Four Marketing Strategies To Keep You On Top In 2021

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: 

  1. Google My Business
  2. Video Marketing
  3. Live Chat And Chat Bots
  4. List Segmentation And Personalization

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

Google My Business Is Essential To Your Online MarketingGoogle 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: 

  1. Your location
  2. Hours of operation
  3. Your products and services
  4. Updates about your business
  5. Posts about specials and what’s going on
  6. Pictures 
  7. Your website
  8. Reviews

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. 

How To Set Up A Google My Business Account

Video Marketing

Creating Videos Is Great For Social, SEO, And All Your Marketing EffortsThis 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! 

3 HVAC Video Ideas

Live Chat and Chat Bots

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: 

  1. Live person who works at the company, and is chatting with you in real time, or 
  2. A chat bot that is programmed and designed to answer questions based on the visitors’ interactions. 

This feature does a few things for you: 

  1. It allows you to speak to visitors quickly - Sometimes a visitor may come to your site and leave. Sometimes they fill out a form that requests someone contact them. With a live chat feature, you can let these people identify themselves and talk while they are READY to talk. It happens so often that people will visit a site and if they can’t find the answer to their question they leave. If you have a way for them to ask the question, you can engage them immediately.

    There are also tons of cases of someone filling out a form, then being unresponsive once the company reaches out to get in touch with them. If there is a chat feature, they don’t have to fill out a form and wait, they can speak right away, and forgo the game of phone tag you may play.
  2. Allows you to speak to a visitor before they speak with a competitor - That visitor that leaves your site after they can’t find the answer to their question often goes right to a competitor to find this same information. Instead of allowing them to fall through your fingers, you are giving them a chance to ask you the question, and they don’t even have to leave your homepage. Even if it doesn’t result in a high quality lead, or maybe they get the answer and still decide to visit a competitor, it allows you that first touch before they can go seek the answers elsewhere.
  3. Capture a little information about a visitor who may not be ready to speak to a salesperson yet - For instance, if someone is researching around your site for the price of a new AC system, they may not want to go through the process of speaking to a salesperson just yet. They probably just want a little information before they start making decisions and talking to salespeople.

    If there is a live chat feature, they may be able to ask a simple question over the internet, where there isn’t the pressure of having a salesperson in their home, or having to speak on the phone. This can allow you to answer their question, and even get their name and email so you can stay in touch with them after the chat. 

Using a Chat Bot

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! 

Messaging on Social Media and Google

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. 

List Segmentation and Personalization 

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: 

  1. New AC systems 
  2. No service plan 

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. 

Download Your Email Campaign Guide

Adding Personalization

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

Don Lafferty Jr.

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