Navigating through the world of business can be chaotic. At the time of this publication in November 2023, global economic growth is expected to remain weak for an undefined amount of time.

However, certain rules of marketing remain steadfast to guide businesses towards success in any environment. These universal laws are the anchors that keep a business steady, helping it thrive amidst uncertainty and change.

In this guide, we’ll explore three laws that have proven to be the cornerstones of successful marketing. These are practical, tried-and-tested approaches that have empowered businesses to overcome challenges and flourish, regardless of external conditions. By mastering these principles, businesses can turn adversities into opportunities, ensuring growth and resilience in any market landscape. Let’s uncover these essential laws that pave the way to success in the unpredictable world of business marketing. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to integrate these insights into your career. Follow the implementation steps!

Law 1: Success in Marketing is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Navigating the tumultuous seas of digital marketing necessitates a steadfast ship, fortified by a strategic long-term vision. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Take Apple, for instance. The late ’90s saw them on the brink of bankruptcy. Instead of grasping at quick, temporary fixes, Apple anchored themselves in a long-term vision. A vision that didn’t just stop at survival, but aimed for revolutionary contributions, resulting in groundbreaking products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

In a landscape where immediate gains often allure businesses, it’s essential to remember that these are transient. A focus merely on the immediate returns leaves businesses scurrying on a hamster wheel, chasing after fleeting successes, but never really moving forward.

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A long-term vision, however, acts as the north star, guiding businesses through immediate challenges while ensuring sustainable success and consistent growth over time.

Consider This Analogy: 

Building a business is like growing a tree. Initially, it requires nurturing, patience, and consistent care. But with time, the tree grows, becoming strong and robust, offering shade and fruits—transforming the landscape. The same goes for business. A vision, perseverance, and a long-term strategy are the nutrients that allow it to flourish, creating a sustainable presence in the market.

Implementation Steps: 

• Begin by planning a content calendar focused on delivering consistent value over the next six months. 
• Ensure regular reviews and necessary adjustments to your long-term goals, keeping pace with evolving market trends and demands. 
• And don’t forget the foundation—invest in robust systems and ongoing training, laying down strong roots for sustainable success in the ever-changing digital marketing landscape.

Law 2: Survey, Listen, and Serve

Effective marketing hinges on understanding and responding to the customer’s needs and preferences. A robust, customer-centric approach helps in shaping products and services that resonate with the audience, enhancing overall satisfaction and loyalty.

Take Netflix, for instance. Netflix’s evolution from a DVD rental company to a streaming giant is a compelling illustration of a customer-centric approach.

Their transition wasn’t just a technological upgrade; it was a strategic shift informed by attentively listening to customer preferences and viewing habits. Netflix succeeded, while competitors such a Blockbuster haid their blinders on.

Here are some keystone insights when considering how to Survey, Listen, and Serve…

Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty:

Surveying customers is essential for gauging their satisfaction. When customers feel heard and valued, it fosters loyalty, turning one-time buyers into repeat customers. Through customer surveys, businesses can receive direct feedback, helping to identify areas of improvement, enhancing overall customer satisfaction.

Engagement:

Engaging customers through surveys not only garners essential feedback but also makes customers feel valued and involved. It cultivates a relationship where customers feel that their opinions are appreciated and considered, enhancing their connection and engagement with the brand.

Product & Service Enhancement:

Surveys can unveil insightful customer feedback regarding products and services. This information is crucial for making necessary adjustments and innovations, ensuring that offerings remain aligned with customer needs and expectations.

Data Collection:

Surveys are instrumental in collecting demographic information. Understanding the demographic composition of a customer base is crucial for tailoring marketing strategies, ensuring they resonate well with the target audience.

Operational Efficiency:

Customer feedback can also shed light on a company’s operational aspects, such as customer service and website usability. Such insights are invaluable for making necessary enhancements, improving the overall customer experience.

Benchmarking:

Consistent surveying allows for effective benchmarking, enabling businesses to track performance over time, assess the impact of implemented changes, and make data-driven strategic decisions.

Implementation Steps:

• Regularly incorporate customer feedback mechanisms like surveys and direct interactions to remain attuned to customer needs and preferences.
• Continuously refine and adjust offerings based on customer feedback, ensuring products and services evolve in alignment with customer expectations.
• In conclusion, adopting a customer-centric approach, symbolized by surveying, listening, and serving, is indispensable for nurturing customer relationships, driving loyalty, and ensuring sustained business success.

Law 3: Build Trust in Every Interaction

In a world cluttered with countless competitors vying for your prospects attention, standing out is about more than just having a great product or service. It’s about connecting authentically, building relationships rooted in trust and understanding. It’s this foundational trust that transforms casual customers into loyal advocates, ensuring that your business isn’t just seen, but it truly resonates and remains memorable.

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For instance, let’s talk about Oprah! Through vulnerability and honest connections, Oprah Winfrey didn’t just build an audience; she cultivated a community. Sharing, listening, and interacting genuinely, she created a media landscape where trust and respect flourished. Oprah was known to make her audience and even guests cry for the first time live. She had a natural ability to build instant trust.

Here are some keystone insights when considering how to develop and maintain trust…

The Unseen Fast-Track

Trust is an unseen accelerator. It simplifies decisions, clears doubts, and fast-forwards the customer journey, turning curiosity into conviction and interest into investment.

The Emotional Guardrail

Trust is like a safety net or a warm embrace, making customers feel valued, understood, and cared for. It nurtures a positive environment, encouraging customers to return, not out of necessity, but a genuine affinity towards the brand.

Implementation Steps:

• Real Stories: Share testimonials and experiences, both shiny and shaded, to build credibility and show authenticity.
• Open Conversation: Encourage and welcome customer feedback and discussions, facilitating a two-way conversation that fosters understanding and improvement.
• Community Engagement: Actively participate and engage in community or industry events, align your brand with genuine causes and values, promoting real connections and trust.

Navigating through this law involves cultivating a space where authenticity leads, trust blossoms, and genuine relationships flourish, engraving a memorable brand story in the hearts and minds of the customers.

Guarantee Your Success With These Foundational Laws

Navigating through the world of business is a demanding odyssey that calls for more than just adaptability and innovation—it requires a solid foundation built on timeless principles. In our exploration, we have just unraveled three indispensable laws that stand as pillars supporting the edifice of sustained marketing success, enabling businesses to sail confidently through the ever-shifting seas of the marketplace.

Law 1: “Success in Marketing is a Marathon, Not a Sprint,” advocates for the cultivation of a long-term vision. It is about nurturing a resilient mindset focused on enduring success rather than transient achievements. Like a marathon runner who paces themselves for the long haul, businesses must strategize, persevere, and adapt, ensuring sustained growth and innovation. The embodiment of this law is seen in enterprises like Apple, whose evolutionary journey is a testament to the power of persistent vision and continual reinvention.

Law 2: “Survey, Listen, and Serve,” delineates the roadmap to a business model deeply intertwined with customer insights and responsiveness. This law emphasizes the essence of customer-centricity, urging businesses to align their strategies and offerings with the preferences and expectations of their audiences. It’s a call to attentively listen, actively engage, and meticulously tailor offerings to resonate with customer needs, forging paths to enhanced satisfaction and loyalty.

Law 3: “Build Trust in Every Interaction,” underscores the significance of building genuine, trust-laden relationships with customers. It champions the cultivation of a brand personality that resonates with authenticity, fostering connections marked by trust and mutual respect. This law navigates businesses towards establishing themselves as reliable entities that customers can resonate with, rely on, and return to, enriching the customer journey with consistency and sincerity.

These pivotal laws form the cornerstone upon which businesses can build strategies that withstand the tests of market volatility, competition, and evolution. They stand as unwavering beacons guiding enterprises towards avenues marked by not just profitability, but also a legacy of value, integrity, and impactful contributions to the marketplace. Armed with these foundational laws, businesses are empowered to navigate the multifaceted realms of the business landscape with confidence, clarity, and a strategic vision poised for lasting success and remarkable achievements.

Oh yeah! And do you know Newton’s Law?The law of inertia, also known as Newton’s first law of motion, states that an object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion… The choice is yours. Take action and integrate these laws. Get in motion!

The post Mastering The Laws of Marketing in Madness appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Imagine this: You’re a marketer, and you’re constantly chasing the next big thing. You’re always on the lookout for the latest trend, the newest platform, the freshest idea. You’re running on a hamster wheel of “on-demand” marketing, and it’s exhausting. 

You’re always reacting, never planning. You’re always behind, never ahead. Sound familiar?

Now, what if I told you there’s a better way? A way to break free from the relentless cycle of on-demand marketing and step into a world where you’re in control. A world where you’re not just reacting to the latest trend, but setting the trend. 

A world where you’re not just keeping up, but leading the pack.

Welcome to the world of strategic marketing. A world where you set 90-day plans and watch as your marketing efforts become more efficient, more effective, and more freeing. A world where you’re not just a marketer, but a marketing revolutionary.

