If there’s one thing that has always been true is that nothing stays the same, everything is constantly changing!
That holds especially true in business and even more true when external events change the way business is conducted.
Traditional businesses have been hit the hardest recently especially those who have relied on networking events, business conferences, trade shows, etc for their marketing.
In changing environments it requires business owners to adapt and pivot if necessary.
Here are 3 ways marketing is evolving and what businesses can do to evolve with it.
1. Personal Branding
In this day and age, people seek authenticity. They want brands that they can relate to. The more a brand can show personality the more likely they will attract the right audience and customers.
Luckily with social media, being able to reach these potential customers has become easier.
It then just becomes a matter of posting content that reflects your brand and personality and with consistency, you begin to build an audience of people who buy from you repeatedly and refer you business.
2. Utilize Video To Build Trust
Video is still being underutilized by a lot of traditional businesses. People do business with other people that they know like and trust.
Luckily technology has made the cameras on our phones the type of quality that would’ve required a very professional camera only a decade ago.
With video, it accelerates the process of the know like and trust factor which basically means that more people will see your face which gains more familiarity and trust!
Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram know this and tend to put videos in front of more people for this reason.
3. Build Your Referral Network Online
More than likely, there are several other industry professionals who refer you to business and more than likely that referral partnership started with a conversation.
What if you could control how many of those conversations you have?
What if you had a platform that enabled you to spark conversations that result into real life referral partnerships?
LinkedIn has become the equivalent of going to networking events. It’s now the hub for professionals to congregate and exchange ideas and referrals.
There’s even new platforms emerging such as Alignable that helps connect referral based businesses together to exchange referrals.
What we’ve found at Maverick Media Lab is that traditional businesses can thrive and get even more referrals leveraging these types of platforms and even using email for business to business communication.
With the right system in place, businesses can grow their referral networks, which oftentimes increase the average monthly referrals and the benefit is it can be done all organically even before doing paid advertising.
By growing the personal brand and using video as a way to market while at the same time growing their network, traditional business owners can dominate the competition and see record breaking months of referrals and repeat business coming in!