In a world dominated by video marketing, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a role, in transforming the industry. By improving customer experiences increasing engagement and providing content AI is reshaping video marketing strategies both now and, in the future.

Let’s start with some overall stats,

In fact, 96% of marketers have already witnessed the positive return on investment (ROI) that AI-powered video marketing brings. In general, nowadays, 75.7% of marketers are using AI tools for work.

So, let’s dive into how AI is transforming the landscape of video marketing strategies and explore its exciting future.

What is Video Marketing?

Video marketing is a tactic that companies employ to connect with their desired audiences showcase their offerings and transform viewers into customers. This approach encompasses the creation and dissemination of captivating videos, on platforms to convey messages and establish brand awareness.

The Impact of Video Marketing is Undeniable

Heightened Brand Awareness: Research reveals that video marketing contributes significantly to enhancing brand awareness, with 64% of marketers acknowledging its effectiveness.

Videos are dominating the content marketing industry!

Videos possess a unique power to captivate attention, narrate a brand’s story, and leave an enduring imprint on viewers. By leveraging visual and auditory elements, videos enable brands to stand out amidst fierce market competition.

Amplified Conversions: Valuable consumer insights from 2022 demonstrate the ability of video marketing to bolster conversion rates. Videos have the power to inspire and prompt viewers into action be it making a purchase subscribing to a newsletter or establishing a connection, with a company.

However, that depends on the production quality,

By showcasing products or services in action and addressing customer pain points, videos become a persuasive catalyst for driving conversions.

Elevated Engagement: videos, be short form or long, have the most power to keep audacious captivated for a long time. People spend an amount of time on social media watching videos, which demonstrates the appeal and effectiveness of this medium. Videos provide an experience by combining visuals, audio, and storytelling making it more engaging and interactive.

People spend an amount of time on social media watching videos, which demonstrates the appeal and effectiveness of this medium. Videos provide an experience by combining visuals, audio, and storytelling making it more engaging and interactive.

Unforgettable Brand Recall: Videos leave a lasting imprint in viewers’ minds, significantly enhancing brand recall. Compared to text or images alone, videos exhibit a higher recall rate.

Videos create a lasting impression, on viewers by using captivating visuals, storytelling techniques, and emotional connections. This ensures that the brand stays at the forefront of their minds when making purchasing decisions.

Heightened Social Media Activity: The pandemic has amplified the significance of video marketing, leading to a surge in social media activity. As social media platforms prioritize video content, consumer behavior has shifted accordingly.

Nowadays, it seems social media is treated as a marketplace,

Businesses have adeptly capitalized on this trend by crafting compelling videos that resonate deeply with their target audience, fostering stronger connections and interactions across social media platforms.

So we can say video marketing serves as a dynamic and immersive medium that enables businesses to artfully narrate their stories, showcase their offerings, and forge authentic connections with their target market! Its ability to evoke emotions, deliver captivating narratives, and provide valuable information sets video marketing apart as a pivotal strategy in today’s digital landscape.

How is AI Changing Video Marketing Strategies?

As we step into 2023, AI is paving the way for transformative changes in video marketing strategies. Here are eight key ways AI is reshaping the landscape of video marketing:

AI-Powered Video Editing for Efficiency & Quality

AI-powered video editing tools automate tasks such as shot selection, transitions, color grading, and sound mixing, saving time and improving video quality. AI enables marketers to concentrate on developing engaging content and providing seamless user experiences by streamlining the editing process.

With AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data and learn from patterns, it can even suggest the most effective editing techniques and styles based on audience preferences and industry trends, ensuring that every video is optimized for maximum impact.

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Some of the Best AI-Powered Video Creators and Editors

Let’s mention some of the interesting AI-powered platforms that help to create and edit marketing videos for marketing purposes.

1. DeepBrain AI: It’s an innovative AI platform that provides a one-of-a-kind solution for making AI Avatar videos in a matter of minutes. DeepBrain AI generates natural-sounding speech with various accents and tones, resulting in a realistic and engaging user experience.

2. Pictory: Pictory is one of the best AI-powered video creation tools, with plenty of interesting features. The platform is popular among marketers, including YouTubers, bloggers, course creators, and agency owners.

3. Elai: Elai is an ideal video marketing solution for digital marketers who want to generate interesting videos. The AI-powered system can produce accompanying text from the inputted audio, making it easy to add subtitles, voiceovers, and other features.

AI Voiceovers and Animation: Enhancing Visual Appeal

AI advancements in voiceovers and animation bring a new dimension to video content, enhancing visual appeal and increasing audience engagement. AI-generated voiceovers can provide seamless narration that matches the tone and style of the video, creating a more immersive and professional viewing experience. 

Additionally, AI-powered animation tools enable marketers to bring complex ideas to life with visually stunning graphics and effects. By leveraging AI in voiceovers and animation, brands can elevate their storytelling capabilities, grab viewers’ attention, and effectively convey their messages.

Some of the Best AI-Powered Voice-Over Generators

So, nowadays a lot of marketers create marketing videos without recording themself. AI makes it too easy to create voice-overs, so marketers just need to write their script and these AI platforms generate interesting voice-overs for their videos.

1. Lovo: It’s a professional content production tool that generates high-quality voice-overs and synthetic speech using Generative AI and text to speech technology. The platform is intended for marketers, HR professionals, sales teams, and content service providers of all sizes.

2. Synthesys: It’s an AI-powered platform and a leader in the creation of algorithms for commercial applications that transform texts into voices and videos. Imagine adding a real human voice to your social media videos or online courses.

3. Murf AI: It’s another great tool, AI voice-over and text to speech are two of the essential features of the Murf.AI platform. Murf gives you the option to create high-quality synthetic voices for a variety of applications, regardless of whether you require male or female voices and support for many languages.

