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Digital Marketing Trends That Will Drive Your Content Strategy for 2019

Digital Marketing Trends That Will Drive Your Content Strategy for 2019

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Digital marketing revolution has arrived, and it’s moving fast. As the advertising techniques change in real time and new technologies continue to emerge, the demand to keep pace has also increased. Today, CMOs must look forward to what will come next to remain ahead of the curve. The right steps to take are equally important to get them where they aim to be.

Here are some trends that marketers should pay attention to in 2019:

Personalization

Traditional ads have lost their appeal to people years ago.  Studies show that consumers trust reviews, branded sites, and the people they know more than traditional ads, which landed only on the bottom of their list. According to eMarketer, 30 percent of the entire internet population is expected to use ad blockers when the year ends. When that happens, traditional ads can no longer reach the 30 percent target audience. However, this doesn’t imply that ads should be ditched completely.

As marketers get to know more about their customers, they expect greater personalization and customization in their advertising message, especially in 2019. It is about creating an environment of deep engagement and trust.  In an ever more competitive online environment, consumers are increasingly becoming more demanding. They expect brands to know them well and that they demand that marketing should be delivered through channels they prefer.

Some ads may still have a place in marketing if they become more relevant to convince the consumers that they are still valuable land relevant.

It is estimated that by 2020, most search queries are going to be voice-based, which will make it an ultimate search-marketing tool.  This type of technology is seen to grow even bigger and better as more and more consumers are looking towards the convenience of using intelligent voice search.

To understand this trend, consider the differences between voice search and text, or what the consumers may say instead of typing while placing an inquiry. It also seems more reasonable to write in a more conversational tone to create content that works well with voice search.

Nowadays, most of the voice search usage is connected with utility, as people depend more on it when multitasking. But as the rate of word accuracy improves in the coming years and consumers start to get used to meeting their needs, brands are expected to compete on another platform while trying to learn how to be found in voice searches.

AI-Powered Solutions

Brands began experimenting with AI including machine learning apps in 2018. These innovations are expected to be more in demand in the coming year. From robotic process automation to chatbox, the value of high productivity rate, including increased customer satisfaction, and enhanced efficiency will become clear. AI-powered technologies are expected to bring customer-based marketing to a new level, including better trend analysis, more advanced personalization techniques, and improved customer profiling.

As CMOs begin to collect and store data, the use of AI-powered apps will help them reach their target audience with precision, increase efficiency, and create an opportunity for excellent customer experience. The digital workflow will also become much easier because AI-powered solutions will be accessible to more businesses that are searching for ways to maximize technology. Media agencies can now use smart algorithms to enhance paid advertising campaigns to study their performance in motion.

Creative Marketing

Consumers are now resistant to advertising. The increasing number of ad blockers has made it even more difficult for marketers to deliver their messages. To get new consumers in 2019, companies should pay attention to how their ads will blend more naturally into content. This is where native ads become valuable since they offer time-off from techniques such as banner ads. Unfortunately, as brands try working on becoming less annoying, they also cloud the lines that separate native from traditional ads. It becomes difficult to figure out if what consumers are looking at is a legit article or a sponsored native article. As such, they are expected to demand a clearer distinction between the different types of content. That will eventually prompt CMOs to be less disruptive and more creative.

That being said, digital marketing has a bright future. As virtual and augmented realities continue to pave the way for new engagement and CMOs are looking at greater creativity, brands will more likely become authentic and more responsive to the needs of their customers.

Best-Marketing-Podcasts-That-Will-Inspire-Your-Lead-Generation-for-2019

Best Marketing Podcasts That Will Inspire Your Lead Generation for 2019

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Let’s be honest, there are a lot of marketing and business podcasts out there, but only a few of them will ever tickle your fancy or be worth a second-listen or staying tuned for. In this short article, we list out the movers and shakers of marketing podcasts. So keep your headphones handy, it’s time to listen to do the best.

