10 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch Out For in 2016 by @ChappyMargot | Dramel Notes

The year 2016 is upon us, which means sparkly clothing, champagne flutes, and a long list of soon-to-be-broken resolutions. Aside from all of your cliché New Year’s Eve traditions, many marketers are starting to forecast what’s to come in the world of digital.

So, as you tuck your ornaments away and toss the remainder of those cookies that are getting in the way of your waistline goals, check out this list of digital marketing trends that are on the up and up in 2016. The best way to beat your competition this year is to stay ahead of the digital curve, and this list will help you do just that.

#1: Social Ads

Online advertising has been rapidly on the rise this year, and in 2017 digital ad spend is predicated to finally surpass TV! According to Interpublic Group’s Magna Global, in 2015 digital ad spend will have grown 17.2% (to $160 billion), and 13.5% in 2016, surpassing TV as the biggest advertising platform in 2017.

With a big chunk of this digital spend being allocated to social advertising, this is a trend marketers cannot ignore in 2016. For instance, eMarketer predicts social network ad spending will reach $35.98 billion in 2017, which will make up 16% of all global digital ad spend.

So how should marketers’ best leverage social to gain traction on their competitors?

• Start by deciding which platforms are worth investing in for your audience. Are you selling beautifully crafted handmade blankets? Then visual platforms like Instagram and Pinterest may be the way to go. Are you in the B2B space? Facebook’s sophisticated targeting options could be a good option to hone in on your target audience.
• Test your posts organically and promote the winners. Don’t just randomly allocated budgets to blog posts that your teammate authored. Instead, promote the organic winners to up the performance even more.
• Utilize action-oriented ad formats. Think Twitter Lead Generation ads and Facebook Click to Website ads with call-to-action buttons. Encouraging people to do something instead of just promoting your social account will be a better use of your ad spend.

#2: Facebook Messenger for Business

In March of 2015, Facebook revealed Messenger for Business, taking the widely used messenger system that you and I utilize to communicate with our friends, spouses, and family members, and making it available for B2C and even B2B conversations.

With Facebook messenger’s user base topping over 700 million people each month, and experiencing 40% growth from 2014 to 2015 (according to Luxury Daily) it’s becoming clear that Messenger’s availability to businesses could have a significant impact.

Aside from the opportunity to provide personalized customer service interactions, marketers can leverage this new channel in a similar manner to email marketing. For instance, say you’re running a limited-time discount, you’ll be allowed to message in-market customers about specific promotions to encourage them to shop. You can also send push notifications and keep consumers updated on their order status with detailed messages.

Just last week Facebook announced businesses can also install a Facebook messenger box on their websites to utilize it in a similar manner as a website live chat box.

Facebook is clearly invested in the success of this platform, and with such widespread popularity businesses should be invested in it as well. In 2016, this tool will become more important in delivering the right messages to the right people at the right times.

#3: Podcasts

When I told my boss about this one, he rolled his eyes. Podcasts? Really? I was skeptical at first as well, until I started to think about how often I listen to NPR and This American Life on my walk or bus ride to work. Not to mention last fall when I (along with millions of other Americans) spent every spare moment listening to “Serial” the podcast series covering the 1999 murder of a young high school student.

Approximately 46 million Americans listen to podcasts monthly, and the average listener listens to six a week, according to Edison. Clearly, podcasts are on the rise, but how can marketers leverage these in 2016?

One way is to pay to play with ads. Starting your own podcast series might seem overwhelming, and rightfully so, but companies like Squarespace and Casper have leveraged ad space during breaks in programming on the most popular podcast programs like TED Radio Hour and “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me.”

Larger brands like GE and Netflix have recently launched their own podcast productions, and people are actually listening! Umpqua Bank launched a podcast series with MTV correspondent SuChin Pak that provides financial guidance, and the first three episodes have been downloaded over 70,000 times –  pretty impressive!

“Creating podcasts takes more work for small-business owners, but experts say they can be a powerful way to build customer loyalty,” says Dennis Nishi in the Wall Street Journal.

#4: Native Advertising

Ad blockers are the modern-day marketer’s worst online nightmare. Although ad blockers, which prevent ads from being shown on websites, are not “new,” they’ve been all over the headlines ever since Apple revealed the mobile operating systems powering iPhones and iPads, iOS 9, would now support these sneaky little ad killers.

Why the big fuss? Well, online advertising fuels the majority of websites across the Internet.

“Advertising represents $350 billion of the U.S. gross national product, and consumers depend on it to help make $9 trillion of annual spending decisions,” reports AdvertisingAge. “Some websites, particularly those with millennial audiences, are already losing up to 40% of their ad revenue because of ad blocking.”

Whether or not ad blockers will affect you in 2016, the numbers show that it’s worth putting in place preventative measures to ensure your advertising goals are not ripped to shreds. This is where native advertising comes into play.

