Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore new tools to help creators start their own IGTV series with special guest, Rebekah Radice. We also […]
When you want to get your message in front of the right people on social media, where do you turn?
More and more, brands and businesses are turning to social ads and custom audiences. You can do a lot of awesome, targeted messaging by focusing on the right audiences with your ads — whether you’re talking to a group of customers, a bunch of website visitors, or a list of subscribers
In this post, we’ll talk you through ways to build custom audiences and lookalike audiences on all the major social media platforms, plus share a couple ideas of how you can put these audiences to the best use.
Best wishes for some well-targeted, highly successful ads!
Since this blog post focuses specifically on audiences, let’s start there. In general, an audience is going to be the bucket of people who will potentially see your ad. This group can be customized based on a variety of factors, which we’ll get to in a minute.
A custom audience is a step beyond the basic demographic and psychographic audience filters. A custom audience can be based on an outside source like a set of emails or website visitors or on the social media behavior of users.
Types of custom audiences you can build within Facebook
And then you have lookalike audiences, which take one of your custom audience and expand it to a larger group based on the qualities that the custom audience has in common. For instance, if all the people in your custom audience are interested in augmented reality, use social on a tablet, and have master’s degrees, then a lookalike audience will include people who share these attributes, too.
How to create a lookalike audience for Facebook / Instagram
As you can tell, there are many ways to slice and dice this information to build some really unique audiences.
So let’s get dive into some of the details, starting with the biggest and most robust social advertising networks … Facebook and Instagram.
How to Create Custom Audiences for Facebook and Instagram Ads
Advertising for both Facebook and Instagram is combined into the Facebook Ads Manager. You can run all your ads from here as well as create and manage all your audiences.
1. A customer list — also known as a standard custom audiences.
This audience is based on a list of emails, phone numbers, or Facebook user IDs that Facebook can then take and match to its list of users. Typically you’ll find that Facebook can match between 60 and 70 percent of the contacts on your customer list.
2. You can create a website custom audience.
With this audience, instead of uploading a list of customer emails or phone numbers, you build the audience based on traffic to your website. Using Facebook Pixel tracking, you can create an audience of people who have visited any specific page on your website during a set time period.
3. You can create custom audiences based on app activity
If you happen to have a mobile app or game, you can build audiences based on the actions that people take within your product.
4. You can use offline activity to build a Facebook audience.
This could include things like conversations that happen offline in brick-and-mortar stores or information you collect on a spreadsheet.
5. Build an audience from Facebook and Instagram engagement
These can be based on who engages with your posts, videos, events, and profile. You can even set the timeframe of this engagement so that you’re building an audience of people who recently engaged, like in the last 90 days, or who engaged anytime in the past year.
Strategy Ideas for Making the Most of Your Custom Audiences
Jumping quickly into the strategy of ads and audiences, we thought this nugget from a recent Jon Loomer blog post was really interesting. In the blog post, they shared that the most popular Instagram audience strategy is lumping all audience types and time windows together into one large chunk — like, everyone who engaged with your profile in the last 365 days, for instance.
As you might guess, there is so much more you can be doing with these audiences!
Let’s take a closer look at engagement audiences for instance: With the robust filtering of Facebook’s ads tool, you can build audiences of engagers based on a huge number of different factors like who has visited your Instagram profile, messaged you, or saved a post or an ad.
When it comes to these custom audiences, we quite liked this tip from social media today:Building “warm” audiences of people who have engaged with your content within a recent timeframe. Video in particular is a useful engagement and attention metric. So, say you create a ‘warm’ audience of people who’ve watched a certain amount of video from your page. From there, you can create a Lookalike Audience based on the warm audience, which will allow you to expand your reach to include people who share similar behaviors to that initial, warm, engaged group.
The Jon Loomer blog has a few favorite audience tips, too, specifically around building engagement-based audiences. These include:
People who have engaged in any way with your brand on Instagram in the past seven days, the past 20 days, and the past 90 days.
People who have visited your Instagram profile in the past 30 days but who are not customers
and People who have viewed your Instagram Stories videos in the past seven days
Another way to work with custom audiences is through retargeting.
This gets at the custom audience type of pixel tracking and website / profile visits.
