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Essential B2C marketing implementations. Technology and regulatory changes need to be prepared. We asked marketers how they plan to approach the next 12 months – here are the 18 topics they focused on.

The best ways to market your business in the next 12 months

The list below offers insights into many of the strategies you’ve heard of, including SEO, loyalty, e-commerce, and video and influencer marketing. It also includes new strategies in terms of cookie-free advertising and changes to privacy, as well as new approaches you can take to serve the new COVID-tired and socially change-conscious consumer. Regardless of the strategy, the idea is the same: to market personally and value your customers, but also efficiently so that you can save time, scale and get on with your day-to-day life.

Optimize for the next update from Google

With the Page Experience Update from Google (May 2021), new metrics called “Core Web Vitals”, with which the loading time, interactivity and content stability of the website are measured, will affect the entire search ranking.

Prepare for the end of third-party cookies

2021 will also be the year marketers prepare for two big changes: the end of third-party cookies and a new privacy policy in California.

“We need to become familiar with data collection practices where privacy is paramount. That means focusing on creating lists and building personal relationships with customers, ”said Harry Maugans, CEO of the data protection service Privacy Bee. “Make sure your campaigns help you create your first party data so you can rely less on other people’s data.”

The death of third-party cookies will change the way in which digital ads are targeted and tracked. However, Dave Toby, director of the digital marketing agency Pathfinder Alliance, said there was still “significant confusion about how campaigns are impacted”.

Maintaining relationships with first-party suppliers

Direct relationships with customers become even more important as the online landscape becomes more and more crowded with brands trying to reach digital consumers. But it will also be important because one-to-one relationships allow brands to personalize content for better experiences.

Houman Akhavan, CMO of CarParts.com, said a first-party data strategy produced “incredible results” in 2020, including “record conversions”.

“A critical part of this first-party data strategy was using the right customer data platform technology that is scalable to process millions of records of customer insights, including real-time signals that need immediate action before they become obsolete. “He said.” We have generated over a quarter of a billion personalized one-on-one messages using our customer data platform. We have seen our click-through rates increase by up to 400% and our email sales have doubled . “

Focus on customer loyalty

And for brands struggling to recover from the events of 2020, it can make sense to focus on existing customers.

“In an uncertain economy, most brands – especially niche retailers – should focus on existing customers,” said Jonathan Frey, CMO of electric bike retailer Urban Bikes Direct.

Jim Pendergast, SVP of AltLine commercial finance platform, expects B2C brands to highlight mobile marketing for customer loyalty.

Start Selling on Social Media

Another burgeoning trend that may have far-reaching implications is social trading. In 2020, Facebook launched Shops for Facebook and Instagram so that users can shop directly on the platforms.

Bruce Biegel, Senior Managing Partner of the management consultancy Winterberry Group, expects a stronger focus on social commerce and new marketplaces in 2021 in order to shorten the customer journey from search to conversion.

Product personalization

The email weapon isn’t that secret. Everyone knows that email marketing is a powerful customer acquisition tool. First of all, the foot-in-the-door technique applies. Second, you have permission to forward marketing messages to a whole list of people.

There are two ways to use email marketing in customer acquisition: tracking and increasing customer loyalty.

Capturing an email is an easy way to reach a prospect later. Let them know when you have a discount or special offer to pursue. As long as you don’t abuse the list (which leads to unsubscribes), you literally have a list of people who are slightly interested in your product and are open to being contacted again.

Email is also a great way to improve your customer loyalty. The most valuable customer is the one you don’t lose. Customer loyalty is just as important as new customer acquisition. Contact them to let them know about pending notifications, recent updates, and more. Arouse their interest in your product via email. Remind them what’s going on, what’s missing, etc.

Personalized product selection solutions using predictive analytics technologies identify future consumer behavior and rank each SKU in order of greatest propensity based on the greatest likelihood that that individual consumer will purchase from all listed SKUs. It presents them to that person at exactly the right moment, maximizing the CLV potential of that person’s customer lifespan. (i.e. purchase likelihood, discount affinity, churn likelihood, etc.).

Let communities grow

Brands should not only show that they are trustworthy, but also nurture the community of loyal customers.

“The notion of community building is not new, but brands need to understand that loyalty is returning, and brands that know what their customers want and how they can be engaged through transparency and humility will make all the difference”, said SEO consultant Itamar Blauer.

Olga Petrik, CMO of Gmail CRM company NetHunt CRM, agreed that brands should now invest more in loyalty and customer loyalty.

Optimize for voice search

We saw voice search in previous year-end forecasts. However, this may be the year consumers use their voice-activated devices more while they were at home during the pandemic.

Get to know local search engine optimization

Speaking of which, local SEO is another marketing strategy to keep appearing on this list. This time because brands can update their Google Business profiles through their Google My Business accounts to include pandemic-friendly details like online appointments and roadside pickup and delivery, said Sarah Blocksidge, marketing manager at digital marketing agency Sixth City Marketing.

Go casual on social videos

The social video trend will no doubt continue throughout the decade.

Mark Hayes, director of marketing at the video-based advisory platform Kintell, noted that TikTok has over 500 million users and is available in more than 150 global markets. It has also spurred copycats like Instagram’s Reels, which launched in August 2020. (Twitter’s Fleets, released in November 2020, has similar 24-hour video capabilities.)

Go live

An extension of this video trend is live streams, which will continue to be popular.

Reuben Yonatan, CEO of VOIP guide website GetVOIP, noted a sharp surge in brands going live during the pandemic to engage with consumers in real time.

Tap micro-influencers

2020 was a good year for micro-influencers like Nathan Apodaca, the viral cranberry juice-drinking TikTok star, and Tony Piloseno, another TikTok user with hugely popular paint-mixing videos who was fired by Sherwin Williams and then hired by Florida Paints. With TikTok showing no signs of slowing down, the power of influencers big and small is expected to continue.

Use retail media networks

Retailers like Amazon were among the few who actually benefited from the changes sparked by the pandemic.

In recent history, Amazon has also diversified its advertising portfolio, adding units such as sponsored video ads, sponsored display ads, and OTT ads.

“With these additions, Amazon has become a fully closed ecosystem that supports the entire marketing funnel from product discovery to purchase,” said Natalia Wulfe, CMO of digital marketing agency Effective Spend. “Advertisers can use OTT and Sponsored Display to create awareness, video ads to educate and engage visitors, and traditional sponsored product ads to drive transactions.”

Taken together, these developments mean that advertisers on Amazon can enjoy better reach and performance than ever before, added Wulfe.

Establishing brand partnerships

2020 brought us successful brand collaborations like McDonald’s and Travis Scott, Adidas and Allbirds as well as Adidas and Lego, which means that more brand collaborations are on the horizon.

Unexpected partnerships between corporate brands draw media attention, create social buzz, and enable cross-marketing to customer bases – with no celebrity endorsement fees, which plays a good part in a time of hard-to-measure customer attention and tight budgets.

But brands that don’t have the resources to hire a Travis Scott, for example, can instead partner with brands that offer complementary products or services. This is exactly what the ThermoGears thermal imager did when they wanted to bring new visitors to their website.

Get into Augmented Reality

Expect more augmented reality (AR) executions as well. This allows brands to show consumers what objects look like in their homes, such as: B. the AR catalog from Ikea, or what clothes or accessories look like on your body, such as the virtual try-on app from Warby Parker.

The pandemic encouraged marketers to think in unique ways about how to connect with consumers who stay in their homes, ”said Stephen Light, CMO of mattress retailer Nolah Mattress. “The solution was AR marketing, which helped the target market feel like they owned the product even without seeing it in person.

The biggest misconception about AR ads is that they are expensive but actually more budget friendly than traditional channels.

Automate what you can

Another tactic to reduce the budget and increase efficiency is to automate marketing. Sharon van Donkelaar, CMO at LinkedIn Marketing Automation Company Expandi, said automation helps free employees from “many boring and routine business tasks.” This includes automated bidding in Google Ads.

Originally published here.

Author: David Swift

David Swift is a seasoned CEO with a proven track record in the information technology and services industries. Experience in personalized product selection software for email marketing. A martech entrepreneur. … Show complete profile >