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14 OctDigital MarketingSocial Media Marketing

How Can I Stay Ahead of the Marketing Trends? (Don’t Ignore the Fourth Point)

Marketing trends are constantly changing, with new ones appearing all the time and older ones fading away to make way for newer ones. It can be difficult to keep up with what’s hot now, much less know how it will affect your marketing strategies and how you can use it in your business.

This guide on current marketing trends will help you stay on top of the latest trends so you can get the most from them and ensure that your marketing campaigns don’t fall behind the times.

Identify Marketing Trends

Identifying trends is a tricky task.

You have to stay on top of what’s happening in your industry and track how customers respond to it.  

To identify trends, you must be up-to-date on the latest events and pay attention to smaller shifts in tone or approach. 

A good example of this was the evolution of Google+ from its original launch as a place for friends and family (aka the Circles) into its current image as a networking site for businesses (aka Communities). 

In addition to seeing which topics people are most interested in discussing, Google+ Communities lets businesses gather information about their audience—what they like, where they live, and so forth. 

The benefit for marketers? It makes finding new prospects easier than ever before.

Follow leaders

Understanding what’s popular on social media is a way to get ahead of your competitors. Follow the leaders in your industry and find out what they’re talking about. 

It might be a great new marketing technique or a way to reach more customers, but you won’t know unless you keep up with social media trends. You can start by following influencers and brands already doing well in your field.

Look at what’s popular on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook.

The world is constantly changing, and marketing trends are no exception. It can be hard to stay on top of all the latest and greatest in marketing, but by following these tips you can do it without breaking a sweat

Marketing Trends

-Keep an eye on social media channels like Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter for what people are talking about. 

-Sign up for newsletters from industry leaders like Ad Age and Forrester Research. They’ll keep you updated with what’s happening in your industry, so you’ll know when it’s time to get up to speed with new trends or change course entirely.

-Follow blogs specializing in your industry; they often post articles about marketing trends before anyone else. 

-Watch talks at conferences and events, such as the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity or the South by Southwest Interactive Conference. These speeches will give you a behind-the-scenes look into what’s next for marketing. 

-Read books by some of today’s leading thinkers in the field, like Scott Stratten (Unmarketing) or Seth Godin (Purple Cow). You’ll pick up loads of inspiration and new ideas from these books.

Identify your marketing niche. Know what you do best.

Before starting your journey, you need to know who your customers are and what they want. Once you’ve identified your niche, it’s time to find out what marketing trends are important in that niche. 

Social media is a best way to do this. You can also look at other companies in your industry and see what they’re doing. 

When it comes to marketing trends, understanding the following things is crucial: 

– What type of content does your target audience like? 

– What social media platforms do they use? 

– Which devices do they prefer for browsing content? 

– What kind of messages resonate with them?

Be an information sponge.

It is important to keep up with other brands to stay ahead of the curve. Be an information sponge and study your competitors. Follow them on social media, read their newsletters, watch their commercials, and go through their website. 

This will help you identify trends early and prepare you for what’s coming next. 

For example, while some marketers might focus on video marketing, others may have started incorporating live streaming into their strategy. You’ll also see new forms of content emerge, like Instagram Stories or Facebook Live, that you may want to explore.

Implement tried-and-tested concepts

To build a comprehensive marketing strategy that incorporates tried-and-tested concepts while staying ahead of the curve, it’s important to get input from different stakeholders within your company who are aware of upcoming marketing strategies. 

For example, if your company produces physical products, ask your manufacturing team about any changes they expect in distribution channels like e-commerce or brick-and-mortar retail stores; these changes could affect how customers discover and purchase your products.

Benchmark your marketing progress

To maintain a healthy business, monitoring your progress is a critical step. It would be best to benchmark your progress at least once every quarter. Benchmarking is a helpful way to see how you are doing and helps you identify where changes need to be made. 

