The biggest challenge for starting businesses is letting people know they exist. Your company can have the most innovative, state-of-the-art products or services. Even so, if nobody knows about them, nobody will buy them.
Hence, an important factor all enterprises should focus on is how to best promote what they’re offering and reach most people in a specific target market.
As the years go by, advertising strategies change. As of now, these are three of the most important trends in the market.
Self-advertising
One of the biggest marketing trends today is that of self-advertising. It is especially true for small and medium-sized businesses with limited promotional capital. Sure, companies like Apple, Nike, McDonald’s, and Procter & Gamble have enormous budgets and thus can hire the services of well-known advertising agencies. These agencies handle everything from advertising and promotion to public relations, brand management, and building a strong corporate reputation.
Smaller businesses can’t do that. Yet, they have access to something they didn’t before, a tool that has completely changed the game.
Of course, we are talking about the internet. There isn’t a facet in our lives that has not changed because of the internet. This phenomenon is seen both from a professional and personal standpoint.
For a start-up looking to gain market approval, an online marketing campaign through social media is perhaps the best low-cost strategy to put in place.
But the internet is not the only way firms are self-promoting. They are also utilizing traditional marketing techniques. Nowadays, all you need to promote your business is an Insta Graphics Systems machine to print your company logo or slogan on a few t-shirts or a baseball cap.
Trust Through Experience
Celebrity advertising is nothing new. Movie stars like George Clooney and Brad Pitt and athletes like Michael Jordan and Lebron James have endorsed products since the beginning of time. However, there has been a shift in how companies want to portray themselves to their customers and the public.
Let’s take a company specializing in retail health monitors, for example. If they want to promote a device that measures blood sugar or heart rate, they have two options. The first one is to pay a large amount of money for a well-known pop singer to appear in a commercial. The second is to use a doctor, a nurse, or a patient with one of these underlying conditions.
Both choices have advantages. In the former one, the brand can get almost unlimited exposure. The level of reach is much less in the latter one, but the product appears more reliable, and there is higher customer trust. Besides, it is also cheaper.
With advances in education and technology, every year, people are becoming more and more intelligent. They will not be fooled into buying something even if there’s a pretty face attached to it. Instead, companies are starting to realize that those who promote their products must know about them in detail. Only then will commercials and ads be believable to the viewer.
Customer Participation
Making money is not easy, especially now. We are amid the covid-19 global pandemic, unemployment numbers have reached levels never seen before, and businesses are struggling to stay afloat.
As such, the culture of thriftiness is now in full swing. People are much more careful about how they spend their money, and they are more demanding of the products and services they buy.
This reality has changed how businesses advertise. The purpose is no longer to sell but rather to involve the customer as much as possible in all stages of product development and promotion. A way to do this is through participation and two-way feedback.
For instance, companies can hold live online events where current and prospective buyers can give their input on existing and future products. They can also create blogs, community apps, and other social media types to engage in conversation with their clientele. If customers are not satisfied, they can get instant feedback and even decide on changes and alternative options. In essence, they are transforming the product in partnership with the company.
The biggest benefit of customer participation is word-of-mouth. As we know, word-of-though is one of the most effective ways to advertise. It is free, reliable, and aids the business in both customer retention and acquisition.
As we have seen, three trends are driving the marketing industry today. These are self-advertising, building trust through reliable promotion, and achieving customer engagement through participation.
Regardless of your business’s size or history, implementing these measures will save your company money and maximize the reach your products and services have.
