innovative marketing ideas

5 Innovative Marketing Ideas To Use In 2019

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When it comes to inbound marketing, it can be somewhat easy to fall into a pattern. If you feel like your marketing efforts are just more of the same, then it might be time to take a fresh approach. You want to stand out from your competition, after all. The following are five innovative marketing ideas that you should consider implementing into your inbound marketing strategy in 2019:

1. Create Eye-Catching Lists

Lists are popular because of how easy they are to read. Audiences can just scan lists and still get the general gist of the content. They’re particularly effective at keeping the attention of readers. Just make sure you format your lists into sections and use visuals for each item on the list for an even bigger impact.

2. Reference Current Pop Culture

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that referencing pop culture is tacky or that it will date your content. As long as the pop culture you’re referencing is relevant to your target audience, it can actually help to engage your audience on a deeper level. For example, you could use the meme of a popular TV show that you know your target audience is familiar with to add a bit of flair to a blog post. Just make sure you keep your buyer persona in mind when you do this.

Local SEO Marketing In 2019: 5 Easy Tips To Dominate Local Search

3. Use More Images

Written content can become stale simply because it’s not visual. Make it a point to use images to break up the text of written content. The longer the text is, the more images you should use. Images help give the eye a break, make the content more interesting to consume overall, and give readers an idea of what the content is about by simply glancing at the images. Even if you’re crafting a white paper or an eBook, using images to break up your text will go a long way towards making it easier to read.innovative marketing ideas

4. Leverage Older Studies For New Content

There is a massive amount of old studies available online no matter what industry you’re in. Many of these studies are not outdated even though they may be older. Look for older studies

that have relevant information and leverage that information for new content. Not only can you use the data to back up new content, but you could even highlight the data on its own in the form of new infographics or other types of visual content (just be sure to cite your sources).

5. Create Time-Lapse Videos

Video content is the most effective content there is because of how easily consumable it is. People love watching video content and do so on their phones on a daily basis (as long as that video content is on the shorter side). Time-lapse videos are extremely effective because they’re basically videos that are displayed in fast motion, making them even easier for viewers to consume. Time-lapse videos tend to be on the shorter side, which is perfect for present-day audiences, which have shorter attention spans (which is why social platforms like Snapchat are so popular). There are lots of ways that you can create time-lapse videos as well, from showing how products are made to the showing the effects of a product over time (for example, showing a stain remover product removing a stain from a carpet).

You should always be on the lookout for innovative marketing ideas to keep things fresh and to keep your audience interested and engaged. These are five innovative marketing ideas that can help to inject some life into a marketing campaign that might be growing a little bit stale.

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marketing trends

What’s Trending in Marketing for July 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs. They highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Microsoft Just Dealt A Blow To Google’s Ad Blocking Plans

Google announced their plans to restrict ad blocking Chrome extensions. This means that ad blockers, like uBlock origin, won’t work on the Google Chrome browser. This update will come in the upcoming months and some Chrome users have made it clear that they’ll move to another browser if Google carries out that plan. Microsoft has responded by reaching out to their users to see if they’d like Ad Blockers built into the new version of the Microsoft Edge browser. You can learn more about this story on Forbes.

Instagram advertisers can now convert organic influencer posts into ads

Instagram confirmed in March that it’s testing a new ad format. It’s going to be possible for brands to create ads using organic posts from the influencers they have relationships with. Marketing Land writes, “Before brands can use influencer posts as ads, the content creator must grant their business partners (the brands they have relationships with) access to promote their posts. Once the creator — or influencer — has done this via their Advanced Settings page, brands will see the influencer’s posts in the Ads Manager under “Existing Posts” and can run the content as an ad within the Instagram newsfeed or Stories format.”

Comcast partners with Charter, Cox to advance targeted advertising

Comcast launched an advertising strategy that will target audiences better in an effort to lure more advertisers away from digital platforms like Facebook and Google. The initiative is called “On Addressability” and the aim is to target advertisements to certain households based on their interests. So far, this has only been done on a small scale in TV advertising. TV is the best way to reach a lot of people at once, but it lacks the big data that digital platforms use. Learn more about this story at Yahoo.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Emotional Advertising: How Brands Use Feelings to Get People to Buy

Informing your audience is important. You want potential buyers to understand what their problem is, and how your products or services can solve that problem. Unfortunately, people don’t generally make purchases based on information alone. It turns out that people are more prone to making emotional purchases than informed purchases. It’s why commercials consist of much more than an explanation of a product’s use. Instead they use emotional advertising to target the viewer. It’s effective, and it’s why connecting with your audience on an emotional level will benefit your marketing strategy.

