Top Digital Marketing Tips for 2018
CleverClicks attended Pubcon 2017 in Las Vegas; one of the top digital marketing conferences in the world. Aside from attending various keynotes and sessions and acquiring tons of valuable knowledge, we also approached and had one-on-one chats with many of the expert speakers, asking them more about their expertise, key learnings from 2017 and their top digital marketing tips for 2018.
Here's what they had to say.
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Follow @navahf Follow @WordStream Where do you think PPC is headed in 2018?
“Audiences, so one of the most common uses of audiences has always been in display and traditionally search has kind of shied away from it and more in favour of keywords, I can tell you Google is making a really big push on audiences we've already started to see it in the RL SAS, but you can definitely expect to see audiences, ie, interests, folks who visited your site, similar folks who have visited your site like that's really what you want to pay attention to.”
Read the full interview here >>
WordStream
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Follow @rogerdooley
“Stay focussed on the brain for one. With Cialdini's newest Principal of Influence Unity - focus on shared identity with customers, and make it very visible. I don’t see many companies doing this.
For instance with sporting companies who often have that shared identity with their customers, in other words, their customers are lifestyle people who engage in an outdoor lifestyle, who are crazy about fishing or hunting or whatever, and these companies would fail to establish that bond with the customer who has those same interests as them.
It’s got to be visible, you know. You don’t bury it on the about us page where nobody looks. It’s got to be on the homepage, the landing page.”
Read the full interview here >>
Neuroscience Marketing
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Follow @Szetela
What should people be thinking about now if they want to double their growth in 2018?
"I would say two things: One of them is to do more display advertising, both on Adwords and Facebook. The other is to take advantage of automation."
Read the full interview here >>
FMB Media
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Follow @dennisyu Follow @BlitzMetrics
"We've heard that video is key, but if video truly is key, that means you've got a video editor in-house, that means you’re creating video as your core content strategy, not something on the side. It means that you’re boosting video, and that your analytics are all around video. How do you actually adopt that? Because you know that video is the most engaging thing out there."
Read the full interview here >>
BlitzMetrics
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Follow @julieewaldFollow @Impressa_LV
"I think anyone marketing online needs to remember to think in a holistic, integrated way.SEO, PPC, content, social media, and so on all need to be part of a cohesive, concerted effort to get maximum results. If you simply "do" SEO or blogging, for example, but don't provide further support for these initiatives by linking up your other marketing initiatives like social media or email marketing, you're limiting your overall results.
When your marketing efforts support both each other and your overall business objectives, you'll get greater results... and likely spend even less time and money to get them."
Read the full interview here >>
Impressa Solutions
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Follow @BruceClayInc "I believe in 2018 everybody should focus on three things - Mobile first, video second and voice search.
Now anybody with a phone is going to adapt to voice search, and if you search for your own company by voice, most of the time you’ll never find yourself, unless you’re searching by explicit name.
If you’re searching for a product, you won’t be there even if you rank well in other areas. A lot of it has to do with language, and a lot of it has to do with the interpretation of the voice to understanding what you mean. So in understanding that Google is in the business of making money; answers are still pretty important to them."
Read the full interview here >>
Bruce Clay Inc.
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Follow @stonetemple "Learn how to get featured snippets, because that's going to become more and more important. They're going to have more and more answers that are given to you by voice and if you're not getting set up to get those then you're in bad shape.”
Read the full interview here >>
Stone Temple Consulting
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Follow @badams Follow @PolemicDigital "Voice search is going to be big - which includes how to actually optimise properly for it.Just keep an eye on technology in general, and don't jump on the band wagons, but keep an eye on what's happening and be ready to adjust when necessary, which has always been the case in SEO."
Read the full interview here >>
Polemic Digital
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Follow @shendison “Pay attention to schema data… or structured data. If you’re a local business, whatever your products or services are, look into schema.org. Make sure you’ve got that markup in all the appropriate places on your site.
And then video, figure out video production. You don’t need a $10 000 camera or a huge video budget; you can make quite effective videos just by being creative using your camera that’s right on your phone. If it’s done well, it’s going to get shared. Turn your phone and your camera sideways.”
Read the full interview here >>
Search Commander Inc.
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Follow @loganly Follow @BlitzMetrics "It's all about video - I think because video is the best way to tell a story, which is the best way to sell a product. Everyone is watching on their phones right? So you don't need high quality, it can be super informal. Anyone can make a video. Just pull your smartphone point it at you and tell your story and that's my focus for 2018.”
Read the full interview here >>
BlitzMetrics
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Follow @hermant2012 Follow @searchrep “I’d say in the mid-term, we’re probably going to get a lot more voice activation, searching with voice, with video. Right now you don’t see too many people doing it, but it’s growing steadily. So voice is going to be huge, what’s inside the video is going to be huge as well. You know, more detailed algorithms going within the content of images and videos in the short to medium term. Longer term, where Google is headed and the world is headed, is AI."