We’ve talked to lots of brands that start out with targeting anyone and everyone that visits their website in their retargeting campaigns. Needless to say that approach isn’t always the most effective.
Customers visit your website for lots of different reasons. They visit different pages. The pages they visit represent different buyer intents. Perhaps they’re not looking to buy your product at all. The key is to match your custom advertising audiences to those shoppers’ intents. For example, if you’re an e-commerce brand and someone visits your website shopping for shoes, make sure that you segment those people into a custom audience labeled “shoe shoppers” or “footwear.”
Over the past year at Buffer we’ve created various audiences based on the subject matter our visitors are interested in learning about. We have a custom audience for traffic to all Facebook marketing pages, Instagram marketing, customer experience, case studies, etc. That allows us to be hyper-focused on what type of content we deliver, which helps to drive down costs.
As you’ll find with all of these social networks, they’re not quite as robust with ads offerings as Facebook and Instagram. But that’s okay! There’s still plenty of customization you can do.For Pinterest, you have a few options for what to create when it comes to customer audiences.
You can build audiences
Based on visitors who went to your site
Through a customer list that you upload — like a list of emails
Based on people who engaged with pins that link to your website
With an actalike audience that behaves similarly to an existing custom audience that you’ve created
Pinterest audience options
The visitor audience is based on a Pinterest tag, very much like the Facebook pixel. The Pinterest tag is a piece of JavaScript code you can install on your website to gather conversion insights and to build audiences that you can then target, based on actions taken on your site.
The Pinterest engagement audiences are really interesting, too. For these, all you need is to confirm your domain with Pinterest, and then Pinterest will be able to check to see which Pinterest users have engaged with pins that link back to your website. So for instance, if 1,000 people had saved a pin of Buffer blog content, we could build an engagement audience based on this.
Similar to the Facebook and Instagram engagement audiences, Pinterest gives you a handful of options to further customize this group. You can filter based on a specific URL, based on a pin category, or even based on the percentage of video that’s been viewed.
One interesting way that e-commerce brands can use this is to create audiences that are interested in particular product categories — people who click on certain links or certain Pins.
How to Create Custom Audiences for Twitter
With Twitter ads, you can build custom audiences based on
An uploaded list of contacts or customers
A collection of website visitors based on data you get from using a Twitter website tag
A list of your mobile app users
A flexible audience.
Twitter audience options
The flexible audiences feature is similar in nature to some of the engagement audiences we’ve talked about before. These audiences give Twitter advertisers a way to save combinations of audiences and subsets of audiences, based on factors like recency and frequency of interactions.
How to Create Custom Audiences for LinkedIn
You can build custom audiences on LinkedIn based on a list of contacts that you upload or you can build audiences based on website data, captured using a LinkedIn tag.
LinkedIn audience options
One interesting bit of audience customization that LinkedIn provides is with account-based audiences. Let’s say that you want to get a certain percentage of Fortune 500 companies using your product; well, you can upload this list of accounts to LinkedIn and build a custom audience that focused on the stakeholders of these companies.
Yes, there’s a lot of interesting things you can do on LinkedIn if you’re a business selling to other businesses. Then of course Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter are all great for selling your products and services direct to consumers.
That’s right, and before we go, we’d love to leave you with just a couple more ideas for how you can use these custom audiences in unique ways.
More Tips for Getting the Most out of Your Custom Audiences
I thought this tip from AdEspresso was pretty intriguing.They boost a lot of their content to a wide audience and then create a custom audience based on people who click that content and visit the website. This custom website audience, then, is made up of people who have already shown a lot of intent and might be more primed to start a trial.
Another exciting way to use custom audiences is to think creatively about what you share with a custom audience of existing customers. Typically you might think of ads as a way to acquire more customers. But what if you used this list as a way to keep existing customers engaged? You can build a custom audience based on people who have shopped with you in the past or used your product before, but it’s been awhile since they returned — a “sleepy” audience of sorts.
And finally, there are some neat things you can do with custom audiences of newsletter subscribers. You can segment the list into audiences of engaged subscribers and disengaged subscribers and deliver unique content to each group. For the disengaged group in particular there’s a lot of value in re-engaging: MailChimp ran an analysis of 60 million e-commerce purchases and 40 million email addresses from retailers and found that a single inactive subscriber is still worth 32% of an active subscriber.