In this article, we’re going to explore five ways strategic marketing can set you free. We’re going to show you how to stop reacting and start planning. How to stop chasing and start leading. How to start your own marketing revolution. 

Ready to break free? Let’s dive in.

Meet Hazel & Hems

Hazel & Hems Boutique: the customer avatar is a woman in her mid-20s to early 40s that has an eclectic taste in fashion, wants to stay up to date with the latest trends, and is also sensitive to sustainability and local business support.

Their core product is a locally sourced, polished stone bracelet that is affordable and only sold for limited time periods.

Hazel & Hems was created as a case study for us to explore the process of creating a brand from the ground up and everything that is involved with it. This was a building block for creating our Social Media Mastery Certification and Social Media Bootcamp.

#1. Crystal Ball Marketing: Anticipating Trends and Behavior

Strategic marketing allows you to anticipate market trends and customer behavior, reducing the element of surprise in your campaigns. 

For example, Hazel & Hems, being a sustainable clothing boutique, could anticipate the rise in demand for sustainable fashion due to increasing environmental awareness.

By strategically planning their marketing around Earth Day, they could capitalize on this trend and drive more sales during this period.

#2. The Loyalty Loop: Keeping Customers Coming Back for More

By focusing on customer needs and satisfaction, strategic marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention. 

Hazel & Hems could implement a loyalty program that rewards repeat customers with discounts or exclusive access to new collections. 

They could also use email marketing to keep customers informed about new products, sales, and company news, keeping Hazel & Hems top of mind and encouraging repeat purchases.

#3. The Harmony of Branding: Consistent Messaging Across Platforms

A strategic plan ensures your marketing messages are consistent across all platforms, reinforcing your brand identity. 

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Hazel & Hems could ensure that their messaging about sustainability and boho-chic fashion is consistent across their website, social media, email newsletters, and in-store displays. 

This consistency would strengthen their brand identity and make them more recognizable to their target audience.

#4. Customer-Centric Conquests: Tailoring Marketing to Your Audience

By understanding your target audience, you can tailor your marketing efforts to their needs and preferences, improving customer satisfaction. 

Hazel & Hems, knowing their target audience is environmentally conscious professional women aged 25 to 35, could tailor their marketing messages to highlight their sustainable practices, quality materials, and versatile designs that are perfect for both work and leisure. 

They could also host events or workshops on sustainable living, further aligning with their customers’ values.

#5. Spotlight Strategies: Boosting Your Brand’s Visibility

A strategic plan can boost your brand’s visibility and recognition in the market. 

Hazel & Hems could partner with local eco-friendly events or influencers who align with their brand values to increase their visibility. 

They could also run a strategic social media campaign, using targeted ads and relevant hashtags to reach a wider audience and increase brand awareness.

How Do You Make a REAL Strategy for Your Marketing?

Creating success is as easy as 1, 2, 3… here’s how we can help!

Are you looking to get more sales? Clicks? Engagement? If you want to improve your digital marketing strategy, you need to understand the Customer Value Journey (CVJ). The Customer Value Journey is an 8-step path that people travel as they discover your brand, build a relationship with you, and become buyers and raving fans.

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The post 5 Ways Marketing Strategy Will Set You Free appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Maybe Gary Vee convinced you it was a good idea, or you heard a few too many people talk about how LinkedIn was their number one source for finding B2B clients.

LinkedIn is talked about as an underrated platform. Like TikTok, LinkedIn posts can actually go viral (take the hint Facebook and Instagram). The thing is, you’re not going viral on a platform with all types of users.

You’re going viral on a platform where everyone is there to talk about business. Hence, the goldmine.

As a B2B business, we can’t ignore the potential of LinkedIn. DigitalMarketer’s Senior Social Media Manager, Shannon Goodell, has been strategizing and implementing on LinkedIn. Recently, she stumbled on some serious success.

Over two million impressions, almost 100,000 engagements, and 62,000 post clicks (!). 

Shannon’s narrowed down our strategy to 3 effective ways to increase impressions, engagement, and post clicks on LinkedIn. Time to go panning for gold.

#1: Find LinkedIn Posts in Previously Published Content

The first step of creating LinkedIn content is realizing you don’t need to create LinkedIn content. You already have content that could be used on LinkedIn. It just hasn’t been put into a LinkedIn-friendly format. As Shannon explains,

“Pull out tips and advice from your blog posts, Lead Magnets, podcasts, courses, playbooks, workshops, etc., and post as text-only posts. Add the link to the resource or resources in the comments and direct people to check out the comments for the link(s) to learn more.”

This is how Shannon has been able to create more DigitalMarketer content…without creating more DigitalMarketer content. It’s the beauty of splintering—every piece of content you create for your brand can be turned into at least 10 other pieces of content for other platforms.

“This is a super simple post to create, and it works! If you don’t have a lot of content to mine, post your own tips and advice and also ask your team members for theirs (based on their areas of expertise).”

Here are two of Shannon’s tips for splintering content into LinkedIn posts:

1. You can use fewer characters on LinkedIn than on Facebook, so make sure to edit your copy so the post can be read clearly and easily
2. If you can’t figure out how to make a post work with the number of characters given, just post one tip at a time

Splintering content is a great strategy for LinkedIn… and every other platform you’re creating content for. You don’t need to create a brand-new post every time you change platforms. You just need to make your content native to the platform you’re posting on.

This means you don’t want to post a long, all text LinkedIn post to your Instagram stories. People are on Instagram stories to see movement and engage with their phone (think GIFs and stickers). Your Instagram story content can be a team member breaking down the post with a talking head selfie video or a graphic that explains what your LinkedIn post did—but more aesthetically for the ‘gram.

Splintering content can turn a blog post into:

1. A LinkedIn post
2. An Instagram feed post
3. An Instagram story
4. An Instagram IGTV
5. An Instagram Reel
6. An Instagram Live
7. A Twitter thread
8. A TikTok
9. A YouTube video
10. A podcast episode
11. A Facebook post
12. A Facebook Live

The wild part about this list is that we can keep going. We haven’t even mentioned Fleets or YouTube stories.

Use your previously posted content to create a stream of LinkedIn posts. Make your posts extra fancy by turning them into (free!) downloadable documents, as Shannon explains below.

#2: Create Downloadable Documents (Not Opt-In Lead Magnets)

The key is in the parenthesis. These aren’t lead magnets where users opt-in to your email list to get the resource. You’re just going to give them the resource. We know this goes against your marketing brain, but the data doesn’t lie.

Two million impressions and over 62,000 link clicks tell us this strategy is working. We’re establishing trust with our audience and showing them how much value we give away for free (no opt-in required!).

As co-founder and CEO of DigitalMarketer Ryan Deiss says, if you give away your best stuff, people will be dying to know what you keep behind the paywall.

You don’t need a graphic design team to create these downloadable Google Docs. All you need to do is “copy and paste from a valuable resource (blog post, Playbooks, Lead Magnets, etc.) and add relevant links to the resource and calls-to-action in the doc. Title it appropriately, and you’re ready to go.”

Our docs are super simple and straight to the point. They’re focused on delivering value over taking up our graphic design team’s time.

Here are Shannon’s tips for creating these documents:

1. Give Viewer access
2. Use Grammarly to check your spelling and grammar

“Once ready to post, just hit “document” and choose “Google Drive.” LinkedIn will ask you for access, and then you can choose that Google doc to upload as a PDF.  Title the PDF in LinkedIn and add your text copy and post! I also direct people to links in the comments to learn more.”

Save these documents for your content team to keep using. You can use these documents to outline more posts in the future. They’re a document today, but in a few weeks you could turn that content into a LinkedIn text post, a blog article, a podcast episode, a TikTok… okay, we’ll stop now. You get the point.

These documents are great for showing your audience how much you’re willing to give away for free (a strategy tried and tested with the Customer Value Journey and Customer Avatar Worksheet). When Ryan and the DigitalMarketer team first considered giving away our Customer Value Journey and Customer Avatar Worksheet for free, it felt like too much. We were giving away our secret sauce. What would people pay us for?

It turns out the opposite was true. We had given away some of our best stuff, and in return, people wanted to pay us to know more. If that’s what we would give for free, they couldn’t imagine what was hiding on the other side of that paywall.

As much as it might feel like you should at least be asking for an email opt-in, you’ll have to trust us and karma on this one.

#3: Lean into Employee-Generated Content

Your LinkedIn content has been splintered from other posts, but now you want to get as much engagement on it as possible. It’s time to lean on your team. If you’re not utilizing employee-generated content yet—the time to start is now.

Employee-generated content gets higher engagement, follows, and conversions than branded content. Brands like Morning Brew show us the importance of putting faces to your brand, creating an audience-attracting magnet acquired for $75 million.

The key to getting employees to share branded content is to ask them. Without the green light to create company content, employees will avoid stepping on toes. They don’t want to get in trouble, and it’s safer not to take the risk. Leadership is a huge part of employee engagement.

Have your company’s leaders explain what employee-generated content is, how it can help the business, and what they’d love to see from employees in the future. In our case, we want our DigitalMarketer team to share our LinkedIn posts so we can get more impressions.

