7 Tips for a Highly Effective Elevator Pitch

If you’re a business owner, you should be ready to deliver your company’s elevator pitch at a moment’s notice but can it ever be counter-productive? The problem is that too often, an elevator pitch feels more like a windup into a long monolog with detailed descriptions of every product and service your company provides and why each is amazing. We’ve all been at the other end of this kind of pitch and as a result, we’ve developed personal exit strategies. The most effective one I’ve found is looking off in the distance and identifying someone I need to say hello to and quickly moving on.

Elevator Pitch Tips

The following seven habits will help you avoid elevator pitch overload:

Remember your vision. Why did you start your company and what are you really excited about? If you don’t know your “why” it’s going to be very difficult to motivate anyone else to get excited about your company. And if money is your key driver, your pitch will come across as a sales pitch. Think about the last time you were on the receiving end of this type of pitch. How receptive were you?

Get familiar with your ideal client. Instead of thinking of your elevator pitch as a one size fits all, try and imagine the one person who would be a great fit for what you offer. Who are they?  What do they care about? What is their pain point? When you understand your ideal client and what motivates them, you will gain insight and empathy for them which will make it easier to identify them. So when you find yourself speaking to that ideal client, your pitch will feel like the very thing they’ve been looking for.

Understand your value proposition. What makes your company unique? Are you the Uber of cookie dough? The Martha Stewart of auto parts? Once you understand your value proposition, embrace it and own it.

Get comfortable with rejection. The goal of a great elevator pitch to is identity your ideal client so when your pitch doesn’t connect with the listener, consider it a gift. You’ve just saved yourself weeks or maybe even months, chasing after the wrong client who is too polite to tell you that they don’t want what you have to offer.

Keep it short and keep it real. In our 24/7 social media culture, one minute is too long for an elevator pitch so keep it to 30 seconds and leave out any industry jargon or acronyms. Use real language that tells someone what you do in a way that piques their curiosity so they’ll want to know more. If you get a blank stare, go back to #4.

Think of your pitch as the start of a conversation. When you’ve connected with a potential customer, they will visibly nod and start asking questions. This is a really good thing!

Practice! It’s natural for a new pitch to feel awkward at first so the key is to practice it until it feels natural and meaningful to you. Then breathe and smile. Your elevator pitch will come across much better when you’re relaxed.

I’ve spent a decade crafting my elevator pitch which is why it now seems like second nature to answer the question, what do you do? with: “I align vision with relevant messaging that cuts through the noise.” If I don’t have you at hello, I smile and ask what you do. After all, someone I know could be looking for the very thing your company offers.

Source: http://bit.ly/2cW1Ah2

Be curious

More about me go to : www.patrick-osinski.com

Social Media Strategy: where to begin?

Social media are a necessary part of any marketing strategy, but they should also be a part of your SEO strategy. As social media become more popular, Google and other search engines can’t ignore them any longer. Tweets and Facebook posts don’t get the highest rankings in Google, but Facebook pages and profiles for sure do. But how do you know which social media to use? In this post, I’ll walk you through the first steps of determining a social media strategy: finding the social media that suits both your business and your audience best.

Which social media suit your business?

The first step in determining a social media strategy is whether that social medium is one that you’d want to be found on. In other words, does the social medium suit the message and branding of your company? And on top of that: does this social medium offer the options and reach you’re looking for?

Social media like Facebook and Twitter offer a lot of ways to advertise and make your brand and company known beyond the scope of your followers. With other social media, this can be more difficult and would require a lot of hard work to get the same results. Make sure to think about what presence on the considered social media would mean for your company. Make sure that this aligns with how you want your business to be branded.

Which social media does your (desired) audience use?

Different kinds of people use different kinds of social media. So you have to know what social media your audience uses. And for you to know that, you’ll have to get to know your audience. This requires some effort and research, but it will definitely be worth it. For instance, if your company mainly works in the business-to-business area, you should definitely be active on LinkedIn. And if you have a young audience, your business is best off using social media such as Snapchat, Vine, Tumblr and Instagram:

Social media you can’t ignore

At the moment, there’s basically only one social medium you really can’t ignore and that’s Facebook. Why? Let me show you:

Facebook currently has nearly 1.5 billion active users every month. That’s over 20% of the entire world population being on Facebook at least once a month. So you can see why this is one bandwagon you’ll want to get on.

A blog or website should thus definitely have its own Facebook page. And your posts should all be shared on Facebook. That way, all the people who follow your page see new posts in their timeline. WordPress can do this automatically for you when you publish an article. Some people will like, share or comment on the Facebook posts, be giving them, even more, exposure.

