The Importance of Digital Marketing in the Modern Era
These days, it goes without saying that digital marketing savvy is no longer simply nice to have when it comes to making a success of your business. It’s an absolute necessity, especially if you’re serious about staying a couple of steps ahead of your competition.
Even so, knowing digital marketing prowess is important is one thing. Successfully predicting the next big thing and embracing it in a timely manner is another. The following are just a few of the biggest, most important emerging trends in digital marketing. Learn them, master them, and make them a part of your marketing strategy today!
Voice Search
At this point, it’s safe to say that voice search isn’t just a novelty anymore. According to the experts, it’s currently the fastest growing type of search out there. Around 41% of adults perform a voice search daily while 55% of teenagers do and more people are catching on to the perks all the time. Voice search is convenient and hands-free. As voice recognition tech gets smarter, voice searches are becoming increasingly more efficient as well.
Make sure your business is ahead of the pack by optimizing accordingly, as few people type the way they talk. Focus on long tail keywords instead of only short tail alternatives. Make sure your site’s microdata is fully optimized as well and add pages to your site that address FAQs to make sure you’re coming up in all the right searches.
Native Advertising
Ad blockers have been an issue for digital marketers for years now, but this is even more the case now that more and more operating systems support them. Native advertising is one of the best ways to makes sure ad blockers don’t put too big a dent in your own bottom line.
Natives ads can be made to look, feel, read, and convey information the same way traditional alternatives do. However, ad blockers don’t stop them from being displayed to visitors. Problem solved! And you can focus your advertising on specific geographical areas, which is essentially the same as hiring a top marketing agency, whether in Charlotte or Chicago.
Personalized Pay-Per-Click
Personalization is the order of the day right now when it comes to marketing and with good reason. A given consumer is infinitely more likely to respond to advertising that’s actually relevant to their lifestyle and interests. What’s more, people are increasingly becoming used to it.
Personalization is also the key to making sure your investment in PPC goes as far as possible, especially if you’re working with a limited budget. Start by making sure your keyword strategy is absolutely flawless. Then consider leveraging useful Google tools like Customer Match to help you finetune your efforts even further.
Podcasts
Think a podcast wouldn’t fit into your marketing plans or suit your target demographic? Think again. Over 40 million Americans listen to podcasts on a monthly basis with the average podcast listener tuning in a whopping six times per week. That’s a lot of people you could potentially be reaching if you came up with the right approach.
Of course, brainstorming a podcast and putting a successful one together does take work, especially if you’re a small business owner or an independent contractor. However, the potential rewards definitely make it worth considering. Like well-written blogs, podcasts help boost customer loyalty and allow your customers the chance to develop an emotional relationship with your brand.
Marketing Automation
If there’s one thing every business owner understands perfectly, it’s that time is money. The more time you can save yourself and your team when it comes to smaller, more tedious tasks, the more brainpower you’ll be able to devote to the biggest, most important aspects of running your business.
That said, if you can automate sales and marketing, you should absolutely do so. A growing selection of resources has made it easier than ever to automate everything from social media posts, to content management, to email newsletters, to contact segmentation. Make this the year you dive right in and use them to take your own business to exciting new heights.
Wearable Tech
These days, people are nothing if not completely invested in their mobile technology and with good reason. After all, it’s there for them whenever they need any type of information whatsoever whether that’s directions to the nearest coffee shop or the 411 on what their social media circle is up to that afternoon. The rise of wearable tech is making it even easier to stay connected 24/7.
Smart business owners are, of course, leveraging ways to cash in on this trend. Look for new ways to focus your marketing efforts on the moment-to-moment locations of your targets. You never know when a potential customer will be in your vicinity, looking for exactly the service you’re selling.
Buy Buttons
If you feel like you’ve been seeing buy buttons showing up in an increasing number of places over the past year or so, it’s not your imagination. Social media platforms like Pinterest and Twitter have already been offering users the ability to purchase goods and services right on-site. Soon you’ll be seeing the ability to “buy now” popping up on Google, other search engines, and additional social media platforms as well.
Research has shown that allowing consumers to buy products directly through ads they see on social media leads to higher conversion rates. Expect more and more platforms to get on board with buy now buttons for this reason and finetune your marketing efforts accordingly.
Videos
If you’ve ever caught yourself spending more time than you should watching multiple short speed videos on Facebook or Instagram, then you already know what a hot ticket video marketing is these days. People don’t just love video. They’re accustomed to seeing it in their social media feeds at this point and can easily be tempted to stop scrolling long enough to watch for a while.
The key to success here is to come up with videos your target audience won’t be able to resist. You’ll also want to make sure your videos can be watched either with or without sound, as many people view their social media feeds with their phones set to “silent”. Explore the possibilities for yourself today and experience the difference for yourself!
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