digital marketing
It’s official. It’s happening. And it will affect how we use Facebook ads.
Content by Madis Birk
Apple’s three new app policies are expected to take full effect soon. Well, nothing to be surprised about here. The digital ads ecosystem is very dynamic and keeps changing. Whether it’s new government regulations or tech company policies, changes have occurred in the past, and will most likely happen again in the future.
But for now, let’s discuss the current changes that are going to occur due to the iOS 14.5 update. Apple announced that most likely from March 2021, it will provide users with an opt-in prompt on each app which will allow them to choose whether they consent to third-party sites like Facebook to track their user data.
In this article, we are going to discuss how Apple’s new policies will affect Facebook advertisers. And if you scroll all the way to the end, you will also find several expert strategies to ensure that you survive this latest update.
Here are some changes you should expect soon:
1. Changes in App Advertising
In May 2018, Apple introduced a concept called the ‘SKAdNetwork’ API. One of the main reasons behind coming up with this concept was to increase the privacy of users who installed mobile apps.
Well, now that it’s 2021, and the SKAdNetwork API is no longer just a concept. It’s a reality that will affect the way you use Facebook Ads.
Going forward, the SKAdNetwork API will be used by Facebook for app advertising on all iOS 14 devices, and this will either restrict, aggregate, or delay all app event data.
For example, when it comes to campaign management, event data will be restricted to a maximum of nine campaigns and five ad sets per campaign for every Facebook Ads account.
Furthermore, lift measurement will be unavailable for iOS 14 App Install and App Events campaigns.
And last but not least, reporting of events will be delayed for up to three days after an app is installed.
2. Changes in Mobile Web Advertising
The SKAdNetwork API is not the only new creation of Apple that will affect advertisers. Apple has also created the PCM (Private Click Measurement) protocol for web attribution. This protocol will strongly contribute to restricting data that businesses and platforms can access.
Let’s understand PCM with an example.
Suppose an iOS 14 user is served an ad on Instagram and is taken to a web browser to complete a purchase. Now, because of PCM, this event would be lost and not properly attributed.
Tracking users in a different geographical location will also be a challenge. For example, if a user in Spain is served an ad for a US-based company, but is then redirected to the local version of the website based on their location, the purchase would not be properly tracked.
Rest assured, Facebook will release the Aggregated Event Management tool to counter this problem. This tool will help in proper attribution of sales if an event similar to the ones mentioned above occurs.
3. Optimization and Targeting
With iOS 14.5, there will be an eight-pixel event cap per domain for optimization. This means that an advertiser will only be able to use a maximum of eight conversion events per domain for optimization.
So, if you’re an advertiser, you will need to prioritize the eight events that are of most importance to you. One thing to note here is that the eight-event cap is only capping the number of events you can optimize towards. However, you may still track more events for reporting and audience creation.
In short, the new iOS update may hinder optimization, especially if there are not enough data points. This is probably not very good news for small-scale advertisers who do not have many data points as compared to the big players. Also, as more and more people update their operating system to iOS 14.5, the size of retargeting audiences will also shrink over time.
4. Measurement
The new default attribution window will make measurement a bit complicated as it will contribute to under-reporting on organic as well as paid channels. You should also expect an increase in dark social traffic. (If you cannot recall what ‘dark social’ is, it’s when people privately share content on social media which makes it harder to track. Dark traffic has always been there, but the new iOS update might contribute to its increment.)
When it comes to ad reporting data, there will be a three-day delay on data display for the data that comes from iOS 14.5 users. This is because of Apple’s PCM (Private Click Measurement) protocol. As explained above, PCM can restrict and delay data access.
Limited data could make running ads a little inconvenient to advertisers. For example, clients will only be able to see a few reported conversions, and sadly, the conversion event breakdowns would not even exist.
5. Business Manager Tool Setup
This section is short and simple, yet very important. The Facebook Business Manager interface will have a change in design. This needs to be done because Facebook cannot have a separate interface for Android and iOS.
It’s likely not going to be rocket science and advertisers will get used to the new changes in the Facebook Business Manager interface easily. For instance, things might move from Ads Manager settings to campaign level, or maybe, from Ads Manager to Event Manager.
How to Prepare for the iOS 14.5 Update in a Proactive Way
Actions to take now
Action 1: Verify your domains with Facebook
When you verify your domains with Facebook, this means that you’re officially set up on the platform.
There are several ways of verifying domains with Facebook. You could add a DNS TXT entry to your DNS record and confirm that you are the owner of a particular domain. You could also upload a Facebook-provided HTML file to your web directory to do this.
