As the new year and new decade approaches, is your business ready to tackle the ever-changing needs and desires of your clients and customers? Be sure to start the new year off right with a 2020 digital marketing strategy that takes into account the changing face of technology and social media.
Our team of savvy marketing experts has put together a list of the top 8 ways you can stay ahead of the changes and amplify your marketing efforts in the new year:
1. Use insights from audience segmentation to make your advertising dollars go further.
Here at FSC Interactive, we know that segmentation is key to effective online advertising campaigns. Without segmentation, it is hard to truly understand consumer behavior and gain the insights that can be used to tweak and improve future campaigns. When used correctly, however, the insights gained from audience segmentation in your paid media strategies can inform your mix of media spends elsewhere. For example, when you segment your paid advertising campaigns by geographic location or specific demographic data like age or income level, you can learn which groups of people are most interested in your product or service. You’ll also be able to see what messages your consumers respond to. Armed with that information, you can make smart choices about where to spend additional marketing dollars.
In 2020, it’s time to push a mix of creative messages that speak to each audience segment. We recently worked with New Orleans and Company to promote their annual summer campaign, “Stay & Play,” (formerly “Be A Tourist”), which encourages New Orleanians and the Louisiana drive market to support New Orleans businesses during slow, summer months. FSC created targeted brand awareness video ads that were served to family, Millennial, and Gen X/Baby boomer audiences. After viewing the first video ad, users were re-marketed to, based on their audience demographics, with a carousel ad highlighting deal categories. This audience segmentation allowed us to gain insights that will improve our 2020 strategy for this annual campaign. For instance, the Gen X/Baby boomer audiences were more engaged with this particular campaign than the family or Millennial audiences, so next year we will develop a strategy specifically for the Gen X/Baby boomer demographic.
2. Create a digital marketing strategy specifically for Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories.
In 2020, it’s no longer good enough to lump your digital marketing strategy for Instagram and Facebook Stories in with your marketing strategy for the rest of those platforms. Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories should be viewed as its own platform with continuous ephemeral content that deserves a strategy of its own.
Stories have exponentially increased in consumer usage and show no signs of stopping. Facebook Stories and Instagram Stories were updated in 2019 with new features like polling questions, quiz stickers, donation stickers, and chat stickers. Stories can be a great place to engage your brand’s fans with live event coverage, showcase user-generated content, or partner with influencers.
3. Explore and test new social advertising spaces to connect with your audience.
Much like insights about your audience segments can help stretch your advertising dollars further, so can new advertising platforms. We are always exploring and testing new social advertising spaces that could be a good fit for our client’s primary audience segments.
For example, after researching OpenTable’s advertising capabilities, we decided to shift some of our Facebook advertising budget for Criollo Restaurant to OpenTable for promoted results. With our ultimate goal of more reservations, we decided this experiment had the potential to boost bookings at Criollo during the challenging season of summer on slow weekdays, Monday-Wednesday. By utilizing ads on this non-traditional platform, we saw a slight increase in reservations year-over-year from the previous summer.
Where are your clients and customers hanging out online? To narrow in on niche interest groups, social advertising on Reddit could be a great choice. For products like fashion, beauty, or home decor, search advertising through Pinterest is where it’s at. And if your target demographic includes teenagers, TicTok Ads could help you reach this younger audience.
4. Optimize for voice search.
Voice search continues to change the way we live as well as the digital marketing landscape. Just take a look at these statistics: nearly half of all households are expected to own a smart speaker device in the next few years, and by 2020, 30% of web browsing will be screenless. Shopping from voice devices currently accounts for about $2 billion in consumer spending, but that number is expected to rise to $40 billion by 2022. More than half of consumers use voice search to find local business information and to research restaurants, so if your website isn’t already optimized for voice search, now is the time to fix it. And since most voice-initiated web traffic comes from mobile devices like smartphones, you’ll definitely want to ensure that your website is responsive and optimized for mobile.
5. Educate, engage, and entertain your clients and customers with video marketing.
Video marketing has been on the rise for years now, and it shows no signs of stopping. There are more ways to consume video content online than ever before, and consumers increasingly turn to videos to get answers to their questions and information about products.
Are there questions that your customers frequently ask about your products? Video content is a great way to inform them about the details of your product and how it can be used. Video is ideal for introducing a brand-new product or service to the marketplace. For example, when weighted blankets burst onto the scene last year, video played a huge role in generating those initial sales. Targeted video ads on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, or Instagram can boost awareness and drive sales for your products.
6. Work with micro-influencers and incorporate user-generated content into your editorial calendar.
With platforms like Instagram leaning toward the removal of likes, how are you ensuring that your product is seen by the networks of people you are targeting? FSC specializes in micro-influencer campaigns, which place your product at the center of super specific, niche industry conversations. Micro-influencers usually have smaller followings, but their fans are typically highly engaged.
These days, almost everyone is an influencer and content creator. By incorporating user-generated content into your brand’s editorial calendar, you can recognize and reward your most loyal customers and fans. Here at FSC, our community managers spent time actively engaging with audiences on Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms. They also keep an eye out for great user-generated content that could be re-posted and shared on our client’s accounts as a way to show the fans that we’re listening.
7. Meet potential customers where they are with shopping ads.
For our retail clients, whether they’re ecommerce shops or brick-and-mortar stores, shopping ads are a critical part of our digital marketing strategy. Here is another place where audience segmentation can stretch advertising dollars even further. With so many different places to run shopping campaigns (Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram Shopping, and Pinterest, just to name a few), it’s crucial that we focus on reaching the right customer demographics with the right content on the right platform.
We start the process of creating ad campaigns by researching your market’s landscape and we develop detailed audience personas based on your ideal customer. Then we develop creative and specific messaging for each audience persona. Specific audiences receive targeted ads featuring the messages and images that are most likely to appeal to them. After the ads have started running, we closely monitor the results of our ads, tweaking and adjusting our ad campaigns based on what is working and what could be improved. No matter who you’re targeting, we will put the perfect message about your brand in front of your ideal customer.
8. Answer questions and engage your clients and customers with conversational marketing.
Once you’ve attracted customers and clients, how do you keep them coming back for more? In our fast-paced world, consumers demand quick answers and outstanding customer service. Conversational marketing tools like social media community management and chatbots can increase ecommerce sales and conversions and can help you seal the deal with B2B clients.
While some chat box tools and customer service helpdesks have a human being on the other end answering questions in real-time, artificial intelligence enables even the smallest of businesses to utilize the power of chat to answer consumer questions. Automated website chatbots can assist with booking appointments, greeting customers, and directing them to appropriate FAQ articles.
Is your business ready for 2020?
Does your business have a digital marketing strategy in place for the new year? Whether you have an in-house marketing team who could use some outside help with content marketing, or you’re ready to outsource your marketing efforts entirely, we can help! Contact us to learn more.