It’s important to stay abreast of marketing issues and trends to help your business grow. In this article, Voom CreativeTM shares key learnings from the “Amplify Your 2021 Marketing” webinar from LocalIQ, the marketing division of the USAToday Network.
How do you drive revenue in today’s marketing world? It starts with building a strong foundation based on strategic branding, storytelling and technology. Make sure to boost your efforts for these three marketing strategies in 2021.
Branding Disrupts Sameness
We live in a world where humans have an eight-second attention span. Eight seconds. Then, factor in that we typically view 10 pieces of content before we ever make a purchase. Not only do marketers need to quickly get your attention, they need to frequently keep those messages in front of consumers while cutting through loads of clutter.
Great branding is a fantastic way to break out from the pack in a sea of sameness among companies, products and services. Branding can set you apart from competitors and show what you stand for. Yes, this includes the logo and visual identity, but it also encompasses a company’s core values, the customer journey and every written and spoken word from the organization. In short, branding is how you want consumers to feel; it’s about fostering an emotional, human connection.
Connecting through Brand Storytelling
One way to foster an emotion connection for your brand is to tell stories. Brand storytelling is slated to have a huge impact on businesses in 2021. Storytelling has a number of important benefits:
more memorable than facts alone.
%
more likely to buy the product in the future.
%
consumers are influenced to purchase a product or service.
An amazing 80% of people want brands to tell their stories. What type of stories?
- 66% want stories of regular people
- 38% want stories of the brand’s customers
- 19% want stories of the brand’s employees
- 10% want stories of the brand’s CEO/Founder
- 2% want stories of the brand’s products and services
The statistics are compelling. Tell stories of people rather than products or services. Speak to your audiences like they’re regular people.
LocalIQ states there is a science to storytelling and they describe its three components as:
Inform
Relevant content that enriches and provides value to your audience.
Engage
Custom, dynamic content that inspires and engages such as actionable information or a video.
Connect
Cultivate meaningful audience and brand relationships through storytelling and science in order to connect the audience to the organization, and vice versa.
The science of storytelling also requires quality content (what people want to view or read) and quality audiences (trusted communication channels). Engaging video content is meaningless if it’s targeted to the wrong audience on the wrong platform. And flat, stale content will lack impact even if you’re targeting the right audience on the right channels.
All of these pieces should come together to create content that audiences spend time with, which ultimately lifts awareness and intent for products and services through value and impact.
Remember how humans have an eight-second attention span? In the world of marketing, an engaged view counts as just 10 seconds of viewership. Keep that in mind when you create your marketing copy, social media posts, videos and website content. What type of content do you need to create for 10 seconds of engagement?
It’s a Digital World
The third way to amplify your marketing in 2021 is to enhance your digital marketing efforts. Why? Digital marketing is used at multiple points in a typical customer journey. Here’s an example:
A car buyer searches Google for “best cars of 2021” and sees online display ads. Next, the buyer checks for information on social media and emails friends for advice. Once the buyer has narrowed their options, they’ll visit car dealer websites and check reviews online. That’s a tremendous amount of digital marketing opportunity!
Still not sold on digital? Here’s some data to further demonstrate why you want to boost your digital marketing.
%
of people search online for local businesses.
%
of people click Google ads when buying online.
%
of adults in the U.S. search for local services on smartphones and tablets.
users are on social media.
Digital marketing can offer significant impact:
- Visually appealing
- Builds brand awareness and can drive action
- Highly targeted with extensive reach
- Display ads can be retargeted and can block competitors