What’s a marketer’s worst enemy?
It’s the ever-changing trends that make them feel like you aren’t able to adapt to technology fast enough… So many new tactics and trends
This isn’t another ‘’Top marketing trends in 2022’’ blog article.
This article is about tested and proven tactics that will never become obsolete.
Here are the top marketing tactics that will last forever, no matter what!
1. Leveraging user-generated content
User-generated content is original, brand-specific content created by customers and published on social media or other channels.
UGC comes in many forms, including images, videos, reviews, a testimonial, or even a podcast. It’s often used across all stages of the buyer’s journey to help increase engagement and conversion.
And since building trust is the foundational piece of content marketing, 93% of marketers agree that consumers trust content created by customers more than content created by brands.
That’s because people trust real people, not brands.
The reason that user-generated content builds trust is that it acts as social proof. It makes your potential clients feel like they’re missing out on something!
Here are the different types of user-generated content:
- Photos and videos
- Testimonials
- Reviews
Pro tip:
If you’re having a hard time motivating your audience to create content for you, consider asking them to create and share a piece of content related to your brand and the winner gets a prize.
2. Make relatable content a part of your strategy
Whatever you do, don’t make it boring…
Have you ever heard this phrase before?
Seasoned marketers understand that relatability is social media’s heartbeat. It can save you from the never-ending quest for “fun content”.
Of course, it all boils down to:
- Truly knowing your audience.
- Understanding how your brand is perceived.
- Bringing your audience from one emotional state to another based on what you know about them and how they perceive your brand.
In the McDonald’s example above, you’ll notice that instead of using perfect grammar, they use social media slang to make their Twitter post more relatable.
3. Guided social proof
Imagine that you’re walking down the street and you start feeling hungry.
You see 2 different restaurants. One is crowded and the other is empty. You’d most likely go to the crowded one right?
This is the power of social proof! We never want to be first at trying something new.
Social proof maintains that a person who does not know what the proper behavior for a certain situation is will look to other people to imitate what they are doing and to provide guidance for his actions.
That’s why customer testimonials and reviews are so crucial for long-term growth.
Pro tip #1: Simply asking a customer to leave a review is too vague. Instead, make your testimonials reflect your brand’s unique value proposition. You can do that by asking customers to leave a guided testimonial.
Here’s an example:
Your unique value proposition: Our training program will help you move like your younger self.
How to ask for a guided testimonial: Could you please leave a review about how you’re able to move better since you started our training program?
Pro tip #2: When you’re promoting an ebook or a whitepaper, place guided reviews that talk about the usefulness of that specific marketing asset. This will help you increase form completion rates.
4. Influencer marketing
49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations to make a purchase.
Here are 2 myths about influencer marketing that you shouldn’t believe:
1. Influencer marketing is expensive.
Yes, working with macro-influencers (More than 1 million followers) can be quite expensive.
But a micro-influencer (less than 100k followers) will usually cost less. Working with many different micro-influencers can be more effective than working with 1 macro-influencer.
2. Influencer marketing doesn’t work for B2B brands
The challenge is that B2B businesses usually have a diverse set of customers across multiple industries. But by identifying the segment with the highest lifetime value, you can set up a solid influencer marketing strategy.
Here are the multiple benefits of influencer marketing:
- Specific targeting. You just need to make sure that the influencer is related to your niche and that their public persona matches your brand’s image.
- Increases brand awareness. Working with influencers enables you to cut through the noise and drive their followers to your brand.
- Increases engagement. Collaborating with influencers enhances the quality of your content and makes it more user-centric. Such content is more inclined to find traction among your target audience.
- Increases conversion rates. Brands can utilize it to influence purchase decisions and increase conversion rates. A study shows that 33% of the participants agreed that influencers are the most reliable sources for shopping recommendations.
Here’s a short list of crucial best practices that you should respect when considering working with an influencer:
- Remember that you should give the influencer some creative freedom.
- Determine a specific KPI that you’d like to work on for that campaign.
- Prioritize authenticity. Consumers see right through “salesy” endorsements, but when an influencer uses their own genuine voice to tell a story, their audience will listen.
- Prioritize engagement. Make sure to choose an influencer with high engagement on their content.
- Clearly communicate your goals to the influencer.
5. Customer journey mapping
73% of customers agree that the customer experience helps drive their buying decision. Knowing that, what can you do to improve your customer experience?
It all starts with understanding the journey that each customer goes through when buying, considering a purchase from your brand, getting a question answered, signing up to your newsletter, or any other interaction with your brand over the course of their journey.
Knowing the steps your potential customers take to achieve a specific goal is one thing. However, simply understanding their journey isn’t enough. A popular best practice within successful organizations is to create a customer journey map.
This is a visual representation of the process a customer or potential buyer goes through to achieve a specific goal.
During the mapping process, you might hear feedback such as: “It was difficult to compare options’’. This isn’t an assumption, this feedback could’ve been shared with one of your customer service reps.
What’s important here, is to avoid thinking “It’s so obvious, it’s right there under the pricing tab, how did they not see it?”.
Remember that you’re used to seeing what’s on your website, therefore you can’t really look at it through a potential customer’s eyes.
If a prospect faced that challenge, it means that others just like them might be facing the same problem when navigating your website. Even worse, some of these prospects probably became someone else’s customers.