The transition period between the end of one year and start of the next is often a time of reflection and of making exciting plans for the next year. It doesn’t feel as if we’ve had the chance to make definite plans in the past couple of years with all the restrictions, testing and vaccines. Instead, our focus has been on being adaptable to last-minute changes.
Professionally, my focus is still on translation and editing and that’s not going to change. However, I’ve got more writing planned for this year, more collaborations and new challenges as a form of continuous improvement and to provide variety.
Deeper connections
Deepening the connection I have with my clients, colleagues and friends who live further afield is a major part of my plans. I believe many people are craving a more meaningful and deeper relationship with others after social contact has been so fragmented and often only virtual. This is a key factor behind many of the marketing trends predicted by those in the know for 2022. Let’s look at three of these.
Content marketing
Blogs are here to stay and publishing articles on your website is an excellent way of engaging potential and existing clients. At least 47 % of buyers consume three to five pieces of content before talking to a sales person and we now expect brands to create content (see https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics). Although the criteria for what a buyer perceives to be useful content has expanded. Not only should it be insightful, relevant, deemed trustworthy and answer their questions, it needs to be engaging to attract and retain their attention, offer a mix of media (video, text, infographics etc.), and lead clearly to the next step in the process. Buyers should be able to find the information they need in their own language and you get extra gold stars if you also offer interactive content.
Interaction
Buyers love a way to interact with a company, without it necessarily being a one-to-one direct conversation. You could offer a way to ask and answer questions in real time, quizzes, surveys and polls or provide tools a user can use to calculate how much of a product they may need, for instance.
Screen fatigue is a big issue with more people working remotely and doing increasingly more online. People complain of being “Zoomed out” after too many conference calls or training sessions, which is a big reason why interactive, fun marketing scores highly. The more physical barriers are put up between individuals, the more we crave interaction and connection.
Video
If you’re not already using video, the following statistics present a compelling case. In particular, short-form video – videos that last less than 2.5 minutes – is expected to increase this year.
According to Wyzowl (https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/) 84 % of people surveyed have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. Explainer videos, which account for about 73 % of videos produced, aren’t only useful for sales, they are also said to reduce the number of support calls a company gets because people can easily find the information they need.
In a report by Cisco, video is expected to account for 82 % of online traffic by 2022. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by adding another media to the mix, consider repurposing. B2B companies repurpose content across different channels much less than B2C companies.
You could take a video transcript and reuse this as an article with a few small tweaks. If you’d like to repurpose any of the content I translate for you, I can happily create a short summary or teaser to save you time later.
To make your video count for all audiences, avoid highly specific cultural references or lots of text that would need to be recreated and rerecorded. That way you can repurpose the video with captions or audio in another language.
How can you create a deeper connection with your clients this year and beyond? I’d love to help!
