Looking to create awesome social media content to boost engagement?

It’s a given that creating engaging social media content is crucial for building a strong online presence, engaging your audience, and growing leads and sales. 

But how do you get it right?

Here are some tips and examples.

9 Tips To Create Social Media Content That Boosts Engagement

Start by creating professional and compelling social media profiles. Then use these tips when creating content. 

1. Know Your Audience

Knowing your audience is the key to marketing success, whether it’s in email personalization or creating tailored social media content. 

For instance, Canva creates tailored messages for each of its target groups. This is a post for nonprofits.

And here is content created for teachers.

How do you identify your social media target audience?

You can use market research, email survey campaigns, or website forms to find out your customers’ social media preferences.

Here are other ways to gain audience insights:

• Facebook: Facebook Audience Insights gives data about your audience like this.

• Instagram: Click the Insights action button to get details of your existing audience and their engagement with specific content.
• Twitter: Twitter analytics and Tweet activity page give you stats such as key demographics, languages, and interests of your audience.
• LinkedIn: Access the “Analytics” tab where you can see audience insights.

Tools such as Copper CRM also let you sync your contacts with social media accounts to build lookalike audiences and target specific groups.

This Copper CRM review gives you more details on how to use this tool to sync contacts.

2. Define Your Goals and Metrics

While boosting engagement may be the primary goal for creating social media content, you’ll need to go granular when defining your goals. And tie each goal to a specific social media metric that you can track.

Here’s a framework to help you get started:

3. Choose The Right Content Type 

The types of social media content you can experiment with include:

• Blog posts
• User-generated content 
• Live streams/webinars 
• Ebooks and whitepapers  
• Stories and reels
• Contests/giveaways
• Videos
• Infographics
• Polls and surveys

Be sure to link the type of social media content you want to write with:

Your Target Audience’s Interests

As you can see from this image, short-form videos, images, and live videos are the most engaging social media content, as per a 2022 survey.

The Type Of Content Suitable For Each Social Media Platform And Demographic

Here’s a quick summary of the type of social media content to write for each platform/demographic.

Your Niche

The type of social media content you’ll create will also depend on your industry.

For instance, a Gartner study found that educational and user-generated content works best for software marketers. 

4. Create A Mix of Social Media Content

Experiment with different types of content, such as text, images, videos, and live streams. 

Simplilearn uses different types of social media content to boost engagement. This is a post on LinkedIn that promotes its professional certificate program.

And, on YouTube, the brand has multiple informative videos.

Make sure that your content is offering something of value to your audience.

Whether it’s helpful tips, informative articles, or just entertaining videos, give people a reason to stick around and keep coming back for more.

5. Write Compelling Social Media Copy 

Write social media copy that is catchy and easy to understand. And always include a call to action that encourages people to share your post with their followers.

The more shares you get, the wider your reach. 

Are there any formulas for writing catchy copy?

I have these tips for you:

Keep it short: Here are the ideal lengths for each platform:

• Instagram: 138 to 150 characters
• Facebook: 40 characters
• LinkedIn: 220 characters
• TikTok: 300 characters

This is an example of a short and catchy caption on Instagram:

Include action words and adjectives: Experiment with action words such as earn, save, act now, and adjectives such as powerful, awe-Inspiring, brilliant, etc. See this example from TED Talks.

Use numbers: Numbered lists and guides with easy steps can help increase engagement. See how Semrush does it.

Ask questions: Humans are always drawn to questions that spark curiosity like this post.

Write the social media copy by following the Google EAT guidelines so that your social media campaign can also help in getting good results from the search results. Your social media copy should include trustworthy, authentic, and expert facts and information.

6. Use Trending Hashtags

Utilize relevant hashtags and keywords to increase the visibility of your social media content. 

For example, if you are a food blogger, you may want to use hashtags such as #foodie, #yum, and #foodporn.

You can search for trending hashtags by typing your keyword on social media platforms’ search bars. 

Platforms like Twitter also have an Advanced Search feature where you can search for specific tweets and hashtags.

You can also use the right software to generate hashtags in your industry. These software can help you to create and how to use hashtags for your social media campaigns.

7. Post At The Right Time

Timing is crucial when it comes to social media. Post your content when your audience is most active to increase your reach and engagement.

According to a recent study:

• The best days to post social media content are Tuesdays to Thursdays
• The best time to post social media content is 9 AM and 10 AM.

But, there’re individual variations between each social platform when it comes to the peak engagement time or days. 

For example, posting on Instagram between 10 AM and 1 PM on most weekdays can help you maximize your reach.

8. Use Visual Elements

High-quality visual elements, such as images and videos, can make your content more engaging.

Be creative with how you present them. 

One way to stylize your photos and images is to use photo filters. You’ll create stunning visuals in minutes.

See this eye-catching visual from Velvet Spectrum.

9. Encourage Engagement

Encourage your audience to engage with your content by asking questions, starting a conversation, or running a contest. You can also host a giveaway as Fraser Hill Farm has done.

Be sure to show your audience that you value their opinion by responding to their comments.

You can also use lead generation software that allows you to integrate your social media platforms to manage and monitor interactions.

10. Analyze and Improve

Creating powerful social media content isn’t all about just content creation. Studying the content’s effectiveness is equally important. You need to use social media analytics tools to figure out if your social media posts are performing as expected. 

Check whether they’re generating significant engagement, driving sales, and bringing you new followers. 

In the case of blog posts, you can leverage a Google index checker and Google Analytics to check if your social media post helped speed up indexing or improved its rankings on Google.

Want to get certified in Content Marketing?

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Wrapping Up

Remember that social media content doesn’t just have to be about your brand. In fact, some of the most successful social media campaigns focus on providing valuable information or entertainment to users. 

The goal is to get people talking about your business in a positive way!

Use analytics tools to track the performance of your content on each platform and adjust your strategy accordingly.An easy way to master your social media content strategy is by becoming a Certified Social Media expert. Learn how to apply proven strategies and boost social media engagement.

The post From Clicks to Conversions: Create Content that Boosts Engagement appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

As Ryan Deiss pointed out during his opening keynote at Traffic & Conversion Summit 2019, change occurs in a cyclical pattern. Just like the seasons change, the world of marketing is changing in phases.

And right now, we’re at the end of a cycle—which means the opportunity for innovation and disruption is the largest that it’ll be for years.

To learn more about this opportunity and how to make it work for you (and not against you), watch Ryan Deiss’ opening keynote from Traffic & Conversion Summit 2019:

Ryan covers:

• Why it’s the end of marketing as we know it… and why he’s not worried about it
• 3 digital marketing strategies to help you rise above the noise
• A brief history of digital marketing and what the future of digital marketing holds

Don’t have time to watch an hour-long presentation? Read on to learn the highlights from Ryan’s keynote!

The 5 Phases of Technology

History has shown us this cycle over and over again.

In 1801, the first steam engine was unveiled.

In 1830, railroads were opened across the US and UK.

By 1880, there were 2,000+ railroad companies causing a necessary standardization that regulated the industry in 1886.

By 1906, all of the rail lines were owned by just 7 entities.

Alexander Bell patented the first phone in 1876.

His patent expired in 1894, and immediately 6,000 phone companies were launched.

Today, there are only 4 major phone service providers.

We see the same pattern with the newspaper industry and the automobile industry.

The world is moving in cyclical phases which means—technology is too.

There are 5 phases of technology:

Phase 1: Discovery and Invention

In Phase 1, there is a new technology that benefits an industry or is even so large that it changes society.

To succeed during Phase 1, you have to be in the right place, at the right time.

The invention of the steam engine and the phone are examples of Phase 1.

Phase 2: Proliferation

The proliferation phase is the gold rush and becomes the wild west of the new technology.

In an ideal world, our business enters at this stage. Here, we have the first mover advantage.

It’s during this phase that businesses spring up and grow at a rapid pace, like the railroads in the US and UK. And—unfortunately for those like Alexander Bell—patents expire and entrepreneurs rush to launch their own company causing a ton of new companies to start.

Phase 3: Standardization

By Phase 3, there are so many companies selling the new product that the economy, government, or industry itself has to create regulations for the benefit of everybody.

It’s at this stage that a lot of companies fail because they don’t get with the program.

Instead of adapting to standardization, they fight the change and go out of business or get bought up, which leads to the next phase…

Phase 4: Consolidation

During consolidation, companies get gobbled up and the industry becomes consolidated in the hands of only a handful of dominant companies.

For instance, the 2,000+ railroad companies and 6,000+ phone companies of the past merged into 7 railroad companies and 4 phone companies.

This is the phase where the rich get richer.

Phase 5: Innovation Or Disruption

In the final stage, the company that was once on the cusp of the brand new has become so normal, so part of the every day that the companies that own them become comfortable and the level of competition that once existed goes away.

This is a crucial stage because there are only 2 directions to go: avoiding or embracing innovation.

Companies rather become stagnant and will have a harder time competing when a new player comes onto the stage and starts to disrupt the status quo.

Or companies lean into innovation and push the boundaries of the current technology and create a brand new cycle.

The process of discovery and invention begins again.

This cycle has been happening for centuries, and it is happening in the digital marketing world…

The History of Digital Marketing

Discovery: 1994-2000

This is when the first banner ad was displayed (and had a 78% click-through rate!!!)…

…the Dotcom bubble placed the internet in the news and Google AdWords launched.

Proliferation: 2001-2009

During proliferation, the first (of many) mommy blogs were created, WordPress launched, and the major social media players were established (Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter).

Facebooks ads rolled out and the first iPhone was released. 

Standardization: 2010-2014

In 2009, Google introduced its newest ad ranking feature, Quality Score. This forced advertisers to completely change tactics as Google now favored high-quality ads and landing pages. Paired with Panda, this standardization is now referred to as, “ The Google Slap.”

During this time, Facebook started to audit advertisements, banning dating sites and weapons in 2014.

The whole era can be best described as a giant flaming pile of poop for marketers as the rug was ripped out from under them.

And then it got worse…

Consolidation: 2015-2019

The technology wave of consolidation placed Google and Facebook at the top of the advertisement world. They control 84% of the ad space, allowing them to push their prices up.

Facebook’s ad revenue doubled in 2009 and 2018. Think about this… they doubled their revenue without doubling the number of users. And they did this in a very short amount of time… by increasing their prices.

Then came Amazon, who is accountable for nearly 50% of all US ecommerce sales. FIFTY PERCENT!

Startups are currently spending almost 40 cents of every VC dollar on Google, Facebook, and Amazon advertisements.

Why?

Because the average Facebook organic reach is 0.5%.

In 2019, traffic costs are up and conversions and engagement are down. And they have been for some time now.

The question digital marketers are asking themselves today is, do we innovate or disrupt?

Innovation or Disrupt: 2019-?

“Today digital becomes king.” ~Ronan Shields

2019 is the year that US digital ad spend will surpass offline ad spend. Digital marketing is disrupting the world of marketing.

The digital marketers, agencies, entrepreneurs, and founders who don’t want to accept that it’s time to disrupt are going to be left behind.

DigitalMarketer is not one of them. Change is here and Ryan’s strategy to become a disruptor is simple. And it can be applied in your business, too.

Do the opposite of what used to work:

Everything that is fast, needs to be slow.

Everything that is big, needs to be small.

Everything that is small, needs to be big.

What does Ryan mean? Let’s take a look…

Strategy #1: Shifting from Fast to Slow

There are 3 ways to make this shift.

1. Fast to Slow
2. Automation to Conversation
3. Scalable to Unscalable and Untrackable

Let’s start with…

1. Fast to Slow

Funnels need to be shifted into a journey.

I have nothing against funnels, but in 2019, they focus too heavily on value extraction (how do we get customers to buy?) instead of completing the Customer Value Journey (how do we get customers to sell our product without being asked?)

The Journey starts with the customer coming to us in an incomplete and sad state and shifts to them being in a complete, happy state.

This is known as the Before & After.

In the “Before” state, the customer is discontent in some way. They might be in pain, bored, frightened, or unhappy for any number of reasons.

In the “After” state—life is better. They are free of pain, entertained, or unafraid of what previously plagued them. All thanks to your product or service that solved their problem.

And to get them to buy your product, you need to move them through your Customer Value Journey…

The Customer Value Journey

The Customer Value Journey starts at Step 1 with Awareness and moves to Step 8: Promote.

