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Top Content Marketing Trends to look out for in 2018

Post author By binadmin
Post date 28 Jan 2018

After reading and Experience of last year’s working closely with clients, we have found out that there are two things which very much critical for any Brand to stay on top in 2018

1) Relevant Content Creation as per Customer Persona
2) Mapping or Distributing Content according to Buyer’s Journey

So let’s find it, which are the trends to watch for the year 2018

1) Creation of Niche content

This means if Brands wants to stand out then they have to drill down or have to take deep dive to understand their ideal customers and its behavior. They have to do customer segmentation and deliver the content according to the journey customers are into.

What Brand can do to follow this trend?

So for Exp: If you are targeting Travelers then instead of targeting “Top Travelling Destination” Brand has to be specific on “Top Adventure Vacation for Couples”

A Brand who is into fitness and bodybuilding should explore niche target audience to start with rather than generic. What we suggest by this, instead of targeting Bodybuilding they can identify targets like Bodybuilding for 40+ Dads

2) Adaptation of Voice based search or Content

According to Garner predication, the world is moving to screen less search, recent trends have been seen that younger people have started using voice search on their mobile. It means that your future customers are more likely to use Voice search or Voice Assistant like Google or Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa.

What Brands can do?

Since there is always a difference between the way we speak the way we type, brands have to adapt to natural language search. Instead of focusing on particular keywords, a brand needs to focus on long tail phrases or answering questions the way Human speak to each other.

Few thing a Brand can do

Create more relevant content with long and specific phrases
While keeping in mind keywords they have to keep word which speaks to naturally
Majority of Voice search is from mobile so have to see content presented very on Mobile devices (Mobile Friendly)
For Local “near me” searches, brand has to optimize their content as per local language

3) Smaller but relevant content

It was recommended earlier that if your article is long and having more than 3000 words, it’s more likely be featured on search engines. This is all good if your intention is to rank in SERPs, but remember nowadays social is driving more traffic then lengthy content.

People prefer to consume same content via Videos or Visuals rather than reading them on mobile

What Brands can do?

Create Infographic
Create Videos related to relevant topics, which can be shared via Social Media Channels easily

4) Change of Influence Marketing

Past all research shows that 90% of people trust on a recommendation by individuals over brands. Even Google trends show steady growth on the influencer marketing YoY basis we are not denying that influencer marketing is one the key areas of the Brand which needs to be addressed while they make their marketing strategy.

But we recommend that instead of aiming for volume, a brand needs to identify influence which has common values and target audience. So key aspect needs to be addressed rather then connecting them only for promotion of Brand or product, a brand needs to collaborate with them for a long-term

What Brands can do?

Identify Kep influencer based on Product or objective
Create a Campaign directed to that Influencer
A Brand can create secondly campaign for influencer to drive awareness
Regularly track metrics related to awareness, sales, and Engagement

5) Transparency to Customer

Younger Audience is tired of Push Advertising. They want to associate with Brand which has a transparent approach in terms of communication. So For Exp if the Brand is talking about Organic Food then they want to have more information as well as want to see practically brand guidelines related organic living, health or food

What Brands can do?
A Brand can associate or accredited themselves with some government authority for regulations.
Even Brand release certain research or whitepaper, or do events on a line which they want to position themselves. This way customer directly associates with brand

6) Video will continue rise

Rather than reading large content people prefer to consume video on that natural languages, they can associate them very well. All the content which Brands is creating in form of text should be transferred and convey via video.

What Brand Can do?

A Brand can create Youtube channel where they can explain the feature of products or Application of products or Unboxing and Product demonstration can be done. A video has always been a very interactive form of communication on the internet.

Brand can also cover their events or seminar via Live Video on Facebook or Educate Customer by taking Seminars

Even Interactive Question and Answers Sessions also going to be very helpful

7) Creating and Marketing Content Mapping Buyer Persona

Nowadays cost of acquiring a new customer and retaining them is very vital for Brands. CRM play an important role in retaining existing customers. It becomes necessary for a brand to create a content strategy which engages the audience throughout their life cycle if form email or connecting them to Social media or traditional channels.

Here is what brands can do

Creating details buyer persona with their Demographic and Psychographic
Mapping the Content around customer Journey and communicating with them on each stage Reach, Action Covert, and Engagement. All stages will require different set of content to be created for customers

That’s all for now

Let us know your feedback on above content marketing trends? Which one do you prefer for your Brand? and Why?