Simple Ways that Small Businesses Can Use Data to Build Better Customer Relationships

In this day and age, it’s pretty difficult for consumers to not be inundated with dozens of advertisements. As such, targeting your audience has become more important than ever, especially when it comes to running a smaller business. The most effective way to target your audience is to make use of the consumer data that you have access to. Knowing how to use the data you have can go a long way towards building customer relationships.

However, having consumer data is a lot different than knowing how to make it actionable, which can make the data you have very intimidating. The following are the three steps that you should take to so that you can leverage your data to build strong customer relationships.

What Are Behavioral Biometrics and How Do They Fit Into Marketing?

Companies often hold focus groups in order to get direct feedback about products, services, and even website experiences. The only drawback to such focus groups is that people often aren’t sure how to articulate what they feel about certain things. However, new biometric technology, such as eye-tracking software, has made it easier to determine exactly how someone feels about a website experience at any given moment–and they can allow you to do so without holding a focus group.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Almost 70% of digital ad spending going to Google, Facebook, Amazon, says analyst firm

Google, Facebook, and Amazon are collecting more than 2/3rds of all digital ad spending. Between the 3 companies, this is about $73 billion. Amazon owns 38% of e-commerce, which is down from almost 50% a year ago.

These numbers matter greatly as the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice will begin antitrust investigation of Facebook, Google, and Amazon in the upcoming 12-18 months. More about this story can be found on Marketing Land.

Political Ad Spending Will Approach $10 Billion in 2020, New Forecast Predicts

A new report predicts that spending on political advertisements will reach a new high in 2020. According to the forecast, political ad spending will total $9.9 billion in 2020. In 2016, $6.3 billion was spent on political ads. Political ad spending in 2018 accounted for 2% of total digital ad spending in the US and it’s projected to increase to 2.2% in 2020. Learn more about this story on WSJ.

Survey finds 89% of marketers seeing increased sales using location data

700 U.S. based mobile marketers from 536 consumer brands and 164 agencies took part in this 2019 survey. The survey found that about 9 in 10 marketers plan to use location data in the future to increase sales. However, of those surveyed, only 24% are using or plan to use location data for store visitation or offline measurement.

This report shows that location data is becoming a popular horizontal tool for audience segmentation and targeting across channels. Learn more about this report at Marketing Land.

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Digital Advertising Display

Pump Up the Power of Your Digital Advertising Display

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Display ads are one of the oldest forms of online advertising. Unfortunately, the typical display ad doesn’t have as much of an impact as it once had. It has been surpassed by many other online marketing strategies. This is in part because display ads are often irrelevant to the consumer viewing them, not to mention they may disrupt the consumer’s website experience. But that doesn’t mean that display ads don’t have a place in your marketing strategy. The following are a few tips for using a digital advertising display in an effective manner:

1. Combine Your Display Ads With Native Formats

Using a native format allows your digital advertising display to blend in with the content on the page that they are being displayed on. Whereas users often skip over traditional display ads, they are more likely to read native display ads because they are part of the overall content experience. Several studies have backed this, finding that consumers view native display ads 52 percent more frequently than traditional display ads.

2. Set Targeting Dimensions Of Your Display Ads

Contextual targeting allows you to target your display ads to specific demographics, which means that your display ads will be more relevant to the user experience. Private platforms, such as Google and Facebook, allow for contextual targeting by letting you choose who you want to target (age range, gender, etc.) and when.

3. Test Your Display Ads On Social Media

Because of how social media lets you target specific demographics when running display ads, it’s also a great way to test your display ads. This is because social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have excellent analytics tools that you can use to measure your advertising outreach’s value. This means you can test different display ads against certain demographics to see which perform better. This allows you to adjust your strategy so that it’s more effective.

