30 Sep Marketing Ideas and Trends I Can’t Stop Thinking About
A few marketing ideas and trends have popped up onto my radar. Because sharing is caring, here are five I’ve been thinking about.
Brand love as content marketing strategy
I came across this article about how companies are creating “brand love” content to get engagement on Twitter. Brand love can obviously be used on any channel, especially considering how dismal engagement has become on Twitter.
Brand love is all about:
Talk[ing] directly to your biggest fans and just hav[ing] fun with them.
Don’t try to sell them.
Don’t try to get them to click through to a blog post.
Don’t try to get them to sign up for a webinar.
Brand love content is similar to meme marketing. It’s about creating relatable, funny and relevant content that your ideal clients will get.
I already dig memes, so I’m going to start incorporating brand love into my own content marketing strategy.
Intentional automation
I’m reading the book Company of One by Paul Jarvis right now, and he talks about automation so much that I’m rethinking how I communicate with current clients.
Paul writes a lot about the power of email – a gospel I also preach. As he points out, once you put in the effort to segment your email lists, you can send out more personalized information, depending on what the client has purchased or where they are in the sales cycle. Amen, Paul. Amen.
I’m more interested in automating a follow-up process once I complete a one-time project for a client (like website copy) or am 3 months into an on-going project (like blogging). This is not a new idea, and it’s not one I haven’t heard before. It’s just one of those things I’ve neglected to do.
By not having a systematic follow up process, I know I’m missing out on two things: the chance to gain valuable feedback from clients and ask them for referrals. This is all marketing, and in fact it’s very low-hanging fruit on the marketing tree.
I am here to tell you that this is something I am finally going to put in place. Feel free to follow up with me and see if I’ve actually done it!
And by the way, if you have a follow up process in place, I’d love to learn what works best for you. Feel free to drop me a line here.
Marketing roles are shifting to experience roles
One of my favorite bloggers, Mark Schaefer, recently wrote about a trend that is gaining traction: the Chief Marketing Officer title is morphing into Chief Experience Officer, or CXO.
This totally makes sense. Consumers are craving experiences, not things and certainly not clever ad copy. This trend definitely accelerated because of the pandemic. In-person experiences disappeared overnight, and our longing for them increased.
An experience doesn’t have to be extravagant or elaborate. We moved to Colorado a few months ago, and our new dentist provides every new patient with something fun and useful. My son got a water bottle, I got a picnic blanket and my daughter got a little bag with chocolate and lip balm in it. (My husband has yet to go, and I’m curious what he’ll receive.)
Experiences can also come in the form of extraordinary service, like delivering a project early or following up immediately on a question with a detailed explanation (not just a one sentence response).
Nano influencers are now a thing
I’m a big fan of quality over quantity. A truly engaged community, even if it’s relatively small, is much more powerful and effective than a community full of people who are members in name only.
This is why nano influencers (1,000 or fewer followers) are such a big deal in the influencer marketing. Their engagement rates are 7% higher than mega influencers (1 million+ followers) and macro influencers (100,000 – 1 million followers).
The difference? They feel more like friends to their followers, they’re trusted, they’re viewed as more authentic and they only work with brands they truly love. Pull these factors together, and endorsement of your brand can result in immediate sales.
Plus, many nano influencers will provide placement in exchange for goods and services, making them extremely cost-effective partners.
TikTok for business?
In a recent newsletter, my friend Meredith wrote:
“What I’m obsessed with this month: TikTok. But hear me out! There is a wealth of business information that is being taught and shown on TikTok. It’s NOT just for kids and doing silly dances (although let’s not overlook the value in being entertained!).”
Because most of my clients use only LinkedIn and Instagram, I have completely ignored TikTok as a marketing tool. My experience with TikTok is limited to watching funny TikToks my son sends me via text. I don’t even have the app – they just open in my phone’s browser.
Lo and behold, TikTok for Business is an entire website devoted to helping businesses use the platform for marketing.
As with any channel, don’t use it unless your target market is on it. I only know of two fully cooked adults who use it.
But it’s apparently not just for young people anymore. As of March 2021, teenagers made up 25% of total TikTok users, and young adults between 20 and 29 years of age accounted for 22.4%. That’s not even half of all US users!
Am I going to use it? No. I am too established on LinkedIn and cannot be bothered building a new audience on another platform.
This doesn’t mean you can’t give it a spin – IF you are 100% positive your target market is using it.
Your turn
Which idea or trend intrigues you most? Are you going to integrate brand love or automation into your marketing? Have you thought about re-titling your marketing team? Will you work with nano influencers or use TikTok for marketing? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Shoot me a note here.
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