The Future of Digital Marketing — How to Win Now
Every business is playing the same game — Marketing. The dry cleaner on the corner who doesn’t even have a website, much less a social media account, is just as much subject to marketing as the Ad Agency on Park Avenue in New York City.
Everyone is trying to promote and sell a good or service. Yet more often than not, companies fall into two categories. 1) Thinking marketing doesn’t affect them/they don’t have the resources (time, money, skill). 2) Thinking their marketing is perfect and doesn’t need to change.
Actually, there’s massive room for improvement and growth for companies big and small. Here’s where Digital Marketing is headed.
Inbound Dominating Outbound Marketing
The most prominent feature of marketing going forward is going to be the permanent shift from outbound to inbound marketing.
Outbound marketing is when you push your information and materials out to the world. Pushing advertising at visitors on web pages and cold calling potential customers are examples. The problem with this form of marketing is that it’s invasive. Because of the overload of advertising we’ve learned to ignore banner ads, or wait to pay attention to YouTube until the ad has finished.
Inbound marketing is where you make your business an enticing destination and draw people in. Setting your website to rank well in SEO to reach people looking to fulfill a need, having interesting content on blogs and social media, and using social influencers are all ways to draw people into your brand. Inbound marketing is something customers are more likely to welcome rather than actively attempt to avoid.
Mr. Porter sells clothes to men but they go one step further to also have a lifestyle/fashion blog. This brings potential customers and repeat customers into the website regularly, and establishes Mr. Porter as a leader in the industry.
Story Telling Instead of Statistics
Customers don’t buy statistics, they buy a story. Too many brands are spouting off how many megapixels are in their camera or horsepower in their engine. Customers don’t want to be told what the product does. They want to be shown what they themselves can do.
Apple manages to pack a tremendous amount of storytelling into very short advertisements showing how people can live using their products.
Brand over Sales
It’s true that sales are what drive profits, which keep companies in business. But few companies embrace the intangible benefits of a brand. Having a strong brand is harder to measure outright than ad clicks turning into sales, but in the long run can have incredible effects on the strength of your company in the industry.
Human beings have Harley Davidson logo tattoos. Can you measure an exact dollar value for every Harley Tattoo in the world? No. But that brand value probably looks unassailable from any competitor’s standpoint.
Tactics
Now that we’ve covered the macro of the future of Digital Marketing, let’s look at some tactics that can be immediately deployed.
Influencers
Influencers are a majorly under utilized resource for brands. There are people on all platforms of social media that wield incredible influence. They have followers that tune in every day to see what they’re up to. Finding influencers that genuinely fit your brand and can show show you off can have an incredible reach and impact. They key is to give the influencers control of the project. They know their fanbase best and how to communicate with them.
A New Kind of Community Management
Let’s be honest, a brand can’t care about people. People care about people. Having great content isn’t enough. You also need to interact with customers in a way that doesn’t feel like they’re talking to the legal team.
Snapchat’s support account on twitter does an amazing job of being playful and fun and upbeat while staying on brand and helping people out.
Follow Attention
No platform or marketing technique is sacred. Customer attention shifts to the places they enjoy spending their precious time. Does your demographic hate email and love snapchat? Or maybe they’ve moved off twitter and onto Instagram. Shift your resources accordingly.
Document
If you feel overwhelmed by the prospect of being responsible for creating a bunch of content think along the lines of documentation. Do you run a donut shop? Make goofy Instagram stories about your day at the store.
The Future
But all of this is already possible! How is this the future? Then why are brands pouring millions of dollars into television advertising that people skip with their Tivo? Why do the same marketers who cry about the dwindling return on online advertising continue with the same strategies as before every single day?
The market WILL move eventually. The market always over saturates what they find works well. Banner ads used to dominate and then everyone went there and the signal was drowned out by the noise and now it’s an ineffective strategy. There’s a chance to beat your competitors to the punch by focusing on the strategies and tactics covered above and doing something new.
There’s a huge opening to start playing marketing games in a way most marketers are uninterested in or have underestimated. Very few companies even manage to incorporate all of the strategies. But the market has shown the value of inbound marketing and its potential moving forward. Being first to step into these kinds of digital marketing strategies will mean a huge advantage over your competitors.
