11 Reasons Why Every Affiliate Marketer Should Learn SEO

 As an affiliate marketer, you probably spend a LOT of time thinking of ways to drive traffic to your site.

After all, no traffic = no affiliate sales.

The two main sources of traffic for most websites are usually:

1. Organic Search

2. Paid Advertising

Social media and other sources will also bring visitors to your site, but these are usually your two best bets for consistent, ongoing traffic.

Why Should You Care About Organic Search? 

Of these two main sources of traffic, search always comes out on top. In fact, a recent study by Experian Marketing Services found that on average, 87% of a website’s traffic comes from organic sources. This percentage of course, varies by industry. However it doesn’t change the fact that the majority of traffic in almost every industry comes from people typing their queries into Google or another search engine and clicking on the links in the results. 

This means if your website is not optimized for search, you are potentially losing out on large amounts of traffic. 

But what do I mean by "optimized for search"? I mean, your website should be created and maintained according to several widely accepted best practices for search engine optimization. You should also implement your other marketing efforts (especially content marketing and social media marketing) keeping your SEO goals in mind.

Why Should You Learn SEO?

OK, so we know SEO is important. But, there are thousands of SEO experts in the world. Wouldn’t it just be easier to hire someone to do your SEO instead of trying to understand it all?

Yes, of course. I definitely think it’s a good idea to hire someone with SEO expertise to help you out. However, if you develop an understanding of how search engine optimization works, your affiliate marketing efforts will ultimately benefit from it. In fact, by understanding what your SEO provider does, you may be able to get more out of the services they provide. 

But if you're still not convinced the additional SEO knowledge will do you any good, here are 11 reasons why every affiliate marketer should learn SEO. 

(By the way, our free lesson, Introduction to Affiliate Marketing SEO, is a great place to get started with your SEO learning.)

1. Understand Search Engines

You get that search traffic is important, but do you understand what it takes for your website to do well on a search engine? How do Google, Bing and Yahoo even work?

When you learn SEO, you don't just learn a new marketing skill. You actually start to understand how search engines work. This is hugely useful when you're in the business of driving traffic to your site.

Search engines consistently crawl the web for new content (links) and index them so when a person performs an online search, Google/Bing/Yahoo can deliver the most relevant results for their search query. The results are ranked so the most popular link for a search term (or the one most likely to give an answer) appears at the top (number 1 position). 

But how does a search engine determine the most popular and relevant site for a search term? 

Well, we don't actually know. Search engines rely on secret algorithms to decide what pages to show. SEO experts make educated guesses about what goes into those algorithms based on common factors in high-ranking websites. And Google occasionally drops little hints about what's important, too. These have led to best practices and general guidelines for SEO that make it possible for website owners like yourself to build sites specifically to get found by the search engines.  

I recommend checking out Google's website on How Search Works to get a deeper understanding of what really goes on behind the scenes of the number one search engine. 

If you're interested in learning more about best-practice recommendations for ranking on the major search engines, check these out: 

• Google webmaster guidelines
• Bing webmaster guidelines
• Yahoo search ranking guidelines

By developing a more thorough understanding of search engines and terms like crawling and indexing, page rank and more, you will become more aware of what it takes to optimize your website and benefit from increased search traffic.

2. Improve Your Website's Design

Once you begin to understand how search engines work, you will see that a good website is not just about a pretty design and some clever content. While the focus of modern SEO is to make websites human-friendly, it's important to remember that how you and I see a website is different from how search engines view it. 

For your website to be truly search engine friendly, it must follow some pretty technical specifications for design and development.

Learning SEO will help you grasp the importance of aspects of website creation, such as:

• Creating quality content.
• Making your content indexable. 
• Organizing your website into a proper structure.
• The proper use of keywords in your site content.
• Having quality inbound and outbound links for your website

Here's some advice from Google on how to create a Google-friendly site.

