Top 7 Trends in Social Media for Marketing Agencies in 2019

Ten years ago, you could’ve successfully marketed your clients’ products without social media. Today, there’s no chance.

Social media is the first place after Google where customers look for products, and, what’s even more important – brand image. 87% of consumers would purchase a product based on values, and the average revenue increase when a brand is presented consistently is 23%.

Even though we love our PPC campaigns, there’s nothing like social media to help the customers get to know your clients and their products. And because technology and customer priorities change from year to year, today we’re taking a look in the future.

Here’s what we can expect in 2019, and how you can use social media as a marketing agency to ensure your clients succeed.

1. The Rise of Social Shopping

Social shopping has become increasingly popular in 2018 and with Instagram’s new shop-on-the-gram features, it’ll become even bigger in 2019.

Users will now be able to find products in images and videos, save them to their collections, and find new products in the Explore section. Even though there have been talks of Instagram creating a separate app, there’s no reason.

Consumers of 2018 love shopping through social media. It comes pre-packed with referrals and comments from other people, and they can see their favorite influencers advocating the products.

In addition to Instagram (which is a visual platform), Facebook took after WeChat’s social retail example and is now working on features that will make it much easier for customers to shop without leaving the app.

Even though we may have to wait sometime before you can integrate your clients’ stores with Facebook, the social shopping trend can still be incredibly beneficial for your clients’ businesses.

Social shopping is fueled by referrals, and with social shopping on the rise, you should consider using satisfied customer testimonials in advertising. Social proof is very important to consumers of 2018, and it’ll encourage them to buy from your clients even more in 2019.

2. Micro-Influencers Driving Macro Sales

Influencers are no longer people; they’ve become walking, talking billboards in the last five years. Their followers (and your customers) quickly realized who actually provides value, and who sells products they don’t believe in.

Social media marketing in 2019 will be value and thought-driven, no doubt about it. And as far as word-of-mouth goes, micro-influencers are the channel you want to use.

They’re typically social media users who have between 1,000 and 20,000 followers and extremely high (real) engagement rates. Their community is tight-knit, which actually means a narrowed-down niche for your clients.

In their study, Mediahub realized that micro-influencers increased their marketing campaign engagement by 50%. And what’s even more interesting is that influencers with around 1,000 followers actually resulted in more success for the brands they worked with, generating 85% higher engagement than regular influencers (with over 100k followers).

Since the main motto behind marketing and shopping in 2018 and 2019 is: value, honesty, and convenience, micro-influencers fit right into that category.

If you want to optimize your clients’ campaigns (and reduce the spend on that area) in 2019 as a marketing agency, start working with micro-influencers.

3. Relevant, Interactive Content

Content marketing is here to stay, and it’s the number one way to drive sales through social media. After all, content strategies increase your clients’ ROI: they generate 4x more leads per $1000 within 36 months.

It’s also good for branding and customer communication. Consumers today won’t repeatedly buy from your clients’ brands if they don’t understand them.

So in 2019, make it your priority to include content into your marketing strategy – and not any kind of content. Create content that’s relevant instead of outdated, and increase engagement by making it interactive.

[Image-Source:Ion-Interactive,https://image.slidesharecdn.com/marchthoughtleadership-2-150326170354-conversion-gate01/95/balancing-your-interactive-content-priorities-3-638.jpg?cb=1427390261]

With the state of social media features today, it’s not hard to create interactive content.

Interactive content on Twitter:

• Polls
• Hashtags
• Questions
• Conversational video
• Partnerships and sponsorships
• Daily trends (e.g. #MondayMotivation)

Interactive content on Instagram:

• Questions
• Polls

• Shopping features
• Stories

• IGTV

Interactive content on Facebook:

• Polls
• Stories
• Facebook Live
• Messenger chatbots
• Quizzes

Interactive content on LinkedIn:

• Storytelling
• Quick, relevant status updates
• Questions as a driver for white papers
• Advice (how-to posts)

Consumers in 2019 won’t be happy if they can just observe your clients’ social media. They have to actively interact with it in order to find value, and ultimately make the purchasing decision.

