Digital Marketing Archives - Page 5 of 18

In News

How TikTok Is Changing the Digital Marketing Game

November 7, 2022 No Comments

Tick…Tick…Tick. Is time running out on your opportunity to effectively use TikTok? Not if you make wise investments.

From recent feature rollouts to off the chart viewership numbers, TikTok has eclipsed a number of social platforms in key engagement areas, such as retention rate and active collaboration features like duets and stitches.

Best-in-class brands leverage TikTok’s native tools, editing features, ad formats and ecommerce capabilities to maximize reach and facilitate purchase. In fact, 84% of the top 50 brands ranked in Gartner’s latest Social Media Benchmarks Digital IQ had a TikTok profile as of November 2021.

However, there are still many high-performing brands that are either underinvesting in their brand TikTok pages or ignoring the platform altogether. What does this mean for digital marketing leaders?

Lost Opportunities With Target Audience

First, those that overlook TikTok will miss connecting with key audiences. TikTok commands a large, hyper-engaged user base that demands marketers’ attention. The platform is investing in increasingly sophisticated commercial features, too, such as TikTok Ads Manager and objectives driven Promote feature. TikTok gives brands the ability to invest in a number of different ad formats and influencer partnerships that drive a specific call to action among a highly targeted audience.

Given this, digital marketers should assess the scope of TikTok’s growth and audience, its business tools and the competitive landscape to kick off informed discussions about the merits of investment within the marketing organization and the rest of the C-suite.

Missing Out on Social Commerce Growth

Second, TikTok’s increased investment in social commerce means digital marketing leaders also risk losing out on a major monetization opportunity. According to TikTok, the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has more than 6.8 billion views and viral videos regularly translate to direct sales lift. One beauty brand saw more than a 600% increase in daily sales after their watermelon products went viral on the app, too. TikTok has capitalized on the success of viral products by introducing in-app ecommerce capabilities — for example, in-app store and link in bio — to enable a seamless buying experience for consumers.

As a result, digital marketers must track TikTok’s commerce features and gauge alignment with key marketing goals. Monitor ongoing legal concerns and remain transparent with users as personal data privacy remains a growing concern.

How to Leverage TikTok to Improve the Customer Journey Experience

Brands that effectively use TikTok — and other major social media channels for that matter — throughout the customer journey outperform competitors by lifting word of mouth, engaging more prospects and driving more valuable engagement with customers.

Digital marketing leaders have traditionally focused their social media efforts on brand posts, advertising and influencer marketing to improve brand awareness and consideration. However, they often fail to develop and invest in social strategies that lift customer satisfaction, loyalty and brand advocacy, missing out on opportunities to deepen customer relationships.

In order to drive value through social media successfully, brands should focus on the greater context of consumer needs and understanding how and why customers use social channels, not just what channels they use.

By Claudia Ratterman

Sourced from CMSWire

In News

4 Reasons Why You Need to Hire a Digital Marketing Agency to Level Up Your Brand Power

October 19, 2022 No Comments

By Jean Ginzburg

If you are not an expert, outsourcing your marketing efforts to a digital marketing agency is a great solution. With remote work flourishing, outsourcing your digital marketing to a specialized agency with talent and resources in place is a great way to propel your business growth without having to grow your team first.

Finding the right people to help you grow your business might be a challenge. That is why I recommend looking outside of your company for talent. Outsourcing important tasks to experts might be the push your business needs to grow quickly. One of the key tasks you can outsource to experts is marketing.

You might feel hiring a marketing agency is a risk. It’s understandable to feel hesitant at first when first engaging with a team outside your organization. But certain risks are worth it when the benefits outweigh them.

1. Not hiring a digital marketing agency could be costing you more

The number one reason companies shy away from hiring a marketing agency is they think it’s expensive. Often a marketing agency can be a cost-effective strategy when you take into consideration a full-time employee’s salary, benefits, taxes and PTO time.

Hesitating in hiring experts might delay your company’s growth unnecessarily. A marketing agency can help your business grow quicker and start generating revenue faster. It will free you up to focus on working with your clients and running your business effectively.

2. You get to decide what marketing efforts you’d like to outsource to a marketing agency

A digital marketing agency would typically have a menu of services. The advantage of contracting a marketing agency is it would have resources you would need that would take much time and effort to build up in-house.

Instead of wasting your time gaining expertise in digital marketing, you can access an agency’s experience and resources. Since marketing is its bread and butter, the agency will have people and tools in place to start executing your vision as soon as possible.

Talk to the agency representatives so you can agree on what services and resources would be best for you to leverage, given the stage of your business development. For example, you might want to outsource specialized aspects of digital marketing such as SEO, media buying or email marketing campaigns.

Shop around for a digital marketing agency to see what each can do for you and negotiate the budget.

3. Help them help you reach your marketing goals

For a digital marketing agency team to be most helpful to you, they need to understand your vision. If they don’t get what you are about, your values, your brand image and your goals for marketing, their efforts won’t produce the results you are looking for.

Ensure the hired team has enough material to learn about your brand so they can design campaigns in your voice. Develop branding guidelines for them to follow, reflecting the look and feel of your brand. This way, no matter who joins their team, they all have the same understanding of your brand.

The agency will also need to understand your tech stack and the tools you use to collect and analyze your company’s performance. They will need access to your ways of reporting and your data. Establishing clear channels of access, sharing and communication will decrease friction, increasing efficiency and speed of execution of your vision on their end.

4. Collaborate and connect via project management tools

The project management tools, such as Trello, Slack, Asana, Monday or Clickup, don’t just serve as tools of efficiency. They also provide your team and your marketing agency with a unified place to work in, creating a sense of a teamwork environment.

Trello, for example, serves my team as a central hub for communication and collaboration. My team can communicate and work together efficiently through comments and tags on specific tasks, and everyone can track progress.

