Every year, it seems marketers get fixated on one or two “big things.” These trends tend to dominate conversations and airwaves until they’ve either died out, or we’ve collectively said everything that can be said about them and have moved onto something more timely. A few years ago it was Twitter. Then it was inbound marketing. This year, thanks to new market entrants like Meerkat and Periscope, it’s live streaming video. While many of marketing’s digital best practices hold firm, the tools and strategies continue to evolve. Here are two growing marketing trends we can’t stop talking about:
Gamification recognizes the power of goal setting, feedback and rewards and uses them to drive excitement and engagement. Elements of gamification can intrigue and engage prospects, and may be even more valuable to internal marketing efforts.
In external marketing efforts, gamification can be used to drive lead engagement with website content and help you collect valuable lead information. For example, multinational software firm SAP used gamified elements to build an online community of brand advocates. The rewards for engagement with microsite content included the chance for frequently active community members to gain a designation as an “expert” in different areas. As users progressed through the site, SAP captured valuable information about their users’ buying needs and preferences.
Internally, gamification can be harnessed to drive marketing and sales usage of a CRM and the achievement of individual and company goals. For example, you might use gamification elements, such as leaderboards and scoreboards, to motivate continued job training, achievement of sales goals and improvements in customer service, and then align these with technologies like your CRM platform.
While gamification is not brand new, it is still coming into its own in B2B and healthcare marketing. Is your business on top of this trend?
Meerkat and Periscope have taken entertainment, politics and consumer marketing by storm, but is there a place for live streaming video in the B2B and healthcare worlds? We think so. Meerkat and Periscope can be used to do more than simply broadcast the concert you attended last night. They can be leveraged to create engaging live streams of things like product demonstrations, interviews with your top executives and conference keynotes, thereby humanizing your brand and building live, real-time relationships with targets you could never hope to interact with personally. But beware of putting too many eggs in the live streaming video basket. While you may want to experiment with tools like Periscope and Meerkat now, it probably doesn’t make sense to make a large investment until a significant portion of your target customers begin to actively use live streaming apps.
Today, marketing tools and trends are changing faster than ever. As a B2B marketer, how do you process this accelerated change in the industry? Download our whitepaper to learn more:
Photo Skoll World Forum via Flickr Creative Commons
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