Much can be learned from listening to podcasts. You can choose from a wide variety of marketing experts, entrepreneurs and academicians who are gracious enough to share their personal insights and experiences about how to best market a product, service or event. What is more exciting is that most, if not all of them, can be accessed for free.

What is interesting about podcasts is that the speakers are constantly talking about emerging trends and best practices that are very relevant in this present age. Moreover, you can get new tips and advice (for your lead generation) on a daily basis if you have the time to listen. Just by listening to marketing podcasts, here are a few basic things you will learn:

  • Discover the main reason why you are doing what you do;
  • Know and understand your target market or audience;
  • The best way to create your own niche;
  • How to keep up with social media trends;
  • How to capture your market; and
  • Important strategies that will make your business competitive.

For the best marketing podcasts that you should make time to listen to, here are our choices:

#AskGaryVee

AskGaryVee

If you want to understand Facebook’s ever-changing algorithm, you will learn best from multi-millionaire entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuck who puts out new podcast content every week where he answers previously submitted questions from followers. To make the podcast more exciting, he invites other celebrity guests to talk about new social media strategies, ideal platforms for different kinds of businesses, characteristics of an entrepreneur that are very important in order to be successful, and success secrets to name some.

Louder Than Words

Louder than Words

Louder Than Words is highly recommended for those who work in the creative side of marketing from content writers, creators, creative designers, graphics artists, designers, to company leaders. This podcast specializes in teaching listeners how to bank on their creativity and get ahead in the industry. The podcast hosted by John Bonini introduces new podcasts every week featuring interviews with varied forerunners in the creative marketing industry. Bonini gives them an avenue to reveal their personal creative processes with the hopes of inspiring others to find their best motivation.

Call to Action

Call to Action Podcast

If your intention is to engage in a one-of-a-kind digital marketing campaign that will take your business to the next level, it is best to learn from the best. And where it concerns groundbreaking digital marketing initiatives, Call to Action is able to give you the right answers. The podcast is hosted by Unbounce, a Canadian software company that produces landing pages for websites.

The Fizzle Show

The Fizzle Show

Entrepreneurs who mostly do their business online should go for The Fizzle Show as it usually features lessons on how to start a business, choose a business that will appeal to a bigger market, create a service or product that will serve a need, and how to know your audience better to mention a few. You will find this particular podcast intriguing as it features very engaging and ludicrous hosts who do not only speak truths about certain business practices but also have the capacity to entertain you while you learn something new.

Inbound After Hours

Inbound After Hours

To better understand how crucial the role of content is to your inbound lead generation strategy, it is best to check Inbound After Hours. The group specializes in helping in-house marketers deliver commendable results. Inbound After Hours is a certified partner of HubSpot, a US-based software developer, and marketer of products for inbound marketing and sales, further boosting the company’s value.

What is interesting in their podcast is that it is in video format and live interviews with well-known marketers are being featured.

ConversionCast

Conversion Cast

If you are looking for concrete illustrations of how to make the most of your conversion rates, this is the best podcast to listen in order to strengthen your website traffic, customer sign-ups, email list, social shares, and user trials. You only need to allot a short period of time from your daily schedule as the episodes are only 15 minutes in length. You can choose from several episodes that you think serves your need best. Each episode features a significant person in the area of marketing.

It’s time for you to start listening to better things and getting your groove on with the latest and greatest in marketing knowledge. Switch to better business and marketing podcasts today, trust us, you won’t regret it all.

The-Australian-Open-How-to-Hit-an-Event-Marketing-Grand-Slam

The Australian Open: How to Hit an Event Marketing Grand Slam

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From the serious tennis aficionado to the casual fan, the Australia Open serves up something special for every eventgoer. During the next two weeks, not only will Melbourne Park be the place where the world’s best tennis players battle it out – it’s also going to be where hundreds of thousands of people experience a premier entertainment spectacle unlike any other.