A sense of cohesion among the team, aided by the digital tools, will help create a sense of common purpose. This way, each member of your team and the team you are outsourcing to will be invested in helping you achieve your goals and committed to the bigger picture, not just their assigned tasks.

It’s rewarding and gratifying to have your whole team working in unison and collaborating with an outside agency smoothly.

Level up your brand power

Growth requires more people power. Sometimes, that power can be found in outside agencies. Hiring a digital marketing agency might feel uneasy at first. Once you make the first step, however, you will find that outsourcing allows you to free up your time to work on scaling your business.

By Jean Ginzburg

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

How Web3 Will Change Marketing Landscape Forever

October 11, 2022 No Comments

By Mayur Sethi

Web1 was the introduction of the Internet, where users could ‘see’ the revolution of communication, and Web2 allowed users to experience and interact with the revolution. Now we have Web3, in which we will be allowed to immerse ourselves in the experience, and for the very first time, users will be able to own the revolution.

At the beginning of the Internet, users relied on multiple software and services to accomplish a single task. To play a video game, you had to purchase an online game and connect with your friends via IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and Ventrollo. This is Web1 — a decentralized platform operating in a pluralistic framework. Now, all of the tasks mentioned can be accomplished on Twitch and Discord — this is Web2. Web2 enabled giants like Meta and Alphabet to consolidate crucial auxiliary objectives such as gaining followers, sharing updates, promoting products, and building an online persona into a single website/application.

Welcome to Web3

Web3, also known as ‘the new internet’ is a term used for a brand new rendition of the internet that presents the option of decentralization. You’ve surely read and heard about this brand new Internet, but how does Web3 embed into our properties? It’s pretty simple: through user behaviour.

Although it sounds like a succession — something like 3G, 4G, and 5G — Web3 is not an upgrade from Web2. Instead, it exists simultaneously and is supported by the Web2 frameworks. You don’t have to upgrade from Web3 to Web3.

The Need for Web3

Instagram is a great place to build your platform and gain followers, but it comes with its own cons. Web2 companies like Meta collect plenty of data on the backs of consumers. On the parallel side, these companies have now consolidated the platform and have a monopoly in the market.

The need for Web3 comes from people realizing the dangers of BigTech overreach. People are now interested in building tools that give the power back to the users. Context: for every dollar that YouTube advertising generates, creators get only 55%. Couple this with the risk of losing your entire work at the whim of a YouTube executive. Web3 is the solution to this precarious system. Instead of channelling money through centralized platforms, creators will now deal directly with the users.

Every time you stumble upon the Internet, sites like Facebook and YouTube get a hold of your data. This data is then sold to other companies. While Advertising isn’t entirely harmless, it is not the only space that gets a hold of your data. Here are some very scary examples:

· Ancentry.com retains the DNA of more than 26 million people

· Twitter fined for selling user data

· Apple sells data to Google

The strive for Web3 goes beyond privacy. It’s actually about what we can control. Not distributing our data to monopolistic companies has been a major point of infliction in the quest toward Web3. Just like a slippery slope can turn into an avalanche in mere seconds, giving a tremendous amount of power to a single entity can take an ugly turn in quick succession.

Why Web3?

Blockchain and Web3 is the emerging choice for the next generation of Internet users. Here are the main reasons why:

1. Privacy & Security: Web3 is an improved version of the web, built through the best cryptographic technologies that ensure that Internet users are able to secure their data from hackers and prying companies.

2. Storage Decentralization: The IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) is designed to store data in multiple devices to deter any breaching efforts. Each file storage has its own security and the system operates simultaneously around the globe.

3. Anonymity: Users can choose to remain anonymous and operate in seclusion, all the while high-stake businesses and social media reputations.

Key Features of Digital Marketing in Web3

1. Artificial Intelligence

Web3 operates on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and interprets data in a much more reliable form. This opens pathways for a more linear and consistent reading of data sets. AI is beautifully woven through the entire structure of Web3, and it bodes perfectly well with digital marketing campaigns that rely on human behaviour to target audiences.

2. Decentralization

The primary feature of Web3 is decentralization. In this realm, the data isn’t held by a giant database. Decentralization ditches the use of HTTP protocol to find pre-stored information on servers. In Web3, information is not restricted to a single location — instead, it is intentionally spread out.

3. No middlemen

Web3 allows individuals to take control of their data. Through this, individuals can directly exchange value with each other and require no meddling of an intermediator. We’ve grown used to operating on highly centralised platforms such as Meta and Google. Although they come with their own perks, they also leave users privy to security breaches and information manipulation. Web3 opens pathways to data ownership, which is an essential step to achieving complete freedom on the web.

4. No external authorization

Users on Web3 no longer have to rely on third-party authorization to view data. Imagine not having to share your information (and biometrics) with third parties for authorization. the removal of obstruction increases the chances of user security and privacy.

The Impact of Web3 on Digital Marketing

The buzz around Web3, NFTs, and Metaverse is seemingly inescapable now. I am constantly fielding questions on what it means for digital marketing and social media-based promotional campaigns.

Web3 is being marketed as its predecessors’ smarter, more sophisticated version. The new and immersive technology is targeted toward users who want to interact with brands and have a first-hand experience of distinct products.

Digital Marketing in the Metaverse

The Metaverse is here to create a surrounding and immersive space for consumers. The unbounded access is the luxury of this space and is a fun and personalized way of interacting with people far away from you. Yet the space comes with challenges of its own.

You no longer have to imagine being in an alternative space where space and geopoints dictate the level of access and communication. We are already there. Metaverse combines the marketing lessons of Web1 and Web2 to create a mature, more sophisticated experience on the Internet for users.

Marketing via Tokens

Marketing is all about engaging with people and delivering your message. The gist of old-school marketing is to be relatable, likeable, and authentic. The future of a brand’s marketing lies heavily on the authenticity of the marketing campaign. Tokens and Web3 marketing take it up a notch by ensuring that users can have an equal stake in the engagement, buying, and selling of products.