Here’s Matthew Douglas, our Content Manager of Sponsored Content, sharing a LinkedIn post highlighting an article published to the DigitalMarketer blog:

To organize the process of sharing the post with your team, use Shannon’s strategy:

“Create a Google doc with links to your recent company LinkedIn posts plus brand new copy divided into categories (sales, marketing, human resources, etc.). Include your company’s LinkedIn handle in all of the posts. Then share with your company.

Before you ask your team to engage with your branded content online, we have to make sure you’re clear on the goal. As Shannon explains,

“The goal here isn’t web traffic (although it can be an added benefit). It’s to get new people to your company page to explore and engage. The goal is to get them to share your previously published LinkedIn posts plus brand new posts that all tag your company’s LinkedIn.”

Obviously, web traffic is an important (massive) part of your LinkedIn strategy. But, your employee-generated content isn’t necessarily there to pull massive traffic. Your employees might only have a few engaged friends and family on LinkedIn—so don’t be hard on them if you’re not going viral because of their shares.

What you’re doing is getting your brand acquainted with more LinkedIn users. This is Stage 1 of the Customer Value Journey, Awareness. For someone to buy a product from you, they have to first know you exist. You don’t want to ask them to buy your products the second they find out about you. That’s like asking someone to marry you while they’re walking down the street. You have to let them warm up to you, ask for a first date, and then give them some time to decide you’re the right person for them.

Luckily business works faster than relationships that lead to marriage, but it’s still a relationship.

When your customer avatar discovers your brand through a colleague, friend, or family member, you’re walking into that relationship with established trust. That will help move new leads through your CVJ faster and help people get to know you, even if they don’t need your services. How many times have you referred someone to a brand without ever buying their products because you saw them online, and it seems to fit the solution your friend is asking about?

The answer is all the time. Position your brand in the same way by using employee-generated content.

We are not stopping this LinkedIn strategy anytime soon. Shannon has figured out how to increase our impressions, engagement, and post clicks, and we’re really excited about this strategy.

LinkedIn is an engagement goldmine for B2B businesses. Instead of pushing through the noise of every customer avatar in existence on other social platforms, you can focus on business-minded people on LinkedIn.

People don’t open LinkedIn to find recipes, see fancy car photos, or get inspired by home decor. They’re on LinkedIn with their business hat on.

And that sure seems like the best possible time to show them what you have to offer their business.

The post 3 Ways to Increase Impressions, Engagement, and Post Clicks on Your LinkedIn Company Page appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

The Snapchat-inspired feature offers brands a fun and free way to actively engage with their followers and target audience.

More than 500 million people watch Instagram Stories every day. 500 million. That’s a lot of potential customers that could be engaging with your business. Of course, your brand isn’t the only one on the market vying for attention, so it’s important to stand out. That’s where we come in…

Below are just a few tried and true strategies for harnessing brand awareness and increasing viewer engagement on Instagram stories.

Remember, with great social strategy comes great responsibility… that’s how the saying goes, right?

Tell a Story

It’s right there in the name, an engaging Instagram Story must first and foremost—tell a story.

Seems like a no brainer, we know, but you’d be surprised at the difference a cohesive narrative makes when it comes to keeping your audience’s attention.

A bunch of random photos thrown together leaves the viewer feeling confused and disconnected which means they’re most likely clicking through as fast as they can to get to the next account.

Even the slightest amount of context lets the audience “in” on your story, which in turn makes them aware of your purpose and helps them understand your brand as a whole.

That being said, we’ve found that using a story board is a great way to visualize your Instagram Stories ahead of time. Pre-scheduling and preparation are key.

Use Hashtags

Adding hashtags to your Instagram Stories is a super easy way to increase your reach and engagement. It allows new audiences to discover your content and start following you.

If a hashtag is popular enough, users can actually search for it and view live stories on a curated hashtag page where they may come across your account.

This is why it’s so important to use words and phrases you think might be top of mind for your target customers.

Add Stickers

One of the most effective ways to increase social engagement is by using stickers. You’ve likely seen these on a friend’s account or maybe being used by another popular brand.

Whether it’s a playful emoji or a poll prompting responses to the outfit of the day, there are a number of different ways to make stickers engaging.

These are a few sticker options we’ve seen work well for brand marketing:

• Countdown stickers are great for creating anticipation around a product launch or event.
  • Polls and question stickers are useful for learning more about your followers and their opinions.
  • Gif stickers allow you to get creative with your CTA’s and they let your followers know you’re not a regular brand, you’re a cool brand.
  • Quiz stickers are a fun feature that allow users to participate with your stories and provides entertainment in addition to brand awareness.

Caption Your Videos

If you’ve ever been tapping through Instagram Stories while at work (or in another locale which doesn’t welcome sudden, blaring audio) you know how frustrating it can be when you want to watch an account’s video content and it doesn’t have captions.

That’s one reason why it’s so important as a brand to make sure you include captions for videos that can be watched without audio.

More importantly, you don’t want to alienate your audience members that may be hard of hearing.

Users are far more likely to stay engaged when they can enjoy content from anywhere regardless of sound capability.

If captions are not an option for certain videos, then a “sound on” cue is a good way to let the viewer know they have to turn their sound on for that particular piece of content. Otherwise, they will most likely get annoyed and move on to the next account.

Keep them around by giving them the convenience of enjoying your content no matter where they are.

Clipomatic is a video editing app available on the Apple Store that allows you to record captions using speech recognition. 

Find Peak Engagement Times

Knowing your audience is key to increasing engagement on social media.

That means doing a deep dive into your analytics to find out when your followers are typically most engaged with you. Once you’ve nailed that down, you can plan your stories around those peak engagement periods to ensure you’re maximizing audience attention with your best content.

Every Instagram business account is equipped with an Insights tab which allows access to Instagram’s native analytics.

These metrics include anything from demographic factors like age range, gender, and location to peak activity times, most popular posts, and more. They will be an invaluable piece of your social strategy.

(RELATED: Facebook’s NEW Instagram Capabilities in Creator Studio)

Cross Promote Within Your Feed

Another way to send more eyes to your brand’s Instagram Stories is by cross-promoting them within your regular feed.

This is especially helpful if you already have significant engagement with your posts and need to diversify audience attention.

The popular social media scheduler platform Later does a great job of organically directing people to their Instagram Stories from their feed, as you can see from the post above.

Reshare User Content

Perhaps one of the best ways to fill your stories with engaging content is by re-sharing user posts.

Not only does it make your followers feel like they’re part of your brand, but it also creates valuable consumer trust.

According to Business 2 Community, User Generated Content (UGC) is 50% more trustworthy than any other type of media. Hence why there’s such a wildly successful influencer market on Instagram.

The swim brand Fella Swim, for example, did an entire “As Seen On” series which co-branded user content with their own. Check it out above.

Use the “Swipe Up” Feature

You’ve likely seen popular brand accounts use Instagram’s “Swipe Up” feature in their stories. This feature is only available for accounts with 10,000 or more followers, so if your brand hasn’t hit that mark yet, it’s a great goal to strive for.

The Swipe Up tool encourages followers to engage with a specific landing page on your website or inspires them to purchase a new product. They can easily swipe up from your story and be taken to a new page without experiencing a complete disruption to their normal social activity.

For example, the Converse Instagram account does a great job of prompting their followers to check out new collections without being too “in your face.”

Respond to Direct Messages

One of the biggest things every brand should be doing is responding to audience direct messages.

If you want people to engage with you, then it only makes sense that you engage with them in return.

Obviously, when you get to a certain point it becomes difficult to respond to everyone, but at least making the effort shows your audience that you are an authentic and genuine brand.

If you are receiving a lot of similar questions in your DM’s, it’s also useful to post responses in your Instagram Stories. This way all of your followers can feel as though they’ve been acknowledged. 

Collaborate with Other Brands/Try Takeovers

Collaborating with new brands is another good way to grab audience attention, especially if you’re in a creative rut.

Whether you have an influencer take over your story for a day, or maybe host an Instagram Live video with another brand, there are endless ways to change up your content while also building meaningful relationships.

Check out the collaboration above that Anthropologie did with The Good Hive for Earth Day.

This kind of project not only looks good for your brand, but it also shows you’re capable of expanding the type of content you do.

Give Your Audience Something to Share

Last, but certainly not least, it’s important to remember that you want your audience to share the content you create.

Yes, it seems obvious, but sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of this when you’re thinking as a brand and not a user. Always put yourself in the audience’s perspective.

What kind of content would you want to share as a follower? How can you create this content for your fans?

Everyone loves a good Instagrammable moment, especially influencers who are even more likely to take advantage of a photo op.

The local Austin shoe brand BANGS knocks it out of the park when it comes to creating Instagram moments with a message. Check their content here.

With these engagement strategies, you’ll be on your way to creating a killer social media presence and building a more active audience for your brand. Then, it’s just a matter of continuing them through the Customer Journey to become customers.

