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Digital marketing is accelerating – so what’s next?

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By Julio Taylor.

In 2019, Hallam, Google’s Premier Partners Growing Businesses Online 2019 award winners, published one in a series of eBooks: The Future of Digital Marketing: 2019 and beyond. Covid-19 has ground the world to a halt, but has accelerated digital marketing, taking it down paths that have not been ventured before.

The team at Hallam recognises that and we’re at a stage where there is even more to add to this eBook. The Future of Digital Marketing 2.0, contains interviews with several industry experts and aims to break down exactly what the future of the industry looks like, and highlights what businesses and brands need to be prepared for ahead of digital marketing’s next big shift…

An introduction from Julio Taylor, CEO at Hallam

The latest change to digital marketing is something we have been building towards for some time now, and there are several factors behind that.

There is a massive generational change in the workforce, with 70% now millennial or younger.

We’re living in a world where, for the first time in history, the vast majority of the population is born into a digital world as standard. Digital transformation, for me, is the absolute priority and the audience is demanding it.

Because of that, there is a huge amount of complexity when it comes to digital marketing and the skill required to deliver deep and meaningful impact. You need expertise in all areas to make that happen, whether that be UX, SEO, PPC, PR, advertising, content marketing, strategy, or technical.

There is also the pace of change to consider. Factors like technology, automation, and user expectations are moving incredibly quickly. The things that were groundbreaking just a couple of years ago are now old news. Some of the topics that were hot just four years ago are now expected.

Within that, the demand for privacy is growing exponentially – partly because of the Cambridge Analytica situation, and partly because audiences are just getting smarter with it.

That has led to changes in legislation, which is restricting the use of third-party data and cookies but has also led to changes in browser design and the technology of devices – meaning it is more difficult to advertise to people, compared to how it was a couple of years ago.

Everybody is advertising, so it’s going to be about what makes you and your brand different from everybody else. That is going to be determined by the creative and the experience.

For me, it’s about precision and persuasion. That’s something we always talk about, and both are important. They are two sides of the same coin. They are extremes. But we’re heading towards an age where both need to be applied effectively.

There is so much more to this topic than the six we have outlined. We will be updating and re-releasing our Future of Digital Marketing eBook very shortly and these six key themes give you a flavour of how much our industry is going to be changing…

ePrivacy will shake the industry up

Arianne Donoghue, our strategic consultant, says: the reality is that advertising has become so focused on data and being able to target users easily that it’s really hard to see how it is going to change.

The issue now is that it may be forced to. What impact will there be if cookies disappear? Cookies, by no means, are the only solution.

There is a technique out there called browser fingerprinting, which takes so many elements of data from your browser like the fonts on your machine, the time zone and the screen resolution. It even looks at little things like the emojis a user uses.

All that data can be pulled through to form a digital fingerprint of who you are. It’s more reliable than any cookie out there. For those interested, there are a number of different sites you can use online to have your fingerprint assessed to see how unique and traceable you are around the internet. This data can also be tracked through your VPN (Virtual Private Network).

The whole point of a VPN is to store your internet history so it is harder to find and track you, but a browser fingerprint can circumvent your VPN. While somewhat terrifying, a lot of this is covered under GDPR and the ePrivacy regulation that is likely to come into force in 2021.

What does that regulation mean for digital marketing?

If cookies disappear, the industry as it has worked for the last 20 years, will just fall over. The reliance there has been on targeting users is not going to be available anymore.

So, for marketers, it is about figuring out what is next. There have been discussions about how contextual advertising is yielding good results in the market space dominated by big players, but we’re not seeing that filter down to the average advertiser.

I’m sure Google and Facebook have a plan and maybe we will see the first steps of that when IOS 14 is released later this year. It feels like we’re waiting for the ‘big five’ to lead and the rest will follow.

A zero-click and visual change to the future of search

Strategy director Ben Wood believesGoogle wants to give the best possible results. But they also want to give the best possible experience on their platform, which is essenially their search results page.

What we will see is that it is going to get more difficult to gain clicks from search because Google is wanting to bring everyone’s content on to their results pages wherever possible.

Take holiday bookings, mortgage calculators, or finding recipes, as an example. Zero-click search will be much more impactful in these areas because you will be able to book flights or tables on Google, demolishing the traffic those websites would otherwise be getting.

Others, like B2B software, will be totally different because Google won’t be able to replicate everything that is on their website. The levels at which clients will be impacted by some of these trends will vary depending on the industry but these features just go to show how susceptible businesses are to the evolution of Google’s search product, and highlights the importance of a diverse traffic acquisition strategy.

Something else we need to be wary of is visual search, which is still not being taken as seriously by SEO’s in the way that I expected.

Visual search has been on the rise for years with platforms like Pinterest evolving their features with a focus on lens technology. Google has latched on to that idea and invested in piloting Google Keen – a new visual way of building boards to track interesting topics.

What I think will be a game changer for many industries is lens/image recognition technology, which allows you to take a picture of something and search for it. Visual search is much easier than manually typing out and, as a service, I think that will continue to improve especially in retail, fashion etc.

Visual search and optimisation should be considered as a key part of SEO and right now, that’s not the case. We will see that grow a lot over the next two years and for more SEO’s to take image optimisation seriously and invest in adapting web usability to cope with new features such as visual search functionality for ecommerce just like larger retailers such as Macy’s have started to do by partnering with Pinterest to use their lens (visual search) technology.

Development is no longer just for building websites

Jon Martin, our technical director, says that one of the big things taking shape right now in the digital marketing community is the programming language, Python.

Only a few years ago it was all about PHP because it was open-source, anybody could use it and you didn’t have to pay to learn it. Python, however, is now becoming the go-to tool because it’s nice to work with, easy to learn, and is allowing SEO professionals to do what they want to really quickly.

Developers and SEO professionals need to have a strong understanding of Python, but also have a holistic view of the landscape and understanding of SEO and PPC. Certainly in the future, developers are going to be important in helping businesses and brands automate things that were previously manual.

UX is becoming a ranking factor, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need a new website

Joe Powell, our creative director, explains thatUX is one of the most important elements of digital marketing and underpins everything we do as an agency. The demand for UX consultancy has been increasing through the need for user-ability testing from our clients to validate their theories and mitigate risk before making a decision.

User testing allows us to learn where things have gone wrong, so we’re not making the same mistakes again. A typical flaw of businesses is that they have objectives they want to achieve, but they don’t consider what impact that will have on the consumer. It’s a delicate balance between representing the stakeholder and the users’ needs.

The less resistance you add to the user experience on any platform – whether that’s in-store, on a digital interface, website, or even a book – the easier it is to use, the more intuitive it is, and the higher the probability that it will convert into a sale or enquiry.

