Christopher Earle: 4 Emerging Marketing Channels You Should Adopt in 2018

Monday, 27 November 2017

4 Emerging Marketing Channels You Should Adopt in 2018

Regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, your audience is always on the move. With changing devices, interests, and behaviors it’s increasingly difficult to stay in front of your target audience. As the saying goes, ‘a moving target is harder to hit.’

To increase our chances of hitting our targets, we often weave several channels into our marketing strategy, putting our brand in front of more potential leads. However, in today’s digital landscape, it can feel like new platforms and social networks pop up daily leaving you to wonder if you need to change up your strategy.

Below, we gathered our top five emerging digital marketing channels to help you decide which channels are worth focusing on and stay top of mind with your target audience. Read on to learn how you can adopt them into your 2018 marketing plan.

1. Messaging Apps

Messaging apps are now 20% bigger than social networks, creating new pathways where you can target your audience. This includes messaging apps like WhatsApp, Slack, WeChat, and Facebook Messenger. Facebook Messenger alone is on the phones of over 1.2 billion people and with mobile now accounting for 57% of internet traffic, it’s important for your brand to be visible on the mobile apps your audience uses.

Through strategic advertising and integrated chatbots, your brand can attract and support more customers through messaging apps. For example, you can send sponsored, personalized messages to people who have messaged your brand in the past to start a dialogue. Then, with well-designed and thoughtful bot, you can automate the conversations and interactions your brand has with your audience to draw them closer to converting.

2. Medium

With 91% of B2B marketers stating that they use content marketing, odds are you already create noteworthy content for your brand. Medium, a publishing platform where people “read and write things that matter,” allows you to distribute that content with an engaged and thoughtful audience. And through Medium’s priority on quality content, the size of your audience doesn’t affect the virality of what you have to say, which differs from how other publishing sites and networks work.

As a platform for individuals and their opinions, Medium is a place for your brand’s thought leaders to share their progressive ideas. Instead of publishing content as a business, ask your brand’s top minds to post content that is thought provoking, yet relevant to your industry or business. With over 126 million website visits to date and growing, Medium’s active users will highlight and interact with your content, increasing the visibility of your content on the platform.

3. Reddit

Boasted as “The Front Page of the Internet”, Reddit provides another unique opportunity for brands to engage new, active audiences. With over 250 million users to date, Reddit allows users to create, share, and discuss online content and vote on their submissions. This has resulted in an active, loyal, and engaged community full of user-generated content. In fact, after 1.69 billion website visitors to date, Reddit has an average site visit duration of over 10 minutes.

Get started with Reddit by selecting a few subreddits (i.e. threads dedicated to specific topics) that are appropriate for you to share your content in. You can also try out Reddit’s advertising features which allow you to sponsor a post to the front page of a subreddit. And if you’re feeling extra brave, you can host an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit, which allows you to have a Q&A session with Reddit’s community. Be warned, however: posting on Reddit can be a bit like walking through a minefield—you never know what you’re going to get.

4. YouTube

Video accounts for 74% of all internet traffic, meaning your audience spends a majority of their time online watching a video. While YouTube has been around for over a decade, it still hasn’t made it into many marketing strategies with only 30% of B2B marketers believing video will be critical to their content marketing. Today, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and second most visited site, making it a prime place to distribute video content and engage audiences.

While producing your own video may seem daunting, video creation has never been more accessible through new SaaS offerings and sophisticated phone cameras. Plus, your videos don’t need to be overly complicated. Showcase your company’s thought leaders through one on one interviews, live streamed Q&A’s, or webinars. In addition, you can create in-depth tutorials that walk your audience through difficult problems, highlighting your expertise and educating your audience. For more ideas on the types of videos you can create, see how seven brands are using long-form video content to connect with audiences.

Mix Up Your Content Marketing Game

Finding the right content marketing mix that successfully engages the right people isn’t an exact science. For more tips and ideas on how to find that perfect balance, check out these content marketing mix tips.

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