Marketing Trends

Benchmarking will also help you keep up with trends in marketing, which will help you stay on top of your competition. You should always know the current trends to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy and stay ahead of the curve. 

CONCLUSION

There are several ways marketers can stay on top of marketing trends. The easiest and most cost-effective way is by reading blogs and other websites that cover marketing topics, such as this one. 

The more time you spend reading about new developments in digital marketing, the better prepared you’ll be when they happen.

Is that clear? If not, please leave your query in the space provided below.

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04 MarSocial Media Marketing

How to Market Your Business with Popular Social Media Platforms

Introduction

Do you know that social media marketing hugely impacts creators, brands & consumers? Today, social media platforms have a great impact on a brand. Popular social media apps have captured consumers and understood the potential for a total addressable market.  

In this blog, we will go through what causes the popularity of the social media platform. We will see how brands can use social media platforms for advertising, marketing, and promotion. Also, how to leverage social media sites can contribute as a direct marketing channel to your audience.

Let’s find out the popular social media apps. First of all, we will begin with how many social media platforms are there and influencers.

75% of 18-24-year-olds use Instagram, with 67% Generation Z and 57% Millennials using the app daily.

How many Social media platforms are there?

The truth is, when talking about social media platforms, we must also consider the number of active users as a popular metric to assess the potential of that platform. For instance, Facebook has 2.910 billion monthly active users, with 65 million businesses using Facebook pages for promotions and leads. The important thing is understating how the algorithm works and the components of relevance. Algorithm sparks conversations with videos, stories, and text images.

Whereas the influence is made up of three components:

  1. Relevance
  2. Reach
  3. Resonance

U.S. spending on influencer marketing is set to surpass $3 billion for the first time in 2021, and to top $4 billion in 2022.

Instagram

Instagram is the social media platform with the greatest potential ROI for product-based businesses. Instagram is the most suitable place to interact and engage if your target demographic is under 35.

This is the perfect platform for influencers to execute paid partnerships. Influencer marketing allows brands to reach their target audience in a way that feels far more genuine than traditional advertising.

Some of the top social media influencers with more than 15,000 followers have the highest engagement rates on all platforms. The cost of the partnership with the brand, of course, can also be much lower than those with a mega influencer.

Instagram is a hub where different Instagram influencers build their followers in a specific niche. Based on audience size, they get brand partnerships. Influencers with extensive following ask brands to pay for brand visibility. Generally, the types of influencers are as follows:

  1. Nano-influencers are those that have more than 10,000 followers.
  2. Mega-influencers are those with 1 million+ followers.

Due to the various types of influencers with followers, influencer marketing has gained new heights in 2022 as more and more influencers dominate their niche in contrast to traditional advertising via celebrities. 

LinkedIn

This platform is the best for recruiter and employment-oriented online service social media platforms.

With almost 700 million user accounts, LinkedIn is becoming a goldmine for those operating in a b2b space. Approximately three million users share content weekly, amounting to nine billion impressions. Some estimates show that 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn.

In other words, LinkedIn can be an effective platform for problem-aware audiences to create thought leadership as a professional brand builder. The platform offers video, creator-themed tools, and new targeting options for reaching the target audience and lead generation. It is an excellent platform where creators can use LinkedIn to have meaningful connections and a corporate reach and have a chance to network with peers with similar interests.

TikTok

TikTok is a popular social media app to see 15-second videos shot on cell phones. With its personalized feeds of quirky short videos set to music and sound effects, the app is notable for its addictive quality and high levels of engagement.

TikTok doesn’t use any age verification tools when new users sign up.

Who is TikTok intended for? TikTok is a social media platform where young people express themselves to create videos and share. The video-based platform is fifth for most monthly active users from launch only five years ago.

Meanwhile, Instagram has seen impressive growth and is the fourth platform where the most active monthly users are found.

Soft Stings help you with brand voice, content calendar, and marketing strategy to reach your audience.

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How do Social Media Influencers Make Money?

A social media influencer who builds a following will not accept a deal that makes their brand seem inconsistent.

