Ecommerce popularity is continually on the rise. In the United States alone, ecommerce sales are expected to reach close to 2 trillion dollars this year, so a strong marketing plan is essential if you want a piece of that pie.
We know that social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, and more are incredibly effective foundational ways to grow your business and increase brand awareness – but what’s the next layer on the cake? What can take those marketing channels to the next level?
Today, we’ll take a look at how the marketing ecosystem is changing and what growth opportunities lie ahead.
Why It’s Important to Be Aware of Marketing Trends
In order to continually succeed in any form of business – it’s important to stay on top of the movers, the shakers, and the risk-takers and learn from them.
For you to truly make a splash with your ecommerce business, you’ll need to be able to quickly adapt to changes in the market. If you’re solely relying on search engine optimization as your main driver for traffic and sales and one day your rankings drop – where do you go? What do you do?
On top of that, if you’re already struggling with your marketing and brand awareness – you might need some inspiration for how to market your product.
Emojis are quickly becoming an incredibly important part of how we communicate with one another. On social media, they’re more prominent than ever.
Use Emojis as a New Way to Communicate
With social media being 63% made up of images, emojis pose as nothing but a creative opportunity to help convey messages that strike a chord with a larger audience than ever before.
Businesses are using emojis as a part of their marketing content – and with good reason – they resonate with people across the world. Oxford Dictionaries even called the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji their 2015 word of the year.
Emojis are a fun, cute, and quick way to get a message across. It’s a much more personal approach to communicating with potential (and existing) customers than traditionally writing 140 word tweets, or long emails. You send emojis to your friends and family, so why not send emojis to customers too?
A study by the team at WordStream found that a tweet with an emoji in it had 25.4% higher engagement than the exact same tweet without an emoji.
If you’re looking for some creative inspiration, take a look at how companies like Dominos and Denny’s are using emojis in their Tweets!
thought this was an omelette
nope
875875 likes
Try sprinkling some emojis in your tweets when you can – and who knows, you might see more traffic and engagement heading your way.
Tell Stories with Native Video
Unless you’ve been in hiding for the past few months or so, you’ve probably seen your news feeds on social media filling up with videos that have amassed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views.
From videos of celebrity DJ Khaled getting lost at sea on his seadoo, to quick cut news, to recipes in thirty seconds – there’s no doubt this type of content is becoming increasingly important as a marketing tool.
For example, take a look at this video from Tasty that has more than 40M views on Facebook alone.
Facebook has made changes to its video platform in the past six months or so, making share-ability much easier than ever before. During 2014, Facebook averaged 2 billion video views per day and has continued to grow since the Ice Bucket Challenge.
A website called Elite Daily took note, and expanded its video team from seven to 35 – they produce two pieces of video content per day! Their videos got 153 million views on Facebook last year, and 18.9 million in December alone according to TubularLabs.
Besides Facebook, larger companies are starting to use Snapchat Discover as a channel for growth. A few brands are even creating branded content series, such as AT&T’s upcoming “SnapperHero.” The show will feature famous YouTube and Vine stars, and will use crowdsourcing to help determine what type of content it creates – a potentially massive content play for AT&T.
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With that in mind, start thinking about different types of native content you could be producing for your business or brand.
Virtual Reality as the Next Channel for Growth
Wth Oculus releasing its first consumer product this year, and an expected 25 million units sold by 2018 – the opportunity to tell stories in a 360 degree space is drool-worthy.
How might it look? Consider the fact that any experience in virtual reality is tangible. If you are a company that plans and promotes trips across the world, have someone step onto a cruise ship invirtual reality to give them a taste of what the actual trip might be like.
Here’s a very early example of what retail shopping in virtual reality might look like:
According to Econsultancy, Red Bull offers VR experiences alongside its extreme flying races so fans can experience what it is like to be in the plane, not just watch it.
In a discussion at WIRED Retail 2015, Henry Stuart from Visualise told the audience; “Shopping will be tailored in VR, it will only show stuff that’s relevant to you, and you will be able to pick things up in the virtual world and feel them, as well as playing with them, before you start to buy them.”
With that in mind – start thinking about what that type of experience could look like for your business and products! The future of virtual reality is closer than we think.
Conclusion
Now that we’ve taken a look at some new and surprising ways to get more traffic and engagement this year, it’s time to start experimenting! Try sprinkling emojis on social media when you can, and even consider making a quick piece of video content too. And hey – if you’re one of the many early Oculus or VR adopters, maybe creating a virtual experience that ties into your brand is an option too.
Have any other ideas as to what marketing strategies might be big this year? Let us know in the comments below.
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