It is safe to say that by now we have partially adapted to the new normal lifestyle. The pandemic has been both emotionally and financially hard on people.
Businesses around the world are dealing with fluctuations in terms of revenue and capital. But we see no setbacks in their efforts for marketing as we notice modern methods evolving on a daily basis in the field of online marketing.
The marketing strategies need proper budget planning but it might be difficult to allocate sufficient budget during the crisis. So a business funding could be a considerable option to tackle financial difficulties in the pandemic.
Numerous investors are searching for an opportunity to earn in return, it is all highly influenced in your search for how to pitch your business idea.
Online marketing is one of the important activities of the founder’s journey which cannot be unestimated even during the 2020 crisis. So here are few modern methods of online marketing:
1. The Next Big Thing: Artificial Intelligence(AI)
Artificial intelligence is majorly influencing digital marketing nowadays. Relevancy and personalization play a vital role in the conversion.
With the help of artificial intelligence, brands could easily connect with potential customers. AI can collect data, analyze it, learn from it, and then finally use that data for personalizing purchase experience.
Artificial Intelligence may surpass humans when it comes to CRM (Customer relationship management) as AI can collect huge amounts of data in a short amount of time.
Some latest applications of AI in online marketing:
- Automation in emails
- In communication like chatbots
Businesses around the world have already partially adopted AI in their online marketing strategies. Some of the applications involving AI are discussed further in the blog.
2. Role of Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has some trace of traditional marketing as it involves celebrity endorsement. Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using social media’s influencers to drive traffic for conversion.
Influencers could be hired by either directly paying them or gifting free products after which the influencer will review your product on his/her social media platform and ultimately the brand’s awareness is boosted.
Undoubtedly most relevant social media platforms for influencer marketing currently are Instagram and Facebook. 78 percent of marketers choose Instagram posts most effective for influencer marketing.
On Instagram some common activities which influencer prefers to do for marketing are:
- Promoting products or services on the story(a general feature of Instagram)
- Interactive contents like polls or ratings
- Directing potential customers to the conversion page of the website
We may conclude that influencer marketing is a modern method of driving customer loyalty to your brand online.
3. Unique Searching Methods
With the evolution of technology, we address a change in searching methods for the last few years. Here is the list of some new searching methods and their effects on the online marketing strategies.
i. Image/Visual Search
As the name suggests, users can upload an image to conduct a search and get the relevant result accordingly.
Visual search has some extraordinary features like taking the live photo of an object or product and finding out where to buy exactly the same or similar product online. Google lens and Pinterest lens are some known tools for visual search.
ii. Voice Search
Continuing the popular trend of 2019, voice search has once again influenced online marketing strategies. The use of voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google is majorly increasing day by day because these assistants are standard house appliances now.
An online marketer needs to optimize the long-tail keywords according to the voice queries. The long-tail keywords optimization should be very specific to the user’s voice commands.
4. Retargeting Your Customers
i. The Evergreen: Email Marketing
Email marketing has always been a part of online marketing. A recent study suggests that around 80 percent of marketers have reported an increase in email engagement over the past 12 months. Experts also believe in email marketing:
“Email has an ability many channels don’t- creating valuable, personal touches – at scale” – David Newman
“Out of all of the channels I tested as a marketer, email continually outperforms most of them” – Neil Patel
With the current competition in the market, an email without being personalized has no value. Every customer expects the brand to talk with them separately.
Such kinds of expectations are sometimes hard to fulfill as the email list might be vast or the process of personalizing each email may take a lot of time. So here the role of AI automation in email marketing comes into play.
Al can help a marketer to analyze their customer’s online behavior, various engaging activities, and even the purchasing history. Then you can retarget that customer through an email in the form of product recommendation and significantly increase the conversion rate of your website.
ii. Display Advertisements
Display ads are the most relevant form of a retargeting method for potential customers. Display Advertisement is a form of advertising which conveys your message in the form of graphics, creative text, videos, and logos. Display advertisements follow some complex mechanism but in easy words, it tends to make use of cookies, which varies from user to user.
We are addressing a few use cases for AI-powered systems that are being deployed by marketers and advertisers today. Programmatic advertising is a common example.
Certain businesses use artificial intelligence and machine learning to regulate the purchase and sale of advertising in real-time. LinkedIn advertising uses ad frequency and relevance scores.
Both the factors are a key principle of data that LinkedIn’s algorithms use to dictate how much you pay and how your ads are displayed.
5. Video Marketing
An easy to digest and eye-pleasing kind of activity is to watch a video. Over 85 percent of businesses use video as a marketing tool in 2020 (source Hubspot). Though YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google, video marketing doesn’t necessarily mean uploading videos on YouTube.
A video on a landing page could increase the duration of time spent on your website and thus longer exposure builds trust and ultimately boosts up the conversion rates.
Social media platforms are also another alternative for video marketing. Uploading a video could result in more engagement of your followers which increases the numbers of shares and likes on the post.
A pro tip for businesses on video marketing is that often the videos of social media are watched without the audio so adding appropriate subtitles to your video is a must!
Hashtags are not a new trend for the marketing world however the marketers still need to cope up with the ongoing importance of the hashtags.
Hashtags play a vital role in building your business’s social media profile. Hashtags in social media can be fundamental to generate exposure for your business and are a great way to generate the right kind of customer engagement.
It is easy to discover high traffic orientated conversations on social media by knowing the trending hashtags and then participating in those conversations to gain great visibility to your business.
7. Application of AI: ChatBots
Chatbots follow the process of creating an interactive conversation with your customer which is based on artificial intelligence. In the initial stage of setting up chatbots in a website business owner or marketers has to program chatbots with fixed answers to some basic questions related to the product or services.
Chatbot helps in narrowing down the customer service issues to a specific common category before directing them to the real right person from your team to talk to.
Chatbots keep learning with time as the more queries customers ask, the better chatbot gets in answering them. Chatbots will continue to be the part of online marketing as many customers prefer interacting with customer services at any time of the day or night, and a human can’t be responsive 24/7, unlike chatbots.
Wrapping up: Modern methods of online marketing
We may conclude that if you want to stay competitive, it is important to wrap your head around how modern online marketing methods work and incorporate them into your business strategy.
Mark Burke is a blogger and a business consultant in Alcor, a global investment bank. Mark is passionate about researching on the latest small business and marketing trends. He loves writing informative blog posts to help small business owners and startup founders in their entrepreneurial journey.