About the Science of Social Media
The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing strategies from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each episode. It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27,000+ listeners each week and rock your social media channels as a result!
Denny’s, Nationwide and Walmart are among a small group of companies with multicultural advertisements that performed highly with African American, Hispanic and LGBTQ+ audiences. The cultural relevance of these analyzed ads, which were released over the past couple of years, were measured utilizing the ad metric CIIM (Cultural Insights Impact Measure), developed by The Association…
Denny’s, Nationwide and Walmart are among a small group of companies with multicultural advertisements that performed highly with African American, Hispanic and LGBTQ+ audiences. The cultural relevance of these analyzed ads, which were released over the past couple of years, were measured utilizing the ad metric CIIM (Cultural Insights Impact Measure), developed by The Association…
The summer before my sophomore year in college, I was scrolling through Facebook when I saw my friend dump a bucket of ice water on herself.
When I read the status update, I realized she was doing the Ice Bucket Challenge in an effort to promote awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease.
Although every social media campaign can’t reach the same viral attention as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, there are several things you can try to improve the results of your social media efforts.
Below, let’s review the top social media campaign ideas to try this year.
1. Build social proof.
One of the main benefits of social media marketing is that you can build social proof online. Your online reputation is one of the most important aspects of your brand. On social media, you can personify your brand and speak directly to your customers.
To build social proof, you might start a hashtag for users to submit testimonials. For example, P90X is an at-home training program that uses the hashtag #p90xresults to gather customer results.
This helps build social proof that their product works without seeming promotional. Additionally, you can share posts and interact with customers who mention your brand to spread awareness of the positive results your customers’ get from using your product or service.
2. Post offers and discounts online.
To complement your marketing campaign, you can promote discounts and offers on social media. In fact, there’s even a special section for offers on Facebook.
Discounts can help spread awareness and bring in new customers who might not have tried your product or service.
The best people to promote your brand are your current customers. Using social media, you can showcase happy customers and their stories by liking or sharing posts of them using your product or service.
You can encourage customers to share photos of themselves with your product and create a hashtag to promote it.
For example, Coca-Cola started a marketing campaign called Share a Coke. The hashtag #shareacoke became a place where people would take pictures of the new product. This promoted their campaign and drove more customers to purchase their product so they could find a Coke with their name on it.
4. Host contests.
People love winning free stuff and getting discounts — which is why a content is such an effective social media campaign idea.
Hosting a contest on social media is an excellent way to drive engagement, traffic, and create brand awareness.
You can run several different types of contests including asking followers to tag a friend in the comments, answer a question in the comments, or send a photo of themselves with your product or service.
Additionally, if you’re creating an ad campaign, you can host a casting contest and feature your customers in your ads.
5. Create calls-to-action on your posts.
Just like in the real world, being mysterious doesn’t get you far. If you want your customers to do something, ask them to do it.
A call-to-action (CTA) does just that. By including a CTA on all your social media posts, people are more likely to interact and engage.
CTAs can be simple — like asking people to sign up, subscribe, learn more, or comment below. A CTA can increase your click-through-rate (CTR), engagement, and success of your social media campaigns.
6. Encourage engagement with polls.
Who doesn’t love a good poll when you’re scrolling through your social media feed? Personally, I vote in every poll I see. I’m even tempted to vote in the ones that don’t apply to me — although I try not to because I don’t want to ruin the numbers.
With polls, you’ll learn more about your audience and increase engagement.
For example, TurboTax used the polls feature on Twitter to see if people considered rideshare drivers self-employed:
That’s why you should consider putting together an influencer giveaway social media campaign. Working on your relationships with influencers in your industry will help increase brand awareness and build social proof.
After researching the influencers in your industry, contact them and suggest a giveaway.
8. Go live.
When you’re putting together a social media campaign, don’t underestimate live videos.
In a recent survey of 1,000 respondents, 80% said they would rather watch a live video from a brand than read a blog, and 82% prefer live video to social media posts.
You can use this to your advantage.
Try hosting a live stream, talking to your customers in real-time, or asking and answering questions. This will help you connect with your audience in a way that personifies your brand. By personifying your brand, people are more likely to feel connected to your company in the same way they feel connected to a friend.
