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The Changing Face of Digital Marketing: What small businesses need to know for 2018

Digital marketing never stays static, and 2018 is going to be no exception.

As a small business owner, or the person responsible for marketing in a small organisation, what do you need to know at the start of this year to stay ahead of your competition?

We asked Tim Butler, founder of Innovation Visual, to reveal the key digital marketing trends that every business owner will need to get to grips with in 2018.

1. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a significant force in marketing now and in 2018 people will realise that it is impacting their marketing in many different ways. AI works by learning and responding and this power is being used in a number of areas of marketing and customer service.

Machine learning – the ability for AI to learn and improve itself without explicitly being programmed has seen the functional scope of what is possible expand rapidly in recent years.

Marketing is at the forefront of AI use. Google’s AdWords and Facebook both use AI to refine who is shown what adverts. AI goes even further beyond this in marketing.

• 2. Voice Search & Digital Assistants

The most commonplace use of AI is in the digital assistants like Amazon Echo’s Alexa, Google Home’s Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri. The rise of voice search is something you need to be aware of due to the pace at which it is growing. There are an estimated 50 billion searches per month now activated by voice.

The searches are on both Voice First devices (those that do not have a screen, meaning all interaction is through audio, like Amazon Echo and Google Home), mobile phones and increasingly desktop devices that have voice search capabilities.

For small business owners in 2018 the huge rise in voice search will impact consumer businesses more than B2B. However, both should be implementing plans to benefit from, rather than be left behind by this technology. The main impact areas from voice search are:

No screen for search results

Only the first result is read out by devices so being number 2 in the results now has little benefit. The fight to be the number 1 search result is going to become increasingly intense for marketeers going forward.

Longer and question based search queries

Voice searches tend to be longer and more sentence based than typed search queries. The impact here is that you need to start optimizing your content for themes, not rigid sets of keywords.

Retained context & personalization

The AI is retaining the context of what has been said before, which means that the results provided are dependent on this and increasingly granular personalisation.

Local & mobile bias

A large majority of voice searches are being done on mobile devices. Google has said that 20% of its mobile device / app based searches are now done by voice. Searches like ‘find a coffee shop near me’ take into account the user’s geo-location data to provide results.

Dis-intermediation 

Voice search is facilitating greater disintermediation. If you ask Amazon’s Alexa to order you a large peperoni pizza one will arrive from Domino’s. You do not get the choice. Being the chosen supplier or being number one in results gives massive market power when voice search is going direct to transaction.

3. Chatbots

Helpful chat boxes in the corners of websites have become increasingly popular.

Often when discussing their use with clients over the past few years the issue has been manning these chat systems, so that web visitors have someone ready to interact with, especially in smaller businesses and outside of normal hours. This problem is ceasing to be a problem through the application of AI.

Chat systems powered by AI can understand the conversational tone and like search algorithm changes, hold previous data to form context. Good bots can provide personalised responses to people’s questions.

For the customer, this can mean that rather than scrolling through lots of different options of products they can use the chatbot technology and ask it questions and eventually get a customized product recommendation that fits their exact need.

It sounds great and it is when it works, but for anyone who has used a poor one the level of frustration can become overwhelming!

2018 is going to see much better chatbots as the technology becomes more mainstream and mistakes that have come before are learned from and improvements are made.

The other big difference is the way that bots can integrate with existing messaging Apps such as WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger by inviting the Bot to join a conversation. This will make bots much more prevalent in 2018 and just like voice search make their use by people habitual not exceptional.

4. Smarketing

No, it is not a typo. Smarketing is a term being championed in a number of places, especially by HubSpot. This is going to be getting more traction in B2B marketing in 2018 as an approach to deliver better customer acquisition and sales results.

The Smarketing theory is that businesses need to stop thinking about Sales and Marketing as two separate functions. This can be easier said than done, especially with established hierarchies and managers protecting self-interest, but it makes sense.

To a potential customer they view a potential supplier in singular terms. To them the experience they have with that business should be consistently good throughout their buying journey. So, they should not experience a dramatic change in tone, approach, content or even offering when they move from browsing a website to being contacted by a sales person.

There is a benefit for businesses acquiring new customers by taking an Smarketing approach. If you have a joined up Smarketing team you do not face the issues of marketing pushing the wrong types of leads, or the wrong level of seniority, or too many / too few leads into the sales function.

A seamless Smarketing team leads to better customer experience, which is likely to improve close rates and reduces internal business inefficiencies reducing cost and improving output.

Why then would you not have a Smarketing team in 2018? It will come down to the matter of it requiring a substantial change in the mind-set of the organization.

Is your business ready to change in 2018? If it is you could gain a competitive advantage. If not you could get left behind as your competitors take your business.

5. Rise & rise of inbound marketing

Inbound marketing has been around for some time. Since John Deere started the Furrow Magazine in 1895 if you include the offline approach. However, digital inbound marketing continues to gain ground and in 2018 it is set to become as mainstream as having a mobile friendly website for B2B companies.

Inbound also feeds into the trends from search engines to look for content and optimizing for themes. Building great content is great for your visitors, the search engines know this, but inbound marketing and content marketing places the emphasis much more on getting this content to achieve the business goals.