Adding a meta tag to the <head> section of your domain home page is also an easy way to verify domains.
Action 2: Decide which eight events for conversions you’ll track
Because of the new limit, you will have to choose the eight events you want to use to track conversions, then rank them in the Events Manager. Remember, just like domain verification, this needs to be done by the pixel owner, not the partner.
Check out Facebook’s official overview of “events” and this guide on how to decide which events to track.
Action 3: Compare the relationship between 28-day to 7-day attribution
You should calculate the impact that the attribution window change will have on your business before Facebook removes 28-day attribution. Since the reporting will change to 7-day post click and 1-day post view, you will need to keep an account of the sales that occur from days 8 to 28.
Source: Facebook
Here are some more detailed instructions on adding comparing windows to show view and click attribution.
Miscellaneous actions
You should proactively evaluate the impact of targeting and optimization changes on your campaigns. Also, make sure that the Auto-Advanced Matching is turned on in Events Manager.
Finally, to understand the true impact of Facebook and Instagram ads on your sales funnel, you should install a post-purchase attribution survey tool, like Prove It Post-Purchase Surveys. This will help you collect data and feedback from customers voluntarily—without relying on cookies.
Actions to take later
Action 1: Focus on strategic alliances with innovative data products
You should use products like ‘clean rooms’, which provide advertisers with privacy and safe access to data with events tied to various user IDs for ID management. Some examples of these products include, but are not limited to, Google Ads Data Hub, Facebook Advanced Analytics, Adobe Experience Platform, and Amazon Marketing Cloud.
Action 2: Find alternatives to cookie tracking
If you’re a marketing partner, you can still facilitate retargeting by using any number of user-specific identifiers to target individuals, such as email addresses, phone numbers, etc.
In order to increase the volume of persistent IDs, you should encourage site login through improved authenticated experiences or by offering incentives to consumers for logging in.
Action 3: Develop “value exchange” strategies
As explained briefly in the previous point, you could offer incentives to customers for sharing their data through “value exchange” strategies. This is a great way to increase a brand’s first-party data.
An Accenture survey from 2019 found that 71% of the 8,000 surveyees believed that the brand had communicated in a way that was too personal. However, a whopping 93% said that it’s important that every interaction they have with the brand should be excellent.
To offer excellent experiences, brands need to dig deep into their consumers’ psyche—and a lot of data is required to truly understand your customers. So, use value exchange strategies to collect data and use it to your advantage.
Miscellaneous actions
To survive the new changes, you should make data governance a top priority.
In order to do this, you must ensure that the data collected and stored has proper user consent, and can be appropriately leveraged for media execution purposes.
You should also implement Conversions API to ensure that the events are passed back to Facebook directly from the server—not just from the pixel.
If you use Shopify, you should set up the Facebook Sales Channel App. It is very easy to set up. Simply connect your Facebook account and watch all your products sync automatically. This will make it convenient for you to promote them on Facebook or Instagram.
What Industry Experts Have to Say
“This will have the biggest negative impact on one particular type of movie release, that being the cinema release. A conversion for a movie ticket is in most cases a cross-device conversion as an effect of the complex value chain of the movie industry. This, combined with the ticket being accessible to purchase in a limited timeframe will ultimately result in fewer conversions for theatrical releases whilst continuing on a trend the industry has seen in the last couple of years; more and more movies will be watched online.”
– Nikolaj Mathies, CEO at Gruvi US
Effect on the promotion of SaaS via FB Ads
“Facebook ads is one of the best channels to drive new customers for SaaS companies and the iOS14.5 update isn’t going to change that. What will change however is the ease at which you can expect to report back on the direct impact of your ads. Continue to focus on your fundamentals like improving your creatives, messaging, and overall marketing funnel. Accept that you’ll have a little less precision with your in-platform reporting and make sure you’re always using UTM tagging so that you can still track everything easily in Google Analytics.”
– Dylan Hey, CEO at Hey Digital
Effect on the promotion of real estate via FB Ads
“The changes push the real estate industry to adapt and find new strategies once again. It will be difficult to rely less on the Facebook Pixel for retargeting and ad measurement but there will still be many ways to use the platform efficiently.”
– Zachary Dulla, CEO at Indoor Drone Tours
Effect on the promotion of e-commerce products via FB Ads
“Since the CTA is rather cold of the prompt Apple is sending to IOS14 devices, we’re expecting a rather high opt-out ratio. In conclusion, side-server tracking will become the most important third source for facebook to gather their aggregated data events. Social media channels, such as Facebook, will therefore need to work towards eROAS, which are an estimated ROAS, instead of actual data proven ROAS. Facebook Ads will temporarily have lower ROAS for eCommerce until their algorithm is up to speed with eROAS.”
