Key Digital Marketing Trends in 2021
Social media and digital marketing will only be more important to people in 2021. After a year in which many people relied on social media for communication, more and more people have come to value the dependability of Facebook and other platforms.
B2B vs B2C Marketing
Definition B2B vs B2C Marketing: What’s the difference? Right off the bat, the one obvious difference between the two categories of marketing is scale. B2B stands for business-to-business, it is marketing from one company to another. A few examples of B2B: • An insurance broker that sells insurance protection and risk management to small business owners • An interior design agency that specializes in designing office spaces • A communication software service that sells video conferencing, cloud calling, online meetings (Zoom, Webex, Skype,…) B2C stands for business-to-consumer, and the type of marketing people most know. When you’re a B2C business, you represent your business’ endeavors to sell to individual buyers. That’s all of us, folks! Here are a few examples of B2C in action: • A resort that provides all travel needs for vacationers • A salon that offers skincare services • A wellness practice that offers healing services from all different angles to patients With that being said, learn the lingo! Basically, to reach your target audience, speak their language. While b2c digital marketing is often based on emotions, B2B leans more on logic. Certainly, B2B businesses are much more likely to purchase from an expert who understands their terminology and processes. This is also when content clarity comes in handy. Read our SEO and content clarity tips for success. Branding B2B focuses on building relationships. B2B International says “branding begins with the consistency of presentation that becomes the identity of a company.” Therefore, Being able to correctly portray your position in the market and have your personality shine definitely drive brand awareness and ramp up your lead generation. B2C is about prioritizing your message. What makes people click, sign up, or buy? Of course, Emotions! If you’re a B2C business, you must use a relatable voice that entices your audience to click on an ad. For social, you have to adopt empathy and create impactful posts in your messaging. Although, Through your stories, you can humanize your brand and present who you are, what you do, and how you can help people. Tactics to reach the audience Ad Campaigns We cannot stress enough the importance of keyword research and optimization in any ad campaign. With the right keyword plan, smaller businesses like you can level the playing field against bigger competitors and make your ad dollars go even further. B2C campaigns usually have bigger markets. Even if you’re targeting a specific niche, you can still take advantage of keywords that attract a more general audience. B2B is a bit trickier here – the pool of potential “buyers” is much smaller. Hence, In the case of B2B marketing, you must target even more precisely to get in front of the people who are more willing to make a purchase. Channels Customers of B2C are everywhere, really. Thus, You can market traditionally via magazines or online or radio. You should, in this day and age, have a social presence to increase sales. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – there are hardly any limits when it comes to B2C. Consequently, Have a well-curated social media content, email marketing campaign, and relevant blog topic to drive traffic to your website (sounds like a service we know). LinkedIn has developed a reputation being the top in the B2B world; this is where you can connect to many other business professionals. Concurrently, Content Marketing Institute found that 63% of marketers rated LinkedIn as the most effective B2B social platform. No one knows your business like you do. Accordingly, we can help you save the tireless hours you might have to spend on building your brand and earning a strong reputation – so that you can focus on other aspects of your business. Additionally, If you need any consulting or advice we are here for you. Get in touch!
Using Social Media Data to Increase Sales
Whether you want to partake or not we live in a socially connected world, brands across all industries have multiple platforms and pages to follow, all giving unique data, sales, info and insights! It is time to use your social media data to increase your sales. Now this is where the good stuff comes in. In the time and age of being an entrepreneur or small business owner data is your best friend and if you’re ignoring it, you are most definitely missing out. Your social media pages collect a heck of a lot of useful data that you should be accessing daily. Many companies fail to take advantage of these vital resources to improve their sales and better their customer experience. Here are a couple ways you can leverage your data. Monitor The Competition First, you can use social data to monitor your competitors’ offerings, products, and services. How are they packaging their product or service to their unique consumer. See what your competition is doing that you like or don’t like. How can you improve or step up this platform and make it your own? This is an easy way to gain a little advantage and see what it is that your customers really want or care about. Social insights can give you various data across all platforms, so yes you need a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Don’t be afraid to try different strategies on each one either! Use It or Loose It! Seriously though, not using the data to better understand why your visitors/fans stop and make a conscious decision to read, like or share your post can leave you in the dust. It’s simple really. Check out your demographics, see what type of personalities’ they tend to have. Are your biggest chunk of visitors younger, male, moms, business professionals? Are these users consistently engaging in your brand or are they random? These things can really get your wheels turning and help you start to make some educated decisions on why they coming or going. Companies miss the opportunity to better understand their customers and get a leg up on the competition. Don’t just leave social feedback to one area of the company, but instead integrate it throughout your strategy to make your entire operation as customer-friendly and informed as possible. No one knows your business like you do. So give yourself an increase in sales and give your customers what they want! We are here to help with any consulting or advice you may need. Please reach out with any questions in regards to establishing a strong social media strategy today! We’d be happy to help!
