Five marketing tips you shouldn't ignore | Advice

Although the core tenets of marketing are consistent over time, the world moves on and marketers need to keep abreast of the latest changes so that what they’re doing isn’t out of sync with what their target audiences expect. Here we offer five marketing tips and pieces of advice, critical to your success and based on current trends.

In parallel to the below, we have also published a complete marketing guide, packed full of free content you can draw upon to make your marketing campaigns a success. Download it here now.

Going mobile
It seems an obvious one, but many organisations are not thinking about mobile devices as the key device to interact with consumers. Make sure that your website is strong on mobile devices and that your marketing messages can be accessed through mobile – whether that’s creating a Whatsapp group or push notifications via text or email. It’s a great opportunity to target consumers with personalised, specific offers.

Creating content
Much current marketing advice talks about brands being “media companies”. This might seem like something unachievable for smaller organisations but basically all this means is having a platform, whether written, audio or video, to tell stories to your audience. This might be a blog, podcast or video series. In a world of competing messages, relevant, timely content is a great way of being found online and provides the ideal fodder for social media.

Garnering reviews
The strongest affirmation of your brand is that of real customers. There are now more platforms than ever to post recommendations and although some have come under fire for fake reviews, online forums and reviews are still powerful. Take advantage of any platforms you’re already using such as Facebook or Google Business to encourage customers to leave reviews. Of course, you can’t give them any incentive, but hopefully happy customers will want to say something positive of their own accord.

Gathering data
“You can’t manage what you don’t measure”, so the saying goes. This year it’s more true than ever. There are ever more ways of measuring your online presence and interactions with customers and marketers have a duty to make sure they’re using the data they have available in the right way. For those new to analytics, MarketingExperiments breaks down common Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics terms so that you understand what you’re looking for and how to use it.

Becoming compliant
Last but certainly not least, the big change on the horizon this year is, of course, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), coming in on May 25th. This is going to impact marketers significantly and potentially enormously reduce the database of consumer contacts you have. CRM provider SuperOffice has provided a guide to GDPR specifically for marketers to explore the different ways marketers need to get ready. Have a read.

As described at the start of this blog, we recently developed a series of articles looking at different areas of marketing, specifically for food and drink businesses. We’ve collated this content into a navigable ebook with potted tips for marketers. Download the ebook today and make sure you’re up-to-date with the fundamentals of marketing for food and drink businesses.