If you follow inbound marketing techniques you create your content in a much more structured way.

Content is focused on specific audience groups, personas, and their needs. Their need for information changes through their buying journey and good inbound marketing addresses not only the differing content needs at different stages, but crucially also moves the prospect along the buying journey.

Does your business have documented target personas? Does it understand their buying journey? Does your marketing team have a content strategy? If you are not answering yes to all of these questions then make 2018 the year that you start benefiting from inbound marketing.

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About the author

This guide has been written exclusively for ByteStart by Tim Butler, founder of Innovation Visual, a digital marketing consultancy specialising in developing your online presence and digital communications. Using the latest techniques in SEO, PPC and online content creation, Innovation Visual works to increase conversion rates, basket values, and return frequency. Tim is a regular contributor to ByteStart, and you can find more of his insight in;

Social Media Advertising Opens the Doors to New Customers

It’s fairly safe to say that social media has changed our lives. Networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat have opened up new ways to communicate and share our passions and daily lives. As a result, they have attracted hundreds of millions of active users. The online advertising research company eMarketer estimated that 593.7 million people worldwide used Instagram at least once a month in 2017.

All of these networks have benefited from the fact that consumers eagerly share their interests across these networks, generating a substantial amount of data about these consumers that advertisers can use to deliver targeted ad messages. This has led to the massive popularity of social advertising as a way to reach very targeted audiences – the same eMarketer report estimates Instagram sold $4.10 billion in advertising in 2017.

Many businesses are aware that social media gives them an opportunity to interact with their customers by sharing content, news and special discounts to those who “follow” the company’s pages. But many do not know that they can amplify their voice across these networks through the use of paid advertising, which can put them in front of both their existing customers and new prospects.

Facebook allows advertisers to set their goals, determine the audience targets that they want to reach, set budgets and then run campaigns across the network (here is an overview of the basics). Advertisers can get very creative with their targeting. They can pursue consumers who recently visited their site or looked at items at online retailers. They can target completely new audiences who have the same characteristics of customers (in other words, those who are “likely” to be customers). Many of the same parameters and strategies can be applied to Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

 The best part is that these opportunities are available to advertisers of all sizes and advertisers don’t have to approach social advertising as a do-it-yourself endeavor. Ad agencies, local media companies and other ad services providers, including Sound Publishing, can help advertisers take advantage of social advertising to grow their business. In fact, here at Sound all we need is your desired audience and what you’d like your campaign to do (such as promote the launch of a new store or bring new visitors to your website), and we will handle the rest, including creative, campaign set up, and reporting.

• SOUND PUBLISHING
• Mon Jan 22nd, 2018 12:48pm

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4 Mental Techniques to Improve Your Time Management | Brian Tracy

Essential for new Entrepreneurs. Great tips to get you focused, organised and simply get it done!

Are Entrepreneurs Born -- or Made? Research Says 'Born.' But There's a Catch.

Entrepreneurs, social psychologists and economic theorists have all speculated whether entrepreneurs are born or made -- in other words, whether you're predisposed to become an entrepreneur due to your genetic makeup, or whether that disposition comes from your environment, conditioning or other external influences.

For most entrepreneurial hopefuls, it’s comforting to think that entrepreneurs are made, that even if you lack the "right" DNA, enough practice, experience and conditioning can help you be a success.

But step away from that comfort zone, because research seems to indicate the opposite: Entrepreneurship rates, it turns out, especially rates of entrepreneurship success, are influenced more by a person’s genes than his or her upbringing and degree of nurturing. Fortunately for the majority of entrepreneurial hopefuls, however, there’s a catch.

What the research says

There have been many studies attempting to answer this question, and they've landed on each side of the argument. In the nature vs. nurture debate (looking at factors beyond entrepreneurship), the most effective studies have been those done on twins, because they naturally share DNA, but may have experienced different environments and upbringings. An important distinction here is that identical twins share 100 percent of the same genetic information, while fraternal twins share 50 percent.

One study that looked at entrepreneurial tendencies, specifically, was done by Scott Shane, a professor at Case Western Reserve University. Shane looked at hundreds of pairs of twins, eventually finding that the identical twins among them had much higher rates of “shared entrepreneurial tendencies” than their fraternal counterparts or subjects in the control group.

Further exploration of data, including the research of molecular genetics, has traced  this genetic heritability to four core entrepreneurial traits, each of which increases the likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur, while also being heritable:

1. The likelihood of starting a business. Genes can influence your probability of starting a business.

2. The ability to identify new opportunities. Your ability to identify business opportunities is similarly heritable.

3. The tendency to become self-employed. Related to but distinct from starting a business, self-employment is also a heritable probability.

4. Extroversion. Though extroversion by itself isn’t enough to motivate entrepreneurship, extroverts have an easier time making new connections, leading followers and engaging in a wider community.

A less formal survey of entrepreneurial beliefs found that just 1 percent of entrepreneurs surveyed believed that higher education played any role in shaping their entrepreneurial mindset. Conversely, 61 percent said their entrepreneurial characteristics had arisen from their innate drive.