Personalized Content: Deepening Engagement with Audiences

AI algorithms analyze customer data to deliver highly targeted and personalized content. This personalized approach enhances engagement, boosts conversion rates, and fosters more vital customer satisfaction and loyalty.

By leveraging AI-driven insights, marketers can understand customer preferences at a granular level and create video content tailored to their specific needs, pain points, and aspirations. 

From personalized product recommendations to individualized storytelling, AI enables brands to forge deeper connections with their audiences and provide them with valuable content that resonates personally.

Advanced Analytics: Insights for Data-Driven Decisions

AI-powered analytics tools provide valuable insights into video performance, tracking metrics like views, engagement rates, and conversion rates. These data-driven insights can aid marketers in making wise choices and enhancing their tactics.

AI algorithms can go beyond surface-level metrics and dive into more nuanced aspects of video performance, such as audience sentiment analysis, emotional response tracking, and attention heatmaps.

With these insights, marketers can fine-tune their video content, iterate on successful elements, and experiment with new approaches, all to continuously improve performance and drive desired outcomes.

Hyper-Personalization with AI Recommendations

AI algorithms deliver hyper-personalized video recommendations based on individual preferences, interests, and browsing history. This focused strategy promotes brand loyalty, consumer happiness, and engagement.

By analyzing vast amounts of data, AI can identify patterns, behaviors, and affinities, enabling marketers to deliver video content that aligns with each viewer’s specific interests. 

Whether it’s recommending related videos, personalized playlists, or tailored product suggestions, AI-powered recommendations create a highly personalized viewing experience, keeping audiences engaged and coming back for more.

AI-Driven Targeting & Optimization

AI enables precise targeting and optimization of video marketing campaigns by analyzing data on past search history, previous purchases, and social media interactions. This precise strategy maximizes conversion rates by ensuring that video content is delivered to the appropriate audience at the optimal moment.

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AI algorithms can segment audiences based on demographic factors, interests, and behaviors, allowing marketers to create tailored video campaigns that resonate with specific customer segments. 

Through continuous analysis and optimization, AI-driven targeting empowers marketers to allocate resources effectively, refine messaging, and achieve better campaign performance and ROI.

AI-Generated Content Creation

AI facilitates content marketing especially content creation in video marketing through generated scripts, automated production, and AI-assisted editing. Marketers have the opportunity to utilize AI to delve into concepts improve their work processes and boost productivity.

Scripts generated by AI can serve as a foundation, for video ideas enabling marketers to streamline the process of creating content. Automated production tools powered by AI can effectively manage tasks such, as creating scenes tracking objects, and rendering which ultimately results in a reduction of time and effort involved in video production.

AI-powered editing tools provide suggestions, for transitions, visual enhancements, and pacing to ensure that the end result of a video aligns, with the intended goals and connects effectively with the target viewers. In addition, nowadays, a lot of AI-powered platforms are available that can generate successful (high conversion) banner and video ad creatives.

AI-Powered Interactive Video Experiences

Interactive video experiences empowered by AI captivate audiences with personalized branching narratives and interactive decision-making. These captivating elements help to hold the attention of viewers resulting in increased levels of engagement and loyalty, towards the brand.

By using AI algorithms it becomes possible to analyze how viewers respond and behave while interacting with videos. This analysis allows for adjustments to the content ensuring a personalized experience, for each viewer.

Interactive videos powered by AI enhance viewer engagement and empowerment by providing options, quizzes, and personalized storylines. This fosters a bond with the brand. Boosts the chances of viewers taking desired actions.

The Future of Video Marketing with AI

As we gaze into the future the potential, for video marketing with AI appears bright. The latest trends suggest that AI technology will continue to progress presenting marketers with possibilities, for creative breakthroughs. Here are key ways video marketing with AI will continue to evolve in the near future:

• Enhanced deep learning algorithms for improved content personalization
• AI-powered real-time video analytics for instant insights and adjustments
• AI-generated dynamic video ads tailored to individual viewers in real-time
• Voice-controlled video experiences powered by AI voice assistants
• AI-driven emotional analysis for personalized video recommendations based on mood
• Automated video translations for seamless global audience reach
• AI-powered influencer marketing matching algorithms for effective collaborations

AI Changing the Video Marketing Quick Wrap-Up

Undoubtedly, AI is changing the video marketing strategy and will only be more popular in the future. As we enter 2023, AI is set to revolutionize video marketing and overall social media strategies in various ways. From AI-powered video editing and personalized content delivery to advanced analytics and interactive video experiences, AI brings innovation and efficiency to the field.

With AI’s capabilities, video marketing will continue to evolve and create highly impactful and immersive experiences for audiences. It’s an exciting time for video marketing as AI takes it to new heights of success.

The post AI’s Impact on Video Marketing in 2023 & Beyond appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Social media is one of the most quickly evolving areas of digital marketing. So, your social media marketing team needs to keep pace with customers and competitors alike. 

From new social platforms and changing algorithms to the latest technologies and trends, marketing is unforgivingly fast-paced. It comes as no surprise that social media marketers are struggling to keep up. 

In a recent survey by The Social Club, it was found that the accelerated pace of social platforms is becoming overwhelming for social media marketers. 81% admitted that it was a struggle to stay on top of the latest trends and technologies.

Other marketers struggle to develop the wide range of must-have marketing skills needed to perform the diverse role. 

As a result, performance, knowledge, and skills gaps can grow within social media marketing teams—and they can wreak havoc. Luckily, you can combat gaps by identifying and addressing them in a variety of ways.

So, let’s discuss how you can identify and tackle gaps within your team. And in doing so, how you improve productivity, future-proof your business, and equip your team to meet social media marketing goals.