Summing Up

Blockchain and Crypto went from pipe dreams to billion-dollar innovations because they were able to gear the market toward universal ownership and direct linkage. Brands are discovering NFT markets and establishing unique bonds with their base based on their will to build authentic communities. While we may have been introduced to the platform, we’re still conflicted on the road to marketing on Web3. I think it will be a fascinating journey with space for many trials and errors. Regardless, I can faithfully predict that the biggest net gainer of the process will be the user.

Feature Image Credit: Pexels

By Mayur Sethi

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

Permission Marketing: Best Practices in a New Age of Data

September 30, 2022 No Comments

By Rachel Done Cubillas

What is permission marketing, and how can it help you face marketing challenges in today’s privacy-focused world?

Seth Godin’s book, “Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends and Friends Into Customers” has revolutionized the way marketers perceive their customers, allowing them to “get in front of the digital revolution.”

As Godin defined it, permission marketing refers to a form of marketing where consumers are given the choice of opting in to receive promotional messages. You have probably seen it multiple times already, with companies offering incentives for following them on social media or subscribing to an email list for coupons. It’s highly entrenched in our society.

What sets permission marketing apart from other strategies for reaching consumers is that it’s characterized as already having an engaged audience. Users wouldn’t choose to subscribe to your business’s newsletters, emails or social media unless they had a prior interest in your goods. It also has the benefit of being a low-cost way to create personal and relevant relationships due to it usually being done via digital communication tools.

Essentially, it’s the opposite of direct marketing, aka blind marketing, where sometimes the only thing consumers have in common is a zip code.

While Godin’s book is an essential item for every marketer’s toolkit, there’s no denying it was released quite a while ago — 23 years, to be exact.

During that time, a technological explosion — unimaginable in the era of Y2K — rocked our world. While marketers have generally kept abreast of these rapid changes, the landscape around them, including social media and data privacy laws, is going to change even more.

Still, the idea of allowing consumers to consent to be subjected to marketing, aka permission marketing, is more relevant than ever in this age. By enacting and adapting permission marketing to today’s challenges, brands can stay on top of these constant changes while catering to their number one priority: the customer.

Below we’ll take a look at some of the predicted challenges ahead for the industry, along with some best practices on how to tackle them with permission marketing.

Social Data Collection and the Privacy Uprising

Every marketer will say that the more details they have on potential customers, the more likely they will be successful in sales. For the last decade, a great deal of marketers have gotten the specifics on customers via data on social media.

Brands primarily used this data to create a synergistic relationship between their marketing efforts and their customers. People used social media, and companies could see what customers liked and disliked, which allowed those companies to fine-tune their ads.

Meta — arguably the largest social media company due to its ownership of WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook and Instagram — suffered a huge data leak in 2019, prompting a mass exodus of users and new concerns about data privacy.

To further complicate things, Apple saw two ways to gain from Meta’s loss. First, they launched a new marketing campaign with one major selling point — privacy. Users gained more control over how their data was tracked and used, a change that made a major impact on other companies and slashed ad return on investment by 38%, according to Forbes.

The second gain for Apple was to partner with other companies, like Singular, to tap into ways to model and analyse this newly missing data — something that sequestered other brands from the advertising game.

Keeping an Eye out for New Tools

Not every company can afford to use these now necessary data collection technologies. As such, when seeking out new tools for permission marketing, Annie Wissner, CMO at Avenue 10 and VP of marketing at High Level Marketing, said “the best…tactics are those that help your audience go faster, reduce costs, solve business problems or gain a competitive advantage. Any form of content, from a blog post to a podcast to a webinar to a newsletter, is good as long as it offers value, is fun to consume and is highly relevant to your audience.”

If any of your company’s current strategies don’t fulfil those metrics, it might be time to change where you’re spending your time and money.

One tried and true application for permission marketing is email subscriptions. Email marketers have to seriously compete for the attention of younger generations. On average, Millennials receive 6–50 emails per day, and Gen Z sees anywhere from one to 20. And the chances of getting them to open an email are low.

But that doesn’t mean these groups don’t like getting email, and companies shouldn’t abandon the communication medium. According to MediaPost, more than 66% of Millennials and 53% of Gen Zers want to receive email marketing at least once per week.

Wissner said email is a nice tool because it offers the ability to organize and search through content — something that’s necessary with the growing need to keep content structured across multiple communication channels.

She claimed that while email has its advantages, other channels might be a little more attractive for younger audiences, such as Slack and social media, as it offers the ability to get an immediate response to a question, concern or comment.

For instance, some companies use Facebook Messenger to send ads directly to consumers and keep it as a place where customers can reach out if they need help with an order. Slack, on the other hand, has recently been used at digital conferences as a way to communicate the logistics of the event and award prizes based on participation in the chat channels.

Be Mindful of Where Your Customers Are

Permission marketing is often the way companies can start and recircle clients into their sales funnels. But in the age where digital and physical are starting to blur, omnichannel marketing efforts will help consumers complete the sales funnel.

Wissner had another bit of advice for marketers on this subject: use an omnichannel strategy with your permission marketing. In many ways, permission marketing is the base concept of omnichannel — meeting the customer where they’re at.

By Rachel Done Cubillas

Sourced from CMSWiRE

In News

Finding Your Target Audience Through Social Media

September 20, 2022 No Comments

By Brian Wallace

Today, influencer and content creator are two of the most sought after jobs. Not everyone can go viral, but everyone can make an impact.

In today’s world, western countries, and the world at large, are not just influenced — but socially dominated — by social media. Platforms like Facebook have risen to have nearly 3 billion users, and others like YouTube and Instagram are not far behind. For younger demographics between the ages of 18 and 29, 90% have used at least one form of social media.

