Online marketing in 2021, what happens next?

Digitization is progressing at a rapid speed. This makes it all the more important for companies to continue developing and to identify and meet the needs of potential new customers. The variety of different marketing instruments often makes it difficult for companies to maintain an overview and to judge which are the right ones. Mike Schwede has been involved in the digital field for over 20 years and wants to share the knowledge and experience he’s gained during this time with you all.

What do you think are the biggest changes in online marketing over recent years?

Years or months? (laughing)

1. Advertising and virality
   The last decade has been strongly characterized by social media. The interests of users can be tracked and used for interest-based, targeted advertising, which is an ideal complement to Google’s intention-based approach, which addresses immediate needs when searching. Outdated models such as programmatic advertising have been completely abandoned and relevance has been massively increased.
   
   
2. Virality instead of advertising
   In 2015, messenger services such as WhatsApp have outpaced traditional social media platforms, which cannot be used to generate data such as user interests. Cocooning has generally taken place, i.e. not public discussions but private ones in groups. Traditional advertising approaches on social media will come to an end. You now need to become viral so that content finds its own way to its target groups. TikTok quickly recognized this and aligned its algorithm to virality, and ensured its videos can also be shared on WhatsApp.
   
   
3. Enormous complexity
   It’s now normal for hundreds of different advertising methods to be sent out to various target groups and optimized. Everything’s becoming even more specific and more niche-orientated, meaning that it soon becomes impossible to manage manually and a huge amount needs to be automated.
   
   
4. Big players
   There used to be various platforms you could display your advertising on, but now a great deal of advertising goes straight to Google, YouTube and Facebook. Traditional online advertising is now usually not worth the effort. In other places, this concentration of advertising is going even further. In China, it’s normal for operators not to have their own website but instead to channel everything through WeChat and Alibaba. And many only sell via Amazon. This is leading to a high degree of dependency. It’s important to find your own niche and expand your penetration rate within it (collect e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers instead of likes) and operate your own shop. Amazon and Galaxus cover a broad section of the market.

What impact is COVID-19 having on online marketing strategies?

Recent crises have been a catalyst for digital marketing and major shifts in budgets. E-commerce has grown enormously this last year. I don’t know of any good e-commerce agency which isn’t fully booked in 2020. Everyone now wants a shop and to sell something, which even teenagers are capable of thanks to tools like Shopify. It’s become so easy. In other words: more and more providers are vying for the same number of users. This means that marketing needs to become more refined and absolutely must stand out from the crowd. “Be different or die” is the principle we follow in our agency “Die Antwort” (in German).

Whenever there’s a trend, there’s a counter-trend: people are consciously turning to offline meet-ups again and are seeking experiences. Now’s the time to start thinking about how you want to make your brand tangible for the post-corona period. This could be a branding space on the city’s main thoroughfare where people can experience the Ricola or Victorinox brands with all their senses, or a traditional business for trying out products. I recently wanted to try out a set of headphones. It wasn’t possible. This is how you gamble away your only advantage over e-commerce.

Which basic principles should be observed in digital marketing?

• Relevance. First of all, what you want to say is not relevant, what’s important is what the user wants, what’s engaging and interesting to him. This means a bridge needs to be built to bring the user step by step to my product.
• Independence. You absolutely must stand out from the crowd as it’s not just other companies which are vying for the attention of users: every friend, media company, influencer is producing content and wants to reach these users. How can I make my brand content more relevant and eye-catching than the holiday snap by Joe Blogg’s friend?
• The messenger. Who the content comes from is extremely important. Friends, micro-influencers, experts and influencers enjoy much greater credibility and often a much higher penetration rate than brands, which means brands have to consistently incorporate user-generated content, content creators and influencers in each campaign. And sometimes even refrain from including any of their own content whatsoever.
• Corporate identity. A consistent presence is key. But I have to adapt myself as a personality to the content. A brand has to be consistent, but it needs to act and be perceived very differently on each platform. Using the same post on Facebook and Instagram? Preferably not.
• Agility. And finally, there’s not much opportunity or time for planning You need to do lots of things, try things out, do plenty of measuring and optimizing. A strategy paper should not be 12 pages long. And it should be completed in weeks, not months.