An understanding of SEO will ensure you don't waste your time making website changes that don't deliver results. Plus, for any new websites you launch, you will also know how to structure your site and optimize it right from the start.

3. Optimize Your Content

You don't need me to tell you this, but... content is king.

On your site, on your blog, on social media... everywhere you look, the web is overflowing with millions of pieces of content.

But, how much of it is actually good quality?

In the early days of the web, it took very little to get your website to do well on a search engine. In 2015, that has completely changed. The major search engines are heavily focused on the quality of your website now, and your content has a lot to do with it. 

Quality content is not just about creating a great blog post or a fun infographic. It's about building an entire website that delivers that same quality. For search engines, good content is a sign of a site that is considerate of its visitors; one that tries to anticipate and answer questions. It's all about a good user experience.

Check out this really helpful e-book by SEO.com on 11 Types of Content You Should Be Creating For SEO Right Now.

Here are some guidelines from the major search engines on how to create quality content for your site:

1. Google guidelines on valuable content

2. Yahoo content quality guidelines

3. Bing on how to build quality content

If you're hiring people to do your content, it's important that they create something that won't get you penalized by search engines. When you learn SEO, you also learn what makes for good content so you can guide your writers, designers, bloggers and other content creators in the right direction. Or, if you're doing it all yourself, you'll know how to produce content that will impress your site visitors and search engines.

4. Figure Out What to Do with Keywords

Most people, even if they don't quite get SEO, understand that keywords play a big role in the world of search engines. This is true.

Keywords are fundamental to the search process. It's how users communicate what they're searching for. The search engines deliver results based on these keywords. 

Search engines measure how keywords are used within your website. This helps them determine how relevant your website is for particular search queries. So, it's essential that you use specific, highly relevant keywords to maximize your opportunities for appearing in search results.

But, be careful of keyword abuse. In the early days of the web, stuffing as many keywords as possible onto a page was a common practice. This no longer works and in fact, will count as keyword abuse and will probably get you penalized. Now, it's more important to use your keywords in a relevant, natural way.

Don't be this person! Write naturally so your visitors feel you're having a real conversation. 

Understanding how keywords work will be very helpful for you because:

• You can identify which keywords are relevant for you.
• When you do keyword research, you now know what to look for.
• If you hire a writer for your web content, you can guide them on proper keyword usage.
• You will understand where keywords need to be used, e.g., on page content, in title tags, in meta descriptions, etc. 

5. Understand How Link-Building Works

Links are another big part of the SEO puzzle. 

Search engines use links to analyze a website's popularity, trustworthiness, authority, and much more.  However, not all links are made equal. A trustworthy site is likely to link to another trustworthy site — not to spammy sites. This often helps a search engine determine the quality of links.

The more popular and trustworthy a site, the more significant it is to have a link from them. 

So, to make the most of your link-building efforts, you need to make sure you're acquiring links from other relevant, popular and trustworthy sites. These will be helpful for your website's SEO. Paying for 1,000 irrelevant links will do you no good.

Link-building is an important task for SEO. Whether you're doing your own link building or hiring someone else to do it, you need to understand how it works to make sure you're only building quality links. 

6. Build Your Online Reputation

When you learn SEO and do it right, your site will start to show up in more search results, thus boosting your brand's online visibility. 

How does a boost in your visibility help you? When you start to show up in the results for all the relevant search terms for your industry, your audience and customers will start to think of you as a leader in the industry.

I'm not making this up. People trust organic search engine results more than paid ads.

On average, people believe organic results are more likely to be current and relevant. They want the most authoritative sources. In short, they believe they are getting the best information via search engine results. 

So when you understand SEO, you can figure out how to optimize your site to appear in the results for more queries that are relevant for your customers. The more they see you, the more they will start to trust your site. 

7. Get More Traffic to Your Website

A website optimized for search engines is definitely going to start getting you more traffic.

An eConsultancy study found that an overwhelming 94% of clicks are for organic search results. 