It’s incredibly important to establish a content calendar that will help you constantly engage your clients’ customers. You don’t have to do it manually, as DrumUp offers content scheduling features (and much more).

4. Social Media Marketing Personalization

Accurate audience segmenting and targeting has been the number one marketing priority since the dawn of marketing itself. However, when it comes to personalization, it seems like a lot of brands are struggling with it.

The lack of personalization puts off consumers so much that 74% of them feel frustrated when content isn’t personalized. As a counter-point, marketers who use personalized experiences see a 20% increase in sales.

[Image-Source: Accenture, https://mms.businesswire.com/media/20161013005226/en/549456/5/Personalization_Survey_Graph_1.jpg]

What can you do for your clients as a marketing agency?

The first thing is obvious: gather data. For this, use social listening. Social listening will also help you curate content better, and create a content calendar that perfectly fits the customers’ interests.

DrumUp makes this really easy. Without it, you’d have to go through multiple feeds at once – and still risk not getting the right information. DrumUp’s algorithm will do that for you, and show you exactly what kind of content your audience needs.

The second thing you can do to personalize your marketing efforts is to understand the customers’ motivation for buying the product. This may seem simple on paper, which is exactly why a lot of marketing agencies haven’t had the appropriate amount of success in 2018.

Run an audience analysis and cross-reference it with your social media strategy. No matter which social media you’re using, engagement should be your number one priority. Segment audiences according to channels, and tailor your approach to their personal preferences.

Focus on personal interactions. Even though we’re all looking at screens, don’t take the human touch out of the equation. Facebook Messenger offers innovative chatbot features, Twitter has DMs, and nothing has ever been as effective as LinkedIn outreach.

Speaking of LinkedIn, LinkedIn Dynamic Ads were quite a revolution when the platform announced them. Their significance will grow in 2019, as they’re an incredible way to personalize the experience for your clients’ customers.

Personalizing your social media strategy won’t just help you get new customers; it will help you retain the existing ones, and generate more referrals than ever before.

5. Brand Awareness and Values

Marketing success is going to be very hard in 2019 without openly stating your client’s brand values. This will be the ultimate way to reach new heights of brand awareness, and create customer loyalty from the very first purchase (while also increasing the value of each purchase).

The goal of social media marketing in 2019 is to sell to customers who feel like your client’s brand is their friend.

While brands traditionally steered clear of stating opinions or standing up for values, this will become indispensable in 2019. While keeping ethics in mind, your brand should stand for similar values to those of your customers.

[Image-Source:-SproutSocial, https://www.marketingcharts.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Sprout-Topics-Demonstrating-Brand-Transparency-on-Social-Aug2018.png]

Sponsorships and donations can go a long way when it comes to brand awareness. So does employee advocacy.

Additionally, you can also use user-generated content to show appreciation for your customers. Big brands frequently do this, on a smaller or bigger scale.

For example, hashtag competitions are a big favorite of brands like Nike. Their customers are encouraged to post their own content related to the brand, and then the brand page re-shares it. This can be especially useful for your clients if they’re in the B2B space as it gives the other side more exposure.

It’s no longer enough to talk about what your brand stands for. Action should be following it closely. Especially where customer prioritization is concerned.

6. AI-Powered Customer Service and Marketing

A huge part of user experience has been shaped by instant customer service which SaaS companies like ZenDesk started providing. It’s easier and more pleasant for customers, and it means a lot for the bottom line of your clients.

However, you can use the AI-powered customer service principles for your marketing efforts, as well.

We’ve previously touched on Facebook Messenger chatbots, but while they can be used to respond to customers’ queries, they can also be used for marketing.

For example, if you want to boost the customer response to your client’s marketing campaign, you can contact them directly with the help of chatbots, and present the idea in a more personable way.