9. Have a takeover.
Takeovers is an opportunity to keep things interesting in your Stories section of your social profiles. You can have employees, partners, or guests host a “takeover” for the day. This entails having someone else — apart from your social media team — regularly post content on your social media page(s) for a day.
For example, every day The Skimm has an employee take over their Instagram Stories. Typically, they show followers what they do in a day, discuss what their job is, what their responsibilities are, and give career advice. This helps with branding and also promotes their workplace culture.
If you’re running a social media campaign, adding a takeover to your promotion can help increase engagement — additionally, having a guest or partner takeover your account can help your brand reach their audience, as well.
10. Publish behind-the-scenes content.
Behind-the-scenes content is one of the best ways to connect with your audience.
By showcasing a behind-the-scenes look, you can keep current and prospective customers up-to-date, brag about your team, and create an emotional connection that makes you relatable.
With any social media campaign, behind-the-scenes content can show off your personality and broaden your content.
11. Livestream events.
A social media campaign is one of the best ways to promote your events. But the promotion shouldn’t end on the day of the event.
Instead, consider live streaming certain parts of the event on social media. This will create more buzz about the event, encourage interaction with attendees, and is helpful for people who couldn’t attend the event.
12. Design a viral campaign.
Creating a viral marketing campaign is an easy sentence to write, but a hard concept to execute.
When you’re brainstorming your next social media campaign, answer these questions:
Does it appeal to your target audience?
Does it have strong visuals?
Does it have an emotional appeal?
Is it creative?
Is it easy to digest, and share?
Does the timing make sense?
Like the ALS challenge, creating some sort of online challenge that influencers can easily participate in will help spread the word.
13. Write event hashtags.
If you’re hosting an event, don’t forget to create a hashtag. With a hashtag, you can reply to attendees and keep track of questions.
For example, at INBOUND, the event hashtag is typically #INBOUND19 (or whatever year it is). This hashtag helps HubSpot curates content related to INBOUND, including attendees’ pictures of themselves at the event, and attendees’ testimonials/opinions on the event.
If you can get an event hashtag trending, then you’ll be able to create more brand awareness and interact with your customers.
14. Interact with your customers.
Speaking of interacting with your customers, you can design a social media campaign specifically around talking to your customers.
For example, in 2014 Taylor Swift did something called “Swiftmas.” This is when she went on social media, looked for highly engaged fans, chose her top fans, and then sent them presents. She even coined a term for this process, called “Taylurking.” If she commented a Christmas tree on one of your posts, you’re getting a present.
This is a great example of interacting with your audience in a way that doesn’t feel promotional, yet still creates brand awareness.
15. Use the holidays as inspiration.
Similar to the Taylor Swift example above, you can use the holidays as an inspiration for a social media campaign.
You can use your social accounts to promote a holiday sale, a Halloween contest, or sell holiday products like ornaments.
When it isn’t the holiday season, you can still use current events to inspire your social media campaigns. Remember, your social media posts don’t happen in a silo. They’re happening in the real world, and they should be timely.
16. Provide educational content.
It’s easy to get in the habit of just posting your products or services on social media. But that would be a mistake.
Your content should be educational and create value. When you’re creating a social media campaign, ask yourself what value it’ll bring to your audience. That’s how you’ll brainstorm content ideas that could go viral.
17. Repurpose high-performing content.
Every time you run a social media campaign, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can use old content that has performed well in the past.
Do you have a podcast that has really high downloads? Or a blog that has the most views? You can repurpose that content for social media. Create a video for Stories or IGTV and summarize it in a caption.
Old content is a great way to boost your social media campaigns.
18. Curate content.
Your social media doesn’t have to include content that’s only from you. In fact, sharing other people’s content is a great way to humanize your brand and create value for your audience.
If your social media campaign needs some more post ideas, consider curating content from other people that complement your promotion.
Again, you don’t want your social media profile to feel too promotional. Your posts should have variety.
19. Participate in popular trends.
It’s always important to remember that the world is still spinning while you’re in your marketing meeting, brainstorming social media campaign ideas.