There’s a common misconception that improving UX means you need a new website build. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. UX can be practised on a single page or a website and you can make conversion-focused enhancements to existing websites.

There are other options, however. If you’re happy with your current website’s design, but want to increase engagement, then our advice would be to review the experiences of certain areas and make ad-hoc changes to those sections to improve the offering.

A lot of sales teams are interested in getting new websites, but sometimes smaller changes can make the world of difference to CRM.

UX is an immensely important thing to get right. It’s not something that can just be picked up. It is acquired through years of experience and moving through different disciplines, like brand, design, copywriting, development. Every decision has to be made with one question in mind; does this add value? If it doesn’t, it’s not worth pursuing.

SEO and PPC are evolving and will face some challenges

Charlotte Tomlinson, media director, explains:SEO and PPC, for a long time, have been very separate disciplines. There has been a big effort across the industry this year to address that because the results, when the disciplines are combined, are clearly better.

What we’re going to see is SEO and PPC come together to form integrated search and shared data campaigns, which will, ultimately, save money for businesses and brands in the long run.

A great, but simple, example of this is taking the data from a business’ paid campaign to make decisions around what SEO should be optimising in order to drive conversions.

What we’re seeing, quite often, is that what businesses didn’t think was important is actually becoming more so, allowing the teams to pivot accordingly to target audiences and keywords that hadn’t been considered before.

The relationship between businesses and their PPC agencies is also going to change significantly, and that is down to the growth of automation. PPC is going to become very strategic, creative, and consultancy-focused, rather than manual.

There needs to be an education piece around that. Google is at the forefront of that automation and PPC professionals will face a lot of questions by clients when it comes to value for money. It is down to us to deliver that value that in-house teams simply cannot get.

Again, though, that comes back to down integration; design teams and PPC working together to create awesome creative that is going to make advertising more successful than it has been before.

Headless will be the future of web development for the next decade

Martin says that while it has been around a while, Headless, including its various platforms, including Ghost, is a concept that lets you decouple the back and front end of a website.

For example, this allows you to have a WordPress driven website, but your front end looks completely different and you’re not reliant on the WordPress templates to do that. This gives you a huge amount of flexibility when coding, but the big benefit is around speed, performance, and usability of the site.

Essentially, you’re cutting a lot of the time that would be spent loading up WordPress and, instead, focusing on these small, nimble, pages that take far less time to load. This is predicted to be the future for the next decade of web development in the same way responsive web design was previously.

We’re only touching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the influence of AI

Kieran S-Lawler, head of marketing, explains: This is a topic that gets spoken about a lot. AI has got a big role to play in the forecasting of data-driven content. It is still learning – doing so at a supernatural rate – and it will get to a stage where it’s finding patterns and analysis far faster than we ever could.

That forecast might not be 100 percent accurate, but it will give you insight into what life for a particular sector could look like. It’s also got a big role to play with interactive content, too, and how marketers use AI systems to engage and interact with customers.

We’re seeing it with bots already. Bots are not AI, but it gives you a flavour of what we can expect from AI in the future. On the flip side, there’s a general feeling that marketers and content creators are going to be redundant because of the advanced technology, but, for me, that’s far from the case.

Someone is going to be required to feed that AI and inform them what is right and wrong. It will make our life easier and provide us with data and insight that we would otherwise have to spend multiple hours trying to find.

I think we’re only touching the tip of the iceberg with what is achievable with this technology. There’s a lot more to come. Right now, it’s not totally accessible and it isn’t in a format that is easily digestible for marketers to truly use and understand.

Final thoughts

Just as marketers are only touching the tip of the iceberg for AI, we’re also only touching the tip of what the future of digital marketing looks like. The industry continues to develop at a rapid rate and from the future of Google and privacy, to the next steps in platform advertising, data, automation and content, it will all be covered when Hallam releases its new eBook, The Future of Digital Marketing 2.0, this autumn.

By Julio Taylor

Sourced from The Drum

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5 Ways a Digital Marketer Can Supercharge Your Online Outreach

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By Kay VanAntwerpen

You need time, a coherent and precise strategy, and the core expertise to optimize your digital presence.

In today’s world where people are glued to their devices for work and for play, the most important advertising delivery platforms are internet-connected devices. According to the PEW research center, 28 percent of American adults are on the internet “almost constantly,” while 45 percent report using it “several times a day”—meaning that 81 percent of Americans use the internet a whole lot every day.

If your business hasn’t established its digital presence, you can be almost certain that your competitors will reach your customers first. Eighty-one percent of consumers conduct online research before making a purchase. That’s not the only reason you need a digital presence, though. Digital marketing is about more than just existing on the internet. Instead, you can utilize the web to become a powerhouse of sales generation, customer loyalty, and brand recognition.

It’s not difficult to optimize your digital presence, but you do need time, a coherent and precise strategy, and the core expertise—digital marketing isn’t just a skill you can pick up on the fly.

Hiring a full digital marketing department is often unreasonable, especially for small businesses. The average salary for a digital marketing manager alone is $69,755. That’s why many companies turn to small agencies such as Assemble, The MOM Project, and TopTal which we’ve touched on in a previous article.

Below, we’ll look at five ways a digital marketer can help superchare your business.

1. Precision email marketing sales funnels.

Almost 294 billion emails are sent and received daily, but email campaigns are somewhat unique. When done correctly, your readers will hang on every word and look forward to your correspondence like an old pen pal. When done poorly, your emails will get dumped in the trash before they’re even opened, often doing nothing more than annoying your potential customer.

An email campaign done right not only grabs attention but builds a tangible relationship with your potential customer by providing interesting and valuable content, exclusive deals, and more—eventually converting your readers to customers.

When handling your email, a good digital marketer will:

  • Curate and purge email lists, removing inactive email addresses.
  • Draft engaging email campaigns that increase brand awareness and build consumer trust.
  • Develop alternate email campaigns for specific lead varieties.
  • Design email layouts to match your brand aesthetic and messaging.
  • Develop leads through email communications with potential clients.

2. High digital visibility. 

As we mentioned earlier, most customers perform some kind of online research before making a purchase. If you’re hitting your visibility goals, you’ll be the first name to pop up when a customer conducts product research. If you’re not doing anything, your competition will show up first.

To be visible on the web, you’ll need an artful social media presence, precision SEO (search engine optimization), and perfect mobile responsivity on all of your digital platforms. A good digital marketer knows how to work where all of these factors intersect. They’ll assure you’re the first name to crop up when a customer searches for products or services in your field. They’ll also make sure your name appears with reputable sources, and that your reputation speaks for itself.

