Photo by Roberto Nickson
Digital Marketing is a large industry, which is constantly changing. If you don’t keep up with the latest digital marketing trends, you risk being left behind. Here we are to tell you about hidden digital marketing strategies that every business owner should know. These strategies will help you elevate your online presence and generate more revenue for your business! Let’s get started!
Hidden Marketing. What is it?
Hidden Marketing is a way of advertising goods and services when consumers do not realize that they are being sold to. The tools are aimed at promoting the company’s product inconspicuously, gaining the consumer’s trust. Hidden marketing also requires minimal costs while delivering high performance.
Photo by Mikael Blomkvist
Hidden marketing does not directly sell the product, it:
- informs the market about the release of a new product/service;
- builds communication with the target audience of the brand, winning its loyalty;
- creates an active and interested community around the brand and its product;
- generates consumer curiosity and a desire to learn about the brand from personal experience;
- works with possible negativity around the brand, identifying strengths and weaknesses of the product/service.
What can be achieved using Hidden Marketing?
- Increase brand awareness
Brand awareness is how consumers recognize and remember your product. The greater the brand awareness you have, the more audiences will be familiar with your logo, messaging, and services. To achieve this you need to form an associative series of «problem – solution with the help of a brand’s product».
- Brand loyalty and positive perception
72% of users do not buy anything until they study the reviews. The more reviews about you and your services there are on the web, the more useful they will be for potential buyers, and the easier it will be to sell your products or services and persuade buyers to choose your brand over others.
- Attracting attention to new products
When a product or service is just entering the market, it is important not to miss the moment and inform the audience in time about all the benefits that the product carries. The more relevant information the consumer finds, the easier it is for them to choose in your favor.
- Increase in sales
Intrusive open advertising often angers and repels consumers, unlike native advertising, which has become a more acceptable promotion option. You create the illusion that the buyer has made their own choice, that they accidentally came across a review for a particular product or service.
- Speed in getting results
The general background of a brand’s mentions and its ratings on the web is an excellent example of how hidden marketing works. With the help of these tools, you can almost immediately assess the effectiveness of promotion, and adjust or completely change the strategy.
Types of Hidden Marketing
Having learned about the advantages of hidden marketing, we will analyze its existing types.
Product Placement
The name pretty much speaks for itself and you can guess that this type of hidden marketing consists in placing product advertising on various sites. As a rule, a product or service is incorporated in films and TV series, computer games, and sometimes books. The main feature of product placement is that the introduction of the product is natural and does not look like a television commercial. If the viewer realizes they’re being advertised to, then the marketing move will lose its appeal.
Viral Marketing (V-Marketing)
This concept is often confused with the more general term “Hidden Marketing”. The virality of the content means that the main distributor of information are consumers themselves, who convey the benefits of the product or service to potential buyers. That is, representatives of the target audience are both promoters and buyers.
“Guerrilla” Marketing
This type of Hidden Marketing is low-budget advertising and marketing methods that allow you to effectively promote your product or service, attract new customers, and increase your profit with very little investment or with none at all. This can be both sowing discussions on forums and on social networks, and placing the photographer’s phone number on the event manager’s advertising booklets – if they are partners.
Hidden Digital Marketing
Hidden Digital Marketing is every blog, video, and piece of content you see online, it’s every link or mention on social media, it’s every time you have to enter your email address, it’s every time you see that jacket you were tempted to buy, and it’s every search result on every Google search page.
Its Strategies:
Many users do not always trust official information on websites and go in search of reviews on third-party platforms. To ensure that they do not find unpleasant surprises there, we advise you to use these strategies and prepare in advance.
- Social Networks
Hidden marketing primarily chooses social networks as a platform of presence – a place where potential buyers gather not for shopping, but to distract themselves from everyday routine, learn daily news, and chat with friends, but not to make purchases. At this moment, the user of the network is relaxed and open to the perception of information.
You can take advantage of this situation by creating several interesting pages and groups related to your product. In the comments to the posts, you will need to bring users to discuss it and exchange opinions and advice. Information spread by real people is more trustworthy, and the main task here is to stimulate your subscribers to discuss and repost.
- Influencer Marketing
Another up-and-coming if not already a full-swing marketing trick is influencer marketing. An influencer is anyone online with an audience, big or small. These are usually bloggers, gurus, or YouTubers, and they have value to offer your marketing strategy. When it comes to influencer marketing, you have the chance to promote your products and services through a new voice. But don’t fall for pretty numbers, sometimes the audience may be small, but active and reliable.
- Visual Content
Despite all the new digital marketing trends, content is still one of the most popular trends. To reach your target customers, you need to create high-quality, relevant content that resonates with them. Create original images that illustrate the history of your brand and bring it to life.
The difficulty of visualizing business ideas lies in the fact that it is difficult to understand at what point it is worth sacrificing informativeness for the sake of efficiency, and what format is best to convey information. Additionally, make sure to promote your content across all of your social media channels to reach the widest audience possible.
- SEO
SEO is the optimization of the site for search engines, which helps to bring it to the top position in the search. The more people see your site in search results, the higher its traffic. Traffic has a positive effect on conversions, and they are converted into sales, which proves that it is profitable to engage in search engine optimization.
Most marketers invest millions in a robust SEO strategy and expect results in an unreasonably short period of time. In reality, getting to the top ranks on SERPs takes time. High rankings, traffic, and conversions only follow after weeks and months of tedious grunt work of employing the best SEO practices, so patience is key.
- Video Marketing
Videos are a more personalized method of interacting with the target audience than pictures or text messages. This format helps users to hear the voice of the brand, conveys the mood and evokes emotions.
Therefore, videos help to elevate the brand, as well as develop and strengthen trusting relationships. Users are willing to share videos with their friends in private messages and social networks. A carefully thought-out and creative video has every chance of going viral and launching word of mouth among the target audience.
Final thoughts
Hidden Marketing is one of the most accessible and effective ways to promote a brand. To successfully accomplish the tasks, first of all, it is necessary to assess all the risks in advance, work out the strategy, set clear goals and objectives, and determine the tools to achieve them.
From a variety of tools, you should choose the ones that suit your goals, then get acquainted with the experience of competitors, and take into account their mistakes. It is very important to listen to the audience, and its requests and promote the brand in terms of benefits for a particular consumer.
As for Hidden Digital Marketing, it is a complex and ever-changing field, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth your time and effort. By implementing the strategies outlined in this article into your digital marketing strategy, you can be sure to reach your target customers and achieve your business goals.