Twitter DMs can go a long way if they’re not robotic, as well. If there’s a particular offer that would interest a segment of your customers, you can divide them with Twitter Lists, and message them.

Same goes for LinkedIn: InMail is still the best way to directly reach customers.

Social media marketing in 2019 is going to be big on doing things directly. And great AI tech is going to help you do it without manual work.

7. Content Marketing Will Be a Major Player in 2019 Marketing

You probably noticed that we’ve emphasized the importance of content. However, it’s still one of the main ways to reach (new) customers on social media.

It’s an excellent way of providing additional value, educating prospects, warming up marketing campaign leads, and ultimately, converting them to customers.

You can experiment with different forms and channels, but the more your content stimulates engagement, the better will your results be.

This can be a lot of work if you’re doing it on your own, so try out DrumUp. It takes care of everything for you – from scheduling to finding content to share.

So automate your marketing, and focus on the most important thing: making your client’s business thrive.

[Image-Source: https://mybigplunge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Infographics-Rise-Of-Social-Media-My-Big-Plunge.gif]

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15 Social Media Tools that Will Help You Survive the Fake News Phase & Its Repercussions

Fake news is a serious social media problem that could affect the relationship you share with your social media audience. How?

• People are starting to question the information that they receive via social media.
• People have always been wary about the information shared by brands on social media. In fact, people consider information shared by people like themselves more credible than the information shared by brands (Edelman 2018).

Note: To overcome this hurdle, you could explore employee advocacy as a social media marketing solution.

• Social media platforms such as Twitter have begun their battle against fake news, placing stringent rules to avoid the circulation of factually incorrect information. And they are doing that by making serious algorithm changes that could affect your social media marketing efforts.

So, how can you as a social media manager or small business owner ensure that your business survives the fake news phase and its repercussions? Here are 15 social media tools that can help you strengthen your relationship with social media fans.

1. DrumUp for fresh content & employee advocacy

Instead of sharing your own content, you could share content useful to your social media audience – content from sources that are universally trusted. That’s a great way to show that you’re neutral and trustworthy.

You could also have your brand’s content shared by employees, through whom you can effectively impact your target audience on social media.

DrumUp is a social media management tool that fulfils both these functions. You can use the tool to curate fresh content (using keyword streams and/or RSS feeds) and schedule them on social media accounts. You can also use the tool’s employee advocacy platform to enable employees to share your content effortlessly.

2. Canva for visual communication

Visuals are great way to drive a message home because they get processed by the human mind quicker than text does. Visuals are also offer you the opportunity to build trust with your social media audience. For instance, visual testimonials (such as a customer’s raving video review) can improve your credibility.

You can also use visuals such as graphs and screenshots to make your communication more transparent and effective by showing customers how your products and pricing work.

Canva is a graphic design tool that you can use to design most of the visuals that you can use on social media. The tool stocks canvases and templates optimized for most use cases on social media. The tool’s drag and drop feature and its flexibility make it a great choice for graphic design.

3. Brand24 for real & personal conversations

Successful social media managers see social media platforms as channels not only for publishing but also for conversations. You can use social media channels to connect with current and future customers, potential partners and co-marketers, influencers and brand ambassadors. You can also use social media channels to enable employee conversations and employee advocacy.

For social media to count, you have to show customers that you care. And you can’t do that at scale. You have to focus on one-on-one conversations.

Brand24 is a social media monitoring tool that you can use to identify mentions, important keywords – any indicator of important conversations. The tool’s alerts will give you opportunity to create real and personal conversations.

4. FAQFox for customer-centric content research

It’s not enough to just be in contact with current customers. You should also be in touch with prospect customers and know their wants, concerns and challenges. That involves assessing the temperament of different target groups of people. And doing this can be tricky.

The objective of understanding prospect customers is to be able to connect with them by creating/sharing content that’s most relevant to them.

