It’s not too early to be thinking about New Year’s resolutions. And since you’re promoting yourself and building business, more efficient marketing is probably on your wishlist for next year.
Why not resolve to market yourself more efficiently in 2020?
Marketing is a full-time job. Since you already have a full-time job as a mortgage broker, you have to make your marketing efforts go further. Keeping an eye on the trends can help with that.
Here’s what I think you’ll want to know in 2020…
Personal video feeds the need for custom content
Eighty percent of customers say they’d be more likely to do business with a brand that provides a personalized experience. Combine that with 68% of people who prefer to learn about a product through a short video and you really can’t miss with personalized video.
Technology, including social media platforms, is letting us personalize far beyond just changing the name in a newsletter. I use (full disclosure, I also sell), this tool, called BombBomb. It lets me create a fast video—even in reply to an email—with a personalized message to the recipient.
If you’re not using video yet, here’s an article to help you get started.
Live video adds urgency to your marketing
Consumers spend three times longer watching live video than pre-recorded ones. That’s a lot more time on your name and your brand. Live video is projected to be worth $70 billion by 2021.
Just Google tools for live video, and you’ll get a list of options as long as your leg. If you want to keep it really simple, though, many social media platforms let you broadcast live video right from your account as easily as you post a pre-recorded video. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn all offer live video options.
SERP is transforming SEO
There is a great deal that goes into accomplishing a site being found on Google.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page) refers to the information you find when you do a search, but before you decide which link to follow to a website. It’s a little “snippet” of information about the topic you’ve just searched.
SERP is changing the way we do SEO, because a lot of people are finding the info they want without clicking to a website. No click searches are growing steadily.
If you are successful in hitting the top of the page, you’re golden. By 2018, over 60% of search results returned by Google are not position-zero search results.
One thing you can do immediately is install a caching agent
The person who manages your website can do this for you. It will speed up the delivery of your website.
Ask them if they can change titles and urls and create any reporting for you to create stronger results.
Reports you may want to request:
- Structure SEO report
- Comparative monthly reports
- Score and authority reporting
You will likely feel the pressure in 2020 to invest more resources into SEO and SERP. You’ll need a strategy that takes into account the resources and time you have available.
Content is targeted, tailored and more visual
I used to say that, like the sales funnel, your content has to get ever more focused. Now the customer experience requires a flywheel approach.
That means you need to be providing more touchpoints than ever before. And they need to be meaningful ones, too.
More touchpoints, means more data. More data means more ability to customize and personalize.
I’ve already noted the power of personalization in the personalized video section. This customization refers to all content, though.
Technology lets us customize to the reader. And when you customize, you make your marketing go a lot farther for you.
Your content also needs to be more visual. Along with the preference for video noted above, still content needs to be more visual too. Over 50% of U.S. consumers between 25 and 44 years old want to see more video content from the brands they love.
Email marketing as a primary channel for leads
Email is still a truly successful way to generate leads. It’s proven to get more leads than any other lead generation tactic.
That means we have a huge responsibility to keep content fresh, engaging and useful. Too many irrelevant emails and you won’t see the leads. Worse yet, it turns emails into telemarketing.
To keep your email marketing relevant:
- Use the personalization tips above to keep it relevant
- Make your emails visual, too
- Know your audience, and what they want
- Avoid “bait-click” headlines (sensational headlines that don’t deliver on content)
- Add in personalized video for extra power
It all adds up to marketing efficiency
There are only so many hours in your day. If you can spend your marketing time on more effective touch points, you’ll be getting a lot better ROI than less targeted approaches.
Following the five trends listed above will get you on your way to more efficient, higher ROI marketing in 2020.