Check out our article: What’s New with Google: How Page Speed Affects SEO and Adwords

4. Make Your Digital Advertising Display Mobile-Friendly

Make sure that you design your display ads with mobile use in mind. Some display ads may look great on your desktop but won’t translate as well to a smaller screen. The fact that the majority of your audience is going to be viewing your display ads on a mobile device, it’s incredibly important your ads are built for mobile viewing.

5. Focus On Delivering Your Message Quickly

A display ad functions in the same manner as a roadside billboard. Billboards can’t be jam-packed with text and information because drivers don’t have the time to read it all as they pass by. They must deliver their message within a couple of seconds. The same applies to display ads. Users need to be able to consume the message with a quick glance.

The traditional method for using a digital display ad is somewhat outdated. However, display ads can still be effective if you know how to use them. Follow these tips and your display ads are likely to have a bigger impact on your audience.

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local SEO

Local SEO Marketing In 2019: 5 Easy Tips To Dominate Local Search

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If you sell products or services online, then SEO is an extremely important part of your marketing strategy; however, if you also happen to have a physical location, then you’ll want to make sure that you address local SEO as well. A strong local SEO strategy will help ensure that you attract an audience that is located near your physical location, thereby increasing the odds that they will come visit in person. The following are five tips to help improve with local SEO marketing:

1. Claim Your Google My Business

Google My Business is a free platform that you can use to build your presence online. Since most people will do a Google search when looking for specific products, services, or businesses located in their area, having a Google My Business set up will make it easier for people in your area to find you. Setting up a Google My Business account is easy. If your business is already listed, you’ll want to claim your business by going through the verification process.

2. Optimize Your “Google My Business”

The more complete your Google My Business account is, the more users will trust your business. There are a number of things that you will want to do in order to properly optimize your Google My Business page for local SEO marketing, including:

  • Choose the exact match of your business category
  • Write a description of your business and include location-based keywords
  • Make sure your NAP (name, address, and phone number) is correct
  • List your business hours
  • Add a logo to make sure your brand will be identifiable
  • Show interior and exterior photos of your business to prove your location is real
  • Add photos of your products and/or services

3. Collect More Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are important for a number of reasons. First of all, potential customers are going to look up reviews of your business before they decide to visit your location or order online. The more reviews you have, the more they will trust you (as long as those reviews are generally positive). You should also respond to negative reviews in a positive manner to try and resolve any issues customers had with your company. This showcases good customer service.

The more reviews you have, the more popular Google will assume your business is, which will help when it comes to page rankings. Last, but not least, the more reviews you have, the more real estate your business takes up on the SERP (search engine results page), thereby making it difficult for users to ignore.

Are there ways to increase SEO? With the help of Google Trends, anything’s possible!

4. Publish Locally Optimized Content

You should also focus on local SEO marketing tactics when implementing your content strategy. To attract customers within your area to your website, create content that’s more locally focused. This doesn’t just mean using local keywords (such as the name of the city you’re in or the neighborhoods nearby), but also writing content that actually has to do with the area you’re located in. For example, content about local events or things to do near your store.

5. Optimize Website For Mobile Use

A significant amount of local searches are performed by customers who are on the go. They will search for certain businesses on their phones as a result. For example, if they’re out running errands and get hungry, they may look for a nearby place to eat. As such, you’ll want to make sure that your website is optimized for mobile use.

Local SEO marketing is a must if you have a physical location and want to increase your company’s exposure throughout the area. Use these tips to improve your local SEO marketing efforts.

17 SEO Myths
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Type of Marketing Strategy

As more Companies Catch on to the Benefits of CBD, Here’s What You Need to Know About This New Type of Marketing Strategy

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CBDs (cannabidiols) are becoming incredibly popular throughout the country, leading to many CBD products and businesses popping up everywhere. One reason for this is the continual legalization of marijuana throughout many states. Note that CBD is only illegal in states where marijuana is illegal (if it was derived from marijuana). It can also come from hemp, in which case it’s legal everywhere.

It’s hard not to argue that CBD’s popularity isn’t related to the increasing acceptance of marijuana. However, it’s not the only reason behind the sudden increase in demand for CBD-related products throughout the country. Surprisingly, these products aren’t just sold at marijuana dispensaries. They are also sold at many health and food stores too. There are even rumors that major corporations like Starbucks and Coca Cola are strongly considering offering CBD products. If you’re in the CBD business, you’re going to want to know what type of marketing strategy to implement as the industry continues to explode.