The interesting thing about social media, though, is the power rests in the hands of individuals. The top accounts and creators are individual people who tend to have extremely loyal and influenceable bases. This is why brands and companies are willing to spend so much on social media advertising; there are few other means to reach a consumer in such an effective manner.

Now Hiring: Influencers and Content Creators

Today, influencer and content creator are two of the most sought after jobs. For children the dream has moved from astronaut to YouTuber, and by definition, most content creators are destined to not be mega-stars. Still, anyone can find a perfect audience using social media, and it’s certainly not all up to luck.

Building a Loyal Audience

The way to build a reliable and loyal audience consists primarily of three major phases:

Phase 1

Phase 1 is the first two to three months and is all about the foundation. First a creator must understand their context, what platform they are on, what kind of content they would want to create, what would make them successful.

The next step is creating some wide-reaching content and seeing what sticks, using data to analyze their audience and specify. And the final step is an awareness of the base audience, what are the demographics, who is watching, is that changing depending on changes in the content? Through these steps a solid small viewer base can be built.

Phase 2

From here phase 2 begins. This phase is all about gaining control over the details of one’s content. The first step in this is securing one’s tone. Any content one puts out there is going to have a tone and natural reaction from the audience. More consciously turning that into a way to communicate a message is essential to growing an audience, moving beyond simply making content and starting to send a message.

Also vital to this second phase is timing. This consists of understanding both the timing of when to release content and what effects that has on the base one is growing. Releasing content at certain times may garner a different audience than others, and longer form content will certainly produce a different audience than shorter form. Working on this will help one’s content take on a deeper level of quality and depth.

Phase 3

Finally phase 3 is likely the most simple; it consists of emotions. Once a creator does start to build an audience, criticism and praise are going to be daily occurrences. This can be great, learning from the audience. Repeated comments can move a creator toward better content; although responding to every comment and set of criticisms is a sure fire way towards failure.

Instead, through phase 1 and 2, the creator should have confidence in their content. While there is always room for improvement, the strong base one builds should give them the mental strength to avoid any rash decisions based on criticism. The best creators are both reactive but not too reactive. Finding the balance between these two is phase 3.

Conclusion: You Can Make an Impact on Social

And once all of this is accomplished, with some creativity and a lot of hard work, one can expect to have a solid and loyal audience. This is not to say that everyone is destined for greatness, but that everyone can have an impact. Carving out an individual niche and going about it the right way is plausible for anyone interested.

By Brian Wallace

Brian Wallace is the Founder and President of NowSourcing, an industry leading infographic design agency based in Louisville, KY and Cincinnati, OH which works with companies that range from startups to Fortune 500s. Brian also runs #LinkedInLocal events nationwide, hosts the Next Action Podcast, and has been named a Google Small Business Advisor for 2016-2018.

Sourced from CMSWIRE

In News

How To Succeed As A Digital Marketing Entrepreneur In 2022

August 26, 2022 No Comments

By Amine Rahal

There’s no doubt that we are seeing a surge in digital business and digital marketing needs from businesses that are not necessarily operating online. This is especially true when potential clients are millennials and Gen-Zers, as they are likely connected to social apps and digital environments in greater numbers than their older peers.

So, how can you successfully take advantage of the trend of digital marketing? Let’s have a look at what it takes to succeed as a digital marketing entrepreneur. To succeed, you should pay attention to the following aspects of digital marketing.

• SEO.

• Social media presence.

• Pay-per-click (PPC).

• Email marketing.

• Google-friendly website.

As a digital marketing business owner of over two decades, I have a lot of experience to lean on in these respects. Let me take you through each of these important channels to help bring you up to speed on the basics of digital marketing entrepreneurship.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best free tools you can use in digital marketing. SEO can help you drive organic traffic to your websites, create more leads and generate new clients. What you need to know about SEO in 2022 is that it is becoming more and more competitive.

Thousands of websites are optimized for Google’s PageRank algorithm to appear as high up on the search results list as possible. Many companies are targeting the same words, creating a tougher environment for ranking your content at the top. So, use online keyword research tools to research keywords you can target that have a low difficulty. Basically, you should look for keywords that don’t have so much coverage.

You can also use online tools to help monitor the traffic your site receives and to find keywords and topics that you can target. There are many tools you can pay to use, or you can use Google Analytics, which offers a free version.

Social Media Presence

Social media is also a very valuable tool and will likely become more central to any digital marketing business as time goes by. Data from Statista shows that there are 3.78 billion social network users globally, and the largest social media ad market is in the United States.

Having a strong social media presence is, therefore, a must to help grow your digital marketing business while keeping in touch with customers and building customer loyalty. Social media can help you create brand awareness and give your customers a better overall experience.

This digital marketing tool has the following advantages for your clients and leads.

• Quick interactions for feedback and answers to questions.

• Easy access to your brand’s services and products.

• Social engagements with your business brand.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

PPC digital marketing allows you to get your brand, services and products at the top of Google’s search page with the use of paid ads. Every time a user clicks on your ad, they are redirected to your page, and you are charged a fee.

Using a PPC marketing tool allows you to grow brand awareness and attract new leads. PPC marketing tools allow you to track the performance of your ads. This allows you to calculate your return on investment, as you can see how many clicks turn into sales.

These tools also allow you to choose which geographic location you want your ads to appear in, what time of the day they’ll appear and the amount of cash you wish to spend for a given period.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is another important part of any digital marketing campaign. It may not bring the wide impact social media can create, but it is still an important tool. You can use email campaigns to create brand awareness, nurture leads and connect with active users from your website.

Various companies offer solutions for entrepreneurs to manage, construct and send their emails. You will need to investigate which service would work best for your digital marketing business. They often offer very different features with different target audiences. So, you will need to find the best match for your needs.

Google Friendly Website

Nowadays, just about every business, even a local brick-and-mortar store, has a website. This is good, as they are all potential clients of a digital marketer. But how do we get people searching on the internet to find them?