The Australian Open has now become more than just a tennis tournament, and the story of how it was transformed into a widely-attended entertainment event offers valuable lessons for marketers to learn from.

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Here’s what the Australian Open teaches us about holding successful event marketing campaigns:

Pull out all the stops

Before the Australian Open became a highlight of the tennis-playing world, it was widely considered a backwater, and some people even saw it as a poor copy of Wimbledon.

Nowadays, however, the Australian Open is known as “the Happy Slam” because it’s almost every tennis player’s favorite grand slam to play in. In fact, it was the legendary Roger Federer himself who first gave the event its nickname, capturing most tennis players’ sentiments toward the Australian Open.

Many players feel that the tournament organizers really go out of their way to make sure the participants get taken care of.

But there’s one thing that really turned the Australian Open from just a sporting event into a widely-attended spectacle. In an attempt to attract as large a crowd as possible, Tennis Australia (the event organizers) remade the Australian Open into a “festival that happened to have a tennis tournament going on at the same time.”

Today, the tennis matches form only one part of the Australian Open experience. The event now hosts dozens of activities to keep eventgoers engaged—from grand slam-themed food and drinks stall, to a weeks-long music festival.

This strategy has paid off very well in terms of boosting attendance numbers. Last year’s event attracted a record 743,667 fans, breaching the 500,000 mark in its first week.

Adopt a data-first approach

The average company spends around 32% of their marketing budget on tradeshows and live events. With such a large share of spend going into this channel, marketers are under a lot of pressure to demonstrate solid results from live events.

Yet surprisingly, ROI from event marketing ranks as one of the most difficult results to measure and track. One key reason for this is that a lot of marketers have yet to follow a data-first mindset when planning and carrying out live event campaigns.

But with the tools available to event marketers today, it’s easier than ever to measure and manage tradeshow activities. Marketers can now use real-time analytics dashboards and attribution models to define metrics for success, gauge ROI, and justify spend.

That’s the direction that Tennis Australia took when it appointed digital marketing specialist Josie Brown as the organization’s Chief Insights and Marketing Officer, a newly-created role tasked with overseeing the execution of Tennis Australia’s data-driven marketing and branding strategies.

As technology brings new ways for fans to enjoy the sport, the event organizers now have a giant window to event activities that can help them gain actionable insights on event performance and deliver a rich experience for attendees.

With technologies provided by partners such as IBM, the Australian Open has transformed from a watch-only event into a fully-interactive, data-rich tennis tournament that millions of fans can immerse themselves in.

Know which tools to use and how to use them well

Over the years, the Australian Open organizers have shown their marketing savvy by adopting robust marketing tools and tactics—then using these to their full potential.

For example, during Australian Open 2015, Tennis Australia leveraged social media marketing to achieve the two-fold goal of increasing awareness and growing ticket sales. The tournament organizers developed and executed an extensive social media plan to increase fan engagement across different platforms before and during the event.

Tennis Australia then formed a dedicated social media team to carry out targeted campaigns on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and others—then tied these touches closely with live event activities. The results were very impressive: 300,000 new followers in two weeks, 14.3 million unique website visitors, and the event’s highest ticket sales to date.

Tennis Australia also demonstrated their mastery of paid social channels when the event organizer carried out a highly successful Facebook Ad campaign in 2018. The company wanted to add Facebook video and photo ads into its multi-channel marketing mix to promote ticket sales for Australian Open 2018.

The ads initiated Messenger conversations to purchase, which generated a 24.3x return on ad spend, along with a 16% lower cost-per-acquisition and 4,600 purchases during the run up to their 2018 grand slam event.

At around the same time, Tennis Australia deployed Australian Open Ticket Finder Bot, a sophisticated chatbot that helped the company directly sell tickets via social media. In its first week, the chatbot generated 170% more conversions than the usual ticket purchase link (turning 141 of 600 conversations into ticket sales) and recording an ROI of 25x.

