2018 Digital Marketing: New Tech, Targeting, Tactics

Marketers can expect digital marketing to continue to experience rapid changes this year. Thanks to Forbes magazine's Forbes Agency Council, which recently outlined digital trend predictions for 2018, they may be able to get a head start. The first of the article's 15 trend predictions is continued growth for Augmented Reality (AR), per Chris Carter of Rep Interactive, as mobile devices become more powerful, social apps improve AR integration, and, we would add, traditional print, from direct mail to labels, also embraces AR. Meanwhile, conversational interactions will offer new opportunities and challenges, per a couple of council members—such as Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana, chatbots and more. Now that Google says 20% of its mobile queries are voice searches and usage is set to climb further, marketers will need to create content targeting these types of searches and ads for non-traditional venues, predicts Brett Farmiloe of Markitors. Video was a big story in 2017 and is now seen as a basic of success for 2018 marketers, per several Forbes council members. It also means that marketers will face a higher bar in terms of quality. As social media platforms jump into live video and add features, "the shaky, holding-a-phone-in-your-hand live video won't be acceptable anymore," warns Thomas Brodbeck of Site Strategics. Most agree that the days of impersonal e-mail blasts are done, and marketers will be focused on hyper-targeting and personalizing every interaction, forecast several experts. Watch for personalized landing pages connected to each advertising campaign, for example. The need for unbiased targeting, predictive analytics and budgeting for every step of the customer journey will increase use of application programming interfaces for machine-learning algorithms, natural language processing and artificial intelligence, opines Douglas Karr of DK New Media. And as data protection regulation increases, ad tech vendors will need to go beyond tracking behavior with cookies to contextual targeting strategies based on page content, adds Julien Verdier of Adyoulike. "Influencer marketing" had marketing buzz in 2017, but Craig Greiwe of Rogers & Cowan predicts that 2018 will see a collapse of interest because brands that spent big on influencers haven't seen measurable results. He expects brands instead to "zero in on a few select individuals who drive results or move to organic grassroots promotion, and away from high-cost, middle-tier influencers who drive awareness but little ROI." Content marketing and native advertising, meanwhile, remain in the marketing tool box—but with changes. For more, see http://www.acculistusa.com/2018-digital-marketing-trends-technology-targeting-tactics/

B2B Needs to Tap Growing Native Ad Trend

Native advertising may be a hot digital marketing tactic, with spending expected to hit $10.7 billion in 2015, but many marketers, especially business-to-business marketers, still haven't embraced its opportunities. Our thanks to Ash Nashed, founder and CEO of digital tech company Adiant, for his educational b2bmarketing.net post on native ads. Nashed especially speaks to B2B strategists, where only 34% of marketers have put native ads in the mix, he notes. Native ads, which are specifically created to organically fit within content, include search ads appearing alongside organic search results; social media ads resembling organic feed posts; promoted listings on e-commerce sites like Amazon, which appear next to algorithm-generated recommendations; video ads that entertain to promote brands; ads that appear within news articles targeted to specific interests; and advertorials offering educational editorial content. Per Nashed, the keys to success are what we'll call the four "T's": targeting (using data to select hypertargeted segments by demographics, intent, location and/or platform), testing and results tracking (marketing givens), and trust (qualified leads don't come through trickery; the audience must know they are clicking on an ad). For inspiration, Nashed holds up GE's award-winning efforts, including a blog on global innovation for The Economist magazine, a segment on "The Tonight Show," and in-stream ads on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest. For more: http://www.b2bmarketing.net/blog/posts/2015/06/24/win-over-decision-makers-smart-native-advertising

How B2B Can Succeed With Native Advertising

Native advertising has big fans in consumer online marketing, and business-to-business marketers are being urged to take the plunge. B2B strategists who resist embracing native ads after disappointing results from traditional banners and pop-ups should consider these statistics provided in a recent MarketingProfs article by Helen Grimshaw: 52% of people who click on native ads have purchase intent, compared with only 34% for banner ads; 70% want to learn about products through content rather than traditional advertising; and 75% of publishers already offer some type of native advertising. Just to be clear, native advertising is a form of paid media that seamlessly integrates with a site to add value to the user experience. So native ads work best, Grimshaw advises, if the B2B campaign masters two strategic elements: placement and relevancy. As an example of successful placement, Grimshaw cites Relendex, a secured peer-to-peer lending company, which created co-branded online pages with Property Week magazine, a commercial property publication with a large audience of lenders and borrowers. The partner pages used semantic ad targeting technology to serve up educational links to Relendex's site. Grimshaw's example of smart relevancy comes from Delta Airline's TechOps division, a full-service aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) company. TechOps got the word out that it offered MRO services for any airline, not just Delta, by placing native ads with Flightglobal, an online news and information provider for the aviation and aerospace industries. The campaign used semantic search technology to create links between Flightglobal's articles and Delta TechOps's related content. For more detail on results, read http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2014/26145/why-b2b-marketers-need-to-embrace-native-advertising