Innovation & data-driven digital marketing.
Marketing is everywhere. From traditional billboards and TV commercials to ads that seem to chase you around the internet, chances are that your customers are inundated with information about thousands of brands every single day.
Our customers have never been more accessible, but they’ve never been more difficult to impress. How can you cut through the noise and make your marketing stand out, especially when your competitors are hot on your heels?
The answer? Market smarter, not harder. Take a look at our best strategies for upstaging your competition below.
Promote Thought Leadership
Edelman and LinkedIn recently completed a survey about thought leadership that had fascinating results. Did you know that senior leaders spend over four hours per week consuming thought leadership content? What’s more, 90% of senior executives rate thought leadership content as extremely important. So what is thought leadership, anyway?
Thought leadership are articles placed on media outlets or on your company blog that offer meaningful commentary to issues going on in your area of expertise. They help to shape and amplify your personal brand, can open doors to relevant conversations with other industry experts and they build trust and establish industry authority.
So what constitutes good thought leadership?
- Original pieces of content created by industry leaders, managers and professionals.
- Overall digital branding and social media presence (on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, as well as personal/professional blogs).
- Contributed content and guest posts on outside publications.
- Digital and in-person networking, speaking opportunities and involvement in relevant conversations.
What’s the best place to start? Think of topics that are ‘hot’ in your industry and consider your opinions. Congratulations, you’ve just thought of your first article topic!
Integrate Video Into Social Media Marketing
It’s widely known that video is the next big thing that’s hot in social media marketing. According to a recent survey by Buzzsumo, video is the best performing type of content on Facebook, and Marketing Land recently reported that LinkedIn users are 20 times more likely to share a video on the platform than any other type of post.
How can you integrate video into your social media strategy? We’ve collated our best tips below:
- Determine the purpose of your video. What are you trying to achieve with your content? Maybe you’re trying to inform your audience, introduce a new product or start a conversation. Once you’ve established how your video is adding value to your customers, you’re ready for the next step.
- Know your platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn all have different audiences and different video guidelines. Take a look at our breakdown of video specifications here.
- End with a call to action. At the end of the video, it’s crucial to make sure that you leave your audience with their next steps. A call to action is what can turn a casual viewer into a customer. Add a link to a free download, your company page or a reduced-price offer on your website to keep your customers coming back for more.
Optimize for Your Audience
Optimizing for your audience is absolutely critical when it comes to setting yourself apart from the crowd. Consider optimizing your website for local customers.
The benefits of optimizing for local search are easy to quantify – you’re turning online traffic into foot traffic, and people who are searching for things that are close by are normally pretty serious about what they’re looking for. There are plenty of ways to optimize for local customers (we’ve done a deep dive here), but get started with these:
- Take NAP seriously. NAP means name, address, and phone number. Make sure that all three of these pieces of information are consistent online. It’s the first step to optimizing for local search.
- Submit your business to local listings. The benefits of submitting your business to a local listing website are too numerous to mention here (take a look at this article for more info), but the biggest has to be the valuable backlinks.
- Use location-based keywords. Using keywords that are specific to your location is a great way to boost SEO organically. It signals to Google that you’re an authority in your region.
Whether you choose to implement a thought leadership PR plan or just up your game on social media, implementing any of these tips will put you well on your way to upstaging your competition. Tried one? We’d love to hear how it worked for you. Let us know in the comments below!