In 2021, it’s not just about the marketing strategies you use to get your message to your audience — it’s also about what you’re saying.
You can have an arsenal of marketing tactics, but if you’re not clicking with your target audience, they won’t engage.
The 2021 audience is looking for brands with a strong ethical compass and a humanizing touch.
This year’s best marketing strategies combine both of these trends and package them into creative methods to reach your audience on a peer-to-peer level. Think referrals, influencers, and personalized deals.
Read on to find out which marketing tactics offer the most cost-effective way to reach your audience this year, with examples of brands who are doing it right.
Top 2021 Marketing Trends to Consider
2021 is all about purpose. Customers want to know what drives your brand.
One in five customers say that a brand’s positive actions will affect their purchasing behavior. In particular, 20% of consumers look at how a company treats the environment and 19% look at how companies support the communities they operate within. Be sure you write your About Us page with those facts in mind.
Additional resource: What is Performance Marketing?
Another important trend lies in the human experience or HX.
Customers want better connections with brands that offer personalized experiences based on real behaviors, needs, and desires. In short, 56% of consumers want their digital experiences to feel more human.
As a recent Deloitte report explains:
“When digital connections— personal and professional —lack a human touch, it can create an environment where people feel isolated, underrepresented and unfulfilled.”
In this respect, 2021 is the year that marketing should be driven by values and emotions, and underpinned with trust.
5 Cost-Effective Marketing Tactics That Will Bring Results in 2021
While customers are looking for a more human experience, underpinned by purposeful action, it’s still important to find ways to deliver this effectively. Without viable marketing strategies, even the best marketing messages go unheard.Here are the top five most cost-effective marketing strategies to get your voice heard and increase conversions in 2021.
1. Blogging
70% of companies invest in content marketing and blogs are the second most used content media in their strategies.
Why? Because blogging is a straightforward, cost-effective search engine optimization (SEO) technique that increases visibility on search engines to drive organic traffic.
67% of all clicks go to the top five search results. Put plainly, if you’re not in those top results, you’ll struggle to garner clicks.
For your blogs to be successful, they need to focus on key search terms that your target audience search for in Google. Create an infographic or video content, not only text. It will help you to get the first position on Google.
The best ways to do this is by answering common questions that your audience may have and providing useful information that educates and entertains your audience.
Include relevant keywords in your blogs to push your articles up Google rankings, which will increase the number of clicks.
Notice how the nursing school website uses geo-specific keywords to reach the top of Google for local searches.
Take a closer look at this section on the Sam Houston State University online school program. Notice how the keywords are related to the types of searches that would be performed by prospective nursing students.
Remember, it’s important to add blogs frequently.You’ll need to publish at least three to four blogs a week. If this is too much, it might be wise to outsource the work to a professional copywriting service.
2. Video marketing
Video has a great return on investment (ROI). In fact, 80% of marketers say that video marketing has directly helped boost sales.
Not only that but video marketers also agree that videos generate more leads, increase organic traffic, and help the customer better understand their products. That’s why video is the number one content format that companies use in their content strategies.
Promotional videos, brand storytelling, and corporate videos are the most used video types as they show the customer who the brand is, what the products and services do, and what’s on offer.
Check out how Ketoned Bodies uses videos in its social media marketing strategy.
With quick brand storytelling videos, the meal management solutions company humanizes the experience to spark a connection between the brand and the buyer.
3. Affiliate marketing
With an affiliate marketing program, bloggers, content producers, and influencers link to your products and receive commission from each sale.
This is an extremely cost-effective marketing tactic as your affiliates will help you reach new audiences, without you having to shell out the costs for the marketing.
You can take advantage of their social media followings, organic traffic, and online presence, and you only pay a flat commission rate for the pleasure.
Not only is affiliate marketing relatively low-cost, it produces excellent ROI. Just look at the electronics company HP, who made upwards of 43% more revenue thanks to their content affiliates.
It’s important to create a compelling affiliate program, though. Otherwise affiliates will choose to promote your competitors’ products instead.
Take True Blue Life Insurance, for example.Not only does the life insurance firm pay a handsome commission for completed sales, they also pay affiliates for leads.
Alternatively, try a tiered affiliate program, like FreshBooks.
When customers sign up for a trial, affiliates get $10. If these trial users upgrade to a paid-for subscription, affiliates get a further $200.
This encourages affiliates to nurture leads throughout the entire sales funnel.
To maximize conversions, another great lead generation tactic for affiliates is to offer a free maturity assessment on their landing page.
A potential lead fills in a couple of questions and you can return specific advice and recommendations based on their maturity level.
Remember, that it pays to help set your affiliates up for success, so don’t be afraid to help them make the most of their lead generation tactics. At the end of the day, their success is your success.
4. Promotional marketing
86% of shoppers say that discount coupons affect which brand they’ll choose to buy. Therefore, if you’re offering a discount or promotion that rivals your competition, you can convince customers to pick you.
Think carefully about which deals will entice your customers. For example, 63% of millennials will search for a discount before completing any purchase.
Alternatively, 79% of consumers say that free shipping is more likely to make them purchase.
Consider how you’ll deliver your deals to best reach your target audience. 30% of marketers add promotional offers to emails, while other marketers offer social media promotions or on-page pop-up deals. You can search email through email finder and send an email or integrate it with your monthly newsletter. If you do it this way, every new customer that enters your funnel will be informed about your products.
This creative social media offer by finance app, Earlybird is a prime example.
Pledging to double every $25 that users gift to another app user, Earlybird encourages existing customers to use the service more, while convincing new users to sign up.
Additional resources: Top Marketing Strategies To Create High Revenue
5. Referral program
Referral programs are the ideal way to leverage your existing happy customers to market your brand for you.
Since 68% of consumers say they’ve recommended a brand to a friend or family member, it’s clear that customers are willing to refer products they’re passionate about.
For customers to recommend a brand, it needs to be trustworthy, provide good customer service, and perform better than the competition. Customers also refer brands with good deals, free shipping, and admirable ethics and values.
While it’s important to have all these positive attributes, you can also incentivize customers to refer your brand to a friend through a referral program.
Most commonly, referral programs offer dollar credit rewards to the referrer (and sometimes the referee) for every new user that signs up using their link.
Other referral programs offer discounts, gift cards, points, and sometimes free products.
Take a look at this two-sided referral program by Joy Organics, here.
Customers simply enter their email address to receive a unique referral link.
Whenever someone purchases something for the first time using the unique referral link, they get a $10 discount and the referrer gets a $10 discount.
These types of referral programs are essential when setting up an online store in order to maximize your existing customer relationships while also bringing in new sales.
Conclusion
Your marketing strategy doesn’t have to be expensive — it needs to be creative. Use the resources you have around you, such as existing customers and popular influencers.
Remember, that customers are looking for brands with a strong ethical backbone that provide a humanizing experience. Whether you’re crafting deals or creating marketing videos, try to include these elements into your marketing materials.
If you need help promoting your business, check out more helpful business articles on News Break.
Author Bio
Axelle Dervaux has experience in digital marketing with a focus on B2B marketing for SaaS companies. She’s working in various marketing fields such as SEO and SEA, social media, lead nurturing, customer retention, product marketing. She is the Marketing Manager at clicdata.com, a cloud-based business intelligence, and data management platform. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.