Find the right audience and be ready to pivot

We’ve seen how the Australian Open’s strategic pivot has transformed the event into a premier sports spectacle. But the refocus wouldn’t have been very successful without a series of careful rebranding initiatives carried out by Tennis Australia a few years ago.

In 2016, the company unveiled a new identity for the Australian Open. The move was aimed at capturing a wider audience and reflecting the event’s new focus as a full entertainment brand.

One of the brand repositioning’s most visible signs was the replacement of the company’s longstanding “Serving Man” brand mark with the new “AO” logo.

According to Tennis Australia’s marketing manager, Jo Juler, the Serving Man mark no longer adequately represented what the Australia Open had now become, and it didn’t capture the wider audiences and personalities that Tennis Australia wanted to appeal to.

Also in the same year, Tennis Australia hired the services of a digital marketing company that specialized in Asian market demographics. The company was planning marketing campaigns aimed at the growing number of Chinese expatriates in Australia who were also becoming a prominent event audience segment.

Many experts believe that it was Tennis Australia’s move to reposition the Australia Open as the Grand Slam of the Asia-Pacific which led the event to finally mark its identity.

Conclusion

The Australian Open teaches us a lot of useful event marketing lessons. But the most important things to keep in mind are: doing your best to delight your attendees; letting data be your guide; knowing and using the right tools for the job; and becoming really familiar with your changing audience.

How-to-Run-a-Rewarding-Sales-Outreach-Using-Content (Blog Image)

How to Run a Rewarding Sales Outreach Using Content

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Digital marketers will never get tired of saying that content is king and there is a lot of solid and firm reasoning behind this. There are different types of content strategies for different markets, and the best way to establish your dominance in outbound marketing is getting your content straight.

Content that is planned carefully and presented creatively has the potential to boost the image and presence of your business. Deciding to do the traditional way of marketing to a target audience can be challenging. Nevertheless, success can still be achieved with its use.

Related: Dummies Guide for Content Marketing

Here are 5 different types of content that you can consider for your sales outreach:

1. Videos

Videos are a very powerful tool when intending to reach out to a target audience by means of advertising for instance. Short videos that are well thought out and executed creatively are bound to engage viewers right away. They are also able to contribute to increasing awareness.

52% of marketers believe that videos are a type of outbound marketing content that generates the best return on investment. It provides a strong leverage even for small and medium scale businesses allowing them to compete with big companies with an even bigger budget.

Studies show that companies who use videos in their outbound marketing campaigns can experience an average increase of 157% in organic traffic when people simply use search engines. Furthermore, videos are proven to help increase the time that potential clients spend on the website by at least 105%. When this happens, it simply means that there is a huge possibility that the viewer will take interest in your product or service.

2. Case Studies

Case studies are considered the most effective type of content that is not as difficult to make as videos according to marketing professionals around the world in a March 2015 survey conducted by Ascend2, a company that provides research-based marketing for marketing technology organizations and digital marketing agencies.

This type of content highlights the benefits that clients experienced from using the product or availing of the service. Usually, case studies also magnify how the product or service contributed to the success of the client giving the testimony. This is very appealing to customers as it helps them weigh their options and consider their personal needs more intently.

When choosing a client to give a testimony, carefully screen the possibilities and choose someone whose belief in your product or service is unshakeable.

3. Infographics

What better way to summarize all the crucial information about your business that customers ought to know than through infographics? This type of content gives you the freedom to put together multiple details in a single design without boring your readers. You can use bullet points to make it even more attractive, easier to read and digest as well.

Infographics may include statistics depicted by tables, charts or graphs to make it more appealing. The tricky part, however, is being able to come up with a layout that is not chaotic at first glance. You should be able to put together information on a design that is clean, simple and highly readable.

