How To Use International Marketing Trends To Increase Your Brand Awareness

8 min readOct 25, 2021

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A new customer base with new expectations arrived in 2021. As people have adjusted to virtual living, technology has had to develop in various ways as well, and consumers are pushing hard to bring societal development along with it. Any good marketing strategy must recognize and adapt to these forces or die trying — because if they can’t adjust, they won’t last very long.

Social media trends focused on customer experience. As people desperately sought human connection during a time when loneliness was the norm, social media had to adapt to meet it.

International marketing trends are no different. Even in the UK and Australia, the top marketing trends continue to focus on creating a safe space, increasing online marketing efforts, and overall designing a better experience online for customers.

The outcome? The entire way we view social media and marketing has changed, and these six trends are here to stay.

Trends in International Marketing with Naomi Wickham

Whether you’re in Australia, the UK, or the United States, social media latest trends all point in the same direction.

I had the pleasure of e-meeting a web designer and developer specializing in social media based in the UK, Naomi Wickham. Over our almost hour-long conversation, we discussed the similarities and differences between United States social media trends and International based social media trends.

Naomi started her career in marketing by studying for her software diploma during the pandemic. Fascinated at the limitless capabilities Canva provided, she switched from creating and designing on Canva as a hobby to a career.

This also started designing on Canva as a hobby which introduced me to others using Canva, and it started to cross over into social media growth.

With her degree in hand, she started WickeDesigns, a UK-based Digital Strategy company aiming to help small businesses increase their brand awareness through digital marketing efforts and social media.

“COVID-10 has made [online marketing] no longer optional but a necessity.”

What is Trending in Social Media?

To understand what social media and marketing trends are currently widespread across the globe, you first have to understand what this means and why it’s vital to your small business.

“Marketing trends” meaning trends or movements that go in a general direction towards certain efforts or changes. They often indicate a change in products, services, beliefs, or strategies that companies now must consider to stay relevant.

Remember when the ‘Harlem Shake’ took over the internet in 2013 and every brand, business, and influencer jumped on the bandwagon? That’s a marketing trend!

Mental Health and Social Media

In 2020, The National Center for Biotechnology Information released a study titled “Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health: A Systematic Review.” The purpose of this study was to research the effects of social network usage on mental health.

Their study found a 70% increase in self-reported depressive symptoms among the group using social media versus those who did not.

One of the biggest trends Naomi and I noticed in our discussion was the similarity between how serious companies and marketing strategies are now taking this into consideration.

Naomi: Here, it seems like there is a big push for the safety of children and teens on social media, as well as trying to stop the spread of “false information or fake news.” Overall, there is this big wave of people rightly being worried for their mental health and their kids’ mental health since social media isn’t always honest.

One major trend among social media influencers is the “social media vs. reality” content. With everyone being locked in their homes for months on end, it became apparent that social media isn’t, and wasn’t, always as honest as we thought it was.

This trend has helped influencers and brands appear more human, in turn growing their online communities and audiences by showing that their lives aren’t perfect.

Marketing Made Simple with AI

Thanks to mobile, social, and being locked in our houses for almost 18 months, consumers are now always “on.” With the ubiquity of on-demand apps and services and the influence of social media in how people connect, share, and communicate, consumers are also becoming more demanding.

With this need to be constantly ready to connect with your customers 24/7, companies are now relying on AI technology like chatbots, automatic social media responders, and even AI-written blog posts, emails, and social content.

Even in the UK, Naomi stated a significant increase in AI technology and social media.

Just like here, companies are experimenting with AI technologies to give their customers quicker, more personalized experiences regarding customer service, community engagement, segmented emails, and more.

One big way brands are increasing their customer experience is through chatbots. While most small businesses can’t afford a 24-hour human customer service presence. However, it’s a significant benefit to include chatbots on your website: artificial intelligence programs that can direct visitors to information, solve simple problems, or collect their feedback so a human can get back to them as soon as possible.

According to Drift’s 2020 State of Conversational Marketing report, usage of chatbots as a brand communication channel has increased by a whopping 92% since 2019.

The War on Misinformation

One of the most significant issues of misinformation online is that when users interact with a piece of content, they tend to see more content geared towards that subject, belief, or idea.

The epidemic of misinformation online has caused multiple social platforms to now create “warnings” when it comes to posting and creating content with trigger words in it, such as COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, fat, and more.

“Growing misinformation and fake content by malicious users have not only plagued our online social media ecosystem into chaos, but it also meted untold suffering to humankind,” says Taylor & Francis Online.

The best thing for small business owners to do is always make sure you post content with facts backed up by credible sources. With platforms restricting their users from sharing harmful content or negative words (Twitter permanently banning Donald Trump, for example), the safest thing brands can do is to steer away from conversations using those trigger words.

“People Buy From People”

I couldn’t stop thinking about this quote when Naomi said it in our meeting. She was right, after all, people want to buy from people.

Naomi: Even though the company isn’t that person, like Elon Musk, people still feel connected to that person and company and want to be a part of it.

And she has a point.

According to ResearchGate, businesses who post content with faces are 38% more likely to receive likes and 32% more likely to receive comments.

Revealing the humanistic side of your brand is probably more relevant now than ever before. This is a result of how we’re using social media: we want to look at personalities, not objects, and that impacts what customers expect when they visit your website.

How to Adapt to New Marketing Trends

Create Better Customer Experiences

Americans will pay 17% more to do business with companies that have excellent reputations when it comes to customer service.

Making sure you take your customer experience, and customer lives into consideration when running your business is crucial, especially when mental health and misinformation on social media is such a hot topic.

Improving your customer experience can be simple changes such as admitting your mistakes, creating memorable experiences, or simply responding to positive and negative reviews.

Nurture Your Brand Community

Regardless of if you’re in Australia, the UK, or the US — people want to buy from people.

Making sure you create a community of acceptance, relatability, and humanism is essential when growing your business and increasing your brand awareness.

Naomi stated that she has also noticed that “personal branding live videos or TikTok’s are a regular part of life,” even for businesses. Putting your face front and center in your brand is important to show your customers that you’re real and not just a company.

Creating a brand community isn’t just for your customers; it can also give you insights into your own company, products, and services that you didn’t have access to previously. According to a study from Innsbruck University School of Management, social communities filled with followers and customers have proven to help over two-thirds of companies accommodate their clients by making intelligent decisions that could affect the organization long term.

Invest in AI Technologies

AI in marketing, social media specifically, holds the potential to transform how brands markets across networks like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. It can automate many tedious tasks related to social media management and customer experiences.

As we’ve learned in previous blogs, acquiring a new customer costs seven times more than maintaining an existing one. With numbers like these, it’s more cost-efficient to automate parts of your marketing efforts to keep your current customers happy than it is to find new customers continuously.

Examples of AI in Marketing:

Chatbots
Ad targeting
Segmented email campaigns
Customer trend prediction software (such as Obviously AI)
Grammar editing tools
Social media inbox management

As you can see from the examples above, AI in marketing doesn’t always involve robots trying to figure out how to best sell to your audience. It can also be as simple as Instagram inbox management systems or prediction tools.

Regardless of Your Country…

Marketing trends continue to be similar throughout regardless of your location.

Customers in the UK want a good experience just like customers in the US do. And marketing trends in the US continue to gear towards artificial intelligence just like they are in Australia.

We don’t always have the extra time in our day to keep up with the day-to-day needs of marketing and web design. This is why Zoek is here to help. We offer services such as SEO, Web Design, and even Graphic Design, to help build a strong community around your brand.

Speak with a Pro!