In the world of Internet technology, change continues to happen at lightning pace and with it, consumer habits are changing just as quickly. Digital marketers must keep up or risk getting left behind by others who adapt more quickly. To keep the right messages in front of the right audiences via the right media, digital marketers need to not just to stay current, but to stay ahead of evolving consumer trends.
Everything mobile: Move quickly. According to Google, typical Americans check their phones 150 times a day. Each mobile session lasts only about 70 seconds, but that adds up to almost 3 hours in one day. To reach consumers, your message must be where they are and when they are there. Websites and advertisements designed for mobile must render well on a wide variety of screen sizes, and they must load quickly. Google refers to “I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-buy and I-want-to-do” moments – moments when consumers see something that sparks their interest and leads to a related quick internet search. With a strong digital marketing campaign, your message can reach those consumers when they get an impulse to know something, go somewhere, buy something or do something. This is also referred to as In The Moment Marketing. It’s about advertising to the right consumers in the right place at the right time, all the time.
Social media: Reputation is everything. The average person in North America spends more than four hours a day on social media. While the social media experience is divided among a large and growing number of platforms and apps, the division provides an opportunity for digital marketers. Social media advertising lets companies target narrowly defined audiences, both by choosing a platform popular to a specific demography and by narrowing ad buys to specific subsets of those users based on lifestyle, life stage, interests, hobbies, affiliations with groups, and many other selections that allow for micro targeting to highly productive groups of consumers. Deeply targeted campaigns can be a game-changer for social advertising performance.
Video: Roll the tapes! Consumers increasingly are turning to short videos instead of pages and pages of text. According to Zenithmedia Bluecorona, video is expected to make up 82 percent of all internet traffic in 2021. Already, video is winning more screen time than static content. From a digital marketer’s perspective, where there is video, there is video advertising. Think of video advertising as a TV commercial, only much better. Video ads are far more targetable, more affordable, more measurable and offer direct response capabilities which makes this platform far, far more productive than TV. Being a Google owned company, the targeting capabilities on YouTube are mind-blowing and if done right, YouTube ads can perform exceptionally well.
Content is king: The more things change, they more they stay the same. While consumer trends and digital marketing opportunities are changing rapidly, at least one thing has held constant. To catch and hold consumers’ attention, marketing messages still must have strong, clearly communicated, relevant content. The three benefits of good content are: 1) Illustrate your expertise and leadership in your industry, 1) keep your company and products or services top of mind among your customers and clients and 3) being an important SEO tactic, good, relevant content improves your natural rank in the search engines.
It can be hard to keep up with the rapidly changing trends and tactics in digital marketing. If you’d like a helping hand, we’re here for you. If you’d like to chat about a specific challenge you’re having or goal you’re trying to hit, feel free to reach us at (203) 682-4585. You can also schedule some time for a chat here, or visit www.adedgemarketing.com. We’d love to share both ideas and cold, hard data about the latest digital marketing tactics that perform best for your industry.