Evaluate Your Team’s Skill Sets & Experience

Before you can identify skills gaps, you need to establish the skills and experience your team currently possesses. 

So, start by conducting an in-depth evaluation of your team’s current skill sets, experience, and knowledge. This will present you with a comprehensive inventory of skills that you can align with your business goals. 

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Ultimately, it helps you determine where your team thrives and where it falls short.

But how do you go about this? 

As a best practice, consider using several different methods of evaluation to get a reliable picture of your team’s current skill set. For example, you might:

Create a Formal Test

Formal tests can be used to assess the technical and theoretical competency of your employees. For example, you can test how effectively employees are able to use a certain tool. Or, you can assess how aptly they identify a particular framework and apply it to a situation. 

While this is a popular evaluation method, there are some limitations to consider. 

Formal test conditions don’t always present a reliable picture of proficiency. Some people perform worse in test conditions due to stress and anxiety. Other people might display competency in test settings but are unable to apply this knowledge in real-life scenarios. 

So, consider using formal tests alongside the two other evaluation methods that we’re going to discuss below.

Conduct On-the-Job Observations

Observing real-world performance is one of the best ways to accurately gauge your team’s skill set. 

On the job, are your employees able to efficiently utilize technologies to meet goals? How effectively do they communicate and collaborate in fast-paced environments? Are they applying their skills, knowledge, and experience to a standard you’d expect?

In-person assessments allow you to observe your team within the everyday work environment. Compared to formal tests, they can give you a more accurate representation of employee performance. But, there’s still the risk that employees’ nerves may alter their performance, which can skew the results of your evaluation.

And of course, in-person observations simply aren’t possible if you’re a remote team. So, you might have to use another method: performance management technology.

Utilize Software to Measure & Evaluate Performance

Instead of relying on in-person observations, you can enlist the help of software to track your employees’ performance. This includes tracking whether employees meet project deadlines, reach benchmark KPIs, and are otherwise engaged in and attending to their responsibilities.

The data obtained from software can help you identify performance gaps. Performance gaps are just as critical to identify and address as skills and knowledge gaps, as they damage productivity and negatively impact your bottom line. 

In many cases, performance and skills gaps overlap in some way. 

For example, underperforming employees might lack the skills or knowledge they need to perform their roles effectively. Similarly, employees who regularly miss work might lack motivation or feel dissatisfied in their role, which can arise as a result of a skills gap. 

To combat this, an HR performance management system with an attendance tracker feature enables you to track performance and attendance in real-time. Attendance software automates the process by identifying absence patterns and quickly alerting you to potentially struggling employees. As a result, you can uncover and tackle performance gaps more efficiently and effectively, all while supporting your employees and earning their loyalty.

Establish Your Team’s Objectives

Setting realistic, unified team goals and objectives can close performance gaps that may be hurting your productivity. When team objectives are misaligned or unachievable, employees disconnect from them. This leads to disengagement and poor motivation. 

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However, when you set clear, realistic objectives and empower your team to achieve them, you can boost productivity and close performance gaps.

Establishing team objectives can also help you identify skills gaps. 

Let’s say that your team really wants to grow its followers on Pinterest. As you proceed to devise a Pinterest marketing growth strategy to meet this objective, you might discover that your team doesn’t know enough about Pinterest to execute this strategy effectively. So, you’ve identified a skills gap.

Armed with this knowledge, you can quickly target this skills gap by hiring a marketer with the relevant experience. Or you could upskill your employees—more on this later. 

Identify Areas for Skill Development

Now it’s time to dig a little deeper and identify any specific skills gaps that exist within your social marketing team. Chances are, you’ll find some—53% of companies currently have a skills gap, according to research by SHRM. 

Skills gaps can arise for a variety of reasons. Talent shortages, poor training, lack of experience, and failure to keep pace with new technologies can all result in skills gaps that put your company at a competitive disadvantage. 

With a fine-tooth comb, inspect your team’s digital marketing skills, experience, and objectives to illuminate any areas for improvement. For a social marketing team, the most pressing and common skills gaps include graphic design, videography, and photography.

Provided by The Social Club, here’s an example of what social media marketers deem to be essential skills, compared to how many marketers feel that they actually possess these skills.

Provide Continuous Training & Development 

Before you rush to fill your skills gaps by hiring new employees, consider upskilling your current employees first.

Upskilling is a learning and development strategy that involves providing continuous training to employees to help them learn new skills. There are a bunch of benefits to doing this—it’s more cost-effective, it boosts productivity, and it even increases employee satisfaction and retention. 71% of employees who took part in employer-provided upskilling opportunities say that it increased their overall job satisfaction.

That said, any old training program won’t do. Training content needs to be delivered strategically, with a focus on keeping it engaging and interactive to maximize knowledge retention. 

Here are some top tips for training your social media marketing team:

• Create visually engaging and interactive online training videos
• Utilize other interactive training methods too, like memory games, quizzes, and puzzles
• Assign employees to a mentor for 1-on-1 training and development sessions
• Create a centralized online knowledge base packed with valuable content (how-to’s, blog posts, indexes, etc)
• Offer bitesize training modules to help employees retain knowledge
• Most importantly, provide opportunities for them to exercise their new skills

Seek Feedback From Customers

Your customers are invaluable information sources. Their feedback can shed light on areas that your social media marketing team needs to improve on, driving learning and development initiatives in the right direction. 

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There are lots of different ways that you can request feedback from your customers. Follow-up emails, social media, and website surveys are just a few examples. And you can request feedback on pretty much anything you want, from the quality of your YouTube videos or Instagram photos to the consistency of your brand’s voice across your social channels. 

Just make sure to avoid common customer survey mistakes if you want to garner the best results.

