How digital marketing has changed business forever
The influence that digital marketing has on people’s behaviour and habits is incredible. We only need to look around. There are place where people don’t have running water, but own smart phones – such is the need for people to be connected to those around them. Now more than ever, businesses need to understand how to utilise this new digital universe and the role that marketing plays in it. We look at some of the biggest ways that digital marketing has changed business forever. Transparency – customers are no longer happy to just take what companies say for face value. They want to know about the companies they interact with. This is particularly relevant when it comes to food products with consumers wanting to know exactly what’s in the things they eat. Companies now have a whole new list of priorities which can range from their packaging to how they treat they employees and the information they give their customers. Adaptability – Digital changes at an incredibly fast pace. This requires employees across departments to be agile, work together and most importantly keep up to date with development so they have the skills to adapt and use these changes to the company’s advantage. Provided ongoing education is a great way to achieve this. Ultimately, if a business wants to succeed with its digital strategy it needs to empower it’s work force to be at the cutting edge of digital technology and skills. Innovation – The rise of the digital era has forced us all in some way or another to move out of our comfort zones, learn new applications and communicate with people in a way we never thought possible. The pressure on businesses to be innovate is huge, and those who fail will be left behind. A new kind of celebrity – Social media and video outlets like YouTube have enabled ’regular’ people to become incredibly influential. Companies no longer need to hire celebrities to endorse their products in order to get millions of people interested in their product or service. Data = personalization – Companies now consists of enormous amounts of data about their customers, their behaviour and what drives them. This allows businesses to personalize their message to consumers on a whole new level. New research shows that 85% of users are more likely to buy a product if the message is personalized and supported by social. Content overload – Marketers have their work cut out for them with 3.3 million people making a Facebook post every 60 seconds, and 29 million messages being distributed via Whatsapp. Brands need to be more creative than ever to get their message through to the right customers. So what is our strategy for grabbing potential customers’ attention? The Editor
Constantly changing, constantly evolving
By the words of world famous inventor and business man, James Dyson, “business means constantly changing and constantly evolving.” It certainly feels like the world is changing at a much faster pace than before. I was recently in Sweden and in just 12 months since my last visit I could see how things have evolved there. New technologies and solutions that weren’t available less than a year ago, have become a part of day-to-day life. For AdMarula, change and evolution is inevitable – in fact, we’ve been doing it for the past 8 years. Being part of one of the fastest evolving industries in the world, we as digital marketers need to keep up and evolve with the industry. Those who graduated with a degree in marketing can’t compete in today’s market unless they know how to learn and adapt as they go. The industry is simply moving too fast. What was popular in internet marketing 10 or even five years ago is now an ancient practice. We all need to educate ourselves on a daily basis. Luckily there are lots you and I can do stay on top of things happening in our industry. Reading, reading, and more reading! I often tell my team this. There is SO much information available to those who are willing to find it. Sign up to blog posts, newsletters, alerts and read articles. Set aside time in your day to do this, because if you don’t you will miss out on more than you realise. Be out there, physically meet and speak to the people in the digital industry. Much of what we do is automated and can be done via email, Skype etc. but in essence Digital Marketing is still a people’s industry so relationships and communication skills are important. Knowledge sharing. Attend seminars and industry events. We can all learn from each other and it’s often the best way to learn about new trends or important changes happening in your immediate business community. For more technical knowledge you may have to attend a course. These days it is really useful for marketing graduates to have some development skills under their belt. The bridge between marketing and tech is becoming smaller and smaller, which means marketers need to know how to ‘speak basic tech’, and developers need to learn basic business skills so they can think one step ahead of the consumer – understand how they can offer a technical solution to a user-driven problem. We are certainly living in interesting times, and I personally cannot wait to see how our industry will evolve even further in the near future. Onwards and upwards! Daniel Gross – CEO
Understanding Intelligent Optimization