Type of Marketing Strategy for CBD Products

The CBD industry is still in its infancy, but studies are predicting that the industry will be worth $22 billion by 2020. One of the major contributors to its popularity has been word of mouth. Today’s culture has a thing for natural, health-related products, and CBD is just that. However, there are so many big players hopping on the CBD train. Knowing how to market your CBD business is going to be vital to growing your business. Proper marketing allows you to compete with the many other CBD-related companies in the near future. 

CBD oilHow To Market CBD

The most important element of your marketing efforts in today’s CBD market is going to be your content marketing strategy. Consumers are still learning what CBD is. Many consumers don’t understand how CBD is different from marijuana, which isn’t surprising considering how many misconceptions about marijuana there are (such as the fact that it’s not an addictive substance).

Although CBD is from marijuana, it is not the ingredient that can cause the high marijuana is known for. That ingredient is THC, which is a psychoactive ingredient. Many consumers may think that CBD is psychoactive as well since it’s found in marijuana, but it’s not.

8 Tips on Social Media Best Practices For Your Business 

Informing Consumers

All of these misconceptions are important to dispel in order to be able to successfully sell your CBD products. Creating content that informs consumers about CBD is going be extremely important. Not only will you be helping to inform your audience, thereby generating more interest in your products, but high-quality CBD content will help attract more leads who are interested in learning about CBD and will help to build trust in your brand. Content focusing on what CBDs are, what the potential health benefits are, how CBDs are different than THC, and what some of the common myths about CBD are can be quite helpful to your audience. In states where marijuana is still illegal, you may also want to highlight how CBD products derived from hemp are legal.

The CBD industry is relatively new, but it’s absolutely exploding. You can expect many CBD-related businesses to begin popping up over the next few years, not to mention that big, established companies will likely begin offering their own CBD products as well. The type of marketing strategy you implement plays an important part in helping you stand out in an industry that will be soon oversaturated. 

25 Website Must Haves

What’s Trending in Marketing for June 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs. They highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Spotify tests interactive ads that listen for your voice

Spotify is testing interactive ads that can be controlled by users voices. The idea allows a user to say “play now” when hearing a voice controlled ad, which would then take them to the piece of relevant content. Two ads are currently running, one for Unilever’s Axe products and the other for a Spotify podcast called Stay Free: The Story of the Clash. Saying the key phrase during whichever ad is playing will direct you to an Axe-branded playlist or to the advertised podcast. This is just one way digital content allows for the development of new ways for consumers to interact with advertising content. You can read more about this story on The Verge.

LinkedIn refreshes Sales Navigator homepage to put focus on alerts

This is a change to increase Ease of Access when using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. The big news with this latest update to the Sales Navigator platform is that the homepage shift. It is transforming from a newsfeed format to focus on alerts.  Knowing the full-breadth of features offered by LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps marketing teams contribute added value to their sales organization. These insights allow companies to take full advantage of their social media advertising platform and investment. Learn more about this update at Martech Today.

Facebook is getting a redesign

The main takeaway from the new Facebook redesign is that groups will continue to dominate the Facebook marketing space. This is an interesting redesign that comes off the heels of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing how a lot of users have started using groups and more private ways for sharing content.

Social Report writes, “But this is no new trend. We’ve been huge proponents of Facebook groups since Facebook changed its algorithm to prioritize content from groups and other “content that matters” on the Newsfeed last year.When Facebook changed its algorithm, it plummeted organic reach for Facebook pages. At the same time, however, Facebook gave groups more organic reach—even if they’re run by a brand. This groups-focused redesign shows us that Facebook is continuing its commitment to Facebook groups, and that we’ll continue to see the platform prioritize content from them indefinitely”.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Developing the Perfect Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy

The buyer’s journey has changed a lot over the years. This is a result of the consumer’s ability to explore multiple channels online and to engage in multiple ways. There is no distinct path that takes them from point A to point B in order to make a purchase. While one customer might begin doing research through a search engine like Google, another might ask their followers questions on social media to identify solutions to their problems, while yet another might stumble on an ad for one of your products in a magazine. Basically, every buyer’s journey is unique.

