At Click Content Studios, we believe keeping up with marketing and communications trends is a critical component to a company’s success.
Social media, video and other online content are a few examples of current trends that are hard to ignore. We’re here to tell you that you can – and should – be taking advantage of a mix of traditional and new media. It’s affordable, convenient and practical.
Use these tips to stretch your marketing dollars, all while generating customer leads and audience engagement.
Learn how to tell your story using multiple mediums
There are many ways to reach your target audience: radio ads, TV commercials, print ads, paid content, social media posts, etc. Working inside all of these worlds creates a story – and an experience we crave as human beings.
How do you make storytelling work for your business?
Keep it short. The nice thing about video, in particular, is you can show and say a lot in as few as 10 seconds.
Keep it simple. Stick to one or two main messages you feel are really important to get across.
Keep it authentic. Consumers are smart. They know when you aren’t telling the truth or trying to be something you aren’t.
Learn to embrace new media, but don’t ditch what’s working
These days, people are spending an average of 7.8 hours a day consuming digital media, primarily on their mobile devices, according to Adobe CMO.
However, this doesn’t mean you should only be doing video simply because stats show people are glued to their screens. Traditional media is still very much alive and can help you reach your target audiences from all age groups more effectively than just video content alone. It truly comes down to what your goals are – and also what’s already working for you. If that direct mail piece you’ve been circulating for the past year has garnered leads and even sales, great! Keep it up!
How do you reach audiences from all age groups?
Invest in an affordable video editing app. Try out Animoto, Videolicious or Magisto, all of which offer subscription services for personal, small, medium and enterprise-sized businesses. Most offer free, limited-time trials.
Invest in print. According to a recent Folio magazine article, “Print advertising accounted for 62 percent of the $16.6 billion in magazine advertising revenue in fiscal year 2016, according to PwC’s most recent research, and 87 percent of circulation revenue came from print products.”
Invest in outdoor ads. A recent Nielsen survey reported that 71 percent of all respondents felt billboards were still more effective than online ads.
Expect people’s attention spans to be short
The Smithsonian reported that only 1 in 4 adults read a book in 2016. But that’s just books, right? Not so fast. Time Magazine reported in 2014 that it takes 15 seconds for someone to stop reading an online article.
How do you get people to take interest in your company?
Go with your gut. You know your business the best, which means the best way to pique interest in your product or service is to lean on your instincts.
Go with the experts. Partner with a professional communications team (like Click Content Studios) that understands what you’re looking for and how to achieve those goals.
Go with patience. “Going viral” on the internet is actually not a real thing. To understand who is listening, how, when and why takes months of collecting and studying metrics and analytics.
Understand the world of online video, social and new media is unpredictable
Let’s take a closer look at some predictions: Cisco predicts that by 2020, online video will account for more than 80 percent of internet use. TechCrunch recently reported that Facebook users are watching more than 100 million hours of videos per day. And more than 5 times that are watching videos on YouTube (that’s 500 million people).
The keyword in all of the above? Yep, predictions. Remember Y2K when everyone thought the entire galaxy was going to default back to the year 1900 because of a programming error? Yeah, nothing happened but it was a pretty big deal.
While we can safely “presume” video will continue to account for most internet consumption in the near future, they’re really just predictions. Assumptions based on current trending activity.
How do you get things done an uncertain marketing world?
Stay passionate. Focus on why you’re in the business you’re in. Why you sell the product or service you do. When you stay passionate and energized by your work, you’ll find that communications and advertising comes easily – even when something fails!
Stay the course. So maybe something does fail. How you react to that failure ultimately depends on whether you have the gumption to forge ahead. Stay the course. Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint, right?
