Thursday 30 March 2017

Updates YouTube Advertising

What’s New With YouTube Advertising
In January 2017, Google announced it would make changes to AdWords to allow advertisers to reach more viewers on YouTube -- especially across mobile devices, where 50% of YouTube views take place. Among the changes it rolled out, possibly the biggest announcement was that advertisers will soon be able to target viewers based on their Google search history, in addition to their viewing behaviors YouTube was already targeting.

Marketers can now target ads at people who recently searched for a certain product or service to target the video ads they’ll be served on the platform. If the content of a video ad is closely related to a search the viewer has been researching, they might be more likely to watch the entire ad or click through the ad to the website.

Keywords are relatively less expensive to target on YouTube than in traditional Google Search: Views cost an average of $0.06 per click on YouTube, compared to the average Google Search cost per click, which is estimated to be between $1-2. When YouTube targeting includes search history, it may be a more cost-effective way to target your audience with a more engaging form of content -- video.

The 2 Types of YouTube Video Ads
TrueView ads are the standard video ad type on YouTube. Advertisers only pay for TrueView ads when viewers watch or interact with their ad (for example, by clicking on a call-to-action), and videos can be easily customized to share a variety of content.

Advertisers only pay when a user watches the ad for at least 30 seconds or until the end of the video or if the viewer takes an action, such as clicking on a call-to-action. YouTube requires that skippable TrueView ads be 12-60 seconds in length and that non-skippable TrueView ads be 15-30 seconds in length.

There are two types of TrueView ads:

Video Discovery Ads (Previously Named In-Display Ads)

Video discovery YouTube ads show up on the YouTube homepage, search results pages, and as related videos on YouTube video watch pages.

Sunday 1 January 2017

Digital Marketing Trends to Watch for in 2017

Is it REALLY that time of year when industries start looking at what may lie ahead in the coming year? YES! It is, even though it seems like just last month it was 2015 and we were making predictions for 2016. WOW! Time flies; here we are in the fall of 2016 and we are starting to talk about digital marketing trends to watch for in 2017.  What are the digital marketing trends to watch for in 2017? We’ve been doing some research on this question and found that there are some interesting trends to watch on both the B2C front as well as the B2B front.

B2C Digital Marketing Trends
Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality
Google has just announced its VR platform Daydream.  The platform is to be built into the Android operating system and includes both hardware and software specifications. Basically, Google wants to create the Android of Virtual Reality by encouraging phone makers to build their phones around this new platform.  So far, Google’s Daydream has been well received. Additionally, Pokemon Go was THE PHENOMENON of the Summer of 2016.  In fact, a report in HEAVY  stated that Pokemon Go had been downloaded at least 15 million times and the game was seeing about 21 million daily, active users. Considering the response that both of these have gotten, it’s safe to expect to see more going forward, which is good news for digital marketers because placing advertising in an altered or virtual reality is now a possibility.

Mobile Dominance
Mobile devices have emerged as the preferred device, which has had a significant impact on how businesses connect to customers. Consider mobile messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Snapchat and WeChat. These have become primary ways to communicate outside of the normal mobile channels and digital marketers are beginning to see these platforms as a means of reaching consumers with their advertising message.

Video is King
In the past year several video based social media platforms have emerged. Platforms like Parachute and SnapChat began the live video revolution and since then, any businesses have found it a great way to engage with customers. Facebook took this and ran with it to launch their video platform, Facebook Live. How will this benefit the digital marketer trying to get their message in front of potential customers? For starters, video messaging has become multi channel meaning it is no longer restricted to television. In addition, innovations such as VR and AR, which provide interactive mobile engagements, are likely to become even more important in 2017.

Advertising Algorithms
Every digital marketer knows it by now: algorithms change frequently. This fact will have more of an impact on how brands generate their content in the fututre. Rather than relying on keywords to boost search rankings ,artificial intelligence algorithms will begin to include creative components such as colors, fonts and copy. Advertisements will evolve and be updated based on reactions from users. This will require brand to execute a full digital marketing strategy to boost their over a web presence, rather than picking and choosing select elements. Furthermore, they will likely find that they will need to have generous media budgets in order to get the reach and traction they need, unless, of course, their content “goes viral.”

