The truth is that companies don’t need to chase trends to have an effective digital presence and keep up with their competition. At least not every trend.
However, marketers do need to keep a close eye on the landscape and adopt new strategies and trends where it makes sense for their business. In 2019, we’ll see rapid growth in a number of different strategies.
Some of those strategies have seen consistent growth for years. Others are new to the scene and just now beginning their ascension in the digital world. But, all of them will play a key role in the internet marketing industry in 2019.
-
Social Media More Storytelling & Less Promotion
Taking the educational approach means doing more teaching than selling. Storytelling is not much different and, in fact, can be educational in nature. However, the power of storytelling lies not in teaching people things they didn’t know, but in relatable characters and situations, or at least characters and situations that evoke emotional responses. Such responses spur action, often much more effectively than shameless and constant self-promotion on social media.
-
SEO Positioning
SEO can (and hopefully does) have a noticeable impact within the first year of action being taken, and many of those actions will have an impact that lasts more than several years.
As the market evolves, yes, it’s best to follow the trends and changes closely. But even a site that hasn’t had a boatload of intense SEO recommendations implemented will improve from basic SEO best practices being employed on an honest website with the decent user experience.
And the more SEO time, effort, and budget that is committed to it, the better and longer a website stands to be a worthy contender in its market.
Implementing strong, quality SEO on a brand’s website and digital properties is always going to be beneficial to that brand and its marketing efforts.
It’s considered a “new age” marketing technique, but it’s critical to a brand’s web presence in this day and age, especially as available data and rivaling competition continue to increase and grow.
-
-
Google Ads
Compared to traditional marketing channels like TV and magazine advertising, online marketing is highly measurable, and Google Ads PPC is one of the most measurable of online channels. It’s difficult to make exact measurements in SEO because you can’t always know what actions led to increased or decreased rankings. Then there’s the whole “not provided” fiasco. Social media can be equally difficult to measure. In comparison, Google Ads is more transparent, providing tons of PPC metrics that allow you to see at a granular level what works and what doesn’t. You can pretty quickly determine if your campaigns are sucking or returning ROI.
-
-
-
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is the bread and butter of what we do here at Marketing Code. In inbound marketing, the focus is placed on the content that you produce and the value that you are able to offer your customers. That won’t change.
The industry is moving in one direction and it is toward higher levels of personalized content production, no away from it.
Inbound marketing is all about attracting your audience based on the value that you provide, not based on how well you can interrupt their thought processes with an interesting advertisement. It’s a long-term growth strategy that helps to position your company for ongoing success.
According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2018 report, 55% of marketers say that blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority in 2018.
That won’t change in 2019, as more companies make a long-term commitment to producing more content and inbound marketing strategies.
Look for inbound marketing and related internet marketing strategies, an already large part of the online marketing industry, to continue its growth in 2019.
-
-
Growth Hacking
If you’ve been paying attention to recent trends in the digital marketing industry lately, you probably have heard a fair amount about growth hacking. If you aren’t aware of what growth hacking entails, I’ll provide a quick explanation.
In growth hacking, every strategy you execute, tool you install, and technique that you use to gain traction is informed by your desire for growth. Often, in growth hacking, traditional processes take a back seat to results.
Growth hackers view the digital landscape as a battleground and see their job as fighting in that battleground and rising above the competition at whatever the cost. They use data as their weapon and creativity as they vehicle.
Growth hacking often employs small techniques, known as “hacks,” that help companies to drive demand and growth. Often, these strategies are in a moral gray area, which is one of the reasons why growth hacking has remained on the outskirts as a strategy.
However, companies see the results that the practice is able to provide and want it for themselves, which is why we will see growth hacking take an even larger jump into mainstream marketing circles in 2019.
Most online marketing companies have multiple balls in the air at any given time. They’re creating strategies, running campaigns, and managing vital communications channels.? Online Marketing tools are in abundance these days, which is not surprising considering the incredible demand for them among businesses of all scales. The diversity is clearly there to make an uninitiated entrepreneur ponder over the variety of options available.
Here are 4 Online Marketing tools that will help you boost your business strategies
1. Website Analytic Tool
Hands down our favorite tool for the best analytic insights is?Google Analytics. You simply add their small tracking code to all the pages of your website, and you get FREE access to your website’s performance data. You can see where your website visitors are coming from, which pages are getting the most hits, what pages cause the most people to leave your site, and so much more. These insights allow you to develop smart strategies around converting visitors on your website.
Once you start using Google Analytics,?try using it to answer these 5 questions.
- Who is visiting my website?