What strategies can companies pursue online?

Nine strategic fields have emerged in the past few decades, each of which can also be combined. The respective priority defines which of the various platforms, content or other goals should be used. Typically, an e-commerce driven project needs to be focussed on entertainment, expertise and service; sales always comes in second place.

What mistakes can be made online?

• In general, thinking you can simply press a button online and the sales will pour in right away is the wrong approach. Rapid results are more coincidence than a given.
• Online is not cheaper. Be it an online shop or advertising: a good content strategy is complex. It requires the corresponding personnel and monetary resources.
• Don’t invest straight away and put all your eggs in one basket. As I said, you should approach it step-by-step, try things out, learn from it and optimize. Make big plans but start small; create as little complexity and expand incrementally. This ensures your strategy develops in parallel to the market conditions.
• Gain experience. Those who think they understand how the market works will soon find out that things are different online. Even if you have prior online experience, not every community works in the same way. Experience can sometimes give you an undue sense of certainty and mean you’re not critical enough. This is why so many outsiders achieve great success.

What are the latest trends in online marketing?

• Without a doubt: stories. These started out in Snapchat, were copied by Instagram and then gave the platform a huge boost. These 15-second clips and animations, which are only available for a maximum of 24 hours, are now finding their way onto Revolut and Spotify. At my social content hub Cooala we’re currently working to bring web stories to customers’ own websites. I can’t wait to see how we get on.
• TikTok is the second huge trend. The first entirely full-screen video smartphone app on the market at the moment. It’s home to an incredible amount of creativity and diversity. What’s most fascinating is that followers aren’t the key to success; the algorithm can also make unknown creators go viral if the content is good. With just a couple of thousand followers, I can generate one to two million views. Important: TikTok isn’t just a teenage platform: ⅔ of users are over 18 years old. I’ve compiled several articles on TikTok For Business and advertising opportunities.
• Messaging and cocooning. Conversations take place privately, which means the content has to be even more viral to make it reach WhatsApp and be sent on from the there. It also needs to be found via Google and able to be sent on to a content home (shareability). Fascinating: the most important sharing platforms for our content hubs are WhatsApp and the old stalwart e-mail.
• A majority of Swiss people already use voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant, and have the requisite hardware at home. This means it’s essential for search machine marketing that you don’t just optimize for keywords but also for topics. The content also needs to be structured (Schema.org). Because if I ask my assistant what the humidifier I can see is and where you can buy it, then our content should also be optimized for it.

What suggestions do you have for companies that want to pursue an online marketing strategy on a tight budget?

Keep it small but be consistent. Just run one Instagram channel with beautiful photos, for example, and factor in enough of a budget to advertise it instead of being active on three platforms. This also means pruning old budget items.

Do lots yourself and take enough time to do it. But don’t be ashamed to get some professional help to begin with, or take part in some training. For instance, today’s smartphones can take amazing photos and videos so you don’t need an expensive film crew, but you do need to master the basic principles of a good story, image cropping, lighting, sound and editing so the end result isn’t embarrassing.

And automate. When it comes to simple tasks, you should automate them using Zapier.com, for example, instead of doing them manually. You can then use the time you save for good content and customer service.

What’s the best way to bring digital and analogue marketing into harmony?

I don’t differentiate between digital and analogue but focus more on print, real-life and out-of-home. Printed material is a really poor investment and has zero impact on sales. Real-life events, brand experience, product samples and give-aways make the product/service range more hands-on and are essential. With good planning, real-life measures generate perfect digital content. A targeted poster on a tram or bus, an eye-catching animation on a screen in a supermarket or train station raise additional awareness, which is then ideally continued on smartphones. Last but not least, you should also take to heart the advice of the recently deceased master of e-commerce Tony Hsieh (founder of Zappos) and look at customer services as a marketing investment instead of a cost unit: where else can you interact with customers one-on-one without interruption?

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