Read the full interview here >>
SearchReputation
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Follow @keithgoode Follow @IBM “I would say, it’s nothing new, but voice search. It’s going to keep getting bigger all the time, and gaining access to that data and taking advantage of that data is going to be very valuable to SEO’s.”
Read the full interview here >>
IBM
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Follow @ErikDStafford "My top tip would be that you really have to focus on creating a dimensional message for you or for your clients; and that’s always been our philosophy, but it’s never been more important.
There are big companies out there that are competing for attention - everyone is competing for attention. YouTube has entire floors of people dedicated to getting you to watch the next related video. Snapchat and Instagram have streaks. Everyone wants you to log in, everyone wants your attention. And so, what worked 5 years ago, what worked 2 years ago doesn’t work anymore. You have to create a dimensional message."
Stafford Marketing
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Follow @gryffincom "Stop thinking about direct, bottom of the funnel marketing and start thinking in terms of omni-channel, multi-attribution marketing. Look at your content, organic, and paid search strategy as part of a strategy to feed visitors into your buying funnels, and use different strategies to push them down the buying funnel to conversion.
Integrating your strategy between your own content channels, as well as paid search and remarketing on Adwords and Facebook, is a powerful way to keep feeding new users into your funnels and nurturing them until they purchase from you. To superpower your strategies, add influencers into the mix to feed the top of the funnel!"
Gryffin Media
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Follow @methode Follow @Google "My top tip is structured data - I don’t think most people realise how important it is to use structured data to help search engines such a Google, understand what the page is about - the entities in the page and how they relate to each other. It’s not just about search features. It’s actually about indexing and understanding your page.
If we understand your pages better, then we can more easily rank your site. So I definitely think people should focus more on structured data. Add structured data to your site where relevant. Schema.org has lots of schemas that might be applicable to your site. Make use of them."
Google
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Follow @5le Follow @SurveyMonkey "My best marketing tip for 2018 is to conduct tests on everything. Don’t believe everything you hear and read from the brands and thought leaders. You need to get your hands dirty and learn what will work for your specific website and products."
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Follow @Marie_Haynes "We have seen a lot of changes to Google's algorithms in 2017. The most important change is that Google seems to be putting more and more effort into determining which sites truly are the most helpful to people.
As such, it is getting harder and harder to make a mediocre site rank well by creating links or tweaking content.
In my opinion, the key to better rankings in 2018 and beyond is to find nuggets in Google's Quality Raters' Guidelines as these guidelines tell us exactly what Google considers to be signs of high and low quality in a website.
Specific areas to focus on are improving Expertise, Authority and Trust (E-A-T), keeping an eye on your off-site reputation, and also focusing on having the most helpful main content on your site as compared to competitors."
Marie Haynes Consulting
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Follow @bgtheory Follow @Adalysis "For 2018 it’s completeness of PPC accounts. Most accounts are built but they’re missing some extensions or they’ve got some empty Ad Groups. It’s being complete across the entire account and almost going back to what we’ve learnt and looked at some of the best-practices and being consistent."
Adalysis
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Follow @KatContentQueen Follow @GoFishDigital "When it comes to improving a website's search rankings and boosting brand awareness, certain types of creative content can yield extremely positive results.
We've seen huge wins by leveraging existing Google Trends data, surveying consumers through the Google Survey platform, and hopping on breaking news stories to create on-brand marketing materials.
These three tactics are low effort, high reward strategies that could become the secret sauce for digital marketers in the new year."
Go Fish Digital
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Follow @rehor "Download and read Google’s Website Quality Rater Guidelines. That is very important for anyone in SEO who wants to understand what Google is looking for from a website quality perspective. That’s not necessarily just for 2018, but it is something I find many people do not do."
Elmer Boutin
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Follow @AJonLinkedIn Follow @Mouth_Marketing "My top digital marketing tip is this: If you are in B2B Sales, then you need to get on LinkedIn Sales Navigator and start connecting to your target audience. To add to that, it is also imperative that everyone exports their LinkedIn data.
We have noticed an increase in the information that LinkedIn requires from users prior to pulling their own data off of the platform. I suspect this may be an indication that this data will be shared differently and may even be exported for a fee instead of being free since the information is so valuable. LinkedIn gives you all of the dates that you connected with people on; their email address, company name, job title, etc....
This data can be used in many ways and with the right marketing team, you can use the data while still complying with the law and LinkedIn's terms."
Mouth Marketing
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Follow @TheTMOffice "Continue to optimize your site: schema and speed are essential. For paid clicks, extreme relevancy mapped to landing pages. Products with ample relevant content and longevity in spend will reduce CPC/CPA overall.
Get the quality score costs down and benefit double in organic with a great, optimized page."
Trademark Productions
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Follow @katykatztx Follow @MrketingRefresh "The most important strategy for 2018 is to create useful content. By that, I mean to create content with "utility" for the humans that are seeking questions about your line of business. Each technological innovation that search engines make to their algorithm and product lines is to increase human utility.
Many SEO experts are now talking about how to create content for voice search by optimizing for snippets, etc. But that is because it's 10 times faster for a person to speak a question than it is to type it.
