With the year 2014 on the very near horizon, many of us have started thinking about the upcoming business year and deciding how to keep our business competitive and profitable.
As a marketing expert, one of the best ways I find to keep ahead of the cure is to educate myself on what trends are developing and how they might help me reach my target audience.
I’d like to share with you the following infographic as it highlights the increased use of tools like company videos and social media, but also communicates three overarching trends you can implement in your marketing for 2014:
1. Visual marketing is a must: With so much virtual noise competing for everyone’s attention, consumers want to be able to understand your message very quickly, rather than reading through paragraphs of text. And, as large portions of your audience are visual learners, you can safely guess that all of your audience would appreciate being engaged, if not outright entertained, by your marketing. Think about how you market your business, could you implement promotional videos into your marketing plan and adjust your website to enhance the visual experience?
2. Your audience wants to feel connected to your brand: Consumers don’t just want to know your product, they want to feel like they know YOU as a business and as a brand. If companies with blogs and customer testimonials see larger traffic than counterparts who don’t employ these tactics, an argument could be made that there is a disparity in consumers feeling personally connected to one company’s brand over the competition.
3. Your audience has to be able to find you: People have so much access to information via the internet, smartphones and social media. Many consumers do their homework prior to making any decisions around where to spend their time and money. Your brand has to not only communicate your message very quickly, but the message must live where your future customer will find it. So get listed, get social and be easily accessible.
Do you agree with these trends? If so, are you already using these tactics, or plan to in the New Year? How can you leverage them further to reach your audience? I look forward to your comments below.
CreativeWorks Marketing 