Another experiment also found that 60% of "direct traffic" reported in your data may actually be attributed to organic search.

With people more likely to click on search results than paid ads, it's only natural that if your website is more visible online, you will start to see more people visiting your site. 

Search engines are the first point of contact for most people looking for information. SEO helps you understand how to make your site more visible to the right audience, which in turn results in more traffic to your site.

8. Make More Money

Say your website currently gets a 100 visitors a day. Let's also say that 2% of your visitors click through to your ads and this makes you $2 a day. 

Now, your website is getting a 1,000 visitors a day thanks to solid SEO. You have the same 2% click-through rate. This means you're now making $20 a day!

If you experience a jump in traffic thanks to your SEO efforts, this is eventually going to boil down to increased revenue from your website — especially if your website is optimized to make your traffic convert to sales. Who doesn't like more money?

But to make this extra money, you really have to develop an understanding of what SEO is, how it works and how you can make it work for you.

9. Market Yourself for Free

SEO is free marketing.

Pay-per-click advertising requires you to set daily/monthly budgets that you are willing to spend to buy advertising space on search engines. Each click on an ad will cost you money, and if you're in a particularly competitive industry, clicks can sometimes cost $40-50! 

Clicks on organic results don't cost you any money. All you have to do is maintain your position in the rankings, and the traffic you get is completely free.

Of course, you will be spending time and energy optimizing your site in the first place. It's going to cost you some hours, even if it costs you no money. You can also hire someone else to do the initial work, which will put a dent in your budget. But then you can save money by doing your ongoing SEO maintenance yourself — because you'll understand how SEO works! 

10. Protect Yourself From Sketchy SEO Practices

If you're working with an SEO expert, it's doubly important to at least have an idea of what they're going to do for your site. 

There are thousands of SEO providers out there, and while a lot of them are very good, some will engage in sketchy practices. Their aim is to show you results right away, but there's a few problems with that:

1. These results will be short term.
2. Your site could end up with a penalty. 
3. Google could de-index you for spammy SEO practices.

By learning a bit about search engine optimization, you'll learn the difference between what is good (white hat SEO) and what is bad (black hat SEO). Avoid black hat tactics, and if your SEO provider tries to suggest anything sketchy that falls into this category, you know to send them packing straightaway. SEO takes time, so don't be frustrated if you don't jump in the search rankings overnight!  

11. Become a Better Affiliate Marketer 

Your end goal is not to become better at SEO, but to become better at affiliate marketing...right?

By gaining an understanding of SEO, you will:

• Make better, more SEO-friendly websites, right from the beginning. 
• Get better at driving traffic to your website.
• Create better, more relevant content for your site.
• Build high quality links to your site. 
• Improve your website's authority in the industry. 
• Outdo the competition (especially if they're not doing SEO).
• Spot more opportunities for growing your site and business.

Nobody knows your business better than you, and SEO will only help to enhance that. 

Does this make you want to learn SEO to improve your affiliate marketing efforts? 

If you already do SEO for yourself, what do you think has been the number one benefit of learning SEO for affiliate marketing?

P.S. If you're looking for a tool that shows you whether your SEO efforts are getting you anywhere, we have something for you: AffiloTools automatically tracks your rankings in great detail and in multiple search engines so you can see real results.

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How to Grow Your Instagram Following from Zero to Thousands Organically (10 ideas)

According to eMarketer, Instagram could have 26.9 million more US users by 2020, overtaking Facebook, Twitter and every other social media network on record. The social media platform also seems to be enjoying an unprecedented adoption and engagement rates among young adults, resulting in increasing mobile revenues.

If you want to make the most of this social platform, you need to grow your following. Here are 10 ways to grow your Instagram following organically.

Note: The easiest way to execute all of these ideas is by using a social media management tool such as DrumUp that simplifies publishing.

