Essential Guide To Trendjacking In Digital Marketing

As a digital marketer, there’s no greater joy than taking advantage of the latest trend and using it to your advantage. After all, who doesn’t love getting a piece of the latest and hottest new trend? However, to be able to maximise the trend within the digital marketing space, you would need the know-how of  of trendjacking in digital marketing, and that’s what we’re here to help with.  

Before diving in, let’s define trendjacking. In a nutshell, trendjacking is the act of riding the wave of a hot topic or ongoing trend so that you can reach a more relevant and interested audience. This involves keeping an eye on the latest trends and adapting your content, strategy and campaigns to take advantage of them. 

By leveraging emerging trends, you can effectively capture the attention of your target audience and stay top-of-mind amidst the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Examples Of Trendjacking In Digital Marketing

Trendjacking can be seen in various digital marketing campaigns, from social media posts to SEM campaigns. This approach highlights how brands can leverage trending topics to create content that resonates with their audience and ultimately drives business results. By leveraging on what’s popular at the moment, brands can increase their reach and relevancy.

Social Media

At Primal Digital Marketing Agency Malaysia, we found a clever way to trendjack the announcement of the latest Transformers movie. The tagline of the movie, “Power is Primal,” coincidentally shares the same name of our agency. Leveraging on this chance, we created a social media post that emulated the Transformers movie poster. 

By taking advantage of the trending topic, we created a shareable and buzzworthy post that showcased our creativity, brand image and ingenuity as a digital agency. This social media campaign demonstrated the importance of staying alert for opportunities to leverage trending topics and creating content that resonates with your audience. When done right, trendjacking in digital marketing can be a powerful tool to boost brand awareness and drive business results.

Primal Malaysia Leveraging The Announcement Of The Latest Transformers Movie

Source: Primal Malaysia

Another brand to highlight is Domino’s Pizza. Domino’s Pizza is known for their entertaining advertising in Malaysia. Back in 2020, they used the highly anticipated release of the PlayStation 5 to their advantage by trendjacking a social media post. The brand created a post that showcased a Domino’s pizza box, cleverly disguised to resemble the game console. 

The post was timely, creative, and relevant to their audience, who were undoubtedly enthusiastic about the release of the PS5. This approach demonstrated the brand’s ability to stay attuned to emerging trends and highlighted their knack for creating engaging content.

Domino’s Pizza Malaysia Trendjacking The Release Of The PS5 To Promote Their Products

Source: Domino’s Pizza Malaysia

SEM

GrubHub, a popular food delivery app in the United States, used a popular search trend – “Florida State University” – to gain the attention of people looking to enrol in University and get them to order food.

 By strategically scheduling their Google ads close to meal times and the University’s enrollment dates, GrubHub was able to capture the attention of a specific audience who were likely hungry and looking for quick and easy meal options. By aligning their advertising with the interests and needs of their potential customers, GrubHub was able to increase their brand visibility.

GrubHub Utilising Trending Keywords to Increase Sales

Source: Search Engine People

Benefits of Trendjacking 

Stay Relevant & Reach A Larger Audience

Trendjacking is a powerful approach to keep brands relevant, timely and engaging for their audience. By capitalising on the latest social media trends or breaking news, brands can produce exciting and interesting content that resonates with their audience.

 This allow brands to stay ahead of the curve with content that’s more likely to be shared, resulting in more traffic and potentially generating more conversion outcomes.

Trendjacking allows you to piggyback off trending topics to relate to your target audience. A study by Hubspot found that 35% of Gen Z’s prefer companies that publish trendy/cool content.

By taking the time to be aware of popular topics and what’s trending, you can ensure that your content is always relevant and not stale, catching the attention of a new audience and allowing you to keep the old ones coming back for more.

Trendjacking in digital marketing works so well because trend-driven content is much more shareable than content unrelated to the current trending topics. It also allow brands to reach users that do not follow their social media accounts but may be interested in the trending topic. 

Crafting content that is timely and relevant will capture people’s attention and is more likely to get shared across various social media platforms. The shareability of trend-driven content is one of the major advantages of trendjacking in digital marketing. 

