From TikTok videos to hashtag contests to influencer giveaways, new marketing trends emerge every year, giving brands a wide variety of options for reaching their target audiences. While leveraging one trend might work well for a particular brand, trying to incorporate the same trend into another brand’s strategy may not have any impact at all—or worse, it might damage a brand in the eyes of consumers if the effort doesn’t feel genuine to its story and ethos.
Jumping on a marketing trend early can lead to campaign success, but it can also flop if the trend isn’t executed properly by the right kind of brand to reach the right kind of audience. How can brands make timely decisions about whether to adopt or ignore a marketing trend? Below, members of Forbes Agency Council share their best tips to help marketers determine which of the latest trends they should integrate into their overall strategy to lead their brands to success.
Forbes Agency Council members share ways to decide whether or not to jump on a marketing trend.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Use External Data Sources To Guide Your Decision
Brands often adopt trends without looking before they leap, but there are now tools available in the form of external data sources to guide these decisions. Marketers have used internal data-backed insights, but that’s only half the picture. The other half is uncovered by using external audience, market and competitive insights to understand if they should adopt a specific marketing trend or not. – Charlie Grinnell, RightMetric
2. Run Content By Trusted Consumers
Brands have to determine if they have a place in the trend. Do you have anything to add that is useful, interesting or engaging for your audience? Does it feel like a fit for your brand? You can easily test this by creating content and running it by a trusted group of your consumers to do a gut check. This can be done quickly. Customers will tell you what they think if you take the time to ask. – Aliza Freud, SheSpeaks, Inc.
3. Make Sure You Won’t Alienate Or Confuse Your Audience
In order to ensure any trend will work for your product/service, you need to understand your audience, because jumping on a marketing trend may actually alienate or confuse people. Don’t just fake stuff or do stuff because it is what everyone else is doing. It is always great to find ways to make new trends or offerings work, but it needs to be done right and with a proper strategy in place. – Zack Teperman, ZTPR
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4. Pay Close Attention To Your Direct And Indirect Competitors
Don’t copy or steal ideas, but see how your competitors are utilizing the new trend and what level of success they’re having. Many times early adopters that are in your line of vision can help you step over huge potential potholes and save time, money and major stress. – Christopher Tompkins, The Go! Agency
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5. See If A Trend Will Help Reach Your Target Demographic
Evaluating how a trend fits within a brand is the first step in making the decision whether or not to adopt that trend. You should be asking yourself if your target demographic can be effectively reached through the trend. If the answer to that is “yes,” then take a risk in order to reap the benefits. Not every new trend is a fit for every brand, and that is important to understand. – Tellef Lundevall, Accelerated Digital Media
6. Use Forecasting And Scenario Planning
Forecasting and scenario planning are great ways to help decide if a new trend is worth testing. Regardless of any change you make to a campaign, hot marketing trend or not, you can expect to see an impact. If you predict that a certain trend could impact your metrics, run the numbers across a few different scenarios to determine whether the risk is worth the reward. – Donna Robinson, Collective Measures
7. Ask Your Customers
Ultimately, the opinions of your customers and target market segment are what matter. Every new trend will have its promoters and detractors, so it’s normal to not expect a wholly positive reception. The important thing is to understand on which side of that fence those who are most important to your business land and what impact it might have on revenue. – Chris Martin, FlexMR
8. See How Much Effort It Would Take To Make The Trend Work
If your brand is more than three degrees of separation from being able to “jump on the trend,” you should probably wait for the next trend. For example, if there was a #GlamFace makeup challenge, a brand manufacturing car seats is going to need to make a lot of left turns to make that work. But the current #10YearChallenge might just fit like a glove for a maturing brand such as this. – Bernard May, National Positions
9. Let Your Audience Guide You
If a trend emerges from your target audience and doesn’t go against your brand values, there’s little harm in participating and significant upside for capitalizing in a timely way. With that focus in mind, these opportunities will arise naturally by understanding your market and putting yourself in their shoes. – Cam Wilkie, func.media
10. Ask Yourself Two Key Questions
The questions to ask are: “Do I have the right to be engaging in this conversation?” and “Is this truly relevant to my target users?” If the answer to either of these questions is “no,” your brand won’t be able to fully leverage the potential of the effort. Consumers are tough on brands they deem insincere, and aligning your brand with the wrong trend won’t be worth it if consumers decide you’re inauthentic. – Annette Sally, Blue Sky Agency
11. Make Sure The Trend Resonates With Your Brand DNA
The trend should resonate with the brand DNA to ensure that the adaptation of it becomes a success, builds trust with the audience, gains relevant publicity, brings new consumers and re-engages with existing customers. Poor choices about which trends to follow can endanger the brand’s identity and may turn away some audience members, as such communication is considerably more powerful than an ordinary ad campaign. – Oksana Matviichuk, Performics
12. Don’t Forget To Plan Your Follow-Up
It’s always about the goal of the campaign for the brand and how the brand plans to follow up on the activations around the trend. Most trends-based engagement will “flop” for a brand because the follow-up is not considered before the brand begins the campaign. Intentional interactions, clear campaign goals and focused follow-up are key. – Vix Reitano, Agency 6B
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Author: Expert Panel®, Forbes Councils Member