Conversion Rate Optimization
CRO is a marketing strategy that is used to influence website visitors into customers. The strategy is made up of several components such as audience segment testing, response tracking and advertising testing. These tools will continue to be important for businesses to use in their digital marketing strategy for 2017.

B2B Digital Marketing Trends
Digital Marketing as the Star
Digital Marketing has moved from being seen as an “additional piece” of the overall strategy to a more “front and center,” integral part of any business’ marketing plan. As society norms continue to evolve, so will the role of digital marketing. As long as lifestyle platforms such as Facebook and Google remain everyday activities for the majority of the market, this industry will continue to sky rocket. In 2016, digital efforts proved to be beneficial. In 2017, they will prove to be imperative and will likely surpass other marketing avenues in results.

Personalization
B2B businesses are seeing value of bringing a personalized experience to their customers from start to finish. Marketing channels such as trade shows and have made B2B communication formal, but, that’s slowly becoming a thing of the past. Behind the business, is people running that business. People spend much of their personal time online, across various platforms. In 2017, digital marketing will enable B2B marketers to reach their customers via a more personalized medium, such as their Facebook News Feeds.

Advocate Marketing
Also known as “word-of-mouth” advertising, this old-school tactic is still very powerful and effective. However, where “word-of-mouth” used to mean exactly that, now it looks slightly different thanks to advocate marketing software platforms that offer referral and engagement reviews. More and more B2B businesses are making use of these to drive business online.  Reviews and referrals from existing, happy customers adds tremendous value and brings in qualified leads from potential new customers.

E-mail Marketing
Although many have expected the value of E-mail marketing to decline; it hasn’t thanks to mobile devices that allow customers to read e-mails on any device.  E-mail marketing is still a great way for B2B businesses to stay connected to their customer base as well as connect with new potential customers. It has proven to be a great way to add the personalization, mentioned above, as well as a means of increasing awareness, acquisition and conversion.

Social Media
Initially, B2B businesses neglected social media however, LinkedIn and Twitter have proven to be great tools for B2B businesses to connect and grow their business. However, it is important that B2B businesses prioritize social media and use the channels that are most effective for their business.

Video Content
B2B businesses can reap extreme benefits from video-based content for their business. Periscope and Facebook Live are a great way to offer a quick and easy solution to live streams while YouTube and Vimeo are still popular ways to share general video content. This content can used across platforms in advertising on Google and social media. Videos enable B2B businesses to offer tutorials, demos and cover business events.

While we saw many of these trends begin to gain ground in 2016, we expect them to continue to gain ground exponentially in 2017.  Regardless of whether you’re a B2C or B2B business, it’s important to be on top of the trends so that your business will remain on the cutting edge and continue to see growth through 2017 and beyond.
http://www.seohub.co.in

Top 10 marketing techniques in 2017

Let's now drill down into the key tactics and marketing technology within each of these tactics which will be important in 2017.

1. Content marketing trends

Content marketing has been in the top 3 for the last 3 years we have run this post, so we focus a lot on how to create an integrated content marketing strategy through advice in our content marketing toolkit.

Our research with HubSpot, illustrated in the Competing on Content infographic, shows that more businesses are now using a strategic approach (40%), so this is a trend we can expect to see continuing in 2017. We can also expect that there will be more focus on Measuring Content Marketing ROI as the cost and competition within content marketing increases.

At a practical level, Martech Guru Scott Brinker has talked about the 4th Wave of Content Marketing and I'm seeing more and more examples of interactive marketing apps - like our capability graders and also personalisation tools recommending content. Read his article, introducing it, a great read and you can check out the ion-interactive examples of interactive content marketing.


2. Big Data

As defined in our question, Big Data marketing applications include market and customer insight and predictive analytics.

The 3Vs of Big Data show why this is a key trend selected by many, who have experienced the increase in volume, real-time data and data formats in their business and want to exploit the value to increase sales through personalisation on websites and through email marketing through predictive analytics - a topic we have covered many times on our blog.  It's also closely tied into machine learning where Big Data is mined to identify propensity to convert given different customer characteristics and behaviour.

3. Marketing Automation (including CRM, behavioural email marketing and web personalisation)

Like content marketing, marketing automation has been in the top 3 for the last 5 years we have asked this question. Many businesses still have potential for improving their automation as our research on the State of Marketing Automation shows.



