As every inbound marketer knows, marketing is a constantly evolving discipline. What works today might show less promising results tomorrow. What is Inbound Marketing or Marketing Automation today? New trends are emerging as quickly as the technology to support them can be developed and released. And if you want to stay on top of your game, you need to continually evaluate and adjust your priorities to ensure your marketing efforts continue to bear fruit.
Are you ready to review your to-do list? Here are a few key marketing trends to consider when updating your priorities.
Key Trends to Consider for Your Inbound Marketing
1. Less Obtrusive Advertising
We've all encountered the infernally annoying presence of pop-up ads while browsing the web. It's a pet peeve for many, who find the intrusive presence of pop-ups disparate to their interests a frustrating part of their online experience. Enter the ad-blocker – best friend to those who revile pop-up ads, and worst enemy to marketers who've spent time putting ads together that are being stopped short.
Going forward the real winners will be those marketers that are able to seamlessly integrate their advertising with the UX of their users, without disrupting it.
2. Marketing Automation is On the Rise
Marketing automation is an invaluable service that more marketers are beginning to see as indispensable to their success going forward. Using integrated marketing and CRM software like HubSpot helps marketers focus on their buyers’ journeys with greater attention, and to improve the customer lifecycle from engaging with prospects to nurturing and qualifying them as leads, and taking right through to becoming happy customers. Marketing automation and CRM software also facilitates the generation of plenty of data, which can be used to obtain greater budgets for marketing and to make informed decisions about the efficacy of all marketing activities.
3. Customer Experience Comes to the Forefront
Inbound marketing is, at its core, about meeting the needs and pain points of your target audience. However, many marketers have spent years focusing their efforts on advertising and forms of non-interactive communication, neither of which does a good job of reaching out and engaging with target buyer personas. It's time to turn this on its head and focus on using integration tools to take brand/prospect relationships to the next level.
But what about those customers who were inundated with advertising and messages? Use them. How? By giving them an out-of-this-world customer experience and transforming them into brand ambassadors, and using their feedback through closer post-sales support and interaction to work on boosting your conversion rates.
4. Decisions Need to be Data-Driven
We're huge believers in the power of data. In the past, marketers made judgment calls based on personal preferences, hunches, moments of potential genius (or not) and past mistakes. But things have progressed since then, and now there's no excuse for not using the data you're generating with your marketing efforts to make more informed, strategically aligned decisions.
Smart and successful marketers are the ones who are able to leverage data and metrics to their advantage, making their efforts more effective and targeted, and identifying areas of weakness to be addressed.
5. Social Media is Becoming Everyone's Thing
Before, the individuals working social media as a channel on behalf of a company or brand constituted primary of marketers acting on the brand's behalf. But the times are changing, and forward-thinking marketers are looking to encourage the use of social media as a toolset for the rest of the organisation, encouraging employees to get involved as social advocates for the brand.
Business is personal in nature, and far greater trust exists between peers and network connections than between total strangers. Social advocacy by employees can add greater depth and weight to interactions, and provide opportunities from improved recruitment to improved customer care and experience.
6. Budgets are Becoming Smarter
Thanks by and large to improved data and better metrics, it’s possible for marketers to begin allocating budgets with more accuracy, as well as being able to request budget increases from c-suite with data-driven reasoning. Because of all the data at their disposal, marketers can focus their budgets on areas of greater efficacy and use their resources to achieve greater results.
7. Sales and Marketing are Uniting
Bettering your customers’ experiences and improving your marketing means putting aside the often tumultuous relationship between Sales and Marketing teams and uniting them to see working well towards generating better qualified leads and to delight current customers into becoming evangelists for your brand.
8. New Technologies are on the Rise
Marketers are turning their gaze towards new channels that are offering up unique marketing opportunities. These include Snapchat, Slack and 3D or virtual reality channels. While the latter might still be more of a novelty, there are signs of it moving towards a more mainstream presence, and it offers marketers the chance to come up with some unique activities.
9. Integrate Your Traditional Marketing Experiences With Inbound Marketing
Mix things up by combining marketing channels and tools effectively. Share effective, informative content with the world through relevant mediums such as blogs, social channels and press releases. If you are running a print advertisement or designing a business card, include a website landing page URL.