FAQFox is an unorthodox content research tool which you can use to find questions that certain groups of people are asking. You can do this by running keyword searches across commonly used discussion forums such as Quora and those relevant to your niche.

5. FollowerWonk for influencer and ambassador hunting

Twitter is an excellent social media platform for influencer and ambassador outreach because it’s open and allows you to communicate with anyone from your friend to the POTUS.

When searching for influencers/ambassadors on Twitter, you need to analyze profiles to see who makes the best fit. This is easier done with the assistance of a tool than done manually.

FollowerWonk is a Twitter analytics tool that you can use to analyze profiles and filter them by matching keywords to Twitter bios. Using the tool, you can also identify influencers within your social circles and reach out to them with relevant content.

6. GIPHY for GIF based communication

GIFs are videos on caffeine. They are easy to consume as they take barely any space when compared with full-fledged videos and are much shorter in length. They are also more appealing, effective and affordable than full-fledged videos.

While curating videos is hard (videos are usually covered by copyrights because they’re expensive), curating GIFs is easy and inexpensive.

GIPHY is a copyright free extensive source of GIFs that you can use to spice-up your conversations on social media. The repository also has an API that we’ve used to enable GIF curation within DrumUp.

7. RelayThat for branded image creation

Branding is an important part of building trust on social media. The consistency that your messaging has affects how social media users see and interact with your brands. However, it’s difficult to keep track of colors and fonts when you are creating content on a large scale, everyday.

Many brands choose their colors, fonts and image creation styles in advance and stick to them perpetually, without deviating from them on any channel.

RelayThat is a graphic design tool that allows you to choose and maintain brand parameters that you can easily add to all of your social media images. RelayThat also allows you to add your logo and original images to standard templates effortlessly.

8. Rocketium for video content creation

Video is an indispensable part of social media marketing. An overwhelmingly large segment of social media users are beginning to consume video on a daily basis. Video has become everyone’s preferred format of content for consumption.

There’s a lot that you can do with video for social media, from creating How-to videos to conducting expert interviews and doing live QnAs.

Rocketium is a video builder that you can use to quickly put together videos for social media use. The tool has video templates that you can use to put together professional looking social media videos to make an impact on your target audience.

9. Pocket for niche content curation

Content curation is a smart way to build a relationship with your audience without spending too much on content creation. By curating content, you can the best content in the industry with your target users without to create it yourself on a daily basis.

However, it can be really hard curating content manually. Imagine having to visit multiple websites to find the content that you want to share, every single day.

Pocket is a content collection app that helps curate content for you, based on your preferences. The tool is smart and adapts to the posts you choose to read, eventually omitting all the content that you wouldn’t want to read.

10. TweetChat for Twitter networking & conversations

Yet another way to network with the right people is through Twitter chats. The people who participate in Twitter chats are usually very interested in specific niches and in meeting the right people.

Typically the format of Twitter chats allow you to exchange knowledge in areas within an industry and find others who are also doing the same.

TweetChat is a Twitter chat tool that you can use to follow hashtag specific conversations and participate in them real-time, which can otherwise be a nightmare. Within the tool, you can experience Twitter chats at your pace and never miss a tweet.

11. Socedo for social media lead generation

While social media conversations and content publishing are great for audience engagement, your social media efforts only affect your business when conversations turn into queries and eventually sales.

There’s plenty of opportunities on social media for you to turn conversations into business, but these opportunities usually take time to manifest.

Socedo is a social media lead generation tool which automatically assesses social media profiles and identifies the people who are most likely to be interested in your business and the products/services that you have to offer.

12. PitchBox for blogger outreach and off-social PR

Blogs are still relevant in many industries. If your company’s referrals are majorly driven through blogs and bloggers, building strategic relationships with them can be beneficial. And you don’t have to focus only on your niche. General blogs whose audience matches your target audience also count.

When building relationships with bloggers, it counts to make it as organic as possible. Identify individuals you admire and want to work with and let them know the same.