Consider trends, like popular hashtags, and participate in them. For example, #throwbackthursday still hasn’t gone out of style. If your posts need a little inspiration, look for popular hashtags and trends and jump on board.
Customers like to see that the brands they follow are staying current.
These campaigns are more likely to be seen by your audience because the sites haven’t developed complicated algorithms yet.
Plus, you should always look for new places to engage with your audience and learn more about them.
21. Plan “caption this” contests.
A fun and unique contest, the “caption this” contest is especially helpful for those times where you have a very intriguing photo but are having a hard time writing a caption.
These contests encourage creativity and are a fun way to interact with your audience.
When you’re planning a social media campaign, consider a “caption this” contest to encourage engagement.
22. Design geofilters on Snapchat.
Geofilters on Snapchat are an excellent way to increase brand awareness and create memories with your audience.
If your customers take a photo at an event, they’ll appreciate the geofilter. By posting photos of themselves with this filter, your customers are a free, walking advertisement.
Again, the best way to promote your brand is through your current customers. Geofilters will help you do just that.
23. Generate hype for your launches.
When you’re about to launch a product, service, or event, you should create a social media campaign to generate hype.
Previews of your product or contests to figure out what the product is will create excitement among your customers.
This creates enthusiasm among her customers — as a result, she sold out almost immediately.
24. Come up with human interest campaigns.
At the end of the day, your audience relates to people, not companies. You should always try to humanize your brand in your social media campaigns.
To do this, include a human interest element in all your campaigns.
For example, when Kim Kardashian West launched her shapewear Skims, her social media campaign included videos of the models in her shapewear talking about how it made them feel more comfortable and confident in their skin. The human element in this campaign allowed followers to see the value in Kim’s new product.
25. Develop entertaining segments.
You know how James Corden has fun segments on his show the Late Late Show, like Carpool Karaoke? Those fun, bite-sized segments are crucial elements to making his show as fun to watch as it is.
When you’re creating a social media campaign, follow in his footsteps and create fun, entertaining segments just like you might for a TV show. After all, most social media has long-form video content like Facebook Watch or IGTV.
This type of content can increase traffic and engagement for your social media campaigns.
Brainstorming social media campaigns isn’t always easy. However, you can use this list to get started.
The new year is right around the corner. And I know you are already prepared because you read this blog and tons of other marketing blogs, right?
But here is the thing: I also read most of the popular marketing blogs, follow all of the marketing YouTube channels, and listen to the same podcasts you do.
And I’ve noticed that very few people are talking about what’s really going to happen in 2020.
Sure, they will tell you things like voice search is going to account for over 50% of the search queries next year but all of that stuff has already been talked about.
And there are actually more interesting trends that will
affect your marketing that no one is really talking about.
So, what are these trends? What’s going to happen in 2020?
Alright, here goes…
Trend #1: Companies who rely on Google Analytics will get
beat by their competition
Heck, I love it so much I log in at least 3 or 4 times a day. And here is the kicker: I get so much traffic that my Google Analytics only updates once a day.
I really need to break that habit but that’s for another day.
You are probably wondering, what’s wrong with Google Analytics?
There actually isn’t much wrong with it. It’s a great tool,
especially considering that it’s free.
But here is the thing… marketing has been changing. New channels are being constantly introduced, such as voice search.
And transactions no longer are as simple as someone coming and buying from you and that’s it.
These days there are things like upsells, down sells, repeat purchases, and even checkout bumps. On top of that, there are so many different ways you can generate revenue for your online business, such as partnerships, affiliate marketing, and even webinars.
This has caused companies to start using analytics solutions that tie into their database better, such as Amplitude. Or better yet, you are seeing a big push into business intelligence.
A central place where you can tie in all of your data and make better-informed decisions so you can optimize for your lifetime value instead of your short-term income.
In 2020, you will see more companies adopting business intelligence solutions… from paid ones to free ones like Google Data Studio.
If you haven’t checked out Data Studio, you’ll want to start now because it is easy to pass in all of your business and marketing data into one place. For example, you can pass in more granular data from your Facebook ad campaigns into Data Studio while that would be a bit difficult to do with Google Analytics.
Trend #2: Companies will optimize for voice search, but not
for revenue
Optimizing for voice search is a great way to get your brand
out more, but how is that going to convert into sales?