The post How to Increase Instagram Story Engagement appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

And the more someone is engaged with a brand the more likely they are to purchase from that brand.

But you may not have heard of the “rule of seven,” a term coined by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

The rule states that you need to see and engage with your customers a minimum of 7 times for you to stand out in their minds, before they are ready to purchase from you.

So… How do you get people to engage with you and your brand?

First of all, you need to woo your audience. You want them to trust you, and you do that by posting relevant content that speaks to them, about them, and for them. These kinds of organic posts (like the ones I will show you today) will attract people to you.

Then ideally, you want to get your content out to more people without spending more money. By posting organically engaging content, you won’t need to spend as much on boosting or paid ads. And who doesn’t want to get their content out to more people for cheaper?

It all comes back to conversations. They are the most powerful type of engagement. So you want to be posting things that start that communication with your audience.

In this post we will cover 9 different types of organic posts you can use to instantly increase the amount of engagement on your social platforms, even if you don’t spend a penny on ads.

1) Know someone who?

This post is one of the easiest types to create.  “Know someone who…,” “Somewhere there is a [type of person] who…,” “We all have that special friend who….” These are calls to action we can use in our organic posts to encourage our audience to not just stop and look, but also to reach out to someone in their lives who shares this topic with them.

You can use these posts to collect people who are proven to engage with a certain topic. As they mention their friends they become powerful social proof for your brand.  You automatically have a tighter connection with that new “future customer” because they watched their friends have a conversation with you.

2) Coattails Post

This post allows you to use another brand or interest to help build your credibility. Roland Frasier did exactly that with this post featuring his wife.

Roland’s target audience is people who want to grow their wealth, so he picked a high-end hotel to “ride the coattails” of. By tagging that particular hotel in his organic post, he gained access to their audience as well as his own.

For you, think about where the people you are trying to attract “live” online? What other interests do they have? What places they may have visited? Things they may have on their bucket list or things they want to do? Roland knew the hotels where the people he wanted to attract visited and featured content from there.

Here’s a key tip: Facebook knows when people travel and where they stay. And when your content features a location your audience has been, it increases that content’s distribution in their feed. Since Facebook views that content as more relevant to the audience. it gives it a higher “affinity score.”

3) Play I-Spy with Your Audience

Yes, literally, a game.

Games are a great way to get people to respond with micro-engagements. Micro-engagements are things like likes, hearts, or short comments. There is something universal, fun, and irresistible about game content. People cannot help but smile or participate when they see a game their friends have acted on.

Mobile of New Zealand played a game of I-Spy with their audience using a 360 photo.

Not only did this game increase clicks on their content, the time engaged on the page was HUGE, causing a spike in reach with their brand’s content!

4) The Guessing Game

This is another fast, irresistible game. If done well, this type of organic post can engage your audience to help sell your product! That is exactly what happened for Mark, a franchise owner of Marco’s Pizza. He posted a game into a local Facebook group and it went bonkers!

Not only did he get a lot of micro-engagements with his brand, but the timing was genius! Friday night, right before the Super Bowl. And when people were out buying pizza, his pizza store was top of mind!

5) Create a Screen-Stopper

These are a type of video that flashes images to you in a quick sequence, almost fitting them together into a story, much like this post from Airbnb. What I love about this post is that it starts with 1 image, and as you scroll past it grabs another image.

This “screen stopper” grabs the reader’s attention and brings them back to the content.

Another version of the screen stopper is this post from Growing Play. They used this organic post to collect people into video-view audiences. These parents and preschool teachers were potential customers who would consume more content and purchase their products. Her readers watched the flashing words and grabbed a screenshot to give them an instant activity to do with their bored kids. Genius!

6) Identification Quizzes

These posts go bonkers! Buzzfeed says they are among their most popular content. What’s really cool isn’t just the fact that these posts get crazy engagement, but they are PERFECT as a vehicle for market research and as a mechanism to get a ton of engagements as fast as possible. Fulfill that “rule of 7” as fast as you can!

What do you do?

Ask your readers a series of questions to help them sort, or self-identify, themselves as interested in a topic. Sometimes you can help your audience pick the perfect product of yours for them to purchase.

You can also use these posts to collect information about the city or region your audience is in to help build up tourism, or to sell homes—or take advantage of the location/coattail post I talked about earlier.

You can also use these posts to position products to consumers for future organic posts ex: what flavor of fruit are you… you now have valuable information about your audience and you can follow up with them featuring merch about fruit (scratch-n-sniff notepads??) or cookbooks filled with fruit!

7) Watch Parties

If you have a Facebook group, this type of post is a great way to get quick engagements, and have an ongoing dialogue with your audience, without creating new content. You can post videos that other people make, and then discuss them together in your group, in real time.

(RELATED: How to Build and Manage a Private Facebook Group)

You can also use this method as a way to repost old content from your page back into your groups. As a bonus, everyone who is online and watching gets a notification to join your “party.” Below is a screenshot grabbed from a watch party that helped Ryan Levesque close a $2.5 million launch.

Conversations like the one in this watch party convert readers into fans—and ultimately buyers.

8) Host a Real-Life Treasure Hunt

Facebook has said they are filling our feed with content they believe is proof of meaningful connections. Part of the feed ranking system for meaningful connection is based on mutual relationships, time relevance, and location. It is that third element that you can totally capitalize on using a real-life treasure hunt.

Nate Lind worked to create an audience of people in his local area by hiding $500 around the town. Then he gave people clues to where it was located, and participants went on a treasure hunt. The pages associated with the treasure hunts grew at record speed, and with a highly relevant audience, Facebook saw the page as a source of “meaningful connections” in their local communities! It is genius!

9) Heartbeat Checks.

These posts are by far the easiest for anyone to use and grow engagement. They work for pages, groups, and even for people who want to grow the number of friends and the engagement of their personal profiles on Facebook (they also work in other social media platforms in addition to Facebook). We use them successfully on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and more.

What is a heartbeat check? It is a simple question that takes no real effort for your readers to answer, and it helps your reader connect quickly to you—in conversation. Questions like, “Who else is a ___?” or “When was the last time you _____?” are just a start. We have a list of heartbeat checks that work with any niche and can be used to promote any product—just click here to download them.

That wraps up 9 different types of posts you can create on your social media platforms that will instantly increase engagement. These posts get your audience to do some of the heavy lifting of growing your page for you.

The post 9 Easy Organic Posts to Increase Page Engagement appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

We sat down with 17 experts to ask how the digital marketing landscape will change in the new year.

Read on to learn the digital marketing predictions for 2019, what new technologies and trends are on the horizon, and how you can prepare. Plus, hear the tactics the experts are exploring and planning to implement in 2019.

Ralph Burns, CEO of Tier 11

There’s a big change on the horizon in Facebook marketing.

At Tier 11, we specialize in growing businesses faster than they could on their own using the 2 most powerful advertising platforms on the planet, namely, Facebook and Instagram.

As a result, we do a ton of testing on these platforms. Thanks to our intimate relationship with Facebook, we’re typically among the first companies to try out new features and ad formats to deliver better results for our clients—oftentimes as a beta before the rest of the world.

Pretty. Dang. Cool.

And what I’m about to share is one of the most exciting new changes to come along to Facebook in some time.

But before I explain what it is, first let’s set the stage for why it’s so important.

If you do any advertising on Facebook, you know that mobile traffic is taking over. These days only about 1 in 3 people use Facebook on a laptop or desktop, compared to over 95% who access Facebook on a smartphone:

This is nothing new—mobile has been on the rise for years now.

But while mobile accounts for more and more traffic, it still lags behind desktops in terms of conversion rates. And a big reason for that is due to slower load speeds on mobile devices.

This is a problem because the longer it takes for your page to load, the lower your conversion rates will be:

And it’s even worse if your website isn’t mobile-optimized. Don’t even get me started there.

But recently, Facebook has taken a big step toward solving this problem with their introduction of “Facebook Instant Experiences.”

Facebook’s Instant Experiences aren’t actually new—they’re really just a revamped version of the old mobile Canvas ads. But while Canvas ads never really caught on (for one thing, they were hard to use), Instant Experience is already proving to be much, much more user-friendly and much more effective for advertisers.

With Instant Experiences, you can create a super-speedy equivalent to a landing page that will load directly inside of Facebook. You can add just about anything you want to Instant experiences, like photos, videos, lead ad forms, and any kind of pixel you want. (The Facebook pixel is automatically added, but you can also embed pixels for Google Analytics, Hotjar, etc.)

Here are a couple examples of what Instant Experiences can look like:

Notice how high-end and professional these can look? And even with all those images and videos, Facebook claims that they still load up to 15x faster than a standard mobile website.

So, what does this mean?

It means that in 2019, you’re going to start seeing more and more Facebook ads that take place entirely on the Facebook platform. Instead of clicking an ad and being sent off of Facebook and onto a website, the ad will trigger an Instant Experience.

This is a win-win for everyone involved. It’s a better experience for users who don’t like to wait, and it will result in higher conversion rates for advertisers.