Think about your social media strategy!

The main thing you should take away from this post is that you should determine your social media strategy, before your start. It’s easy to waste time, effort and money on the wrong media and/or the wrong goals. So bear in mind these 3 key questions:

• Who do I want to reach with social media?
• Which social media suits my business?
• On which social media do I find my target group?

 Source: http://bit.ly/1pR9SNO

15 ways to boost your brand’s social media ROI

Social media marketing is both a bane and a boon to business owners.

If it’s working for your business and driving traffic, you love it. If it’s not bringing in results, you hate it—and feel that you’re wasting your time.

So, stop wasting your time. Drive results, with the right tactics and appropriate planning.

Here are 15 strategies to improve your social ROI 

that every business owner should practice:

1. Use the right social channels.

The social networks you use for your marketing campaigns should fit your audience—as well as your goals. Consider these points when determining which channel(s) to target, taking into account the following metrics from Alexa:

· Facebook has the largest user base (1.1 billion users, compared to Twitter’s 500 million).

· Facebook garners 8 percent of page views on the web, compared to 1 percent for LinkedIn and Twitter, and .5 percent for Pinterest.

· LinkedIn and Twitter lean toward B2B marketing, while Facebook dominates the B2C market.

· YouTube is the second-largest search engine and is a great ad source to use for amplifying exposure to other social campaigns or your own videos.

Take the time to research your audience and niche so that you can create the blend of social channels that provides the highest return on your efforts.

2. Curate relevant content.

Since it’s not always easy to come up with fresh content, you should curate some. Find relevant articles, news, videos, images, memes, infographics, interviews and more that you can share with your audience.

3. Adapt your strategies based on competitive research.

You’re not the only player in the social landscape. You are competing for a portion of people’s awareness, attention, interests, time and money.

Analyze what the most engaging companies are doing, then innovate and do it better.

4. Keep your team on track.

Pay close attention to what your team should be focusing on, and set goals, identify important channels and eliminate activities that are ineffective. You always want to keep your team working on social activities that perform the best for your company.

5. Balance promotions, with value-oriented content.

Remember the 80/20 rule in everything you do. The importance of not spamming and overselling your business on social media cannot be emphasized enough. Keep your content 80 percent organic and value-oriented, and 20 percent promotional.

6. Push individual user engagement.

It doesn’t matter how big the company is: Customers love personal attention. Respond to those making comments, even if they’re not asking a question. Directly engage followers in all of your social channels. That builds trust and respect, and followers will be far more likely to do business with you.

7. Be authentic.

Today’s customers are savvy, and you can't fake it online. Says Sid Shuman, who runs social media for Sony Playstation: "They can smell that a mile away."

The same people who are die-hard fans of your brand will be the first to call you on the carpet for shady behavior or activity and content that does not reflect the culture that you’ve already created.

8. Stick to a calendar.

Fans appreciate it when they know they can expect certain types of content at certain times of the week. When you’re posting daily and then drop off the radar for a week, it’s noticed and remembered. Schedule your posts, set the number of posts per week and stick to the plan.

9. Leverage social media outside of social channels.

“Incorporate social into every aspect of what you do,” says Jordan Kretchmer, Livefyre's founder and chief executive. Kretchmer's company reports that 88 percent of businesses using Twitter feeds, comments, ratings and reviews on home pages have increased user engagement. Some 42 report of business have boosted their average time on site, says Lifefyre.

Social media can bring you indirect ROI right on your website because of the social authority that comes with being active and engaging your fans.

10. Experiment and monitor ROI

Don’t be afraid to break the mold and try new things. Some of those things won’t work, but many will, and you’ll be adding to your toolbox of tactics to improve engagement over the long term.

11. Use paid promotions.

More and more social platforms are offering you the opportunity to promote your page, push specific messages and more, beyond your immediate network of fans.

You’ll see much-improved ROI by boosting posts and sponsoring Instagram photos, not only for immediate campaigns, but also for long-term ROI from newly acquired fans who otherwise never would have discovered you.

12. Tag URLs to better track ROI

With multiple campaigns running, it can be difficult to see the return across a variety of channels. One way to simplify that is to use UTM tags in the URL that tag a specific campaign source.

This lets you see traffic from Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud or YouTube within your analytics. Now, you can actively see the return as it applies to specific posts or campaigns.

