Keeping on top of marketing trends is essential if you want to stay ahead of the competition and drive business growth. When it comes to marketing, however, change is the name of the game. In fact, just when you think you’re getting the hang of things, you realise that you may be lagging behind. Continually identifying new trends can maintain your digital marketing strategy in order to stay relevant and effective.
It’s still a common challenge for B2B tech and telecom businesses to understand how vital digital channels are today for acquiring and retaining customers. It’s important to create and implement a digital marketing plan to support digital transformation and company growth. Here at Ilex we’ve put together 7 steps on how you can stay on top of the market trends in today’s dynamic environment.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a service that pings you an email updating you on specific marketing trends that you should be following, based on your niche. This is a huge time saver as it removes the need for manual research to be done, with the whole process being automated instead.
Subscribing to Google Alerts helps your business stay on top of your digital marketing, with results being tailored to the specific keywords that you use. Not only will this allow you to receive updates about your competitors, but also news from different sectors which enables you to keep up to date with niche terms and trends.
Blogs
Knowing what is trending in your niche through Google Alerts allows you to create content that will rank well in search engines as you are specifically creating it for your niche topic, and with SEO in mind. Creating blogs also provides a channel of communication with your customers, whilst driving traffic to your website. This in the long term can create leads.
Subscribing to blogs that are relevant to your business will create an easy pathway to identifying new and changing marketing trends that can be applied to your own digital marketing strategy.
Email Newsletters
Email newsletters are key to keeping an eye on the latest marketing trends. Subscribing to other businesses’ newsletters that surround your niche topics is another way to save time in the long term. All their best pieces of content and news will have been condensed into a concise email newsletter.
By creating your own newsletter that you send out regularly to your subscribers, you can communicate in a personalised manner with your customers and deliver the right message at the right time. In fact, a study by Monetate found that email marketing leads 4.24% of visitors to complete a sale.
Social Media
Following people on social media channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook will keep you up to date with the content and key figures that are being talked about. However, it is important to make sure that the connections you are making online are relevant to your sector. Looking at social media strategies such as hashtags will help you spot marketing trends from businesses like yours that are relevant to use.
Engage with People
Creating conversations by replying to other businesses’ posts will help you understand the industry from an audience’s point of view. Therefore, you can use this information to improve your marketing efforts. You should be checking these regularly and replying consistently to make sure that this becomes beneficial for you.
SEO
Scanning for keywords and identifying the current trends that people are searching for is very helpful to pinpoint where you should be using them to your advantage. Going with the current trends and topics will increase your traffic and create long term growth for your business.
Keep an Eye on Competitors
Observing what your competitors are doing is key when keeping on top of new trends, news and opportunities. Have you seen that they have developed a new video marketing strategy? This is something your business should then implement into your marketing strategy.
Looking at your competitors’ social media, blog posts and website design can help to gain more information on the trends that they use for their marketing strategy. This will give you more ideas for what you should be adding on to yours, if you’re not doing it already.
At Ilex, our expert team are here to help you stay on top of the latest trends and implement a digital marketing strategy that works for you. Book a meeting today.