Quick guide to Competitor Analysis for your Social Media Strategy

Ecommerce

Post author By binadmin
Post date 26 Jul 2017

Social media strategies are used by organizations today to plan a strategic plan that will help them to improve on their products and boost the sales. However, much is important, to stay on par with the competition. If you are really looking forward, you must see what your competitors are doing, that will give you a glimpse and help you identify strategic opportunities. Given below are different types of competitor’s analysis that will help you out with social media strategy:

Glimpse on competitor’s activities – When you look at what your competitor is doing, you might get a clear view scope of the social activities they are performing. You can only do this by checking on their profiles, the campaigns they are doing, comments, content on their accounts, etc.You can get wider information once you act like their customer and start posing them with questions and see how often they are responding. If the replies are same for all, it means the replies are set to automatic.The below screenshot shows a Twitter feed of 3 leading US apparel retailers, it shows visual similarities on their profiles. The first two shows a high visual content while the last is more on textual updates on their timeline.

It may look worthy for some while not for others. The objective is to get as much engagement as possible. The brands that are constantly engaging with clients have higher visitors. The following questions will give previews about what brands can foresee through their findings:
- Core channels that organizations are focusing on.
- How are competitors using the channels to meet their goals to meet the sales, engagement and customer services
- Frequency of the updates
- Personal and automated updates
- What content is used and how
- What tailored content is each channel preparing.
Assessing their social role in providing customer service – Social media plays a vital role today in aligning your brand with what customers want. Using social media is a good means to reach out to your customers. The brand BT has dedicated its Twitter account to provide customer care than marketing. The companies seek better understanding of their customers by gathering the tweets and use them to improve their services. The Harvard Business review suggests that 46% tweets had no response in Feb 2014 as compared to 38% in Feb 2015.
There are several things you can see after studying your competitors profile details. You can check if they are responding well to the complaints made, the tone and response style they are using, etc. if the competitors are poor in responding to customers than you know what their weakness is and quickly take this advantage and give customers what they are looking for. Ask yourself this question and you will have an answer:
- Check if competitors provide separate customer service other than marketing
- Do they provide personalization with the initials of people posting
- Do they respond to negative comments
- Do they provide constructive help to customer queries
Assessing competitor’s strengths and weaknesses – You cannot have it all so the best potion is to rely on a structured approach than comparing competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. You should be looking for following things:
- What is the good thing that everyone else is doing
- What are customers responding to
Identifying what customers like to respond to – A smart marketer would exactly know the difference between being socially active and being active and engaged with the audiences. The success for a brand is correct when it has engaged with its audience. You can go through your competitor’s profiles and find some information to see which of the updates are most followed and liked by their followers:
- Check which of the posts have most tweets, retweet or replies on Twitter
- What posts on Facebook has most likes and comments
- What content formats gets the best engagements
- What content style does get attention from the people
After a thorough study, you will know what works good or bad in a social media content plan. Whatever your audiences love, you should be doing that. Make use of the content that you collect online to find most likes, tweets, any particular post that became too popular suddenly, etc. given below is a quick analyze to visualize the opportunities.
- Big Win – in this case, the competitors are not active but engagement is high
- Loss Leader – the engagement is high along with competitor’s activity. You need to compete, it shall take more resource effort with lower ROI
- Space filler – the customer activity is low and competitors are not doing much either. Your brand can be a market leader by engaging smaller audiences.
- Low value – there is high competitor activity with low customer interest.
Use the knowledge to make your own strategy – Read the above sentence very well, by that it doesn’t mean you replicate what your competitors are doing. If all brands are doing the same, what incentive does the audience have for following one particular brand? After studying their social activities, you need to learn your own lessons, think of the good things they are at. Your only objective is to add up value.
Customers can react strongly to campaigns they don’t feel linked with or the brand matching their vision. The below example shows Fraser’s #Emojinal campaign, that divided customer opinion and attracted a lot of negative feedback. It wasn’t a bad campaign but it looked quite different than its core styling.

You can get very good insights from competitor’s examples, the competitor analysis will help you shape your strategy. Do not copy anything! But you can surely take some elements from their successful campaigns and apply it on your marketing activity to make sure that those elements perfectly align with your goals and vision.