Gaining Consumer Attention

In today’s digital age, it can either be a piece of cake or a seemingly impossible task to get noticed. Modern media channels such as Facebook and Instagram make it easier than ever to share information and engage with your audience. However, the downside of social media can be over-saturation. It can be difficult for businesses to stand out and tiresome for consumers to deal with a constant barrage of ads and information, so it is important to make content that consumers want to see and interact with.

Be Present

Being present is more than having a website or social media account, it’s actively engaging with consumers by using and updating those channels. Similarly, it is important to make your content accessible. Using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and collecting and analysing data, like the amount of views and interactions your account, website and content have, can easily allow a business to see its weaknesses and areas for improvement

SMS IS COOL AGAIN

Yes, you heard right: reaching your customers via text message is the way to go next year. According to SEO expert Neil Patel, the main reasons to revisit SMS marketing in 2020 lie in the fact text messages have an extremely high open rate and the best engagement rate of all marketing mediums.

• Bypassing a customer’s inbox with a text message will likely yield a better or more immediate outcome. Campaigns can also be tracked and optimised in amazing detail, thanks to a huge choice of data-rich analytics platforms.
• Before launching a timed voucher or loyalty-based SMS campaign, remember that you’ll always need a customer’s written opt-in first.

CALLING ALL CHATBOTS

The AI bot world of 2020 is set to be a brave new frontier. Typically found on a business’ landing page, a chatbot is a computer program that can interact with human visitors to the site, answering their questions and redirecting their queries all-day, everyday!

– We can’t deny there’s an initial creep factor when conversing with a chatbot. According to a report by Mindshare UK, 60% of people agree ‘it would feel patronising if a chatbot started by asking how my day is going’ – add us to this statistic! But once a universal lingua franca of chatbots is established and more conversations happen, the rewards will be game-changing.

– Guaranteed to smash previous customer service targets, your chatbot is built from the ground up to provide a more consistent, efficient and cost-effective standard of customer service. In terms of productivity and operations, the absence of annual leave, benefits and bathrooms makes bots the ultimate boost to the bottom line in 2020.

LOCAL MARKETING IN 2020

As a full-service agency based in Wollongong NSW, we’re proud to offer expertise and experience in both regional and metro markets in Australia. A common reason why many businesses engage us is to meet an urgent business objective within their own local market.

Success on your home turf can be decided on factors like creating brand awareness, building and nurturing the right customer base, establishing a profile in the local business network and making connections with local media to improve your presence and reputation.

But according to Forbes, technology is empowering local businesses with powerful tools to tackle some high-level digital marketing activity themselves. Be it custom audience retargeting through Facebook or Google or the ability to retarget anyone who visits your website, 2020 will see even more industry-level functionality placed directly in the hands of local business owners.

• Local Influencer Marketing is the trend we’re excited about in a crowded, self-proclaimed influencer market. Serving a gap in the market, local influencers have a clear purpose. Similar to micro influencers, the local variety typically has around 2,000-5,000 engaged followers on social media. But the key distinction is the fact they genuinely live, work, and play in a specific area. Forbes sees great potential for local influencer marketing, especially in categories like beauty services and dog grooming. But as always, it’s crucial to research the right influencer for your brand and if signed, maintain an accountable and professional business relationship.
• Although it’s not mentioned by Forbes, we think local influencers eliminate our biggest bugbear when collaborating with mega, macro or even micro influencers. Instead of the mega influencer’s portrait of sublime yet unattainable perfection, your trusted local influencer has built their smaller but spirited following based on a shared sense of place, community, and familiarity. This group is highly desirable for local businesses. Local influencers may also sell a stylised narrative but unlike a Kardashian mansion, at least this image is closer to home and appears somewhat attainable – which is only good news for the local marketplace.

How It’s Affecting Brands

Back to our Holden versus Ford analogy and you only have to look at the Australian car industry to see how customers can easily fall out of love with your brand. At its peak in 1960 Holden enjoyed a 30% market share. By 2018 they accounted for only 5% of all vehicles sold in Australia. How did this happen and what can we learn as marketers?