As such, it’s important that you have a presence on multiple channels. You should integrate all of your channels, processes, and strategies to help nurture any stage of their buyer’s journey. This is omni-channel marketing. The following are a number of tips that you should consider implementing that will help you strengthen your omni-channel marketing strategy.

Factors That Influence Consumer Purchasing Decisions: Rethinking the Marketing Funnel

In order to continue attracting your target audience, you need to keep up with the wants and needs of customers. This can be a real challenge if you don’t understand the factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions. Those factors are a lot different than what they used to be, which means that the customer journey has changed a lot as well. This updated journey is referred to by many as the consumer decision journey (CDJ). What makes the CDJ so different than traditional marketing funnels is that each consumer’s CDJ is unique. Keeping that in mind, the following are three of the biggest factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions in today’s digital age.

How to Outshine Your Competition with Effective E-Commerce Website Marketing 

While not all businesses have an e-commerce page, many do. If you’re selling products or services online, make sure you have an e-commerce marketing strategy in place. If you don’t, it’s going to be difficult to stand out from all the other e-commerce sites out there. Through the use of digital marketing strategies, you can build awareness of your e-commerce page to generate more traffic. Thereby, you can improve your chances of closing sales. The following are a number of e-commerce marketing tips that will help you do just that.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Mobile to become the preferred platform for video ads by end of 2019

A new report from PubMatic stated nearly 50% of video ads were viewed on mobile devices0. That is up from from 40% in 2018. Video ads are expected to exceed $29 Billion globally according to this same report. This trend follows the amount of content being consumed on mobile devices versus any other device. With 5G on the horizon, content accessibility will only drive increased impressions and ad dollars. More about this story can be found on Marketing Land.

Universal Measurement Standard for video

For years, media companies have tried to develop a universal standard that allows advertisers to compare video metrics across all visual media. The Media Rating Council is getting closer to implementing a single standard for measuring video across all platforms. A standard metric allows marketers to have an effective tool to independently prove how effective ad performance.

Sarah Fisher from Axios writes, “Last week, the MRC finished collecting dozens of comments in response to its long-awaited draft proposal for the new cross-media audience measurement standard, which imposes stricter rules for digital companies reporting video impressions and stricter rules for how TV report commercial viewership.”

Time spent on Facebook, Snapchat remains flat, but Instagram sees growth

A recent study from eMarketer looked at some of the key players in social media. It’s findings offer an interesting glimpse into what 2019 holds for Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. eMarketer reports the average amount of time people will spend each day on Facebook this year will remain unchanged from last year at 38-minutes. That number is expected to drop to 37-minutes per day by next year. This is a downgrade from the figures eMarketer released during the third quarter of 2018.

Overall, eMarketer reports the average amount of time people spent per day on social networks in the U.S. dropped by nearly 1.5 minutes last year. That number will remain “virtually” unchanged this year according to eMarketer’s forecasts. Learn more about this study at Marketing Land.

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Developing the Perfect Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy

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The buyer’s journey has changed a lot over the years. This is a result of the consumer’s ability to explore multiple channels online and to engage in multiple ways. There is no distinct path that takes them from point A to point B in order to make a purchase. While one customer might begin doing research through a search engine like Google, another might ask their followers questions on social media to identify solutions to their problems, while yet another might stumble on an ad for one of your products in a magazine. Basically, every buyer’s journey is unique.

As such, it’s important that you have a presence on multiple channels and that you integrate all of your channels, processes, and strategies so that you can help meet the needs and nurture your leads at any stage of their buyer’s journey no matter where they are. This is known as omni-channel marketing. The following are a number of tips that you should consider implementing that will help you strengthen your omni-channel marketing strategy:

Be Consistent With Your Marketing Efforts

Consistency is incredibly important when it comes to omni-channel marketing. This is because your leads are likely jumping from one channel to another. A lead may see a commercial on TV, then visit your Facebook page, then go to your website. If your branding is different (for example, if your message is different, your tone is different, or even the overall aesthetic of your marketing is different), you’re going to confuse consumers and you’re likely going to lose leads.