Google took around 85.5% of the desktop market share of internet search engines as of January 2022, according to Statista data. So, it is fundamental that your website is Google-friendly. When you run a digital marketing business, having a website that can rank as high as possible in a Google search is central to success.

Make sure the website loads quickly and is safe to use. If you are getting started, pick a website builder that has a secure and reliable hosting service. Improve the website’s performance with appropriate SEO tweaks to make it more attractive for Google’s algorithm.

If possible, add videos to the website. For example, you can add videos explaining what the company does and its services. The Google ranking algorithm also takes into account the amount of time users spend on your website. Therefore, adding a short video of a few minutes in length can improve the website’s ranking if people spend time watching the video.

Bottom Line

The digital marketing business is a great area to work in for various reasons. You have a potentially global reach. The power of the internet is that you are only as far away as the time it takes data to reach your clients. It is extremely cost-effective; with small amounts of money, you can get started and progress toward making your initial revenue.

Monitoring results could not be easier, as everything is digitalized. You know exactly what you put in and exactly what you get out of every action and investment. Digital marketing can have a great and verifiable impact on any business and can help it build a network of repeat customers.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Amine Rahal

Sourced from Forbes

In News

5 Trends Shaping the Future of Digital Marketing

July 14, 2022 No Comments

By Ashlee Sierra

Here’s a little-known secret about the Brafton content marketing and strategy teams: We can see the future. That’s because our company car is a customized Delorean and we have regular training sessions on navigating the space-time continuum.

Obviously, that’s not entirely true. It’s actually a Camaro because we couldn’t find a Delorean.

Regardless of how we get there, what matters is that we’re here to help you see into the future of digital marketing. Come with us on a journey to tomorrow, where we’ll explore evolving digital channels, new applications of automation and a customer journey defined by your ever-changing target audience. Just remember not to run into your future self along the way!

The Current State of Digital Marketing

Before we jump into our time-traveling Camaro, we need to have a clear view of the present. That way, we can be sure we return to the proper timeline.

The same is true for digital marketing: You always need to know what’s happening in the industry before you can make any predictions.

With that rule in mind, let’s take a look at the current state of digital marketing campaigns and their target audiences:

Social Media Habits

Social media platforms are effective distribution channels for your brand story — mostly because there are 4.65 billion social media users worldwide. That’s almost 59% of the global population.

But platforms go in and out of style depending on all kinds of factors, from local trends to mobile device software updates. According to an Semrush ranking of all websites, the most popular site overall in February 2022 was YouTube. Here’s how it and other social media platforms stacked up when compared to websites of every kind:

YouTube was #1, with 50 billion total visits.
Google was #2, with over 39 billion total visits.
Facebook was #3, with 9.34 billion total visits.
Twitter was #6, with 5.62 billion total visits.
Instagram was #9, with 3.19 billion total visits.
Pinterest was #18 with 1.43 billion total visits.

Utilization of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) may still sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but it’s a huge part of today’s digital marketing landscape. Check out these AI statistics that prove it:

40% of marketing and sales teams prioritize AI for success — more than any other department.
34% of marketing leaders say AI is the biggest game-changer in the industry.
71% of marketers say AI could help personalize the customer journey.
Chatbots were responsible for 85% of customer interactions in 2020.
Experts predict AI will lead to a 26% increase in the global gross domestic product by 2030 — an estimated $15.7 trillion.

The use of AI in digital marketing is already pretty impressive. Companies like Magnolia Market, the retail destination operated by Chip and Joanna Gaines, use augmented reality to let customers virtually place products in their homes. It’s like a test drive for home décor. Meanwhile, Unilever used AI to uncover the connection between ice cream and breakfast, leading it to develop a line of cereal flavours for Ben & Jerry’s.

Personalization Preferences

Another reality in modern-day digital marketing is the preference for personalization. Citizens of the online world are tired of cookie-cutter experiences, and now they’re demanding tailored, interactive content that appeals to their unique perspectives. This is especially relevant for your content marketing strategy, including video content, social media posts and more.

Take, for example, YouTube recommendations. With a little help from artificial intelligence, the #1 site in the world (at least according to Semrush) keeps its competitive position in the social psyche by constantly providing 2 things:

Video content we’ve already expressed interest in.
Video content we didn’t know we were looking for, but that aligns perfectly with our tastes.

Say I’ve been watching videos about the new Ford Bronco (which may or may not be true). If you were a Ford dealer, you’d be able to use this preference and YouTube automation to provide video content that caters to my off-roading daydreams. I’d be more likely to interact with this than, say, a video about a minivan.

Many social media platforms play by similar rules. Using automation and algorithms, these sites recommend content users are likely to engage with — including your brand’s social media content (if you have the right digital marketing strategy, of course).

3rd-Party Data Regulation

Although personalization is an increasingly important part of content marketing, it’s also an increasingly difficult one. That’s because consumers are taking control of their data in new ways.

A good example of this is the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which gives people more power over what they do and don’t share with a digital marketer or other 3rd party. The CCPA can be summed up in 4 basic rights:

The right to know what personal information is collected and why.
The right to delete this personal data.
The right to opt-out of the sale of data.
The right to non-discrimination when exercising the other 3 rights.

Tech leaders like Apple and Google are following suit, implementing stricter limitations on the kinds of data that can be collected, the methods that can be used and whether consumers have direct control over this.

While increased privacy may be great news for those of us who don’t want to share the number of times we’ve searched basic slang to make sure we’re using it right, updates like the CCPA are not so good for content marketing. That doesn’t mean the future of marketing is hopeless, though — your personalization and targeting techniques just need to get creative. (More on that later.)