To get customers to sell your product by becoming a promoter, you need them to be successful. You need to help them get to their ideal After state.

Have you mapped your customers’ Journey? You can do it for free (without having to opt-in) here.

2. Automation to Conversation

I’m sure you’ve heard Newton’s famous law that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The action in the past decade has been toward automation, and we are about to see a significant reaction to it.

The reaction is going to come as a solution, talk to your customers.

Chat with them on Facebook, use Drift to automate chat conversations on your website and have bots filter (but not replace) basic human interaction.

Or, here’s a crazy idea, answer the phone.

Here’s an even crazier idea, send emails without links—this feels more like a personal conversation.

Ryan believes the future of digital marketing belongs to companies that are willing to invest in real-time, one-to-one interactions.

Now, there are 2 questions to ask yourself during this time of disruption:

1. Do you know how much it costs you to acquire a conversation?
2. How much is a conversation worth?

Answer those questions to help your company focus and grow.

3. Scalable to Unscalable & Untrackable

If you want to kill any idea, say, “It doesn’t scale.”

What “it doesn’t scale” really means is—we don’t know if it’s working and we don’t know how to track it.

But if you’re not careful, saying something doesn’t scale can hurt you in the long run by killing a good idea.

Here’s a new idea, do the things you cannot track.

Untrackable Idea #1: Send Emails Without Links

Instead of links, ask for replies or ask if your customer has any questions.

The response you get can lead to a conversation that generates a sale.

Or at the very least, can help strengthen your relationship with your customer and continue to move them through your Customer Value Journey.

Untrackable Idea #2: Managed Facebook Groups

Do you have a Facebook group? Assign a team member to manage that community so it becomes a community that delivers value.

Does your community actually make you any money? It’s hard to tell. We’re unsure if our private community does.

But we know it helps retain customers.

So while we may not be able to track how much, we know the DigitalMarketer Engage Community makes us money through retention and happy, successful customers.

Untrackable Idea #3: Post Unrelated Content

At DigitalMarketer, one of our most popular blog posts is, “100 Books Every Marketer Should Read.”

And this post actually helped generate a lot of buzz for Traffic & Conversion.

What does it have to do with selling tickets to the event?

Not a whole lot.

But it was unrelated content that our customers wanted and responded to when we distributed it throughout our channels.

Untrackable Idea #4: Answer Stupid Questions

When you’ve been doing something a while, the easy, intro questions start to sound pretty basic and stupid to you. You may even get tired of answering them because they’re not what you want to talk about.

But that doesn’t matter because they’re the questions your customers want to talk about.

Find ways to answer questions that your customers inevitably have.

For example, you can use Quora to answer questions about your industry or place a “Questions and Answers” section on your homepage, like we do here…

Untrackable Idea #5: One-on-One Onboarding

Assign a team member to onboard each new client.

Give them that special white glove treatment and make them feel special. We do this for the highest level of our membership.

Untrackable Idea #6: Write a Book… or 2

Writing a book is a painful process with absolutely no trackability—do it anyway.

It exposes your brand to new audiences.

Ryan wrote Invisible Selling Machine years ago, and people still ask him to sign it. Since then, he’s worked on Digital Marketing for Dummies and another book is in the works.

Untrackable Idea #7: Publish a Podcast

DigitalMarketer has 2 podcasts, Perpetual Traffic and The DigitalMarketer Podcast, and helped launch Roland Frasier’s Business Lunch, and we have absolutely no idea if these podcasts are helping us acquire more clients.

But the podcasts have helped build the DigitalMarketer brand and expose us to different audiences.

All of these ideas are very hard to track and therefore, hard to scale. But we do them because they feel right. They feel like the right thing to do for our customers.

More businesses should start doing things that feel right for their customers.

If you want to know more about becoming an expert at these techniques, read this book.

Strategy #2: Big to Small

At DigitalMarketer we’ve created a system that segments our customers. And we’ve done this by adding in more fields as a customer signs up for our products—be it for our free membership of Lab or one of our products.

While this longer form has decreased our conversions, it has increased the value we are able to deliver to our customers.

And we’re happy to accept lower conversion rates for better data. We’re able to get better customer segmentation.

And through this customer segmentation, we’re able to…

• Figure out the best products to pair customers to so we can help them reach their ideal After state
• Increase the number of customers in those programs
• And get a better idea of the ROI of a customer

Strategy #3: Small to Big

Fact: No one willingly follows a small idea.

But as companies have niched down, their focus has become so granular that they’ve stopped thinking big. They’ve become kings of tiny, little ant hills.

As marketers, we need to start thinking big again.

Marketers need to define new categories for themselves.

Drift has defined a new category of conversational marketing and entrepreneurs like Sir Richard Branson have defined a new category of celebrity entrepreneurship. These are examples of companies and brands thinking bigger.

Want to get in on this? Ryan suggests reading Play Bigger, the playbook for category creation.

In 2019, marketers need to create movements.

Don’t tell stories about your product—change the stories the customers tell about themselves.

Movements matter and if you want your business to matter, start a movement.

Ask yourself, what do we fundamentally believe to be true about the universe and our place in it?

But despite all that’s changing or will change, in digital marketing, we can be certain that 2 things will never change:

1. The need to generate traffic
2. The need to convert that traffic into revenue

The post Ryan Deiss on the End of Marketing As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

We sat down with 17 experts to ask how the digital marketing landscape will change in the new year.

Read on to learn the digital marketing predictions for 2019, what new technologies and trends are on the horizon, and how you can prepare. Plus, hear the tactics the experts are exploring and planning to implement in 2019.

Ralph Burns, CEO of Tier 11

There’s a big change on the horizon in Facebook marketing.

At Tier 11, we specialize in growing businesses faster than they could on their own using the 2 most powerful advertising platforms on the planet, namely, Facebook and Instagram.

As a result, we do a ton of testing on these platforms. Thanks to our intimate relationship with Facebook, we’re typically among the first companies to try out new features and ad formats to deliver better results for our clients—oftentimes as a beta before the rest of the world.

Pretty. Dang. Cool.

And what I’m about to share is one of the most exciting new changes to come along to Facebook in some time.

But before I explain what it is, first let’s set the stage for why it’s so important.

If you do any advertising on Facebook, you know that mobile traffic is taking over. These days only about 1 in 3 people use Facebook on a laptop or desktop, compared to over 95% who access Facebook on a smartphone:

This is nothing new—mobile has been on the rise for years now.

But while mobile accounts for more and more traffic, it still lags behind desktops in terms of conversion rates. And a big reason for that is due to slower load speeds on mobile devices.

This is a problem because the longer it takes for your page to load, the lower your conversion rates will be:

And it’s even worse if your website isn’t mobile-optimized. Don’t even get me started there.

But recently, Facebook has taken a big step toward solving this problem with their introduction of “Facebook Instant Experiences.”

Facebook’s Instant Experiences aren’t actually new—they’re really just a revamped version of the old mobile Canvas ads. But while Canvas ads never really caught on (for one thing, they were hard to use), Instant Experience is already proving to be much, much more user-friendly and much more effective for advertisers.

With Instant Experiences, you can create a super-speedy equivalent to a landing page that will load directly inside of Facebook. You can add just about anything you want to Instant experiences, like photos, videos, lead ad forms, and any kind of pixel you want. (The Facebook pixel is automatically added, but you can also embed pixels for Google Analytics, Hotjar, etc.)

Here are a couple examples of what Instant Experiences can look like:

Notice how high-end and professional these can look? And even with all those images and videos, Facebook claims that they still load up to 15x faster than a standard mobile website.

So, what does this mean?

It means that in 2019, you’re going to start seeing more and more Facebook ads that take place entirely on the Facebook platform. Instead of clicking an ad and being sent off of Facebook and onto a website, the ad will trigger an Instant Experience.

This is a win-win for everyone involved. It’s a better experience for users who don’t like to wait, and it will result in higher conversion rates for advertisers.

And unlike Canvas ads, which were challenging to build, Instant Experiences allow you to take advantage of templates.

Look at how easy it is to get started. First, check the box next to “Add an Instant Experience”:

Then choose the template that best fits your goals. If you want to acquire new customers, for example, start with the Customer Acquisition template and customize it from there.

Eventually, the day will come when it’s common practice to buy products and services directly inside a social platform. You’ll be able to embed a “Buy Now” button inside your Instant Experiences, allowing people to complete their purchase using a service like Google Pay or Apple Pay—all without ever leaving Facebook.

This is a big deal to Facebook since they’re always looking for new ways to keep people on their platform. So, you can bet they’ll continue to develop these Instant Experiences to make them more sophisticated, easier to use, and more effective.

Amanda Powell, Acquisitions Manager of DigitalMarketer

SEO is ever-changing. And there’s no doubt that constant algorithm changes and updates keep us on our toes.

For instance, in March 2018, you may have noticed mobile-first indexing started to roll out. And Google started indexing sites based on the mobile version of their website.

In 2019, mobile search will continue to stay relevant.

But for 2019, I have 3 main predictions for SEO that go beyond mobile that SEOs and marketers should keep an eye on…

1) Voice Search

Yep. We’ve officially welcomed robots into our homes and now interact with them regularly. This is important because, according to comScore, it’s estimated that 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020.

And in case you didn’t know, 2020 is basically ONE YEAR AWAY! I think it’s safe to say that it will need to be a pretty big focus for SEOs in 2019.

What does this mean for optimization?

It means search strategists need to focus on long-tail keywords and conversational language.

Voice search will also be exponentially more important for local businesses since 46% of voice search users look for local businesses on a daily basis. Alexa just got a whole lot more real.

2) Video

Video is already breaking through the search results by way of rich results on a daily basis. Here at DM, video has actually been a huge driver of our organic efforts this year. Videos like this one…

Video traffic is even predicted to be 82% of ALL traffic by 2022.

What does this mean for optimization?

Transcripts will be extremely important, so Google can see the text of your video content to crawl.

You’ll also need to make sure you start optimizing your videos just like your landing pages—include keywords in the title, and description and make sure the subject matter of your video is relevant, of course.

3) Featured Snippets

One of the big scares this year for SEOs was when Google removed all links from specific queries (see here).

While the blue links were eventually added back in, it was a big insight into the future of organic search.

Google is trying to give the people what they want. Search engine algorithms want to serve users the most relevant results.

So even though the Google test isn’t active anymore, it does show that they were testing to see if it could serve only exactly what a user wanted.

What does this mean for optimization?

This means it’s more important than ever to strive for the position zero on Google.

Any content you create should be rooted in intent. And it’s becoming increasingly more important for your content to not only be informative but also useful.

Overall, 2019 is going to bring some big strategy changes when it comes to SEO. Content creation needs to be more intentional and optimization will need constant updates. But that’s the fun of SEO, it’s constantly changing, which keeps things interesting!

Mike Rhodes, Founder & CEO of WebSavvy

Most people are probably expecting me to talk about upcoming changes to Google Ads. And I would, except that I’m currently under an NDA with Google not to talk about forthcoming features.

So instead, I’m going to step back and speak more broadly about the general digital marketing trends that I see happening in 2019. And those trends fall into 3 main topics:

1) The Way People Search Is Changing

Voice search is going to continue to rise next year. It’s estimated that by 2020, 30% of all searches will be made without a screen. (And ComScore puts that number even higher, at 50%.)

This will have huge implications, in particular for SEO.

Right now, any time you perform a search on Google, you get a screen with 10 or so organic results (plus the ads). This means that 10 companies all get a shot at your attention.

But voice search often returns only a single result. Which means the vast majority of voice searches will go to the top-ranking site for a given search term.

This is still an evolving technology, so things are bound to change. But it’s definitely something to keep your eye on in 2019.

Another change that’s on the horizon is visual search. Google Lens is a new technology that allows people to search based on images, rather than text.

For example, you can just take a picture of your friend’s shoes with your phone and Google will show you a bunch of similar-looking shoes… with a buy button underneath each one. Over time, this is going to have an enormous impact on retail shopping and ecommerce.

 2) The Way People Interact Online Is Changing

The way we interact with each other, and with businesses, is also changing.

In 2019, we’re going to start seeing a lot more hyper-targeted personalization on websites and in business communication.