– Ricardo Ghekiere, Head of Paid Social at Upthrust
Take Stock of how iOS 14.5 affects your brand and be proactive
Ultimately, the iOS 14.5 updates are going to change a lot about how you track the performance of your Facebook ads—but not all is lost. Brands who adapt to different ways of collecting feedback—and stop relying on cookies to tell them everything—will be ahead of the curve.
Madis Birk is an independent Facebook Ads Consultant. A lean, mean, growth-focused Facebook advertising plug-in to your existing A-team. A digital marketing expert integrable into your winning strategy. If you want to get in touch with Madis, you can find him by going to www.madisbirk.com.
Content written by: Madis Birk
March 8, 2018
10 Tools Every Marketer Should Know About
Steve Jobs once said: "Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them."
Not sure what tools Mr. Jobs had in mind but here's a list of tools that can help any marketer at any level do their jobs just that much easier and more efficiently.
1. Deluxe Logo Maker
Don’t underestimate the power of a good logo. Signs.com reports that about 94% of the world’s entire population recognizes the Coca Cola logo. You might be setting your sights a little lower than universal recognition, but a good logo is still essential for communicating your brand’s identity and values and helping it stand out from the crowd. Deluxe Logo provides multiple different price levels for custom-designed logos, ensuring you get the most out of this important branding tool.
2. Packlane
Shopify estimates that the e-commerce market will generate $4.5 trillion in annual global sales by 2021. That means a ton of companies need or are going to need packaging and shipping options for getting their product to customers. Packlane ensures that your customer’s “unboxing” experience is a pleasant and branded one. Companies can easily use Packlane’s user-friendly website to customize packaging style and size, create color schemes, and even upload original art.
3. Yotpo
Yotpo helps you leverage one of the most powerful branding tools you have: satisfied customers. ReachLocal reports that 90% of shoppers use online reviews to help them decide on a purchase, and 70% of consumers will leave a review if asked. Yotpo provides frictionless tools to help you solicit reviews from recent customers, as well as valuable information such as photos and Q&As. It automatically displays your best reviews on your website and across a wide variety of platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. Consumers trust each other far more than they trust marketers--Yotpo uses the most of that trust.
4. Traackr
Influencer marketing is essential for digital branding. According to Marketing Profs, companies see an average of $7.65 return on each dollar spent on influencers. Influencer marketing can be informal and difficult to track, but Traackr provides a platform for monitoring influencer efficacy, discovering new influencer trends related to your topic, and establish long term relationships.
5. ReBrandly
Your marketing strategy likely includes distributing a URL, perhaps just to your homepage, or perhaps to a specific discount offer or blog post. But URLs, and especially URLs for pages within larger websites such as Facebook posts, can be ugly and off-putting for customers. Many URL shortening services will destroy your domain identity in the process, creating ambiguous links that customers find untrustworthy. Rebrandlyoffers branded domain shorteners, which means you can very briefly share a link to content while preserving your brand identity in the URL. Social Media Examiner reports that branded domains can increase click-through rates on Twitter by up to 34%.
6. Unbounce
Landing pages are essential for branding because they’re often the first real encounter a websurfer has with your company’s digital presence. The Landing Page Course advises that a dedicated landing page is essential for starting any new marketing campaign. Unbounce allows you to create aesthetically pleasing, brand-consistent landing pages for new marketing campaigns--quickly, and without having to learn any code.
7. Frontify
Your careful branding efforts can be easily undone if your branding seems inconsistent--customers might think you’re unreliable, or even assume your one great brand is, in fact, two lightweight ones. Brand consistency covers everything from your tagline to your color scheme. Pixelnomics recently recreated several famous logos in “regular” fonts, and the contrast between these recreations and actual logos will drive home that even font choice matters. With Frontify, your brand can create cloud-based, sophisticated style guides, brand portals, media and pattern libraries, and shared collaboration spaces.
8. MailChimp
Email marketing is another essential component of any branding strategy. Wordstream reports that companies can get up to $44 in returns from just one dollar spent on email marketing. MailChimp is an email automation platform that can be connected to any ecommerce website, providing custom email content and newsletters to potential customers. MailChimp’s services involve abandoned cart email reminders, beautiful email templates, and Facebook ads management.