1. Work with locations to maximize exposure

Instagram’s geolocation feature has revolutionized local marketing. Using this feature, users can check what’s happening in any given location, giving local businesses an opportunity to catch their attention. Social media marketers can work with Instagram’s geolocation to maximize exposure for their brand’s content.

Instagram’s geolocation works in different content formats, but before you use any of them, ensure that your store or spot has a labelled location. If it doesn’t have one, you can “Create your location” on Facebook. Once you have, you can use geolocations in hashtags and stickers (on stories), apart from using them typically, as part of every Instagram post.

2. Target low competition hashtags to get featured

When working with keywords and hashtags, it’s not always the best idea to go after the most popular hashtags. For instance, words such as #party and #summer may be more popular, but they won’t do much for your content or Instagram account in the long run. Instead, you can earn more exposure and engagement in your community by using more niche hashtags.

If you’ve noticed, Instagram has a “Trends” section that gets a lot of attention. You can make that section by trending for a specific hashtag. This is more likely when you target a more achievable, less sought-after hashtag. If you aren’t able to identify such opportunities, you could use a tool like Ink361 to do it.

3. Craft the perfect bio describing your unique value proposition

Instagram allows you 160 characters of space to introduce your account to potential followers and win them over. This space can make or break your first impression, so yes, what you say in it matters. Most businesses stick to plain and boring descriptions of what they do, but it’s those who go beyond the basics that stay in followers’ minds.

What do you do? What drives you to do what you do? Why should followers invest any time on you? Answer these questions in a personal, compelling and memorable manner. You don’t have to commit to a particular bio, you can experiment with different ideas and stick with the one that earns you the most attention and compliments. You could use some humor on your bio like Maker’s Mark has.

4. Select an Instagram name with SEO value

It may be tempting to use your own name and make it popular, but don’t do that unless you already have a following on other social networks. Instead, think of keywords related to your niche that people are already searching for. Your account is likely to get a lot of free traffic if you can identify keywords that are also decently popular hashtags.

Getting keywords as Instagram names can be tough, but it’s not impossible. Try and get creative and look for long-tailed keywords or phrases that are a combination of one or more shorter keywords. You can change your Instagram name, so keep testing different names until you find the perfect one.

5. Network and build an Instagram pod to amplify reach

Instagram pods are small, closed groups of pro Instagrammers who help each other boost reach and engagement for Instagram posts. When you publish a post on Instagram, you have a defined window of time to get more exposure for the post before it becomes dated and disappears from all feeds. Pods can help you accomplish that objective.

Many Instagrammers are networking and tieing up with other pros in the same niche, to help each other get access to a large number of Instagrammers. When a participant of the pod publishes a post, he or she DMs the rest of the group requesting them to like/comment and share the posts. The resulting organic engagement improves the individual’s chances of reaching more people and growing their Instagram following.

6. Use hashtags targeted by curator accounts

There exist several Instagram accounts whose sole purpose is to curate content related to certain areas or topics. These accounts typically discover the content they curate by following a bunch of hashtags. You can catch the attention of these curator accounts by consistently using those hashtags on your Instagram posts.

It can be super-hard to get features on the accounts of large curators, who already get thousands of submissions on a daily basis. The key is to find smaller, active communities that are both accessible and worth building relationships with. You can identify such communities by following hashtags yourself and observing the activity of other small Instagrammers in your niche.

7. Run exciting giveaways on a regular basis

Giveaways have always worked wonders for brands who want to grow their email lists. You can use giveaways to get new followers, increase engagement and brand awareness or get exposure among local businesses and like-minded people. The first thing that you should do is decide which giveaway would be enticing enough to your target audience.

However, running a giveaway contest involves a lot of factors that you should consider. Successful giveaway contests have the right hashtag, an attractive prize, means to monitor entries, factors to decide the winner and the right promotion plan. So each of your giveaways should ideally have the right strategy.

