Three marketing trends that start-ups can learn from big brands
When start-ups are in the early stage of their development, one the main focus areas of their marketing strategy is lead generation. This is essential to get commercial traction and start building a funnel of opportunities. Founding teams are still experimenting with their unique selling points, and they try to engage customers and spread their message through different channels. As they scale, they start the long process of building their brand; to accelerate this phase and save time, they can learn a number of best practices from big brands.
Three marketing trends are currently becoming essential to connect with ever-shifting audiences and improve prospects of resonating with them. These are: emphasising corporate, social responsibility, increasing transparency with peer-to peer reviews, and adopting on demand, bite size communication.
Emphasising corporate, social responsibility
Doing business in a socially responsible manner, and setting high standards when it comes to diversity and social causes has become an integral part of measuring success. This is all the more important as global companies expand in emerging markets where legislation and business practices lag behind those in the western economies.
Numerous consumers surveys have shown that when a company reflects social responsibility goals, customers say they feel better about buying their products. A study by Unilever for example shows that “a third of consumers (33%) are now choosing to buy from brands they believe are doing social or environmental good”(1).
By supporting a diverse workforce and championing local causes, a start-up can do more than boost public perception of its nascent brand, it can also attract young job seekers, especially millennials who care about working for companies that align with their values.
Increasing transparency with peer-to-peer reviews
Today’s consumers and business leaders want marketing messages that are not misleading. They want the information they receive to be grounded in the real world, proven and tested. These needs have been exacerbated by the recent climate of fake news, and social posts. This can lead to additional scrutiny and longer sales and adoption cycles. It is very easy for new companies and large brands alike to produce best in class marketing material including websites, well written copy and airbrushed images that convey perfect and idyllic expectations. Customers are increasingly aware of this reality and are adjusting their behavior.
The best response to this situation is to amplify the customer’s voice because customers trust other customers. Opinions, reviews and recommendations shared by existing customers help rebuild the missing atmosphere of trust. This is why we see a proliferation of peer to peer recommendation sites everywhere. Authenticity and truthfulness are rewarded and have a much better chance of resonating with customers and gaining their approval. Start-ups can gain precious time by making plans and provisions to take advantage of this from day one of their marketing strategy.
Adopting on demand, bite size communication
Customer expectations are changing fast. With the ubiquity of internet, mobile devices, apps and social media, we are now constantly online. We can access an ever-increasing amount of information any time and anywhere. As consumers and business users, we expect to interact with companies in a similar manner. When we research a product or a solution, or when we follow-up on a purchase, we expect our questions and queries to be addresses quickly and at any time of the day. This is changing fundamentally the way businesses interact with customers and this has also profound implications on their operations and infrastructure.
Chatbots are one type of tools that has been tipped to help address this challenge and deal with the ever-increasing load of queries that need to be responded to in real time. These interactive platforms make use of artificial intelligence (AI) to replicate human conversations, and they take the form of live chats, emails, social media and SMS exchanges. Investing early in such tools can be a decisive advantage in managing website visitors and prospects who are researching specific aspects of a solution.
Furthermore, we continue to see customer attention span decreasing, with clear preference for brief and concise visual content. This has a direct impact on how businesses communicate and how they present their marketing messages.
Video has become one of the preferred and most effective marketing channels, grabbing the attention of customers who are increasingly mobile. This trend will continue to grow, and a Cisco study projects that online video content will represent more than 80% of all web traffic by 2021 (2). It is therefore essential that new companies introduce new and inventive ways to tell their story and share their message leveraging this medium. In addition to that, Microsoft also found that the average person’s attention span has now dropped to about eight seconds (3), which means that videos need to be quite short and snappy to retain their full impact.
An increasing number of business today leverage YouTube for example, to post short videos, from adverting clips to tutorials and more specific product descriptions. They hope for viewers to gain a better understanding of their products, remember them longer, share with others, and generate inbound leads.
These trends open interesting avenues for startups to accelerate the development of their marketing functions and improve lead generation.
-2- http://uk.businessinsider.com/heres-how-much-ip-traffic-will-be-video-by-2021-2017-6