For example, email marketing is getting smarter. More and more companies are starting to use machine learning that will track your online behavior on their website and use that data to send more personalized, more relevant emails.

Another big change coming next year is a significant increase in the use of chatbots for marketing. This is another way companies are adapting to deliver faster, more personalized communication and, ultimately, a better user experience for consumers.

3) Our Expectations Are Changing

As technology evolves, so do our expectations. And the biggest expectation that more and more of us have today is speed.

Basically, we want things to load fast.

The main place where this is still an issue is on mobile, where load times can still be frustratingly slow for some people. As a result, you can expect to see Google pushing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in 2019.

Here at WebSavvy, we became the single-largest user of AMP in Australia in 2018 when we moved a large number of client landing pages from regular pages to AMPs. When we did, we saw surprisingly good increases in both our load times and our conversion rates.

So, if you’re not already using AMP, I recommend you do so now.

You can also expect to hear more about Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in 2019. Google will be pushing this technology to help promote apps that are fast, reliable, and engaging. If your business has an app, it would definitely be a good idea to look into PWA.

So, to summarize, here’s what I think we’re all going to start seeing more of in 2019:

• More video. This applies to ads in general, and specifically to YouTube. Next year you’re going to start to see a greater variety of ad types on YouTube, making this a more versatile and effective advertising platform.
• Influencer marketing is going to continue to grow, and I think you can expect Facebook to make a strong push toward finding a way to generate revenue from it.
• Retail stores will close in record numbers, and Amazon will overtake Apple in terms of market cap. (If I were a betting man, I’d put my money in Amazon stock.)
• Expect to hear more about machine learning, deep learning, and AI.

Speaking of that last bullet point:

AI is all about prediction. It’s our way of training machines to make better and faster predictions about all sorts of things. (What ads are we most likely to respond to? What search phrase are we most likely to be interested in? What shows on Netflix are we most likely to want to watch?)

And as these predictions become faster, cheaper, and more accurate, this will lead to an increase in the need for—and the value of—human judgment and creativity.

In other words: as the machines begin to do more of the boring stuff, our job as humans will be to add judgment and creativity to the mix to help guide all of this machine learning in a productive direction.

So, I also recommend making sure creativity is a large part of what you do. And if it isn’t, you might want to start moving in that direction in 2019.

Kathryn Aragon, Founder of Kathryn Aragon Media

In 2019, content marketing will become more balanced and realistic.

For years, content marketing has been hailed as king of all digital marketing strategies.

But in the last few years, we’ve reached a saturation point. Content marketing isn’t new or exciting. The mere act of publishing a blog post doesn’t help you rank and won’t help you sell more products.

As we enter 2019, I see more businesses admitting this, much as content strategist Jacob McMillen does in this post from November 17, 2018:

I started taking a similar approach early in 2018. Clients would ask me to promise bold business results, such as doubling their traffic or raising profits by some percentage. I’ve had to tone down their expectations—as Jacob calls it, “unselling” some of what content can do.

It’s not a popular move, but it needs to happen because it’s the only way we’ll be able to make content work in the future.

So, what does it mean to “unsell” content marketing?

It means being more realistic:

• Page one on Google isn’t a guarantee, especially if you’re in a competitive industry or going after a keyword that’s owned by hugely successful brands
• A better blog doesn’t usually deliver higher profits
• Traffic and engagement are trending down, not up, for most blogs

I see 2 reactions as brands accept the reality of these trends…

Some—the ones who are looking for easy buttons—will quit content marketing. Others—the smart ones—will understand the need for balance.

Content marketing isn’t dead. It isn’t a waste of time. It’s just changing. Again.

You see, content marketing has been around for centuries. It will continue for at least as long. As technology and society has changed, we’ve simply changed how we do it.

Source: CMI

Entering 2019, we’re at a pivot point. What’s been working isn’t working anymore, and even top content marketers are struggling to get the same results they used to get.

To fix that, we’ve raised the bar so high, it’s almost impossible to meet.

In the last year, I’ve seen pure exhaustion among content marketers. Yet they’re scared to slow down. They’re afraid of losing the engagement they still have.

In 2019, businesses will realize that content marketing isn’t the end-all of digital marketing. It’s just 1 strategy, and instead of carrying all the others, it should integrate with them.

Then, realizing this, businesses will start to relax. They’ll understand that publishing less often could actually increase engagement levels—because their followers won’t develop banner blindness toward their content.

So, what’s the strategy moving forward?

Start with your business goals. Be clear about what you’re trying to achieve in 2019.

Then think about the tactics that are most likely to deliver the results you’re looking for. Don’t rely on just 1 channel or marketing tactic. Instead, integrate them.

Look for efficiencies you can exploit.

For example, if you always run a major campaign in spring, plan your content to support that campaign. But don’t increase your editorial schedule. Slow it down. Write one well-optimized blog post a month leading up to your campaign. Pull from those posts to create a collection of graphics, memes, and quotes for social media. And use them to create a few Lead Magnets and create your funnels.

Finally, pay close attention to your numbers. If any content strategy isn’t working, don’t hesitate to give it up or change it or completely reinvent it.

In 2019, content marketing won’t be about publishing more. It will be about publishing more strategically. For some brands, that will mean publishing less. For others, it could mean breaking some of those best practices we’re so addicted to. For all of us, it will mean thinking outside the box.

Here’s what WON’T change…

Quality, authority, and authenticity will continue to matter.

You need to be relevant. Don’t get entrenched in the way you’ve always done things. Your audience is changing. You need to be aware of social and technological trends that are behind these changes—and adapt.

Copycatting doesn’t work. Discover your own strengths and your own brand personality. Then create content that expresses your own uniqueness.

Stories will continue to get results. People don’t want to hear all about you and your products. They want to hear real stories that engage them on an emotional level, that make your brand seem more human and accessible.

Neil Flinchbaugh, Founder & Digital Copywriter of NWF Digital Copywriting

As a digital copywriter, it’s part of my job to keep a close eye on how businesses are communicating with people online. And based on some of the recent changes that have happened over the past 2 years or so, I think we will see a big shift start to happen in digital copywriting next year.

In 2019, copywriting is going to take a BIG step toward becoming more personalized and conversational.

I’m specifically referring to copy written for the newest and fastest-growing online marketing medium, which is messaging apps. Check out this blog post for an explanation of just how fast Messenger Marketing is growing.

While Messenger Marketing is relatively new on the scene (Facebook didn’t open the Messenger API until April 2016), many marketers are already predicting that it will overtake email as the dominant communication channel within the next few years.

And when you compare the 2 mediums, it’s not hard to see why. Messenger is blowing email out of the water in every engagement category we’ve got:

Most Messenger Marketing in the US right now is done via Facebook Messenger. But both WhatsApp and iMessage will be following suit and opening up their APIs as well—increasing the reach of this medium even more.

So, if messaging apps really are going to overtake email as our #1 communication channel, how is that monumental shift going to affect the kind of copy we write to appeal to our customers?

First, let’s get this out of the way: the fundamentals of great copywriting WON’T change in 2019. Or in 2020, or 2021. This is true because the people you’re writing to are still human beings, and human nature isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

That means you still need to craft a killer message that speaks to a compelling desire in your audience. You still need to appeal to powerful emotions, trigger a sense of urgency, and back up your claims with social proof and other credibility-boosters.

So, the underlying message behind your sales copy is going to stay the same.

But the medium you use to communicate that message is changing, and that means the WAY you communicate that underlying message is going to have to change too.

And the biggest fundamental shift that’s happening with Messenger Marketing is that instead of talking AT people (the way we do with most other marketing mediums), you’re going to have to start conversing WITH them.

This means we’ll have to start doing a few things differently…

1) In 2019, Copy Will Be Delivered in Shorter Chunks

If you take a minute to scroll through your text messages, I’m betting you won’t see a lot of big paragraphs or long explanations. Most messages are a single sentence long. And you probably don’t send more than 3 or so messages at a time without waiting for a reply.

These are the same kind of short, succinct messages we’ll need to use when writing copy for messaging apps.

After all, most people use Messenger on their phone, where screen real estate is limited. Only a few paragraphs will fit on a phone screen at a time:

And that screen space just about cuts in half once you open the keyboard:

This is why, when writing for Messenger, you have to be ruthlessly concise.

You need to pare down your message to the absolute essentials and avoid overloading people with too much text at once.

REMEMBER: you don’t want to force your users to scroll up to see the beginning of your message. That’s a bad experience.

Now, if you have a longer message—something that requires several hundred words or more to deliver—for the love of all that’s holy, don’t just paste it inside of Messenger.

Instead, ask the user if they want to learn more about the topic. If the answer is yes, either embed a video or insert a link to a blog post on your website.

And speaking of asking questions…

2) In 2019, Copy Will Ask More Questions & Take Better Advantage of Branching Logic

Remember that conversations are a 2-way street. You can’t just yap on and on and on without giving the other person a chance to speak, or else they’ll quickly start to ignore you.

And in Messenger Marketing, the best way of getting the user’s input and feedback is by asking questions and giving the option of several quick replies. Here’s what that looks like:

This guitar chatbot makes it easy for you to specify what aspects of guitar playing you’re most interested in—which keeps you engaged with the bot because it forces you to tap a button to continue.

It feels more conversational.

But engagement is only a piece of the puzzle here. There’s another, deeper benefit to asking more questions…

3) In 2019, Marketing Messages Will Become Much More Personalized

As we begin to ask more questions in our copy, we’ll inevitably start to learn more about our audience. Asking questions is an easy way to get a quick idea of which topics your customers are most interested in.

And with that knowledge comes the ability to deliver more relevant, personalized content.

To go back to the example of the guitar chatbot, let’s say User A tells us he’s interested in Soloing. And User B tells us she’s interested in Music Theory.

You can save this information and use it to make sure that User A gets content related to Soloing, and User B gets content related to Music Theory. This will…

• Reduce your unsubscribe rates
• Improve your click-through rates
• And most importantly, keep your users happy

It’s the same idea we already use today to segment our email marketing campaigns. But because the engagement rate on Messenger is so much higher than it is for email, we have even MORE potential to learn about our customers and deliver more personalized messaging.

And we can apply this technique to sales messages, too (not just content). For example, if you were selling an all-inclusive guitar playing program, you could write separate versions of that sales copy to appeal to each of those different interests.

So, User A would get a marketing message that focuses on how this program will help him to be a better soloist. And User B would get a marketing message that focuses on how this program will help her to master music theory.

The catch to all this is that in order to deliver this personalized content, we’re also going to have to start using more branching logic in order to take advantage of this personalization.

So instead of writing just a simple message that we deliver to everyone, businesses will need to craft multiple messages that are custom-written for each of their customer avatars.

It’s more work and will involve creating more copy and content to accommodate all these avatars, but the improved user experience and conversion rates will be well worth the effort.

Most importantly, it will help to give your users the kind of highly responsive and personal-feeling communication that they’ve come to expect.

Sunny Lenarduzzi, Founder of YouTube for Bosses

My biggest digital marketing prediction for 2019 is that YouTube will dominate as the king of long-form video platforms.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking—hasn’t it always been the dominant force in long-form content?

Well, with Facebook making a massive video push over the last couple of years and Instagram introducing IGTV, there has been competition.

But, facts are facts! Not only is YouTube the social platform most used by US adults (73%), but when it comes to long-form video, 33% of total view time on YouTube is attributed to long-form content.

And as YouTube continues to compete with traditional TV programs, the algorithm is rewarding long-form content for increased watch and session time on the platform.

And as a creator myself, I know that if you combine long-form content with a consistent schedule, you are guaranteed to create a loyal audience. I like to call it “The Oprah Effect”—if you give your audience an exact time and date to tune in, they will be there.

YouTube, unlike other platforms, has a massive advantage when it comes to attention. Instead of a “scroll” mentality, viewers make time in their schedule to sit down and watch their favorite channels on YouTube.

So, not only do you build a loyal audience, but your audience is actually paying attention to your content—as opposed to being distracted by a million other posts on other social platforms.

People come to YouTube with the intent to watch videos—unlike other platforms—and binge watch them for long periods of time.

Other platforms will continue to try to compete, but YouTube is still the go-to video destination on the internet. And I’m seeing more and more business owners migrate over to YouTube as a valuable source of brand building and lead generation.