3. Data-driven analytics.

Sure, you may be getting lots of likes on your Facebook posts, and your blog may get a few shares here and there, but these are just “vanity metrics” —ultimately, it can be difficult to tell whether or not you’re getting any tangible return on your investment.

Fortunately, digital marketers don’t treat their field like some nebulous art form that can only be qualified in the abstract (that stuff is for painters and musicians). Instead, they work in the field of tangible statistics and data analytics. A good digital marketer will not only track your numbers but will also ensure they improve over time. Some of the statistics you should see are:

  • Organic, direct, referral, social, and paid traffic
  • Click-through rates (CTR)
  • Macro and micro conversions
  • Consumer engagement
  • Site speed

4. The power of customer engagement and reputation management.

Social media is one of the most fundamental ways the internet revitalized the marketing game. Your customer base can communicate with you at the click of a button. Major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are necessities. You can’t simply just exist on these sites—you have to actively use them to engage your clientele. A heavy stream of social media traffic doesn’t mean anything if you’re not able to convert those visitors into customers.

A skilled digital marketer will do more than keep your posts fresh. They’ll personally engage with your audience, listen to their wants and needs, and respond in a way that not only leaves the customer happy but also curates a positive reputation for your business.

Which brings us to one of the most overlooked elements of social media: reputation management. In the digital era, news of a negative customer experience travels nearly instantaneously. Take into account review sites such as Yelp and Yahoo Reviews, and it may seem like a single bad day can become a permanent black spot on your digital reputation.

Not so with a skilled digital marketer. While monitoring customer feedback and conversation, your marketer will speak directly with disgruntled customers and help solve their problems quickly and resolutely.

5. Valuable and beneficial content.

Content creation is the crème de la crème of digital marketing. It brings in three times the leads of traditional marketing formats at 62 percent of the cost. Content creation brings your audience to you.

It’s easy to create content the wrong way, though. Too many businesses fall into the prototypical “advertisement trap” where each piece of content they publish feels like a blatant call for business while providing no valuable information or entertainment to the consumer. Returning viewers, this does not create.

When you ask what kind of content your company needs, you should think of the content you would like to consume. Good web content is ideally entertaining, but above all else, it should be useful. 

This is where a digital marketer can be most useful. They’ll help you create content that postures you as an expert and a thought leader in your industry. This content can come in all shapes and sizes, including:

  • Blogs and articles
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Guest articles
  • Webinars
  • Apps
  • Digital contests

As you may have pieced together, content creation is an art form. This is another reason to have a professional handle the labor—poorly created content will turn a customer away quicker than rotten bananas.

Feature Image Credit: Nipitphon Na Chiangmai | EyeEm | Getty Images

By Kay VanAntwerpen,

This article was written by Kay VanAntwerpen, an Entrepreneur NEXT powered by Assemble expert. If you are looking to take the NEXT step in your business then we encourage you to check out Entrepreneur NEXT powered by Assemble.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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6 DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS THAT WILL OWN 2020

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Sourced from Rank me Locally

As technology is advancing with a rampant pace, so are the trends of digital marketing that has changed the outlook of the industry. In today’s digital space, it is not merely enough to have a website and social media; you need more to stay ahead of the game.

The digital world is revolutionizing with brilliant ideas, trends and technologies that are rising and prevailing in 2020 and beyond. These trends are changing the way of marketing for businesses and individuals.

Here are the six innovative digital marketing trends that will own 2020:

The Rise of Video Marketing

Videos will have a rise in 2020 and beyond. It is the best strategy for businesses to market their brands online and influence customers with their brand story. The customers are keen on watching short and long length interactive live streaming videos on YouTube. Not only YouTube, but Facebook, Instagram, snap chat, and Pinterest are showing trends of live video marketing for brands.

These videos deliver enormous entertainment and information to the audience to increase traffic views by hitting like share and subscribe to social media. Video marketing will be among the top of the list in digital marketing in the year 2020 and captive huge audience attention.

A successful video marketing involves many components like attention-grabbing introduction, problem-solving content, high-quality screen resolution, compelling punch line, and call to action elements.

Interactive Content is the Future of Digital Marketing

Interactive content is the future of digital marketing. The term “Interactive Content” defines the strong interaction between the brand and the audience. It triggers viewers to take some action and engage with your website or social media to enhance a dynamic experience with users.

Today’s audiences are bored with blogs, articles, and white paper content. They need something exciting and engaging to hold them back with a website. To get over with boredom, marketers should find new ways to present content to communicate and connect with the audience. There can be plenty of ways to interact with the audience, such as infographics, live videos, contests, wizards, quizzes, e-books, and snackable content.

The snackable content is a combination of visually appealing content to grab instant attention of readers at first glance. It combines short-form and long-form content to connect with readers and enhance traffic, ranking, and lead conversion of businesses.

Emerging Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Technology Trends in Digital Marketing

The emergence of augmented reality and virtual reality in digital marketing has taken marketing automation far beyond the imagination. Now, businesses can use augmented reality AR to bring innovation in product marketing and show products to customers from three-dimensional angles.

Virtual reality (VR) is popular among all ages of audiences in the gaming industry. These technologies are ideal in promoting 5G internet broadband with faster live streaming than before.

Many leading shopping and furniture product brands are increasing their sales and revenues by using augmented reality trends in digital marketing. There are a variety of other industry applications implementing AR and VR technologies in brand marketing in 2020.

Using Artificial Intelligence in Digital Marketing

The artificial intelligence is one of the latest trends in digital marketing that is taking the industry by storm. Businesses are using artificial intelligence in various activities like rapid and automated e-commerce transactions, product recommendation, email personalization, and content creation.

Artificial Intelligence is being used in predictive data analysis of companies and businesses to improve their sales and revenues. The use of robotics intelligence is ideal for ease of execution of tasks and improves productivity, efficiency, and profitability of businesses in the long run.

AI is a scientific technology of designing intelligent robotic machines that think and respond like humans. It allows businesses to make smarter decisions in designing websites, improving user experience, creating successful advertising campaigns, SEO A/B Testing, personalizing content, and predicting consumer behaviors.

Introducing the Era of Voice Searches and Chat bots in Digital Marketing

Voice searches are long-tailed conversational queries that anyone can ask from a device and receive a fast and instant response. Voice search has changed the way of search engine optimization and digital marketing.

The value of written type-based search queries is less effective than voice search. There are a few popular voice search devices such as Google Home, Microsoft Cortana, Google Assistant, Amazon Echo, Alexa, iPhone Siri, and android phones. These devices are ideal for translating voice-based queries and showing desired results for businesses and individuals.

Chatbots are generally used as a popup in websites to allow users to ask any query regarding a website. The sales and support chat agents are always there to help and guide customers in any technical issue. Chatbots offer written style conversation between an agent and a customer and use natural language processing technology to execute and translate query. Now with the latest advancement and innovation, there are voice chatbots available for customers to respond to them in a voice-based conversation style.