8. Identify and participate in trends

Trends attract a lot of attention, which is why it makes sense for Instagram marketers to track and participate in them. When there’s an opportunity for you to align your content with trends, you should, because doing so can dramatically improve your engagement and reach. A good way to do this is by marking events on your calendar in advance, so you never miss participating in one.

If you’re not sure which trends to hop on, start with holidays like #NationalCoffeeDay. It’s important to join these conversations in a meaningful way, else your target audience may make you out for trying too hard to get more eyeballs.

9. Connect your Facebook & other networks to Instagram

If you have a Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn page, or a blog with a following, you may assume that people following you there are already following you on every platform. Here’s news for you – they probably aren’t. By connecting your Facebook and other networks to Instagram, you can get your Instagram posts exposure among all of your followers across platforms.

There are many ways to do this. The simplest would be to connect your Facebook and Instagram, and add social media plugins for all social networks on your website and blog. Once you have, you can cross-post content from one social network to another, depending on what’s possible and not.

10. Work with a marketable theme

This strategy is particularly pertinent to Instagram marketing, because your followers don’t just see your latest post but see all of your posts in grid form. That’s why it’s critical for Instagram marketers to design a theme for each of the brands they manage. The theme can be anything, but it’s best if the theme is visually appealing.

Some Instagrammers use multiple spaces in their grid to create larger images, like pieces of a puzzle. This feature gives you a lot of room for creativity and experimentation. You can use your grid to create something completely fresh, giving your Instagram account visitors something amazing to see.

Wrap

Instagram is probably the best visual social media platform for engagement, and to make the most of the opportunities it provides, you need to step-up your Instagram marketing game. This post provides 10 new ideas that you can use to grow your Instagram following and skyrocket your Instagram marketing results.

Feature image via Freepik.com

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10 Pro Tips for B2B Marketing on Pinterest

We think of Pinterest as a lifestyle social network, chock full of party ideas, crafts, home decor inspiration, recipes, and fitness routines. But Pinterest is so much more than that. It’s become an asset to marketers who want to show off their visual content and drive traffic to their sites.
And here’s a notable benefit of Pinterest marketing. According to this infographic, the half-life of a Pin is a whopping 3.5 months. That’s 1,680 times longer than the half-life of a Facebook post. And don’t even get me started on the 24-minute half-life of a Tweet. Which means that the effort you put into your Pinterest presence will pay dividends for a long time.
And the value of Pinterest marketing isn’t limited to B2C businesses. Pinterest can supply fresh traffic and leads to B2B businesses as well. In this post, I’ll share 10 tips for B2B Marketing on Pinterest.

1. Pin a Variety of Visual Content

Pinterest is for visual content. That’s why so many B2B businesses often think Pinterest isn’t for them. They feel like they don’t have enough—or in fact any—visual content to share.
So, first of all, if you don’t have any visual content, it’s time to get cracking. Content marketing is the future of marketing, and the sexiness of visual content is undeniable.
But don’t wait until you have a fresh bank of visual assets before you dip your feet into the Pinterest pool. Trust me, you have more visual content than you realize. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Product images. Post your product images and link back to your site’s product pages.
• Quotes. Create graphic quotes that would inspire your target audience. Canva makes the job quick and easy.
• Blog posts. Pin your blog posts to drive people back to your site.
• Events. Pin photos of company and industry events.
• Employees. Show off photos of team members. Let your unique company culture shine through pinned photos of your inter-company social events.
• Marketing materials. Pin the covers of your e-books, white papers, and brochures—with links to where the materials can be downloaded.
• Presentations. Put your decks to work for you. Create a board for each presentation and pin key slides to the board.
• Industry-related topics. Share infographics and other pieces that are relevant to your industry.
• Tips and recommendations. Be helpful to your prospects and clients. Curate tips and recommendations to make their lives easier. Create boards on books you recommend, great blogs for them to follow, podcasts, and apps.
• Targeted boards. Create specific boards that cater to the needs and interests of individual industries and your different personas.