Josh Turner, Founder & CEO of LinkedSelling

LinkedIn’s recent rollout of “Objective Based Advertising” is going to make it even more powerful and people are going to be flocking to LinkedIn ads.

For years, LinkedIn’s advertising platform has played second (or third) fiddle to Facebook and other social media advertising platforms.

But in the past 10 months, they’ve been getting their act together and rolling out features that are helping advertisers more easily generate and track conversions.

I don’t expect a major reduction in the cost per click in the next 12 months—LinkedIn charges a premium for their audience—but what we’ve been seeing in our internal and client campaigns is a significant decrease in our cost per objective.

What is an “objective” in this case?

What I’m referring to is a higher leverage buying opportunity—a booked sales appointment or a requested sales appointment.

With LinkedIn’s ability to now measure conversions and therefore allow you to invest in the campaigns that are getting the best results, you just need the right objective for the platform.

By focusing on simplifying the path to your funnel objectives and letting your high-ticket prospects cut to the front of the line in your LinkedIn campaigns, you can see a significant increase in conversions.

And the word is starting to creep out as more and more advertisers start experimenting with the high-ticket audience that LinkedIn provides.

Those who simply just copy over a Facebook ads campaign to LinkedIn are setting themselves up to struggle. For LinkedIn, the smart move is tailoring your ads to get prospects into a higher-leverage opportunity sooner.

From the changes and direction we’ve seen them heading in for the past year, my prediction is that LinkedIn continues to build out more marketer-friendly features in 2019 and becomes the most popular network for getting sales appointments for B2B businesses.

(RELATED: The 5-Message Sequence: A LinkedIn Marketing Strategy that Generated $101k+ in 9 Months)

Rachel Miller, Organic Traffic Strategist of Moolah

Content won’t matter if there isn’t a conversation to accompany it.

Last year, we saw a giant leap in the importance of conversations in the social media algorithms. The more person-to-person interactions a brand received on social media, the greater the results were of that content performing well BOTH organically and in paid media.

But not only did conversations increase the placement of content into users feeds, it also increased sales.

I predict this trend will only become stronger through 2019.

Posting videos or getting your audience to watch/read your content is not going to be enough. You will have to foster conversation as well as consumption.

And while we have seen a drastic increase in ad spend for “stand-alone” campaigns (as pictured below)…

…campaigns that are fueled by community and conversations with your audience are growing exponentially. And without any ad spend.

Brands who don’t focus on conversations are risking becoming obsolete since their customers will just have those conversations elsewhere.

We want our users to take action on content. These actions begin as a micro-conversation—a like, a heart, a fast reaction. And they work up toward a conversation. And ultimately, a sale.

Ted Prodromou, Executive LinkedIn Coach of Search Marketing Simplified, LLC

2019 is the year LinkedIn finally hits the mainstream.

Here are some reasons I think LinkedIn is ready to break out:

The Microsoft effect is starting to happen.

In 2016, Microsoft purchased LinkedIn, but we haven’t seen many changes until recently. At the end of November 2018, Microsoft briefly surpassed Apple (and Google) as the most valuable company in the world (over $770 billion) and monetizing LinkedIn is an easy way to increase their bottom line. For years, I’ve been saying LinkedIn is leaving billions on the table and it looks like Microsoft is finally seizing the opportunity.

Add to this that Facebook is reeling from bad publicity, and people are closing their accounts because of the negativity and political divide.

For a while, it seemed like I could post a cake recipe on Facebook and it would turn into a political attack by both sides. One side would blame Obama or Hillary’s email and the other side would blame Trump for one ingredient they didn’t like in the recipe. I took a few breaks from Facebook this year because of the political attacks out of nowhere. Facebook is under attack by the politicians around the world because of the way they handled the fake news attacks and Facebook isn’t responding fast enough.

For years, running Facebook ads was a great way to generate low-cost leads. But as more businesses jump into the game, ad prices rise. So it’s not as cost-effective for many businesses. Also, as people leave Facebook, your target audience may shrink.

I’m seeing a lot of chatter in many marketing groups and forums that big marketers are finally seeing the value in LinkedIn. This is good news and bad news because we all know once marketers see an opportunity, they pummel it until it’s dead.

LinkedIn is growing, but very slowly.

For years LinkedIn was adding 2 new members per second, but it’s slowed significantly. In April 2017, LinkedIn claimed they had 500 million members, and today, they are hovering around 590 million.

I have always said I prefer quality over quantity and LinkedIn is by far the highest quality community out there.

Content marketing on LinkedIn is absolutely crushing it right now. CEO Jeff Weiner announced last year that he wanted LinkedIn to become the largest content platform on the internet and LinkedIn members are responding. Thousands of articles are being published every day and native video is really taking off.

And to top it off, LinkedIn’s algorithm is constantly being tweaked to get the right content in front of you. It seems like every time I log into LinkedIn, I see subtle changes in the dashboard and mobile app.

LinkedIn is 100% committed to creating an amazing user experience and they are finally making it happen.

Sue B. Zimmerman, The Instagram Expert of Sue B. Zimmerman Enterprise

In 2019, Shoppable Instagram will continue to grow and venture into shoppable services.

With over 1 billion Instagram users—500 million using Instagram every day—and over 200 million users using business profiles daily, it makes sense shopping on Instagram has exploded over the past year.

With a tap of your finger, you can go from looking at something you admire to the storefront making a purchase.

This is a huge bonus for businesses in general and even bigger for small businesses with smaller budgets.

Previously, accounts would need to direct a customer to their bio to allow them to shop, i.e. requiring an extra step for action OR pay for ads to get a direct link.

Initially, shoppable posts rolled out with shopping tags in posts in March 2018. And recently (September 2018), Instagram has expanded to shoppable tags in stories. The process is the same; connecting a business page to a catalog on Facebook, which means only products are able to be sold, not services.

With the expansion of shoppable products in stories and the success Instagram has had for being a place where people go to shop, 60% of Instagrammers say that they discover new products on Instagram and 72% of users have made a purchase from something they have seen on Instagram.

We foresee shoppable services having the same success as products.

Businesses who have service products—like spa services, coaching, nutrition programs, online programs, business downloads, and eBooks—will all be able to have a seamless buying opportunity just as products have on Instagram.

Brad Martineau, Co-Founder & CEO of SixthDivision

The past few years have been big on marketing automation and marketing funnels. And while funnels have their place, the way we understand and use them to reach new customers is going to take a BIG step forward in 2019.

I see 3 big changes coming down the road.

Funnels Are Not Enough

The first change is the growing awareness that funnels, by themselves, are not enough.

They don’t give your users the kind of experience that will make them fall in love with your brand. They’re too isolated. They involve only bits and pieces of your company rather than giving people a holistic experience of everything you have to offer.

Instead, the world is moving toward creating more cohesive customer journeys.

The difference between a funnel and a customer journey is like the difference between a single subway line and a citywide public transportation system. The customer journey (the public transit system) includes multiple funnels (subways lines), and it provides a way of combining those funnels together to help move people not just from point A to point B, but also to point C, D, E, F, and so on.

To put it another way:

Now that marketing funnels are becoming more common, companies are starting to take a bigger-picture view. They’re starting to engineer ways to move their customers through multiple funnels. To sell them multiple products. All with the goal of maximizing revenue and providing a better experience for the customer.

And speaking of customer experience, here’s the second big change coming to marketing automation…

It’s All About the Customer Experience

Over the past few years, a lot of marketers have attempted to simply “throw up a funnel,” with varying degrees of success. In many cases, the marketer puts all of their focus on the funnel itself, rather than the messaging in the funnel or the product/service that funnel is promoting.

Well, that is not going to cut it in 2019.

Funnels are no longer new.

And it doesn’t matter how sophisticated your funnel is—people simply aren’t going to convert if you don’t spend the time to…

1. Create something people want
2. Explain it to them in a way that’s clear and compelling
3. Do it all through the delivery of an experience that your prospects and customers will connect with

And last but not least, here’s the third change that’s coming.

The “Client Journey Architect”

In 2019, we are going to start to see a new skillset begin to develop in the marketing world: the “Client Journey Architect.”

Right now, most marketing departments are divided in half between…

1. The visionary—the founder or leader who decides the direction the company is going to go
2. “Digital drywallers”—the people who actually put that direction into action

Well, this Client Journey Architect will sit right in the middle of these 2 groups.

In a nutshell, the Client Journey Architect will be the person who implements everything I talked about earlier.

They’re the ones who take all the disjointed, disconnected funnels and products in a company and piece them together into a more cohesive whole. Taking a bunch of solitary subway lines and turning them into a fully integrated transportation system that can take people anywhere they want to go.

That will change the landscape and economy of digital marketing because architects will be in demand at a premium and digital drywallers will become commoditized and have to level up or price down.

Nathalie Lussier, Founder of AccessAlly

In 2019, the trend toward personalization will continue, and more sites will be using visitor data to decide on the right calls to action.

I see this playing out across a combination of tools in a tech stack…

• From advertising platforms like Facebook to help segment people
• To email automation tools like ActiveCampaign to manage the different segments via tags
• And website-specific add-ons like RightMessage and AccessAlly to personalize the website experience itself

An example of personalization at work is special offers triggered by specific on-site actions, like in the image below. Notice how the copy changes depending on the user’s relationship with you…

Or, let’s say someone completes a short quiz and based on their answers they get a special discounted offer that lines up with the needs expressed in the quiz.

Or, after visiting a specific blog category, there’s a follow-up email sequence that sends them more of the same content—without the need to opt-in again.

The technology for this type of personalization and “on the spot” segmentation and offer promotion is here. It’s just a matter of using it strategically and making sure it comes off as beneficial to the end users.

Russ Henneberry, Digital Marketing Consultant, Author, & Speaker at RussHenneberry.com

As click costs from paid Google and Facebook traffic continue to rise and artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms continue to make more and more decisions about the audiences you are targeting, 2 things will happen…

1. An Increasing Need to Get the Fundamentals Right

With AI handling more and more targeting options, the edge will slide to those who understand how to craft a great offer and articulate it well to prospects.

In other words, this is a good time to brush up on your copywriting skills.

(RELATED: Perpetual Traffic Episode 34: 14 Elements of Persuasive Ad Copy)

2. A Renewed Interest in Organic Traffic

Earning traffic from search marketing and social media is an organic (read: slow) process.

But it’s worth it for many reasons including the fact that it reduces your “Cost Per” metrics.

In other words, if you buy 1,000 clicks from Facebook for $2 a pop and get 200 leads, your Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) cost is $10. If you add 1,000 clicks from organic search and your numbers remain the same, you’ve just cut your CPL to $5.

My recommendation is to not stop your digital advertising campaigns but, instead, supplement paid traffic with low or no-cost traffic from search and social.

Shannon Goodell, Social Media Manager of DigitalMarketer

Instagram continues its rise with nearly 1 billion monthly active users and 400 million Stories users.

It’s become one of the most popular social channels. People are flocking to Instagram to escape the negativity of other platforms (Facebook and Twitter, in particular).

Here at DigitalMarketer, we consistently get more positive feedback on our Instagram posts than on all other platforms.

And in 2019, Instagram will become an even bigger player for brands.

People, especially the younger audience, go on social to be educated, entertained, and inspired. And Instagram is the perfect channel for just this. Each image posted on Instagram gets 23% more engagement than on Facebook.

Facebook (Instagram’s parent company) realizes that they must focus on Instagram to succeed.

So Facebook continues to release new features focused on monetization and making marketers’ lives easier with Instagram. These are some of the features that were released just this year; a large portion of them with a focus on improving the Story experience:

• Add clickable profile usernames and hashtags in your bio
• Anti-bullying features
• Type modes and new fonts within stories to add personality
• Adding GIFs on Stories
• Mention stickers to tag account in your Stories
• Shoppable Stories and posts
• New shopping features for customers
• Repost Instagram Stories
• Re-share Instagram posts to Stories
• Stickers in Stories
• IGTV
• IGTV previews in Stories

And Instagram isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

As you can see above, the big emphasis in 2018 has been on Stories. In 2019, that will only continue (and grow).

Given this focus on Stories and monetizing them, I believe there will be even more ways to connect with your target audience through Stories. At every stage of the Customer Value Journey.

