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Top Marketing Trends

By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant

You could offer the best products or services, but unless people hear about them, you can’t succeed. Area experts offer their best tips for reaching potential consumers and clients.

 

• “While we have seen big growth in video over the last couple of years with a continued upward trend, audio is quickly gaining traction in the small business space. Podcast networks, streaming music platforms, there are so many options with audio to reach targeted users, organically and paid.

• “People want to see the brands that are connected to their values. This means that your content strategy should be reflective of who your small business is. Community involvement, charitable events, expectation of social issues, quality of product or work — a user should be able to look at your platforms and know what your values are.

• “There are so many digital tools and package deals that platforms will push. Understanding where your marketing dollars are going, the why behind it and continuously measuring results is so important to ensure that you are getting the most effective advertising for your budget.

• “We predict Amazon is going to quickly gain market share for local ad marketing. We’re seeing a future of Amazon next to big players like Google and Meta. Currently, we are seeing opportunities for PPC ad options in beta. The interesting part? Businesses do not even have to sell on Amazon to run ads on the platform. This is something we will be keeping a close eye on.”

— Sarah Tackabury, vice president client engagement and partnerships, Digital Hyve, Syracuse

 

• “Reaching consumers through social media content, advertising and video will continue to be extremely important and cost-effective ways to market.

• “Social media video continues to be a very powerful way to deliver a message, and social media advertising shows our clients a monthly report on how effective their ads are through clicks, engagement, etc. Social media’s ability to be tailored to the audience you want to reach is a virtue. For example, some clients may only require Facebook–Instagram content management and advertising, while others may additionally or exclusively require YouTube and TikTok.

• “Similarly, search advertising through Google–Bing–Yahoo has never been more important. Our clients want to engage customers at the bottom of the marketing funnel when they are ready to buy. Awareness, however, through television and streaming television, is also a critical part of the mix.

• “Financial products and vehicle purchases are cyclical, so the consumer needs to be constantly reminded and aware of where to seek those products and services when they need them.

• “At Chirello Advertising, our clients have had great success using a combination of digital–social–search and TV (both live and streaming) in reaching clients and converting that outreach to sales.”

— Steve Chirello, owner Chirello Advertising, Fulton

 

• “Social commerce — interacting and shopping through social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok — continues to be a high-growth area for marketing. McKinsey.com estimates that 5% of total US e-commerce will be generated from social commerce. This has a range of implications for marketing.

• “I encourage entrepreneurs to focus on highly targeted social platforms for their identified customer base and that may mean using micro or nano influencers for locally or regionally targeted sales.

• “It’s interesting to track the resurgence of QR codes and how they are still relevant in marketing. Introduced in 1994, it’s surprising that after over two decades the COVID-19 pandemic caused such a resurgence of use of QR codes with continued growth anticipated. EMarketer estimates that QR code scanning will increase by more than 19% to 99.5 million in 2025 from 83.4 million in 2022.”

— Elizabeth R. Wimer, associate teaching professor of entrepreneurship at Syracuse University