To help with this knowledge gap, I think I have given more webinars and talks on Marketing Automation than on any other topic in 2016. The most common questions at the end are 'where do we start' and 'how do we get to the next level'. These questions are answered in our Email marketing and marketing automation toolkit which includes a free interactive capability review to score your use of email marketing automation. As businesses progress up the learning curve I expect more businesses to be putting lead scoring in place, or refining it and learning the best places on the journey to feature content through predictive analytics.

4. Mobile marketing (Mobile advertising, site development and apps)

Mobile was in the top 3 three years ago, but as more companies have adopted mobile responsive web design and email templates they have seen less need to focus on it, or at least there are fewer opportunities for growth.

However, research shows that retail conversion rates are significantly lower on smartphone, so there is work to be done for many businesses to optimise conversion on mobile, although they will likely always stay lower than desktop.

Mobile also has a large impact on search marketing as Google vigorously follows its mobile first mantra. To me, it's a somewhat misleading mantra, since the reality is that many web users are still using desktop, laptop and tablet devices and there is a danger with mobile responsive designs that conversion on higher resolution screens may fall if mobile optimised. Instead, leading companies are looking at adaptive mobile design approaches which have the benefit of serving more relevant, contextual content and CTAs for users and reducing load times.

'Mobile first' is also misleading if we look at the overall customer journey since often different devices may be involved at different points. So a better vision for mobile strategy is treating it as part of a multiplatform or multichannel strategy. As this data from comScore highlighted in our mobile marketing statistics research shows, the multiplatform ribbons for all countries are much broader than users who are mobile only or desktop only.



5. Social media marketing including Social CRM and Social Customer Care

When I meet marketers at events and training I find there is still huge interest in social media, thanks to its reach and options to engage audiences and encourage advocacy or 'social media amplification' to give it the full treatment.

Our social media research statistics summary shows continued growth in social media usage overall, but with reduced popularity of some social networks in some countries. For example Twitter and Facebook are in decline or plateauing in many western markets while Snapchat, Instagram and Pinterest are still growing in usage.

Trends in social media marketing are often controlled by the efforts of the social networks to monetise and this has seen Facebook and Instagram, in particular make changes such that businesses now need to 'pay to play' to get the reach needed to have an impact. They have continued to innovate in their targeting and remarketing options. Jason DeMeyers has these interesting views on social media trends for 2017.

6. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) / improving website experiences

This is the technique I selected a year ago as the way Smart Insights would see the most growth from in the year ahead. It's higher in popularity than previous years, but I still wonder whether many businesses are missing out on a more data-driven approach to increase leads and sales from their websites.

I saw this chart of the volume of structured tests presented by a major multichannel retailer who wanted to scale the number of tests they were running. It a great way to show the need to test extensively since only a third have a positive test. It also shows how competitors may be getting ahead if they are testing more extensively.

7. Internet of Things (IoT) marketing applications

IoT is one of the most important marketing technology applications of the last 2-3 years, but it is of most relevance to devices makers and retailers, so it is relatively high-up in this ranking of priorities.

There are expected to be 75 billion connected devices by 2020, meaning there will be ten times as many devices able to talk to one another as there will be people on the planet! The implications are huge and far ranging. All this sharing of data will transform the way we live our lives.

Our article covering opportunities and examples of marketing applications of the Internet of Things has this useful summary of alternative applications:

Smart Products Road Map

8. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO or organic search)

Mobile marketing SEO techniques will be particularly important in 2017 with Google's recent announcements about the mobile index and AMP. We have seen huge increases in AMP smartphone traffic since September 2016 when Google rolled AMPs out beyond Google News. AMPs are targeted at publishers, but should be considered by businesses with an active blog too in my opinion.

We have been covering these announcements and improvements in our other alert posts:

How Google's mobile-only index will change search in 2017
Google to start penalising sites that use pop-ups
Stop everything and implement AMP pages
9. Wearables

Wearables are one of the hottest consumer consumable commodities (e.g. Apple Watch, activity trackers, augmented reality)

10. Paid search marketing

Google AdWords is the most important form of Pay Per Click and here Google has been pursuing their 'Mobile-first' strategy by building out these features.
http://www.seohub.co.in