And unlike Canvas ads, which were challenging to build, Instant Experiences allow you to take advantage of templates.

Look at how easy it is to get started. First, check the box next to “Add an Instant Experience”:

Then choose the template that best fits your goals. If you want to acquire new customers, for example, start with the Customer Acquisition template and customize it from there.

Eventually, the day will come when it’s common practice to buy products and services directly inside a social platform. You’ll be able to embed a “Buy Now” button inside your Instant Experiences, allowing people to complete their purchase using a service like Google Pay or Apple Pay—all without ever leaving Facebook.

This is a big deal to Facebook since they’re always looking for new ways to keep people on their platform. So, you can bet they’ll continue to develop these Instant Experiences to make them more sophisticated, easier to use, and more effective.

Amanda Powell, Acquisitions Manager of DigitalMarketer

SEO is ever-changing. And there’s no doubt that constant algorithm changes and updates keep us on our toes.

For instance, in March 2018, you may have noticed mobile-first indexing started to roll out. And Google started indexing sites based on the mobile version of their website.

In 2019, mobile search will continue to stay relevant.

But for 2019, I have 3 main predictions for SEO that go beyond mobile that SEOs and marketers should keep an eye on…

1) Voice Search

Yep. We’ve officially welcomed robots into our homes and now interact with them regularly. This is important because, according to comScore, it’s estimated that 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020.

And in case you didn’t know, 2020 is basically ONE YEAR AWAY! I think it’s safe to say that it will need to be a pretty big focus for SEOs in 2019.

What does this mean for optimization?

It means search strategists need to focus on long-tail keywords and conversational language.

Voice search will also be exponentially more important for local businesses since 46% of voice search users look for local businesses on a daily basis. Alexa just got a whole lot more real.

2) Video

Video is already breaking through the search results by way of rich results on a daily basis. Here at DM, video has actually been a huge driver of our organic efforts this year. Videos like this one…

Video traffic is even predicted to be 82% of ALL traffic by 2022.

What does this mean for optimization?

Transcripts will be extremely important, so Google can see the text of your video content to crawl.

You’ll also need to make sure you start optimizing your videos just like your landing pages—include keywords in the title, and description and make sure the subject matter of your video is relevant, of course.

3) Featured Snippets

One of the big scares this year for SEOs was when Google removed all links from specific queries (see here).

While the blue links were eventually added back in, it was a big insight into the future of organic search.

Google is trying to give the people what they want. Search engine algorithms want to serve users the most relevant results.

So even though the Google test isn’t active anymore, it does show that they were testing to see if it could serve only exactly what a user wanted.

What does this mean for optimization?

This means it’s more important than ever to strive for the position zero on Google.

Any content you create should be rooted in intent. And it’s becoming increasingly more important for your content to not only be informative but also useful.

Overall, 2019 is going to bring some big strategy changes when it comes to SEO. Content creation needs to be more intentional and optimization will need constant updates. But that’s the fun of SEO, it’s constantly changing, which keeps things interesting!

Mike Rhodes, Founder & CEO of WebSavvy

Most people are probably expecting me to talk about upcoming changes to Google Ads. And I would, except that I’m currently under an NDA with Google not to talk about forthcoming features.

So instead, I’m going to step back and speak more broadly about the general digital marketing trends that I see happening in 2019. And those trends fall into 3 main topics:

1) The Way People Search Is Changing

Voice search is going to continue to rise next year. It’s estimated that by 2020, 30% of all searches will be made without a screen. (And ComScore puts that number even higher, at 50%.)

This will have huge implications, in particular for SEO.

Right now, any time you perform a search on Google, you get a screen with 10 or so organic results (plus the ads). This means that 10 companies all get a shot at your attention.

But voice search often returns only a single result. Which means the vast majority of voice searches will go to the top-ranking site for a given search term.

This is still an evolving technology, so things are bound to change. But it’s definitely something to keep your eye on in 2019.

Another change that’s on the horizon is visual search. Google Lens is a new technology that allows people to search based on images, rather than text.

For example, you can just take a picture of your friend’s shoes with your phone and Google will show you a bunch of similar-looking shoes… with a buy button underneath each one. Over time, this is going to have an enormous impact on retail shopping and ecommerce.

 2) The Way People Interact Online Is Changing

The way we interact with each other, and with businesses, is also changing.

In 2019, we’re going to start seeing a lot more hyper-targeted personalization on websites and in business communication.

For example, email marketing is getting smarter. More and more companies are starting to use machine learning that will track your online behavior on their website and use that data to send more personalized, more relevant emails.

Another big change coming next year is a significant increase in the use of chatbots for marketing. This is another way companies are adapting to deliver faster, more personalized communication and, ultimately, a better user experience for consumers.

3) Our Expectations Are Changing

As technology evolves, so do our expectations. And the biggest expectation that more and more of us have today is speed.

Basically, we want things to load fast.

The main place where this is still an issue is on mobile, where load times can still be frustratingly slow for some people. As a result, you can expect to see Google pushing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in 2019.

Here at WebSavvy, we became the single-largest user of AMP in Australia in 2018 when we moved a large number of client landing pages from regular pages to AMPs. When we did, we saw surprisingly good increases in both our load times and our conversion rates.

So, if you’re not already using AMP, I recommend you do so now.

You can also expect to hear more about Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in 2019. Google will be pushing this technology to help promote apps that are fast, reliable, and engaging. If your business has an app, it would definitely be a good idea to look into PWA.

So, to summarize, here’s what I think we’re all going to start seeing more of in 2019:

• More video. This applies to ads in general, and specifically to YouTube. Next year you’re going to start to see a greater variety of ad types on YouTube, making this a more versatile and effective advertising platform.
• Influencer marketing is going to continue to grow, and I think you can expect Facebook to make a strong push toward finding a way to generate revenue from it.
• Retail stores will close in record numbers, and Amazon will overtake Apple in terms of market cap. (If I were a betting man, I’d put my money in Amazon stock.)
• Expect to hear more about machine learning, deep learning, and AI.

Speaking of that last bullet point:

AI is all about prediction. It’s our way of training machines to make better and faster predictions about all sorts of things. (What ads are we most likely to respond to? What search phrase are we most likely to be interested in? What shows on Netflix are we most likely to want to watch?)

And as these predictions become faster, cheaper, and more accurate, this will lead to an increase in the need for—and the value of—human judgment and creativity.

In other words: as the machines begin to do more of the boring stuff, our job as humans will be to add judgment and creativity to the mix to help guide all of this machine learning in a productive direction.

So, I also recommend making sure creativity is a large part of what you do. And if it isn’t, you might want to start moving in that direction in 2019.

Kathryn Aragon, Founder of Kathryn Aragon Media

In 2019, content marketing will become more balanced and realistic.

For years, content marketing has been hailed as king of all digital marketing strategies.

But in the last few years, we’ve reached a saturation point. Content marketing isn’t new or exciting. The mere act of publishing a blog post doesn’t help you rank and won’t help you sell more products.

As we enter 2019, I see more businesses admitting this, much as content strategist Jacob McMillen does in this post from November 17, 2018:

I started taking a similar approach early in 2018. Clients would ask me to promise bold business results, such as doubling their traffic or raising profits by some percentage. I’ve had to tone down their expectations—as Jacob calls it, “unselling” some of what content can do.

It’s not a popular move, but it needs to happen because it’s the only way we’ll be able to make content work in the future.

So, what does it mean to “unsell” content marketing?

It means being more realistic:

• Page one on Google isn’t a guarantee, especially if you’re in a competitive industry or going after a keyword that’s owned by hugely successful brands
• A better blog doesn’t usually deliver higher profits
• Traffic and engagement are trending down, not up, for most blogs

I see 2 reactions as brands accept the reality of these trends…

Some—the ones who are looking for easy buttons—will quit content marketing. Others—the smart ones—will understand the need for balance.

Content marketing isn’t dead. It isn’t a waste of time. It’s just changing. Again.

You see, content marketing has been around for centuries. It will continue for at least as long. As technology and society has changed, we’ve simply changed how we do it.

Source: CMI

Entering 2019, we’re at a pivot point. What’s been working isn’t working anymore, and even top content marketers are struggling to get the same results they used to get.

To fix that, we’ve raised the bar so high, it’s almost impossible to meet.

In the last year, I’ve seen pure exhaustion among content marketers. Yet they’re scared to slow down. They’re afraid of losing the engagement they still have.

In 2019, businesses will realize that content marketing isn’t the end-all of digital marketing. It’s just 1 strategy, and instead of carrying all the others, it should integrate with them.

Then, realizing this, businesses will start to relax. They’ll understand that publishing less often could actually increase engagement levels—because their followers won’t develop banner blindness toward their content.

So, what’s the strategy moving forward?

Start with your business goals. Be clear about what you’re trying to achieve in 2019.

Then think about the tactics that are most likely to deliver the results you’re looking for. Don’t rely on just 1 channel or marketing tactic. Instead, integrate them.

Look for efficiencies you can exploit.