 Remove Siloed Organizational Structure

Because consumers may be at different stages of the buyer’s journey while exploring different channels, it’s important that your sales, marketing, PR, and customer service departments a

ren’t siloed. You need to make sure everyone has access to customer and prospect data at every stage and on every channel. This ensures that everyone is on the same page when it comes to identifying leads, engaging with them, nurturing them, and closing them.

Create Content For Every Channel

The more content you make available on different channels, the more successfully you’ll be able to reach consumers wherever they are. For example, if you only have a website, then you’re missing out on a lot of leads who use social media to find product or service recommendations. Make sure that you create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey and that you post it on a variety of platforms, including your website as well as social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and whatever other platforms your customers use.

Similar Article: How To Create Content For Each Sale Funnel Stage

Optimize Everything For Mobile Use

All of your online content needs to be optimized for mobile use. This is because many consumers may explore your website while on their smartphone or tablet. This is especially true if they are engaging on social media and follow a link back to your site, or they see one of your commercials on TV and decide to do a search for your company (more and more consumers use their mobile devices while watching TV these days). If your online content isn’t properly optimized for mobile use, then it may not load properly or be displayed properly.

 Put Together The Proper Marketing Stack

Because you’ll be collecting data on leads and customers from a variety of different platforms, you’ll want to make sure that you have the tools needed to organize the data and to put it to good use. To do this, you’ll want to build a marketing stack using tools such as CRM (customer relationship management) software, CMS (content management system, analytics and data visualization tools, and marketing automation.

Omni-channel marketing is essential if you want to attract and nurture modern day consumers through their unique buyer’s journeys. These omnichannel marketing tips will help make it easier to reach consumers at every point of their buyer’s journey no matter where they are.

25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales
What’s Trending in Marketing for May Month

What’s Trending in Marketing for May 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs and highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Google starts showing more images in web search results

Multiple tools that track the Google search results have been showing an increase in the percentage of time that Google shows image results in the core web search results. The image search result box that is sometimes shown in the main search results is now showing up for 1/3rd of all queries according to some reports.sweeTARTS

SEOClarity published their data this morning showing “images in the Top 10 leaped from an approximately 24% occurrence to a 34% occurrence.” The increase has started around April 13. Get more information about this at Marketing Land.

SweeTARTS® New “Be Both™” Marketing Campaign Celebrates the Multi-Dimensionality of Its Products and Gen Z Consumers

Iconic candy brand SweeTARTS® is introducing itself to a new generation of candy lovers. It is launching of its largest integrated marketing effort in recent years. Kicking off this week, the “Be Both” campaign champions Gen Z, which Pew Research Center calls the most diverse generation, and their desire to reject one-dimensional definitions of identity, by celebrating the intersection of their passions, expressions and tastes, and connecting this multiplicity back to the brand’s multitude of colliding flavors, textures and forms. Read more about SweeTARTS new ad campaign at Cision. 

Twitter’s ‘Hide Replies’ Feature is Set to Roll Out in June

A new Twitter feature will allow users to hide replies to their tweets is set to launch this June. Twitter was spotted working on this feature back in February. A representative from Twitter later confirmed it would soon be rolling out publically.

A blog post published by the company this week reveals that the ‘hide tweets’ feature will be available in June:“Starting in June, we’ll be experimenting with ways to give people more control over their conversations by giving them an option to hide replies to their Tweets.” SearchEngine Journal goes in to greater detail concerning Twitter’s latest feature. 

Improving Your Marketing Program

Learn About the Six Steps to Better Use of Marketing Analytics & Dashboard

Using marketing analytics is essential to being able to judge the performance of your marketing efforts. They allow you to see what is and isn’t working in real time, thereby letting you adjust your strategy. Not only do marketing analytics help improve your marketing efforts, but they also allow you to make much more efficient use out of the resources that you have at your disposal so that you don’t end up wasting a significant amount of time and money on tactics that aren’t working.

Should You Consider a Growth Driven Design Strategy?

In this day and age, every business understands the importance of having a company website. Even local mom and pop shops have a web presence, whether it’s a basic website or a social media page. However, not everyone realizes that there are different ways to build your website. If your website is the foundation for all of your online marketing efforts, then consider implementing a growth driven design. It is true that when properly implemented, traditional website designs can still be very effective. However, growth driven designs have their own set of unique advantages worth taking a look at.