2. Balance Quality and Personality

When you create a new board, aim to make it the best board on that topic, and include a wide variety of quality pins. But while you target quality, don’t be afraid to show your personality. Quirkiness and humour can be very effective at making you stand out on Pinterest.

3. Use Pinterest to Find Great Content

Don’t limit your Pinterest presence to your own content. Round out your boards with content that your audience will enjoy, from other sources.
Don’t have time to scour the Web for that content? Follow relevant Pinners to fill your feed with quality Pins that you can conveniently re-Pin to your boards.

4. Use Great Images

Attention-grabbing imagery is key on Pinterest. Make sure you’re using the optimal image size for your Pins, board images, and profile images.
Use stunning photography, beautiful fonts and place subtle branding in the corners of your images. And make it easy for your site visitors to pin your content right from your site. Make sure that all your posts and pages contain at least one Pinnable image.

5. Write Quality Copy

Of course, great imagery that your Pinterest audience wants to click is key. But don’t forget to make your copy work for you too. Think of your descriptions as ad copy. Make them engaging enough to earn a click. And add compelling calls to action to help convert visitors to your site.

6. SEO Your Boards and Pins

Pinterest can be an asset in your SEO efforts. The more people re-pin your site content, the more backlinks your site earns. And social signals can improve your rankings.
To help people find your Pins on both Pinterest and Google, optimize your profile, boards, and pins. Search Engine Watch offers up some great advice here on how to do that.
But how about the Pins that are created directly from your site? You can’t always count on Pinners to enter a keyword-rich description on those pins. Many won’t enter a description at all. Give Pinners a hand by enabling Rich Pins, which automatically pull some of the post content into the description.

7. Get the Data

To help you decide what new content to create and post to Pinterest, you need to understand how your current content is performing. And for that, you’re going to need to get the data. Here are three great sources of analytics data for Pinterest.
To start with, access the analytics data for your Pinterest business page here. You’ll find a variety of engagement insights about your pins.
Next, remember that not everyone pins from Pinterest. Find out what content people are pinning directly from your site by visiting pinterest.com/source/example.com. (Substitute example.com for your domain.)
Finally, use Google Analytics to monitor engagement and conversion metrics for your Pinterest traffic.

8. Research Your Ideal Client

Are you trying to get a better understand of who your ideal client is as a person? Pinterest can provide a wealth of data. Just check out the boards of your clients and people who have repinned your pins. What else are they pinning? What insights can you glean from their boards?

9. Research Content Ideas

If content creation is a priority for you, you’ll hit occasional droughts in content ideas. (It happens to the best of us, believe me.) Pinterest’s guided search is effective for unearthing content ideas and curation opportunities around a topic.

10. Get Inspired by the Greats

Why reinvent the wheel when you can follow the lead of other great brands? Check out these great Pinterest business pages to see how it’s done:

• Hootsuite
• Intel
• General Electric
• IBM
• Fedex
• Marketo
• Hubspot

11. Bonus tip: Collaborate with Clients and Partners

Ok so this isn’t really a marketing, so consider it a bonus. Pinterest is a fantastic tool for collaborating with clients.
I use it whenever I build a visual asset for a new client – whether it’s a video, presentation, infographic or Website. So that I don’t waste time building a piece my client won’t like, I strive to get into my client’s head before I begin. I try to get a sense of the design styles that resonate with them.
Sure, I could have them fill out a client brief. But that exercise feels too esoteric to some of my clients. What’s worked brilliantly for me instead is to create a secret board on Pinterest, and add my client as a contributor. My client then spends time Pinning images, photos, colour palettes, fonts, and websites they love. Before long, I know exactly what they’re after and can deliver on their vision.

Over To You

Have you been using Pinterest in your B2B marketing? If not, why? If so, have I missed any key points? I’d love to hear from you. Please share in the comments.



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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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