Target growth areas for Nordic marketers in 2022

How has the pandemic changed your marketing mindset? For Nordic marketers in today’s digitally-driven society, connecting with customers through personalized experiences is critical. To achieve this in ever-changing contexts, speed to insight is vital, and data management will play its fundamental role in driving a digital-first strategy. Here, we address some of the key growth areas that will help your brand experience thrive—quickly.

Ramp up your digital—now

The global you-know-what has really ramped up the need for brands to go all-out digital in their engagement. This means focusing wholeheartedly on your customer touchpoints across your brand experience. These can be your website, mobile app, or individual landing pages. They can also include paid, owned, and earned media such as search engine marketing, social media, and content marketing.

We suggest starting at the end.

By that, we mean determining your end goal first. In digital marketing, the techniques and methods used are determined by your end goal. And to get there, it comes down providing the details required to meet your customers’ needs. For example, marketers today can’t afford to be brief in their communications. Thanks to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) among other regulation and technology advances, today’s customer demands sufficient, transparent, and easily digestible information. This is especially the case for converting consumers in the Nordic e-commerce market. As Sandberg points out, “Proper product descriptions and details are crucial to guide the customer from browsing to purchasing, including comparing different offerings across your website but also with other suppliers online.”

Everything starts with data

How do you drive your marketing activity forward? For us, it’s data. Getting on top of data helps you to create the personalized experiences that today’s customers demand. As third-party cookies are progressively disappearing—and with that, the consented data collection enabling marketers to really drive customer engagement—data has become even more important in adapting to a cookie-less future.

At Nordic Morning, we see this disruption as an opportunity to use better quality data to better understand customers and therefore, build a more trusting relationship and create valuable digital customer experiences.

So, how can you act on this quickly?

Start collecting real-time data to discover your most valuable customer insights. You can speed up this process by leveraging AI. With the help of machine learning models such as Tealium Audience Stream, real-time user data can be used to generate and analyze consumer behavior forecasts on the fly. You’re then empowered to manipulate the data on a granular level. For example, you could compare an individual customer segment with a specific product category simultaneously.

The elimination of third-party cookies means you have an opportunity to engage with unknown visitors, i.e., those who you do not yet have a ‘contract’ with to collect their data in exchange for a good experience. The ability of detecting patterns of visitors you don’t know yet to create experiences that are as personalized as possible for them is very important.

This means the ability to put the right skills around this technology is essential to drive this customer engagement. With the widening skills gap left by the pandemic, it’ll speed up the process to start thinking about filling these skill gaps with remote workers.

Mobile-first digital experiences

When it comes to brand interaction, it’s looking very much like mobile usage is now top dog for Nordic consumers. It almost goes without saying that the pandemic had a big part to play in this. One Nordic survey discovered that the pandemic led to a 29% increase in the number of people preferring to engage with brands on mobile. Another recent study by Deloitte revealed that almost one-third (30%) of Scandinavian consumers prefer to use a mobile phone for online purchases.

Make a mobile-first strategy and put it high on your priority list.

This will entail a user-friendly, fast and optimized digital experience that’s designed for today’s highly connected, high-speed (5G) generation. Mobile user-friendliness is particularly vital. Deloitte’s study also highlighted that “a ‘mobile-first’ strategy has the potential to create more citizen-centric and personalized services ‘at your fingertips’”. In other words, the user experience across all devices, but especially mobile, must be completely responsive and resilient. Don’t forget that this also means covering all bases in the consumer journey, including email mobile experiences. According to HubSpot, 84% of marketers that focus on mobile web design are planning to continue to invest the same amount or more in 2022.

Increase brand familiarity using SEO

It goes without saying, trust is a massive factor for brands. And there’s no better feeling than a great conversion rate. You may well be pleased with how your content is ranking, however, if you want your rankings to convert to clicks, you’ll want to make search engine optimization (SEO) your new best friend. As one of the most popular top-of-the-funnel marketing metrics, SEO still has a very important role to play in building brand awareness.

Our advice? Do not underestimate the power of the blog post.

Blog posts are solid examples of how SEO can increase brand awareness and start building a relationship with the reader. Why? Because they provide users with informative and valuable content. When the research is done right and with the right high search volume keywords, they’ll answer the burning question in the most satisfactory way. In turn, you get to place your brand atop the pedestal while cementing your expertise within a given area. Think “How to…” articles for example. For recommended tools on where to find inspiration for content ideas based on search behaviors, check out our blog “The ultimate checklist for your digital marketing audit (2022)”.

The marketing reward is well worth it when you’re basking in the search results as your brand is connected to the queries that relate to its services and/or products.

Build rock solid trust through inbound marketing

Speaking of building relationships. One thing we know is that for a relationship to grow, there has to be a solid foundation of trust. For brands, it goes without saying that it can take time and tactics to build a trust that’s worthy of true long-term loyalty. However, for a quicker fix, don’t overlook or disregard the rise of influencer marketing in your inbound marketing strategy. Looking to reach more people in a faster time? Well, it may well be that influencer marketing is your go-to. Forbes foresees brands needing “more creative online partnerships to differentiate them in an all-digital space”.

Think about it: influencers already have an engaged audience that’s highly interested in what they have to say. Then again, there is of course the issue of being able to afford this tactic. But with the rise of micro-influencers, who, although may have fewer followers (even though we’re still talking tens of thousands), there’s still a huge impact to be made. According to Social Media Today, micro-influencers “deliver the highest post engagement rates across Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

One more thing on inbound marketing. Ever heard of The Flywheel Model? Well, you’re about to.

This model uses inbound methodology and puts the customer first in a company’s marketing efforts to not only improve how the customer experiences the brand, but also to help the growth of the business. This is achieved by equipping your customers with the tools to become true brand ambassadors. That way, they can essentially do the marketing for you. By implementing this in the short-term, you’re very much investing for the long term. Find out more about how the flywheel drives business growth via HubSpot here.

Want to harness your data to provide greater customer experiences?

Are you a Nordic marketer that’s not afraid of a drastic, disruptive, trial-and-error-approach? Let us manage your most valuable resource and help you truly resonate with your customers.

Get in touch with Nordic Morning today.