It’s important to keep up to date with your customer’s needs and how the market is evolving. In Holden’s case they didn’t respond to the market or the competition, thinking things would swing back in favour of the once-loved Commodore. However, Australian tastes had changed and the emotional connection to the brand had wavered.

How to Market in an Age of Disloyalty?

Don’t get too comfy – your brand needs to stay relevant otherwise you will find yourself in a Kodak moment. Stay on the pulse of the latest trends, engage with your customers, listen to their needs and be willing to adapt if required. Brand loyalty is linked to psychological needs and emotional triggers, and some of the best brands have found success because they have built a community or they provide a great customer experience.

If only 8% of global customers consider themselves brand loyal, then as a brand you need to think bigger so that you appeal to a larger pool of your customers. Consider focusing on customer retention strategies (onboarding, loyalty schemes, feedback loops, personalised communications), product/service extensions or new products. It’s also important to stay in tune with innovation and to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing.

WHAT IS SEO?

Here’s the most simple explanation: Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) is the practice of writing content on your website that is relevant and helpful for your prospective customers, with the added bonus of ranking highly in search engines such as Google and Bing.

But SEO can also describe certain ways we tweak your existing content such as the words and images on your website (let’s refer to this as on-page or front-of-house) and specific technical elements of your website through your CMS (let’s call this back-of-house).

By adopting good SEO practices on both the front and back of your website, it can easily be indexed by Google and checked for relevancy to a particular topic. And so theoretically, when someone searches for your particular product or service, Google will place you higher up in the list of organic search results – which is still considered “money-can’t-buy.”

Why is it SO important for your business?

What’s the first thing you do when you need something? Whether it’s a product, service, or a trivial fact to win an argument, the first thing your customers will probably do is Google it.

This means that when your customers are in the market for your product, you need to show up in the search results. Make no mistake: Google is becoming a massively integral part of the customer’s decision making process from researching which products to buy, at what price and through which means. While advertising is possible through paid search campaigns, it’s so important for your business to be on that list of organic search results that Google produces. This is incredibly valuable real estate online that still can’t be bought.

How to do it?

We recommend that you contact an SEO Agency, like Waples, to discuss how best to approach SEO on your website, however if you wish to tackle it yourself, here are some tips:

Be the Customer

• Think about what the customer might be thinking when they are starting to search – what questions do they want answered? What phrases are they most likely to search? Think about the questions you get asked every day. This is your list of keywords that you should be implementing into everything from your headlines to landing page copy and blog posts.

Think Content

• When you have a clear idea about what your customers are searching for – tailor your website content to cater to their needs. The more relevant your website is to their search, the higher you will rank.

Be Natural

• There’s an industry term known as ‘keyword stuffing’ – that’s when you see a website that tries to put as many search terms in the website copy as it can.
• Google checks how readable your site is for humans, and will penalise your site if you try to game the system.
• The best way to get around this is to write genuine content that really engages and helps your readers.

Can we help your business benefit from SEO? Contact Waples today.

CONTENT CREATION

This is where the fun begins. Get creative with a go-to platform like Canva which allows you to easily create social graphics using drop and drag style, pre-built templates. You can access some templates for free or upgrade to the paid version to unlock more features. If you want to create your own memes try Word Swag, a mobile app that allows you to pair images with various typography styles. Create is another gem worth trying. It allows you to develop stylish designs and graphics – even Snapchat geo-filters. Best of all, Create is free!

VIDEO & ANIMATION

Most social videos are now watched without sound, so if you have audio in your video you should consider adding subtitles. Luckily there are apps available that allow you to generate subtitles without the need for manually entering a script. For live video, apps like Clipomatic  add subtitles as you record. For pre-recorded video content, Caption This automatically generates subtitles for your videos.

To get creative with your Instagram and Facebook stories, why not add some animation? You can have some serious fun with your content by using apps such as MOJO and InStories.

IMAGE EDITING

You can shoot and edit images like a pro with image editing app MuseCam, which allows you to adjust tone, perspective and depth. Halide is another great image editing app that turns your smart phone into a professional camera. Alternatively, you can turn back time and add a bit vintage flair to your images with Meitu.

