Well here we are, another year, another 365 opportunities to elevate our brands and maximise our potential. We all start new years with the greatest intentions; but in small business it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the everyday running (off our feet) of our craft.
Of course there are another gazillion new ways to market our businesses, each needing to be more creative and innovative than the last in order to catch the eye of our consumers, and gain us a healthy return. With so many many options it can be difficult to focus and get the most out of our campaigns.
Our strategy in this brand spanking shiny new year is to hone in on a handful of trends and marketing tips for 2018 across different channels. Some online, some business to business, some face to face. Some just for fun. Accompanied by a few jaw-dropping statistics, here are some areas in which you can focus your marketing and promotional budget that may help you avoid the daily social media and traditional marketing grind, and get the most out of your 2018. Plaster your brand where the right people love looking.
Video Marketing tips for 2018
- Video is expected to be responsible for 80% of all global internet traffic by 2019.
- One billion people use YouTube and watch 6 billion videos every month.
- Video generates 1,200% more shares on social media than text and image posts combined.
Anyone can shoot a vid on their phone; but beware…viewers have come to expect high quality. 62% of consumers are likely to view a brand negatively if they publish a poor quality video – UH OH!
If you’re going to shoot brand videos, do it right. Consider investing in a professional videographer who specialises in brand marketing and live streaming. You can create an entire year’s worth of video marketing collateral in one or two pro shoots. Incorporate drone aerial videography to really engage your viewers. Consider professional promotional models or a brand ambassador to star in your videos to create a truly beautiful campaign. Your videos can be cut, perfected, edited and re-sampled to act as powerful marketing collateral across all digital channels for many years to come. Speak to your videographer about creating an entertaining ‘behind the scenes’ live stream of the creation of your videos that you can both use to promote your businesses.
While this strategy is more costly upfront, you can actually tick a very big box. Video marketing 2018…done. Of course you can always shoot and stream small videos throughout the year as opportunities arise; but for the most part, your brand videos are organised, they look amazing and you have more time to work on other things (like EVERYTHING else).
Influencer Marketing
- More than 84% of marketers who were interviewed in a 2016 marketing strategy survey, said that influencer marketing campaigns are increasing engagement and brand awareness for their clients.
- It’s claimed these campaigns generate a return of $6.50 for every dollar spent.
Who in your industry would influence large numbers of your target consumers on making a positive decision about your brand or products? Who does your audience trust and follow? THEY are who you want to get talking about you.
You could promote yourself to your couple of hundred social followers until you’re blue in the digital face; but when a relevant influencer with thousands, sometimes millions of followers begins to spruik your wares, people listen. Here’s a great example of a campaign explained by Jan Rezab. Who is quite influential on the eye we must say ?
Regular people, YouTubers, Podcasters and bloggers are the new celebs in the digital world. If you develop a meaningful relationship with the right influencer, you’ll free up eons of time trying to put together social calendars and write engaging blogs. Your influencer should be in the driver’s seat for content creation about your brand, whether they are paid or unpaid.
It’s important to take your time researching, and finding the right influencers for your business. Do you like their style of content? Will a relationship be beneficial for both of you?
Trade shows and exhibitions
Not everyone agrees that a trade show presence is worth the expense; but we’ve seen first hand the roaring success of attendees who have maximised their opportunities, and really stood out to their targets on the trade show floor. Success at a trade show is now much more than a pretty booth and collecting business cards. When well planned, they’re a full blown campaign incorporating social media, product demonstrations and launches, competitions and giveaways, and exploring business-to-business trading opportunities and relationships. Sometimes when you team up with your competition you can become an unstoppable force together.
One key point, is to ensure you’ve clearly identified your exhibition budget and what you need to achieve to qualify a return on your investment. Then you can get to work on setting yourself up to reach those goals. Having a professional promotional team on your side can make all the difference. When your brand ambassadors and company mascot interact with your audience it’s memorable. Create a mobile buzz about your brand around the venue with your team. Execute a massive social media lead up to the event and leverage expo or trade show selfies and hashtags. Engage with organisers and other exhibitors’ social posts and promotions.
Guerilla marketing, experiential marketing or street marketing
Get out there amongst your audience and put on a show. This is the ‘outside the box’ approach designed to engage and entertain, rather than barrage your consumers with ads. If we wanted to promote our fabulous mascot performers to event organisers, we might take to the streets as attendees leave a large event marketing conference with a flash mob of hilarious and entertaining mascots. We might try to team up with local media, collaborate with one of the speakers at the event, work with our social influencers, and live stream it all with our aerial drone videographer. We would investigate all the potential strategies that might help us make a huge spectacle out of the campaign.
Street marketing and Guerilla marketing campaigns are highly creative, they’re often not cheap; but can easily replace twelve months worth of handing out flyers and laboring over content. Here are some fun examples from accomplished experiential marketing agency Ambient.
Plan meticulously and get the right help to pull it off
As we touched on earlier, great marketing and promotional campaigns are often put on the backburner for busy small business. It’s worth chatting to your staff and having them brainstorm a few crazy ideas. Equally as important is asking your customers; what is the communication coming from your brand that they enjoy the most? What would they like to see more, or less of?
Once you’ve found your recipe, don’t do it all yourself. Get the professional help you need to make a huge splash, rather than a ripple. We wish everyone a phenomenal and viral-worthy year of success.
If you’ve run a successful promotion where the results exceeded your expectations, we’d love to hear about it. Similarly, have you run a campaign that you really thought would work, and it completely bombed?
AMS Promotions is a team of Account Managers, Marketers and Promotions specialists. Operating nationally with a pool of over 6,000 beautiful and talented promotional staff and models, we’re driven by exceeding your promotional goals and celebrating your success. Get in touch.
Posted 5 years ago
Thanks for the information