PitchBox is an influencer marketing tool that can be used to search for influencers and bloggers in your niche using keywords that you provide. The tool’s extensive search leverages integrations with major SEO tools such as Moz, SEMRush and Majestic.

13. BuzzSumo for targeted content promotion

One of the secrets of being successful on social media is building a network of loyal followers who engage with your content. However, building that network is a slow and time-consuming process.

The network of followers you build need not be restricted to just influencers. You can also work with micro-influencers or employees, customers and brand ambassadors.

BuzzSumo is a content research tool that you can use to identify people and blogs belonging to a certain niche, so you can reach out to the right people. Using the tool, you can breakdown the source of any article on the internet and access backlink and share data.

14. Twitter lists and Google Drive/Email for relationship building

Twitter lists are great for relationship building because you can create a context for every relationship that you build by adding people to certain lists. However, even Twitter lists can get messy once you have added too many people to too many lists. To ensure that the lists you create make sense, create small groups of people and limit your lists to only as many as you can handle.

One way to ensure that the Twitter lists you create have value, is by following up with Twitter list members away from the social media platform.

IFTTT is a cross-action app that has a few interesting recipes that you can consider using. One of them allows to store mentions in Drive or on email, after which you can personally make contact with the people who mention you.

15. SumoMe for social media referral based list building

Social media referrals are probably one of the top three or four sources of traffic to your website. So, what do you do with the traffic that comes to your website from social media? If you’re not converting it at the moment, you should probably consider focusing on that.

There are tons of ways to convert the traffic that lands on your website. Most of it involves connecting the right content on social media to the right landing pages on your website.

SumoMe is a website traffic analytics tool and traffic conversion tool that you can use to optimize website traffic and conversion. The tool even has customizable email signup forms that you can instal on your website to convert incoming referrals.

Wrap

With social media platforms undergoing major changes to battle fake news and survive its repercussions, it’s critical to invest in social media tools and strategies that are likely to survive the fallout. This list includes a collection of some of the smartest investments that you can make to ensure that your brand isn’t affected by drastic algorithm changes. Over to you.

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5 Digital Marketing Experts Share Views on Predicted Trends for 2018

There’s no certainty that yesterday’s digital and social media marketing strategies will work tomorrow. In fact, in my digital and social media experience, full-blown trends that become mainstream, become ineffective and eventually die just as quickly as they come. To understand what the digital marketing trends you should focus on in 2018, we asked 5 digital marketing experts the following questions.

What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

What is the best way to implement these trends?

How will blockchain affect digital marketing in 2018?

There’s a lot of buzz about blockchain as a payment mechanism and how it might affect the digital marketing scene.

Some of our experts believe that 2018 won’t see much development in that regard, while others on the panel have expressed their excitement for the potential that it holds. Read about this and more on this expert interview series.

Before we go into the answers, here is a short introduction to our expert panel.

Ron Sela

Digital marketing expert and social media influencer Ron Sela has acted as Director of Marketing for top companies such as Pagewiz, Klear and Dapulse. He now heads his own consultancy (RonSela.com) and has an influence marketing blog which has been named as the second best globally.

Aaron Ginn

A Silicon Valley Tech guru, Aaron Ginn is considered an early influencer in the growth hacking movement. Named in Forbes 30 under 30, Ginn specializes in product development, data science and digital marketing, and currently heads Lincoln Network, a community of like-minded technologists.

Gary C. Bizzo

Gary C. Bizzo has been an International Business Mentor to over 1000 entrepreneurs, leaders and investors. He’s a published author and has been referred to as one of the 17 masters of Marketing & PR and an incredible resource for entrepreneurs by Entrepreneur Magazine, and is currently Founder/Partner at Kickstart Ventures Inc.

Eric Enge

Named US Search Personality of the Year and Search Marketer of the Year in 2016, Eric Enge has extraordinary SEO skills and has worked with several Fortune 500 companies. Enge frequently shares his expertise via several prestigious publications, some of which are Forbes, SearchEngineLand and CopyBlogger and is CEO of Stone Temple.