Shoppable Social Media Posts

Social media has a considerable influence on businesses to share posts content and reach their desired target audiences. The emergence of e-commerce has created an enormous demand for social media for businesses. Many companies use different social media platforms for marketing their e-commerce products to the online audience.

Shoppable social media posts are introduced by a popular social media platform known as Instagram. It allows users to directly tag and purchase shopping products from the featured post content. Businesses can also create their brand stories by signing up a new business profile account and selling their labeled products online.

Conclusion

Hence, in a nutshell, those mentioned above are the latest and innovative digital marketing trends that will own in 2020. Some essential trends in digital marketing are last long to stay, such as organic search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and social media marketing.

Online reputation management, email marketing, content marketing, lead generation, and inbound marketing also have tremendous value and demand in digital marketing. These trends are ideal for increasing ranking, traffic, lead conversion, sales, and revenue for businesses.

Rank Me Locally is the best Local SEO Company that offers affordable Local SEO Services to clients. We are among the leading Local SEO Agencies in the United States that have a team of dedicated and qualified Local SEO Consultants to bring your website to the top of Google.

Sourced from Rank me Locally

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What is Digital Marketing and Why is it Important for Startups

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By John Boitnott

Digital marketing is a series of tools that most modern businesses use to bring customers to their products and services. It involves using digital outlets like websites, social platforms, and software applications as marketing channels. There are a wide variety of options in digital marketing encompassing many different methods.

Some marketing techniques that fall under digital marketing include:

  • Search engine marketing (search engine optimization, and pay-per-click digital advertising)
  • Blogging
  • Content marketing (everything from podcasts and video marketing to infographics)
  • Social media marketing and networking on platforms like Linkedin or Facebook
  • Viral marketing
  • Infomercials

Digital marketing activities have several advantages over traditional marketing techniques. For one, digital marketing strategies can reach a vast audience of potential customers. The internet is now available in nearly every part of the world, and the number of Internet users grows every year. Secondly, online marketing can be quite easy to put in place and track.

Contrary to what you might assume, digital marketing is not just for big firms and businesses. Small businesses and, indeed, startups can leverage the power of digital channels to build their brands, get leads, and reach more of their target audience. In fact, startups usually need all the help they can get to lift business off the ground. Here are some of the ways that startup businesses can best use digital marketing strategies.

Gain Insights into The Market with Digital Marketing

Digital marketing methods use trackable metrics that show marketing performance and behavior of customers. This information is useful in informing business decisions and optimizing marketing approaches. An entrepreneur just starting out in the business world may find these insights particularly helpful as they choose media channels and refine digital marketing campaigns.

Many entrepreneurs jump into businesses blindly without a clear marketing plan or course of action. Business is inherently risky, so “winging it” could be a recipe for disaster. It’s crucial to serve a market you understand and can predict, digital marketing enables you to do that.

High ROI on Marketing Efforts 

The early stages of a business are critical and difficult. Many startups struggle with managing expenses and available resources. Low cash flow is a common problem with many startups, and it can lead to business failure. So, most early-stage companies are very cautious about their spending. This is where digital marketing comes in handy.

Compared to traditional marketing styles, some digital marketing methods are more cost-effective. Email marketing, SEO or PPC campaigns can cost very little to launch and run. Also, digital marketing tactics can generate impressive ROI if carried out well. This type of marketing can reduce the upfront startup marketing cost considerably.

Many entrepreneurs assume that digital marketing is highly expensive. Well, this may be the case for some techniques, such as Google adwords or Facebook ads. But for organic digital marketing – efforts like SEO, guest blogging, or social media, outreach doesn’t cost that much. So, there’s no good reason why a startup shouldn’t start using digital marketing channels. The results, in most cases, more than justify any costs incurred.

Keep Up with the Competition using Digital Marketing

The good and bad thing about the digital space is that it levels the playing field for all businesses, big and small. This is good for startups though. It means even digital marketers at new businesses can go head-to-head with established cooperate giants.

The success of digital marketing has nothing to do with the size of the businesses. It’s all about identifying and capitalizing on market opportunities. Despite dominant influence of large competitors, startups can still contend by taking advantage of digital marketing techniques.

Drive Conversions and Sales 

The ultimate goal of digital marketing is to drive conversations and sales, both online and locally. Nowadays, it doesn’t matter whether your business is a brick-and-mortar shop or an online e-commerce store. Digital marketing will still prove useful. Startups can use inexpensive techniques to boost sales during the critical early stages. That generates the revenue needed to grow.

Many businesses use digital marketing to maintain online presence, increase sales, spread brand awareness, and promote new ideas. Startups can do the same, and without necessarily getting into expensive marketing campaigns.

By John Boitnott

CEO, Boitnott Consulting LLC

A journalist and digital consultant, John Boitnott has worked at TV, print, radio and Internet companies for 25 years. He’s an advisor at StartupGrind and has written for BusinessInsider, Fortune, NBC, Fast Company, Inc., Entrepreneur and Venturebeat.

Sourced from ReadWrite

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3 Simple Digital Marketing Strategies to Transform Your Business

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By AJ Cassata.

A great product isn’t enough to create a successful business – what turns a business into an empire requires an excellent product combined with exceptional marketing.

Thanks to the Internet, it’s easier now more than ever to get a brand or startup in front of target customers.

With all of the free distribution tools like social media platforms, the playing field is equal now! You don’t need significant media connections or large upfront investment to advertise your brand like you would 40 years ago.

Although marketing & communicating with potential customers has never been easier, most businesses still struggle with this. They never seem to get the traction they want online, while some companies see amazing results from online marketing efforts.

What makes a difference is having the right strategy & approach.

The tools to help your business grow are out there, but you need to know how to use them. You need to understand how these platforms work and how to make them work for your business – and if you don’t, hire someone who does!

Digital marketing strategy development can be a bit overwhelming due to the abundance of options you have. Sometimes it seems like a new social media platform or revolutionary software pops up every day!

For the past five years, I’ve been helping other entrepreneurs scale their business, and I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t across dozens of industries. I’ve created & managed campaigns on tons of different platforms & social media channels. Through all of my experimentation, I’ve learned a lot.

In hopes of simplifying digital marketing while giving some actionable steps you can execute on, I want to layout 3 strategies that work across the board in any industry. These strategies will work regardless of if you’re a brand new startup or a 7-8 figure company.

The 3 Strategies That Work Across The Board

Google Ads
Facebook Advertising
Automation In The Sales Process

To help you understand how these strategies work in a real-world setting, I’ll walk you through how we applied them for one of our clients, a naturopathic medicine clinic in Arizona.

