Welcome to Day 3 of our series, “30 Days of Guerrilla Marketing.” In today’s article, we’ll explore the power of leveraging trends to capture attention and create buzz for your business or brand.
Jumping on trends is a highly effective guerrilla marketing tactic that allows you to ride the wave of public interest and maximize your exposure. Essentially, you’re going to piggyback on the organic clicks and views that a trending topic is receiving by aligning your brand with it – in one way or another.
Leveraging trends isn’t new. During the 2013 Super Bowl, there was an unexpected power outage that caused a significant delay in the game. Oreo, as in the popular cookie brand, quickly jumped on the trend by tweeting an image with the text, “Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark.” The tweet went viral, generating thousands of retweets and becoming one of the most talked-about moments of the Super Bowl, and it cost them nothing! This simple and timely tweet showcased Oreo’s ability to stay relevant, and the brand received millions of dollars’ worth of exposure as a result.
So, let’s dive in and discover how you can make trends work for you!
Stay Vigilant: Monitoring and Identifying Trends
To effectively jump on trends, you need to stay informed about the latest happenings in your industry and the broader cultural landscape. After all, you can’t hop onto a trend train if you don’t know about it!
Keep a close eye on news, social media platforms, industry publications, and influential blogs. Look out for emerging topics, viral content, popular hashtags, and recurring themes that could potentially be leveraged for your marketing efforts.
By actively monitoring and identifying trends, you can position yourself to be at the forefront of relevant conversations.
An easy and free way to stay at the forefront of every major trend that’s hitting your niche or industry is by using Google Alerts. You can read more about how to use the service to grow your business here.
Relevance is Key: Aligning Trends with Your Brand
Not every trend will be suitable for your brand or business. It’s important to assess whether a trend aligns with your values, target audience, and overall brand image.
Look for trends that naturally complement your products, services, or mission.
By choosing relevant trends, you’ll be able to seamlessly integrate your marketing efforts with ongoing conversations, capturing the interest of both existing and potential customers.
Act Fast: Speed is of the Essence
Trends come and go quickly. That’s more or less the actual definition of the term! To make the most of a trend, you need to act swiftly.
Once you’ve identified a relevant trend, brainstorm creative ideas on how you can leverage it.
Develop marketing campaigns, content, or promotions that capitalize on the trend’s popularity.
Whether it’s creating viral videos, social media challenges, or timely blog posts, the key is to execute your ideas in a timely manner. The faster you can align your marketing efforts with a trend, the greater your chances of capitalizing on its momentum.
Think about ChatGPT for a minute. When it came out, every marketer and business immediately worked to align themselves with it because it was getting a ton of attention. Coaches creates courses about it. Online marketing experts offered free webinars to upsell their ChatGPT plugins and workbooks. Etsy sellers created spreadsheets of ChatGPT prompts for purchase. And they all tweeted, posted, and shared daily.
Be Authentic: Adding Value to the Conversation
When jumping on a trend, you must be authentic and add value to the conversation. Consumers can quickly spot insincere attempts to ride a trend without any real substance.
Instead, focus on offering unique insights, useful information, or entertaining content that genuinely engages your audience. By providing value, you’ll not only establish credibility, but also build a loyal following that appreciates your brand’s contributions to the trend.
Don’t Ignore User-Generated Content: Harness the Power of Participation
Trends often thrive on user-generated content and participation. Encourage your audience to get involved by creating user-generated content related to the trend.
This could involve hosting contests, challenges, or giveaways that require users to engage with your brand creatively.
By tapping into the creativity and enthusiasm of your audience, you can amplify your reach and create a sense of community around your brand.
Analyze and Adapt: Measuring the Impact of Trend-based Marketing
As with any marketing effort, it’s important to track and measure the impact of your trend-based campaigns. Analyze the metrics, such as website traffic, social media engagement, and conversion rates, to gauge the success of your initiatives.
By closely monitoring the results, you can identify what works best for your brand and refine your strategies accordingly. This data-driven approach will help you optimize your future trend-based marketing endeavors.
It’s likely that you’ll discover your audience is quick to jump on certain trends with you while avoiding others.
Still, many other trends that may not instantly appear to align with your brand could very well be producing your highest boost in sales for the month.
The point is that if you don’t pay attention to the data, you won’t know, and that will cost you when the next trend hits.
Closing Thoughts...
Jumping on trends is an effective guerrilla marketing tactic that can propel your brand to new heights.
By staying vigilant, aligning trends with your brand, acting fast, being authentic, embracing user-generated content, and analyzing the impact, you can ride the wave of interest and gain significant visibility.
Remember, trends can provide a shortcut to capturing attention, but it’s the value you provide that will keep your audience engaged and loyal in the long run.
Stay tuned for more insightful tactics in our 30 Days of Guerrilla Marketing series!