4. Social Media

Posts that are made public through social media are very promising mainly due to the fact that a lot of your potential clients are very active on various online platforms. Various social media platforms that include Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are making waves for so many businesses, big or small, because of its vast reach. They are quite easy to use and manage.

Social media has a powerful ability to influence purchasing decisions. They provide an effective avenue for product information, purchase reminder, product discovery, product recommendation, purchase location identification, and product sale or purchase alert.

5. Interviews

Interviews are a great way to get your target market interested. It is known to be a high-performing type of content that enables you to position your product strategically in the market. You can be viewed as an expert in the field where our product is widely used.

Interviews can be done in several ways. You can initiate a webinar or a live stream on Facebook, you can produce a video content ahead of time and upload it in your YouTube channel, make yourself available in third-party interviews, and come up with a written interview that will be posted in your blog to name a few.

When planned well, interviews can boost awareness for your product. It also has the potential of growing your following in a short period of time once it goes viral.

With just a little planning you can create strategies that will drive your business to the next level and guarantee growth in the future! Stay tuned to learn more about outbound marketing and how it can help your business succeed.

The Top 5 Digital Marketing News and Events of Q3 Blog Image

The Top 5 Digital Marketing News and Events of Q3

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The world of marketing is always changing and there are always advancements that really drive our industry forward.

As business operators or marketers, it is of utmost importance that you are updated when it comes to the most recent trends and improvements not just in marketing strategies, but also where your promotional platforms are involved. With the amount of data made available every day from multiple content sources globally, platforms such as Google should constantly be on the lookout in order to maintain the quality and high-quality features of its services.

It is best to learn about new features, functions, applications, tools, and programs made available to both paying and non-paying users in order to maximize available services for the benefit of your business or campaign. In some cases, upgrades may have cost implications on your marketing strategies, demand longer hours of work or an overhaul of your promotional activities.

At the end of the day, you need to find ways how you will be able to continue with your marketing campaigns without compromising the ranking and online presence of your business. When your business is on the line, there is no room for surprise. Here the top 5 marketing news and events of last quarter you ought to know:

Facebook introduces new tools that intend to help users manage their time when using social media networks.

As a response to concerns raised by mental health organizations directed at Facebook and Instagram citing the addictive effects of social media usage in this present age, Facebook has decided to introduce a new tool that aids in time management to remind users of the length of time they have already spent on the social network site.

This tool can easily be located in the settings portion of both social media networks. It generates helpful data on how long you have spent browsing your accounts for the past week. This new tool also has the ability to remind you when you have exceeded the ideal length of time you wish to spend on both social media accounts.

Facebook launches a new tool to create mobile video ads.

Advertisers can now enjoy the ease of creating new video advertisements as Facebook recently launched a new tool that allows them to create new materials using photos. This new tool automatically converts the video into a mobile-friendly format. Advertisers can choose from four unique templates that include promoting a product, selling multiple products, driving product discovery, and showing product benefits. 

Google releases its broad core algorithm update.

The broad core algorithm update, simply put, is giving priority ranking to content that bears quality and reliable information. While Google is constantly known to make updates to improve its services, this recent one has no known “fix,” much to the dismay of a lot of marketers and SEO specialists. As a general rule, Google is sending out the message that it wants content providers to maintain high standards for Google users worldwide.

This newly introduced feature from Google intends to help users identify whether the responses they are getting from their Q&A forum site is close enough to the kind of information they are seeking. The Search button offers a preview of the potential information that the user is looking for to make it easier and faster for them to locate the right ones.

As marketers or business operators, this means that content should be made in such a way that it contains structured data so that it will easily come out in the Q&A format within the search engine results page (SERP).

Twitter eliminates cross-post to Facebook.

Just in case you haven’t noticed yet, you can no longer cross-post to Facebook using your Twitter account. While this function proved to be very convenient for users, Twitter sadly announced this news due to Facebook’s lockdown of its API platform. This was brought about by the Cambridge Analytica scandal where 87 million Facebook users complained after their data was harvested and shared without consent.