9. WiseStamp
A simple but effective tool, WiseStamp lets your company create individual branded email signatures for your employees. Centralized control allows you to implement changes across all signatures all at once, emails appear professional and polished, and consistent branding and contact information is maintained no matter who in your company is sending an email or when they last remembered to update their signature. Popular online tutoring provider, Grad Coach, recently implemented WiseStamp and saw a 21% increase in social media traffic from email signatures, according to the MD, Derek Jansen.
10. HootSuite
HootSuite is one of the world’s most popular social media marketing platforms. It allows you to compose and schedule posts to a wide variety of platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, all from one user dashboard. It can also allow your employees to coordinate social media marketing through task creation and assignment, and it creates analytic reports to help you figure out whether your social media plan is working.
Article by: ,
February 15, 2018
5 Incredibly Effective Digital Marketing Strategies That Most Marketers Are Too Afraid To Try
What are you doing to embrace and tackle marketing industry changes? Are you afraid to try new things? Or are you fearless?
One of the reasons I am so passionate about the marketing industry is the anticipation of changes, and ability to experiment with new marketing tactics and efforts.
Taking chances is often what separates top marketing professionals from novices. But how can you separate fads from educated risks? Take a look at the top strategies I’ve identified that most marketers might deem risky, may not be aware of, or not fully understand.
These are risks, yes, but they are risks that are worth taking.
1. Switch from outbound to content marketing
In the past, it was enough to highlight your product or service and the hundreds of fantastic features and capabilities. These days, you have to add value to your brand and product/service with content that teaches and establishes you as a thought leader and an expert. Why should your customers believe in what you’re selling?
It might scare you to switch to an inbound format that teaches and nurtures your prospects. How will they know what you offer, you ask? How will we sell and generate leads without pushing our product? Content marketing can be scary to adopt because it relies on your expertise and puts the ball in your prospects court.
In contrast, content marketing is shown to drive more traffic and leads than outbound marketing. According to Demandmetric content marketing generates as many as three times more leads than outbound marketing.
2. Interactive content
As content marketing rises in popularity, pushing through the clutter is becoming more and more difficult for all of us. But even though we know we must differentiate ourselves from the pack, we can be hesitant to make our basic content more interactive and exciting.
Interactive content can draw more attention to your messaging while increasing your engagement on powerful social media sites. Quizzes, ROI calculators and interactive infographics can help you convey your brand’s story in a more dynamic fashion.
As a bonus, eye-catching, interactive, fun content can draw the attention or industry publications in addition to attracting prospects. As a result, you can extend your reach and continue driving traffic and high quality links to your site and blog.
3. Embrace up-and-coming social media channels
While there remains a place for LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, new social media channels will allow you to reach consumers in new and exciting ways. Additionally, new channels allow you to explore more creative methods of telling your stories and conveying who you are.
Snapchat, Instant Articles on Facebook, and Instagram Stories provide companies and even professionals a channel to experiment and target specific groups and audiences. As a bonus, new and exciting social media channels are often a great place to promote the interactive contentdiscussed above.
4. Developing content for real people, not algorithms
As a marketer, you may have gotten in the habit of developing and creating content that will highlight your company, blog, business or ideas at the top of the search engines.
These days you’ve got to step out of your box and think about your content in the context of your reader’s desires, fears, worries and needs.
Creating content that is displayed in front of thousands of sets of eyes is no longer enough to set you apart. Instead, readers expect real ideas that are well written and display complex and interesting ideas and thoughts.
While SEO is still very important, don’t be afraid to put your audience and their needs and wants first and consider your page rank secondarily.
Instead of using keywords to draw more traffic from search engines and their algorithms, use keywords to highlight your points and draw readers in by providing information that is valuable to your audience.
5. Reuse and repurpose your top content
Even your loyal readers may not see your content initially. It could take several touches and multiple channels to get through to them. Try reposting your top blog posts with refreshed titles or new visuals.
Utilize that content in a digest newsletter format to drive traffic to content that your audience’s peers have enjoyed (it can be tough to resist content that we know our peers and colleagues have enjoyed).
Want more traffic? Automate that refreshed and repurposed content for periods when it’s relevant or for different days or times to attract new readers who may not have engaged the first time around.
According to Curata, only 29% of marketers are reusing/repurposing content, which means many marketers are only putting their messaging in front of their audiences one time: they’re missing out on valuable clicks, impressions and engagement.
Conclusion
We’re often afraid of the uncertain. We get stuck doing the same marketing activities over and over again in an effort to remain comfortable. We know our metrics for what we’ve been doing. We have goals for those efforts. We know what to expect.
