Thus it is always better to choose few digital marketing best practices rather than doing it all. Few of the marketing trends that stay on the top of the list in 2018 Marketing Strategy are as below:

1.    Marketing Automation:

This is an innovative solution to save time and resources by doing automation of repetitive tasks. But there needs to be an expertise available to utilize it otherwise, it can be an expensive venture. Under this concept, the website, social media and email campaigns are integrated with other lead generation initiative. There is always requirement in the company to generate leads for sales to increase revenue. Marketing automation helps in this by using number of marketing channels and automates the tasks.

2.    Mobile Marketing:

Google has already stated mobile as an important ranking factor. Thus the mobile friendly website and applications have gain significance in recent years. Every year, Google search has been made extensively and half of it is done using mobile. With the help of expanded text ads, Adwords are gaining importance and is about to become first advertising platform on mobile.

Everything done on a website, from content creation to display ads, it is necessary to incorporate mobile standards. You can always consider working with a digital marketing agency if you are low in resources as the digital marketing company can really help in boosting the sales of your products and services with the help of latest digital marketing campaigns.

3. Website Security

Earlier this month, Yahoo suffered a security breach that affected more than one billion of its user accounts. A security breach of this size should serve as a reminder of just how critical it is to ensure that your website is secure in 2018. We provide our clients with server-level monitoring for maximum security.

As scammers become more adept at stealing sensitive information, phishing scams are also on the rise  The Anthem medical data breach of 2015 was one of the largest data breaches in American history, and it caused by a phishing scam that targeted Anthem employees. Today’s scammers will go to great lengths to separate you from your money or access your customer data. In our blog post, Lessons Learned From Scamming a Scammer, you can see just how far scammers are willing to go to get what they want.

In 2015, Google announced that it uses HTTPS encryption and SSL certificates as a ranking factor. This means that websites with HTTPS or SSL certificate will be given priority in Google search engine rankings over websites that don’t. Many online shoppers won’t even buy from websites that don’t have SSL certificates, because they’re afraid of having their credit card information stolen. If you haven’t already done so, your company should definitely make the switch to HTTPS in 2017.

We offer SSL certificates, website security audits, employee training about the dangers of phishing scams and other common threats to your website security.

4.    Quality Content:

Anything posted on social media has to be a part of a thoughtful marketing plan. There will be a larger appetite for quality content in 2017 as social media also only favors relevant content. The customers are always looking for a unique, fresh approach to their problem and thus a customized experience is to be created to speak to the audience.

The realistic goals can be established and documented through an effective digital marketing plan. Internet now consumes more content and less advertising.

5. Paid Search Advertising

As the effectiveness of paid search advertising continues to grow, more companies are realizing that it’s something they need to do to stay competitive. Popular paid search advertising networks like Google AdWords, Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads offer advanced audience targeting features that allow companies to target their customers like never before. This prevents your ad dollars from being wasted on irrelevant audiences and helps to ensure that your ads are in front of the right prospect at the right moment.

We can set up your paid search ad campaigns to only target users who meet your specific demographic and geographic customer data, or campaigns that only remarket/retarget your ads to people who have visited or made a purchase from your website. Using paid search advertising to target in-market segments of prospective customers who are actively researching and comparing your products or services to your competitors is an efficient and cost-effective digital marketing strategy.

However, with advanced targeting capabilities comes increased complexity. Many companies do what they can to limit their ad spend and reach their customers, but paid search ad campaign are the most effective when they’re being managed and optimized by ad experts. Paid search ad specialists know how to research your competitors and;are able to tell you whether or not your competitors are doing paid search advertising and how much they are spending. They can even tell you which keywords your competitors are advertising for and which ads they are running so you can maximize the effectiveness of your paid search ad campaigns and increase your return on investment.

As a Google Partner that is also AdWords certified, we can optimize your paid search campaigns in accordance with Google best practices and setup or manage Bing, Google, Facebook and LinkedIn ad campaigns to achieve your marketing objectives and increase your ROI.