For example, if you always run a major campaign in spring, plan your content to support that campaign. But don’t increase your editorial schedule. Slow it down. Write one well-optimized blog post a month leading up to your campaign. Pull from those posts to create a collection of graphics, memes, and quotes for social media. And use them to create a few Lead Magnets and create your funnels.

Finally, pay close attention to your numbers. If any content strategy isn’t working, don’t hesitate to give it up or change it or completely reinvent it.

In 2019, content marketing won’t be about publishing more. It will be about publishing more strategically. For some brands, that will mean publishing less. For others, it could mean breaking some of those best practices we’re so addicted to. For all of us, it will mean thinking outside the box.

Here’s what WON’T change…

Quality, authority, and authenticity will continue to matter.

You need to be relevant. Don’t get entrenched in the way you’ve always done things. Your audience is changing. You need to be aware of social and technological trends that are behind these changes—and adapt.

Copycatting doesn’t work. Discover your own strengths and your own brand personality. Then create content that expresses your own uniqueness.

Stories will continue to get results. People don’t want to hear all about you and your products. They want to hear real stories that engage them on an emotional level, that make your brand seem more human and accessible.

Neil Flinchbaugh, Founder & Digital Copywriter of NWF Digital Copywriting

As a digital copywriter, it’s part of my job to keep a close eye on how businesses are communicating with people online. And based on some of the recent changes that have happened over the past 2 years or so, I think we will see a big shift start to happen in digital copywriting next year.

In 2019, copywriting is going to take a BIG step toward becoming more personalized and conversational.

I’m specifically referring to copy written for the newest and fastest-growing online marketing medium, which is messaging apps. Check out this blog post for an explanation of just how fast Messenger Marketing is growing.

While Messenger Marketing is relatively new on the scene (Facebook didn’t open the Messenger API until April 2016), many marketers are already predicting that it will overtake email as the dominant communication channel within the next few years.

And when you compare the 2 mediums, it’s not hard to see why. Messenger is blowing email out of the water in every engagement category we’ve got:

Most Messenger Marketing in the US right now is done via Facebook Messenger. But both WhatsApp and iMessage will be following suit and opening up their APIs as well—increasing the reach of this medium even more.

So, if messaging apps really are going to overtake email as our #1 communication channel, how is that monumental shift going to affect the kind of copy we write to appeal to our customers?

First, let’s get this out of the way: the fundamentals of great copywriting WON’T change in 2019. Or in 2020, or 2021. This is true because the people you’re writing to are still human beings, and human nature isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

That means you still need to craft a killer message that speaks to a compelling desire in your audience. You still need to appeal to powerful emotions, trigger a sense of urgency, and back up your claims with social proof and other credibility-boosters.

So, the underlying message behind your sales copy is going to stay the same.

But the medium you use to communicate that message is changing, and that means the WAY you communicate that underlying message is going to have to change too.

And the biggest fundamental shift that’s happening with Messenger Marketing is that instead of talking AT people (the way we do with most other marketing mediums), you’re going to have to start conversing WITH them.

This means we’ll have to start doing a few things differently…

1) In 2019, Copy Will Be Delivered in Shorter Chunks

If you take a minute to scroll through your text messages, I’m betting you won’t see a lot of big paragraphs or long explanations. Most messages are a single sentence long. And you probably don’t send more than 3 or so messages at a time without waiting for a reply.

These are the same kind of short, succinct messages we’ll need to use when writing copy for messaging apps.

After all, most people use Messenger on their phone, where screen real estate is limited. Only a few paragraphs will fit on a phone screen at a time:

And that screen space just about cuts in half once you open the keyboard:

This is why, when writing for Messenger, you have to be ruthlessly concise.

You need to pare down your message to the absolute essentials and avoid overloading people with too much text at once.

REMEMBER: you don’t want to force your users to scroll up to see the beginning of your message. That’s a bad experience.

Now, if you have a longer message—something that requires several hundred words or more to deliver—for the love of all that’s holy, don’t just paste it inside of Messenger.

Instead, ask the user if they want to learn more about the topic. If the answer is yes, either embed a video or insert a link to a blog post on your website.

And speaking of asking questions…

2) In 2019, Copy Will Ask More Questions & Take Better Advantage of Branching Logic

Remember that conversations are a 2-way street. You can’t just yap on and on and on without giving the other person a chance to speak, or else they’ll quickly start to ignore you.

And in Messenger Marketing, the best way of getting the user’s input and feedback is by asking questions and giving the option of several quick replies. Here’s what that looks like:

This guitar chatbot makes it easy for you to specify what aspects of guitar playing you’re most interested in—which keeps you engaged with the bot because it forces you to tap a button to continue.

It feels more conversational.

But engagement is only a piece of the puzzle here. There’s another, deeper benefit to asking more questions…

3) In 2019, Marketing Messages Will Become Much More Personalized

As we begin to ask more questions in our copy, we’ll inevitably start to learn more about our audience. Asking questions is an easy way to get a quick idea of which topics your customers are most interested in.

And with that knowledge comes the ability to deliver more relevant, personalized content.

To go back to the example of the guitar chatbot, let’s say User A tells us he’s interested in Soloing. And User B tells us she’s interested in Music Theory.

You can save this information and use it to make sure that User A gets content related to Soloing, and User B gets content related to Music Theory. This will…

• Reduce your unsubscribe rates
• Improve your click-through rates
• And most importantly, keep your users happy

It’s the same idea we already use today to segment our email marketing campaigns. But because the engagement rate on Messenger is so much higher than it is for email, we have even MORE potential to learn about our customers and deliver more personalized messaging.

And we can apply this technique to sales messages, too (not just content). For example, if you were selling an all-inclusive guitar playing program, you could write separate versions of that sales copy to appeal to each of those different interests.

So, User A would get a marketing message that focuses on how this program will help him to be a better soloist. And User B would get a marketing message that focuses on how this program will help her to master music theory.

The catch to all this is that in order to deliver this personalized content, we’re also going to have to start using more branching logic in order to take advantage of this personalization.

So instead of writing just a simple message that we deliver to everyone, businesses will need to craft multiple messages that are custom-written for each of their customer avatars.

It’s more work and will involve creating more copy and content to accommodate all these avatars, but the improved user experience and conversion rates will be well worth the effort.

Most importantly, it will help to give your users the kind of highly responsive and personal-feeling communication that they’ve come to expect.

Sunny Lenarduzzi, Founder of YouTube for Bosses

My biggest digital marketing prediction for 2019 is that YouTube will dominate as the king of long-form video platforms.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking—hasn’t it always been the dominant force in long-form content?

Well, with Facebook making a massive video push over the last couple of years and Instagram introducing IGTV, there has been competition.

But, facts are facts! Not only is YouTube the social platform most used by US adults (73%), but when it comes to long-form video, 33% of total view time on YouTube is attributed to long-form content.

And as YouTube continues to compete with traditional TV programs, the algorithm is rewarding long-form content for increased watch and session time on the platform.

And as a creator myself, I know that if you combine long-form content with a consistent schedule, you are guaranteed to create a loyal audience. I like to call it “The Oprah Effect”—if you give your audience an exact time and date to tune in, they will be there.

YouTube, unlike other platforms, has a massive advantage when it comes to attention. Instead of a “scroll” mentality, viewers make time in their schedule to sit down and watch their favorite channels on YouTube.

So, not only do you build a loyal audience, but your audience is actually paying attention to your content—as opposed to being distracted by a million other posts on other social platforms.

People come to YouTube with the intent to watch videos—unlike other platforms—and binge watch them for long periods of time.

Other platforms will continue to try to compete, but YouTube is still the go-to video destination on the internet. And I’m seeing more and more business owners migrate over to YouTube as a valuable source of brand building and lead generation.

Josh Turner, Founder & CEO of LinkedSelling

LinkedIn’s recent rollout of “Objective Based Advertising” is going to make it even more powerful and people are going to be flocking to LinkedIn ads.

For years, LinkedIn’s advertising platform has played second (or third) fiddle to Facebook and other social media advertising platforms.

But in the past 10 months, they’ve been getting their act together and rolling out features that are helping advertisers more easily generate and track conversions.

I don’t expect a major reduction in the cost per click in the next 12 months—LinkedIn charges a premium for their audience—but what we’ve been seeing in our internal and client campaigns is a significant decrease in our cost per objective.

What is an “objective” in this case?

What I’m referring to is a higher leverage buying opportunity—a booked sales appointment or a requested sales appointment.

With LinkedIn’s ability to now measure conversions and therefore allow you to invest in the campaigns that are getting the best results, you just need the right objective for the platform.

By focusing on simplifying the path to your funnel objectives and letting your high-ticket prospects cut to the front of the line in your LinkedIn campaigns, you can see a significant increase in conversions.

And the word is starting to creep out as more and more advertisers start experimenting with the high-ticket audience that LinkedIn provides.

Those who simply just copy over a Facebook ads campaign to LinkedIn are setting themselves up to struggle. For LinkedIn, the smart move is tailoring your ads to get prospects into a higher-leverage opportunity sooner.

