made via using techniques like direct mail and sales calls, and face-to-face sales. Instead of putting your marketing campaign in public forums, you present your brand message directly to the potential customer. In this modern-day world of marketing, many brands seem to hide behind efforts to find their clients using only digital media.
Direct Mail
Since so many people have migrated to digital marketing, they have left a massive void in America’s mailboxes. The era of junk mail has passed away, and that is a great thing for direct marketers. Since there is less frivolous mail being delivered to people’s homes, there is an excellent opportunity for any marketer that wants to send their marketing materials directly to their target audience.
Sales Calls
Making direct contact with prospects can be a very effective approach. Calling is a numbers game, and there will be more rejections than sales. Telephone sales are categorized by temperature; they can be either cold or warm. Cold calling is when you place unsolicited calls to people who are not expecting a sales call. Warm calls are more effective because these calls are made to people who have either heard of or done business with your company in the past.
Face-to-Face Sales
Face-to-face sales are the oldest form of marketing. This is when the salesperson talks directly to their prospect in-person. While there is less face-to-face interaction in the digital era, there is no more influential way to communicate your message to another individual than in-person. You can build stronger connections with prospects on both a B2B or B2C basis. Since this form of marketing dates back so far, there is no shortage of strategies and tactics used by sales representatives.
Conclusion
Learning to keep your fingers on the pulse of the frequent changes in marketing, while also honoring the traditional methods makes you likely to achieve the reach you desire. Take the time necessary to familiarize yourself with the new and trusted methods of modern marketing. Changing with the times is the cornerstone of innovation.