10 Marketing Tips to Attract New Customers and Promote Your Brand
Digital marketing strategies and platforms are rapidly changing. What was relevant for your brand, industry and sales six months ago, might not be relevant for you right now.
And as the size of the U.S. economy grows (currently approaching a massive 20 trillion dollars in nominal GDP with about one-third in B2B sales!), we’re all looking for a piece of that pie. So whether you’re planning modest single-digit goals or aggressive double-digit campaigns, we know you wouldn’t want to miss our new list of 10 tips, trends, and suggestions for your digital sales and marketing teams.
#1: Produce Social Video
Cisco analysts once predicted that by 2019, 80 percent of worldwide consumer internet traffic would be video. A 2012 Forbes blog attributes a YouTube exec with predicting it would be 90 percent. They both appear to be correct.
According to statistics from Adobe Digital, approximately 80 percent of all consumers are engaging with at least two brands per week through video on social media. Engagement means they are repeatedly clicking on video ads, demos, promos, launching apps that promote videos, or visiting links to online videos. In a 2017 USA Today survey, 82 percent of respondents said they engage with two or more brands on social media at least once per week.
A 2016 survey of over 3,800 adult consumers revealed that users were watching videos for an average of 51 minutes per day. Perhaps the key finding in this survey of users in the U.S., Australia, and Europe, was that 45 percent reported making a purchase after watching a branded video. Even more compelling web and mobile session data in another research study showed that 75 percent of purchases resulted from the decision to buy that users made after viewing a linked video through social media.
The era of the social video experience is alive and well. In the last five years, we have seen a meteoric rise in video viewing on social media networks. Recently, Twitter reported that its monthly video views had grown by 220 percent (!!!!) in just the last year alone.
#2: Post New Content on Fridays
On average, Snapchat and Facebook viewers watch 18 billion videos every day. Hundreds of millions of hours are logged on YouTube. And one day each week stands out in particular. If you are going to release new content and want to reach the most people and garner the most views, listen to Robert Smith and The Cure, because on Friday I’m in Love:
- More social media (about one in five posts) occurs on Fridays than on any other day of the week.
- One-fourth of all video views occurs on a Friday.
#3: Get Smart!
Integrate your product or service with the Internet or mobile app marketplace. So-called smart devices are very popular as the following examples illustrate:
- Consumers can purchase smart light bulbs and turn them on or off remotely (hi Alexa!).
- Want to receive a message from your refrigerator when running low on milk, juice, or bagels? Smart refrigerators already make up almost ten percent of all e-commerce refrigerator appliance sales.
- 90 percent of all televisions sold online feature Roku, Chromecast, or similar Wi-Fi smart services.
- Half of all consumer audio equipment includes smart programmable speakers or voice-activated technology.
- One in five watches sold online are network-enabled.
#4: Use SEO and Paid Search to Attract New Customers
When attempting to reach prospects with persuasive content that convinces them to become new customers, e-mail marketing only succeeds in converting nine out of every 100 names. You are better off relying on your own organic SEO or paid search. Almost 70 percent of new customer lead generation stems from search and direct traffic.
To reach existing customers, e-mail success rises to about one in five. For even better success rates, about half of all existing customers return to online stores through their own direct traffic or through SEO.
#5: Build Marketing Campaigns Around Holidays
Online shopping is concentrated around holidays. For Q4, nothing beats the surge in online sales that post on the first Monday after the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend—Cyber Monday. Last year, sales topped $6 billion. Other holidays also post strong sales. In Q1, over $3 billion in online retail sales occurred on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Presidents Day.
ADI predicts that Memorial Day online sales will grow at about 20 percent annually. This trend is linked to a combination of incentives and discounts, the psychology of giving gifts for graduates, family, and friends, and days when shoppers can take time off from work.
#6: Get Social!
Social media growth continues to trend upward. The portion of online visits from smartphones has grown across all industries and age groups by about 20 percent per year since 2015. Surprisingly, retail web sessions initiated over a tablet device were down substantially, by about a third. Large wide-format touch-screen, tablet, and kiosk technology didn’t make its way into the new social media landscape. So, you can’t just produce content and test it on the same large displays where your creative team crafted it.
You have to remember to test your content on mobile devices. For example, your new product comparison table looks great in new e-mail blasts but requires far too much swiping and resizing on smartphones.
Social is here to stay. If you want to attract new customers, especially those under age 45, online sales data suggests that you can reach up to three times as many new customers as existing customers by leveraging your social media marketing strategy.
#7: Customize Your Message by Audience and Platform
Adapt your content, subtle brand messaging, and style elements for each target audience by platform. For example, user-created videos are the most popular type of social video content on Twitter and Facebook, while music videos are more popular on YouTube. Duplicate the video production quality and narration style of user-created videos for an ad on those social networks while scripting, scoring, and producing a more professional video to run on YouTube.
To maximize your brand exposure, place your video before or after film trailers. A little more than half of all internet users has reported watching a film trailer in the last month. Adapt your content to a documentary or news style if using Linked-In where a little over 33 percent of users selected news as their top choice of video by content type.
#8: Reward Users for Liking, Sharing or Commenting
Reward users for sharing your content. Reports indicate that half of all new customers said they first learned about a new brand from watching a video that was sent to them through the content sharing feature. You could offer a referral coupon for the existing customer in exchange for sharing with five new people, or a discount code for new customers receiving the shared content. In a similar fashion, you could reward registered user number 100 or 10,000 who clicks the Like button to show 100 or 10,000 likes; or offer a point system for helpful comments by vote or by random selection.
#9: Establish Baseline Video Performance Metrics
How do you know people are viewing and engaging in your content? Analytics can show you views and average minutes watched so you can compare with the total length to determine what portion was watched. Beyond views, you want to know if consumers engaged with your brand—that translates into likes, shares, and comments.
Based on product video channel provider platform marketing whitepapers I researched for this blog, a like occurs in a little less than one time on average for every two views, or about 44 percent of the time. In reality, we found likes never amounted to more than one percent of views—time after time, for SaaS products and services. Even a Drake or Cardi B video with over half a billion views, likes never exceeded one percent of views!
It might be realistic to expect only 8 likes, 4 shares, and 2 comments in 1,000 views. Three sources agreed that Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube were the top three social sites where consumers were most active after watching a video.
#10: Make it Relevant, Personal and Professional
When your content is marginally relevant or not aligned with the consumer, you risk a negative brand perception. Adobe Digital estimated that as many as nine in ten users receive content every day that is not meaningful to them. To convert a brand message into a sale, the content must connect with the consumer and their interests on a personal level. Even for B2B, it is the perception of personal development, strategic advantage, or return-on-investment that drives revenues.
Retelling popular stories works, but so does re-inventing concepts or debunking popular myths. Wise use of emotional shifts also works to engage users with content. You can challenge stereotypes or play the status quo, as long as your video appeals to the very strong human tendency to expect fair treatment, respect, and value (I’m looking at you, Jake from State Farm.)
The number of channels available to communicate with our customers has expanded and continues to grow. CDI Marketing engages with our clients through digital, email, traditional media, partners, blogs, events, videos and social media. How do you prefer to receive your content? Shoot us an email and share your thoughts – we’d love to hear your feedback – [email protected]!
**Statistics and research provided by Adobe, Statista, USBLS, and Gartner.