After all, influencers are content creation experts. This is why they prefer to be called creators. You’ll get the best value from their work by allowing them to showcase those skills. 

YouTube’s potential advertising reach is 2.562 billion. Interestingly, WhatsApp has at least 2 billion monthly active users.

Some Hyped and Popular Social Media Platform?

Gen Z and Millennials have migrated to Instagram. So to reach the buyer, identify the persona strategically choose those the audience is engaging in doubling down on.

The use of Social Media in 2022? 

In addition, how do you choose where to put ad spend? Advertise on YouTube to increase your reach on the platform. Businesses can now advertise, create chatbots, send newsletters, and create leads from active participation on these platforms. In 2022, with the rise of a myriad of new ways to engage and connect with their customers. What else to keep in mind for marketing and advertising in 2022.  

  1.  Have you identified the persona? 
  2.  Is your target audience using the chosen platform? 
  3.  Can you manage brand presence at several platforms at once?

What is Social Media Management?

Social media management is how brands can begin to gain traction. First, there is an analysis of social media audiences and developing a strategy. The tailored strategy contains the following targets to achieve

  1. Creating and distributing content for social media profiles, monitoring online conversations
  2. Collaborating with influencers
  3. Providing community service
  4. Monitoring, measuring return on investment

Why is Social Media Good?

To put it another way, eCommerce brands, Saas, and more business owners are looking for influencers to market their products. In fact, with the ever-increasing rate of active users on some of the widely acclaimed platforms, brands collaborate with nice specified influencers to develop effective content and increase the brand reach. 

How to measure results?

But to measure the effectiveness of a campaign, you have to understand its value in terms of return on investment.

UTM parameters are one way to track an influencer’s visitors to your website. They can also help measure how much engagement the campaign receives.

When you assign each influencer their unique links with UTM codes, you’ll get a clear picture of the results. That is how you can measure results on social media platforms and one way to calculate the impact on your bottom line.

How has social media affected branding?

In other words, how can social media be bad for businesses?

It comes from unsatisfied customers. Sometimes a backlash against something that doesn’t resonate with the audience. Yes, negative social media content can destroy trust in a brand in a matter of minutes. Social media has a tremendous consequence on branding as it encourages the user to share stories and details with others.  

Conclusion

Want to reach an audience? It means that businesses belonging to any industry can build their brands and increase online visibility. Therefore as a social media marketer and belonging to the creator’s economy, it is important to choose the platform your demographic might be moving to.

To sum up, social media sites create a strong bond between the customer and the brand. Also, they help immensely in targeting and retargeting potential customers.

Did you find this article helpful? You might also like other blogs for your brand presence on social media. 

We measure performance, execute ad campaigns, monitor ads and increase your lead generation process. Do you want brand’s marketing and execution strategy?

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10 FebSocial Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing: How to do it, engage & Tips for Brand Reach

Today, every small-medium enterprise, even coaches are using social media marketing to bring more leads and advertise their offers.

For those operating in retail e-Commerce, your business needs to be on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Most marketers forget to focus on strategy and directly execute without knowing what competitors are doing.

So, to stay relevant, the marketing team must focus on planning and executing the long-term goals before diving into paid advertising with the social media strategy.

Brands like disruptive advertising, hunter digital, and fire belly marketing excel at social media and have been considered Top-Rated PPC & Digital Marketing Agency. There’s one thing they are doing commendable: they integrate the core pillars with a strategy with a road map (clearly defined objectives) for social media marketing.

There are five main pillars. Let’s talk through them one by one.

With 4.48 billion people owning social media accounts, there’s a whole world of potential customers that any business can access, simply by logging in and creating brilliant content.

Strategy

A sound social media marketing strategy for your team or client to have a clear picture of who their target user is and how they can appeal to their specific problems of your social media presence. Without a strategy, much of the marketing efforts do not contribute to brand growth, are unlikely to achieve the reach, visibility and leads, and will most likely struggle to return on investment.

