Effective marketing trends strategies give organizations an edge over their competitors and help them understand customers’ needs. These strategies can also help reduce a company’s advertising budget by channeling resources to the relevant consumers. But where do companies, especially SMEs and startups, learn their marketing strategies?
Today, the future of digital marketing is brighter than ever, as many companies are competing to sell their products and services faster and easier. This healthy competition drives innovative trends across various industries. And practices like influencer marketing, social media marketing, and marketing automation are now common and pliable to businesses of all sizes.
The list of top international marketing trends for effective business acceleration.
Thanks to global marketing trends, the most successful organizations now allocate 40% of their marketing resources to content marketing. So it’s safe to say that marketing trends influence companies year in, year out. And if that is the case, your business will surely benefit from the ten biggest international marketing trends today.
Adoption of automated marketing
In the digital marketing landscape, marketers face a lot of challenges. They have to constantly think of what kind of messages to send to generate leads, what their prospects are looking for whenever they visit their website, and their social media impressions. It’s no mundane task to try to sell virtually to people, which is why many companies are turning to automated marketing.
To automate your marketing efforts, you need software to manage repetitive tasks like those listed above. Letting a program handle preset marketing aspects frees up time to achieve other objectives for your company. But before you start with automated marketing, build your contact list organically to avoid chasing false leads. Lastly, automated marketing can take a while to yield, so waiting anywhere between six months to two years for returns on investment isn’t out of place.
Leveraging the influence of LinkedIn to reach decision-makers
According to Statista, marketers love social media because of its high traffic, lead generation, and followers’ loyalty. But LinkedIn is a peculiar social platform because of how many business owners and key figures actively use it for business. So you can’t approach LinkedIn marketing the way you would Facebook and Instagram.
So before you start marketing on LinkedIn, generate a list of potential leads and add them to your network. Yet, no matter how good your lead generation skills are, you have to be an excellent salesperson to close deals. And not just that; you also have to know how to find the people who make the purchasing decisions and tailor your pitches for them.
Streamline your LinkedIn hunt by including specific keywords like VP, Finance director, etc., in your search terms. Another way is to check your network for people working in your target company and ask them to introduce you to their directors. A decision-maker will be more receptive to a recommendation than a cold pitch, so try as many strategies as possible.
A focus on building brand loyalists and advocates within particular countries
Brand loyalists are consumers who have stayed faithful to your brand for a long time. You can convert these people into advocates, as it’s a cheap form of influencer marketing that leverages the efforts of others. But to attract brand loyalists, you must be consistent on every front, especially if you are serving an international market.
Staying true to your brand message and using recognizable elements in your marketing is one way to keep your audience hooked. You would also have to maintain or improve the quality of your products or services. And another way to build a loyal customer base is by giving incentives for purchases and interactions with your business. Eventually, prospects will see how faithful and enthusiastic your customers are and will want a piece of the action.
Using live-streaming for business promotion
If you think that live-streaming is for celebrities and TikTokers only, you should change that belief. Live-streaming can boost your brand’s visibility and credibility. There is a good chance that your consumers are active social media users and are familiar with its video communication features.
So monitor your customers’ preferred social platform and use the video streaming feature on that site to interact with them. For example, you can host QnAs on Facebook Live and have your customers interact with a prominent person in your organization to build an emotional connection between your customers and your brand.
But to make your live promotions effective, you need to be consistent. Pick a specific time and day and be prompt. Also, plan and manage the content you intend to share. Finally, know your target audience so that you can efficiently address their pain points in your live videos.
Online content translation in real-time using translation management systems (TMS)
If you have a global brand, you know that not all your customers speak or understand English. And one of the ways to stay relatable to your audience is to speak their language — literally. Fortunately, real-time translation technology — an AI-powered solution that interprets content to different languages — will solve your translation needs.
Translating international languages or local dialects without technical help is resource-intensive. A translation management system, on the other hand, will automatically translate your content into any language. And since TMS are getting database upgrades, they can learn your messaging pattern and maintain your brand’s identity by preserving the contextual meaning of your messages when translated.