The Future of Digital Marketing: 5 Trends To Watch

Now that you have a firm grip on the present, it’s time to take a trip into the future. Let’s hop into our time-traveling Camaro and get ready to see some of the innovative marketing techniques, trends and ideas that we expect to shape tomorrow’s digital marketing campaigns:

1. Smarter AI

As artificial intelligence gets smarter, so too will digital marketing campaigns. You won’t just find new technology — you’ll also leverage familiar tech in better, more effective ways.

For example, by 2029, search engines are expected to be capable of fully understanding the underlying meaning of queries instead of just analysing keywords. As a result, your content marketing strategy can focus more on addressing searcher intent, providing answers to implied questions and ultimately addressing a user’s real needs.

Of course, the future may also hold systems and solutions we haven’t even begun to dream of. Who knows — maybe your social media marketing will someday be run by the same automation strategy that identified the “ice cream for breakfast” trend.

2. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is already a big deal, but we’re pretty sure it’s going to become even more critical to your digital marketing strategy.

That’s because influencers help create real connections with your audience. Users show interest in an influencer’s opinions, commentary or even just their top-notch jokes — and when you leverage that interest by teaming up with the influencer, you’re delivering personalization on an entirely different level. As consumers show increasing interest in the humanization of their favorite brands, influencer marketing is likely to become key to boosting engagement.

This works in both the business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) landscapes. In B2C, consumers want to know that people like them can trust your brand. B2B buyers want the same assurance, but they also need to see that you’ve served their industry before, worked with teams resembling their own, delivered on key performance metrics (KPIs) and more. That means B2B influencers can be anyone from industry leaders to up-and-coming players in the landscape.

It’s also important to recognize that influencer marketing goes hand-in-hand with video content, especially on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube. Here, you can take advantage of artificial intelligence and automation to get your videos in front of the right people, all while catering to an audience that’s already looking for this specific type of engagement.

3. Thought Leadership

Thought leadership has an important role to play in any content marketing strategy, but it’s only going to become more valuable to your target audience.

Why? It’s simple: As time goes on, our favorite digital channels will continue to be inundated with content that feels repetitive, unimaginative and just plain boring. Thought leadership will stand out as something fresh — a new perspective on a familiar topic, a valuable approach to an industry challenge or even an open conversation inviting your audience to chime in.

Plus, thought leadership gives you yet another opportunity to connect with consumers on a more personal level. When you post a blog written by one of your expert employees or let someone from a different department take over your social media for a day, your audience gets to see the people behind the brand — and these days, that human connection is more valuable than ever.

4. 1st-Party Data

Remember when we talked about privacy updates wreaking havoc on traditional marketing campaigns? There’s good news: The end of 3rd-party data doesn’t mean the end of life as we know it. Instead, things are likely to get even better.

That’s because the future is likely to bring opportunities for 1st-party data — information willingly and knowingly given by your target audience in exchange for a highly tailored experience. You can gather this data through surveys, focus groups, informal chats and more, meeting customers where they are to find out what they’re really feeling and thinking.

This approach has 2 big benefits:

It gives you richer, more valuable data to guide your digital marketing strategy.
It shows consumers you’re taking an active interest in their preferences and responding to their needs.

Long story short, we expect you won’t even miss 3rd-party data once it’s gone.

5. Creative Digital Marketing Campaigns

The final — and perhaps most important — trend to keep an eye on is the progression of digital marketing campaigns themselves. As companies get more comfortable with new technologies, they’re likely to come up with new ways of leveraging those solutions to tell bigger, better stories.

The key is to embrace your role as a consumer. What social media post are you talking about with your friends? Which digital channels are you drawn to when shopping or researching products? Where do brands succeed in making you feel like you’re the only customer who matters to them? Questions like these allow you to use your own experiences as a digital marketing experiment and decide what might work for your approach.

As you explore other brand stories, don’t forget to look outside your industry for marketing inspiration. For example, maybe you have no idea what SaaS marketing even is (hint: it’s all about software-as-a-service offerings like Slack or DropBox), but you can still learn from the techniques and approaches being used in this space.

Shape Your Own Digital Marketing Future

You don’t need a time-traveling muscle car to see the future of digital marketing. In reality, that future is coming up fast, which means you have 2 options: sit and wait for it, or start shaping it yourself.

If you’re anything like us, you’re probably leaning toward the latter.

The first step in creating your digital marketing future is to understand the present. The next step is to keep an eye on trends like those we’ve covered today. But from there on out, it’s up to you — which means you’re free to blaze your own trail, tell fresh stories with new technology, try out the latest marketing strategies or change them up to suit your needs.

And if you need help along the way, just keep an eye out for a Camaro driven by a content writer — and don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest on digital marketing today, tomorrow and beyond.

By Ashlee Sierra

Ashlee Sierra is a writer and editor from Boise, Idaho. When she’s not buried under her giant dogs, she can be found playing video games, telling ghost stories and having passionate discussions about the Oxford comma.

Sourced from Brafton

In News

How to Solve the Competition Problem in Digital Marketing

July 4, 2022 No Comments

By Timothy Carter

There are possibly hundreds of digital marketing strategies for businesses to use, and most of them have significant potential to be profitable. Search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, and other forms of online engagement are you able to boost the visibility of your brand, help you reach new people, and ultimately win more sales.

That said, entrepreneurs and marketers delving into the world of digital marketing often find that seeing these results isn’t as straightforward or easy as they first imagined. One of the biggest problems they face is competition – but why is competition such a massive roadblock in your digital marketing strategy, and what can you do about it?

The Competition Problem

Let’s start with an explanation of the competition problem in digital marketing. In business, competition is a well-known and well-studied threat; if a competing business offers a similar product for a lower price and does a better job of reaching your target audience, they could easily wick away much of your customer base.