Oli Billson, Founder & CEO of Oliver Billson Marketing

Here are 4 predictions I have for 2019 that’ll help you stay on the cutting edge so you can make enormous strides in your business.

Prediction #1:  Mobile Marketing Will Provide Huge Opportunities for Businesses Who Embrace It in 2019

According to comScore, the average American adult (18+) spends 2 hours and 51 minutes on their cellphone every day. They also found mobile device adoption rates are increasing at a huge rate, surpassing 80% in 2017.

This gives you ample opportunity to capture the attention of your target audience on devices they use so frequently in their lives.

We are already taking advantage of this trend here at NextLevelBusiness. That’s why we engineered the Phone Funnel Framework that allows us to connect with prospects via the devices they have in their pockets: their cellphone.

The Phone Funnel Framework follows several steps…

…which you can learn more about from these podcast episodes:

• Perpetual Traffic Episode 150: 3 Facebook Funnels to Drive More High-Ticket Leads
• Perpetual Traffic Episode 170: Drive More Conversions from Facebook Messenger Using “The FSMC Formula”

If you haven’t made the shift toward focusing more on mobile marketing in your business, I highly recommend you do so. It’s a trend that will continue to progress in 2019 and beyond.

PREDICTION #2: Prospects & Customers Will Crave More Authenticity & Human Touch from Businesses in 2019

Advances in marketing automation have allowed the average business owner to grow and scale their business and make better decisions.

However, these advances have made marketing more “impersonal” to their target audiences and have eroded relationships with long-term customers.

Sure, you can implement automation to perform basic tasks. But you should implement a personal touch whenever it is possible so prospects don’t feel they’re interacting with someone hiding behind a computer.

The challenge, though, is how to scale adding a personal touch to your marketing communications without taking a lot of your time. We solved this problem by using bonjoro.com to make personal, short videos for our customers so they don’t feel like just a number by sending.

Here’s an example of one of those videos:

The best part is these videos aren’t fancy. I just take out my iPhone and record a quick video to teach an important point or congratulate them for taking an action.

This is much more personal than sending emails. It also shows our customers that we do care for them, which boosts the chances they’ll stick around.

Of course, nothing beats taking a second and writing an old-fashioned handwritten note to clients who act on one of your offers, or a long-time customer who has been buying from you for a while!

PREDICTION #3: Behavioral Marketing Will Help You Cut Through the Clutter of a Crowded Marketplace in 2019

Gone are the days when you can have a big email list, send the same generic message to all of them, and expect the same level of response you may have achieved 5 years ago.

It’s now more powerful to serve unique and specific content and marketing messages to prospects and customers based on their prior actions.

Why?

Because most of your prospects/customers see the same marketing and sales messages over and over. And they’re on other people’s mailing lists and they get their marketing messages as well, so they’re swamped!

So, you need to cut through the clutter by delivering more uniquely tailored messages that match their previous actions.

That’s why robust marketing automation software like Infusionsoft is critical for most businesses. It allows you to segment user based on their previous actions automatically.

It also allows you to track which emails and promotions they’re clicking on and buying, respectively, so you can get an accurate picture of what your prospects and customers REALLY want.

PREDICTION #4: Social Proof Needs to Be More Specific & Robust in 2019

Social proof is extremely important when it comes to marketing. Prospects and customers want to see that other people have had success getting the result they desire from using your product/service.

The problem is most businesses don’t have enough social proof, or the proof they have doesn’t match their target demographic.

An example is a consulting company who is trying to target lawyers, but all the social proof they have on their website is from dentists.

The solution is to collect reviews aligned to specific buyer personas (a.k.a. customer avatars).

For example, if you’re a business who serves chiropractors who are making under $500K in revenue, then you need to have testimonials from that demographic.

Also, make sure your social proof is results-based and specific. Too many marketers have general “feel good” testimonials that don’t talk about a specific result.

To conclude, I believe 2019 will bring amazing opportunities for businesses who take these predictions to heart and adjust accordingly. That way, you can put your business ahead of the game in the new year and beyond!

Mary Kathryn Johnson, Founder & CEO of Messenger Funnels

For the last few years, in-demand professional copywriters have become extremely talented at generating long-form story copy that draws us into the worlds of their clients and gets us to trust and participate in the adventure.

I predict a very successful sub-set of professional copywriters will emerge over the course of the coming year. And that is the chatbot copywriter.

We have all heard of the conversational marketplace and the need to become conversational marketers in the new age of chatbots, AI, machine learning, and personalized marketing. But as with every new high-converting process, even the early adopters who do things poorly make money.

Many chatbots today contain copy derived from emails broken up into chunks and delivered in Facebook Messenger. Chunks of long-form story email copy are passive, and they simply tell a story in short bursts.

Creating good chatbot copy is an art designed to create a participatory adventure for the subscriber. It is designed to get subscribers to interact and participate in a journey. It is active.

As more marketers and business owners start using chatbots on Messenger, and eventually WhatsApp, iMessage, and Twitter, copywriters who are talented at generating…

• Interactive
• Engaging
• Short-form story copy

…that draws us into the chatbot worlds of their clients will be in high demand!

In 2019, I predict that a new copywriting industry will be born.

And these early adopters who generate consistent revenue for their clients through their chatbot copy will become the new copywriting experts for the next decade and will drive the value of the conversational marketplace.

Dennis Yu, CTO of BlitzMetrics

Smart businesses will focus on vertical video in 2019 to drive awareness, consideration, and sales.

Just like you and me, consumers are too smart for ads. So they cherish the “man on the street” style of authentic, iPhone-captured video.

The Nike’s of the world will create high-production pieces, but even they are generating 1-minute videos to distribute on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Snapchat.

But my prediction is not an argument for more UGC (user-generated content), which is often done poorly and randomly.

Smart marketers will create “authentic-looking” videos in triggered re-marketing sequences. That means:

• Vertical videos that work in a sound-off environment—using captions, simple visual effects from free phone apps
• Stories instead of testimonials—to show people as humans who are multi-faceted and vulnerable, instead of yes-bots who all uniformly shill about your products and services
• Sequenced content instead of a content calendar—viewers of Video A on Facebook get retargeted into Video B on another channel, and vice-versa
• Many public figure pages instead of a brand monolith—to boost posts from figureheads that your audience respects, entertaining instead of just selling
• Smarter attribution instead of “conversion rate”—the more mid-funnel content you have, the greater the “assist” of social to drive search traffic, chatbot to email, etc.

All this means that you must measure the flow of traffic not only down your funnel but across your channels, such that your marketing is an X*Y grid.

Your customers are moving down and across this grid, as you prioritize which boxes in this giant game of tic-tac-toe.

I predict that most marketers will fail to grasp the power of 1-minute videos because…

• They don’t believe it will work in their vertical
• Don’t believe they have the resources/time ($1 a day and 1-minute video)
• And can’t measure the ROI (needs attribution tools like what Facebook now offers)

This is your opportunity to leap ahead of your competitors.

The post How Digital Marketing Will Change: 17 Predictions for 2019 appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Singles are where our bread and butter come from—consistent success with tried and true strategies.

But, every once and a while, we hit a digital marketing home run…

They come in all shapes and sizes, on all platforms and mediums.

Today, we’re sharing the best home runs of 2018 from 14 digital marketing experts. Swipe their insights to make your business even better in the new year.

Let’s get to it!

Sunny Lenarduzzi, Founder of YouTube for Bosses

This year, we generated $100,000 from 1 YouTube video leveraging our signature formula for turning viewers into sales.

I built my business on organic traffic from YouTube, but at first, my strategy was mainly focused on list building as opposed to generating automated sales.

Creating an automated lead gen and sales system from our YouTube channel has allowed us to…

• Diversify our lead gen platforms
• Generate profit without paid advertising
• Build our revenue with an evergreen, automated method

And in the video below, I detail the strategy that helped us achieve this…

We have duplicated the method I shared in the video above on the majority of videos on my YouTube channel, and we are averaging between 10-30% of our revenue directly from YouTube. We have also used this same method to generate over $5,000,000 in revenue for our clients.

See if this strategy can work for you in the new year!

Russ Henneberry, Digital Marketing Consultant, Author, & Speaker at RussHenneberry.com

Selling high-ticket live events is tough.

You are asking a prospect to make an investment of the most valuable things they have: time and money.

And, for those who have never attended the event, you are selling them a “black box.” Unlike selling shoes or office supplies or cars, the prospect cannot hold the event in their hand. They cannot kick the tires or try the event on and walk around the store for a few minutes to see if it’s a good fit.

As a result, great care must be taken to reveal the contents of this “black box” through the use of images, video and… yep… webinars.

I’ve worked on many events over the years, but this year I hit a home run on selling a high-ticket bicycling event.

Here are the details of this 5-day campaign:

• Business Name: Bubba’s Pampered Pedalers (Yep… seriously.)
• Event Name: Coast 2 Coast Bicycle Tour
• Offer Price: $8,900
• Length of Campaign: 5 days
• Total Sales: $214,100 (60% Margin. Not too shabby.)
• Total # of Email Subscribers: 4,226
• # of Emails Sent: 7

This campaign was divided into 3 phases and email was the primary marketing channel:

Phase I: Awareness, Interest, & Segmentation

In this first phase, the goal was to simply segment the email list so that I could stop pestering those who are uninterested in this ride and start pestering them with another ride.

I used a LOT of images in these emails (and on the landing page) to help them see what it’s like to be on this ride:

Subject Lines:

• Announcing the Coast 2 Coast bicycle tour
• Bike from the Pacific to the Atlantic
• Bike Coast 2 Coast (Here’s what to expect)
• Thinking of biking coast 2 coast (You’ll love these pics)

Those who opened or clicked were moved to Phase II. Those that didn’t were removed from this campaign.

Phase II: Subscription and Education

Because of the massive investment of both time and money required to buy and participate in this ride, I decided to use a webinar to educate these prospects.

Yep… I said webinar.

Of course, we didn’t call it a webinar. We called it the “Coast 2 Coast Information Session.”

Bottom line is these people needed to know what was in the “black box” in order to make an informed buying decision.  They wanted to know how they would get a shower, how their laundry was going to get done and what size bike tires they would need.

The Information Session webinar lasted about an hour, and to close it we made an offer of a $500 discount and a free tent upgrade (Total Savings: $700). We did the webinar on a Thursday night and gave them to the end of the weekend to take advantage of the savings.

Subject Lines:

• Coast 2 Coast Bike Tour (Live, online info session this Wednesday)
• Get your Coast 2 Coast questions answered
• Can you come to the info session?

Phase III: Closing the Deal

In this last phase, we simply ramped up the urgency as the deadline for the savings loomed. By Sunday afternoon, we had to close the cart and replace the call to action (CTA) on the landing page with a waiting list. More than 75% of the buyers had attended the webinar live.

A little humor never hurts when you’re closing hard:

Subject Lines:

• 2018 Coast 2 Coast Tour at lowest price ever!
• Coast 2 Coast Tour ($700 savings ends soon)
• LAST CHANCE ($700 savings ends at midnight)
• 8 hours left to save $700 on Coast 2 Coast…

The results? A sold-out event and north of $200K in sales in a weekend owed mostly to a simple information session that allowed the prospective buyer to “try the event on for size” on a live webinar.

You can view all the emails that were sent for this campaign here.

Sue B. Zimmerman, The Instagram Expert of Sue B. Zimmerman Enterprise

This year, we went into 2018 with the goal to use 1-on-1 engagement through Instagram Direct Message to sell our “big ticket” group coaching programs, Hives.

The offer point is $5k, so to achieve this would be no small feat.

To do this, we directed people to send me (Sue) a direct message (DM) in…

• Stories
• Posts on my feed
• And in my bio

…to get as many DM’s from as many engaged followers as possible.

We realized how important it is to ask our followers to take action in all 3 of these places to spark as much conversation as we can.

We also paid close attention to our most active followers and initiated DMs with them, often sending a personal video.

Breaking It Down

Offer Price Point: $5,000

We used a 5-week promotion that included a live webinar. The webinar led to an application for the program and then to a live sales call with me.

After the lead expressed interest about the program via DM, I’d provide the link to the application.

Once that was reviewed and approved, I’d have a sales call with the lead. Often on the same day. And close the sale on the same day, too.

