In the (slightly paraphrased) words of our pal Ferris Bueller, “the market moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
We know there’s only so many hours in the day. It can be hard to just check the to-do’s off the list, let alone keep your ear to the ground for what’s next for your space.
But don’t worry. We love this stuff. We always have an eye out for what’s making waves and standing out in marketing across industries. So, to help you keep tabs on the trends, we’ve put together our top trends to watch this season.
Our Top Three Marketing Trends to Try Out This Year
1. Keep it Personal with AI-Powered Marketing
Artificial Intelligence has been creeping into marketing for years, but the opportunity is now to leverage AI into marketing in more useful ways. In ways that add value to the end-user: your customer. By using tools with AI machine-learning functionality, brands are better equipped than ever to deliver personalized experiences at scale. Used wisely, and creatively, these tools can help brands build better relationships with their customers.
Where You’ve Seen It: You know all those Spotify Wrapped posts that fill your feed at the end of the year? AI helps make that happen. Streaming companies like Spotify and Netflix use AI to curate a personalized experience for users, with recommendations and custom playlists made just for you.
How You Can Use It: Leverage any existing AI functionality in your current tools. This could help your email marketing, your online store and even sales and CRM. Tools like Klayvio, Shopify, and Hubspot are good examples of platforms that are evolving to help you harness AI to augment your marketing. Need some help getting started with these? Give us a shout.
2. Use More Short-Form Video Content
Our collective attention spans are shrinking. And that’s made way for the rise of short-form videos. TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are all driving this trend (and their algorithms are rewarding brands that use short-form videos in their content strategy!).
Shorter videos allow brands to keep your attention, show personality and build connections. This format is perfect for tutorials, product demos, and behind-the-scenes content that can engage viewers in a short amount of time.
Where You’ve Seen It: Duolingo uses TikTok to create a brand experience that’s fun and playful. It’s more entertaining than it is educational and focused on building a brand reflective of its personality. Slack is another great example of using short-form video to build a brand. However, because Slack has a different brand persona, this content is more focused on making work efficient and effective. With YouTube Shorts, the brand connects with users through practical, digestible short-form #SlackTips designed to help you work smarter with Slack.
How You Can Use It: If video is new for you, start by just creating short-form (<60 seconds) Reels on your Instagram. Not sure how? We can help!
3. Integrate Flexible Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) Payments Into Your E-commerce Strategy
The holiday shopping season is upon us. The time when shoppers are often making more, sometimes larger, purchases online. That means e-commerce retailers need to think strategically about their customer experience.
As the cost of living rises, consumers are increasingly aware of their spending. Bear this in mind as you create your Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and holiday marketing strategies. A critical part of any e-commerce strategy is managing cart abandonment. If the upfront cost at checkout feels too high, there is a higher risk of that customer abandoning the cart. Whether it’s to shop elsewhere, to think more about how this purchase can fit their budget, or just to forget about the purchase altogether – an abandoned cart is a missed sale at that moment.
Buy-Now-Pay-Later tools are an increasingly popular e-commerce strategy for retailers looking to give customers a different way to pay. BNPL allows shoppers to split their payments into smaller, interest-free installments, which can help encourage customers to complete their online purchases with you.
BNPL can not only increase e-commerce conversion rates by offering flexibility but also boost your average order value. This payment flexibility can turn hesitant browsers into confident buyers, which becomes especially important for the busiest shopping season: the end-of-the-year holidays.
Where You’ve Seen It: If you’ve done any online shopping at Walmart, BestBuy or Sephora (as just a few examples), you’ve likely seen an option for BNPL at checkout with tools like Affirm, Afterpay or Klarna.
How You Can Use It: This isn’t just for the big-box brands. E-commerce platforms like Shopify and Squarespace offer integrations to help you offer buy-now-pay-later options to your customers (eligibility and pricing restrictions might apply). In a recent survey, 44% of respondents reported that BNPL helped them make purchase decisions over the holiday season. It may not be a fit for every store, but it is certainly worth exploring as part of your Black Friday and seasonal shopping strategy. Curious if it’s a fit for your store? We can help. We help a lot of clients build and grow their e-commerce stores on platforms like Shopify and Squarespace.
Try It, Test It, Tweak It
And the beauty of marketing is that to do it is to just try it (sorry, Yoda).
Our motto is this: Try → Test → Tweak 🔁 Repeat.
Test in a framework, measure the results, tweak the approach to optimize the strategy and continue to grow.
Want to learn more about how to apply these marketing trends to your strategy? Let’s talk!
Sources:
- https://www.paymentsjournal.com/buy-now-pay-later-a-modern-take-on-retail-financing/
- https://stripe.com/blog/testing-the-impact-of-buy-now-pay-later
- https://www.affirm.com/business/blog/affirm-bnpl-increase-ecommerce-conversion
- https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans
Note: We wrote this ourselves but AI had the assist.