The digital world is a crowded place. Marketers are clamouring to have their voice heard. On top of this, the concentration span of customers is diminishing. How, as a start-up, can you get your voice heard? Ian Cowley gives some tips.

The digital world is a crowded place. Marketers are clamouring to have their voice heard. On top of this, the concentration span of customers is diminishing. How on earth, as a start-up can you get your voice heard?

In my experience, you need to develop an arsenal of digital marketing tips and tactics that together help you claim a space. Here are our top five tactics to consider when you look at your digital strategies.

Mix of platforms: social, PR and search

We purposely use a variety of marketing techniques including social media, PR,  search and online digital hubs, because we know that customers no longer make decisions based on seeing one advert on a single platform.

Instead, customers pass through a purchasing funnel en route to conversion: from awareness to consideration; research to validation. It’s really important that your own online presence supports customer behaviour.

For example, we use PR to drive awareness through news of our charity work. Social media then kicks in to promote added-value content, just like crafty Christmas, to build trust with potential customers and educate on our brand values.

As they then progress to research, we have a raft content that shows we are experts in our field, such as printer reviews. Then, we use customer review sites like Trustpilot to offer validation through peer feedback.

This is a very simplistic breakdown of the marketing work we do. The reality is each means of marketing we employ supports every step of the customer’s process. But the above example offers an insight into supporting customer behaviour.

Influencer marketing

Peer and influencer endorsement is becoming more and more important. Today’s shoppers are looking for authentic voices they can trust. As cynicism grows, they feel a recommendation from a trusted peer is more credible than a message from a brand.

We’ve all heard of vlogger Zoella who is now commanding thousands of pounds to review a brand’s product, such is her superstardom status among Generation Y consumers.

However, you don’t necessarily need to pay influencers.

For example in 2013 we launched a crafty Christmas campaign. We wanted to encourage the ‘at home’ market, largely made of families, to print by directing them to fun, Christmas-inspired activity like ‘how to make’ advent calendars, cards and garlands.

The idea being that families who visited our site for free content would then buy printer cartridges when their ink ran out.

However, to help spread the word, we identified a selection of influential family bloggers and challenged them with a Christmas cracker competition.

The results were amazing. Every blogger enticed by the chance to win the title of ‘best design’, wrote at least one blog and posted a social media post telling their readers and friends about our crafty Christmas hub.

Through this tactics, we reached a total of 15,600 additional potential customers.

Moment marketing

Do you remember in January when a puddle in the North East went viral? #DrummondPuddleWatch trended internationally when some locals used Periscope to live stream members of the public attempting to get around it.

What was interesting, for me, was how many brands jumped in on the conversation.

For example Domino’s Pizza tweeted ‘delivering to a puddle near you’, Lidl used it as an opportunity to push their welly specialbuy posting a product shot with the caption ‘Always be sure to have proper puddle-traversing footwear when you’re out and about!’, and Hunter reminded customers that they’d been ‘helping you cross puddles since 1856’.

All effectively asserted their voice in the trending conversation through witty comments, that used the dedicated hashtag, and added to the commentary.

This was a brilliant example of moment marketing: the process of reacting quickly and cleverly to real time events.

It’s a tactic we use regularly via social media. For example, our higher purpose is to get people to print what matters and books are the best example of this.

Therefore on World Book Day we launched a competition via Facebook offering customers a chance to win £100 Waterstones vouchers, tagging posts with the official World Book Day hashtag.

This competition was the most engaged and shared in March and reached 60,000 potential customers, three times the size of our Facebook community.

By jumping on the opportunity presented by a much-loved national day, we got our brand in front of a new raft of customers, while reinforcing a key message to our current community.

Video

Video is tipped to become much bigger in 2016. More and more is being consumed through social media and its no coincidence that YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine after Google.