People are often eager to share trending topics or hashtags that they find interesting or entertaining with their followers, resulting in a higher reach and increased brand awareness. In turn, this helps to attract potential customers, ultimately leading to higher traffic to your page and website.

Stay On Top Of Mind

Trendjacking is the key to staying on top of mind for your audience and constantly engaging them with fresh and exciting content. For example, if there’s a current trend that everyone can’t stop talking about, such as the FIFA World Cup, you can join the conversation by creating content related to your brand and the World Cup. Take this video by KFC in South Africa as an example: 

KFC cleverly used the World Cup trend of Neymar diving to make a funny advertisement. The ad features a footballer who falls over dramatically during a game and rolls around in pain. He rolls off the pitch and all the way to a KFC to order a meal with the tagline “Make A Meal Of It”. 

This is a great example of trendjacking and showcases the effectiveness of connecting your brand with the right trend. By leveraging on the World Cup trend and creating an entertaining ad, KFC was able to capture the attention of their consumers and build a strong connection with their audience. 

Nine years after the release of this commercial, people are still talking about it, proving that content that resonates with a trend can  help a  brand stay on top of consumers’ minds.

Increase Sales Without Having To Hard Sell

One of the big benefits of trendjacking in digital marketing is its ability to help you increase sales without resorting to hard sell tactics. Instead of bombarding your audience with sales pitches and calls to action, trendjacking allows you to create content that’s more subtle and engaging, drawing people in with timely and relevant topics that they’re already interested in.

For example, if you sell eco-friendly cleaning products. Instead of posting yet another product photo with a BUY NOW call-to-action, you could leverage on a trending topics like sustainable living to create content. 

The content could be in the form of tips on how to reduce waste, recipes for homemade cleaning solutions, or even  an infographic that shows the impact of single-use plastics on the environment. By tying your brand into a larger conversation, you’re not only providing value to your audience, but you’re also increasing the likelihood that they’ll see your brand as a thought leader in the space.

In addition to its soft selling benefits, trendjacking can also help you build long-term relationships with your audience. 

By creating content that’s more engaging and less sales-focused, you’re showing your audience that you aren’t here just to make a quick buck. You’re demonstrating that you understand their interests and concerns and that your brand, products and services are committed to providing value. This can help build trust and loyalty over time, which can lead to more repeat business and positive word-of-mouth.

How To Trendjack Successfully

Stay On Top Of Trends

To successfully trendjack, you will need to stay on top of the latest trend. This means keeping an eye on current events, hashtags, and pop culture to stay in the know. You can use tools like Google Trends, social listening tools, Twitter trends or you can also follow relevant accounts on social media to get the latest updates.

Be Strategic & Authentic

Of course, the key to taking the trendjacking approach to increase sales is to be strategic about it. You don’t want to shoehorn your brand into a topic just because it’s trending, which can come across as disingenuous and turn people off. 

Instead, you want to find topics that are relevant to your brand and your audience, and create content that adds value to the conversation. Over time, as people begin to associate your brand with the topics they care about, they’ll be more likely to consider your brand when they are ready to make a purchase.

Inject Your Brand’s Personality

Trendjacking is an opportunity to show off your brand’s personality and voice. Don’t be afraid to inject humour or creativity into your content – this can help your brand stand out and make your content more shareable. According to studies, humour helps disrupt the critical processing of advertising claims, reducing negative impressions about your brand.

Offer Value To Your Audience

People engage with content that offers value. Whether it’s informative, entertaning, or provides a unique perspective, ensure that your content offers something that your audience can’t find anywhere else.

Be Timely

The key to trendjacking in digital marketing is getting in on the conversation while it’s still relevant. Don’t wait too long to create content around a trend, or you risk being late to the party.

Let Primal Digital Agency Malaysia Help With Your Trendjacking In Digital Marketing Needs

Source: Freepik

Whether you’re looking to implement trendjacking in your Instagram advertising,  Facebook ads or even SEM Ads, it can be an effective way to stand out from the competition and connect with your audience. 

Our marketing team at Primal Digital Agency Malaysia specialise in creating effective social media and overall digital campaigns that leverage on the latest trends and insights to drive business results. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help all your trendjacking in digital marketing needs.