Getting over our fears is as simple as widening our expectations and being ok with not knowing exactly what to expect from our marketing efforts. Try something new. By taking small steps and measuring your efforts very closely, you might find that your strategies are not enough.
You might try something that doesn’t work or isn’t right for your audience. But more importantly, you might find something that is a clear win and helps you change the course of your marketing efforts, your business and messaging.
Written by: ,
Marius Masalar - Unsplash
February 5, 2018
Will Google's New Page Speed Criteria Affect Your Site?
If you visit your website on a mobile device right now, how long does it take to load? If you don’t know the answer, you might want to take the time to run an analysis. Desktop-based Google search has always considered page speed as a ranking factor, but only recently has Google announced that page speed would be a factor on mobile devices.
So what are the ramifications of this announcement? How will the new ranking criteria affect your site?
The Change in a Nutshell
Google formally announced the coming change on January 17, on the Webmaster Central Blog. Calling it the “Speed Update,” the plan is to slowly roll out the new ranking factor starting in July 2018—which gives you plenty of time to make changes as you see fit.
According to Google, the update is only going to affect the slowest sites on the web, and is only going to come into play for a small percentage of queries. In other words, the new criteria is only designed to weed out slow sites, rather than rewarding fast sites.
There’s no way to tell exactly what criteria Google is using here; for example, it’s not like all pages that take more than three seconds to load are going to be affected. In fact, on the Webmaster Central Blog, Google encourages webmasters to “think broadly about how performance affects a user’s experience of their page and to consider a variety of user experience metrics,” rather than spending too much time thinking about speed alone.
Will You Be Affected?
According to research from 2017, about 70 percent of sites take roughly 7 seconds to load on mobile devices. As a mobile device user, you likely know, intuitively, that 7 seconds is a long time. You reasonably expect your content to load within 2 or 3 seconds, and anything longer than that is frustrating.
While we don’t have an exact metric to work with, we do know that Google is insisting that only a handful of sites and queries will be affected. In fact, because relevance is still so important, a highly relevant piece of content can still achieve top rankings—even if it loads slower than average.
So will your site be affected? The simplest answer is “probably not,” since only the worst-offending sites are going to see the negative ranking factor.
If you’re concerned about your site’s performance, you can use Google’s own PageSpeed Insights tool to check the load times and speed of your individual web pages. While you’re at it, you can use the Chrome User Experience Report to look up other user engagement metrics for your site.
Why Page Speed Is Still Important
Even though your site probably won’t be affected by the new update, this is a good time to analyze—and improve—your site speed. Even if your efforts don’t result in a higher search ranking, there are many benefits to having a faster site, including:
- Visitor retention. Today’s users are demanding. They generally expect a site to load within 2 seconds, and may abandon your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Cutting your load time by even a fraction of a second increases the likelihood that a user will stay on your site after clicking a link.
- Actions and subsequent page visits. A quick-loading site is an inviting site. When users discover that your pages load quickly, with little delay, they’ll be more inclined to visit other pages on your site, and more likely to purchase with you.
- Brand reputation. If a user decides to stick around, despite an unsatisfactory loading time, they may think less of your brand when engaging with your site. This may negatively affect your consumer relationships.
Improving Your Speed
Let’s say you want to improve your site’s loading time—what can you do?
- Make sure you’re optimized for mobile. First and foremost, make sure your site is optimized for mobile. Use a responsive design, and ensure that all your content loads quickly and efficiently on mobile devices.
- Streamline on-page components. For every component of your site, including images, stylesheets, and scripts, there will be an HTTP request. The more requests there are, the longer it will take for your site to load. Try to streamline these components as much as possible to reduce the number of necessary requests.
- Get a good caching plugin. Get a caching plugin, and don’t play around with the settings unless you know what you’re doing. This will make the site load faster on subsequent visits.
- Minimize your image and video sizes. Images and video are the heaviest file types you’ll have on your site, so try to minimize them as much as you can without sacrificing quality.
- Cut unnecessary files. If there are files on your site (like images), or on the backend (like old blog drafts) that aren’t necessary, eliminate them. The smaller and more efficient your website is, the faster it will load.
Google’s Speed Update isn’t going to spark an SEO revolution—especially considering that page speed has been a desktop ranking factor for many years, and that the update is only going to affect the bottom tier of webpages.
Still, this is a good opportunity to review your site’s loading speed on mobile devices, analyze your key user experience metrics, and make tweaks to improve your site’s mobile performance.
