10 stats that will help guide you with your 2021 marketing strategy
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
If you’ve always been a bit wary of online statistics about marketing, you’re not alone. There are thousands of them out there and many aren’t true or get misinterpreted.
To help, here are a few I’ve dug out from the many to help inform your 2021 marketing strategy and what they mean.
1. Get your SEO right
According to BrightEdge, 68% of experiences online start with a query on a search engine like Google. SEO is still an important part of any marketing strategy. While getting it right takes time and effort it should continue to be a priority for your business in 2021.
SEO essentials for search success:
- Crawl accessibility (aka spiders) - ‘Crawling’ is what search engines do to look at your site and determine what information is on there.
- Compelling content - Once a person visits your site, you should aim to keep them there and give them the information they’re looking for. Blogs, news, product, and service updates are all good forms of content that should be updated on your website regularly.
- Keyword Optimization - Keyword optimization means writing your content to your selected keywords to ensure it’s relevant to viewers.
- User experience - Search engines are there to serve viewers, not website owners. Therefore they prioritize websites that are easy for their viewers to use.
- Shareable content - Great content is fresh, original, entertaining – and shareable. When you’re planning content, you should aim to make it something that your target market will want to share. eBooks, whitepapers and reports, videos, podcasts, memes, images are all forms of shareable content
2. Invest in Long Content
According to most of the industry-leading marketers, long content (2,500 to 3,000 words) is all the rage. But does it work?
Your content is your brand voice and can be used to engage customers, build a relationship and, ultimately, encourage them to purchase from you.
Various research shows that this type of content gets 77% more backlinks and 3 times more traffic than shorter posts.
When creating your long content, don't forget...
- Consider your target market and the value you can offer it: remember who you’re aiming your content at. What are their likes and interests? Do they prefer to read or watch content?
- Consider the aim of your content: Are you looking to engage people, make them interested in your products, educate them, or convert them to a paying customer?
- Make it emotional: add an emotional hook to draw people in. Think back to your target market and what their pain points are – can you relate and show how you solve these problems?
- Add a call to action: a call to action is something that makes the viewer take action. You’ll have seen ones such as ‘Sign up now’, ‘Call us today’ and Share’.
3. People use social to connect with the brand
According to the Sprout Social Index report, 57% of consumers will look at a brand’s social media feeds to connect and learn more about them. That means your marketing strategy needs to focus on raising brand awareness on these platforms.
4. You need to ‘engage’ on social media
It’s not just about raising awareness – nearly half in the Index report also said they would unfollow a brand if their customer service was not up to scratch.
What does that mean? You need to monitor engagement with your social media feed and respond positively and quickly if there is a query or a complaint.
Here are my six golden rules of social media engagement:
- Connect/follow people who are of interest to your business - whether customers/consumers, trade partners/suppliers - even competitors!
- Comment on posts – especially if positive/constructive
- Always thank people if they like / retweet / share your content
- Take part in group chats – but don’t sell!
- Always reply to comments – it shows you engaged and listening! Especially if they are questions, but beware of your tone
- Don’t ever ‘force sell’ – inform, educate and engage!
5. Video is (still) a strong performer
There’s been talk for a while about how fantastic video is for marketing businesses - I being one of the main advocates for a long time! However, the stats speak for themselves:
85% of businesses use video as a marketing tool...
92% of marketers who use video say that it’s an important part of their marketing strategy...
89% of video marketers say video, in general, gives them a good return on their investment...
While it can be more expensive, it’s now the most consumed type of content on the planet.
More than half of consumers would like to see more video content about their favorite brands.
Is it worth taking up a significant chunk of your budget producing video? This is a judgment call for small and medium-sized businesses but it does deliver a strong ROI.
If you're not sure where to start with your video marketing, here's my complete guide to video marketing providing free tips and advice!
6. Invest in PPC
There are plenty of ways to engage in pay-per-click advertising and it is still a strong marketing approach if you understand how it works and targets the right audience.
According to Unbounce, 50% more people who arrive from a PPC link are more likely to buy a product than those who come from an organic search link.
7. Customer service is key
There’s no doubt that if you want to have long-term customers who come back again and again, you need good customer service.
Happy, satisfied customers are the lifeblood for any business and according to smallbizgenius.net, 73% of consumers who follow a brand love it because they have great customer service.
And as the saying goes... People will always do business with people they know, like and trust!
Here are my top five tips for managing your customer service:
- Put yourself in their shoes – what do you class as high-quality customer service?
- Make customer service part of your culture and not just another piece of paper collecting dust on a shelf!
- Create a customer service policy for your business – basically, the dos and don’ts of how you would like your customers to be treated.
- Consider your customer journey from the initial inquiry right through to after-sales service – make the experience meaningful and rewarding.
- Don’t ignore unsatisfied customers – they have a knack for resurfacing at the worst of times…
8. Creating inbound links
Getting other websites (ideally, reputable ones) to link back to your site is important. It’s also pretty challenging. According to Altimeter, 70% of marketers lack a coherent strategy in this area.
If you want people to link to you and improve your SEO, you need to produce exceptional quality content that is relevant to your audience and which they seriously want to link to.
9. Voice search
Whether it's Siri, Alexa, Echo, or Google, according to Review42, nearly half of us use voice search to get information on the internet.
This is a growing phenomenon.
Why is it important for your marketing?
Voice search works differently and has unique triggers that will need to be reflected in your content and keywords.
Keep an eye on this trend and learn how to leverage the possibilities in 2021.
10. Email marketing still works
Finally, we all thought it had died a death, but no.
Email is still an effective marketing tool and has an average open rate of over 22% and a click-through rate of more than 3% which is not to be sniffed at.
What does this mean?
Build your email list and develop a strategy to reach out to your customers if you want to boost conversions and sales.
If you're not sure where to start with your email marketing, here are my 5 Tips to achieve email marketing success!
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