13. Join conversations.

Get to know your audience in groups and communities like Reddit, and let them know who you are as you contribute organically to the conversation. The more you engage your audience, the more you can build trust, brand visibility and referral traffic.

14. Mention people.

When there are opportunities to mention “influencers” and brand advocates in your industry, do it. When you have a proud customer, highlight that person or company. Mentioning people, and tagging them, puts a spotlight on them that leads back to your social channels—a spotlight that everyone in their network can see.

15. Recycle past content

Past content, especially content that your fans enjoyed, should be repurposed whenever possible because you’re always gaining new fans who never saw the original piece.

If you’re short on content, grab some of your “greatest hits” material and repost.

Which social platform(s) bring you the highest returns or the most engagement?

  Source : http://bit.ly/1Toag2a

Quote of the day

Steer clear of these costly marketing mistakes

Every business has a product or service worth promoting, but a prolific marketing presence should not be your main goal.

A thoughtfully planned and well-executed campaign can easily outperform lazy, mass-media ad buys.

To save money, time, and headaches eager entrepreneurs eager need to be wary of poorly-executed campaigns and advertisements done in bad taste that can cause more harm than good.

Examples such as Groupon’s 2011 Super Bowl commercial, Sony’s white PSP ads and Molson Coors’ college drinking campaign earned each organization widespread public backlash and will forever haunt these brands. To be more effective at marketing, businesses must be mindful of embarrassing themselves and offending customers. Ultimately, bad marketing can be ruinous for customer loyalty and sales.

1. False promises negatively impact brand affinity.

Companies like Allstate Insurance, Avis Car Rental and RadioShack have alluring taglines, but offer poor service.

While Allstate suggests, “You're in good hands with Allstate,” paying customers aren’t convinced. On ConsumerAffairs.com, the insurance company receives an average rating of 1.1 out of five. Avis’ slogan, "We try harder," is similarly far from believable. It, too, maintains an abysmal rating of 1.2 out of five. Prior to 2014, Radioshack touted, "You've got questions ... We've got answers." Unfortunately, its broken promises have awarded it a customer satisfaction rating of 1.4 out of five.

Although a clever motto can be enough to motivate customers to walk into your store or visit your website, the experience you offer and the value you deliver are what matter the most. To effectively manage consumer expectations and improve customer satisfaction, make promises you intend to keep.

2. Bad data nets zero ROI for potentially profitable campaigns.

Organizations simply cannot afford to operate with bad data.

According to Econsultancy, “New research from Experian Data Quality shows that inaccurate data has a direct impact on the bottom line of 88 percent of companies, with the average company losing 12 percent of its revenue.”

In advertising, unique creatives are often tested against a control audience. In this instance, clean data might reveal that certain ads drive high engagement and positive ROI while others underperform. With the flip of a switch, data-driven marketers would then turn off the creatives that provide negative ROI and scale up spend on the high-performers. Without these sorts of insights, many marketers find themselves paying a fortune for traffic that does not convert.

3. Inconsistent experiences confuse customers.

Different things make different customers tick. In a world where technology allows us to personalize every marketing touch-point with consumers, many brands still fall short. Email blasts include links to products that are no longer available. Advertising creatives direct audiences to unrelated pages on your site. At checkout, the coupon that should have automatically been applied to a purchase is nowhere to be found.

Marketers need to regularly walk through the customer acquisition and engagement funnels to spot any errors or inconsistencies which may confuse customers and deter audiences from completing their purchase.

4. Aggressive email blasts affect deliverability.

For mid-sized businesses, email marketing offers a 246 percent return on investment. Some marketers forget the importance of proper audience segmentation. An email blast to your entire list of subscribers may cause recipients, in droves, to mark your mail as spam.

Losing subscribers is the least of your worries. If you regularly receive complaints from recipients who mark your email as spam, your email service provider may temporarily disable or permanently delete your account.

According to Campaign Monitor, “The industry standard for an acceptable percentage of complaints per email campaign is less than 0.02 percent.” Anything above that is cause for concern.

5. Marketers fly blind when they operate in silos.

Marketers sometimes find themselves operating alone and on their own terms inside a bubble instead of interacting with their peers to build a better product and increase overall customer experience. Marketers, for their own purposes, should reach out to their colleagues in finance, sales, customer service, product and engineering for valuable help and guidance.

Marketers operating in a silo may not realize which products customers rave about most, which offerings have the highest (and lowest) markup and which tools or services are currently experiencing bugs or downtime.

