If there’s one constant in marketing, it’s that things never stay the same. What worked yesterday will not work tomorrow. You simply can’t rely on the marketing techniques and tools of the past to bring you success in the future. In order to be truly effective, it’s important that you try new things and are intentional about staying ahead of the competition. In this blog, I’ll tell you why marketing changes and give you three practices you can follow to make sure your strategy does not get stale.

At Eye Magnet Management, we are always engaging with millennials to learn about the new trends.

Why does marketing change so often? First, you can be sure that whenever someone has success using a particular technique, the masses will follow. If a company starts getting positive traction by having a daily video blog about their business, it won’t be long before their competition launches them too. Then the audience at which this program was aimed becomes overwhelmed with that form of marketing and tunes it out. This cycle repeats again and again with each new idea, platform or technique. As Gary Vaynerchuk, founder of VaynerMedia, likes to say, marketers ruin everything! The minute people realize something is working, everyone launches a “me-too” strategy, which marks the beginning of the end for that particular tacit.

So how do you stay ahead of the game? How do you ensure your company is the one with the advantage of beating of being there first? Here are three easy ways to do just that:

1. Ask

It’s important to spend time with your target audience and inquire about what is influencing them. Where are they spending their time, what do they enjoy and where do they go to stay informed? When they have questions, where do they go to gather information and get answers? Depending on your audience, the answers to these questions will vary widely. A 30- to 50-year-old housewife might spend time on Pinterest, where a 15- to 25-year-old student might be hanging out on Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter. Once you pinpoint the audience you want to reach, begin trying to see the world through their eyes.

2. Learn

Once you know your audience and where their attention is, it’s time to learn how to reach them there. If they’re on Pinterest and Houzz, educate yourself on those platforms and how to get in front of them. If it’s Snapchat or Yik Yak, download those apps and see how you can properly participate. Notice I said “properly participate.” Nothing is worse than someone who doesn’t understand a platform and then begins to attempt to sell to everyone there. That’s a quick way to get tuned out.
There are several ways to educate yourself from reading online to just spending time with people in your desired audience and asking the right questions. Don’t be embarrassed or act like you know more than you do. Humble yourself and ask for help. This pic was taken this morning at the Eye Magnet offices as I asked twenty-something Leanna for some advice on using Snapchat.

3. Try

This sounds simple enough, right? Once you understand the basics, begin putting them into practice and monitor the results. Marketing is like a science experiment. You don’t know what will ultimately work, so you take what you know and try something based on that knowledge. Then, monitor the results, tweak the program based on what you learn, re-launch the program, monitor the results, tweak again, etc. The end result should be that your strategy gets better as you go on.

In the end, all effective and dynamic marketing boils down to a commitment to constant learning. The three-step process explained above replayed over and over again. To stay in front, you need to constantly asking, learning and trying.