Brand Leverage Marketing: Partnering with a Positive Brand Can Bring Attention to Your Own

Brand Leveraging is quickly becoming more common as it becomes harder for messages to break through the clutter. This marketing strategy uses the power of an existing brand  to support a company’s entry into a new but related product category by communicating valuable product information to the consumer.

Utilizing recognizable visual stimuli, familiar voice endorsements, and popular songs can help you establish credibility, add emotion, and further draw in a potential customer- and more and more companies are jumping on the bandwagon.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Snapchat’s Gen Y, Millennial audience helps deliver 39% YoY lift in revenue

Snapchat has been able to stabilize users for two consecutive quarters now. Snapchat increased DAUs by 2% to 190 million in the first quarter of 2019. As of March, Snapchat claims to reach 90% of all 13 to 24-year-olds in the U.S.  They social media giant reaches 75% of 13 to 34-year-olds.

Snap Inc. reported $320 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2019, a 39% year-over-year increase. Read more about Snapchat’s success at Marketing Land. 

Amazon to introduce video ads in mobile-app search results 

Amazon.com is starting to roll out video advertising on its smartphone apps. Currently, nearly every search result yields a graphical ad unit at the top of the SERP. According to Bloomberg, video ads for relevant products will start to appear in those same positions.

The report says that “Amazon has been beta testing the ads on Apple Inc.’s iOS platform for several months,” but I was not able to find one of these units after numerous product queries. Amazon’s mobile app for Android will apparently be getting video ads later this year. Find out more about Amazon’s video ads at SearchEngine Land. 

Facebook ad revenue keeps rising, 3 million advertisers using Stories Ads

Facebook’s bet on Stories Ads looks like it is paying off. COO Sheryl Sandberg said Wednesday during the company’s first quarter earnings call that, while Facebook and Instagram feed ads make up the bulk of Facebook’s ad business, Stories Ads are “an increasingly important growth opportunity.” Facebook announced it now has three million advertisers running Stories Ads across Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, and more than 500 million daily active users engaging with Stories experiences across the three platforms.

The company reported $14.9 billion in ad revenue during the first quarter of the year, up 26% year-over-year. At $13.9 billion, mobile ad revenue accounted for 93% of the company’s total ad revenue — up 30% year-over-year. Marketing Land has more information about Facebooks ad revenue. 

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What’s Trending in Marketing For April 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs and highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

google ads

Google Launching Policy Manager in Google Ads

Coming in April, Policy manager will be the central spot to manage policy violations.The new dashboard will show any policy-related issues affectingyour ads, keywords or ad extensions. You’ll be able to view and manage disapprovals across your account.You can currently get more details about why an ad got disapproved by hovering over it. Google said, this year, it will continue to add details about why ads were disapproved. Get more information about this at Marketing Land. 

Marketers Say They’ll Adapt to a Changing Facebook

Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared his vision for the company’s coming privacy-focused, unified messaging and social networking platform. The CEO said, in the coming years, Facebook plans to rebuild its services and platforms around the following six  principals: private interactions, encryption, reduced permanence, safety, interoperability and secure data storage. Marketing Land goes in to greater detail concerning how marketers will adapt. 

Bing Ads brings 3D ads to Search with Samsung

Users can interact with the desktop ad format to inspect product features and details. In a first for search advertising, Samsung has begun running a 3D ad format on Bing.com to promote the new Galaxy S10 phone. Full screen ads in search results. The format is the result of months of coordination between Bing, Samsung and agency Performics, a unit of Starcom. The ads display in desktop search, and exclusively on Bing. When users search for the Samsung Galaxy S10 or Samsung S9. The 3D unit expands the size of the screen and users can interact with it by rotating and zooming in on the product image to explore features. Users can also click on an image to see product details about the device. Read more about Bing’s 3D ads at Search Engine Land. 

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Buyer's JourneyLearn About the Buyer’s Journey

The general goal of every business is to attract consumers and turn them into customers. The process that a consumer goes through before they make a purchase is the buyer’s journey. As a business, you will need to meet the needs of the consumer as they move through their buyer’s journey. You’ll need to be able to do this at every stage of their journey in a passive manner until they are ready to be engaged.

