What is Trending in Marketing?

It is a fact: traditional Marketing, including current online marketing, is less and less effective. Over the years – marked by the growing importance of the internet and the rapid evolution of social media – customers have developed abilities to ignore and/or avoid internet ads.

In 2015, a young French male underwear brand proved that the future of marketing laid in the content shared with the customers – valuable, relevant and original – and the media used to do it – social media. #VeryLoveTrip has everything a relevant and efficient internet campaign should have: it was based on a story developed around Le Slip Fran?ais brand’s universe without never really selling the product but generating incredible worldwide brand awareness [1]. This creative internet marketing strategy relying on original content and a appropriate use of social media helped the brand to raise funds in order to enter the US market.

So why should companies invest in an efficient digital marketing strategy? It appears critical to adapt to this evolving environment where social media is an amplifier to any marketing strategy in order to stay ahead of the competition and expand business horizons.

Forbes described Content and Social Media as the future of Marketing Strategies [2], however some issues remain to be tackled if you want to be effective:

• Most social media strategies tend to fail [3]. Why? Being on social media and posting random information from time to time is neither enough nor efficient. Customers are used to see brands on their favorite social media – this has become normal – having a page or an account on social media will not ultimately transform brands into innovative and creative players in the customers’ eyes: their efforts on creating consistent strategies and their understanding of those digital platforms will.
•  In regards of the actual trends in digital marketing (as exposed above) – customers expect valuable and relevant contents which will make them more intelligent and give them real insights. Meaning that Marketing which has been defined for years as an instrument to sell more and attract consumers will need to be rethink into a tool to build interactions and relationships with customers in order to eventually drive call to actions.
•  Technologies move rapidly – so should digital marketing strategies. Constantly adapting to the evolution of social media is not an easy thing to do. Mastering social media can be complex and as their best advantage is to be immediate and global it can also be their worst flaws when a mistake is done. Choosing the wrong media at the wrong time is also source of failure. Online marketing strategies depend on the accurate match of a media to its audience and/or market.

To achieve a strong transition into the future of Marketing, brands will need to offer something different in terms of message to their customers on the already well established social media platforms. Only then brands will be able to be considered as innovative, creative and competitive. Content marketing coupled with social media will be the ultimate way to drive customers to actions and affect customers’ behaviors.

 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rT8kTWq1Vk

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/04/14/10-top-trends-driving-the-future-of-marketing/

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2014/04/22/why-most-social-media-strategies-fail/