Hearing a story for the first time is an interesting experience, whereas, hearing it every day is not a fascinating one. And, the same applies to the marketing communications delivered by brands. Marketers are on a constant quest to innovate and create effective communications. So here are some templates themes you should consider implementing in your marketing campaigns this year and beyond to generate higher user engagement.

Gamification

Gamification is not new in marketing but is effectively instrumental in drawing the customers’ attention and achieve marketing goals. User engagement and entertainment are the primary goals of gamification with a rewarding side effect of an increase in sales, eventually. And stimulants like entertainment, desire for reward, an atmosphere of excitement, and competition are some motivational aspects that make the customers coming back to the brand.

Besides creatively spreading brand’s message and entertaining customers, why should you employ gamification in your marketing process? Brands can utilize this approach in their communications to aid data collection, strengthening customer connections, reinforced brand reputation, loyalty building medium, increased engagement period, and relaxed remarketing practice.

User-generated content (UGC)

UGC is like the digital version of word-of-mouth, where the marketers leverage relevant user-created content to tailor the journey of other customers. It is an authentic and inclusive medium of marketing with unique content every time, and helps in establishing meaningful connection with audiences. These can be in form of reviews, blogposts, testimonials, videos, and images on brand owned or earned media.

Why you should rethink on user generated content as against conventional marketing content? It is proved to be an authentic way of promotion, which adds human touch to the marketing activities and helps the brands to put their customers in front and focus, demonstrating appreciation. As it is created by unpaid contributors it’s a cost-effective medium of promotion, expanding brand’s reach and awareness through shareability and virality.

Continuous Animations

Continuous animation in the form of GIF is already popular in marketing and will continue to be in trend for a while. It is favored because it attracts more attention than the static images and is entertaining, keeping the user interested till the end.

Short animation videos capture the essence of the brand’s communication in limited space and delivers the concept to the viewers before they move on. Also, in contrast to normal marketing practices animated content and CTAs have higher conversion rates, which adds to their share of advantages. Hence, they are quick and easy to create, cost effective, leaves a lasting impact, improves engagement rate, and optimises the search performance of the brands.

Inclusivity

Internet and social media have blurred geographical boundaries. Consequently, to become globally relatable, brands are moving past demographic personas created by age, race, sexuality, language, religion, and income. Connecting with real people and their sentiments is an asset for customer-centric marketing and this can be achieved by embracing diversity and creating meaningful and respectful content.

Being inclusive and diversified helps in building brand’s reputation, and contributes to its overall growth by finding new audiences, become more identified by real people, and unify people with diversified attributes in the community it prevails. Moreover it also increase the brand’s ROI with increased sales and decreased content creation cost, having globally accepted content which can be repurposed for wider geographic segments.

Live data visuals

The live data visual is a process of sharing the descriptive data in a comprehensible format like infographics, maps, timelines, pie charts, and more. Gone are those days where data representation was restricted to just stakeholders. They can now use this creatively in the form of data visuals to represent the stats and facts of the brand without giving their customers analysis fatigue and expand their outreach confidently.

So data visuals can be used now and again to refresh your communication strategy and create an ever-present impact on your customers by narrating a visually appealing data-driven tale. This can keep your viewers interested, engaged for longer time, be a great source of knowledge sharing, and also help to build your reputation with evidence of truth.

Illustrations

Illustrations are exceptional in communicating the imaginative theme and concepts of the brand, which can sometimes be difficult to achieve with upright photography. To stand apart in this competitive sphere, creating custom illustrations adds novelty to the marketing messages and keeps the users engaged with curiosity.

The combination of photography and illustrations based on relevance can add value to the marketing efforts of the brand. In comparison to live action videos, animated videos created through illustrations are easy to create with limited sources, and with minimal errors and delays. Hence, illustrations are easy cost effective, flexible, and adds uniqueness to brand’s overall image.

Sustainability

Social, environmental, and economical issues are widely prevalent. Hence, sustainability is a new way of looking at marketing to retain for longer period of time. Consistently tempering the brand’s promotional communications with a responsibility towards people, planet, and profit strengthens the brand’s relationship with the community around them.

Ethical practice of sustainability, adds a human touch to the communication and creates a long term impact on the brand’s longevity, giving the customers a reason to choose the brand over. It also provides long term benefits by portraying the brand’s perception and the legacy it looks forward to leave behind.

Take your marketing efforts a notch higher with some pre-build creative templates or create your own visuals with easy drag and drop mechanism, and more with Resulticks.