The trick is to create content that people actually want to share. Brands are often going wrong because they are making videos like TV programmes.

But TV programmes, rely on your passivity. When it comes to video content, you want people to take action. So forget long introductions, cutaways and instead focus on authentic content.

A great recent example was the record-breaking mattress domino. It wasn’t slickly produced but it was shared worldwide, purely because you had to see it to believe it.

Not only did Aaron’s Inc get international acclaim for the event but they communicated a very important key message for the company: that they were raising money for a homeless charity.

They communicated the fact they had heart and soul. Which we know is a huge motivator for customers. Customers want to purchase from brands that are like them; brands that care.

Email marketing

Email marketing still has its place. It’s not as trendy as social media or video but it is not subject to the whims of Google and Facebook, which have the ability to minimise your online presence through penalties and algorithm updates.

If you have a database, you can start conversations with customers directly. The only obstacle is the content itself. You have to send out emails that engage.

Investing in tools like dotmailer will help. Not only will it help automate and personalise mass emails but it will be help you analyse what’s working and what isn’t by tracking open rates and responses.

Digital Marketing Tips for Small Business. One great advantage of digital marketing for small businesses is that this type of marketing can be very cost-effective. Return on investment is often much higher than with more traditional forms of marketing.

Let’s look at the ways you can grow your passion and become a better digital marketer, so your own “orchestra” sounds less like an elementary school band.

1. Learn to leverage the data.

There’s a lot of talk about the importance of “big data.” But it’s not about the data itself. It’s how you use it: You have to know how to become an analyst so you’re doing more than just regurgitating numbers.

The problem is, the landscape changes so fast that the idea of analyzing data makes some marketers weak in the knees. But analysis is what is needed. It’s rare to find a marketer who understands and lives just by the numbers.

If you’re not a numbers person, that’s okay. At least recognize the importance of creating and revising strategies by the numbers — then partner with someone who is your “numbers guy.”

2. Get involved in paid social advertising.

The gold rush on “likes” and “follows” is quieting. The free global reach is still there, but social channels like Facebook now have so much data they can sell it back to businesses, and those businesses get to benefit. Research, in fact, shows that social ad spending will hit $25 billion in 2016, with Facebook getting a huge slice.

The social media giant is winning in that regard because social ads, done well, can be extremely effective due to Facebook’s focused targeting.

Make yourself a better marketer by improving your social ad skills:

• Learn more about granular targeting and how to customize your audiences.
• Understand how to deep dive into Facebook insights.
• Learn more about testing how creative images can improve the performance of boosted/sponsored content.

3. Get the most out of email marketing.

Social media is a great tool for brand awareness and engagement, but your most loyal and committed prospects and customers want to keep in touch via email. Email has grown into a complex marketing tool that delivers serious results.

Niche targeting and list segmentation, split testing and analyzing metrics, like bounce, open and click through rates, are powerful tools that are often underestimated. The result is that a lot of marketers and businesses come up short, so you can benefit by being the expert.

4. Do more visual marketing.

There’s enough research available to tell us that people engage better with visual content, from stand-alone images to video, infographics, animated GIFs used in social and images placed within blog content.

Thirty-five percent of marketers in one study selected visual assets as their most important content and 65 percent of senior marketing executives said they believed visual assets were key to how their brand story was communicated. That’s because content with relevant images gets 94 percent more views than content without relevant images.

Learn how to use visuals to make your campaigns more successful.

5. Become a better content marketer.

Content is the foundation for all marketing. It’s why search was created in the first place. When content is done well, and you’re delivering superior value to your audience, you’ll see an increase in engagement, leads, sales and overall organic visibility.

But good content isn’t always easy to produce. The most important components you’ll need to learn and understand are:

• How to create a documented content marketing strategy
• How to create really awesome “10x” content (content 10 times better than that of your competitors)
• The best ways to promote your content
• What kind of content your audience wants.

Start with those skills to build your content marketing strength and become a better digital marketer.

