Steve Trahanas - Digital Marketing Trends, Strategies And Tactics

Social media changed the digital marketing landscape. Today, new forces are changing digital marketing again.

There’s more emphasis today on personalization, video, micro-content stories, artificial intelligence, visual search and voice search. Steve Trahanas moving toward a world where technology will be integral in all aspects of our lives, including work, family and social interaction.

Digital marketers already know the value of SEO and its ability to help rank higher on search engines. Today’s marketing strategy is shifting toward new mediums for attracting and appeasing customers.

Digital marketing trends suggest customers’ priorities have also changed. They expect convenience, 24/7 availability, a direct conversation style, accurate information, customized services and recommendations.

Digital marketers today should keep one goal in mind: Customer satisfaction. You need to offer your audience an unforgettable experience.

To achieve this and measure your results, you can analyze website user data. User-generated content is also information that can provide insights into how your offering resonates with customers.

Insights Instead Of Data

Today, analytics, data, reports and dashboards are in every marketing and sales technology product. Steve Trahanas says But knowing what that data tells you and exactly what to do about it remains elusive. Going forward, insights will be the currency of marketers and sales operations experts.

Those insights, when properly prioritized, will drive the action plans that optimize tactical performance and improve results from both marketing and sales executions. Tools like MAXG, an insight and recommendation engine, tell marketers what exactly to do and in what order to do it.

Chatbots

Customers love their personalized support, while businesses save time, money and resources. Chatbots are the modern customer support assistant. They listen to you, answer questions and resolve issues within seconds. Chatbots learn more about you as you share more information with them. The banking and pharmaceutical industries rely heavily on chatbots to look after small tasks and answer repetitive questions.

Chat has enabled conversational marketing, a new form of marketing that allows prospects to skip the form or the email and start an immediate conversation with marketing or sales. This typically accelerates the sales process and provides an upgraded experience for the prospects.

Artificial intelligence will push customer service into a new age. AI is at the heart of this new chatbot wave. It analyzes consumers’ actions and search patterns, and pulls information from social media channels to better “train” the chatbot. This also assists brands in developing a deeper understanding of how to better serve their customers.

The Personal Aspect Of Every Customer

Your next product or service may be the result of your customers’ feedback. Social media platforms allow you to offer interactive and customized brand experiences. Brands should think about bringing a personalized touch across all of their marketing channels.

You can increase sales and customer loyalty by working on personalized emails, content and experiences. This opens the door to having a stronger connection with your customers.

Personalized emails deliver relevant messages with the right tone. They show you care about your customers. A core part of your digital marketing strategy should be about offering the same level of attention to all of your customers, whether they’re first-time shoppers or repeat purchasers.

Steve Trahanas - How to Choose the Right Manufacturing Digital Marketing Tactics

Focusing on too many marketing tactics and channels is a sure way to fail at all of them. That’s why 35% of manufacturing marketers last year discontinued specific marketing activities they’ve found to be ineffective so they could concentrate on those that yield the best results.

Analyze Your Audience

Your marketing should always be driven by your audience—but only 51% of manufacturing marketers prioritize their audience’s informational needs over their sales message!

Steve Trahanas says Before determining your marketing strategy, make sure you understand your audience by going through these steps.

Create Buyer Personas: Determine 2-3 of your ideal buyers and create profiles—also known as buyer personas—that list everything you know about them. Where do they live and what is their education level? What are their main concerns, and why would they need your product? Be as specific as possible.

Learn How Your Audience Gets Information: Once you know your ideal buyer personas, take the time to investigate how they get information and engage online. Use customer surveys, social media demographics, and study industry publications to learn what formats your audience is most likely to consume and where they go for answers to questions. Your ideal audience may Google their questions, turn to YouTube for how-to videos, or send out questions on Facebook.

Set Marketing Goals

What do you want to get out of your digital marketing efforts? 54% of manufacturing companies in 2019 say they are somewhat proficient at aligning metrics with their marketing, compared to 34% last year. The most common manufacturing digital marketing goals are:

Brand Awareness: For 79% of manufacturing marketers, the goal is to promote awareness around their brand, making it more familiar to their target audience.

Educate Audiences: 69% of manufacturing marketers plan on engaging their audience by providing informative, useful content that could benefit them.

Generate Leads: 66% of manufacturing marketers say they aim to build a list of potential clients that could convert into sales.

Build Credibility And Trust: 60% of marketers are looking to establish their brand as an authority in their industry to gain the trust of their target audience.

Build Loyalty With Existing Clients/Customers: Steve Trahanas building loyalty among customers gives brands a high return on time invested in their marketing, and is the fifth most common goal among manufacturing marketers.

  

Identify Resources and Determine Budget

Spreading your marketing across too many tactics and channels can divide your focus. On top of that, it will stretch your available budget and resources to their limits. Before choosing which digital marketing tactics your business will focus on, determine what resources you have available to you.

Your marketing resources will include three things:

Digital Marketing Budget

Existing Marketing Materials

Marketing Talent

When you start, the percent of your overall marketing budget devoted to digital marketing will probably be relatively low, and the marketing materials you have available to leverage may be few. For example, if your existing Marketing Talent is more experienced in traditional marketing tactics, you may need to hire additional talent or look towards a digital marketing agency to help you set a marketing strategy and execute.

Choose Manufacturing Digital Marketing Tactics

Once you have a better idea of what your audience wants, what your business needs, and what your budget will allow, you can choose which digital marketing tactics you’d like to start out with. On average, manufacturing marketers use five tactics for distributing marketing content—but this depends on the individual business.

The following are examples of useful digital marketing tactics for manufacturers. Before you invest in any of these, be sure to take the tips listed above into account: your audience, goals, resources, and budget. Knowing these factors will help you decide which of these tactics will be suited to your business.

Content Marketing

Creating blogs, videos, guides, and other content can be a great way to establish brand awareness for your company and generate leads. As an organization grows in content marketing maturity, its success is likely to increase; only 28/% of manufacturers rated their content marketing as mature or sophisticated, but of those companies, 41% said they were very successful with content marketing.