The catch

What’s the catch here? All of these studies and surveys looked at entrepreneurs as a group; it paid no attention to how successful those entrepreneurs actually were. So, the takeaway here is that your genes play a role in your likelihood of actually starting a business, rather than whether that business will actually be successful.

In other words, just because you have a lower genetic likelihood of starting a business doesn’t mean you can’t start a business, or that the business won’t be successful. In fact, with significant drive and practice, you might be even more likely to succeed than someone genetically predisposed to starting a business -- especially if that person hasn't had as much real-world experience as you.

The role experience plays

Another study, from Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Kathryn Shaw looked at data from 2.8 million small businesses to determine rates of success based on previous experience. As you might expect, success rates were dramatically higher for entrepreneurs who had previous experience running a business.

This may seem like an obvious observation, but it’s important to consider in the discussion on whether entrepreneurs are born or made; it turns out that, regardless of your tendency to start a business, the real determining factor for success is in how much experience you get in an entrepreneurial role.

The two distinct questions we can ask

The first is: Are entrepreneurs born or made? This question looks only at a person’s probability of starting a business; and. according to research, entrepreneurs are more oftenborn.

The second is: Are successful entrepreneurs born or made? This question ignores the probability of starting a business, instead favoring the probability of success within a leadership position of a business. According to research, successful entrepreneurs are more often made.

What does all of this mean for you, the aspiring entrepreneur? If you want to dig deeper, you can look to your family members to get a loose, subjective gauge of your relative chances of starting a business; if entrepreneurship runs in your family, you’re probably more likely to start a business. If you have a burning desire to be self-employed, entrepreneurship may be innate.

More importantly, though, regardless of your heritage, your chances of making a business successful aren’t set in stone. Even the least genetically likely entrepreneurs can become successful if they spend enough time improving their skills, gaining experience as entrepreneurs and committing themselves to better ideas and self-improvement.

Jayson DeMers • VIP Contributor

Founder and CEO, AudienceBloom

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own..

4 Principles of Marketing Strategy | Brian Tracy

Marketing 101 a must watch ! Invaluable information from a master!

The new meaning of customer service

These days we’re surrounded by new technology. It has a huge influence on communications, transport and the way we go about everyday activities – for instance, the way we work, or shop. It also affects the relationship between companies and their customers. Customer service takes on a whole new meaning because consumers are no longer passive recipients but play an active role in communications and, increasingly, in the process of creating products.

Customers create the products

The days when products were developed behind closed doors and only revealed to customers in their final form are now long gone. Today’s consumers play an ongoing role in the development of new products. And not just when it comes to testing prototypes but also early on in the development of a product – for example at the planning stage. It’s the customers themselves who define the functions they expect from a system being newly developed, or which in their view constitute an “ideal service”.

A good example is crowdfunding where consumers support projects that they themselves want to use, participating in the creation of a product right from the design stage up to the moment when the end product of their collaborative input is made available to them. This is also the way that modern, open and dynamically growing companies operate; customer service takes the form of an ongoing exchange of information – a two-way communication during which the needs and expectations of consumers are explored.

Customers are sellers and brand ambassadors

Traditional advertisements that are scarcely credible and purely out to sell are a thing of the past. The claims of a good-looking TV personality or catchy billboard slogans are no longer convincing for switched-on consumers. Customers of today are unwilling to blindly accept everything offered by producers. Instead, they actively search for the products they want, compare available options and also check out reviews. They use information available on the Internet and act on the advice of friends and acquaintances. So what is the role of customer service in these cases? An absolutely crucial one.

Regular and appropriately tailored communication helps build a long lasting, positive relationship with customers. Everything starts with simple emotions – if people like a company they are inclined to trust it. They will be keen to buy its products and when pleased with the results will share their positive impressions with others. In this way a company acquires a following of loyal customers who at the same time act as ambassadors for the brand. They talk about it, review it and recommend it.

Two-way communication

On the subject of the evolving nature of customer service, it’s also worth noting that the distance between companies and customers is changing. Mutual relations are now significantly closer than before, and communications are two-way. Consumers these days actually expect to have an opportunity to voice their opinions. They’re conscious of how important these are – not only for producers but also for new consumers. They know the huge importance of every voiced opinion, whether good or bad. That’s why it’s important to make getting in contact with a company easy. When they buy its products they want fast and open communication.

They look for ways of getting in contact and, at the same time, convincing reasons to stay with a particular brand. A contact form on a website which gives a response at best several hours later fails to meet such expectations. In fact, it does quite the reverse – having to wait leads to frustration and damages relationships. The answer is fast, active forms of communication such as live chats or helplines, with consultants always available to respond to customers. It’s also worth noting that in customer service, it’s increasingly common to find “Customer satisfaction specialists” – because, today, it’s no longer enough to have customers; they have to be satisfied ones.

What is generally recognized as “high quality customer service” has dramatically changed over recent years. Relationships have evolved and become closer and more direct. The concept of a mass approach has almost ceased to exist – nowadays every customer expects to be treated individually. It’s vital to keep pace with these changes and meet the expectations of today’s customers, and this can only be done using modern tools.

Author Monika Kasperczyk

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