6. Marketing to desktop users neglects a larger, growing audience.

Most advertisements and creatives are built and optimized for a desktop audience. What many marketers forget is they leave money on the table when they fail to optimize their campaigns for mobile users.

In the U.S., consumers spend more time on their mobile devices than they do on desktop computers. The future of marketing is mobile, as audiences have long shifted their attention towards smaller screens with much faster Internet connections.

Marketers waste millions each year on desktop-optimized ads that are delivered to mobile audiences. Companies, instead, should prioritize developing mobile-optimized ads first, and worry about desktop traffic later.

Source : http://bit.ly/20Tzo5G

From Likes to Leads: Five Steps to Social Lead Generation

Does the name ‘John Wanamaker’ ring a bell?

Probably not, but around the turn of the last century, he was a brilliant marketer and founder of a department store chain. He pioneered merchandising, was the first to add price tags to items, and introduced the money-back guarantee on purchases.

But perhaps more than anything, old Johnny W. is best known for his humorous take on his investments in marketing. You know the quote: Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.

Which Half is Social?

Fast-forward to today, and the truth is that many social marketers likely ponder similar issues. Over 150 years later, marketers and communicators are still wrestling with what we today call ‘attribution’.

On one hand, it feels great to measure success based on the number of fans, followers and subscribers a brand has. After all, views, likes, shares, and tweets are clear indications that your audience appreciates what you have to share. There’s definite value in creating brand awareness and affinity.

But on the other hand, this isn’t 2010 anymore. CMOs are under increasing pressure to show demonstrable ROI (or attribution). Every marketer must now correlate social marketing with the bottom line. Are those Facebook likes translating into web form completes? Are Twitter campaigns reducing acquisition costs of search engine marketing? What happens after somebody shares your blog posts on LinkedIn?

Just ask any sales exec and they’ll be quick to tell you what they want from social. Quality leads.

Driving Bottom Line Value from Social

Generating leads from social marketing is the new measure of effectiveness, but the majority of organizations fall short. While 83% of marketers use content to generate leads, a mere 21% are able to correlate ROI against the goal.   

So what’s a marketer to do? Let’s check out five social tactics that can help you delight your sales team and measure the value of your investments.  

1. Listen for the Right Signals

The key to being a great conversationalist is to be a great listener, right? Social marketing is no different.

Of course you want to deliver great content, but social listening is a short path to lead generation. Not only does it enable you to discover what topics are generating interest and what customers are saying about your brand, it equips you to hone in on key ‘buy words’ that indicate an active interest in finding solutions pertinent to your products and services. You’ll need to adjust your listening filters based on your specific situation, but imagine the value of detecting associated terms like ROI, RFP, considering, opinions, evaluation, buying, review, etc.

2. Pinpoint Messages Based on Insights

Next, leverage the insights you’ve gained through social listening to join the conversation. Make that research actionable. Monitor where conversations are happening, and align content to topics generating the most interest.

For the best results, apply social insights to drive broader marketing decisions. One quick win opportunity is to target specific customers with 1-to-1 social advertising on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. Be sure each call to action enables you to track the prospect to the next phase—this is not the time for fleeting marketing messages.

3. Connect Social IDs to CRM Records

Associating social identities to CRM records enables you to continue the conversation on other channels like email. The best approaches use every customer interaction—regardless of channel or stage in the customer lifecycle—as an opportunity to connect the dots. Imagine a day where your marketing can be “channel-agnostic” and technology helps to determine the best way to reach a prospect at a particular time. That day starts now with identity consolidation.

Customers are accustomed to providing an email address or phone number as a unique identifier. Are you requesting social handles as a standard part of every interaction you have with them? How about your peers in support? Or better yet, even earlier—do your online purchase forms include fields for social identifiers? Your product registration process? Webinar registration forms? Surveys? 

Be sure to identify all critical touch points throughout your customers’ journeys. It will likely reveal new opportunities to connect social identities to data already stored in your CRM platform. 

4. Carefully Manage Sales Expectations

It’s not uncommon for social leads to meet some initial resistance from the sales team. Because the strategy is unfamiliar, there’s a tendency to perceive the source as less valuable than more traditional types of leads.

That’s a dangerous assumption. Consider that only 27% of all leads—regardless of how they were generated—ever receive any type of follow-up from sales (and most of those don’t receive any within the first 48 hours). Talk about a negative impact on ROI!

Marketing will have a hard time changing that culture: It has to come from sales leadership. As it relates to social leads, let sales leadership know what they can expect from your team in terms of volume and quality, and gain agreement on SLAs for follow-up.