The “quick conversion” is part of what is attractive. Most of the campaign’s sales came in live, on the call, with 100% of sales coming in within 24 hours due to the urgency of a fast action bonus.

Wins from the DM Selling Process

A high-ticket offer price point like $5k typically requires trust.

So it was great to see that 21% of people who signed up were NOT existing customers.

Difficulties with DM Strategy

It can be a time-consuming process.

It is important to consider both the salesperson and the team schedule, to understand availability.

I ALWAYS reply personally from my accounts, though a company could use the same process with a sales team.

The Continued Lifecycle of a Group Coaching Client

Why does one $5k sale coming in from Direct Message matter so much?

First, we found we can go from a DM to creating a lifelong client and supporter.

Second, our program has a strong retention rate, with 55% of the last session re-enrolling.

Creating 1 intimate connection via direct message has the potential to be lucrative beyond the 1 sale.

Since then, we used the same strategy for a different offer where we sold a 1-day online retreat with the Sue B. Zimmerman team. We promoted it in a series of Stories, encouraging direct messages if interested.

The $497 dollar offer sold out in 3 days, without any ad spend, other social or email marketing.

This is another example of a high-end price point product converting quickly with a strong community in DM.

How We Are Using It in 2019

We now understand and have the numbers to back up how important direct message conversations are.

It’s important to be creative with how you are starting conversations in the DM. Use polls, questions, and other prompts in Stories.

Also, Instagram has recently released a new update for business accounts where you can use “quick replies.” With quick replies, you can craft really intimate yet efficient messages saving time and making this tactic even easier to implement.

Mike Rhodes, Founder & CEO of WebSavvy

At WebSavvy, we LOVE playing with the new stuff, the Betas, the crazy stuff…

We want to know does it actually improve client results, or does Google want us to use it so they just get more data!

We test a lot. Every day.

The following 3 Google ad tactics have worked really well for us and our clients in 2018. Hopefully, you can implement them in the new year and keep growing those profits, too. 

1) Pay for Conversions

Google took it’s “Conversion Optimizer” (CO) feature out of beta in January 2008!

Back then it was a pretty basic tool. The idea being that you gave the “Machine” a target CPA (cost per action—i.e. cost per lead or cost per sale) and it would try to hit that target for you. Up until then, the only options had been to pay for clicks (for Search at least).

With CO now we could focus on the goal, maybe getting leads for $50, without worrying as much about the details.

Except, well, it didn’t work that well!

And you still paid for the clicks, you just helped point the Machine in the right direction.

In 2018, Google expanded a newish feature called “Pay for Conversions” (PFC) and allowed advertisers to use it on ALL Display campaigns, not just Smart Display Campaigns (of which I’m not a fan).

So, now you can run regular Display campaigns, but instead of paying for clicks (and hoping Google hits your target CPA), you ONLY pay if and when Google gets you a conversion.

Not bad huh!

If you’re like me, your first thought might be, “But what about the volume of leads?” That was my concern, but the Product Manager I spoke to said that volume won’t suffer. You’ll still get the same amount of leads, but you only pay when you get them.

Of course, as more and more advertisers adopt this tactic, expect costs to rise. But for now, the results we’ve seen have been excellent.

If you’re running Google Display Network (GDN) ads, and your account is eligible, then give this a try—just look for the “Pay for” section in your campaign settings.

You’ll need to have at least 100 conversions in the past 30 days and 90% of those must happen within 7 days of the click. Also, your CPA target needs to be under $200.

2) Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Google told us recently that we’re the largest user of this technology in Australia. Which probably means wherever you are, not many people are using it yet. Which means opportunity for you my friend!

AMP is designed to speed up the load time of mobile pages (which now account for over 50% of all searches).

Essentially, you create new versions of your mobile landing pages that load super-fast and therefore convert better. You can learn more here.

We’ve seen “Mobile Speed Scores” move from 2-3 to 6-8. Which has led to increases in conversion rates and the volume of conversions. One client saw a decrease in load times from 9.2 seconds to just 2.8! That reduced “visitor loss” by 64%.

Every campaign is different, but the average increase has been 12.3% in conversion rate and just under 10% in the volume of conversions.

Would your clients like 10% more sales from the same ad spend? Give AMP a try.

3) TrueView for Action (TV4A)

This works! Really well.

This format for “pre-roll” YouTube ads gets clicks. A lot of them.

And those clicks convert.

When combined with a Product Feed (for ecom clients) the additional sales have been very impressive with Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) better on many YouTube campaigns than non-brand search!

For instance, a retailer with a target CPA of $32 is getting sales for $8.63 from YouTube campaigns using TV4A ads.

Even really short videos (6-15 seconds) are working well.

Well worth testing.

Hopefully, those 3 tactics help you squeeze more from your Google ads campaigns in 2019.

Shannon Goodell, Social Media Manager of DigitalMarketer

Yes, Facebook is a big focus for us here at DigitalMarketer. And while it remains a big focus, especially with video, we really wanted to hone in and harness the power and growth of Instagram.

So, a major focus of mine since I started in May has been to grow our Instagram account, organically.

Not only the number of followers but also engagements that go beyond just likes and actually drives people to act. From visiting our blog through a link in a Story to starting a conversation that leads to a sale in a direct message, like in the example below…

From the end of January 2018 to November 27th, we have seen our account go from around 10,000 followers to nearly 45,000.

We’ve also seen impressions increase, which means more people are seeing our content and getting to know our brand!

How did we accomplish this? It basically comes down to 3 key things that ANY business can swipe:

1. Post consistently
2. Use relevant hashtags (and plenty of them)
3. Post Stories daily

Yes, and there are other factors that have contributed to our follower growth, but these are the 3 things I make sure to follow.

Consistency is absolutely key.

For one thing, people will come to expect that daily post and look forward to engaging with it. People will be able to discover your brand through your hashtags. And, by making sure they are relevant to who your brand is, you’ll attract more of the right people.

If you are asking why you should really focus on growing your followers?

Well, Stories!

(I’ll explain why in a second…)

You can use Stories to establish your brand as a go-to resource in your field. Stories are huge (and continue to get bigger with over 400 million users), and so many brands are not using them.

The biggest initiative I’ve implemented is using Stories to connect our target audience with content that is relevant to them and gets them in your funnel. We use Stories to share…

• New blogs
• Evergreen content that is still super relevant
• New podcast episodes
• Special guests
• Behind-the-scenes at our workshops and Agency Growth Days

…and more.

Fortunately for us, since we have over 10,000 followers, we are able to put the link to our blog or podcast directly in the Story. Accounts under 10,000 are not able to do this.

So, if you are under 10,000 followers, focus on using Stories to showcase why people should follow you (behind-the-scenes, helpful tips, special guests), while also posting consistent content and using relevant hashtags, following relevant accounts, and commenting on posts.

Then, once you hit 10,000 followers, go all in on posting Stories with links for people to “Swipe Up To Learn More!”

In the meantime, you can also use a CTA in your Story to drive people to the link in your bio.

Here’s an example of one of our Stories that we use to drive blog traffic. As you can see, we always include a CTA to “Swipe Up To…”.

And by posting relevant content and consistently, we’ve seen an increase in our engagement. We’ve gone from 413 likes, 70 comments, and 17 media sent in January to 8,785 likes, 383 comments, and 35 media sent (media sent would be our posts and stories).

So, what kind of content has worked to increase our engagement? We’ve mainly focused on 3 content types to consistently share on our feed:

1. Quote images
2. Tip/graphic videos
3. Book images

Yes, if you follow us (and, you totally should ), you’ll consistently see these 3 types of content.

And, the most consistent performer for us is the easiest to create—quote images!

Any brand can create these and consistently post them. We pull quotes from…

• The leadership team here at DigitalMarketer
• Podcast guests
• Traffic & Conversion Summit speakers
• Books
• And our own blog

Ryan Deiss is our main source of quotes, and his quote images, in particular, perform consistently well for us.

There are a variety of resources you can use to pull quotes to create your own quote images. Just be sure they fit with your brand and are interesting and inspiring for your target audience.

There are many different types of quotes you can use. We’ve found that these in particular work for us:

1. Inspiring
2. Bold
3. Controversial

The second type of content we post regularly are short, graphic videos. Specifically: Tips, Podcast Snippets, and Just for Fun.

Video views are one of my key metrics, and these are an easy way to get those views. Plus, they provide value to our target audience (Tips, Podcast) or entertain and engage (Just for Fun).

This Tip video provided value and also drove traffic to our blog. When I posted the video, I also posted a Story with a link to a blog we wrote about Instagram.

This Just for Fun was used to engage our audience with the question: “What is the scariest part of being a digital marketer.” It got some great responses and was perfect for the Halloween season!

The third type of content we have tested and found has worked well for us may be even simpler to create than the quote images—pictures of relevant books.

Yep, these have been a big winner for us. In fact, this particular post was our TOP-PERFORMER for the year!

This simple book image got over 1,000 likes and 50 comments.

It was literally our graphic designer standing outside and holding the book. That was it. We use a Google Pixel for taking pics for social media, but really any phone will do.

If you’re a marketer or own an agency, there are a plethora of books that you can use. If you’re in a different industry, think of books and other visual resources, like magazines, that are relevant to your brand and audience.

Along with posting these content types, I focus on commenting with hashtags that (a) are relevant to the post and (b) will help our target audience find us.

For instance, I use Mondays to post a #MondayMotivation quote and Wednesdays to post a #WednesdayWisdom quote.

Do some hashtag research, look at the hashtags brands in your industry are using, look at the hashtags your target audience is using and start to test various hashtags. You’ll become more discoverable!

We use Sprout Social to determine which hashtags are really working for us.

I truly love coming up with ideas for Instagram and testing them to see what really resonates (trust me, we’ve had some failures).

Then, once I found that these 3 content types really work, I honed in on them.

If your brand is on Instagram, but maybe engagement and growth is stagnant, or you’re looking to create a business account and test it out, the biggest piece of advice is to: Just try new things and think about content that is both engaging and helpful to your audience.

And, Stories. Use Stories. They’ll help you stay top-of-mind!

Dennis Yu, CTO of BlitzMetrics

2018 was a pretty controversial year for Facebook. And for our home run, I’m sharing how our Co-Founder, Logan Young, got on CNN to talk about that controversy.

To get in front of millions of people, live on CNN, to discuss Cambridge Analytica and Zuckerberg’s Congressional hearing places Logan as a perceived authority on Facebook marketing.

How does a pizza delivery boy go from zero industry experience to the top of the industry in just 3 years?

There are 3 stages and you can implement them, too.

In this experiment, I’ve found that “perceived authority” (having the perception that you’re good at something) is a necessary precursor to “actual authority” (having the actual skill to implement).

The former is critical to driving sales, and it’s why most agencies and direct marketers struggle with conversion rates. The latter is critical to keeping clients and being able to monetize.

Because of this 3 phase process, we’ve been able to transform Logan from $9/hour delivering pizza to selling an hour of consulting for $1,000. Two of these per week is a 6-figure income by itself, not counting course revenue.

The cost to do this was:

• $2,000 a month in boosting posts on Facebook
• 3 virtual assistants from the Philippines (graphics designer, video editor, Infusionsoft analyst—$800 per month x 3)
• Travel (mostly paid for by clients)
• And my time

I’ve spent $350,000 so far on this project to see how much of this is repeatable and practical in driving sales for founders and agencies. Turns out that building authority takes at least 12 months before you see a return, measured in incremental leads and revenue.

And it’s repeatable in most industries, as you shall see from the steps below.

3 Steps to Creating a Figurehead to Scale Your Business

To be able to scale your business, you need 1 or multiple figureheads.

If you’re the owner, it may be you or a celebrity spokesperson. If you’re a major brand, you’ll want multiple figureheads so you don’t risk a “Jared” from Subway taking you down.

And you’ll want a figurehead who…

• Honors your core values
• Can make videos reliably on topics (with or without a script)
• And is a long-term, loyal player

I’ve been building figureheads in multiple verticals since I myself cannot be perceived as an expert in automotive, retail, local lead gen, ecommerce, pro sports, and other areas all at the same time.

Stage 0 (Starting Point)

Your figurehead doesn’t have to be well-known.

Better if they aren’t since a tabula rasa is easier to shape and you don’t have to pay them as much.

If you’re a small business, start with yourself as the figurehead. Determine what you want to be known for, organized into your 6 topics in your Topic Wheel.