If you’re still struggling to obtain customer feedback, there are different ways to tap into what your customers are thinking without asking them directly. 

Reviews left on third-party websites like Google and TrustPilot can be a source of valuable feedback. Try encouraging customers to leave reviews which you can use to accumulate useful information. For example, recurring pain points that come up in reviews may uncover hidden skills gaps or performance gaps within your team.

You can also use social listening tools to monitor what customers are saying about you online.

Review Your Team’s Workload

A heavy workload hinders productivity and is one of the leading causes of performance gaps. But it can exacerbate skills gaps, too. 

Without the means to undertake professional development, employees can quickly fall behind competitors. Remember, 81% of social media marketers struggle to stay on top of social media marketing developments. 

The same study found that 53% of social media marketers claim that it takes over an hour a week to keep on top of the latest marketing trends. 10% say that it requires over two hours of dedication a week.

Put simply—if your team has a heavy workload, keeping up just isn’t possible.

Assess your team’s workloads and, with the assistance of your employees, adjust them to free up time for learning and development. Through this process, you might also realize that you can reallocate resources to maximize skill utilization and reduce skill gaps. 

An employee who excels in paid advertising, for example, should invest more time in utilizing and refining those specific skills. Or, if various team members are tackling campaign management alongside their other duties, it might be wise to hire a dedicated social media marketing manager to unburden these responsibilities. This provides more time for learning and development while also closing a skills gap. 

Consider Hiring Additional Team Members

Sometimes, hiring new team members is absolutely essential. 

For example, it could be that your team completely lacks the necessary experience to fulfill duties in a complex area, like social media analytics. Or, it could be that your team’s workload is so heavy that it’s impossible for employees to leverage all of the necessary skills to their full capability. 

In these scenarios, look into bringing new team members on board. But be careful—a poor hiring process can result in bad hires and a host of other issues. Not only can this widen skills gaps even further, but it can seriously damage your team’s overall productivity. 

So, it’s critical that you precisely identify the skills and experience that you need a new hire to possess. From there, you can create job ads that accurately detail the responsibilities of the role, increasing your chances of attracting high-quality candidates. 
Using talent acquisition software, you can then leverage AI to automate the labor-intensive candidate sorting and screening process. Talent acquisition tools can match and score candidates according to your preset rules, dramatically reducing the time it takes to find the best candidates to interview.

Evaluate Your Team’s Culture

A team culture that is misaligned with your company’s values and objectives can contribute to performance and skills gaps. This is why it’s so important to continuously evaluate your team’s culture, nurturing positive cultural traits and weeding out any negative traits.

Performance monitoring and attendance tracking software can help you identify engagement issues and tackle their underlying cause. Gathering employee feedback via pulse surveys and eNPS surveys can highlight areas for improvement that you may have otherwise missed. And external employee review sites are also a useful way to glean honest, unfiltered insights into your team’s culture.

To effectively close performance and skills gaps within your social marketing team, work on fostering a culture that embraces knowledge-sharing, unity, collaboration, and continuous learning and development.

Key Takeaways

As the latest digital marketing trends, technologies, and platforms continue to emerge at an accelerated rate, knowledge and skills gaps are bound to crop up. It’s vital that you empower your social media marketing team to keep pace with competitors and meet marketing goals by identifying and addressing gaps.

Once you’ve identified gaps through observations and analysis, you can work on closing them the right way. The best ways to tackle gaps in your team include providing continuous training, hiring experienced employees, and adjusting your team’s workload.

The post Are Skill Gaps Holding Back Your Social Media Marketing Team’s Potential? appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

How do you now implement all the great ideas and strategies you learned at the summit? How do you keep the same momentum?

Because when you leave the conference, the outside world is waiting for you, filled with its distractions.

During the closing ceremonies of Traffic & Conversion Summit, Ryan Deiss, DigitalMarketer’s Co-Founder and CEO, said to find success after the conference you have to do 1 thing.

Doing this will help ensure your success.

To learn what that 1 thing is, watch Ryan’s closing keynote from Traffic & Conversion Summit 2018:

(NOTE: Reserve your seat today for Traffic & Conversion Summit 2019 and SAVE 50% with Early Bird pricing. But hurry! This discount is for a limited time. Learn more here.)

Don’t have time to watch the presentation? Read the transcript below!

Traffic & Conversion Summit 2018: Final Thoughts and Closing Ceremonies Transcript

So what we want to do now, I really want to close this thing out the right way. I want to finish where we began. I want to go back 3 days ago. I know it seems like it’s been a very, very long time because when I came out here Monday morning, I lead with one word in particular that I felt summed up where things are today. And that word, if you recall, was crap. Crap. Do you remember that? Do you remember how we talked about how ad rates are on the rise? How impressions are down, ad rates are on the rise. Do you remember how we talked about how the bots are coming to take all of our jobs and fundamentally ruin humanity as we know it?

(RELATED: Ryan Deiss on the Future of Marketing in a Bot-Infested, Facebook-Dominated World Where Everyone Just Buys All Their Stuff on Amazon)

We revealed Jeff Bezos as the Bond villain that he has always been, as the plush toy serial killer that we should have seen coming. Right? And I encouraged all of you to panic. Did you all panic? Did we all spend enough time adequately panicking? I hope so. Because then what we all realize is that it’s going to be okay, and it’s going to be okay because you came to the right place. And I hope that you all agree now, maybe you didn’t believe me then, but I hope you agree now that you did, in fact, come to the right place.

And then we talked about how there were these three big shifts taking place and these shifts that are taking place aren’t just… They’re opportunities more than they are a threat, and there are people who aren’t here, hopefully, your competitors, who weren’t here. They don’t see these shifts coming and when they come, they’re going to just nail them. They’re not going to be ready for them, but you will.