From the changes and direction we’ve seen them heading in for the past year, my prediction is that LinkedIn continues to build out more marketer-friendly features in 2019 and becomes the most popular network for getting sales appointments for B2B businesses.

(RELATED: The 5-Message Sequence: A LinkedIn Marketing Strategy that Generated $101k+ in 9 Months)

Rachel Miller, Organic Traffic Strategist of Moolah

Content won’t matter if there isn’t a conversation to accompany it.

Last year, we saw a giant leap in the importance of conversations in the social media algorithms. The more person-to-person interactions a brand received on social media, the greater the results were of that content performing well BOTH organically and in paid media.

But not only did conversations increase the placement of content into users feeds, it also increased sales.

I predict this trend will only become stronger through 2019.

Posting videos or getting your audience to watch/read your content is not going to be enough. You will have to foster conversation as well as consumption.

And while we have seen a drastic increase in ad spend for “stand-alone” campaigns (as pictured below)…

…campaigns that are fueled by community and conversations with your audience are growing exponentially. And without any ad spend.

Brands who don’t focus on conversations are risking becoming obsolete since their customers will just have those conversations elsewhere.

We want our users to take action on content. These actions begin as a micro-conversation—a like, a heart, a fast reaction. And they work up toward a conversation. And ultimately, a sale.

Ted Prodromou, Executive LinkedIn Coach of Search Marketing Simplified, LLC

2019 is the year LinkedIn finally hits the mainstream.

Here are some reasons I think LinkedIn is ready to break out:

The Microsoft effect is starting to happen.

In 2016, Microsoft purchased LinkedIn, but we haven’t seen many changes until recently. At the end of November 2018, Microsoft briefly surpassed Apple (and Google) as the most valuable company in the world (over $770 billion) and monetizing LinkedIn is an easy way to increase their bottom line. For years, I’ve been saying LinkedIn is leaving billions on the table and it looks like Microsoft is finally seizing the opportunity.

Add to this that Facebook is reeling from bad publicity, and people are closing their accounts because of the negativity and political divide.

For a while, it seemed like I could post a cake recipe on Facebook and it would turn into a political attack by both sides. One side would blame Obama or Hillary’s email and the other side would blame Trump for one ingredient they didn’t like in the recipe. I took a few breaks from Facebook this year because of the political attacks out of nowhere. Facebook is under attack by the politicians around the world because of the way they handled the fake news attacks and Facebook isn’t responding fast enough.

For years, running Facebook ads was a great way to generate low-cost leads. But as more businesses jump into the game, ad prices rise. So it’s not as cost-effective for many businesses. Also, as people leave Facebook, your target audience may shrink.

I’m seeing a lot of chatter in many marketing groups and forums that big marketers are finally seeing the value in LinkedIn. This is good news and bad news because we all know once marketers see an opportunity, they pummel it until it’s dead.

LinkedIn is growing, but very slowly.

For years LinkedIn was adding 2 new members per second, but it’s slowed significantly. In April 2017, LinkedIn claimed they had 500 million members, and today, they are hovering around 590 million.

I have always said I prefer quality over quantity and LinkedIn is by far the highest quality community out there.

Content marketing on LinkedIn is absolutely crushing it right now. CEO Jeff Weiner announced last year that he wanted LinkedIn to become the largest content platform on the internet and LinkedIn members are responding. Thousands of articles are being published every day and native video is really taking off.

And to top it off, LinkedIn’s algorithm is constantly being tweaked to get the right content in front of you. It seems like every time I log into LinkedIn, I see subtle changes in the dashboard and mobile app.

LinkedIn is 100% committed to creating an amazing user experience and they are finally making it happen.

Sue B. Zimmerman, The Instagram Expert of Sue B. Zimmerman Enterprise

In 2019, Shoppable Instagram will continue to grow and venture into shoppable services.

With over 1 billion Instagram users—500 million using Instagram every day—and over 200 million users using business profiles daily, it makes sense shopping on Instagram has exploded over the past year.

With a tap of your finger, you can go from looking at something you admire to the storefront making a purchase.

This is a huge bonus for businesses in general and even bigger for small businesses with smaller budgets.

Previously, accounts would need to direct a customer to their bio to allow them to shop, i.e. requiring an extra step for action OR pay for ads to get a direct link.

Initially, shoppable posts rolled out with shopping tags in posts in March 2018. And recently (September 2018), Instagram has expanded to shoppable tags in stories. The process is the same; connecting a business page to a catalog on Facebook, which means only products are able to be sold, not services.

With the expansion of shoppable products in stories and the success Instagram has had for being a place where people go to shop, 60% of Instagrammers say that they discover new products on Instagram and 72% of users have made a purchase from something they have seen on Instagram.

We foresee shoppable services having the same success as products.

Businesses who have service products—like spa services, coaching, nutrition programs, online programs, business downloads, and eBooks—will all be able to have a seamless buying opportunity just as products have on Instagram.

Brad Martineau, Co-Founder & CEO of SixthDivision

The past few years have been big on marketing automation and marketing funnels. And while funnels have their place, the way we understand and use them to reach new customers is going to take a BIG step forward in 2019.

I see 3 big changes coming down the road.

Funnels Are Not Enough

The first change is the growing awareness that funnels, by themselves, are not enough.

They don’t give your users the kind of experience that will make them fall in love with your brand. They’re too isolated. They involve only bits and pieces of your company rather than giving people a holistic experience of everything you have to offer.

Instead, the world is moving toward creating more cohesive customer journeys.

The difference between a funnel and a customer journey is like the difference between a single subway line and a citywide public transportation system. The customer journey (the public transit system) includes multiple funnels (subways lines), and it provides a way of combining those funnels together to help move people not just from point A to point B, but also to point C, D, E, F, and so on.

To put it another way:

Now that marketing funnels are becoming more common, companies are starting to take a bigger-picture view. They’re starting to engineer ways to move their customers through multiple funnels. To sell them multiple products. All with the goal of maximizing revenue and providing a better experience for the customer.

And speaking of customer experience, here’s the second big change coming to marketing automation…

It’s All About the Customer Experience

Over the past few years, a lot of marketers have attempted to simply “throw up a funnel,” with varying degrees of success. In many cases, the marketer puts all of their focus on the funnel itself, rather than the messaging in the funnel or the product/service that funnel is promoting.

Well, that is not going to cut it in 2019.

Funnels are no longer new.

And it doesn’t matter how sophisticated your funnel is—people simply aren’t going to convert if you don’t spend the time to…

1. Create something people want
2. Explain it to them in a way that’s clear and compelling
3. Do it all through the delivery of an experience that your prospects and customers will connect with

And last but not least, here’s the third change that’s coming.

The “Client Journey Architect”

In 2019, we are going to start to see a new skillset begin to develop in the marketing world: the “Client Journey Architect.”

Right now, most marketing departments are divided in half between…

1. The visionary—the founder or leader who decides the direction the company is going to go
2. “Digital drywallers”—the people who actually put that direction into action

Well, this Client Journey Architect will sit right in the middle of these 2 groups.

In a nutshell, the Client Journey Architect will be the person who implements everything I talked about earlier.

They’re the ones who take all the disjointed, disconnected funnels and products in a company and piece them together into a more cohesive whole. Taking a bunch of solitary subway lines and turning them into a fully integrated transportation system that can take people anywhere they want to go.

That will change the landscape and economy of digital marketing because architects will be in demand at a premium and digital drywallers will become commoditized and have to level up or price down.

Nathalie Lussier, Founder of AccessAlly

In 2019, the trend toward personalization will continue, and more sites will be using visitor data to decide on the right calls to action.

I see this playing out across a combination of tools in a tech stack…

• From advertising platforms like Facebook to help segment people
• To email automation tools like ActiveCampaign to manage the different segments via tags
• And website-specific add-ons like RightMessage and AccessAlly to personalize the website experience itself

An example of personalization at work is special offers triggered by specific on-site actions, like in the image below. Notice how the copy changes depending on the user’s relationship with you…

Or, let’s say someone completes a short quiz and based on their answers they get a special discounted offer that lines up with the needs expressed in the quiz.

Or, after visiting a specific blog category, there’s a follow-up email sequence that sends them more of the same content—without the need to opt-in again.

The technology for this type of personalization and “on the spot” segmentation and offer promotion is here. It’s just a matter of using it strategically and making sure it comes off as beneficial to the end users.

Russ Henneberry, Digital Marketing Consultant, Author, & Speaker at RussHenneberry.com

As click costs from paid Google and Facebook traffic continue to rise and artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms continue to make more and more decisions about the audiences you are targeting, 2 things will happen…

1. An Increasing Need to Get the Fundamentals Right

With AI handling more and more targeting options, the edge will slide to those who understand how to craft a great offer and articulate it well to prospects.

In other words, this is a good time to brush up on your copywriting skills.

(RELATED: Perpetual Traffic Episode 34: 14 Elements of Persuasive Ad Copy)

2. A Renewed Interest in Organic Traffic

Earning traffic from search marketing and social media is an organic (read: slow) process.

