New media is changing the landscape of online marketing. Video holds increasing influence over content marketing and the attention of prospects on the web. If you let new media marketing strategies leave your business behind, it gets more complicated to play catch up. A decisive plan for your marketing will help you get a leg-up on your competition.
Podcasts, video and influencer culture have been killing text content on the web, but your website still carries even more importance than ever before. These 12 decisive new media marketing tips will help you keep your web presence afloat in a content marketing landscape that is vastly different than what we saw a decade ago.
The Sale Happens Before They Even Talk to You
Most customers do extensive research on Google, Amazon, Bing, Yelp and on forums well before you ever see an order for your product or service come through your website. Because of the dissemination of high-quality and accessible information available online about any number of subjects, the best thing you can do to insure business for your company is to be the very best source of information available on the web.
You’ll read it throughout this blog but read it here first: new media marketing is all about relationships and being the thought-leader in your industry. The more that prospects can find you and look to you as an expert, the more referrals you will get and the more revenue you will bring for your business.
Be Heard
Make sure your website is well-optimized for keywords relevant to your business. Do the research or hire an expert company to do it for your website. Regardless of how you achieve it, showing up on page one of Google for searches relating to your product or service is the very best way to bring new business to your door. Whether you revamp you learning resources or utilize social media influencers to advertise your business, the most important result is that your brand gets seen and your message heard by the right audience.
Use A Variety of Media
Using every tool at your disposal is another method that will put you ahead of your competitors. To be successful, your company should fuse together disparate types of new media such as podcasts, explainer videos, YouTube channels, search engine marketing, optimization, social media communities, marketing automation, blogs and more. Choose your own recipe.
There’s a massive world of media for your company to experiment with. There is no one-size-fits-all plan for new media marketing. Producing an Amazon Prime channel could work for one company, where concentrating on blog and social media posts could be the best strategy for another. Don’t leave any new media stones unturned when planning your content marketing strategies.
Be an Original Thought-Leader
It’s an old-school thought with new media applications. Be the leading thinker in your market. If you can set the trends and make a splash, you’ll leave your competition behind, struggling to catch their breath. Encourage social media participation and create a varied portfolio of informational media to keep prospects coming back to you to learn and reference. Additionally, the more Google sees people returning to your website, the higher you’ll rank. It’s a win-win.
On the same subject, taking inspiration from others is a cornerstone of marketing, but if everything you make is inspired from others (Read: unoriginal), your brand will suffer. Most companies rely on repeat customers to sustain their brand’s success over decades. Staying memorable is the only way survive, and thrive, in highly competitive markets.
New Media Is About Connections
Make connections. Make your prospect feel special. Nurture intimate relationships (no, not that kind) with your customers and make sure that you have content that people want to interact with, and always deliver service that goes above-and-beyond expectations.
And make connections to social media influencers in your market. These resources, who speak directly with tens and even hundreds of thousands of potential customers for your business can help you decisively push your company into the spotlight.
Create Value and Be an Expert
Be generous with your knowledge. Someone is always going to use (or steal) your knowledge once you make it available, so just be okay with it and innovate. That’s why your company matters. Your specialized knowledge is influential in your market, so stay ahead of the trends, use new media techniques to keep your competitors on their toes and make your expertise available to the world.
Give Your Company A Face
It’s important that prospects can associate you with a specific image. Branding is vital for a successful new media marketing strategy, so look toward the future when choosing an image for your company.
Make a Dynamic Website
Landing pages are king. Make visiting your website into dynamic, immersive and informative experience for the visitor. If your website doesn’t make an impact above the fold, it doesn’t matter how painstakingly-curated and relevant the rest of your content might be. Animated hero banners, RSS post feeds and well-curated information are a few important things to keep in mind when designing your new media website.
Give Great Service
Everybody is a critic. And since every one of your customers has access to massive online review databases, it’s more important than ever to treat every one of your customers like they’re your most important account.
Treat Customers Like What They Are: Relationships
It bears repeating: fostering lasting relationships with your customers is the best way to drive business. Many businesses rely on repeat customers to sustain them. But even if your business relies mostly on new business, being viewed as a thought-leader in your industry is vital for gaining and holding a significant share of your market.
So, make sure to update your blog regularly. Create new media like podcasts, explainer videos or other streaming media that can be consumed while multi-tasking, especially if you’re in a niche service industry. And above all, nurture your customer relationships, both online (through your website and social media), and in-person.
Social Media is King
Facebook might be rethinking their algorithms to the detriment of marketing content, but this just means you have to make better content and build stronger communities. Community is the strategy by which many of the longest-living brands have built their reputations for years. And that’s only become more important in a new media landscape.
Video blogs, podcast episodes, shout-outs to pop culture: these are just a few of the things that are going to make sure your brand is relevant to your audience and how you can continuously nurture the sales leads that your online social media community generates.
Community can also come in the form of an extensive catalogue of tutorials, learning resources and forums you’re your customers to visit. Or, and this is much more difficult to quantify, let alone to achieve, it can be a pervasive cultural influence that your brand builds over decades. The sky is the limit.
Data, Data and More Data
The more information you have, the better you can see where you’re heading and how to get there. Why would you choose to keep your near-sighted vision when you could have 20/20? Using the Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics and other data analytic tools embedded on your websites, you can segment your marketing efforts and vastly improve your conversion results. And on that note, always remember: segment, segment and segment some more. The narrower you can focus your targeting, the lower you can keep your cost per conversion.