We talked about how conversation is the new lead. Remember that? We talked about how conversation is the new lead and probably when I said this on Monday morning, a lot of you, I know I can tell from some of the faces I could see the front, some of you were like, “What the crap are you talking about? What do you mean by that?” And hopefully by the time you were done hearing David Cancel and even hearing Daymond John talking about how if you’re down, you’re down as low as you can possibly go, if I’m there, what do I do? I make 50 phone calls. I have 50 conversations.

This is where things are headed because yeah, automation’s great, but god dang it, doesn’t it seem like all this online stuff is replacing actual human conversation? And we talked about how there is going to be an overreaction. There is going to be a switch. It’s gonna come full circle. It only always does, but the interactions are not going to be taking place here anymore, right? They’re going to be taking place in these different locations.

And you heard Ezra talk about how to use email more effectively and you heard Molly and Anna Selby and others talk about how to really make Facebook Messenger work, right? The tools that are out there to facilitate the types of conversations that your customers want to have with you, that your competitors never will, but hopefully you will.

So you’re prepared. You’re ready, and we talked about how the future belongs to companies who are willing to invest in real one-to-one H2H interactions. If I’ve convinced you that this is really a thing, even if you don’t yet know what it means for you and your business, if I’ve convinced you that this really is a thing, that this is where it’s headed, then I feel like I’ve done you a great service, and I don’t say that egotistically. I just don’t see enough people talking about this.

Nobody’s really talking about this. Certainly, in the online marketing, the digital marketing space, nobody’s talking about this. Everybody wants to automate everything and remove the humans. This is where it’s headed and the companies that win in the future will be the companies that believe this too. They share in this belief and they take action because of it.

We also talked about how community is the new brand. Community is the new brand. I hope you felt that while you were here. I hope you felt that while you were here. I hope you now feel a little bit more connected to us at DigitalMarketer and the team. I hope you feel like you know us and you have a sense of who we are. I hope you feel like you’re a part of what’s happening here and you’re a part of this community.

But more than that, I hope you’re building communities of your own. You remember what Jeff Bezos said when he’s not being a bond villain, right? This idea that your brand is what other people say when you aren’t in the room. Your brand is what other people say when you aren’t in the room. That’s the essence of brand. What are people saying about you?

But we all know it’s difficult to influence what people say about us. It’s very difficult. People are going to have their own opinions, and if you try to put words in your customers’ mouths, they’re going to see it coming. They’re smart. They’ll see it coming. They’re not going to appreciate it. So you can’t necessarily influence what people are saying, but if you’re building community, you can absolutely influence who’s talking and who has the loudest voice.

You can influence that. You can influence that by building this community and by propping up those who are truly serving that community. So I talked about how the opportunity, what I really see as the biggest opportunity in business today, I don’t care if you’re B2B, I don’t care for B2C. The big opportunity is to build your own Amazon Prime in your market, to build your own verticalized Prime.

Look, Amazon got it. Amazon’s got it. They’ve only got like 50, 60, 70 percent of every US household, and I believe that they’re eventually going to go ahead and tackle the rest of planet Earth before too long. Right? They got it when it comes to just general retail, but just like if you really wanted to buy the best fishing lure out there, you didn’t necessarily want to go to Walmart. You wanted to go to Bass Pro Shop, right? That’s where you wanted to go.

Your market deserves to have the Bass Pro Shop. They deserve to walk into your community and to see other people who are like them, like-minded and have real professional conversations, not just walk into another Walmart of the internet. So give it to them. Give it to them and they’ll reward you for it. That’s what we’ve been trying to build this whole time at DigitalMarketer.

If you would’ve told me, if you were to ask me, “Ryan, pick,” because we ran a split test. We split test for months. We split tested at the top of the DigitalMarketer homepage a number of different headlines and the fact that this one, “Join the premier online community,” the fact that this one won, no specifics whatsoever about what people get. We didn’t go into the tactical things you’re going to get.

The one where we talked about how you get 38 plus trainings and execution plans for just a dollar, that one didn’t win. The stuff didn’t win. The features didn’t win. Heck, even we talked about the benefits, that didn’t win. When we said, “Join a community, that’s what won. I never would have guessed it, but it makes me so happy that it won. It makes me so happy that it won because it tells me that, as humans, we crave community and that hasn’t changed. And it’s real in this industry, it’s real in this market, and it’s really yours as well.

And then we closed with talking about how the customer is the new power broker. The customer is in charge. You heard from my friend, David Cancel. “Brands must now learn to compete in a world of infinite supply where the customer has all the power,” a world of infinite supply. What does that mean? It means you don’t want to be one of these companies bragging about the fact that you’ve got all the new releases of the latest and greatest movie on your shelves. No longer wins the day.

There was a time when Blockbuster had a reason to exist because they had all the new releases. They had all the supply, but in a world of infinite supply, in a world where no matter what you want, no matter what you want, it can pretty much be there the next day, supply does not win. Locking up, having all the logistics figured out, that doesn’t win anymore. What wins? Demand wins. Demand wins, and what do we do as marketers? We are generators of demand. We create demand from scratch. We’re as close to alchemists as the world has ever seen.

We can create demand from scratch in a world where demand is the only thing that has any value, in a world where demand is the only thing that has any value. That’s why when I was up here, right about here, talking to Daymond John and he said… I asked, “What does it mean to be a brand,” and talking about how everything’s moving to the back to the consumer. It doesn’t matter if it’s B2B. I’m like, “That means that the marketers are gonna win.” He’s like, “Yeah.”

The marketers are going to win. It means that you’re going to win. Means it’s a good day to be a marketer. We’re the cool kids again, but if you want to win at the demand side, again, back to Jeff, the single most important thing that you focus on is the customer. That’s what Amazon is focused on. So we talked about what does it mean to be obsessed with the customer? What does it mean to be truly customer-centric? It means you got to show up.

