The current pandemic has led to an increase of online usage among consumers. According to The New Stack, there has been a 25% to 30% increase in internet traffic over the past couple of months. This sudden spike provides a great opportunity to brands offering physical products.
But not all businesses involve selling commodities. What about entreprofessionals like doctors, accountants, engineers, and attorneys? If you are an entreprofessional, your time and talent --your specialized skills -- are the product. Will this big shift to the digital world be beneficial for you as service providers?
The answer is, of course, yes! Entreprofessionals can definitely take advantage of this shift. All it takes is the right mix of strategies. Take your business to the next level and achieve exponential growth by implementing strategies that align with these five effective digital marketing trends.
1. Video Marketing
One of the biggest challenges professional service providers face is the intangibility of their "product." Simply put, entreprofessionals offer an "experience" to their clients instead of an item. While a grocery shopper might walk out of a store with bags of products, a doctor's client, on the other hand, returns home primarily with an experience from the appointment.
This intangibility can lead to a lack of connection between entreprofessionals and their prospective clients. And while this poses a challenge, it is not without a solution. With video marketing, service providers like you can reach out and influence your audience's perspective.
By putting forth the right narratives, videos have the power to hook your audience. Giving them stories they can relate to helps to make them realize the need for your services. Forbes lists this strategy as an effective way of creating more personal connections with users as compared to typical written content; thus, providing you a great opportunity to turn strangers into an aware audience, and ultimately help you convert that audience into interested prospective clients.
2. Personalized Campaigns
People get an immediate sense of ownership over what they buy whenever they purchase tangible products. It's instant gratification. This isn't always the case with services, making them harder to sell. It is with this issue that the need to cultivate interest arises. And how exactly do you make people care? Simple. Make it personal.
A study by Single Grain shows that 63% of consumers are annoyed by generic ads, while 80% claim to be more likely to do business with a brand that gives customized experiences. Personalizing your marketing campaigns improves your odds of getting the interest and trust of your audience.
People pay more attention when they feel that the message is specifically directed to them. By communicating on a personal level, you compel them to tap within their own experiences. Doing so compensates for a lack of experience of your offered services.
3. Artificial Intelligence
Services, by their very nature, are perishable. They do not necessarily spoil, per se, but they are limited in terms of their "shelf life." Since they are often time-bound, many customers feel like the product ends where the service do. Because of this, entreprofessionals sometimes face the trouble of having a “saturated” market. Or so you might think.
It's fairly easy to get worried about not having new clients. But be comforted by the fact that the digital world is such a vast one. If there are people online, and the services you provide meet their personal needs, you can leverage our current digital age to capture the attention of potential customers outside of your immediate area. It might seem too wide of a sea to fish clients from, but that is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes in.
When you leverage AI within your digital marketing efforts to analyze consumer behavior and search patterns, you shortcut your way to connecting with just the right audience at just the right time. AI enables you to interpret data from social media platforms so you may know how your previous clients found your business. AI can also point you to exactly where to look for new clients. With this technology, you might just have a solution to market saturation.
4. Conversational Marketing
Services deal with subjective human interaction. Consumers' behaviors are unpredictable and ever changing. Feedback varies from one client to another. That said, there is no single way to approach differing market segments. The only sure way you get successful results is for you to listen to your audience by engaging with them.
Clients want to get answers when they need it. And by promptly responding to them, you start cultivating interest. I know it sounds a bit overwhelming. But no, this doesn't mean talking to every single potential client.
Conversational Marketing involves using tools such as Chatbots that allow you to engage with your audience on their own terms. According to UpGrad Blog's 8 Digital Marketing Trends You Can't Ignore in 2020, it is an effective tool that "improves customer satisfaction through a one-on-one feedback-driven model that facilitates higher engagement." With this strategy, you are able to get a glimpse into your potential clients' concerns. It gives you an idea on how to approach them resulting in a higher probability of conversion.
5. Omnichannel Marketing
Putting all your campaigns through a single channel may promise growth, but it has a tendency to plateau over time. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket.
As entreprofessionals, you need to make sure that you are maximizing different channels that can drive you to cultivating a larger audience and converting more of that audience into interested prospects. This strategy is what we refer to as Omnichannel Marketing. The idea is to create a massive awareness about you and your service to nurture brand equity.
Omnichannel Marketing allows you to capture wider segments of leads through various touchpoints which, when done correctly, enables you to offer a higher level of user experience and a stronger brand message.
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Being a professional service provider will entail a little extra work on your part if you want to take strides toward exponential growth. You should know that even if you are not willing to invest your energy and resources implementing effective digital marketing strategies, we’re certain hat at least some of your competitors will. If you are overwhelmed by how to implement any or all of these strategies, click here to see if you qualify for a Vimagery Strategy Session. Together, we can help shortcut your efforts to cultivate, convert, and close new clients in the weeks and months ahead.