We helped the clinic max out its sales capacity. After implementing the three strategies just mentioned and nothing else, the clinic became so busy to the point where the soonest patients could book an appointment was three weeks. That’s an excellent problem to have, isn’t it?

On average, our online marketing campaigns had resulted in an additional 60-80 new client consultations per month for a Stem Cell Therapy service that’s worth $6000-8000 in revenue to the clinic – and that’s just upfront revenue, that’s not including the life-time value of the client.

Digital marketing can also do more for a business than make money – aside from helping to skyrocket sales of this business, we also lowered costs and helped to streamline operations & patient communications.

Our digital marketing campaigns had become such a stable source of new client acquisition that the clinic was able to stop spending on TV & radio advertising, which saved about $5000 a month in advertising expenses.

Like many companies, the clinic also had an inefficient & unorganized sales process, which cost the staff and the business owner extra time & expense.

By introducing automation to the business & its operations, we were able to organize their client communication process, reduce the work-load for the front-office staff, and alleviate pressure on the whole team. As a result, they could focus more on taking care of the patients, and less time on follow-up and scheduling.

So, let’s dive into these strategies so you can replicate the same success into your business!

Google Pay Per Click Ads

Placing ads on Google is extremely useful, as you can get in front of users with a high intent to purchase your product/service.

You pay to advertise on certain search-terms & phrases that your target customer enters into Google – this means that you get in front of the people that are already searching for the solution your business provides.

This is the low-hanging fruit, and where you should start. When my agency is onboarding a new client, nine times out of 10, we begin by rolling out campaigns on Google. The prospects you’ll find from Google ads are the farthest down the buyers’ journey and the closest to making a decision.

These people are already aware of the problem they have and the solution they need.

In the medical clinic’s case, we bid on terms like “Stem Cell Therapy In Scottsdale.”

Somebody who’s performing that search already knows what Stem Cell Therapy is, and they are likely familiar with what it costs, and they are just looking for the best provider.

A big part of marketing is about being in the right place at the right time, and that’s exactly what Google can do for you.

The beautiful thing about Google Ads is that you only pay when someone clicks – so your marketing dollars are only being spent towards people that are interested in your service or product.

However, you have to watch your costs to remain profitable. Before we were hired, the clinic ran campaigns on Google and was paying about $5 for each click. After we audited the account and performed optimizations, we were able to get the Cost-Per-Click down to between $1.50-$2.00, roughly a 70% decrease in cost!

A few tweaks to your campaigns can make a huge difference, which is why you must know what you are doing before you put your credit card in and start launching ads.

Facebook Pay Per Click Ads

With over 3 billion active users, Facebook is an excellent option for just about any business. Similar to Google, due to the sheer size, you’ll be sure that your target market is on Facebook.

Coming from a marketer’s perspective, I can say that Facebook has the most advanced advertising platform & AI, and when you learn the ins and outs of the ads manager, you can make magic happen to your business.

The benefit of Facebook is the hyper-targeting. Great marketing requires substantial targeting. Think about this – you wouldn’t be able to sell meat to a vegetarian, no matter how good your meat is. Getting your ads placed in front of the right people is arguably an essential part of any marketing campaign.

With Facebook, you can create your hyper-specific audience and hone in on your ideal customer. Facebook allows you to select parameters of who you want to see your ads. For example, you can choose based on demographics like income, age, gender, location, and psychographics like interests & personality.

For our medical clinic client, we were promoting a very niche service – Stem Cell Therapy & Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy. The doctor we worked with did not want us to promote everything his clinic offers; he wanted us to help promote those two services so that he could stand out in his local market as a specialist in those areas.

We were able to run particular ad campaigns to different market segments to promote Stem Cell Therapy, such as athletes, golfers, 60+-year-old men & women, even people who are considering getting a knee replacement. Regenerative Medicine is expensive as well, and to prevent people that couldn’t afford the service from booking consultations, we limited the ads to only show to people in the top 25% of income based on zip codes. This level of targeting just isn’t available with other forms of advertising!

Automation In The Sales Process

Facebook & Google are excellent platforms that help to drive traffic & leads for your business or startup, no matter the industry. However, gaining attention is just the first step! Once you have campaigns running & generating leads, now you have to convert those leads into customers! Leads don’t grow a business, sales do.

The medical clinic we worked with, like most businesses, had a sales process that needed much improvement. Lots of leads were coming in, but the clinic didn’t have enough staff to follow up with new inquires and leads consistently.

So, we implemented two new technologies into the business to solve this problem – email follow up, & an online scheduling system.

Before this client had hired my agency, he was having his front office staff call any leads that came in, to schedule appointments. We decided to eliminate this step – when it comes to your sales process, the more steps you have, the more opportunities there are for your leads to drop-off and lose contact.

We found that most of the leads the clinic was paying to generate, were never even getting in contact to schedule a consultation. The front office staff was too busy to follow up with every single lead coming in, which means the business was wasting money on all of the leads that didn’t convert.

To fix this, we created a funnel that directed all of the incoming leads to an online scheduling system, where the prospects could directly book an appointment with the doctor, instead of waiting for the front office to call and schedule them.

Not only did this take a load off of the staff and help the lead conversion flow, but it also made for better customer experience.

We also implemented automated email follow up, which would email the leads every day for three days after signing up for a consultation, to remind them to schedule online, and remind them to show up on time for their appointment.

As you can see, digital marketing can help your business with more than the front-end process of getting awareness, traffic, & leads. These technologies available to us can help convert your leads into customers, make your entire sales process more efficient, free up-staff time, and improve your customer experience.

In conclusion, digital marketing can seem a little daunting with all of the different strategies we hear experts preach, and with all of the different platforms, it’s hard to know where to even begin. So – keep it simple! For getting traffic, stick to the big two – Google & Facebook. From there, use tools like email marketing, SMS marketing & automated scheduling to help convert the leads into customers!

By automating the marketing and sales process, you free up time to focus on other essential and high-level tasks that your business depends on, such as business development, strategic partnerships & developing your team.

By AJ Cassata

Sourced from TechDay

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Marketers: Shake up your strategies in 2020

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By Jude McColgan.

30-second summary:

  • Remarketing is your friend: The common myth is that remarketing is a form of stalking consumers who previously interacted with your brand, but when done correctly, it can be very beneficial and 90% of marketers would agree.
  • Going beyond personalization: By adjusting efforts like the timing of push notifications, the mediums being used to deliver those ads and incorporating more creative copy, companies can provide experiences that make the consumer fall even more in love with the brand, fostering stronger brand loyalty.
  • Breaking a brand’s mold in 2020: A new decade is the perfect time for brands to be edgier and more creative. Companies should try shaking up their strategies and highlight ways that differentiate themselves from their competitors and offer consumers a unique experience.