Remember that? It means you got to show up. It means you need to go where your customers are, even if it isn’t convenient. That’s why DigitalMarketer answers the phone. That’s why DigitalMarketer is on Facebook Messenger. It’s why when you hit us up on our page, we do our darnedest to respond. We don’t always get there as quickly as we’d like, but it’s why we had four new people start this week while we’re here to be better at serving you. And we’re going to add more.

We want to be wherever you are. It’s the reason I announced the DigitalMarketer’s going to Australia, a place that literally couldn’t be farther away from where we are and still be on land. Okay? It’s why we’re going to Australia and it’s why we’re going there first. We want to prove that we’re willing to go far away because that’s where you are.

Are you willing to do the same thing for your customers? Are you? Ask yourself, are you willing to do that? If not, you got to wonder if a competitor is because if they are and you’re not, they’re going to win and they’re going to win because they deserve to win. Look, I don’t mind losing. I don’t mind losing if somebody comes along and they’re better than me, but god dang it. I want to give myself a shot. I want to know that I at least deserve to win. I want to know that I prepared well enough, that I wanted it badly, and I want to know that I did everything that I could to win. Can you say the same thing?

Step two, we talked about the importance of redefining. Redefining? Redefining what? Redefining what your business stands for, redefining what defines your business. In other words, stop defining your business by what you sell. I don’t know where the gentleman is, if he’s in the room, but when I had my AMA, he told me I had a hard time deciding what my core offer should be because I’ve got this product in this market, and this one over here, and this one over here, and this one over here.

I don’t know what my core offer should be. He said, “Of course you don’t know what your core offer should be because you don’t know who you’re selling to.” You cannot figure out what you should sell until you first know who you serve. There are three critical questions that every single business on planet Earth must answer. Who am I serving? What value do I deliver to them? And how do I articulate that value such that when people hear about it, they say, “I want it.” Most of you are here because you want to get good at number three. You’re here because you want to get good at number three.

You absolutely deliver value, but you don’t know how to best articulate it. You don’t know how to best amplify it. You want to get good at number three, but many of you are here, you want to get good at number three and you still don’t know number one. You still don’t know who. Make sure, before you leave here, that you’ve at least committed to no longer defining your business by what you sell or how you sell it, but instead, you start defining your business by who you serve. It is impossible to be customer-centric if you don’t know who it is that you serve.

So decide. Be crystal clear. Seriously, I don’t care if you’re sitting here an hour from now. Eventually, the hotel is going to kick you out. They’re going to start picking up all the chairs. But if you sit there, they’ll pick up the ones around you, right? It’ll be weird. You’ll make it weird for people. But don’t leave this room until you’re crystal clear on this. Don’t leave this room until you’re crystal clear on who you serve.

And then finally, step three, know your role in the process. I see so many marketers, I see so many speakers, so many authors. It’s so terrible in the speaker, author, expert space. Speaker, author, expert space, they want to get up and they want to talk about how amazing they are, talk about how great they are. I’ve got a rule. When I go and speak at another event, I give my bio at the end because I know for a fact you don’t give a crap who I am until I’ve first given you something of value.

When do you start talking about yourself? At the beginning when nobody cares or at the end, after you’ve delivered value in advance? Know your role. Recognize that your customer is the hero. You’re the guide. Again, credit to Donald Miller for teaching me this, for articulating it in such a way that I completely understood this. Alright? So these were the big themes, right? Let’s review.

Invest in conversations, invest in community, and finally, invest in your customers. I firmly believe, guys, if you do these three things, and my hope … That’s why I wanted to open up with these things. If you do these things and over the course of the time that we had together, you got the tactical details of, okay, that’s great. How do I do it? That’s what the rest of our time that we’ve had together, and we’re going to review some of this in just a moment. You’re going to get a very quick snapshot.

We’re going to watch a video and you’re going to get to see and get reminders, and when you watch the video, I want you to be reminded of different sessions that you were in and ask yourself, “What did I learn and how did it relate to one of these major themes?” What did I learn and how did it relate to one of these major themes? Use this as a moment to recall that because the big question that I have for you and what I want to leave you with is, what are you gonna do now? What are you gonna do?

You just invested three days of your life. Now, I hope you had a good time. I really do. I hope you made a new friend, right? I hope you got to cut loose a little bit. I hope you got to use words like chat bot and autoresponder and not have people look at you sideways like you’re crazy. But I’m telling you, if you don’t leave here having done something, then all that I did was give you a whole bunch of new, bright, shiny objects to chase around for the next 6 months, for the next 12 months.

And that sucks. I don’t want to do that. I want to know that you leave here and you implement what you’ve learned and you grow your business because that’s what we’re in the mission of doing here at DigitalMarketer. We’re in the mission of doubling businesses, and that doesn’t happen if we just teach you things. Your business is not going to double just because you leave with a real big fat notebook with fancy things written in it. And you’ve done this before, right? You’ve been to events like this before.

You bring back the notes like they’re a souvenir, like they’re a lot, like hard work. You know, you go to a city and you get like the mug. Milwaukee. I don’t know why you went to Milwaukee or why you felt like you needed to get a mug while you were there, but you did it. You want to commemorate your trip to Milwaukee and so you come back with the mug. I don’t want your notes to just be a mug, right? I want your notes to be the basis that you’re going to use to double your business.

So what are you going to do right now? So this is your action item. This is your action item. Pick one big thing. I gave you 3 general themes. I gave you three general themes. Pick one thing that you can do that’s gonna move you in a positive direction with investing in conversation, investing in community, and investing in your customer. You learned a lot of things, seriously. Scan through your notes, look at them. Scan through your notes and look at them and think about all the things.

