Taking the road not taken: When the crowd wants to zig, you move to zag. Driving in the empty lane. Better yet, driving off-road. You are always swimming upstream. Running into the wind. That’s what taking the road not taken means.
In the advertising world the river is flowing a certain direction in 2019. According to Ad Age, GroupM, one of the major ad forecasters, is predicting slower advertising growth in 2019, and has reduced its projection from 3.9 to 3.6 percent. There are a number of factors involved in the slowing growth; but with the decrease in the growth rate of overall spending money for advertising, there is also a golden opportunity for contrarian companies to seize the initiative. This could be your chance to zig when other advertising companies zag. To stick your foot in new doors. Here are 5 digital marketing ideas for the year 2019.
Online Video Ads
This is a hot trend right now, and will only get hotter. Targeting your consumer base through online video ads can be a slick way to drive home your brand message without a lot of wasted energy or resources. In fact, search engines love videos as much as consumers do, and adding video content to your site can potentially boost your SERP ranking considerably.
Furthermore, videos play on consumer psychology by engaging the viewer’s emotions more effectively than the printed word. And even more awesome: videos are highly shareable.
Personalization
Right now web design is all about UX; and what better way to add value to your consumer’s experience than by personalizing your brand message on a microcosmic level?
The great thing is, it doesn’t have to be big or flashy. For example, some companies have designed their landing pages to ID the user’s location, and then offer a customized greeting with the name of his city or town inserted in. It’s a little flourish that adds unique value, and can positively shape your customer’s perception from the beginning of the interaction.
Pay Per Click
This is the digital marketing equivalent of plucking that low-hanging fruit, and then plucking some more, and more, and more… PPC marketing can be an effective strategy in itself, but as a supplemental initiative it can do wonders for your company’s market presence. After all, why spend all your time guessing which websites are suitable magnets for potential customers, when you can go further down the funnel, and cherry pick your leads from the narrow end? This is a strategy that can, in effect, turn Google into your ally and business partner; and who wouldn’t want that?
Social Media Marketing
This can be the means to engage your consumer base at the most visceral level. People want to hear stories; and they want to be able to put a “face” to the faceless corporation. When your employees share their personal tales, their triumphs and heartaches, and then connect their stories back to the bigger narrative of the brand, then you will be able to drive customer engagement and loyalty like never before.
Social media is, by definition, a shareable commodity; so your stories will germinate and spread across the market. And the topping on the cake is how easily this can be a low-cost solution to some of the tougher advertising challenges out there. You can target specific subgroups, and yet enjoy wide exposure at the same time.
Leveraging Mobile Apps
With so many more users engaging via mobile technology (well over half, and perhaps as much as 2/3 of US-based Internet traffic is coming from mobile devices) it is critical to leverage mobile apps as at least one channel of your advertising campaigns.
Of course, there is a right way and a wrong way to market via mobile devices. Formatting differences are important to consider when designing advertisements for smartphones and tablets. Content should generally be simplified, and calls to action kept to a minimum. However, initiatives such as promoting your company’s app, or targeting apps that are used by your desired demographic for focused advertising campaigns, can open up doors to a consumer base that is growing broader and more diverse by the month.
Sticking to the Road
Back in the day, Google took the road not taken. “Stickiness” was supposed to be the be-all end-all metric of online search engines; users were supposed to stay a while on the page. Google was too fast, too good. Its users found what they needed and left too quickly.
Google stuck with the road not taken… and the rest is history.
If you’d like a boost on your journey through the world of digital marketing, or maybe a tip on that back road that will shave 5 minutes off of your trip, check us out at Bash Foo. We are the Creative Brand Provocateur for our clients; we can push you along that road not taken, and get you to your destination.