I haven’t seen too many solutions so far when it comes to
capitalizing on your voice search traffic, but so far there is Jetson.ai.
If you aren’t familiar with Jetson.ai, it makes it so people can buy from your site using voice search. It doesn’t matter if it is Alexa or Google Home, they work with most of the popular devices.
What’s cool about Jetson.ai is that it can learn from each customer and customize the interactions.
For example, if I keep ordering the same toothpaste from a specific store using voice search, Jetson.ai keeps track of that so you can easily keep ordering the same product over and over again with little to no friction.
Heck, it’s easier than logging into your computer or pulling
out your phone to make a purchase.
Trend #3: Your lists won’t convert as well, so you’ll
have to look for alternative communication channels
Email, it’s something we all use in the corporate world.
But here is something interesting when it comes to marketing
emails… I’m in a group with a bit over 109 email marketers across different
industries in different parts of the world.
And can you guess what we are all noticing?
Our open rates are staying roughly the same and that’s
largely because we all know how to clean and optimizing for deliverability.
But our click rates are going down.
So far as a group we have seen our click rates drop by
9.4% in 2019.
That’s crazy considering as a group we have over 146 million email addresses.
Now does this mean email is dead?
Of course not!!!
Email is here to stay and will be here for a very long time.
But what companies will have to do in 2020 is to leverage more communication channels.
Chatbots will take off drastically. Not necessarily the Intercom’s or Drift’s of the world but more so the solutions like ManyChat and MobileMonkey.
ManyChat and MobileMonkey leverage Facebook Messenger and as they connect it with Instagram and WhatsApp it will get even more popular.
In addition to chatbots, you’ll see more people leveraging
tools that allow push notifications like Subscribers.
It’s so powerful, here is the impact I’ve been able to
generate from push notifications so far using Subscribers.
You can wait till next year to lever chatbots and push
notifications, but I’d recommend you start sooner than later. 😉
Trend #4: Moats will almost be non-existent, other than
brands
You’ve probably heard the word “moat” before. If you
haven’t, just think about water around a castle.
Back in the day, they had water all around the castle and
they used a drawbridge to get in and out of the castle, so it would protect
them from invaders.
With your business, you may have a moat. It could be a feature, your cost structure, a technological advantage, or even a marketing advantage.
Over the years, moats in the online world have slowly been disappearing.
It’s easy for anyone to copy these days. So, what’s separating you from your competition?
Something could work right now, but it won’t last forever…
But do you know what will still be a strong moat in 2020 and
even a stronger one in the future?
It’s branding.
People buy Jordan shoes because they love Michael Jordan.
His brand is stronger than ever even though he hasn’t played in the NBA for
roughly 16 years.
His shoes are so popular, it’s helped him boost his net worth to over a billion dollars. Plus owning a basketball team doesn’t hurt either. 😉
But what’s interesting is he’s made more money after
retirement than he did as a basketball player.
And it’s not just Jordan who built a strong brand… so
have the Kardashians.
Just look at my agency NP Digital. It’s literally one of the fastest-growing ad agencies out there. And when I look at all of my competitors’ numbers, we are growing at a much faster pace because of my brand.
Yes, we have a great team, but again, that really isn’t a moat as a lot of agencies have great teams. It’s my brand that gave us a really fast kick start and continues to hopefully push us up.
You’ll want to build a brand in 2020. Whether it is personal
or corporate, it’s the best moat you can build in marketing. Plus, it will help
you with Google’s EAT.
Trend #5: Marketing will become a more even playing
field, you’ll have no choice but to use automation
When I first started off as an entrepreneur, I turned to SEO because I couldn’t afford the big ad budgets as my competitors.
Heck, I couldn’t even afford to run any paid ads.
Over the years, the playing field has become more level.
There are credit card companies like Brex that make it easier for startups to
get approved for larger limits and you may not have to pay them back right
away.
There are financing companies that will give you cash to
spend on marketing, so non-venture funded companies can more easily compete.
There are even companies like Lighter Capital that will give you loans without all of the headaches based on your existing revenue.
And to top it off, software solutions are now starting to integrate AI to give better recommendations. From Clickflow and RankScience to Distilled ODN… everyone is trying to use AI to make SEO and other forms of marketing.