The terms SEO and Optimization are nothing new and we’ve covered both topics extensively in the past. While having a well-executed SEO strategy is vital for any online business to succeed, the buck shouldn’t stop there. Many web developers still overlook the importance of other on-site tactics that go beyond SEO auditing, to create value from users. This is Intelligent Optimization and the new future driver for search engines. What we are talking about here is taking it a step further; think expanding into sales funnels, pixels, automation and most importantly, data harvesting. In recent years SEO tactics have focused heavily on rankings, but the next time you and your marketing team sit in a SEO pitch with an agency, be sure to bring up these points: Which pixels? – Simple? Sure. Yet very important to get this right. Not only should a Google Analytics tracking code be placed, but a Facebook Pixel needs to be added as well for the most effective retargeting. The best way to organize your pixels is still through Google Tag Manager. If they’re not familiar with GTM, they need to be. Automation, the right way – No, we are NOT talking about automated follow-up emails here. These are very apparent and generally come off as cheap, annoying and dishonest. However automating social media postings from the blog will save your business time AND doesn’t require personal interaction with customers. A simple Zapier script that cross-posts to all social channels from your blog would be a great start. Data harvesting – One of the first questions your SEO agency should ask is: “how do you collect data on customers.” Data driven marketing is the future, and being able to leverage your site’s data is the first step in creating a high end one-to-one marketing campaign. Combining web pixels, sales funnels, and custom audiences gives your company an edge to creating a powerful CRM database. Do they know Schema.org? – Schemas are lines of code added into the backend of your website that tell search engines, like Google, information about your site. Google treats schema marked-up sites with authority, allowing you to move up in rankings quickly. More importantly though, schema creates rich snippets (those boxes you see in Google search), allowing your business to be found more easily. Do they understand your sales funnel? – It may be simple for you, but many web developers don’t understand sales. Intelligent optimization places a heavy emphasis on pushing your web visitor to create an action. This is common place for business owners, but web developers need to understand this as well. For e-commerce sites, make sure your best selling items are also presented at the bottom of your page (you want them at the top as well). Happy selling! Daniel Gross – CEO
Most important SEO trends in 2019
New year, new challenges and for any affiliate/online marketing professional staying on top of the latest SEO trends and changes should be high on the priority list. We know you are busy, so we’ve saved you the effort of scanning through all the sources and brought you a short-list of the most current SEO trends you need to be aware of (and aim to implement) in 2019. Don’t build your whole business on Google – Google and other search engines CAN provide high quality and targeted traffic, BUT there are so many other places to obtain traffic from including social media, email marketing, Yahoo Answers or network with other bloggers and affiliate marketers. Understand your user’s intent – Does your audience prefer text? Images? Video? Audio. Knowing this will all be more important than ever in 2019. Super content – If you’re still creating content just to keep your blog alive, that won’t be good enough any longer. Google is intensifying its focus on evaluating content quality and rewarding sites that provide exceptional depth – this trend will continue in 2019. Mobile-first indexing – In a nutshell, mobile-first indexing means that Google uses the mobile version of your page for indexing and ranking, BUT that does not mean “mobile-only.” There’s still a single index with both mobile and desktop versions so best to get both right and no better time than now. Page speed – Google’s nuts about delivering the best UX and delivering it fast. Desktop page loading time has been a ranking factor for a while. And it recently got a twin sibling – mobile page speed’s become a ranking factor for mobile. Perhaps time to speak to your hosting provider about that loading time? Structured data – With the rise of AI this is becoming more and more important. If Google wants to move from a mobile-first to an AI-first world, structured data is key. Time to start looking at and understanding structured data, schema, active and passive search behaviors, and how they can connect to behaviors that signal intent. Increate your E-A-T– Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness – better known as E-A-T in Google’s search quality rating guidelines. Hire experts to author and leverage data from known entities, and ensure credentials and credit is given to both, OR get more of your employees to blog, write, and speak. That is the level of expertise that Google is looking for to power their results. The techie stuff – don’t forget the technical side of SEO. Three words: Speed (your page should definitely load under 3 sec), JavaScript (here to stay, so familiarise yourself), Progressive Web Apps/PAW’s (start thinking about how your website can live on as a PAW in the future). Good luck! Affiliate Management Team
AdMarula CEO, Daniel Gross, interviewed on current and future trends in digital marketing
Websiteplanet.com Editor, Ditsa Keren, recently interviewed our CEO, Daniel Gross, on the current and future trend in digital marketing.