WHY EARNED MEDIA IS IMPORTANT

Earned media is a trusted and credible third party source of content for your brand. Whether it’s a friend’s recommendation or endorsement through published content, the level of trust and authority bestowed on this message far exceeds any sales message.

Earned media also delivers cut-through messaging to your audience which can be amplified across multiple platforms in traditional and digital media.

With topical content, your brand can begin trending across social. When stories are placed across social platforms, the quantity and reach of earned media is expedited through tagging, the use of hashtags and content sharing.

HOW EARNED MEDIA FITS WITHIN THE CHANNEL MIX

It’s important earned media forms part of a bigger plan and is used in tandem with your owned and paid media strategy. It is an additional channel to drive awareness, amplify messaging and build brand excitement with your audience.

You can link earned content into your marketing strategy across owned assets by sharing a news story on your website or reposting an influencer’s endorsement across your social pages.

Where many brands falter in obtaining earned media is in failing to create a compelling story.  Forget the sales pitch and develop a strong media story like community initiatives, innovations or business milestones.

We also think valuable content should aim to ‘convert’ an audience. Here are four additional takeaways from the team at Waples:

THINK OF CONTENT MARKETING AS A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT

The popularity of content marketing comes at a time when traditional advertising isn’t producing the same cut-through. As audiences become increasingly tech-savvy, they are also presented with more content consumption opportunities on more screens and with more competition for their attention.

In a digital-first era, these prospects do much of the pre-purchase research themselves – so content that speaks directly to this stage of the customer journey can yield a profound effect. However, this process must be seen as a long-term investment. But don’t despair – the outcomes of this relationship-building exercise are enormous; improving brand recall, developing trust and gaining higher quality leads are just a few.

DO WHAT YOU DO BEST

Your brand has something unique to offer. It could be the relatable and helpful tone of voice used throughout all your content, a series of interesting how-to articles or even providing a ‘behind the scenes’ look at your business with video and photo content. Don’t be afraid to stand out from your competitors.

Your buyer is intelligent; and ‘borrowing’ ideas and design from what’s already out there will only show your lack of expertise and a unique point of view. Whether it’s committed deliberately or not, plagiarism just adds to the overall noise – lowering your SEO ranking and making it more difficult to stand out.

PROVIDE VARIETY, BUT BE SPECIFIC

It might sound counter-intuitive but let us explain; one of content marketing’s key benefits is delivering consistent brand messaging across a broad range of content types. The most common approach is producing a blog or article on your website and leveraging this across social media channels. But maybe your target audience would engage better with an eBook, Research Report or Webinar instead?

Experiment with various types of content to find the right mix for your business and marketing outcomes. But remember to adhere to the standards of your intended channel. For example, a visually-rich social media channel such as Instagram is suited to compelling photos and videos and a unique perspective, rather than anything too text-heavy or promotional. On LinkedIn, stay professional, industry-aware and accountable with everything you post or share.

ADOPT A CONTENT MARKETING CHAMPION’S MENTALITY

The real benefits of content marketing require time and investment. But producing material to satisfy your audience online inevitably increases your brand awareness. As you build a personal library of usable content that’s not time-sensitive, you’ll also have a way to increase your reach in an economical way through content repurposing.

Turning brand awareness into brand recall and preference requires a champion’s approach. It starts with the basics: Research your buyer and create original, high-quality content to satisfy them. But these tips are only the tip of the iceberg in the Titanic of content marketing. There are a number of proven ways to enhance your strategy including:

• using social media to promote owned content.
• implementing SEO techniques to improve your website’s ranking on Google.
• aligning your content marketing and PR strategies.

At Waples, we can conveniently take care of this all under the one roof. It’s here where a content marketing agency can really power-up your campaign. To reach your content marketing objectives, it’s crucial to produce the right content for your target audience, publish it strategically and continually optimise it to improve engagement.

It also helps to work in tandem with a digital specialist to ensure your campaign works together. This could mean implementing a range of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) techniques to improve your website ranking on Google, or having a skilled writer familiar with your brand and its target audience on-hand to write impactful SEM (Search Engine Marketing) ads.

Get in touch with our Waples team to start developing your unqiue content marketing strategy today!