6. Get your hands on more technology.

There are new apps and software services coming out all the time. Some recycle the same features; others innovate within their space. A good digital marketer knows to continually expand his or her tool box with new technology tools to better manage the work and improve the results. Popular tools include:

• Hootsuite
• Buffer
• Google Analytics
• Quuu
• HubSpot
• Aweber
• AdRoll
• SproutSocial
• Unbounce
• CrazyEgg
• Moz (just to name a few)

Getting familiar with tools and platforms like those listed here will make you an asset in digital marketing and will better serve you, as well as your clients/employer.

7. Dig into social media marketing.

Organic social engagement is the other side of the coin from social media; and it has a lot of moving parts. Success comes from understanding the functionality of different social networks, which ones to focus on, what goals to apply to different networks, which tactics will help achieve those goals, where your audience members spend their time and the best types of content to use to inspire engagement.

If you’re marketing for your own business, you don’t need to leverage them all to find success. If you’re marketing for others, it’s best to build your experience with a variety of platforms. The more skilled you are with social media marketing, the more value you bring to the table for clients or employers.

Remember that no matter what the platform, knowing your audience and understanding how to engage them comes before all else.

Conclusion

The skills you need can seem like a long list, but getting better at digital marketing is a journey, not a sprint. Prioritize what is most relevant to you first and start building your experience in each area, using some of the recommended resources above.

Set goals and begin working through them. The only way to become a better digital marketer is to start working on it today.

If digital is a big part of your business, then you’d be familiar with terms like link building, content marketing, social media marketing etc. These are umbrella terms covering a number of marketing techniques that can really up your game.

But knowing this alone is insignificant if you don’t know how to make the most of each technique with new and interesting tactics. So let’s walk through some techniques that can increase the effectiveness of your online marketing. Here are tips to be a successful digital marketer.

1. Guest posting

While you may have heard arguments that guest blogging is being overused as a tool for link building, and losing value as a means of useful content deliverance, none can deny its effectiveness in the marketing world.

Guest blogging is here to stay, so you better make it part of your marketing strategy!

Ironically, the hardest part about guest posting is not the content creation; rather, it’s sourcing the blogs. Thankfully, the internet is a great place where you can find solutions to every problem imaginable.

ISDMMT is one solution to the ordeals of guest posting. It carries out a number of tasks for guest bloggers, such as:

• Prospecting links
• Keeping track of unique projects
• Keeping track of good links
• Analyzing results for you.

2. The Skyscraper Technique

As interesting as its sounds, the skyscraper technique requires that you find the tallest skyscraper content in your niche and improve it with stories of your own

Once you get going, you will realize the numerous ways you can edit and improve people’s content and make it so much more useful. Also, you will be amazed by the grand attention your content receives through the skyscraper method!

Here are three fairly easy steps to guide your way through the skyscraper technique:

• Dig out linkable assets – topics and content that are already faring well and earning laurels in the niche of your business.
• Make it better. You can make it longer, update it, better design it, and/or add more detail to it.
• Reach out to people to provide you backlinks. The website you choose should have already posted something relevant to your linkable asset, be part of your business niche, and should be ranking higher than your own.

3. The Moving Man Method

This relatively new term coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko has taken marketing agencies by surprise. The method is the marketing equivalent of revamping old clutter to create something way more useful than the original.

This marketing technique requires you to:

• Search for sites that share your market but have moved to a new URL, changed names, stopped offering services, stopped updating resources, or have completely shut down their online business.
• Produce content that is up-to-date, more powerful, and more relevant than what the defunct website had to offer.
• Access the hundreds of people still linking to the old website and ask if they would be interested in linking to your webpage in lieu of the defunct, outdated webpage.

Simple and witty, just like what we expect from marketers of the twenty-first century!

4. Internationalizing SEO

Internationalization is a method not too common but of great significance. You make your website/blog accessible to more people by offering it in languages of more than one country. Makes sense!