Consumers have been bombarded with ad content since well before Black Friday, many of which were completely irrelevant to their shopping experience – meaning they are over being marketed to 24/7. So, how can brands try to combat ad fatigue this year? It’s all centered around shaking up marketing strategies, while putting the consumer first.

Their journey begins by choosing when and where they engage with a brand; it’s up to marketers to use that data and digital intelligence to understand their audience on a personal level, and better inform their personalization and customer engagement strategies.

As you kick off your marketing campaigns in 2020, keeping the following tips in mind can help you start to build loyalty and trust with your customers:

Remember, remarketing is your friend

The common myth is that remarketing is a form of stalking consumers who previously interacted with your brand, but when done correctly, it can be very beneficial – and 90% of marketers would agree.

Remarketing gives brands another way to reach users outside of its physical store, website, or mobile app, while simultaneously increasing the chance of conversion. The problem is, few brands are implementing remarketing correctly, which results in users receiving ads that either don’t apply to them, or that they aren’t interested in.

As we enter a new decade, marketers should do an assessment of where their inbound traffic was coming from in 2019 and create new demographic segments to leverage in retargeting efforts this year.

Consumers don’t have to hate your ads, so take advantage of the tools you already have to provide them with a better experience.

Go beyond traditional personalization

Today’s consumers can spot a halfhearted sales pitch a mile away. It’s not enough to simply insert a naming macros into an email template and call it personalization.

We can, and should, do better. Instead, brands must tailor content effectively, but how?

By adjusting efforts like the timing of your push notifications, the mediums you’re using to deliver those ads – mobile, web, social, SMS, email, and in-store – and incorporating more creative copy, companies can provide experiences that make the consumer fall even more in love with the brand, fostering stronger brand loyalty.

At Localytics, we call this moving beyond traditional personalization to delivering the next best action for your customers – letting them choose what, when and where they want to engage.

Brands will find higher engagement with their messages and less churn by contextualizing the content they send consumers and ensuring it meets their interests and preferences.

Only by throwing out the way they currently think about personalization efforts can brands in fact move beyond it – ultimately delivering communication that’s truly aimed at an individual. Those who do so will avoid adding to the holiday ad hangover.

Break your brand’s mold in 2020

If your brand has been offering the same marketing message and value proposition to consumers for the past few months, it might be time to change up your tactics in the new year.

There can be a learning curve with this process, but it’s important for each brand to experiment with different strategies to find what works best. A new decade is the perfect time for brands to be edgier and more creative, and to experiment with delivering ads in new formats that consumers might be adopting quickly.

If your target audience is of a younger demographic, consider advertising to them on TikTok, and if you see notable engagement on your mobile app, integrating a chatbot for better product recommendations may be a good idea.

Companies in the retail space could pilot new promotions based on a multitude of audience factors to see if that boosts stagnant engagement rates, while companies in other industries could cut out promotions and sales speak altogether in favor of a more purpose-driven narrative instead.

The marketing industry has been preaching the importance of personalization for years, yet many consumers today still feel that brands are missing the mark. Now more than ever, it’s time to put the consumer first and put them at the heart of your strategies.

We’re armed with the technology advancements to paint a more colorful picture of the consumer using not just Profile Data, but also Behavioral Data. Effectively engage consumers at the right time, on the right channel and with the right message to offer the next best action.

By Jude McColgan

Jude McColgan is CEO of Localytics, a customer engagement platform that gives brands the digital intelligence they need to deliver a meaningful, personal customer experience. The Localytics platform is used in more than 37,000 apps with more than 100 million notifications per day.

Sourced from ClickZ

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Digital Marketing Tips For Your Small Business

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Managing the marketing needs of a business is a full-time job.  The need to be seen never ends, no matter the industry in which your business operates.  Digital marketing is the most effective way to market your business to today’s consumers.

It’s important to know that digital marketing is about far more than just throwing out a bulk of content.  Take some time to explore those elements, and read through a brief explanation of a few digital marketing tips for your small business now.

Focus on Mobile Optimization

Mobile access to the internet is a way of life, and your business will do well to acknowledge the influx of mobile devices online today.  No matter the purpose of your digital content, it should be designed to please mobile web users.

Responsive design will help your content be more relevant to users’ needs.  Build content that can adjust to various display sizes and is easy to manipulate.

Learn to incorporate SEO

Search engine optimization should be a normal part of your vocabulary when you’re working to create a digital presence for your small business.  SEO is a term used to describe all the things you can do while designing your content to make it more appealing to Google search algorithms.

When your content please the algorithms, you’ll rank higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages).  Using tactical terms to gain the attention of your target audience will help show clarity to Google.  Content that ranks in the top few listings of the SERPs gets much more attention than everything else.

Disburse Quality Content

It’s true that a lot of content is a good idea, but you can’t just throw anything out there on the internet.  Your digital content should be enriching and helpful to whoever comes across it online.

Build a business blog for your operation, and upload new posts regularly.  Disburse content that is relevant to your operation, and teach readers interesting things about the industry.

Utilize Social Media

Social media is an extraordinary outlet for any small business.  Work diligently to spread the word on various social media platforms, and watch the popularity of your business rise.

Add social media sharing icons to your business website, your blog, and other digital content your business creates.  Grant users the chance to share your organization with others, and you’ll reap the benefits of some free marketing.

Reach Out Through Email

Email connections are valuable to businesses of all shapes and sizes.  Gather useful email connections through your business website and other digital mediums.

Use your email rolodex for sending out regular newsletters, important information, sales confirmation, and more.  Email correspondence builds consumer rapport.

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Sourced from NoPa$$iveIncome

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8 Best Digital Marketing Strategies Small Businesses Should Implement

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By Aashirvad Kumar. 

In the last decade, things went from offline to online. People are now searching for clothes on e-commerce websites instead of looking for some stores. Businesses are taking their online presence seriously. Moreover, people are creating millions of dollars through different online services. Here are the eight best digital marketing strategies small businesses should implement.

Running a business or starting your new business?

These days most startups fail because of their narrow visions about marketing. There are hundreds of articles written by various digital marketing experts about different marketing techniques that will help you grow your business.

You’ll need to know about basic digital marketing strategies that will help you grow when you have entered into the internet.

There are basically eight digital marketing strategies for small businesses that should be implemented in order to mark your online presence. But, you’ll want to have a clear vision of your marketing strategies for your new business. Begin here.

Email Marketing

My personal favorite and a great tool to grow your business quickly. Email Marketing is a strategy that has an ROI of 21$ per dollar. Emails are considered dead in the marketing field, but still, email marketing has the potential to give the best results in comparison to other marketing strategies.