Check Out A Guide to the Decision Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

After helping consumers learn about their problem and how they can solve it, you will want to present your product or service as the best option for that specific solution. It’s at this point that consumers are in the decision stage of the buyer’s journey.

Read About The Difference Between the Buyer’s Journey and Customer Journey Customer Journey vs Buyer Journey

You’ve probably heard a lot about consumer life-cycles, and the different terms used to describe said life-cycles such as buyer journey and sales funnel. Terms like buyer’s journey and sales funnel can be overwhelming.  You might even wonder why some terms seem to describe the same thing, such as buyer journeyand customer journey. Don’t be fooled–the buyer journey is very different from the customer journey and it’s important that you know what the difference is.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Expect More Instagram Branded Content Ad Opportunities in 2019

Instagram confirmed it is exploring more ways for brands to amplify content from influencers. The company has tested a new branded content ad format since last year. It will allow brands to turn posts created by influencers into ads on the platform. “We got great feedback from the brands that participated that this ad product is helping with some major limitations that can come with organic branded content including targeting and scale,” said an Instagram spokesperson. Read more about Instagram branded content at Marketing Land. 

Amazon Adds Customer Acquisition Metrics for Sponsored Brands Campaigns

Amazon Featured ImageThe “new-to-brand” set of metrics are aimed to help brands understand how well their campaigns convert first-time buyers. Amazon has introduced new metrics that capture insights on new customers that converted from seller’s ad campaigns. The “new-to-brand” metrics are available for Sponsored Brands ad campaigns — the search-triggered ads that showcase several products and formerly called headline search ads — as well as video and display ads. Find out more about Amazon’s new customer acquisition metrics at Marketing Land. 

Public Google+ Content Gets Archived for Future Generations

Google’s failed social media network could have been a huge step towards internet domination, and thanks to the Internet Archive, we’ll always get to look back on it.As the April termination date for Google’s social network approaches, attempts are being made to preserve public content for posterity.The fatal combination of low user engagement and security flaws characterized the end of Google’s foray into social media. Marketing Land has more information about Google+ content getting archived.

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Eddie Bauer’s “Release the Fleece” Ad Campaign

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Eddie Bauer’s recent ad campaign has put an interesting twist on a common seasonal item that many are familiar with: fleece. In their recent “Release the Fleece” campaign, E.B. focuses on the uses of emotional appeal, photography, and typography to draw their customers in and transforms this every-day product into a must-have commodity.

Emotional Advertisementad campaign

Ads that end up making people buy and share can usually be linked back to one word: emotion.

This should come as no surprise. According to Psychology Today, studies show that people rely on their emotions, rather than just information, to make final brand decisions. Emotional responses to ads are more influential on a person’s intent to buy than the content of an ad.

In Eddie Bauer’s case, their “Release the Fleece” focuses on sporty, adventurous, and smiling adults. This is the demographic E.B. is trying to grab the attention of. By showing customers what their fleece products look like “in action” on relatable and similar types of people, this further entices the potential customer to invest in a fleece product.

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Photography

The power of visual communication has reached an all-time high with the rise of digital and social marketing. This is media that modern marketers use to promote their content and brands. Because of this, photography is becoming even more vital to the promotion of a product than ever before. It catches a customer’s attention, improves understanding, calls for action, and most importantly: it drives sales.

Eddie Bauer’s photographs in their fleece campaign are all outdoors. Whether the models in the fleece are hanging out along a coastal beach, casually strolling in the city, or hiking up the mountains, they make the fabric look modern and chic. This type of fabric is for cooler weather. E.B. intentionally chose the month of February to send out this ad campaign. This helps reinforce to customer that there are only a couple months left to wear fleece.

Typography

When it comes to optimizing conversion rates, marketers are more than familiar with testing various colors, images, and buttons to see how they will affect customer turnover. But what about something as seemingly insignificant as choosing a typeface? You may believe you’re in the clear as long as you’re keeping away from Comic Sans, but typography matters more than you realize. It can add that “human touch” that customers are looking for.

In Eddie Bauer’s “Relase the Fleece”, typography was kept very minimalistic. It is very easy to read in sans serif. The colors of the typography are a cool, mint green and ocean blue, both of which have spring connotations. In fact, the ocean blue hue matches the color of Eddie Bauer’s logo.

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