Hashtag, you’re doing it right!
If you’re a social media novice, hashtags may seem confusing and you’re right, they are. But they are integral to the way we communicate online, and search. As our world of technology grows and grows, so does the infinite amount of information available for us to search through on any given platform that we choose at that moment. The hashtag’s widespread use began with Twitter but has extended to other social media platforms. In 2007, developer Chris Messina proposed, in a tweet, that Twitter begin grouping topics using the hash symbol. Twitter initially rejected the idea. However wide spread use took fire, we mean took off. Case in point the #SanDiegoFire, at Messina’s suggestion, to tweet updates on a series of forest fires in San Diego. The practice of hashtagging took was a blaze; now users and brands employ hashtags to cover serious political events (#Cairo) and entertainment topics (#MileyCyrus) alike. Numbers are supported, if you click on any trending topic on social media you see they are quite the popular little guy popping up everywhere. However, punctuation marks are not, so commas, periods, exclamation points, question marks and apostrophes are out. Forget about asterisks, ampersands or any other special characters. If you’re a grammar junkie…. #sorrynotsorry Keep in mind that the @ symbol does something completely different. Using @ before a person’s Twitter handle will tweet at him directly, letting him know you have written to him via the @Connect tab. A hashtag will not. Sometimes users will hashtag a celebrity’s name instead of using her Twitter handle — it is acceptable to tweet #highwaytohavasumovie or @highwaytohavasumovie. But if you are trying to reach someone directly, don’t use a hashtag. Most major social media platforms support hashtags. These include: Twitter: Twitter is the birthplace of modern hashtag usage — as such, its hashtags are more versatile than other sites’ (see “Tone & Voice,” below). Twitter hashtags are mainly used to denote specific topics of conversation; the “Trends” sidebar of your Twitter feed curates a list of hashtags you might be interested in, based on your tweets. When you search for a hashtag on Twitter, there are three ways to filter the results. The “Top” option displays the most relevant and popular posts, including those from users you don’t follow. “All” shows you every tweet that uses the specific hashtag in real time, and “People you follow” will only display results from users you are following. Hashtag Search Results Embarassing as it is to admit, this is how we do most of our searching while on Facebook: Facebook only recently added hashtag support in June 2013, and the practice has not picked up much steam. Nevertheless, clicking on Facebook hashtags will take you to a list of posts containing the same hashtag. It’s completely useful in the Facebook environment, literally weeding out all the posts that you are not looking for and truly helping to bring to the forefront the ones you may be interested in, or extremely helpful to find old articles you stumbled upon and forgot to save. Instagram: Hashtags can be used to complement photos shared on Instagram and help you discover new accounts and pick up followers. Some hashtags were created specifically for Instagram photo challenges — #ThrowbackThursday, for example, encourages users to post retro photos. Vine uses hashtags in the same way — try accompanying each of your Vine videos with at least one hashtag to maximize shareability. Google+: When you click on a hashtag in Google+, the search results will include the original hashtag as well as posts with similar tags and keywords. Google search results display on the left side of the page, while hashtag results from within Google+ appear on the right. Google also gives you the option to search within Facebook or Twitter. Tumblr: Tumblr posts have a special “Tag” section where you can enter tags. These tags function like Twitter hashtags, organizing posts by topic, but the hash symbol is inserted automatically. Hashtags included in the main body of a post are not transformed into links. Pinterest: Use Pinterest hashtags to mark and search for content. Click on the hashtag in a pin description to navigate results that contain the exact hashtag, plus pins with the same word or phrase in the description. If we totally confused you, not to worry. That’s what we’re here for. We love this $h!t!! Shoot us an email and we can talk strategy and how to make the most of your hashtagging!
