Paid Online Ad Updates

We are steaming ahead into a New Year and January is already in full-swing for many. However, this is a great moment for digital advertising specialists and marketers to take stock and evaluate the digital marketing landscape in 2019. As always, ongoing disruption will make it a challenging year. We’ve put together a handy summary of what to lookout for in 2019 …

Voice Search – The ‘Next Big Thing’ For 2019?

Right, 2019 is all about making sure your website is ready for “Okay, Google”, “Alexa,…” or “Siri,…” voice search results. The voice search metrics are ground-breaking and will impact on marketers in the future. However, today, they are causing ripples.

Google has already announced that 20% of its entire mobile search queries are voice search-based. TechCrunch, forgive the pun, crunched the data for 2018 voice tech-sales and found that 1 in 6 Americans now own a smart speaker device. ComScoreargues, that by 2020, 50% of all search queries will be executed through voice-based tech.

There are basic ways you can start to improve your voice search query result accessibility even in these early days. Researchers have already found that 75% of smart-speaker owners use the device to search for local SME businesses – therefore making your website and sales channel process, voice search ready, is crucially important to help drive new sales in 2019. Try and aim for featured snippets … here’s what you can do :

– Find common questions on your chosen subject via a service like ‘Answer the Public‘. Use this information as the root of your content. Include the question (as an H2 html tag), and answer it in the main body text below it.

– Create unique local content that is original, useful and insightful.

– Make sure your website is HTTPS ready – secure website credentials are central to being picked by Google or Amazon’s search engine bots.

– Invest in good hosting tech – the faster the page uploads the more optimal the site is for voice search results.

– Your content needs to be short, snappy and to the point. People want information fast!

Will Video Kill The SEO Star?

2019 Is the year you need to embrace the power of video in your marketing activities. Video is king. Cisco argues that by 2022, nearly half of internet traffic will be video-based which means marketers really need to engage with video as a means of creating new customer engagement avenues.

As a marketer, video can help you tell stories in a way conventional digital marketing means fail. It is about engagement and in 2019 you really need to ‘connect’ with these disruptive digital marketing technologies to help engage with more customers:

– Facebook Live or Instagram Live – The Power of Live Video can help bring about a new ‘type’ of customer engagement. If you have a community of followers, live events can help create marketing avenues that empower interactive connectivity that can help push customers more positively towards to sale-end of the customer journey.

– Live Cams – Whilst many might have fond memories of National Geographic animal cams showing 360-degree vision of Meerkats back in the early days of the internet, times have changed and so have consumer habits. However, the new ‘live cams’ marketing strategy is quite easy to undertake; just use a GoPro HD cam, or other durable digital video camera, to help connect your business with your customers. Agri-businesses, for example, are using live cams to help highlight the usefulness and diversity of their products in real-world settings. Live cams can help your business showcase your products and services in a real-world setting.

– YouTube Ads – With more people accessing YouTube than the entire top selection of cable, satellite and terrestrial television channels in the EU, marketers need to understand how cost-effective YouTube ads have become. By advertising before a YouTube clip, with your own marketing clip, you could engage with relevant real-world customers looking to connect with your business.

Quality, not Quantity, will Help You In Your Paid Advertising Content Marketing Endeavours

Google has always been quite open about how to get good search result positions in terms of SEO activity and content strategy planning – just write good, original and purposeful content that people, not bots, want to read. Gone are the ‘black hat’ days of old, 2019 is all about quality content to help drive sales.

If you’re using marketing channels to direct would-be customers to your digital content to help push them along in their customer journey, you need to understand the relevance and importance placed on quality. But authenticity and value must be front and centre in all your digital content outputs in 2019. By capitalising on changing content consumption means – as outlined above from video to voice searches – your content needs to be easily personalised. You need to leverage the power of your eCommerce, digital platforms and other tech experiences to help make your content personally relevant to your customers.

To Do In 2019:

– Be ‘authentic’ and open – your content needs to be useful, educational and original.

– Plan, plan and plan – You need a content strategy to help connect your marketing strategies with your content needs.

– Clickbait is Dead – It is time to focus on personalisation when creating and deploying content.

Stack Those Marketing Channels for 2019 Success

You need to embrace the ‘stack’ in 2019 and understand that the days of using Facebook and Google ads as your only means of digital marketing activities are now dead in 2019. I’m not advocating you don’t use these two useful mediums but to look further afield in 2019 for digital paid advertisement pastures new.

Look Out For These Alternative Paid Ad media :

• Bing
• Reddit
• OutBrain
• Amazon
• PopCash
• AdSterra

·    … as well as traditional SEO and social media – like LinkedIn and Twitter

So, leverage the power of alternative marketing technologies whilst continuing to use Google and Facebook will mean you can engage with a wider audience allowing your business to find greater success.

To AB Test Or Not To AB Test, That Is The Question …

As a marketing professional, you already understand the importance of cost-conversion analysis of digital marketing. Therefore, in 2019, you need to emphasise the importance of conversion optimization when executing your marketing strategies to make sure you find the right kind of digital marketing success.

In order to successfully achieve this outcome, you need to use A/B testing tools to help identify your landing page’s optimization levels and to use built-in tools to remedy any issues. By having a fully optimized landing page, you can understand and deliver the right marketing strategy to help drive the correct kind of business that will lead to overall success.

How can you use A/B Testing successfully? HubSpot provides marketers with a useful guide for practical A/B testing in the real world.