In 2022, marketing is about so much more than just getting your name out there. It’s about creating a brand that resonates with audiences and keeps them engaged. The key to doing this well is to stay authentic and consistent with what you put out there and keep your marketing centred around the customer. Effective messaging isn’t rocket science but it can be tricky to get right if you are prone to chasing trends rather than creating quality content. The ultimate goal is to turn your customers into an advocate for your brand because they believe in the value it provides. With the right plan and a little creativity you could be well on your way to a brand breakthrough this year!
What is marketing?
Marketing refers to any activities a company takes to entice an audience into buying a product or service through messaging on a variety of channels.
Marketing aims to deliver value for prospects and consumers through content, with the long-term goal of demonstrating value, strengthening brand loyalty, and ultimately increasing sales.
At the core of marketing is the ability to understand, predict and influence your audiences behaviours in order to effectively sell a product or service.
“Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart”
Joe Chernov, VP Marketing, Pendo.io
Marketing Dos in 2022
- Authenticity
Today, authenticity is the ultimate form of credibility. Gone are days where suits and ties grant credence. Audiences are much, much wiser now. Your influence is based on how much people relate to you. This year authenticity remains a key factor in marketing success.
- Consistency
When it comes to brand consistency, one of the most important things you can do is communicate with your audience in a way that’s aligned across touchpoints. Branding has become more focused on delivering messages and selling products than ever before, being able to reach an individual through their values will help build trust and loyalty.
- Quality Content
Content marketing is the key to success in today’s competitive market. To have a successful business, you need content that will capture people’s attention and keep them interested enough for what they want from their company or product offerings. It’s a way to demonstrate your value to prospects rather than shout at them like a ‘hard seller’ would do.
- Original video
Video marketing has been around for a long time, but it’s becoming more important than ever to include videos in your strategy. The number of businesses using it in 2021 was at an already saturated 86%. Why? Because few strategies are as easy and inexpensive as whipping out a smartphone or webcam and making a quick, easy to edit clip. What’s more is that few channels come across as more authentic as actual footage of you and your business.
- Thought Leadership
Thought leadership is the new way to stand out in a market where everyone’s claiming to be doing things differently. It doesn’t mean you have an original idea, but it does take creativity and nerve for brands who want their voice heard, especially when challenging strongly held beliefs.
The key here isn’t just publishing articles with catchy headlines; thought-leaders need more than that if they hope audiences will pay attention long enough. In B2B, thought leadership is gold.
- Community Building
Building a strong and loyal customer base is vital to the success of any company. A clear brand that resonates with consumers helps create this community, which can be used as an unofficial mouthpiece for companies looking into building trust among their target audience or those who have already committed themselves fully to supporting your business. In fact a community is actually a worthy end goal of marketing campaigns and overall strategy, due to their potential to catapult your business and its fanbase.
Marketing Don’ts in 2022
- Trend chasing
You can’t stay on top of the latest trends? Well that could be good. It’s a good idea to have an end goal in mind when choosing which ones are most important for your business, so that they don’t become distractions from what really matters – developing meaningful connections with customers who will buy. Trends merely confuse your real goals and can make it feel like you’re making progress when you aren’t.
- Hardcore selling
Most of us are really distrustful of companies that apply hardcore selling. It gives the impression that a company is disingenuous and more interested in making money than in a customer’s needs. No one wants to receive ovelry “salesy” content that doesn’t offer any value. The most popular forms of marketing today are based around building communities and providing valuable information.
- Unrealistic expectations
Marketing is a lot like cooking. You need to have an idea of what you want your end result to be, then slowly bring in ingredients and spices. You can have some instant success but the result will only be like instant noodles. Sometimes recipes take longer than others but they are always worth it because once someone tastes them there’s going to want more -the flavour demands attention. To create long-term value, slow marketing focuses on building meaningful and trusting relationships with customers. These patrons become brand ambassadors for your business in the process.
- Poor content
Content marketing plays a major component in cementing your brand’s reputation and ultimately its bottom line. Brands with poor content output are often overlooked. Investing time and money into creating a content marketing strategy that doesn’t resonate with your target audience is equivalent to just
- Random campaigns
You need a plan if you want your message to resonate with the public. Not having one is risky business. As many businesses painfully discover, ad hoc marketing can be worse than not engaging in marketing at all. The inconsistent messaging, branding and ‘look’ that results leaves audiences confused or disengaged.
Why you need a strategy
While not strictly necessary, we strongly advise against marketing without a strategy, it’s almost as cardinal a sin as not measuring your activities.
This is because a strategy helps you in so many ways. If you have a properly thought-out plan it will help and essentially enable you to get where you’re hoping to go. This includes clarifying priorities and setting measurable goals that you can expect to achieve, allowing you to plan other parts of the business around something.
A solid strategy facilitates achievement tracking, documents mistakes and helps you to delve deeper into understanding specific audiences. It will enable you to hone in on the strategies and activities that get you the best ROI. This structured activity helps you to increase brand awareness and learn how to connect with the audience that will grant you the most success, building a community that sets your brand apart and ultimately does your marketing for you. How’s that for a plan?
Yes, it’s confusing with so many different things going on.
There are so many different digital and non-digital channels to market through. From Tik Tok, to signage on brick and mortar, word of mouth to email campaigns. Figuring out the right channel for your business is HARD!
Marketing is never standard (if that’s what it is for you, that’s why it’s not working!). It is not one-size-fits-all. Every business has a different consumer base, budget and geographical reach; what is right for some companies may be completely wrong or ineffective in other circumstances.
It can feel tempting at first glance to try absolutely everything available, but that seldom works well. It takes time to develop an edge using chosen channels; many of which have become professions in and of themselves. No matter how sophisticated your strategy gets there are still influential factors which impact on its effectiveness too. So it’s important you consider your plans from all angles.
To really cut through the confusion it helps to know what you’re aiming at, this brings us to:
Be clear, set a goal!
Yes, the best thing to do, that can actionably be done, by yourself and by the end of today is to define a specific clear goal.
Read more about marketing and trends in our whitepaper which you can download here.
With passion and professionalism in abundance, Vida Barr-Jones has an impressive track record of establishing and meeting business goals. Vida brings 34 years of commercial experience, having spent eleven years as a Board Director at Europe’s largest FTSE-listed office products wholesaler. Vida is an inspirational leader known for excellent communication and engagement across all levels.