At the end of the day, the most important thing is to get in the mind of your consumer and design your marketing materials to be optimized for their solutions.
Today, and in 2018 as well, that often means answering questions in a straightforward, succinct way across the web (not just on your owned platforms)."
Marketing Refresh
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Follow @jimboot "My top tip for 2018 is to forget about Google and focus on building your brand. As long as you have good tech SEO done, building out your brand in the medium that your customers spend most of their time in will be the difference in dominating the SERPs."
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Follow @CourtneyHerda Follow @SmarterSearches "My #1 tip for online marketers for 2018 is super simple. Put the customer first. Don't be swayed by what's new, what's trendy, or what you want to do; focus on who your customers are and what they really need.
Focus on the social channels where their customers are, focus on blog topics and content marketing pieces that are relevant and most productive to their customers.
The customer is really the priority and focusing on the customer journey is the biggest theme I've seen for 2018."
Smarter Searches
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Follow @andrew_goodman Follow @pagezero "When evaluating marketing performance by channel, either under a partner's efforts or by your in-house team, be sure not to get tripped up by misleading attribution.
Moving beyond "last click" conversion is only part of the issue here. Excessive credit to non-acquisition channels such as direct navigation, brand PPC and organic queries, and email (and excessive spend on remarketing via multiple channels, when the last click may "snipe" all the credit from other productive channels) will derail your growth efforts and lead to budget misallocation.
If feasible, consider adding $/NC (cost per *new* customer) to your arsenal of metrics in, for example, retail. In short, stop short changing your workhorse channels and your "top of funnel" efforts!"
Page Zero Media
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Follow @KristinaLibby "My tip for 2018 would be: Make yourself into an influencer in your industry. Follow in the footsteps of social media influencers to ensure you have a footprint all on your own. This is advantageous for your career, your business and your personal growth."
Kristina Libby
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Follow @NewVideoAnthony "My top tip for 2018: The best new skill you can learn is video leadership.
Dedicate 30 minutes a week to knowing what to say, how to say it, and how to look good on camera.
Videos work like automated messenger people that don't need a salary, vacation or health benefits. If you've ever thought that you needed a clone to get everything done that you have to do in a day, ask the question: 'how can I delegate this task so that I never have to do it again?' and if video is the answer then you've just identified a way that video can give you back more of what you value most. Your time. If getting more 'time freedom' is your goal in 2018 then video is a tool that you have available to you."
Anthony Prichard
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Follow @jakebohall Follow @hivemarketing "Focus on being THE ANSWER. As search morphs from 10 blue links to interactions with assistants, the transition will be focused on those sites or pieces of content that clearly deliver the answer.
To best position yourself for this, leverage schema markup for all entities on a page so Google knows you are a financial institution giving out interest rate information vs. Barb the Blogger.
Most importantly, don't get caught up in writing question variants on a page, focus on writing clear answers. A widget is a tool that does x, y, and z, can easily be interpreted by Google as the answer for "What does a widget do?". You don't have to waste time and confuse the page by putting the question there."
Hive Digital
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Follow @kieley_taylor Follow @GroupMWorldwide "I’d say my top digital marketing tip for 2018 is to plan for a short attention span.
This is especially true for social and mobile where there are many app sessions per day for a short duration and where content can quickly be advanced with a scroll of a feed or a tap of the screen. We’ve begun to see 6 seconds is the new average time spent on long-form content in social."
GroupM
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Follow @puriprashant Follow @AdLift "My top tip would be: decide with data. I’d recommend marketers to become more savvy and comfortable with their analytic tools – with a number of platform in the mix, it’s imperative to understand ROI across all platforms and make informed decisions on which platform to double down with or which ones to scale back on."
AdLift
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"Consider rebooting previously unprofitable broad keyphrases by layering in new Adwords audience targeting options."
Craig Paddock
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Follow @michaelbonfils "Multilingual Keyword Research: There is a broad difference between Translation and what is considered Search Localization. Translation is taking a word and finding the closest equivalent. Search localization is take a word and finding the relevant word or words that people use to search. You would be surprised how many translators do not provide the correct word that is searched in for the market. I often see a nearly 30-45% traffic loss when marketers think it’s ok to just do keyword translations rather than doing proper search localization."
SEM International
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Letterpress asymmetrical
Kale chips lomo biodiesel stumptown Godard Tumblr, mustache sriracha tattooed cray aute slow-carb placeat delectus. Letterpress asymmetrical fanny pack art party est pour-over skateboard anim quis, ullamco craft beer. -
Letterpress asymmetrical
Kale chips lomo biodiesel stumptown Godard Tumblr, mustache sriracha tattooed cray aute slow-carb placeat delectus. Letterpress asymmetrical fanny pack art party est pour-over skateboard anim quis, ullamco craft beer.Letterpress asymmetrical
Kale chips lomo biodiesel stumptown Godard Tumblr, mustache sriracha tattooed cray aute slow-carb placeat delectus. Letterpress asymmetrical fanny pack art party est pour-over skateboard anim quis, ullamco craft beer.