Offer translations of your website in multiple languages and localize words to get your fair share of an international audience.

5. Psychological techniques

Many times while implementing your marketing strategy, you will have to think like more than just as a marketer; you will have to think as a psychologist.

Understanding the psyche of your audience and creating content that they can actually relate to are skills possessed by only rare, true marketers. If you learn the art you can conquer the hearts and minds of your audience.

This psychological effect is sometimes created by the use of powerful words. Don’t hesitate or fall short of researching such power words within your niche as they can compel new customers to join your community.

The second strong psychological effect is that of social sharing and caring. Use social media sites and communication to your full advantage by being humanistic and generous in your approach. Connect with people and other companies as people. When they share your content, always remember to return the favor.

6. Increasing your website’s click-through-rate (CTR)

Increasing your CTR in search engines is a time tested method of improving search engine ranking for websites.

Business blogs and websites have been going through the struggle for a long time. However, it’s really not that hard if you have a systematic approach to it.

CTR can be increased fairly easily by:

• Wise keyword selection
• Quality content
• Eye-catching titles
• Comprehensive, engaging descriptions
• Prompt Calls-to-Action
• Using breadcrumbs in the URL
• A Table-of-Contents plugin
• Getting Google sitelinks

7. Sharing through LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn is a wonderful place to run into new businesses and clients, stir up conversations, offer deals, and market your products in the process. In order to provide value and engage in a conversation with members of your target audience, share content through LinkedIn groups.

• Comment on and share popular content
• Begin conversations by asking a question
• Post your own content (videos, blogs, Infographics, etc.) in the group

8. Innovative emails

Who hasn’t tried email marketing in order to address a wide audience? But the process and content of email marketing has become so monotonous and predictable that most companies usually get ignored by email recipients.

It’s about time we start getting innovative with email marketing;

• Instead of blindly sending your emails into the vast expanse on the internet, aim for specific people with certain interests. You can email all the people who tweeted about a certain product in your niche as an example.
• Long gone are the days of pesky looking emails. If you wish your emails to be read by recipients, design and compose them with grace and wit.
• Use less text and more compelling images in emails.

Learn from the geniuses, such as Dropbox which designed this sleek, beautiful email you just cannot ignore! These are the tips to be a successful and great digital marketer.

9. Innovative link building

There’s no point in trying to target and build connections with random websites which have no correlation to topics in your niche. You can better spend the effort on reasonable prospects. Companies employ a number of methods when trying to identify and reach to potential websites which can backlink to their content.

One such technique is email marketing to people who have backlinked to relevant content already. Get in touch with these websites which have established positions in the market. Break the ice with them and ask politely for a feature or two of your own website.

10. Using advertorials

Advertorials are the way forward in the present age of content marketing and promotion. They are unique and unlike traditional advertising because the content imitates editorial content but serves to fulfill the goals of a brand.

Following are ways to make advertorials advantageous for your brand:

• Find the right match of magazine/online publication for your advertorial.
• Make sure your advertorial is clearly labeled as ‘advertisement’ as per the FTC’s latest laws and guidelines, or else it may get banned.
• Remember, advertorials are more like blog posts. You don’t directly sell the product; you sell content related to your product.
• Don’t forget to share your advertorials on social media sites.

11. 301 redirects

Redirection is a process of sending both users and search engines to a URL different from what they requested. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which transfers almost all of the link juice to the new page.

A 301 redirect is the most preferable type of redirect because it indicates to browsers, search engine bots, and the users, that the page has been permanently moved. Search engines may take some time to discover your new page but once they do, they will take your new page to the same rankings where your former page stood.

Wrap

The 11 ways of making successful digital marketer and online marketing more effective are the latest and most responsive of their kind. However, online marketing is a long, on-going process which cannot be summed up in 20, let alone 11 techniques.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to monetize online content. While there are many true stories of Internet entrepreneurs amassing small fortunes by delivering high-converting referral leads to affiliate businesses, this relatively straight forward concept isn’t always as simple to execute as it appears.