But for our purposes, we’re going to be focusing exclusively on how competition interferes with your digital marketing strategy. Ultimately, there are three main issues:

Higher costs. Dealing with competitors usually means higher costs, both in terms of time and money. If you’re competitively bidding on advertising, and many of your competitors are aggressively bidding on the same keywords as you, the cost of an ad for those keywords is going to increase. If you’re trying to outrank a competitor on a major search engine, and they already have a decade of experience at the top, it’s going to take an enormous amount of time and resources to challenge them. Existing competition can also threaten the return on investment (ROI) you see from your existing marketing strategies, since your impact may be reduced by the visibility of competing offers.
Lower visibility. Competition also lowers your visibility in at least some contexts. If you end a competitor have ads side by side, users may only take the time to fully read one of them, or they may feel overwhelmed or bombarded by advertisements, choosing to skip over them altogether.
User confusion. If a user sees a video demonstration of your product in action, then immediately sees a video demonstration of a competitor’s similar product in action, they may walk away feeling confused. They may remember one or neither brand or mistakenly associate one brand name with the other product. This isn’t good for either one of you.

Obviously, you can’t push a magic button and instantly remove your competitors from the market. Instead, you’ll need to find creative strategies to deal with the competition problem in the digital marketing space.

These are some of our best recommendations.

Get to Know Your Competitors

The first step to take is always to get to know your competitors better. The better you understand your competition, the better you’ll be able to handle them.

Understanding their strengths and weaknesses will give you a clear path to optimizing your offers and your presentation. Noting their most powerful marketing strategies can help you decide whether you want to avoid those specific areas or lean into them and double down.

Take note that competitive research isn’t a one-time ordeal; many entrepreneurs rate the competitive research section of their business plan, then never return to it, but this is a mistake. Your competitors are always growing and evolving, just like you are, so you need to keep researching and updating your understanding accordingly.

Differentiate Yourself

Possibly the best way to deal with competition in digital marketing is to differentiate yourself. Making yourself extremely different or pursuing different strategies will immediately distinguish you from your closest counterparts. In some cases, this allows you to find inexpensive alternative paths to reaching customers.

In others, it’s more about making sure there is no confusion for your target audience. In any case, differentiating yourself could help you seize control.

Think like an entrepreneur and get creative here. There are many different ways you can differentiate yourself, though these are some of the most common:

Geographic location. For starters, you could target a different geographic location than your competitors. If one of your competitors has a national presence, you could focus exclusively on one metropolitan area.
Target demographics. You can also target different demographics. If you already have a firm target audience and your marketing campaigns have always been built around them, this may be a difficult transition to make. But sometimes, targeting a different age group or a different socioeconomic class is all it takes to immediately distinguish yourself.
Buyer intent. Your marketing strategy probably includes specific targeting tactics for different stages of buyer intent. You can competitively differentiate yourself by focusing more heavily on one of these stages.
Brand, image, and voice. Another option is to revitalize your brand, changing your image and your voice to stand apart from your competition more strongly. For example, if all your competitors seem to have a stuffy, overly professional voice, you could offer something more casual and laid back. This is especially powerful if you also update your demographic targeting in the process.
Quality and support. Consider setting yourself apart from the competition by offering better product and service quality, better support, or both. Make these distinctions the centrepieces of your digital marketing strategy moving forward – as long as you can back up your claims.

Outspend Where Appropriate

Thanks to automation and other scalable, high-tech tools, digital marketing is relatively cheap. A small business or an individual can get started with a basic digital marketing strategy for just a few hundred dollars. But if you want to compete on a national scale with some of your biggest competitors, you’re going to have to spend far more.

Many entrepreneurs and marketers are too intimidated to attempt such a bold gambit, but there are cases when outspending your competition is the wisest strategy. If a competitor spent $50,000 to reach rank one for a specific keyword, there’s probably a good reason they did – and spending $60,000 to outrank them could be the best use of your resources.

Use the Competition to Your Advantage

It’s natural to think of your competitors as enemies or threats, but they could also present new opportunities to you. Consider tapping into the power of your competition, rather than simply avoiding or dominating them.

For example:

Content collaborations. partner up with one of your competitors and collaborate on a piece of shared content. It could help you both improve your visibility.
Partnerships. Form a partnership with one of your competitors to expand your reach and provide mutual benefits.
Branded keyword optimization. It’s possible to optimize for your competitors’ branded keywords, or even pay for ads that display when users search for your competitors’ branded keywords. This is a bit of a dirty strategy, but it could be a valuable trump card if you’re having trouble beating your competition in other ways.

Focus on Retention

You can get more value out of your current digital marketing strategies by focusing on retention. Remember, customer retention is less expensive and more effective than customer acquisition. If you’re already spending a hefty sum on your digital marketing strategies, you should maximize the value of each new customer you attract to your brand.

Offering more support, customer loyalty incentives and stronger client relationships are great places to start. Also, consider setting up a referral program, so you can naturally attract more loyal customers to your brand.

There are many ways that you can adequately address the competition problem in your digital marketing work. Some are naturally going to be more favourable for your brand than others. It’s up to you to study your competition carefully, set the right budget, and analyse your effectiveness to choose the best path forward.

Feature Image Credit: Pixabay; Pexels

By Timothy Carter

Sourced from readwrite

In News

The future of digital marketing isn’t what you think: 5 trends

June 21, 2022 No Comments

By Stas Pamintuan

The landscape of digital marketing solutions changes so frequently that it’s almost impossible to imagine its future. For entrepreneurs and businesses, it’s become even more of an opportunity to gain a competitive edge in the market. Stas Pamintuan of agency Digital Ethos looks into this future, looks at five trends every marketer should keep abreast of.

As many companies transitioned to remote work throughout the pandemic, digital marketing became essential to most businesses’ survival.

This is still the case, as many have stayed remote or moved toward hybrid working. Fast-growing means ever-changing and evolving, so in order to venture into the future of digital marketing, keeping with the times is essential for adaptation to your target market’s wants and needs.

