Hopefully by now you already have your marketing communications strategy, and all of the PR and social media activities confirmed for 2020.
Make sure you’re not just reinventing the same old campaigns you did for 2019 however; the world and the technology we use has changed a lot over the last twelve months, as have all of our researching and spending habits. You need to look at your marketing plan with fresh eyes to make sure it continues to be relevant and successful in engaging your audience and driving your desired results.
We’ve already talked about creating the plan and strategy for the year ahead, but when it comes to the specifics, there are 9 elements that you absolutely MUST include in your PR and social media in 2020:
1. Ephemeral content and live video
Limited-time ‘disappearing’ content such as Facebook and Instagram stories are growing much faster than feed sharing. Globally, we are becoming much more cynical and less trusting, we are fed up with seeing glossy, edited corporate film and models, we’re looking for authentic content to engage with, and with LinkedIn introducing it’s own version next year, we’re bound to see this trend expand to other sectors that have not traditionally embraced stories on other platforms.
2. Chat and private messaging
More and more brands are discovering the benefits of using chatbots to deliver next-level customer service more efficiently and immediately than ever before. We particularly like KLM’s Facebook messaging service, which allows much easier and more convenient customer service around flight bookings, check in, seat changes, and other general enquiries.
3. Localisation and personalisation
Consumers are looking for personalised content, and we therefore need to create more niche platforms and campaigns that allow micro targeting. Creating location specific (by country, city or outlet) or niche (by interest, brand or lifestyle) pages and accounts enables content to be tailored more to the relevant audience, as well as giving more impact to local events and services. Plus, the more focussed the pages are, the more accurate and useful the analytics will be in providing insights into these specific audiences, helping us to develop increasing engaging strategies moving forward.
4. Community partnerships
Having a sense of community is becoming increasing important to us – as global connectivity increases, we still want to feel a sense of belonging. Supporting local ‘home-grown’ businesses and talent is an important part of developing this community, as we’ve seen from many successful partnerships between big global brands and local talent, particularly in the fashion industry, where local artists personalise global products for the local region. Developing partnerships that are relevant and appealing to your audience could be a hugely successful strategy for the year ahead, whether you are the big brand or the smaller.
5. Influencer support
It almost feels like a dirty word now, but whilst there has been a lot of negative commentary around influencers in 2019, the right marriage of brand and influencer can have a huge impact on brand awareness, engagement and ultimately sales, and this is not set to change in 2020. With an increasing focus on personalisation and community and less trust generally, priority is shifting to more niche micro influencers, rather than the bigger ‘celebrities’, but the most important thing is finding the right person for your brand, the person who has the most effect on your audience.
6. Authentic contribution
We want more from brands nowadays than simple sales gimmicks, we need you to match our values, lifestyle and personality. We want our products to be environmentally and socially conscious and to actually contribute to the society we live in. We need to feel like you genuinely care and want to make a difference, so brands who develop relevant and sustainable CSR strategies (rather than a simple PR stunt) will create a much more loyal and emotionally engaged following than those who have not thought beyond their content strategy.
7. Longer form content
In the last few years, our posts have been getting shorter and shorter as we try to deliver our messages in short attention-grabbing chunks, as visually as possible. In 2020, we’ll see more of a focus returning to longer form content, with huge SEO benefits for written content (giving Google more to work with so that you have more chance of appearing at the top of search pages), we’ll also see more videos with a longer duration.
8. Audio content
Podcasts and audio books are gaining popularity, although most brands are still experimenting at this stage. If there is a way to build audio into your strategy for 2020, it’s certainly worth exploring, and working out what works best for your audience. Just make sure you look at it as part of a strategic integrated communications campaign, and not a marketing gimmick.
9. Reaching out to your audience
Nothing builds community, loyalty and engagement more than getting your audience actively involved in the brand development and day-to-day business. Social media makes it easy to research customer and potential customer opinion and sentiment. There are a number of popular and easy-to-use tools, such as polls on Facebook and Twitter, and Q&A’s on Instagram and Facebook, that enable you to reach out to your audience directly and ask for their opinions, ideas and feedback. Use them strategically to increase engagement and emotional connection, and to help you develop and adapt your business and communications strategy accordingly.
The political, economic and social turbulence around the world over the last year has led to another drop in trust across the board. We’ve become incredibly cynical of everything and everyone, so brands need to rethink their strategies and objectives for communications – it’s not about broadcasting your message, or the hard sell, nor is it even about engagement and loyalty anymore – the starting point needs to be developing, or rebuilding, trust in your brand/business. In order to do this, you need to invest the time and effort in really getting to know your audience on a personal level and building or contributing to the community around them. The nine elements we’ve already mentioned will all go a long way to helping achieve this, together with a genuine brand commitment, and real authentic content and stories/events/campaigns that support this.
As experienced PR and social media consultants, we are happy to help you develop a strategy that works for your brand over the next twelve months and more, and to brainstorm ways in which you could be achieving better results from your communications, as well as the ways you can measure and benchmark this success. Please do email us sam@footstepcommunications.com if you’d like to know more!