To make the journey that little bit easier, here are five fundamental tips for prospective affiliate marketers:

1. Choose Your Niche

A common misstep of those new to affiliate marketing is to target a broad swath of the most popular and lucrative products and services, making it nearly impossible to generate enough relevant, sustainable traffic to consistently compete. You can get more traction when starting out by formulating your strategy around the type of content you are interested in and capable of producing, and then cultivating a comprehensive plan for promoting relatable, in-demand products within your niche.

In a world of increasingly effective search engine algorithms that have helped make quality content king of the Internet, the way to achieve long-term success is to become a trusted source of information and insight on topics that are a natural fit to refer to on an affiliate basis.

2. Generate Valuable Content

An effective affiliate marketing campaign shifts away from basic pay-per-click strategies by placing the focus on marketing content (rather than specific products) to a qualified targeted audience. The path to forging productive relationships online is through consistently delivering content loaded with information that your readers, viewers, listeners find relevant and engaging. It’s what first attracts an audience to your channel, compels them to keep coming back, and establishes a level of authority that helps consumers feel comfortable taking action on your affiliate links.

By giving your visitors information that supplies actionable takeaways and prepares them to make more informed purchasing decisions, you become a resource they will value, return to often, and share with their network of friends.

3. Cross-Channel Promote

While an essential component to a successful content strategy for affiliate marketing is to utilize online copywriting and SEO best practices to attract search traffic, few will be successful without the basic semblance of a cross-channel marketing campaign. The healthy flow of qualified traffic is the fuel that powers the affiliate marketing machine, and the best way to expand your reach, increase exposure, and forge deeper connections is through multi-channel engagement.

From building a communications list for direct email marketing, to promoting your content via social channels and online media outreach, the idea is to get all of your actions and efforts working in unison to build your audience and promote your brand.

4. Understand Your Legal Obligations

Modern marketers are compelled to pay close attention to legal guidelines that govern the way they conduct their business online. When it comes to affiliate marketing in particular, there are very specific areas of compliance that must be understood and adhered to in order to safely steer clear of federal violations.

While anyone participating in an affiliate marketing program (whether by simply linking to Amazon or providing comprehensive product mentions endorsements) should be thoroughly acquainted with the most current FTC regulations, it’s crucial to start by understanding that any entity involved in a compensated affiliate relationship must make full disclosure.

Smart affiliate marketers not only embrace the role regulations play in protecting the American consumer from misleading advertising, but also the opportunity disclosure provides for winning the trust and support of an audience. Let your visitors know that if they click on an affiliate link that it makes your website money, and also that you only give a positive review for products and brands that you would endorse for free.

5. Utilize Software Tools to Unlock Efficiency

By all accounts, it is the small details that ultimately tilt the scales of difficulty in running an affiliate marketing program. Entrepreneurs and online publishers just getting started should understand how software solutions such as Skimlinks not only reduce the workload of running campaigns by automating time-consuming details, but also provide insight and accuracy in efficiently monetizing your content.

Skimlinks instantly converts existing product and merchant links within your content into affiliate links, and it also locates and converts natural product references into links where your readers can purchase applicable items.

By connecting with a solution that helps link the right products to your website, blog, or even social media posts and supplies all the tools you need to track, analyze and optimize your affiliate relationships, you can turn on lucrative streams of revenue with seamless precision.

Final Thoughts

Affiliate marketing is an effective money-making strategy for countless online entities – however, as straightforward as it is in theory, success is rarely as easy as it looks. By choosing a sustainable long-term strategy, devoting resources to quality content production and promotion, understanding legal obligations, and optimizing with software solutions, you can position your affiliate marketing program on the path to success. Don’t lose hope. It will take time in earning money from affiliate marketing.

30 Tips for Great Digital Marketing