Pick one, make a commitment picking one. And you know what? You could go out tonight and you can party. You’re all adults. If you want to eat dessert first, you can do that, but I would encourage you instead of that, spend this evening working towards this one big thing. Start making some progress. You don’t have to finish it. I had a friend who, he authored a bunch of books. I said, “What’s the secret to writing a lot of books?” He said, “It’s simple. Never end a writing session with a period.”

What do you mean? When you’re writing, I always finish a writing session in the middle of a sentence so that when I pick up the next day, I finish that sentence and I go. So I’m not saying you have to finish anything but start. You don’t have to put a period on the end, but start. Begin to move towards that. So this is my kind of first big message for you, my first big hope for you. And the second one is let’s do this again. This was fun. If you had a good time … I know it’s hard to imagine like when you’ve been doing this for three days, you’re like, who wants to do another three days? You’re like, I’m full.

Right? I’m full. It’s like eating 17 slices of chocolate cake, right? Chocolate cake is good. 17 pieces of chocolate cake? Uh, right? And that’s… We’re kind of at the 17 pieces of chocolate cake stage, but I can assure you in about 12 months, you’re going to be ready for some more chocolate cake. All right? So here are the dates. February 25th, 26th, 27th right here in this hotel. You know where it is, you know the dates, and I can tell you guys, I don’t know how you felt, but I feel like we kind of maxed this thing out. Right?

Which tells me that we ain’t going to be able to add a whole lot more people next year. We’re not gonna be able to add a lot more people. This is one of the perks slash not perks of signing long-term hotel contracts. Okay? So next year… Yeah, exactly. Bah dah boo. You want me to be your contract attorney, let me know.

So I got a feeling this event’s going to sell out pretty quickly next year, and I know for a fact that the ticket price is going to go up. So I want to make sure that you’re here. I want to make sure that you don’t forget. So go ahead, come by the DigitalMarketer booth. You can also get out the app and you can, while we’re here, pick up your tickets for next year, and I really hope that you do. I really hope that you do. Once we’re a couple months out from the event, if we’re still a couple months out and you find out that you can’t make those dates, that’s cool. Let us know and we’ll give you a refund. It’s fine, but make sure that you least have them.

You don’t wanna forget. I had some friends that are like, “Hey, I want to come out to T&C.” I was like, “Dude, we’re sold out.” You can come hang out in the lobby. I don’t want you to be a lobby attendee. So come on out because right now, this is the absolute lowest price the tickets will ever be. Okay? The absolute lowest price the tickets will ever be. So now what I want to do, yes. Yes, and VIP. Yes, exactly.

So now what I want to do, just to kind of close this thing out, I want to take a little walk down memory road, the last three days. I want to do this one because my guess is you made some pretty sweet memories over the last couple of days, but also as you’re watching this, I want you to remember those sessions, right? Remember back to those moments and allow it to inform what should your one big thing be. So yeah, this is going to be fun. I’m excited to watch the video. I’m excited to relive some of these moments, but I’m also going to ask you to work during it. Okay?

So as we watch it be thinking, what can I do from that session, or that one, or that one? Okay? All right, let’s bring down the lights, play the video, and close this thing up the right way:

(NOTE: Reserve your seat today for Traffic & Conversion Summit 2019 and SAVE 50% with Early Bird pricing. But hurry! This discount is for a limited time. Learn more here.)

The post Traffic & Conversion Summit 2018: Final Thoughts and Closing Ceremonies appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Never fear, the DM Engage Glossary of Market-y terms is here! These terms cover what’s frequently used inside the Facebook group so you can learn the lingo. Trust us—you’ll catch on quick.

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40/10/10 – Optimal conversion rates in relation to Lead Magnet, Tripwire, and Core Offer, respectively. This is the goal that DigitalMarketer shoots for and generally recommends as a good goal, but conversion rates will vary significantly based on product and industry. Test and see what’s good for you!

A

AC – An acronym for ActiveCampaign, a popular email marketing automation tool.

ACV – See “Average Customer Value”

Average Customer Value – A formula that tells you how much your customer is worth.

Average Visitor Value – A formula that tells you how much you can pay per click.

AVV – See “Average Visitor Value”

B

BFBC – An abbreviation for Black Friday Bootcamp. A yearly webinar that DigitalMarketer hosts every Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving in the United States). All proceeds go to charity.

BOFU – An acronym for Bottom of Funnel. Relates to content and offers at the “Conversion” stage of the marketing funnel.

C

C&C – An abbreviation for the Content & Commerce Summit. (Retired)

Cert(s) – Certifications offered by DigitalMarketer.

CF – An abbreviation for ClickFunnels. A popular landing page and funnel-building software.

Click Through Rate – A way to measure the ratio of clicks to the number of people who saw an ad, email, or landing page. It is calculated by number of clicks / number of impressions X 100.

CO – See “Core Offer”

Cold traffic – People in your target audience who have never heard of your business.

Conversion Rate Optimization – The process for increasing the number of people who take a specific action on your site.

Core Offer – Your flagship offer in a sales funnel.

Cost Per Click – The amount you pay a publisher (like a website, social media platform, etc) each time one of your ads is clicked. See also: “PPC”

Cost Per Lead – An advertising pricing model where the advertiser is charged for each lead generated from the ad.

Call To Action – An instruction given to your audience so that they take an immediate, measurable action.

CPC – See “Cost Per Click”

CPL – See “Cost Per Lead”

CRM – An abbreviation for Customer Relation Management, usually in reference to a CRM software that is designed to help businesses automate and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support.

CRO – See “Conversion Rate Optimization”

CTA – See “Call To Action”

CTR – See “Click Through Rate”

CVO – See “Customer Value Optimization”

D

DM – An abbreviation of DigitalMarketer.