1. Expanded reach in generation Z

As generation Z starts to mature, businesses must reconsider their marketing strategies. That generation wants memorable experiences, and digital marketing solutions have to be more precise in their purpose.

One way to do this might is leveraging user-generated content to create a sense of exclusivity for your product or service. This will make it something they can relate to and more likely to side with, especially if they have FOMO.

2. Omnichannel and integrated approach

As consumers become more aware of what they want, market expectations have become more specific. This is evident on digital platforms and channels. It’s even more important in the way you market to your target audience. Whether that’s through social channels, PR or content, there are plenty of opportunities to maintain a unified omnipresence.

A unified omnichannel marketing strategy enables you to create an irresistible online presence for your brand – collectively, that’s the goal of digital marketing.

3. Personalization

Make sure your campaigns are personalized. While it’s obvious that most consumers value privacy, they also favour personalization. You can see this in appreciation for tailor-made Spotify playlists and Netflix recommendations.

Each element of the campaign is essential, allowing you to deliver value via storytelling. Personalized campaigns see higher rates of engagement, conversions and reviews from customers. The first step in obtaining this data is allowing customers to opt-in for data tracking and analysis, so they are aware of how their data is being used, before analysing it.

4. Micro-influencer marketing

Influencer marketing has hugely grown in recent years, with top influencers on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter attracting millions of followers and making a decent income from brand deals. While this offers great ROI compared to traditional advertising channels, there are still some issues.

From fake followers to big-name influencers losing their power as they take on more and more sponsored posts, consumers perceptions of authenticity (and the relevance of influencers’ recommendations) can be affected. As consumers continue to value individual recommendations over being marketed at, it makes sense to invest in micro-influencers – social media users who have a smaller but dedicated audience who are trusted to deliver authentic content. Influencers’ power will be measured not by the number of followers they have, but by their personal relationships with their followers.

5. Video to overtake digital channels

Savvy marketers have recognized the power of using online video in their digital marketing solutions for years. We’re not quite at the peak yet, but video is proving itself as a powerful medium; we’ve seen a massive rise in live streaming video, especially over the last year or so.

From social media to SEO, digital marketing continues to impact billions of people. And with more advanced tools and changes in best practices, digital marketing solutions will continue to propel businesses to step up their competitive drive in the market. That’s the beauty of this space. It’s about adapting and delivering tailor-made marketing strategies to keep your online presence flowing.

By Stas Pamintuan

Sourced from The Drum

In News

The 6 biggest mistakes made by newbie digital marketers

June 17, 2022 No Comments

By Tom Welbourne

Digital marketing is an ever-changing world, with new platforms and algorithms constantly shifting the goal posts. Tom Welbourne, founder and director at agency The Good Marketer, tells us how to avoid rookie mistakes.

The constantly-shifting digital marketing landscape is exciting and full of opportunities. But this presents room to make costly mistakes, from underestimating the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) to lacking clarity about social media marketing goals. Gaps in your marketing plan can make otherwise promising strategies fall at the first hurdle.

To avoid making mistakes, the key is knowledge. We’ve compiled the six biggest mistakes that newbie digital marketers make to equip you with the knowledge of what to avoid – and how to do things the right way.

1. No clarity on audience

Think you know who your audience is? It’s time to rethink your assumptions and get more specific. Most people have an idea of who their audience is, but this is useless if you don’t clearly define their age, gender, and interests as well as broad audience categories.

For example, a mortgage provider will have multiple audiences, from first-time buyers looking for their first mortgage to more mature homeowners who have had mortgages before but are looking for a new agreement.

Use analytics tools like Google Analytics to find out who your audience really is, rather than who you think they are.

2. Lack of clear goals

You won’t get to where you’re going if you don’t know exactly where that is. Clear goals give you a clear destination and help to map where you need to hit along the way. If you establish that you want to reach 10,000 followers on Instagram, you can break this down into what you need to achieve month-on-month to achieve that overall goal.

Digital marketers use the ‘Smart’ (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goal framework to create well-defined growth goals that will give a direction to take and the basis to measure your campaign’s success.

3. Setting unrealistic goals

Perhaps the most important aspect of Smart goals is the ‘achievable’ aspect. Having clear goals is important, but you will always end up falling short if your goals aren’t realistic.

If you currently have 500 followers, setting a goal to gain 10,000 followers organically in six months is always going to leave you disappointed and feeling like you’ve failed.

To ensure your goals are realistic, evaluate based on past experience; do some research about similar businesses; or speak to other people in your industry about what could be achievable.

4. Ignoring SEO

Everyone loves an aesthetically-pleasing website, but how many people prioritize SEO when building their site?

SEO is an essential digital marketing strategy used to increase the online brand visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs). When someone searches a keyword related to your business, SEO improves the likelihood of making it to the top of those results.

When newbie digital marketers hear about SEO, they can mistake the acronym as something too technical for your average marketer, but they’d be wrong. SEO is something that even a beginner can do comfortably when equipped with the right knowledge.

5. Overlooking quality content

You’ve heard it over and over and will continue to: content is king. Your marketing strategy is nothing if you haven’t taken the time to create quality content that works for your audience.

Ultimately, your digital marketing strategy will succeed if your content can provide value to your audience. Whether you’re solving a problem or providing valuable insight, take time to reflect on how your content conveys value.

6. Lack of recorded strategy

Often, newbie marketers have a strategy in mind for how to reach their goal, but leave it undocumented and not fully developed. A written strategy gives you a clear outline of how to grow your brand or business, and how to leverage your USPs to achieve your vision of success.

Being a digital marketer is a learning curve. The mistakes will probably be plenty, so the best you can do is equip yourself with a solid framework that provides a path to follow. The best marketers are able to use the same process of goal-setting, strategizing and implementation no matter the project. Once you get to grips with how these stages can benefit you and your work, the world is your oyster.

By Tom Welbourne

Sourced from The Drum