Since its advent, digital marketing has only been growing, with more and more brands constantly using multiple channels to engage their audiences. Brands actively use available platforms to connect with their audience in a more personalized manner. Web design companies and SEO companies apply various digital strategies to increase online traffic on their websites. Through digital marketing, creative agencies are able to build content and craft different strategies for each platform. Digital marketing is a wide spectrum, ranging across modes of communication that brands can choose. This supports the marketing strategy of creating awareness and spreading brand information to potential consumers and convincing them to purchase the product or service of the brand.
Digital marketing has also played a vital role in creating goodwill for the brand as it allows audience members to have a closer connection with the brand, allowing them to express their opinions, feedback, praise, or complaints. Online reputation management enables the brand to react faster with a solution, thus creating a responsive image for the brand.
Every year, new innovations in digital marketing allow brands more opportunities to connect with and grow their community. Here are a few hacks that you must look into, to grow your brand presence with your online community.
- Engage with Emails
- Instagram shopping
- Reels
- Instagram Pins
- Augmented Reality
- Virtual Reality
- Non Fungible Tokens
- Influencer Marketing
- User Generated Content
- Instagram Filters
- Metaverse
- Artificial Intelligence
1. Engage with Emails:
Brands have been using emails for a while, to inform and educate their potential consumers. However, a redundant message or an email that is not engaging may cause the message to go unopened, ignored or even make the audience unsubscribe from the mailing list. Thus making it very important to have a well-created email strategy and good content in every email.
With Artificial intelligence growing, brands can leverage this technology in their email strategies by drafting subject lines as per the AI recommendations. The AI can suggest a topic based on the previous history and allow the subject line to look more attractive to the reader, making them inquisitive to open the whole message. As AI grows, we can expect more innovations in our emails and you should actively focus on new ways to incorporate the same in your brand’s emails. Automated emails are important as they send out already drafted emails depending on the trigger. Automated emails ensure the email reaches the user when they are ready to receive more information about a particular topic and helps in giving them the required information at the right time. Automated emails are behaviour-driven emails that get activated based on the user’s response to the email communication.
Ensuring the emails are personalized is very important. Even if two people are potential consumers, they may not connect to the same kind of communication and hence it is important to have a good understanding of the audience and personalize their interaction as much as possible.
This allows them to feel more connected and use the CTA as the message concerns their needs.
2. Instagram Shopping:
First introduced in 2020, Instagram Shopping has around 130 million users engaging with the shopping feature posts. This kind of interest has proven that innovation in shopping experiences is welcomed by consumers. It is a great and simple way for brands to showcase their products to users through the app, get higher engagement rates and bring in revenue through conversions.
Instagram shopping allows brands to create visual catalogues on their pages, allowing consumers to see the products like a magazine and navigate their way to purchase the product almost seamlessly.
Visitors can also comment on the posts having tags of products of their interest, thus boosting engagement for the posts.
3. Reels:
Reels have gained massive attention from viewers, making them spend a lot of time-consuming this short form of video content, across various genres. This is a creative way of storytelling and brands have been leveraging reels to educate their audiences in an interactive manner. Additional features such as music and transitions help make the reel even more immersive thus captivating the audience for the short span and conveying the message across. People participate in reels and also share their version of an existing reel. Reels are growing and your brand must constantly share reels on topics that concern your brand and the audience, in order to gain more traction.
Instagram reels are an example of the momentum that reels have gained over time. As per a report, over 675 million people can be reached through ads on Instagram reels. Sharing an average of 5 reels a week is a good way to keep the audience engaged with the brand page. Using reel challenges through reel remixes can help generate a quicker and wider reach. Collaborating on Instagram reels also helps create a wider reach by tapping on a whole follower list of the page that you choose to collaborate with. This is a great way when collaborating with celebrities or influencers as their followers also see the post on their feed, thus increasing the visibility and growing a higher engagement. This helps attract potential consumers.
4. Instagram Pins:
In a recent update on the app, Instagram allows some users to pin posts of their choice on their profile. It is a way of showcasing certain posts right at the beginning of the profile, in order to draw immediate attention to the selected posts. Users can choose to pin and unpin posts from time to time, thus making the profile grid create an illusion of variation.
Brands can leverage this update in their favour, by highlighting posts that they want to bring focus to depending on the marketing requirement.
5. Augmented Reality:
Over the years, multiple brands have integrated augmented reality into their marketing strategies. It is an exciting form of engaging the audiences with the message, by enhancing their interaction through audio-visual elements. Technology advancement has enabled a better AR experience, thus allowing brands to create more efficient AR-based experiences for their audiences. The success of PokemonGo is an example of a seamless AR experience and audience adaptability to AR technology.
With the instruction of the Metaverse, we can only expect more and more brands to leverage AR in their strategies to build a better and more personalized experience for their potential audiences.
6. Virtual Reality:
Virtual reality is an experience that immerses the audience in the digitally created world. The user puts on a headset or a device that supports the virtual space, creating an illusion of entering a virtual space. Although present in their actual physical environment, the audience interacts in their virtual space through interactive audio-visual elements. Technology advancements have helped boost innovation in VR experiences.