Stage 1 (Build Your Foundation)

Put up a website in your figurehead’s name.

I chose younglogan.com, since loganyoung.com was taken and because it works better for “young adults”—to have a young looking role model that speaks on the power of mentorship in digital marketing.

Next, create a public figure page, start inviting connections on LinkedIn, get your Facebook ads account going, and ghostwrite some articles in their name.

Stage 2 (Connect People to Topics)

Find the people in your network who have perceived authority on the topics from your Topic Wheel.

Have your figurehead interview them. And you can be in the interviews, too, if you’d like to build your authority at the same time.

If you’re able to get on stage to speak, have your public figure be your assistant running the slides so that your people can take pictures of them on stage without the risk of them saying something wrong. As they learn your material better, let them speak at pre-determined points, but be ready to jump in if necessary.

Turn these interviews and speaking engagements into blog posts and Facebook updates. Boost these posts, especially 1-minute videos. Then, remarket off 10-second views into courses, packages, and whatever you sell.

You must connect something to sell since this is what funds your machine. Use the dollar a day strategy to determine where to allocate more money based on a 300% ROAS (return on ad spend) threshold.

Expect 3-4 touches to drive a Tripwire sale and 7-10 touches to drive a course or package. If you sell high-ticket items, expect 20-30 touches.

Stage 3 (Inception)

I got Logan on USA Today several times, which we boosted to other media (people who WORK AT CNN, Forbes, and other outlets—not people who read these publications).

Provided you continue to adjust your Topic Wheel, you’ll get a massive “domino effect” in media coverage.

We got “lucky” with CNN, where Logan was able to be in front of a live audience of millions to talk about Facebook’s raging controversies.

It’s taken several hundred small podcast interviews and guest blog posts (which we boost for $1 a day) to get medium-sized publications (like ReadWriteWeb and Reuters TV), and then to major publications (Al Jazeera, USA Today, CNN, etc.).

The more coverage we got, the larger the pool of items we had to continue to keep boosting, as we want to keep these items alive.

Some posts have been alive nearly 3 years. So your budget will go from a dollar a day on just 1 post to dozens of posts spending a few dollars a day each. That’s how you get to over $100 a day.

And then we have ads in Ads Manager driving sales of our various offerings (consulting, courses, and packages—like the image below), which is what allows us to keep funding this growing library of promoted content.

The irony of all this is that you cannot directly measure the ROI of building perceived authority. So, it’s truly brand-building and openly sharing knowledge to drive inbound marketing.

Yet we know how much traffic we are generating at the bottom of the funnel, and see the consulting dollars we’re earning. People come up to us in random places (like the Melbourne airport or downtown Vancouver), saying they’ve seen Logan’s dog bite video or practice the dollar-a-day technique.

Revealed mechanically in this 3 stage process, the process may seem Machiavellian or manipulative. Yet when you consider that the feed (and increasingly stories) is 85% of Facebook’s traffic, you must be there to build awareness and trust.

People are allergic to what are blatantly ads, but 1-minute stories from people they trust increasingly cuts through advertising clutter.

This strategy will work for you even better as Facebook becomes more saturated, traffic gets more expensive, and the algorithm gets pickier.

Kathryn Aragon, Founder of Kathryn Aragon Media

This year, I decided to revive my copywriting services and, while I was at it, to target 1 company that only works with the world’s best copywriters.

Nothing like setting the bar impossibly high, right?

I needed to create a lead generation campaign targeted specifically to this company, and it needed to be so memorable, they wouldn’t be able to resist the chance to try me out.

I started by developing a concept, or big idea.

What sets a winning campaign apart from all the duds is a big idea that captures the imagination. I wanted my prospect to understand that I’m unique—1 in a million. But to be more precise, I found the number of freelance copywriters listed in LinkedIn, and called myself, “1 in 78,735.”

Now to prove it…

A digital campaign wasn’t going to cut it. But my campaign did need a digital component since this company leans heavily on VSLs (video sales letters).

I chose to create a physical mailer that illustrated my concept. In the box, I’d include a letter with a link to the VSL I’d create. Then I’d follow up with an email that had the link, just in case they didn’t have time to type in the URL I’d give them.

Building the campaign took time. And some creativity.

It’s easy to say you’re 1 in 78,735. But I wanted my prospect to “see” it. So, I set out to buy 78,735 toothpicks to illustrate the magnitude of that number.

I then needed 1 fancy pick to illustrate my services. I chose a cocktail pick with a gemstone head.

Next, I needed to find a box big enough to hold all of this… while still making a good visual presentation.

Then the letter would sit on top, explaining this big box with a small gift… and why they only needed to consider 1 copywriter—me.

That’s Stage 1 of the campaign.

Stage 2 was a micro-site that included a video of me explaining the concept and inviting my prospect to call me.

The video was just a few minutes long. Below it was my CTA: to call me.

But I gave my prospect a few other options too:

• In case they weren’t ready to pick up the phone yet, they could request a Lead Magnet, which I created specifically for them
• In case they didn’t want to watch the video, I included a link to a text-based landing page

Now, with everything built, it was time to execute.

I had already connected on LinkedIn with the person I wanted to send the box to. I messaged him to ask for his mailing address so I could send him a gift.

Then the day before the box should have arrived, I messaged him again to let him know it was coming.

Now came the waiting game…

Nothing.

At the end of the week, I messaged him again to see if he’d received the box. Turns out he had been out of the office that week. He told me he’d be back in the office on Monday.

More waiting…

I didn’t get a response right away, but I didn’t worry about it too much. I knew he was likely busy catching up on work. And I also knew there was a chance he hadn’t taken the time to sit down to open the URL I’d sent him.

(That’s the biggest drawback of a physical campaign. Your prospect can’t click the URL to open it.)

So, on Thursday, I sent an email to follow up the campaign. Notice I didn’t message him in LinkedIn for this. In LinkedIn, we had developed a good rapport. Sending a marketing message could have messed that up.

Even more important, an email would let me show off my email writing skills… And marketing messages don’t feel out of place in your inbox.

What I sent was short and sweet.

Within 20 minutes, I had my response.

Success!

Whether you’re targeting thousands of people or just 1 special prospect, your lead generation campaign needs to be memorable.

If it looks like everything else they’re seeing, there’s no reason to choose you.

But if you create a campaign that sparks the imagination, intrigues, and leads your prospect a step at a time to choose you…

You can’t lose.

Brad Martineau, Co-Founder & CEO of SixthDivision

I approached this question a little differently than most people, for 1 main reason: I’m not really looking for home runs.

Instead, I’ve found that my business runs much smoother and much more efficiently when we focus on consistently hitting singles.

Don’t get me wrong—home runs are great.

But keep in mind, the baseball players who hit the most home runs almost never have the highest batting average. In other words: they strike out a lot, too.

And what I’ve found—and again this is just in my business—is that we score more “runs” overall when we forget about swinging for the fences and instead create a system that helps us to simply get on base over and over and over again.

So, what does that mean, practically speaking?

It means getting back to the basics.

And when I say “the basics,” I mean doubling down on these core aspects of any successful business:

• Creating a thing that people want
• Positioning it in a way that they REALLY want it
• Blowing the customer’s mind and over-delivering so they have an amazing experience
• Automating the marketing and delivery as much as possible so we can repeat the process over and over while minimizing the cost and time involved

It’s nothing fancy. It’s fundamental. But it works.

And it works even better when you follow the process repeatedly, using it to improve your offer and your customer experience in an iterative fashion.

Many businesses don’t seem to understand the fact that you have to continually work on tweaking your offerings to keep them fresh and compelling. After all, markets change and evolve over time. The offer that excited people 3 years ago is NOT the same offer that’s going to excite them today.

One example of how we followed this process to improve our business in 2018 came from a presentation that I gave at an agency summit.

During this conference, I talked about a concept called “The Small Business Spine.” Basically, it was the idea of how you define and capture what your business is about in a way that really serves the business. It was geared primarily for new, small agencies.

This wasn’t the only thing I talked about. It was just 1 of many subjects that I covered in my presentation. But I noticed, as I talked about this Small Business Spine, that people really resonated with the idea.

Their eyes lit up. They sat up straighter and paid more attention. Asked more questions. These are all clues that you’ve hit a nerve, found something people are interested in.

So, what I did next was test out this idea by presenting on it a couple more times. I talked about it on calls, with business owners one-on-one, and finally, I gave a presentation at a live event. And every time I talked about The Small Business Spine, the response was really positive.

We had discovered something our audience really wants (#1 in the steps I described above).

So, what we did next was to create a training around The Small Business Spine and added it to our offer as a bonus. (This is Step #2, positioning.) And when we pitched this offer at the end of the live event, the response was tremendous: 22 out of 60 people took our offer for about $5,000 each.

From there, we worked our butts off to over-deliver on the product itself (Step #3). And when it became clear that this was something we wanted to continue doing, we began automating it as much as possible (Step #4).

So that’s just 1 tiny example of this process in action. But we’ll go through these steps many times each year.

To apply this in your business, begin by paying attention to your audience—what gets them excited? What do they want more of?

When you identify those things, create a product or service around them and integrate it into your offer in the most compelling way you can.

And when you start doing this consistently, something really cool starts to happen: your offers begin to speak to the things your customers really want, which makes your customers feel like you really understand them. They like and trust you more, which makes it easier to work together.

And that leads to some really great improvements in other areas of your business, like:

• Increased customer satisfaction. (We document this, so this isn’t just a subjective observation—rather it’s a measurable improvement.)
• Decreased workload and stress levels for the people doing the work. (Because your clients are happier, they’re easier to work with.)
• Improved economic engine in your business.

The third bullet in that list comes from the automation side of things. Once we discover something new that works, we automate the marketing and delivery of it as much as possible. This empowers our employees to do more work and handle more clients in less time—increasing our revenue at a fixed cost.

And that’s how we create a system for consistently hitting singles in our business.

We may not hit as many home runs, but we don’t strike out, either. We’re keeping the bases loaded so a single is a run. And we’re constantly taking the next step forward in the growth and evolution of our business.

Nathalie Lussier, Founder of AccessAlly

This past year, we successfully converted 80% of “started sales” into clients for our software.

At AccessAlly, we understand that buying software is a commitment and that people might get cold feet when signing up.

So we leverage abandoned cart functionality, and if someone doesn’t complete their order within a few hours of starting the process…

We kick off an email sequence, which starts off by asking if there were any technical problems during the ordering process.

According to stats collected by Moosend…

• 45% of cart abandonment emails are opened, and now it has grown to 49% in 2023 [updated May 2023] 
• And from there 21% of people click-through
• And 50% of these people complete their orders

Our stats differ a little with…

• A 50% open rate for our abandoned cart emails
• An 8% click-through rate
• And 50% of these people completing their orders

We experimented with different variations of content in the follow-up emails to see if a different approach might increase response, too. It’s an ongoing refinement process!

We’re happy we’re able to follow up with people who are interested enough to start the purchasing process, whether they end up signing up within our abandoned cart email sequence or further down the line.

Seeing an 80% success rate for someone starting the checkout process means we can be confident that our ad spend and other marketing efforts aren’t sending people to a leaky bucket.

Especially when you look at stats that show that most websites have on average a 75% abandoned cart rate.

It’s a home run for our business many times over because once someone signs up they’re likely to be a customer for years to come and that ongoing revenue helps us grow!

Brett Curry, Co-Founder & CEO of OMG Commerce

YouTube ads gained considerable buzz in 2018.

Updated ad formats and new targeting options have propelled YouTube ads into the top 2-3 paid channels for many of our ecommerce clients.

In 2018, a huge win for us was targeting Custom Intent Audiences with TrueView for Action campaigns on YouTube. TrueView for Action campaigns utilize the YouTube pre-roll video ads that are skippable after 5 seconds.

This ad format is not new, but just in case it’s new to you, here’s how it works. As an advertiser, you only pay if someone actively engages with your ad by watching at least :30 seconds or by clicking through to your site.

TrueView for Action ads are a new spin on TrueView ads and are relatively new. It’s the same concept, but these ads also include strong CTA buttons around the video to encourage someone to take action.