Video marketing
According to HubSpot, over 50% of consumers are more interested in videos than any other content form. So if you are not already using video marketing, you are shooting yourself in the foot. Using videos for advertising and educating people is entertaining and can capture your audience’s attention for longer, eventually driving them to make a purchasing decision.
To get the best results from video marketing, decide the message you want each video to pass across beforehand. Secondly, create a content plan or calendar for consistency and to help you stay on course. Finally, remember that you don’t need an expensive studio to start your video creation process. You can start with inexpensive cameras, a tripod, a good backdrop and a lapel mic.
Partnerships and crossovers with other businesses and industries
Partnerships are one of the best strategies you can use to reach more people. This marketing strategy, also known as Co-branding, is a campaign collaboration between two brands in which the success of one will bring positive results for the other. The strategy is effective because it increases brand awareness and provides you with a second party to share any possible risks.
Co-branding can also push you into new markets by leveraging your partner’s audience and vice versa. For example, a YouTube channel can partner with a content writing agency to create content while the agency gains promotions and shout-outs from the YouTube channel. Such partnerships help both parties generate leads, gain new customers and enter new markets.
Targeting high-value accounts with your marketing efforts
Whether they just made their first purchase or are returning customers, every person that interacts with your business matters, and you should treat them all with respect. However, there are also some customers called high-value ones. They have the means to impact your brand’s public image or finances directly, so you should create unique marketing strategies for them.
High-value customers often make the most purchases from businesses. Their loyalty or disengagement from a brand will often bring a ripple effect, and they are typically influential people in society. For these reasons, companies today are hiring special people to target and manage these high-value accounts.
To target high-value customers, you should personalize their buying experience first. You can send personal marketing surveys or call them to understand their needs better. One drawback of a personal marketing survey is that interviewers can influence these individuals’ responses, thereby altering the results needed to improve customers’ experiences. So get a professional to manage the surveys and customer relationships.
Using storytelling and narration
Storytelling is the art of using narratives to pass messages to your clients and prospects. It’s not a skill you can grasp by attending a few masterclasses though; you have to practice a lot. Yes, it seems like a lot of work, but it’s worth the investment.
Since storytelling has become a significant part of most big brands’ marketing campaigns, you should join the trend. National Geographic has perfected this strategy. By crediting the photographers for the images in their posts and providing backstories, the organization maintains its ‘wow’ factor and keeps its audience hooked.
People are sentimental, so you are more likely to compel them to make a decision that favors you if your story targets their emotions. But don’t cook up stories or tell tall tales; they will see through the charade, causing the strategy to backfire. Instead, when using storytelling, you should study your audience as it doesn’t matter how captivating your story is if you are not sharing it with the right people.
Empowering employees
Your employees are some of the most influential people in your business. Without them, you would have to face unsolvable challenges, and your business will not see the light of the day. Your workers are like the pillars of your company, but if you don’t invest in them, they could cause you to lose credibility.
One of the most important things you should teach your employees is the company’s positioning statement. A positioning statement is a brief description of everything your company represents and why it’s better than the competition. The three fundamental positioning themes are the user, benefits, and competitors. And if your employees understand your positioning statement, they will know how to represent your business publicly.
Also, how your clients feel when they talk to your employees can influence them to either patronize you or leave. So you should also train your employees on client interaction and customer relationships. Finally, teach your employees out-of-office advocacy so that, if necessary, they can improvise to win customers over when not on duty.
Marketing is critical for the financial growth of any company. Which is why businesses work round the clock to innovate and create better strategies to gain market share. So unsurprisingly, every year comes with unique marketing trends that you can seemingly use to boost your business, yet only a few produce great results.
But by focusing on solving the customers’ needs — sometimes even before they know them — you will retain customers and gain new ones. To reach these consumers, use video marketing, partner with other companies, automate your marketing and build a team of employees to advocate for you. By using these trending marketing strategies, you will position yourself better in your market, attract customers and stay competitive for the next couple of years.
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