Brands can leverage interactive games, creative storytelling, or strategic experiences for their audiences, to engage them in with the brand.
7. Non Fungible Tokens:
We all want to own pieces that are considered to be rare, thus making them feel more valuable. From rare antiques to one-of-a-kind jackets, the desire to own exclusive pieces is never ending and the available choice for purchase are endless. In the era of the digital revolution, we can expect the audience’s behaviour towards purchasing assets to also change. The Non Fungible Tokens are digital assets saved on the blockchain that hold unique identification and cannot be replaced. NFTs can be in the form of visuals, audios, links, etc that are one of a kind. Brands create NFTs to amplify their communication by creating a sense of desire for NFT ownership. Brands such as ADIDAS, Dolce & Gabanna have released NFTs to create a new form of digital communication and boost brand awareness.
NFTs help create a sense of exclusivity by allowing people to own something that is one of a kind, thus making it important for brands to create NFTs that are attractive to the potential purchaser.
8. Influencer Marketing:
In social media marketing, Influencers are content creators on social platforms, whose content is specific to certain topics and they are followed for their knowledge on those subjects. Today influencers are activating various forms of content to send across a message and engage their audiences. Brands constantly activate influencer content as plug-ins in their marketing strategies, to build a higher reach and attract potential audiences. The influencer industry is set to reach $16.4 Billion in 2022. Brands must leverage influencer-led content to increase their post viewers and tap on the influencer’s followers to gain a wider reach and engagement.
9. User Generated Content:
This is a form of digital endorsement wherein the consumers participate in helping the brand amplify its reach and create goodwill for the brand. It is beneficial for the brand as the content is provided by the users on the suggestions provided by the brand, thus reducing time and effort in the strategy. UGC lead content is useful to easily amplify a marketing campaign in a cost-efficient manner. UGC usually creates a form of chain wherein more and more users participate after watching others take part in the campaign.
Brand reposting UGC content is another great way to attract viewers to also participate, in order to get reposted on the brand page.
10. Instagram Filters :
Today, the audience uses Instagram to participate in friendly games available via the filters. Brands can also create filters to encourage the audience to interact with the brand. The filter can be in the form of a game, quiz or as per the creative liberty available for the brand. Many brands have successfully activated Instagram filters for their marketing campaigns. Filters not only create engagement but also increase reach for the brand through UGC content. Audiences record videos of their participation in the AR-based filter games and share them on their individual stories and with their friends. This attracts new visitors who are intrigued to also try the filter and thus interact with the brand through this feature. Filter-based engagements are helpful in building a connection between the brand and audiences.
11. Metaverse
The future of digital interaction, The Metaverse possesses a world of endless possibilities for brands to connect with and engage their audiences. The metaverse is a digital ecosystem of multiple virtual worlds that immerses people in the experiences offered. Brands have the opportunity to create their own spaces in the Metaverse, to attract users and engage them in brand communication through the technologies that support the virtual worlds. Many established brands have already participated in the building never seen experiences for their users.
Your brand should focus on its audience and the kind of product or service of your expertise, and create a digital world where your audiences can experience your brand and immerse in conversations around the subject your brand caters to. Nike, in 2021 created Nikeland, a digital world where users could interact and play games and create a life in that world that focuses on sports and play.
12. Artificial Intelligence
Companies today are focusing on integrated AI technologies in their marketing strategies to boost efficiency and increase customer retention by personalizing their communications seamlessly. Artificial intelligence enables you to build a better and automated communication strategy through a data-driven approach. It uses data collection, data analysis and deep diving into gaining more information about the subject in order to create a sharper understanding of the trend, in order to help you build critical strategies. Audiences have interacted with AI via chatbots available on websites. Starbucks has used AI in its marketing to be able to predict consumer behaviour and craft personalized messages to the consumer. Through the Loyalty Cards and Mobile app, Starbucks gains data on the consumer’s purchase behaviour and uses this data for predictive analysis. After having a better understanding and analysis of the consumer, they are able to send personalized communication to the customer.
With time and technology, we can expect AI to also grow and enable brands to create automated communication that provides a personalized experience for the users.
Today, with the growth in technology and the various marketing channels available, it is easy to get lost in the variety and lose sight of the right communication strategy. Hence it is important to ensure that you choose the channels that bring your marketing message or campaign closer to your audience and in a manner that supports your brand tonality and heritage. It is essential to select channels that quickly and efficiently reach your message to your audience. 2022 has seen brands use various trends in marketing and their success shows that the audiences are reciprocating to new trends in the marketing industry.
Brijesh Jakharia co-founded SPINX Digital in 2005 and takes great pride in crafting web and mobile marketing solutions for mid-market businesses to enterprises. Marketing is his passion, and the thrill to build a brand from the ground up has helped him craft successful brand stories for world-class clients. While not at work, he loves to spend his time on research and reading digital content stories.