It’s also a good idea to provide some coaching on how to best follow-up on social leads. They should be handled differently than other qualified leads. The chances are that you’ve carefully curated the interest over time, and a heavy-handed response from sales can quickly unravel what had been a ‘soft sell’ up to that point. 

5. Measure the Results

Last but certainly not least, carefully track the results of your social efforts. Avoid the temptation to solely use marketing metrics. Instead, speak salespeople’s language—analyze and share results based on sales-centric measures like number and value of leads, opportunities and closes. 

For added validity, be sure you’re able to answer the proverbial ‘as compared to what?’ question in reports. With social lead generation being new, it’s easy to classify it as a new sales tool with no peers (and thus no comparison). But the budgets, resources and marketing efforts could be spent doing something else.

And of course, be honest with your reporting, even if you don’t see immediate efficacy. Driving leads through social can take time, but few doubt that building 1-to-1 social relationships will continue to become ever-more critical.

Source : http://sforce.co/1Q3DNYG

7 Ways To Keep Your Startup Marketing Lean

If you've recently launched a startup, you know your brand needs as much exposure as possible. When you don't have much capital to work with, however, you may require a more cost-effective strategy. 

Luckily, digital marketing is highly scalable. You can start working on effective, goal-producing activities right now, and build on your strategy as you get more resources.

Building Brand Awareness And Value

The more people who recognize your brand from a distinctive logo, voice, and design, the better your chances are of getting content in front of them and driving conversions. Products and services evolve naturally the longer a company stays around, but a recognizable brand is like an insurance policy for your business goals.

Don't think you'll get away with a catchy yet vague slogan like Visa’s “It’s everywhere you want to be” and create brand value. You haven’t gained enough market penetration. Startups have to use explanatory and emotionalcues in their messaging to build awareness and trust.

Yet today's startups have more power than ever to create brand awareness and value without spending money. Even young individuals on social media can create an impactful brand that resonates with followers. Popular YouTube stars Jenna Marbles and PewDiePie both make more than many actors and actresses, and it all started with a free YouTube channel. The key is finding where your target audience spends time and using those platforms to emotionally connect.

Every piece of content, including tweets, infographics, and short- and longform video, has the potential to resonate with your audience in a meaningful way. Having a social impact also increases the likelihood that current customers who believe in your product offering will recommend your product to friends and colleagues.

Optimizing Digital Marketing on a Budget

You don’t need to invest millions into marketing as a startup. Take Zillow. It's now a public company that does spend millions on TV ads and more. But when it first started, it didn’t spend anything on marketing. Its website was its product, and optimizing it at every level ensured the site acted as its own marketing. Email, search-engine optimization, content development, and PR don’t have to cost much money in the beginning.

Consider investing in these areas:

A Strong Web Presence

Websites are at the core of digital marketing. Without one, you have nowhere to direct inbound marketing activities. Your page will serve as a data repository you can tap to gauge success, and it's also the only place online that's completely yours to create. Find ways to add value through your websiteto encourage traffic.

For example, Dropbox used free extra storage as a promotion for referrals, and Pinterest used an “invitation only” tactic to create an image of exclusivity before making the site available to anyone. Each tactic added value without costing the company much upfront.

In addition to traffic-driving tactics, update your website for visibility on search engines. These boring maintenance tasks will continually boost your visibility and become a source of value for inbound visitors.

Social Media

Find out where your audience spends its time. Are they younger folks who prefer to Snapchat, Instagram, and Yik Yak—or are they an older generation who's more comfortable with Facebook and Twitter?

You can always buy your way to prominence on social platforms. But companies that really succeed in social media use these channels as a natural extension of other marketing activities. Social media is a forum for natural engagement that builds credibility, not revenue generation. Consider how Dollar Shave Club used YouTube and companies like Red Bull and Oreo used hashtag campaigns to generate conversations. People of every age use social media, making it a fantastic forum for startups to tap into—you just have to figure out where your users are hanging out.

Your Personal Network

Every entrepreneur has to become a brand champion, and every business owner needs to get the word out. Grassroots marketing is effective because it allows you to leverage personal relationships for the benefit of the business, and almost every company uses it in some form. Get on social media, call up friends and old schoolmates, go to LinkedIn and take advantage of those professional connections, and ask your family to get in on it.

Request that everyone do something to promote the brand, whether that's reviewing the product on a third-party site, sharing content on social media, or mentioning your company online. Every extra link your network puts out has the potential to reach hundreds more people than you could on your own.