DM fam – An abbreviation of DigitalMarketer family. Often used by members of the Digital Marketer Engage Facebook group to describe community members.

DM HQ – A DigitalMarketer membership program that offers courses and certifications in the 8 core areas of digital marketing. It is designed for small and enterprise-level businesses to certify employees, and check up on their progress.

DM Lab – DigitalMarketer Lab. A membership program that includes a library of execution plans (step-by-step marketing tactics), live webinars with DigitalMarketer staff and industry experts, and access to an online community.

DME – DigitalMarketer Engage. A private facebook group for members of DigitalMarketer Lab (hint: it’s the group this glossary is posted in).

DMers – An abbreviation of digital marketers. Often used by members of the DigitalMarketer Engage Facebook group to describe community members.

DML – See “DM Lab”

E

Execution Plan – A term for the step-by-step marketing tactic guides located inside of DigitalMarketer Lab.

EP – See “Execution Plan”

F

FB – A common abbreviation for Facebook. Also see “Funnel Blueprint”

Funnel Blueprint – A DigitalMarketer course on how to build an effective sales funnel, including downloadable templates to implement directly in your own business. It comes with landing page copy chunks, sales letter copy templates, upsell copy templates & scripts and our best landing page templates.

G

GA – An abbreviation for Google Analytics. Software offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.

GDPR: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – a data protection regulation and privacy law for all individuals within the EU. GDPR enables citizens and residents to have more control over their personal data, and regulates the rules for international businesses by unifying the regulation within the EU.

GTM – An abbreviation for Google Tag Manager. A system offered by Google that manages tags used to track and report on website pixels.

H

hot traffic – Refers to audiences that have already purchased something from you.

HQ – See “DM HQ”

I

J

K

KPI – An abbreviation for Key Performance Indicator. A metric used to track the success of an business or marketing initiative.

L

Lab – See “DM Lab”

lead – A potential customer. Typically one who has expressed an interest by giving contact information, such as an email address.

Lead Magnet – An irresistible bribe offering a specific chunk of value to a prospect in exchange for their contact information. The goal of the Lead Magnet is to maximize the number of targeted leads you are getting for an offer. It’s the first step in the Customer Value Optimization process.

LM – See “Lead Magnet”

M

Machine – The Machine is a DigitalMarketer course that outlines our entire email strategy along with providing 36 done-for-you, ‘copy & paste’ turnkey email campaigns. (Retired)

MOFU – An acronym for Middle of Funnel. Relates to content and offers at the “Evaluation” stage of the marketing funnel.

N

Net Promoter Score (NPS) – a tool that can be used to gauge your customers’ experiences and loyalty to your brand, a metric that can be used to measure the likelihood that your customer’s would recommend you.

O

Office Hours – A weekly webinar for members of DigitalMarketer Lab with DM staff and industry experts. We speak on a different topic each week and answer your questions live! Office Hours is scheduled every Thursday at 2pm CST.

OH – See “Office Hours”

OP or OP2 – OptimizePress or OptimizePress2. A WordPress plugin that easily creates landing pages, sales pages, membership portals, and product launch funnels.

OTO – An abbreviation of One Time Offer. A scarcity offer that is only made once to a specific audience. Similar to a flash sale.

P

pixel – Little snippets of code advertisers place on their web pages that allow them to follow you around the web with relevant ads. See also: “Remarketing”

PLF – A system created and promoted by Jeff Walker that provides step-by-step training in launching a product.

PM – An acronym for Private Message, a direct, one-on-one message on a social media instant messaging feature. Also see: “Profit Maximizer”

PPC – An abbreviation for Pay Per Click. Refers to the advertising model where advertisers pay a publisher every time one of their ads is clicked. See Also: “CPC”

Profit Maximizer – An immediate upsell offered after the Core Offer that serves to increase the average transaction value per customer.

Q

R

Relevance score – A metric on Facebook ads that tells the advertiser how audiences are reacting to the ad. It is based on positive and negative feedback from the specific audience to which the ad is targeted.

remarketing – A marketing strategy that places advertisements in front of an audience based on previous online actions. See also, “pixel”

retargeting – See “Remarketing”

ROI – An abbreviation for “Return on Investment.” A metric used to compare the benefit of an investment to the cost of production.

S

SOP – An abbreviation for Standard Operating Procedure. A documented method for a routine task. DigitalMarketer’s execution plans are our SOPs for various marketing tactics.

splinter – The process of breaking off bits and pieces of your core product and selling them a la carte.

split test – A method of testing two variants to locate areas of improvement. Often used to improve landing page performance. Also referred to as an A/B Test.

T

T&C – An abbreviation for the Traffic & Conversion Summit.

TCS – See “T&C”

TOFU – An acronym for Top of Funnel. Relates to content and offers at the “Awareness” stage of the marketing funnel.

Tripwire – An irresistible, super low-ticket offer (usually between $1 and $20) that is designed to convert prospects into buyers.

TW – See “Tripwire”

U

V

Video Sales Letter (VSL) – A promotional video that gives same information provided in a traditional sales letter.

W

warm traffic – Audience who has displayed interest in your offer but have not made a purchase.

What’s Working Now – A monthly webinar for DigitalMarketer Lab members. Hosted by DigitalMarketing staff, the live webinar discusses the latest in digital marketing strategies. (Retired, replaced by Office Hours)

WP – An abbreviation for WordPress. A popular content management system. Available for free at wordpress.org or used for website hosting at wordpress.com.

WWN – See “What’s Working Now”

X

Y

Z

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
This list is by no means exhaustive, but if you feel there’s something important missing, please send an email to community@digitalmarketer.com to let our team know!

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