- What are visitors doing when they’re on my website?
- Where are the visitors coming from?
- Why are visitors coming to my website?
- How are visitors finding my website?
2. Social Media Marketing
Facebook does a good job of providing an in-house management tool, but your?social media?dealings probably extend far beyond a single platform. It can be challenging to balance a posting schedule and reviewing performance metrics across all of your social media pages. Luckily, there are many management tools on the market to help?digital?marketers. Our most recommended tool:?HootSuite.
-
HootSuite
HootSuite?is a powerful and convenient social media marketing system that allows you to manage your corporate accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc. With HootSuite, you can schedule social media posts in advance, publish them on all social networks, and track the reaction of your followers on every social page you run.
Furthermore, HootSuite enables you to respond to comments more effectively, monitor what your customers say about your company and products, and automatically send your RSS feeds to all social profiles.
3. Email Marketing Campaign Creator
Email marketing is one of the most critical components of any successful?digital?marketing strategy. Current and prospective customers have opted-in to hear what they have to say. You have the opportunity to become a trusted resource and increase conversion rates. There are plenty of email campaign tools on the market, but here are 3 of our favorites.
- MailChimp
- Constant Contact
- Hatchbuck
4. SEO Tools
Last but not least,?SEO?is a collection of tools and best practices that help your website rank higher in search engine results, thereby driving more traffic to your site and potentially more business.
Here are a few points you need to consider when working out an SEO?strategy:
- Who is in your target market??– SEO today is not about just grabbing as much traffic as possible, but instead attracting high-value visitors interested in what you offer. In terms of demographics, what is your market searching for? How are they performing web searches? Where are they located? The more specific your answers, the more valuable your investments in SEO become.?Google Analytics?is a good place to start your investigations!
- Most people search on mobile devices?– You don’t need statistics to show you that in the past few years the online mobile market has exploded, overtaking desktops years ago. Optimizing websites for mobile browsers is critical if you want to rank well in search engine results pages. If you’re unsure how your website measures up, enter your site’s URL in?Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
- Search engines are expanding?– When someone mentions search engines, do you automatically assume they’re talking about Google? The tech giant has such a big share of the market that ‘Googling’ has become a verb. However, a significant portion of searches takes place on alternative sites, such as Microsoft’s Bing. Make a point to search for your site on Google alternatives to see where you rank. Just improving social media engagement and adding meta tags might be?all it takes to boost you a couple ranks on Bing.
- What’s your audience searching for??– Just a few years ago, the average user didn’t trust search engines to understand conversational questions. They were searching with clunky phrases like “flower delivery new york.” Now people feel comfortable typing in things like “who delivers roses near me?” Changes in searcher habits are usually subtle but will affect which keywords will be most valuable for your site. Instead of focusing on keywords that get you more traffic, focus on those that translate into conversions, revenue and profits.
In 2019, this statement is more real than ever. Back in the ’90s when Google appeared in our lives, it wasn’t the most popular search engine at the time, but over the years its popularity began to grow, and the companies started noticing that appearing in the first pages of Google meant more fame, and more traffic meant more profits.
Now in 2020, typically “search” means Google.
And, while BING and Yahoo certainly do have their followers, in the final analysis, if your product, service or cause is going to be successful, it better be on Google. And, if you want maximum traffic, it better be on Google page 1.
Improve Your SEO
A few things to improve the SEO of your business for this year:
1. Quality over quantity: ?Google’s algorithm improves every year. It is advisable to review the texts in a continuous and respectful manner. The length is also awarded by Google, which continues to punish duplicate content, excessive keywords, and unnatural language usage.
2. Know your customer: ?The primary focus of any?good SEO campaign is to identify the specific characteristics of your ideal customers, including geographic, demographic, and psychographic variables. ?The more you know about your audience, the more powerful your digital marketing efforts will become.
3. Keep it simple: ?Mobile devices are gaining more and more attention each year.?Work on local SEO, improve loading speed, avoiding plugins or large images— including geolocation among keywords, have an attractive template or attend to voice searches are some of the keys.
Use Google SEO Tools
Remember to use the Google Mobile Search Optimization Test.
The perfect SEO campaign has to take care of every aspect of your specific market.
Frankly, it just takes a lot of work! ?And, the type of work it takes is time and thought intensive. ?And, to add one more level of complication, it’s always changing — a new competitor arrives, a new product line is available, a bad review or news item has to be dealt with. ?The search engine consultant,
Here in at?the MarketingCODE.com, we take care of all that. ?We do it every day.? If you’re looking for the perfect SEO campaign for your business, contact us!