Content

Content is the bread and butter of the digital marketing world. Whether you use slideshows, quizzes, surveys, blogs, videos, articles, or infographics, take the time to make each piece of content feel like an extension of the company. Think about what types of content other successful companies have used. 

Although Target is a large company, for instance, its recent holiday marketing campaign told a story across digital and traditional platforms to inspire an emotional connection and engagement. Startups can do the same thing on a smaller scale to generate brand awareness.

Engage With Your Customers

Part of the beauty of digital marketing is the ability for brands to create a personal connection with consumers. Companies are living, breathing organisms that consumers care about. Brands such as Google, Lego, and Uber all outperform their competitors because they make a personal connection with their audiences.

Companies that win at engagement have created an emotional connection. They respond to feedback quickly and publicly. They understand what their target audience finds valuable. Startups can mimic these larger successes with fast responsivity and by sharing in consumer experiences online.

Mobile And App Marketing

Since many startups focus on providing app-centric services, earning visibility in Apple and Google's app stores will yield the best marketing results. Make sure users looking for products like yours can find your app. There are more than 1,600,000 apps in Google Play and more than 1,500,000 in the Apple App Store. Spend time on app-store optimization, including keywords, icon graphics, and descriptions and screenshots to encourage users to download.

Email

Email still offers a lot of bang for your buck. Most online consumers check their email many times a day, and many use a mobile device to do so. E-commerce companies, in particular, invest in email marketing over every other type of marketing activity—and they're smart to do so.

On a small budget, you can find an email marketing platform that allows you to create, send, and monitor responses to your campaigns. Add a subscription form to your website, and start building up your consumer contact base. Send out regular newsletters with the last few blog links or highlight promotions. 

To Market, To Market

The world is your oyster. You can go social all the way or you can focus on using data to carefully market to a niche looking for more than a snippet of information. However, every business is different. Try out a few tactics and measure the results to see what works for you. If you can only spend money on one digital marketing front, invest it in your website. The rest you can DIY until you hit the big time.

Source : http://bit.ly/1KbudGx

Top Trends in Marketing for This Year

At the start of every year, many inbound marketers like to take a glimpse into what the future holds. It’s exciting to see what new software, hardware, and strategies are at the forefront, and make predictions about what will become the next best thing … and what will fizzle out.

The marketing trends for this year will not disappoint, so here’s a look at what to expect and how to plan for what’s ahead.

Video and images are essential.

Much like the last two years, imagery will continue to drive traffic, generate leads, and convert sales. However, some marketers are still getting on board to use video and images, so you’ll be competing with many more companies for customer attention. Plus, Google is now incorporating in-SERP video ads, giving your content much more exposure.

Virtual reality and 3D are the next major shift.

Video and images will continue to be essential–even more so as developers launch products enabling virtual reality and 3D technology for marketing. While the market will generally focus on gaming, there are opportunities marketers must seize. Integration with social media and video channels will lead to more direct messaging for users.

Make sure you’re optimized for mobile.

Users of portable devices will become even more reliant on mobile usage as compared to desktops, so your pages must be developed accordingly. Use responsive design techniques or create a separate app for users to ensure smooth, glitch-free navigation.

Marketers must embrace the omnichannel approach.

Marketing has always been about reaching your potential customers in the places they’re hanging out. In 2016, they’ll be all over and expect you to be there with them. An integrated approach to the customer experience is important–one that blends interactions for a seamless encounter, instead of a series of connections through your website, social media, and app separately.

This is especially important for businesses with a brick-and-mortar location in addition to online marketplace. If there’s a disconnect between the two experiences, there will be a disruption in your messaging.

Social media is a channel, not a strategy.

For years, marketers have used social media as a strategy for reaching customers. However, these platforms aren’t an approach on their own; rather, your social media profile is a part of your comprehensive marketing strategy–it’s a channel for messaging, not a separate tactic. Think of it as a microphone that supplements and amplifies your content.

Wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) will dominate.

Wearable technology means your customers are never without their smart device; the IoT is turning everyday objects into network connections. These solutions gained some traction in 2015 and you can expect them to boom in the coming months. The landscape of local marketing will see the most impact as the lines between online and traditional marketing become blurred.

The 2016 Outlook

If there’s one common theme tying together all of these sales and marketing trends, it’s that marketers must focus on the customer experience in their efforts. Your content must meet the desires of demanding customers, delivering relevance and context through the channels they want. They have high expectations and limited patience, so your strategies must meet their needs and expectations to get a leg up over the competition.

Source : http://bit.ly/1PIPq7o