You have to very selective while shooting emails to your customers. You can’t attract your customers with a particular mail. You have to run several experiments to find your audiences taste it. Thus, Email Marketing will take time, but once implemented correctly; it will worth every penny.

You can attract your audience through some attractive offers or via some informative pieces of content. But make sure your email good enough to grab your customer’s attention. Avoid using big paragraphs; keep your email content crisp and short.

Social Media Marketing

Another marketing technique that offers you guaranteed results. But the majority of small businesses ignore it as their business is either not related to social media or the want to target user’s available offline.

If you are into the same category, then let me tell you that social media marketing will work as a mouth marketing asset. Thus, if you aren’t the response of offline users, social media can help you grab our customer’s attention indirectly.

Along with this, having good social media handles creates a brand value in the market that will again help you grow your business.

It will give your business some exposure and customers. Social Media Marketing will help you in search engine rankings.

Paid Promotions

It includes PPC (Pay Per Click) Marketing. In paid promotions, you basically pay to get a feature. It could be on social media websites, search engines. But for a new business, it is a tough job to get maximum results at a limited investment, and sadly there isn’t any trick or hack to do so.  You need to practice different promotions so that you can get an idea about which one is giving you the desired results.

If you aren’t good at experiments or don’t have the budget for testing, then you can hire some digital marketing experts. Paid marketers will handle all the paid promotions for you, and they will extract maximum profit from every penny spent.

Search Engine Optimization

If you are running a business that has a website and it can get sales to you then, this is the most import strategy that costs you very less but gives long term results. Since you are not the only one running the business, there would be hundreds and thousands of other people working in your niche.

Through Search Engine Optimization, you can outrank them and can hold the first position on various search engines.

But SEO optimization needs proper skill sets and technical knowledge so that you can compete with others. If you don’t have a good grip about the technical aspects of SEO optimization, then you can hire some SEO experts like Optimise for SEO. These are the experts that will help you rank on the top of search engines.

Content Marketing

It is the most trending marketing strategy that will give your business a quick yet reliable boost. Content Marketing is a strategy in which you are creating useful content for a particular audience and putting it on a platform. Content Marketing increases your business visibility over the internet. It boosts your SEO.  It builds credibility, authority f your business. Thus, content marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies.

Attend Events 

Attending events is not a typical digital marketing technique, but it can help you increase your digital business. All you need to do is to attend the events that are relevant to your field. This way, you will meet with people with a common interest, and it will help you in the next digital marketing technique.

Outreach Like-Minded People

I am assuming that you have contact details like email, phone number, etc. for people that are related to your field. Now, you have to convey a message to then and need to have a conversation describing your products. If the guy found it interesting, then they will surely talk about it on their social media handles or blog.

Reaching out to like-minded people works similarly to paid promotions.

But hey — reaching out is completely free, and it helps you learn from other business ideas. But in this strategy, you need to be very formal and professional while reaching out to people so that you can leave an impression on them.

Offer Freebies

It is a strategy that was implemented by some big brands of the present time, and it worked like charm. In this digital marketing technique, you need to offer something valuable to your users. Offering something useful will get persons or businesses attracted to your business, and as a result, they’ll come to you — as a regular reader and returning customer.

You can check Optimise for SEO as they are offering free SEO audit for a website and in return, they need your mail address so that they can implement the email marketing strategy on you.

Conclusion

These were the best digital marketing strategies that you must try to get the desired results. Though there are hundreds of strategies that work well these 8 are the best among all and yet most efficient.

By Aashirvad Kumar

Aashirvad Kumar is Founder of Tele Trick Mania and SEO Executive at Builds Worth Digital Marketing Agency Pvt. Ltd. He has been blogging since 2016 in the technology niche. He has experience of more than 2.5+ years in Digital Marketing.

Sourced from readwrite

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Digital Marketing Agency Entrepreneurs, Beware: Four Pitfalls To Look Out For When Starting

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By Brian D. Evans.

The “cool factor” of being an entrepreneur is at an all-time high. Everyone seems to want to be a successful entrepreneur. Among many paths, starting and running a digital marketing agency seems to be popular. Many people feel that since they went viral on Instagram, they can be successful in social media marketing or managing other aspects of marketing for others.

Unfortunately, the learning curve (and competition) is more robust than you might think. If you get past all the hurdles and booby traps, you can have a successful digital marketing agency. I should know — I started and built a digital agency that went on to be ranked as one of the fastest-growing in America.

But there are many things to look out for, none less important than these dreaded pitfalls that many gloss over when they get started:

1. Signing The Wrong Types Of Clients Too Quickly

Never rush into your first three sales. These are the most important sales that set you up for success — or massive failure.

I see far too many new digital agency owners boasting about how they get sales within a few days of opening up their doors. Everyone wants to make that first sale. But often, people will lower their standards or take not-so-ideal clients just to get going, which can be a huge mistake.

I had an experience early on where I took in the wrong type of client. The client was the opposite of all of the standards I set for myself and my company. My core values, reputation and ethics are critical to me. After a few months of working with this client, we realized the mistake and cut them loose.

My top recommendation is to stick to your core values as a company, once you know what those are. And it’s important to decide those early on, or you don’t really know what type of client you are after, which makes a disaster scenario more likely. If you start accepting clients without guidelines in place, you are more likely to get the wrong types.

2. Setting Expectations And Not Protecting Yourself Legally

One of the sad realities of toxic startup culture is that companies not doing well will often look for a scapegoat. Marketers can be easy targets and tend to get blamed for almost everything that goes wrong.

Now, when you add in a more substantial sum of money, and a startup hires your digital marketing agency, the stakes get even higher. You could be hired to grow someone’s social media engagement, but the next thing you know they are wondering why a household publication hasn’t covered them yet. Or, you could be hired to help with press and communications, but the client asks why they haven’t gotten any sales yet. A lot of this misguided scapegoat mentality you can’t control. But this comes down to two things you can control: setting expectations properly and protecting yourself legally.

At a minimum, proper expectation-setting involves making it crystal clear what you are willing to do (and not do) to help your clients. Then, reinforce your deliverables by not agreeing to anything additional unless you amend the agreement (and charge more for it). Finally, never do verbal agreements, and always permanently set things in stone with contracts that you have made through your own lawyers, explicitly stating what’s included (and not included, if there’s any doubt). Then, disputes have to rise from the contract rather than through unrecorded or convoluted conversation history.

3. Focusing On The Wrong Markets And Spreading Too Thin

Focusing on the wrong markets goes hand in hand with selecting the wrong initial clients, and can be just as bad. Just like choosing the wrong clients, picking the wrong industry to focus on can also be devastating. For example, I consulted a digital agency that was adamant about getting into the mobile app space. The problem was, other than being app consumers, nobody on the team knew the first thing about successfully marketing a mobile app.