In case you’re unsure, a road map with a strategy for strategic brand announcements consists of getting the content to the targeted persona at the right stage of the brand development.

Simply put, a content strategy benefits the marketing team to achieve business goals by enabling marketers and brand managers to:

  1. create brand assets  
  2.  reach an audience, engagements, and brand mentions
  3. increase sales

A good social media marketing strategy has a content plan, an editorial calendar specific to reach those goals, and a defined timeline to track those efforts into measurable metrics.

Finally, you need to set targets for specified timelines to see how marketing efforts are going and whether you need to tweak them.

Planning and Publish

Social media apps are game-changers, so brands in FMCG have mastered the best use of social media and positioned their brand to prospects. It is not a good practice to start curating content publishing without an objective as a brand manager. So, it is best to set the benchmark and make sure that you:

  1. Know the demographic of your audience so that prospects can relate.
  2. Focus on quality, competitor analysis, and formats that perform well.
  3. Consistent branding asset and brand voice.

Consistency is a golden rule for people coming back for more.

Listening and Engagement

Plan your content. At Soft Stings a (social media marketing agency), we engage with the audience to get feedback on the campaigns. Listening, using hashtags, and sharing on relevant groups are all that come in social media execution.  

 At soft stings, we leveraged the popular social media tool called Hootsuite for key terms and hashtags.

Analytics

Do you know that it is possible to refine your strategy by looking at what analytics tells you? The performance of any social media marketing campaign relies on the number. Numbers, when consolidated that give insights, are called analytics. To sum up, analytics allow us to track and understand user behaviour.

Our agency’s social media team and brand managers use analytics to analyze your competitors.

Once you have all this, as a brand manager, you get a lot of confidence and credible data to vet the efforts on marketing.

The analytics allow us to track what works and what doesn’t. In turn, analytics is best to comprehend future campaigns—and determine the success rate.

Similarly, A/B testing for content, design, CTA is an important part of iterations to bring the best out of the marketing goals.

Therefore, marketing efforts involve marketers actively tweaking the types of content to see which format receives double the engagement than other posts. Ensuring that posts appear in people’s feeds. 

Advertising

For anyone interested in finding the increase in audience, social media advertising is worth seeing returns on ad spend. Interestingly, more than 2.89 billion active monthly users on Facebook alone look at the recent trends and use ad accounts. 

Social Media Marketing

Social media advertising includes content that picks up views naturally, and there is no ad spend and any transactional activity. This is organic. Content that costs money to post. This is paid.

There are several ways you can advertise on social media. For example, you can:

Create strategic content based on the age of the brand, and engage with people as part of the promotion activity.

Secondly, it is best to participate in groups related to your industry.

It is advisable to invest in influencer marketing by interacting with influencers in your industry by creating and sharing content that appeals to people to grow a brand’s following.

Finally, ensure you’re accessible on social media so your customers know they can reach out to you. Don’t just wait for feedback. Invite it!

Social Media Marketing

Platforms and social media apps like Facebook empower us to customize the audience via the ad manager link in the target audience popup.

Social Media Marketing

Facebook puts you in the decision making role to know your target market best.

Understanding Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences

Facebook allows you to create lookalike audiences or smart audiences. So you can very easily create an audience you have previously engaged with.

Social Media Marketing

Instagram Integration

Did you know you can also run the same ad on Instagram with the business manager you published on Facebook? Yes, it is very much possible, and it reduces the work. Considering the integration is what marketers are doing in all the best advertising agencies. 

Brand Reach on Tik Tok

 

Conclusion

Facebook and Instagram operate very differently from networking sites like LinkedIn, where professionals connect and see what’s new in their industries. 

If your content, particularly polls and infographics, is tailored to provide value to the target audience, it becomes very easy helps to increase the brand reach.  

At Soft Stings we can help you with advertising/sponsorship, influencer marketing, social media management/community management, paid media, building your following and contributing to forums.

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