No need to worry, however, as there is another way you can share your Twitter content. All you need to do is copy the URL of your tweet and paste on your Facebook status to share the content.

It seems as if plenty of companies have been making moves this month and we have to wait and see how this will change the current marketing landscape.

So there’s our roundup of the top digital marketing stories of the previous quarter. Stay connected with us to find out the latest and the greatest marketing news and insights.

A B2B Marketer's Guide to Developing a Successful Marketing Tech Stack

A B2B Marketer’s Guide to Developing a Successful Marketing Tech Stack

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Developing a successful marketing stack is extremely important if you want to thrive in the technological landscape of the 21st century.

If your company or business still does not have initiatives to build up your marketing technology stack, it is probably one of several reasons why your competitors are way ahead of you in the game. By now, you should have made “marketing technology stack” a household name for you and your team. This means working towards bigger initiatives to invest in updated technology that will give your business the online marketing boost it needs in order to reach more and more people worldwide.

Aside from meaningful and well thought out content, you also need to invest on marketing software solutions that allow you to access, process and store huge amounts of data that will be very helpful when you intend to sell a product or service. It is also highly recommended that you work on building your own marketing tech stack when every intention to meet all of your marketing goals in a given period of time.

In advertising and promotion, for instance, marketing activities commonly include public relations, video advertising, mobile marketing, social media advertising, and content advertising to name a few. A well-programmed marketing tool added to your tech stack can make all these activities easier and faster to achieve. Other areas where you will be needing a reliable tech stack would include your optimization, email marketing, and automation needs.

Here is a guide to building your ideal marketing tech stack to make your business very competitive:

1. Give importance to analytics.

Give priority to technology that filters and processes micro-conversions such as when potential clients subscribe to your newsletter, fill out survey forms or simply create an account on your website. These little actions mean that something about your content attracted the interest of your target client. Put together, multiple micro conversions can mean a great dealer your business.

Use predictive analytics with assistance from a well-designed software program to help you and your team make sound and intelligent strategies that will convince your target market to avail of what you are offering.

Use your collected data to your company’s advantage. Study the little details and do not overlook them. Always make them part of the bigger equation of things so you do not end up overlooking details that can contribute greatly to your marketing initiatives.

2. Invest in a reliable content management system (CMS).

To better equip your content creators to be strategic about what they write, consider incorporating SEO information in your CMS. This will ensure that your content team is well aware of words, phrases, titles, number of words, and descriptions that will boost your optimization.

Maximize the benefits that can be gained from tagging and categorizing. Categorizing will help you and your team of writers come up with more personalised email content.

Track the performance and effectiveness of your content with help from your CMS. A marketing automation software will also come in very handy when you wish to find out how many visits your page garnered in a given period of time.

Related: The Top High-Impact Marketing Technologies Influencing B2B in Australia Today

3. Invest in a tool that will boost your email marketing activities.

Choose only the best and trustworthy email marketing service. As can be expected, you would want an email service that offers high deliverability and the ease of managing your contacts, groups and other important categories.

Study the statistics that your email platform will generate for you. It is best to find out when is the best time to send emails, how often and how long the content should be when promoting a certain product or service.

Remember that fortifying your marketing tech stack is really about gaining an edge over several competitors out there in the market who are also thinking of many ways to stay ahead of you. Our digital generation has made marketing easier, yet highly competitive at the same time. Staying competitive means having the same technology as your competitor or even better.

Takeaway:

While technology does not fully guarantee the success of your marketing campaign sans the human hands that are operating it, it is still quite promising in terms of how easy and fast your team will be able to execute activities and generate helpful data at the same time. At the end of the day, having the best technology and the most talented employees will do wonders for your business.

Be sure to cleanse your data and verify every time you have a chance to in order for you to come up with better results in each and every time. So what are you waiting for? It’s time for you to start developing that marketing stack today.