Heck, BrightEdge can even automate your SEO (or at least a large portion of it). According to them, their automated SEO solution increases page views per visit by 60% as well as provides 21% more keywords on page one.
Keep in mind their clients are really big (their software starts in the thousands of dollars per month) so they would probably see better results than most companies, but still, you will start seeing many more software companies leverage AI.
Even with Ubersuggest, I’m working on creating AI that does the SEO for you so you no longer have to spend endless hours while, at the same time, saving you thousands of dollars.
In other words, the marketing playing field is getting more
even. And if you want to do well, you are going to have to leverage AI and
automation.
If everyone else is using it and you aren’t, you are going to get crushed because it will make changes faster and more accurately than a human. Again, it’s the only option you’ll have if you want to continually compete.
But don’t worry, there will be affordable/free solutions that exist, it’s just a matter of time. 😉
If everyone is leveraging the same AI marketing technology, how can you beat your competitors?
Well, it will come down to everything else… price, customer
service, upselling, operations, sales… All of the small stuff is what’s going
to help you win.
Trend #6: There will be no more silver bullets, we will
all have to optimize for marginal gains
A lot of businesses were built off of one marketing channel.
Dropbox grew through referral marketing. Invite more
friends, get more free space.
Facebook was built off your email address book. Facebook used to tap into it and invite all of your contacts to use Facebook on your behalf.
Companies like Quora and Yelp were built off of SEO. All of those rankings really help drive their businesses.
But you no longer can build a business through just one
marketing channel. Good channels now get saturated extremely fast.
Even if they work and cause explosive growth, it will only last for a short while before your competitors jump on board and make it harder.
Marketing is now heading in the direction of being about “marginal gains.”
There’s a British cycling coach named Dave Brailsford. His
belief was that if you improved every area related to cycling by just 1
percent, then those small gains would add up to remarkable improvement.
And he’s right, that’s how you win a race.
The same will be with your marketing. There will be a big shift from people focusing on one channel and trying to find the “Holy Grail of marketing” to working on slightly improving each area of your marketing.
From split testing your title tags to get a few ranking improvements to adding checkout bumps to your order page so you can spend a little bit more on your paid ads to using Google Data Studio so you can better optimize for your lifetime value…
It’s all about the little things. That’s what is going to
add up to winning.
That’s what you’ll have to shift your mindset to in order to win in 2020 and beyond.
Trend #7: Personalization is the new marketing
The problem with marketing as it exists today is that 95% of your visitors will never convert into a customer. And that’s if you are lucky.
Chances are you are more likely looking at 97% plus of your
visitors never converting.
The big reason isn’t that your marketing sucks or that all
of those visitors are junk and unqualified.
It’s that your message doesn’t fit every single one of your
visitors.
But through personalization, you can convert more of your visitors into customers.
A basic example of this is Amazon. When you go to Amazon, they know your patterns and what you typically buy so they show you what they think you want to see in order to boost their conversions.
And it works! When I log into Amazon I see tons of household supplies because that is what I buy the most often. I never buy dog food (which is smart because I don’t have a dog,) so I’ll never see ads for dog food.
Businesses are also trying to personalize each and every single experience both online and offline.
Companies like Amperity are trying to create a customer relationship engine so you can better serve each of your customers, whether it is online or offline.
Marketing is going to become a game of personalization. With
ad costs and even general marketing costs rising, you have no choice but to
figure out how to convert the 97% of your traffic that just never comes back.
You’ll see a big push for this in 2020.
Conclusion
I know a lot of the stuff I mentioned above isn’t talked about a lot and they aren’t popular marketing topics that everyone wants to hear… but it is the future.
These are trends that will come true, some already are, and
you have to adapt for them.
Here’s the beautiful part, though. You just read this, and now have a chance to act on the information before your competition. So, make sure you go and do so.
I want to see you not only succeed but I want you to beat
your competition. And I believe you can, whether you are a big company, or just
starting off with very little to no money.
So, what do you think of the trends above? Do you see any
marketing trends that will come true in 2020 that few people talk about?
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore new tools to help creators start their own IGTV series with special guest, Rebekah Radice. We also […]
