Leveraging marketing is so important! But you don’t know how to follow the hot spots? [Overseas Hot Spots Operation Guide]

Hot spots are indispensable for marketing. So how do you find hot spots? This article explains this question from three aspects: what are the hot spots, where do the hot spots come from, and how to "take advantage of" the hot spots scientifically and effectively. Let's take a look!

Regardless of which platform you are on, hot spots have always been the fulcrum for leveraging traffic. Riding on hot spots is essentially marketing by taking advantage of the momentum, using the momentum of hot spots to increase users' impression of you.

For overseas marketers, if they can keep up with overseas current affairs and grasp the latest trends in the brand field, they can create more valuable marketing ideas.

For today’s content, Inpander, a professional overseas KOL marketing agency, has summarized an [Overseas Hotspot Operation Guide] based on years of practice. We hope it will be helpful to you!

1. What are the hot spots?

Before talking about how to follow hot spots, let’s first talk about what the hot spots are.

1. Periodic hot spots

These are relatively fixed hot spots, which occur every year at roughly the same time:

1) Holiday hot spots

Every year, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Father's Day/Mother's Day, Ramadan, etc. are all hot spots that can be predicted in advance.

Relevant demands will definitely arise at this time. Overseas brands and cross-border merchants can be prepared and plan in advance for topics such as "Christmas gift-giving guide", "Valentine's Day gift recommendations", "Father's Day/Mother's Day gifts", "Ramadan traditional customs" , etc. to take on a wave of hot traffic.

2) E-commerce promotion hot spots

E-commerce promotions are also fixed hot spots, such as Amazon's Prime Day promotion in July this year, the Double Eleven and Double Twelve promotions which are also popular in Southeast Asia, and the Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday promotions around the world. These are hot spots that occur at fixed times every year.

Similarly, overseas brands and cross-border merchants can plan lists, guides and other topic content in advance to seize hot spots.

3) Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter Cycle

That is to prepare marketing activities according to our seasonal changes. For example, now it is summer, so summer sunscreen products, clothing and other content will be hot topics.

In winter, skiing, making snowmen, and layering are hot topics.

4) Brand discounts

Many fashion brands release brand discounts at the same time every year. In response to this, brands, merchants, and bloggers can prepare corresponding strategy content in advance and send it out as soon as possible to have a chance to grab a lot of traffic.

There are many fixed hot spots every year. You can prepare a calendar and arrange the content push of these fixed hot spots reasonably .

2. Sudden hotspots

For sudden hot topics, you can monitor social media hot searches and current news. Including but not limited to:

1) Social events, entertainment gossip

Social events and entertainment gossip that have just happened and are popular have already gained a certain level of popularity no matter which platform they are on.

2) Movies, TV series, and variety shows

For movies, TV series, and variety shows that are highly discussed in the local market, we can extend the outfits of movies and TV series based on these hot topics, explore the same styles as celebrities, check in variety show scenes, and so on.

Sudden hot spots are very challenging because they give us very little preparation time and test our ability to capture hot spots and the speed of content production. No matter what the content is, we must be one step ahead.

3. Practical hotspot

This type of hot topic has neither a fixed time of occurrence nor is it sudden, but it has a high degree of topic attention or heated discussion, such as "midlife crisis", "female growth", and "LGBT" . This type is more suitable for topic selection direction and content.

4. Official hot spots of the platform

Official hot spots refer to those initiated or supported by platforms such as TikTok, Instrgram, and Facebook, mainly including official activities, hashtags, official supported activities, and topics. For these hot spots, the official will give natural traffic rewards to creators.

1) Official release

The official will proactively release community activities and topic tags based on recent hot topics, as well as challenges and activities held on the official platform, etc., which will all have traffic support.

2) Official support

The content that is in line with the official trends and is the main focus. For example, there are hot BGM, hot special effects, hot jokes and other forms. For these hot trends, the official will launch related recommended topics. If it is related to your video content, don't forget to add the topic.

2. Where do the hot spots come from?

Marketers can use a variety of channels and tools to follow and track all kinds of major international news, popular culture, and new trends in real time. Here is a list of commonly used tracking tools and channels:

1. Tool 1: Google Trends

URL: https://trends.google.com/trends/

Google Trends is a great tool for tracking current events. It will show you the hottest news and events based on the keywords you enter. Not only that, you can also classify the news by date and region. Google Trends can also tell you the hottest time in the field related to your brand and help you track the traffic changes of hot events in real time.

2. Tool 2: Answer the public

Website: https://answerthepublic.com/

Answer The Public is a unique topic search tool that provides you with the important questions people are asking on the Internet. Simply enter a keyword and Answer The Public will return questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabetical keywords and related keywords based on the words you enter.

3. Tool 3: Reddit

Website: https://www.reddit.com/

Compared with the previous ones, this website is much more professional. It is a social news website, similar to Zhihu in China. You can subscribe to content of interest and check the latest popular topics. Many people use it.

4. Tool 4: Pinterest trends

Website: https://trends.pinterest.com/

For example, if you want to search for watch-related keyword hotspots in the US market, you only need to select the US as the country and enter smartwatch to query related keyword trends.

There’s also a section for this week’s Pinterest trends, so you can see which topics were popular that week. You can also explore the most popular topics by category.

5. Tool 5: Tiktok trending

URL: https://ads.tiktok.com/business/creativecenter/inspiration/popular/

Find the hottest tags, songs, bloggers, videos right now.

Using this tool, you can:

1) Customize countries and follow trends in different countries

2) Customize the time range to query which keywords are most popular in the past 1 day, past 30 days, and past 120 days

3) The most popular songs at the moment

4) The most popular videos at the moment

5) The most popular creators at the moment

6. Tool 6: Rotten Tomatoes

Website: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/

A famous American film review website, through which you can check out popular and upcoming movies and TV series.

3. How to “take advantage of” hot topics scientifically and effectively?

1. Filter hot spots to be related to products/brands

Don’t just take advantage of the hot topics for the sake of taking advantage of the hot topics. Integrate your product/brand promotion into hot topics and make it a topic of discussion among the public so that they can remember your brand or product.

How to do it specifically?

Step 1: List the hot keywords and extend them as far as possible;

Step 2: Find your own brand (product) keyword , which can be a product or a brand value proposition;

Step 3: Combine the keywords listed in both, find an interesting point of convergence or turning point , and develop creativity.

2. Seize the hot spots and create highly contagious and fascinating content

Once you notice that certain topics are hot right now, you can start taking advantage of this opportunity to create some very engaging content. It doesn't just mean making fixed comments based on a certain thing, but using divergent thinking. However, it should be reminded that the ultimate starting point must be your own brand.

When creating content, the following aspects must be kept in mind:

1) Is the content I create what my audience wants to see?

2) What would my competitors think about this hot event?

3) Which part of this event is most closely associated with my brand?

Author: Inpander

Source: WeChat public account "Inpander Going Global (ID: gh_eeba4131474f)"