Aaron Agius

With over 14 years of making impact in the digital marketing space, Aaron Agius has worked with high-profile clients such as Coca-Cola, Salesforce and IBM. Agius is an experienced search, content & social marketer who excels at developing enterprise-level digital marketing solutions and is currently Managing Director at Louder.Online.

Ron Sela

1. What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

Chatbots developed using AI technology is one of the top marketing trends in 2018. The chatbots can maintain conversations with customers using machine learning. It gathers information to improve its conversational skills over time. Leading brands like Facebook have already come up with their chatbot platform and chatbot. There are various tools AI based chatbot platforms like ChattyPeople, ManyChat, ChatFuel, and FlowXO which can be used to develop chatbots for websites and mobile apps.

Voice-controlled devices have brought a change to how brands used to develop their content strategy. Leading players like Amazon and Google have introduced their voice-based devices which have sold in millions. This has lead brands to shift their content strategy to include potential customers in this new audio-based channel. Companies are thinking beyond just simple narration and coming up with innovative techniques to engage the audience making it an important trend in 2018.

Predictive lead scoring is another essential trend which has changed the way marketers deal with leads. It produces more value than traditional lead scoring, accurately identifying the potential leads that can be converted to sales. Marketers can now prioritize their leads better and close deals with increased success compared to traditional lead scoring. The system adapts to changing market conditions to provide an accurate result.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

The best way to implement the changes is to develop a marketing strategy with timeline, objectives, and goals along with metrics to evaluate success. The company should create a marketing team that gets the responsibility to carry out the marketing project. The need may arise for collaboration with an external marketing partner who can help to implement the strategy and get access to resources. The marketing team should be aware and educated about the strategy and any specific technique that is going to be applied.

Marketing project management software can facilitate the implementation. It can be used to assign duties, manage campaigns, track deadlines, measure success and gather analytics for creating marketing insights. The results of the marketing campaigns can be measured using the metrics you developed like the number of sales or amount of readers who accessed the content. Changes should be made to the strategy based on insights and changing marketing conditions for better success.

3. How will blockchain affect digital marketing in the 2018?

Blockchain has already proved to be a disruptive technology which can enable real-time automation. The feature of smart contracts allows real-time universal updates which are accessible to all parties. The tamper-proof system is suitable for developing an automated process for formal client agreements. It can replace the multi-layer executive approval process to offer instant approvals eliminating any project delays. Blockchain can also be used to record each stage in the supply chain of contracts. The whole contract lifecycle can be accessed and used to automate supply chain processes like sourcing.

The system ensures that all data and transactions are entirely accurate and accountable creating a reliable and innovative way for marketers to engage with customers and provide improved service. It will also be possible to monitor products across their entire lifecycle and track down to the minutest detail. Blockchain automation will impact marketing strategies by providing a new way of company and customer interaction.

Aaron Ginn

What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

• Movement back towards 1-1 communication
• Death of the “open platform”
• Contact book is king again

What is the best way to implement these trends?

The number one priority should be building up your own direct communication with your customers. Social platforms are now unreliable and there is constant pressure to change algos which impacts organic marketing, forcing companies to paid marketing.

How will blockchain affect digital marketing in the 2018?

Probably will have limited to no impact on marketing as it is a means of contract formation and validation and the vision casting about blockchain hasn’t come to pass. Most of marketing has focused on Bitcoin over blockchain but these haven’t been marketing advances per say.