It’s important to know what your and your team’s core competencies are as marketers. If you don’t know the first thing about marketing mobile apps, stay away until you do, or until you hire someone who can help with that.

The one last pitfall worth mentioning is avoiding working in too many separate industries. You don’t want 10 clients in 10 vastly different industries — that’s going to make your life way more complicated. You ideally want no more than one or two types of unrelated markets, depending on your scale and capabilities.

4. Not Adopting A Winning Mindset

I’ve always been an optimist, and it has served me well. But being a smart optimist comes with a responsibility to look out for the dangers as well — just as being a pessimist is not going to work too well if you don’t have at least one ear open for “positive” upsides. I’ve adopted the mindset of “hope for the best but plan for the worst,” which I think can work for many people and, ultimately, provide a formula for a great mindset.

This mindset can apply to many areas of life and business. Still, for the sake of the topic at hand, you should hope that marketing is going to go well and things will be smooth and dandy, but plan for if it wouldn’t, and come up with ways to overdeliver on the value that you provide. Don’t mistake this for throwing in tons of extras that aren’t agreed upon and set the wrong expectations. I’m talking about finding small ways to overdeliver without setting the bar at a level that you can’t sustain.

Growing my agency over 2,000% in just a few years has taught me many things. If you can keep these pitfalls that I learned in mind when building and operating your digital marketing agency, you’ll be in a much more sustainable position with a big leg up on the competition.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Brian D. Evans

Inc 500 Entrepreneur. Founder at Influencive, a motivational platform, and BDE Ventures, a marketing and consulting agency.

Sourced from Forbes

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Is the banner ad still relevant?

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By (CMO)

The banner ad is 25 years old. Should marketers celebrate or commiserate?

Twenty-five years after its inception, is there still room for the humble banner ad?

Soon after the advert of the Internet and websites came the banner ad, a digital advertising phenomenon which has grown to become so common, it’s arguably background noise for most people today.

Back in the day, the banner ad and all 300 of its pixels was the be-all-end-all of Internet advertising. Now, technologies like artificial intelligence, programmatic and augmented reality have triggered a whole new way of advertising and led us to automatically adjusting, mobile-enabled ads that are highly personalised, dynamic, and targeted.

Yet, while the banner ad has evolved, the method of measuring it has not – much to marketers’ annoyance. The clickthrough rate (CTR) remains the main way these ads are measured. And by all reports, CTRs are abysmal – less than 0.6 per cent by nearly every report out there.

These dwindling results, along with declining consumer attention and growing use of ad blockers by a fatigued consumers, all means the banner ad has suffered from ever-decreasing CTR while being ignored for its rightful place in overall brand building.

CMO asked several industry experts if the banner ad still has a place in a marketing strategy, or if we should all continue tweaking the settings on our ad blockers.

CEO of IAB Australia, Gai Le Roy, said approximately one-fifth of the digital display market in Australia is still represented by what we would consider traditional old school ad formats, such as banners.

“And while they has been over taken by new formats including video and content/in-feed formats, they still have a role to play in the market,” she told CMO. “The beauty of the media market is that older ad formats, while representing a smaller slice of the market, don’t go away. But we get a broader range of offerings that marketers can use to get their messages to consumers.

“Luckily, as Internet speeds have increased, websites have been able to take heavier ad files than was possible in the early days and this has enabled creative to improve substantially since the first banner ad.”

However, what frustrates Le Roy is banners still often being measured using the wrong metrics. “It frustrates me that even though we have shown time and time again that there is no correlation between clickthrough and impact, the click through metric is still persists,” she continued.

“Our new research study, The Digital Brand Effect, illustrates banners with the right creative, frequency and targeting still have a role in today’s media environment.”

Digivizer CEO, Emma Lo Russo, said success in digital marketing lies in how relevant the content is to the audience and the context they are seeing it in. She claimed traditional banner advertising can still work from a brand perspective, but needs a multi-platform, multi-unit play to drive traffic or action.

“You need to think about who sees what in the journey from not knowing you, to buying from you, to referring you,” she said.

Criteo A/NZ commercial director, Colin Barnard, agreed the banner ad remains a central tool in modern marketing.

“Digital ads have radically evolved since 1994 and so too have the way people respond and interact with ads. Today’s consumers demand more from brands, with 55 per cent of Australians turning off when they see ads they’re not interested in, according to recent Criteo data,” he said.

“The core objectives of banner ads from brand awareness to sales conversion haven’t shifted a whole lot, however, the way we achieve these objectives has, due to a greater focus on creative design and implementation with the introduction of modern technologies like AI and machine learning.”

For Barnard, modern technologies, like AI, have morphed the traditional banner ad into a hyper-targeted tool to create highly personalised customer experiences. But again, he warned against measuring its worth via CTR.

“When it comes to measuring performance digital marketing, one danger is to only count the effectiveness of banners by their clickthrough rate,” Barnard said. “The end result can be somewhat unimaginative creative that incites action like lots of price and ‘click here’ messaging. If the average clickthrough rate is 0.5 per cent, that means 99.5 per cent of people who see these ads don’t click on that particular creative.

“There is an opportunity to increase brand messaging without overly affecting CTR so the 99.5 per cent still see a great representation of the brand even if they aren’t ready to click at that particular moment.”

For lower funnel banner ads, Barnard would like to see other metrics used in a comparative way between different campaigns to better gauge what the 99.5 per cent think. He saw surveys, A/B testing to push creative to the max, whilst not impacting performance, and post-view metrics, as some examples.

“The current situation shows the limitation of machine learning and performance metrics. There are still too many dull ads that underutilise the amazing canvas we have,” Barnard said. “For instance, machine learning-driven creative can result in very poor ads.”

To compensate, Criteo has machine learning-driven content but still has humans crafting templates and even overlaying video, MP4/HTML5 rich motion imagery to bring dynamism to ads, he added.

Head of sales at WeThinkMedia, Jane Stucci, said the banner ad still has relevance as part of a broader marketing plan.

“As digital tech continues to evolve it does create the opportunity now 25 years later to personalise your brand’s creative or message to a highly targeted audience, particularly with the use of dynamic creative allowing you to target the right audience with the right message at the right time on any device.

“As for measurement, is anything perfect or correct? The industry is moving in the right direction by questioning the traditional click through rate as the only measure of success with alternative metrics such as viewability.”

So there you have it: The humble banner ad still arguably has a role to play in both branding and sales. But like most marketing, it’s only as good as your wider omnichannel strategy.

By (CMO)

Sourced from CMO FROM IDG

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