As predicted during 2016, mobile technologies, VR advancements, and wearable
gears are the definitive focus of the
year, and almost every digital marketer in the UK is jumping on the train.
Businesses are starting to scope new and
original ways to incorporate these kinds of technologies into their own
marketing strategies. UK digital marketers
should also have in mind on a couple of things that are regaining popularity
during the year.
Revival of silent videos
The trend came back unexpectedly on 2017
touted because of the “swipe left” phenomenon:
while 80 percent of internet users own a mobile device, average video viewing
time is 1.7 seconds. It means users are consuming content so fast they are not
even listening to it.
Because consumer attention is a scarce
resource, marketers have had to come up with savvier solutions for their
contents. For example, many have chosen to pack a punch at the beginning of the
clip, an immediate hook in the first
couple of seconds.
For example, the social media clip that
Apple pushed to showcase the release of the iPhone 7 was a simplistic clip with frames changing every 0.5
seconds.
Task of the community managers
2016 became the year of the community
managers, and 2017 is not going to be any different. Brands keep thinking
social media is their one-trick pony, bur brands that succeed in the digital market
are not pushing 10 tweets a day.
Consumers don’t want to see brands selling
their stuff on social media. They want to see interesting stories, funny
content, and other creative ways to sell an idea, rather than a specific
product.
More so, social media has added humanity to
online conversations as more and more people can interact with the product creators.
They can give feedback in real time, lay out their opinions, criticise, share, and even create their own representations of a marketing stunt through
memes, reviews, tutorials, and more.
So, the responsibilities
of the community manager are not to schedule daily tweets, but to sort out
creative ways to open communication lines
with their consumers and make them feel a part of
what they are consuming.
In other words, community managers should
become the human face if the company and provide the brand of a personality and
values.
Setback of live content
Streaming content is problematic because it is
just not working out. Despite its immense
potential to receive live comments from their consumers, most UK brands don’t
seem to realise how to manage it.
Often times the production values are too
low or the content is too boring. Without a real high-value exchange, live
content is not going to have an impact on
consumers.
More so, watching live content spends time
and requires full attention, so the streaming event really has to be worth it.
Experian , for instance, is holding
successful chats via Snapchat, YouTube Live, and Periscope to talk with
consumers about their financial issues.
Democratisation of content
During 2017, brands will need to engage and
connect with their clients better than ever before, because nowadays consumers
can share and interact with almost any kind of content on the web, as well as
create their own.It means companies are not competing with
other brands anymore, they are not competing with the entire Internet.
For example, YouTube is still the
powerhouse of the web, hoarding almost 70 percent of the entire web traffic,
and the most viewed videos on the site
are product reviews. It’s a rather complex idea for most companies as more than
half of US and UK consumers check out a YouTube review before buying a product.
Consistent
user engagement
The key is creating consistent user engagement through their digital content. Anything
the brand publishes should amass retweets, favourites,
shares, comments, likes, dislikes, or whatever it is on the social media of
their preference.
On Facebook, the goal is to obtain shares
and reactions as most people are not commenting anymore; on Instagram, the goal
is to obtain comments; and on YouTube, the goal is to get subscriptions and
likes.
The
quality of the “amateur”
Any company wanting to inspire constant
user engagement has to accept that their audience
now possesses a broad range of tools
(like Instagram’s Boomerang or Facebook Live) that can create better and more
engaging pieces of content than the stuff brands are developing at their
laboratories.
In fact, a 2016 survey found that 85
percent of the users find user-generated content (UGC) more interesting and
influential than brands’ videos and photos. Another study ground shoppers
who interacted with UGC beforehand are 97 percent more likely to convert to a
retailer.
Digital marketing researchers have found audiences prefer “amateur” content because
it looks more genuine, and such phenomenon
will only keep increasing as brands fail to understand is no longer interesting
to see fully-commercial ads that are only showing a product for sale.