Gary C. Bizzo 

1. What are the 3 best marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

• Brand marketing will replace Cause marketing. It’s a different way of thinking but brings in the cause and ties it to the corporate vision. Just a different way of seeing it. In the past corporate responsibility to the community was the mantra. Now it’s an executable brand philosophy that is more about how the company manages day-to-day operations.
• Storytelling will be part of new long term play to keep people engaged. However it is done people want to follow the message. Video will continue to dominate the market.
• Machine learning. Marketers will have to embrace the d=idea that they need data collection and analytic tools so they can see patterns and trends faster and quicker than the competition. Google is the leader in this.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

• A company wide realignment in thinking
• Use video to do the storytelling
• Put some money into the best analytic tools then learn how to analyze the data

3. How will blockchain affect marketing in the 2018?

Marketers need to realize a change is coming in the form of blockchain and be prepared to pivot but I don’t see blockchain making major inroads to the consciousness of marketers until the mass market adopts it. We are still a couple of years before prototypical blockchain will be advanced enough for adoption in everyday work.

Eric Enge

1. What are the 3 best marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

The continuing use of Machine Learning by Google is a big trend. What this is driving is three things:

• Google is getting much better at understanding a user’s query-intent.
• Google is getting much better at understanding content depth and quality.
• Google is getting much better at matching content to user query intent.

These trends mean that your business need to focus on creating content that Google will want to select to match up to your targeted search queries. The best way to do that is to focus on how you create the best user experience for someone who enters that search query. If you fail to match up with that, you’ll have a great deal of difficulty in ranking for those queries. Broadly speaking, you can think of this as “aligning your interests with those of Google.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

More and more businesses will create apps for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. There are more than 400M active installs of the Google Assistant, and the Smart Speaker category is growing rapidly, with about 44M US households having one. Users are becoming more conditioned to use voice commands with devices as well, and this will drive more adoption of the digital personal assistants. By developing an app, you enable your business to reach large audiences that currently don’t have that much competition as yet.

Feeding into the digital personal assistant (DPA) opportunity, is the role of featured snippets. When using voice commands to conduct searches via a DPA, you typically get only one response. The great majority of the time this result comes from the corresponding featured snippet that you’ll get if you conduct a types in search on your desktop or mobile device.

As a result, learning how to obtain featured snippets is very important for your business. The basics are to map out common user questions related to your business. Then, create content that answers that question in a direct, and concise, manner. Then on the same page, have additional content that answers the related questions that Google may have. Google does value the more in-depth content, and our research shows that these types of pages are far more likely to get and keep featured snippets.

3. How will blockchain affect marketing in the 2018?

It will take time for blockchain to have a major impact on marketing, and this will unfold over time. In 2018, I’d expect that we’ll begin to see some marketing applications that rely on blockchain begin to emerge. In the longer term, what blockchain has the potential to do is to eliminate the need for intermediaries in advertising. For example, programs like Google’s AdSense program could get replaced, as advertisers will be able to deal directly with the web sites themselves, and the blockchain will provide them with the security needed to be confident in placing those ads.

Aaron Agius

1. What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

The three I’m focusing on most in 2018 are content marketing for thought leadership, customer experience as marketing, and personalisation in marketing.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

For content marketing as thought leadership, I’m continuing to invest in blogging, guest posting and speaking. I’m also advising Louder’s clients to think of marketing from the broader perspective of the full customer experience. As marketing gets more complex, it’s not enough to think in channel-specific terms. Your SEO, content and PPC ads don’t matter if your product isn’t good or if you’re letting new buyers down during the onboarding and activation processes. Marketing has to start thinking bigger.

Personalisation will continue to grow in importance as well, though implementing it can look very different, depending on your company and how you connect with customers. Personalisation might be as simple as incorporating better merge fields into your marketing emails. But it’s also about better segmentation, CTAs that are hyper-targeted to specific pain points and even building out product features for a niched-down audience. There’s no “one size fits all” anymore, whether you’re talking about marketing or the broader question of product development.

3. How will blockchain affect digital marketing in the 2018?

Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to have that much of an impact in 2018. I think we’ll start to see it in the future – in the way PPC ads are bought and sold, in particular. But I don’t think adoption has been widespread enough yet to really affect marketing this year.

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