Custom Intent Audiences are also pretty new. They allow you to combine the precision targeting of search ads with the selling power of video ads. These audiences are built based on someone’s search behavior on Google. Now you can build an audience of people who’ve recently searched on Google for keywords related to your product or service and then target them with your YouTube ads.

This audience type is consistently one of our top audiences in terms of performance. No surprise there. If you know what someone has been searching for on Google and you can then serve them a relevant YouTube ad, you’ve got a shot at sparking some interest in your products.

We’re often seeing cost per acquisition (CPA) in the $20-$50 range for these campaigns. And that conversion is an actual sale. When someone sees our YouTube ads and then purchases our widgets, we’re often paying $20-$50 per sale.

While we often build dozens of custom intent audiences to test, it’s usually best to start with your top converting keywords from your search campaigns. For example, if you sell tankless water heaters and you actively run search ads on Google, take your top 50+ keywords and use them to build a custom intent audience.

So that list might include keywords like “tankless water heater,” “best tankless water heater,” “Tankless water heaters under $1,000,” etc.

OK, so how do you build it?

First, go to your Audience Manager under Tools in Google Ads.

Then under Custom Audiences chose to create a custom intent audience.

Then you’ll be prompted to paste in your top keywords.

The beauty of targeting this audience type on YouTube is that it allows us to scale our marketing efforts without a lot of waste.

The goal of any marketer is to find new customers at an acceptable CPA. When you can hit your CPA target and achieve some scale you can radically change your business.

For one of our ecommerce clients we got the following results from just 3 different Custom Intent Audiences during the summer of 2018:

• 2,414 unique purchases
• Cost per conversion of $10.62, which was 43% better than our average for this account
• Return on ad spend was 50% better than our goal

Audience targeting isn’t the only factor for success, but it’s arguably the most important factor. Serving the perfect ad to a bad prospect will never work. Serving a decent ad to the perfect prospect might work.

While every business is different and Custom Intent Audiences may not be your best YouTube Audience, you should definitely test them!

Mary Kathryn Johnson, Founder & CEO of Messenger Funnels

How many webinars do you actually attend after registering, let alone cause you to buy once you reach the CTA?

Webinars… many use them to sell, and many are tired of them.

So, we took a different approach to increase attendance, and hopefully sales, to our clients’ webinars through Messenger marketing by developing the Webinar ChatBot.

This is a marketing formula delivered in a chatbot, and it uses Facebook’s mission statement to full effect.

Instead of using a Facebook ad that leads to a landing page that collects an email registration to attend the webinar that delivers the webinar and sells us the thing, we turned that process on its head!

We start on the Facebook business page.

Okay, I hear your groan. Facebook has taken away our reach on our Facebook pages, right?! Well, we are getting it back!

Here is the general flow of this marketing funnel (visuals below)…

1. FB Live/IG post/Pin/YT Video → One Page Lead Magnet delivered in Messenger
2. Wait 30 seconds for prospect to consume the PDF
3. Ask if they want a second piece of free value, then deliver a second PDF
4. Ask if they heard about your amazing success with XYZ and if they want to hear more
5. Nurture with benefits to attend the webinar
6. Integrate with CRM to track conversions

Notice that we are giving value first. Social Media focused value, which means short video posts that lead to short, quickly consumable, high-value PDFs.

To implement this strategy, we have our clients go live once per week delivering 10 minutes or less of specific value on their Facebook business page that can be condensed into a one-page PDF we then deliver as a Lead Magnet in the ChatBot.

Think marketing, not advertising.

Think of the things your prospects are struggling with BEFORE they sign up for your course.

Something like… “The 3 things you should never do when starting your Amazon store, and what to do instead to start with a bang,” or maybe… “15 business startup mistakes and how to avoid them when starting your consulting practice.”

If we are all tired of the high cost of advertising to get people to our webinars, and we’re frustrated by the ever-shrinking conversions from those advertisements, we should actually be marketing to get prospects to attend, and this Webinar ChatBot formula does exactly that with amazing success!

We all know that attention spans are decreasing by the second, and being heard through the noise is one of our biggest marketing challenges, but we have found a way to get Facebook to generously help our clients get seen by their exact target audience.

The second most difficult marketing challenge is to get subscribers to stay and engage once they’ve found us, and Facebook willingly helps us with this one, too.

An example of this is our client Alison J. Prince, who sells a $997 course called 0-100K, which helps people start an ecommerce business. Alison had been very successful with the Facebook advertising webinar model and sold $1MM worth of her course in about 10 months using Facebook ads.

When we turned on this Webinar Chatbot marketing formula in January 2018, within 8 weeks Alison was consistently converting an average of 30 sales of her course each week, and at the height of her momentum, she sold $1MM in 99 days through this Webinar ChatBot.

She is still converting an average of 20 sales per week after almost a year of using this formula every week.

Here’s a general overview of her ManyChat Webinar ChatBot…

So, how does Facebook help us with that marketing challenge of being heard above the digital noise?

When our clients go live on their business page and offer a PDF in exchange for becoming a subscriber, Facebook sees the engagement on that post in the form of comments, because we use the comment tool in Messenger to translate that comment into a subscriber.

Remember Facebook’s mission statement… connecting people and engagement…? That is how Facebook generously helps our clients with their business page post reach.

In the first few weeks of implementing this new marketing formula, our clients boost their Live posts, and Facebook consistently gives them 50% or more organic reach because of the engagement that already exists on that post.

One client is getting 75% organic reach from Facebook!

OK, I hear you calling me out on the advertising angle. To be clear, not all clients need to boost posts, but when they do we’re only talking a hundred bucks, not tens of thousands of dollars per month.

The post boost just helps our clients gain that momentum.

So, what about that second obstacle to webinar marketing success… getting subscribers to stay engaged, attend the webinar and buy?

Consistent value delivery and the high open and CTR of Facebook Messenger are the answers to that.

Having implemented this formula since January 2018, we have gathered some pretty impressive statistics of subscriber behavior. For instance, we know that it takes 2.8 times watching a Facebook Live and opting in for that corresponding Lead Magnet before a subscriber becomes a customer (in other words, before they buy from the webinar).

That means the subscriber consumes the value from up to 3 Facebook Lives and 3 PDFs before they decide to trust that this expert can deliver exactly what they need through the course.

Not only that, since these Facebook Lives are evergreen on your business page, your audience can discover the exact content that speaks to their specific issues months after you initially recorded and published it.

Remember that attention span issue?

Well, we have also found that the most highly engaged people spend hours on our clients’ Facebook business pages scanning the valuable content before they find the specific Facebook Live with the PDF they need that was published 8 months ago, and they opt-in to start their journey with this expert.

Ralph Burns, CEO of Tier 11

2018 has been a big year for us at Tier 11. And while we’ve had a lot of home runs in a lot of areas, the biggest game-changer for us was the creation of our Ecomm Ad Amplifier (EAA) Facebook marketing framework.

As a Facebook ad agency spending millions each month on behalf of our clients, we’re always looking for new ways to scale up Facebook campaigns while maintaining (or even improving) the return on ad spend (ROAS). And when we hit on the system that eventually turned into the EAA, I knew we had found something special.

Here’s what the EAA looks like:

In a nutshell, the EAA is a system that we use to remarket to people based on their depth of engagement.

So if someone engages with our ad but doesn’t visit the website, they’re saved as a Level 2 audience. We retarget them with educational videos, product ads, product carousels, and testimonial videos.

Or if they add a product to their cart, we save them as a Level 4 audience and remarket to them using Dynamic Product Ads and click-to-Messenger ads.

The reason why the EAA works so well is because it’s efficient.

At every step along the funnel, we’re creating a new audience and retargeting those people with the best ad formats and messaging for their location in the Customer Value Journey.

Which means that nobody falls out of the marketing funnel, and everybody sees an ad that’s perfectly suited to where they are in the buying process.

The other awesome thing about the EAA is that it isn’t a one-off success. We didn’t just get lucky and hit a big home run here. Instead, we created a system that we can use to hit home run after home run—predictably and consistently.

You can apply the EAA framework to any Facebook campaign and it will help you to do 2 things:

• Scale up (AKA generate more sales and revenue)
• Get more efficient (AKA improve your ROAS)

And to prove that, I’m going to share our results using the EAA for 3 separate clients in 3 completely different industries:

Client #1 sells bath products—relatively simple items retailing for around $20-$60.

When they came to us they were spending $5,000/month on Facebook ads and generating a 2x ROAS. Not bad, but we saw the potential for a lot of improvement.

So we used the EAA to build out and scale up their campaigns, and as a result, they’re now spending $20,000-$50,000/month with a much higher ROAS (5.8x).

• Increase in scale: 4-10x
• Improvement in ROAS: 2.9x

Client #2 sells a hair growth product with a $700 price tag. Initially, they were spending $30,000/month with a 2.0x ROAS.

Using the EAA, we were able to improve that to $160,000/month with a 2.7x ROAS.

• Increase in scale: 5.3x
• Improvement in ROAS: 1.4x

Client #3 sells powered health drinks like green juice smoothies and protein powder. When this client approached us, they were spending $30,000/month with a 0.25x ROAS after 30 days.

(Their product involves a monthly recurring subscription, so they don’t need to break even on their ad spend right away.)

And after implementing the EAA, we helped them scale up to $570,000/month in spend with a 1.1x ROAS after 30 days. A huge improvement that absolutely transformed their business.

• Increase in scale: 19x
• Improvement in ROAS: 4.4x

To sum it up, the EAA is a proven system that’s modular enough to be effective for every Facebook advertiser.

So if you’re having trouble scaling up your campaigns, give the Ecommerce Ad Amplifier a try—I’m confident it will be a game-changer for you.

Rachel Miller, Organic Traffic Strategist, Moolah

We created a Facebook group in 2017, but in 2018 we invested in that Facebook group—supporting it with content and retargeting group members with content from our page.

(RELATED: 5 Types of Community-Building Content DigitalMarketer Used to Engage an 11K+ Member Facebook Group)

Our goal was to build community in a BIG way. And we did. We gave often and asked for nothing in return. We made getting our community members results our priority.

And we were doing it all for FREE.

The result? We saw the numbers of members in our group rise, but more than that, we saw the number of conversations rise.

Not only that, by increasing the conversations in our community, we saw a direct increase in the number of sales and a decrease in the cost per acquisition of each of those sales. We saw a 53% increase on purchases as well as a significant drop in our cost per acquisition ($9 decrease in cost to acquire a customer).

Conversations are what sells. The more conversations you can have with potential buyers, the more they will trust you, the more they will buy from you.

So how’d we do it? How’d we increase our conversations with our members?

We added an onboarding process to our group. This helped…

• Establish patterns in our members
• Demonstrate how they can start conversations in the group
• Get members to begin interacting with each other as they entered the group

Our onboarding sequence also helped Facebook realize the priority that our group content should have in their feeds as new members engaged with multiple pieces of our content as soon as they entered the group. This meant that our group had a more relevant affinity to the user on Facebook and increased our deliverability of content into their feeds.

These were all-organic placements!

Seeing the power of conversations on organic reach is HUGE!

Josh Turner, Founder & CEO of LinkedSelling

LinkedIn ads in general, for our business and our clients, have really made major strides in the past year. Specifically, a big home run has been retargeting visitors to core pages of our website through Sponsored Inmail.

(RELATED: 3 Tips to Set Up a Retargeting Campaign in 24 Hours (Even if You Have Never Heard of Retargeting Before))

When we have a site visitor that has checked out our Services Page or our Contact Us page but they didn’t purchase or book a call, we automate a Sponsored InMail through LinkedIn ads to reach out and repitch the offer for a consultation call.

This approach has resulted in us spending under $30 for each high-quality lead booking an appointment with a member of our sales team.

This is low-hanging fruit that everyone using LinkedIn Ads should add to their playbook.

Its effectiveness is partially due to a Sponsored InMail showing at the top of your audience’s inbox the next time they log in to LinkedIn. It includes a CTA button and banner ad.

If you are targeting high-ticket prospects and want to automate a personal retargeting strategy—look no further than LinkedIn Ads and create a Sponsored Inmail Retargeting campaign.

So…  find a good strategy in here to use in your 2019 initiatives? We hope so!

Here’s to another prosperous and successful new year!

The post 14 Digital Marketing Experts Share Their Marketing Home Run of 2018 appeared first on DigitalMarketer.