But it’s worth it for many reasons including the fact that it reduces your “Cost Per” metrics.

In other words, if you buy 1,000 clicks from Facebook for $2 a pop and get 200 leads, your Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) cost is $10. If you add 1,000 clicks from organic search and your numbers remain the same, you’ve just cut your CPL to $5.

My recommendation is to not stop your digital advertising campaigns but, instead, supplement paid traffic with low or no-cost traffic from search and social.

Shannon Goodell, Social Media Manager of DigitalMarketer

Instagram continues its rise with nearly 1 billion monthly active users and 400 million Stories users.

It’s become one of the most popular social channels. People are flocking to Instagram to escape the negativity of other platforms (Facebook and Twitter, in particular).

Here at DigitalMarketer, we consistently get more positive feedback on our Instagram posts than on all other platforms.

And in 2019, Instagram will become an even bigger player for brands.

People, especially the younger audience, go on social to be educated, entertained, and inspired. And Instagram is the perfect channel for just this. Each image posted on Instagram gets 23% more engagement than on Facebook.

Facebook (Instagram’s parent company) realizes that they must focus on Instagram to succeed.

So Facebook continues to release new features focused on monetization and making marketers’ lives easier with Instagram. These are some of the features that were released just this year; a large portion of them with a focus on improving the Story experience:

• Add clickable profile usernames and hashtags in your bio
• Anti-bullying features
• Type modes and new fonts within stories to add personality
• Adding GIFs on Stories
• Mention stickers to tag account in your Stories
• Shoppable Stories and posts
• New shopping features for customers
• Repost Instagram Stories
• Re-share Instagram posts to Stories
• Stickers in Stories
• IGTV
• IGTV previews in Stories

And Instagram isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

As you can see above, the big emphasis in 2018 has been on Stories. In 2019, that will only continue (and grow).

Given this focus on Stories and monetizing them, I believe there will be even more ways to connect with your target audience through Stories. At every stage of the Customer Value Journey.

Oli Billson, Founder & CEO of Oliver Billson Marketing

Here are 4 predictions I have for 2019 that’ll help you stay on the cutting edge so you can make enormous strides in your business.

Prediction #1:  Mobile Marketing Will Provide Huge Opportunities for Businesses Who Embrace It in 2019

According to comScore, the average American adult (18+) spends 2 hours and 51 minutes on their cellphone every day. They also found mobile device adoption rates are increasing at a huge rate, surpassing 80% in 2017.

This gives you ample opportunity to capture the attention of your target audience on devices they use so frequently in their lives.

We are already taking advantage of this trend here at NextLevelBusiness. That’s why we engineered the Phone Funnel Framework that allows us to connect with prospects via the devices they have in their pockets: their cellphone.

The Phone Funnel Framework follows several steps…

…which you can learn more about from these podcast episodes:

• Perpetual Traffic Episode 150: 3 Facebook Funnels to Drive More High-Ticket Leads
• Perpetual Traffic Episode 170: Drive More Conversions from Facebook Messenger Using “The FSMC Formula”

If you haven’t made the shift toward focusing more on mobile marketing in your business, I highly recommend you do so. It’s a trend that will continue to progress in 2019 and beyond.

PREDICTION #2: Prospects & Customers Will Crave More Authenticity & Human Touch from Businesses in 2019

Advances in marketing automation have allowed the average business owner to grow and scale their business and make better decisions.

However, these advances have made marketing more “impersonal” to their target audiences and have eroded relationships with long-term customers.

Sure, you can implement automation to perform basic tasks. But you should implement a personal touch whenever it is possible so prospects don’t feel they’re interacting with someone hiding behind a computer.

The challenge, though, is how to scale adding a personal touch to your marketing communications without taking a lot of your time. We solved this problem by using bonjoro.com to make personal, short videos for our customers so they don’t feel like just a number by sending.

Here’s an example of one of those videos:

The best part is these videos aren’t fancy. I just take out my iPhone and record a quick video to teach an important point or congratulate them for taking an action.

This is much more personal than sending emails. It also shows our customers that we do care for them, which boosts the chances they’ll stick around.

Of course, nothing beats taking a second and writing an old-fashioned handwritten note to clients who act on one of your offers, or a long-time customer who has been buying from you for a while!

PREDICTION #3: Behavioral Marketing Will Help You Cut Through the Clutter of a Crowded Marketplace in 2019

Gone are the days when you can have a big email list, send the same generic message to all of them, and expect the same level of response you may have achieved 5 years ago.

It’s now more powerful to serve unique and specific content and marketing messages to prospects and customers based on their prior actions.

Why?

Because most of your prospects/customers see the same marketing and sales messages over and over. And they’re on other people’s mailing lists and they get their marketing messages as well, so they’re swamped!

So, you need to cut through the clutter by delivering more uniquely tailored messages that match their previous actions.

That’s why robust marketing automation software like Infusionsoft is critical for most businesses. It allows you to segment user based on their previous actions automatically.

It also allows you to track which emails and promotions they’re clicking on and buying, respectively, so you can get an accurate picture of what your prospects and customers REALLY want.

PREDICTION #4: Social Proof Needs to Be More Specific & Robust in 2019

Social proof is extremely important when it comes to marketing. Prospects and customers want to see that other people have had success getting the result they desire from using your product/service.

The problem is most businesses don’t have enough social proof, or the proof they have doesn’t match their target demographic.

An example is a consulting company who is trying to target lawyers, but all the social proof they have on their website is from dentists.

The solution is to collect reviews aligned to specific buyer personas (a.k.a. customer avatars).

For example, if you’re a business who serves chiropractors who are making under $500K in revenue, then you need to have testimonials from that demographic.

Also, make sure your social proof is results-based and specific. Too many marketers have general “feel good” testimonials that don’t talk about a specific result.

To conclude, I believe 2019 will bring amazing opportunities for businesses who take these predictions to heart and adjust accordingly. That way, you can put your business ahead of the game in the new year and beyond!

Mary Kathryn Johnson, Founder & CEO of Messenger Funnels

For the last few years, in-demand professional copywriters have become extremely talented at generating long-form story copy that draws us into the worlds of their clients and gets us to trust and participate in the adventure.

I predict a very successful sub-set of professional copywriters will emerge over the course of the coming year. And that is the chatbot copywriter.

We have all heard of the conversational marketplace and the need to become conversational marketers in the new age of chatbots, AI, machine learning, and personalized marketing. But as with every new high-converting process, even the early adopters who do things poorly make money.

Many chatbots today contain copy derived from emails broken up into chunks and delivered in Facebook Messenger. Chunks of long-form story email copy are passive, and they simply tell a story in short bursts.

Creating good chatbot copy is an art designed to create a participatory adventure for the subscriber. It is designed to get subscribers to interact and participate in a journey. It is active.

As more marketers and business owners start using chatbots on Messenger, and eventually WhatsApp, iMessage, and Twitter, copywriters who are talented at generating…

• Interactive
• Engaging
• Short-form story copy

…that draws us into the chatbot worlds of their clients will be in high demand!

In 2019, I predict that a new copywriting industry will be born.

And these early adopters who generate consistent revenue for their clients through their chatbot copy will become the new copywriting experts for the next decade and will drive the value of the conversational marketplace.

Dennis Yu, CTO of BlitzMetrics

Smart businesses will focus on vertical video in 2019 to drive awareness, consideration, and sales.

Just like you and me, consumers are too smart for ads. So they cherish the “man on the street” style of authentic, iPhone-captured video.

The Nike’s of the world will create high-production pieces, but even they are generating 1-minute videos to distribute on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Snapchat.

But my prediction is not an argument for more UGC (user-generated content), which is often done poorly and randomly.

Smart marketers will create “authentic-looking” videos in triggered re-marketing sequences. That means:

• Vertical videos that work in a sound-off environment—using captions, simple visual effects from free phone apps
• Stories instead of testimonials—to show people as humans who are multi-faceted and vulnerable, instead of yes-bots who all uniformly shill about your products and services
• Sequenced content instead of a content calendar—viewers of Video A on Facebook get retargeted into Video B on another channel, and vice-versa
• Many public figure pages instead of a brand monolith—to boost posts from figureheads that your audience respects, entertaining instead of just selling
• Smarter attribution instead of “conversion rate”—the more mid-funnel content you have, the greater the “assist” of social to drive search traffic, chatbot to email, etc.

All this means that you must measure the flow of traffic not only down your funnel but across your channels, such that your marketing is an X*Y grid.

Your customers are moving down and across this grid, as you prioritize which boxes in this giant game of tic-tac-toe.

I predict that most marketers will fail to grasp the power of 1-minute videos because…

• They don’t believe it will work in their vertical
• Don’t believe they have the resources/time ($1 a day and 1-minute video)
• And can’t measure the ROI (needs attribution tools like what Facebook now offers)

This is your opportunity to leap ahead of your competitors.

The post How Digital Marketing Will Change: 17 Predictions for 2019 appeared first on DigitalMarketer.