Keeping your businesses fresh and at the forefront of your market is always important. And, the best ways to do it always seem to be changing.
Whether it’s what you offer, or the way you market it, your sales process, or even how you deliver on your products or services, we all want to make sure we aren’t falling behind.
That’s why we’re here to tell you about the marketing trends and strategies that we’re seeing work in 2021 — and that will still be successful into 2022. Most of these aren’t new, but they’re always evolving. And, now, they’re more important than ever:
If you’d like to learn more about how to implement these in your own marketing strategies, reach out to us here at Mingl Marketing for a free consultation.
Google My Business (GMB) is more important than ever before. This is a free listing on Google for businesses and organizations, where they can manage their online presence across Google, including Google Maps and Search.
Setting up and maintaining your GMB listing will help your local SEO. It gives visitors another way to find your business, interact with your business, and then lead them to your website.
You can even message with visitors through GMB, and when you are ready to do some local advertising, your GMB listing can become a big advantage.
Google is the number one search engine, and if they like businesses to have a GMB listing, then that’s what you should be doing for your business.
If you own a business, you should be setting up a Google My Business account immediately, if you haven’t already done so. It’s free, and relatively easy to do. On GMB, you can list:
Whether you have a brick and mortar business that you want people to come to, or you have an online business that doesn’t even have an office, having a GMB account is essential to being found on the biggest search engine there is.
Here are a few more questions answered from Google themselves, showing you how easy, and important it is to set up a GMB listing for your business.
This seems like a drum that we can never stop beating. Video is a key part of marketing strategies in 2021, and it’s growing every year. Video dominates social media, and has even become a huge contributor to positive SEO.
When you google something, not only do you get articles and webpages in your search results, but you are also now seeing videos delivered that help answer your questions.
With more and more people enjoying video on the internet, it’s essential to the success of your business to create videos as well.
Even when video isn’t the reason people find you, having videos on your website exponentially helps convert visitors to leads. The right video can explain that you have the solution to a visitor’s problem, and convince them that you are the company they need to get in touch with. 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. (Wyzowl)
Video is shared on social media more than ANY other kind of content, and 60% of consumers who made a purchase from a brand found out about them on social media. (Animoto)
I can keep giving you stats that point to video becoming a bigger priority in 2021, but all you have to do is VERY LITTLE research to see how important it is. After reading this I bet you are thinking about just how many videos you come across on your own. And, I’m sure many of them were marketing videos themselves!
Here is a great article highlighting 67 video marketing statistics for 2021.
Videos can be all different lengths, some shorter and to the point, others a little longer and more detailed. The truth is you should have all different kinds of videos, and you should never stop creating them. Case study videos, tutorials, product features, and more.
The more video you are creating, the better chance you have at attracting and converting visitors to leads, and then to customers!
You know when you go to a website and a little box pops up in the corner, offering you someone to chat with? This chat feature has been around for some years now, but it’s bigger than ever and only continues to grow.
This is either a:
This feature does a few things for you:
A chat bot is when you use AI to program and set up a chat feature that doesn’t require a human to be on the other end. This is great for times when no one is in the office, or even just to free up the time someone may use on live chat.
You can program your chat bot to give certain answers, or ask certain questions, based on what the visitor has to say. This can be done through giving options to the visitor to choose from, or it could be a little more intricate, allowing visitors to type in actual text and respond to that.
You can also program a chat bot to get the conversation to a certain point, and then hand it off to a human who can take over the chat.
These are some incredible tools that SO many businesses are starting to use, and could help your business as well!
Lots of potential customers and visitors may not get to your website. But, they could message you in other ways. Facebook, Instagram, and Google are just a few of the places that someone could come across your business, and send you a message.
If you don’t have these channels set up, and someone keeping an eye on them, you may lose out on potential customers who want to speak to you.
It doesn’t take hardly any time to set up, and then turning on notifications to let you know when you receive a message. If you are creating the right content that attracts and grabs the attention of visitors, you may not even need to get them to your site to earn their business.
Make sure you have all these messaging channels established and keep in touch with visitors wherever they contact you from.
Sending out broadcast emails is a great way to generate business. Taking things a step further by sending out more personalized, tailored messages is even better.
If you start sending the same messages to everyone over and over, people will either stop opening them because nothing is geared towards them, or maybe they’ll unsubscribe.
Segmenting your lists will also help you send fewer emails to everyone. No one wants their inbox filled with things they don’t care about, so by segmenting your lists, you can send fewer emails that are more effective, and send the messages you want certain people to recieve.
You can segment your lists in many different ways, unique to your business. You can have lists segmented based on products purchased in the past, or based on how long it’s been since you’ve heard from certain customers.
Segmenting your lists allows you to send messages that speak directly to a certain audience. For instance, suppose you are an HVAC contractor. You sold a bunch of new air conditioning systems in the past year, but not every one of those customers purchased a service plan.
You can send an email to that particular list with a message saying, “The best way to keep your new AC system in tip top shape is with a service plan…”
This message speaks DIRECTLY to people with:
You couldn’t send that message to everyone in your database, because not everyone has a new AC system. And also, a lot of people may already have service plans.
This extra layer of personalization lets the recipient know that you actually know who they are, and have products and services that they need.
Or, suppose you have several messages you want to get to your customers, but not everyone needs to see them all. You can send 3 emails, with 3 different messages, to 3 different segments.
This way, not everyone is getting 3 emails, 2 of which they may not even care about. Instead, most people are getting 1, or maybe 2 of the emails that are more relevant to them, and don’t feel bombarded with messages they don’t care about.
Personalizing an email goes right in step with segmentation. You don’t necessarily need to have your lists segmented to personalize emails, but it can have that effect.
For instance, as long as you have a first name associated with an email address, you can absolutely start the email with, “Hi [first name],” to grab their attention. This is a small bit of personalization.
The list segmenting gets into the next part of personalizing an email. Suppose you sold microphones to record music. You could create a list of people who bought this microphone, and then send them an email with the first name personalization to start, but also a list of recording equipment you may also sell that compliments your microphone.
This email not only has their name in it, but also a reference to what they’ve purchased, and what else they may be interested in that compliments their microphone.
You see, when you segment your customers into different buckets, you can create these tailored messages that not only help you sell more, but also lets your customers know that you care about their interests, and have what they need in the future.
Email Marketing, Content Marketing, Marketing Trends, List Segmentation, chat bots, Google My Business
About the Don Lafferty Jr.: