It always pays to enhance customer relations for better and more sales opportunities. Read on to see how you can make use of mobile, visual and social trends to better communicate with your audience, and gain increased traction for your business.
By the myBusiness techblog team
The beginning of a new year is always a good time for businesses to reflect on marketing campaigns that worked in the previous year, and tweak (or perhaps remove) the strategies that didn’t perform so well. During this process, it is critical for companies to research projected marketing trends and strategies for the upcoming year and prepare accordingly.
Last year, the marketing world underwent many distinct changes. We saw continued increases in mobile web traffic globally, but specifically a 192.46% rise in Southeast Asia, according to Pingdom.com. We also saw the rise of Pinterest as a visually-based social media platform that grew from 1 million users in July 2011 to more than 20 million in a span of just a year. We also witnessed one PSY’s (a Korean music artist) music video turn into a global phenomenon—all thanks to YouTube. We can use these examples to predict which trends will be the most popular, and the following are just some methods you might want to think about when reaching out to your customers this year.
Focus on mobile-related marketing
You’re probably aware of the growing number of mobile users both locally and regionally. To tap into this large pool of potential customers, you have probably optimised your website for mobile browsers, or tried out basic mobile marketing campaigns such as SMS blasts. To further enhance your engagement with customers, you might have to consider developing your very own mobile app. You also need to make sure that your business is well-equipped with resource to engage them on these platforms. For more ideas, you can read our previous article on mobile technologies and tools you can adopt for added business value.
Engage your customer visually
Targeting consumers through visual marketing is being heralded as the next big thing in social media marketing. As the popularity of platforms such as Pinterest has shown, developing visually-driven marketing can help interact with consumers, and businesses that don’t leverage these platforms might lose out on a valuable resource to better engage their customers.
Even the larger enterprises are taking note of this trend. Take for example Coca Cola, which unveiled their new corporate website—which places “Brand Journalism” at its heart of providing new experiences to consumers. The revamped website was fresh, and designed for real-time content, but most of all, it was also highly visual. This helped to boost reader retention, and gain higher awareness for the brand.
Another great platform to use might be the new myspace social media platform. The re-designed interface attempts to combine the best elements of Pinterest and Facebook, presenting a highly visual experience that even allows for horizontal scrolling—making it perfect for viewing on tablets.
Never ignore social media
In case you haven’t noticed, having a presence on social network platforms allows for better engagement with customers. And delivering personalised services based on customer feedback could prove to be the tipping point for continued purchases. You can be sure that positive publicity generated by such acts can, and will spread very fast. Remember however, that when used as a marketing tool, social media involves a lot of effort to maintain, and customer requirements need to be constantly updated. Read our blog entries here and here for a better idea on what to expect for social media this year.
Engage in more convenient forms of payment
Consumers are now more tech-savvy and affluent than ever. By allowing your customers different payment modes, you make purchasing that much more convenient for them—and ease of payment speaks volumes nowadays, when a customer can change his/her mind if the payment process is too complicated, or slow.
Square is an electronic payment service that allows users to accept and make credit card payments via their mobile devices. As installing the app is effortless, many start-ups and entrepreneurs have adopted its use. Another innovative payment mode would be Near-Field Communication (NFC). NFC is supported at over 30,000 retail points, and allows customers to use their mobile phones to make payments with a simple tap on the reader (much like the EZlink card/reader).
It will be interesting to see what new innovations and technologies 2013 will bring in terms of enhancing customer-engagement. The key thing to remember now is that you should never be afraid to test them out. You will never know if it could turn out to be the next ‘big’ thing that could be the start of a brand new trend.
Have you utilised any of these new technologies and have an experience to share? Let us know in the comment box below.