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Photo by: Thought Catalog- Unsplash
January 23, 2018
11 Digital Marketing Buzzwords to Know and Love in 2018
Well, it’s 2018, so now's the time to get your marketing plan in place, if you haven't done so already.
To help, we think you'll need to be aware of these marketing buzzwords in 2018.
Don’t worry, they’re not the useless jargon style buzzwords so many people loathe. These are useful marketing terms that will need to be part of your vocabulary this year.
Here are your digital marketing buzzwords for 2018:
Algorithm – Everyone wants to talk about Google’s algorithm updates or the Facebook algorithm making it hard for businesses to get their marketing messages in front of their target audience, but what does it really mean?
Well, you can think of an algorithm as a formula. It’s a set of rules Google or Facebook uses to determine what content shows up where. So, Google uses its algorithm to determine which businesses and websites show up for certain searches, while Facebook uses its algorithm to determine which posts are most important and relevant to its users.
SEO – SEO stands for search engine optimization and it's the way that we optimize for Google’s algorithm.
SEO involves optimizing your business’s website for searches by adding keywords, meta-tags and other information that search engines need to know in order to rank your business in the right searches for the right consumers. Don’t forget there’s more than one kind of SEO.
Marketing Automation – Marketing automation is exactly what it sounds like - it's software which enables you to automate certain marketing tasks.
Even if this makes it sound hands off for you, you still need a human touch to set up your automation and make sure everything continues to run smoothly.
AI – AI stands for artificial intelligence, and it’s taking over the marketing world. You can think of AI as any time a machine mimics human intelligence.
Those algorithms we mentioned earlier are one example of how AI impacts your marketing strategies - the algorithms replace humans by quickly figuring out which businesses or websites should show up in your search results, News Feed, etc. AI is also used in advertising to determine which consumers see your business's ads in search results or their Facebook newsfeeds.
AI is already an important part of digital marketing, but we expect it to become even bigger in 2018 and beyond.
Customer Journey – Your consumer’s path to purchase is longer than you think and involves multiple touchpoints across different channels and devices.
People don’t purchase products or services after the first click – it's much more complicated than that. The customer journey is one of the most important things to understand when creating a digital marketing strategy.
Omnichannel – Along the same lines, omnichannel marketing means creating a seamless online presence (and marketing plan) that reaches customers wherever they’re searching or browsing.
Because the consumer’s path to purchase is longer and more complicated than it used to be, omnichannel marketing is more important than ever.
Attribution – Attribution is a fancy way to say figuring out which marketing channels are driving ROI (ROI was one of our buzzwords for 2017).
Attribution can be tricky, though, since consumers will likely interact with your business in a few different ways (visit your website, scroll through your social media, be served a retargeting ad or any other number of ways) before making a purchase.
You can track attribution through the first way a customer ever interacted with your business, assign attribution to each step of the way or even use the very last action/interaction before the customer made a purchase.
Geofencing – Geofencing is a form of location-based marketing.
It's setting a virtual boundary around a specific location. Think of it like drawing a circle (or polygon) around your business on a map to target people who are in the area.
Businesses that have an app can use geofencing to target people near the business and draw them in with a special offer or promotion.
Micro-Moments – Google talks about micro-moments all the time - they’re those little moments in your life when you need help with something so you reach for your phone.
Micro-moments are broken down into moments such as “I want to know,” “I want to go” and “I want to do,” among others. The point of micro-moments is to understand that there are plenty of small moments when you can be there for a consumer if your business has a consistent, correct online presence.
Smart Content – For a long time, everyone was saying that content is king, but it looks like smart content may be planning to usurp the throne.
Smart content is a term that people are throwing around a lot right now. It refers to personalized content that's designed to meet a consumer’s needs. This could be anything from adding the consumer’s name to an email or personalizing a call-to-action depending on where the consumer is in the buying cycle.
Hyperlocal – The word “hyperlocal” is nothing new, and neither is the marketing concept. But, with Facebook and Google making it easier and easier for local consumers to find the right business in their area, having a hyperlocal marketing strategy is imperative for businesses that want to compete in today’s digital world.
Local search marketing is a good place to get started with a hyperlocal strategy so that your business shows up when local consumers are looking for your products and services.
These are the buzz terms we expect to see a lot of in 2018. Some have been around for a long time, others are new, but it's worth considering what each means in a modern context, and how they relate to your approach.
Written by: Isabella Andersen
Photo by: Alisa Mulder - Unsplash
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