Since native ads look, read, and feel like non-promotional content, ad blocking technology does not prevent them from displaying. Native ads have already been trending, but with more ad blocking panic setting in, these babies should become an essential part of your digital marketing strategy in 2016.

#5: Personalized PPC

One-third of marketers see personalization as the most important capability to the future of marketing, according to an Adobe study. We also just happen to live a world where the Internet knows more about you then the coworker sitting two feet away from you.

For the last several years, paid search has been all about targeting the right set of keywords to find people who may or may not be in-market for your products or solutions, but this strategy has a lot of flaws. From generating irrelevant clicks and site visits, PPC can become quite expensive if your keyword strategy isn’t flawless. Even if you’re targeting the most relevant set of keywords, your volume might be so low that you’re not reaching nearly enough searchers to generate new business.

If Google knows so much about each and every searcher, why is it so hard for advertisers to find the right audience? For one, Google prides itself on protecting searcher information, but it also knows what advertisers want, which is why Google introduced Customer Match in September 2015. Customer Match allows you to upload a list of contacts you already have and target them through search. This feature is also available on Facebook and Twitter, and is essentially making search and social become more like email marketing by serving ads to people who are within a certain stage of your purchase funnel.

For instance, let’s say you captured a list of emails from a recent webinar on healthcare software. You can then target these people on Google, Twitter, or Facebook with relevant offers. In 2016, PPC will likely become more and more personal, which is why marketers must start utilizing these new features, like Customer Match, to connect with their prospects and customers at the right time with messages catered to them.

#6: Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is nothing new. As a $5.5 billion industry, marketers have clearly come to understand the importance of utilizing automation to save time and improve productivity. Here at WordStream, we’d need to double the size of our team if we didn’t have automation in place. From scheduling emails, segmenting contacts, automating social media, and managing content, automation has allowed us to grow, reach, and exceed our goals quarter after quarter.

So why is this a trend for 2016? Many companies still fall short of implementing a robust marketing automation system that actually works. 2016 is the year when marketers need to dive in, identify gaps in their sales and marketing funnels, and form an automation strategy to make their jobs easier and their goals more attainable.

#7: Videos

A few nights ago I spent a good two hours watching 30 second videos of speed recipes on Instagram. Now, whenever I scroll through any of my social feeds, I’m bound to watch one, two, three or more videos, with or without sound. I notice companies of all sizes utilizing video, from the small mom-and-pop shop in South Dakota to companies in the tech space like Moz and Unbounce to huge brands like Hallmark, video marketing is hot, hot, hot!

A huge chunk of ad spend is also being allocated to video. Yahoo even took it to a whole other level when they recently tested a full-screen sized auto-play video ad, which engulfed the entire search engines results page!

Videos help businesses entertain and engage their audiences through visuals, colors, sounds and/or music. More importantly, videos often humanize a faceless business, in turn building brand loyalty and trust. What could be more intriguing and unforgettable then a remarkable video? According to a study by the Web Video Marketing Council, 96% of B2B marketers are using video in their content strategy.

“Marketers have learned that video is good for more than attracting attention,” says Tyler Lessard, CMO of Vidyard. “It enriched the customer journey at all stages, and it is more effective than other content at converting buyers.”

In 2016, marketers should watch out for an explosion in video marketing and analytics. If marketers aren’t already producing and tracking video performance, the time is now!

#8: Mobile (again)

It’s the year of mobile! Wait, wasn’t 2015 the year of mobile? And 2014, 2013, and 2012 for that matter? Yup, we’re all sick of hearing that phrase uttered – we get it already. But, to be fair, 2015 really did prove that mobile is exploding, from Google’s announcement that mobile has surpassed desktop to “Mobilegeddon,” the algorithm change that forced SEOs to optimize their sites for mobile at lightning-fast pace.

Our iPhones have become an additional limb. I recently left mine for 10 minutes in the seat of an airplane and it felt like I’d lost my best friend. So, what does this mean for marketers in 2016? Mobile will remain on the forefront and only continue to trump desktop, so marketers will be need to continue building out robust mobile marketing strategies.

#9: Wearables

Technology wrapped around your wrist and in your hoodie? Is that really necessary? Indeed it is. As devices continue to rule our world, wearable technology is predicted to see an adoption rate of 28% in 2016, according to HubSpot.

What does this mean for marketers? More data on every move your target buyer is making. The internet of things will continue to become more and more important to marketers in 2016.

#10: Buy Buttons

E-commerce and retail marketers listen up! Buy buttons have slowly been appearing on social sites like Pinterest and Twitter. In July, Google also confirmed its testing its own buy button. The ability to buy directly from a social site or search engine is going to explode in 2016, and e-commerce marketers need to keep up! While some don’t like the idea due to a loss of branding and fear that Google and social sites are attempting to become a retailers themselves, the buy button is upon us and serves as another means of increasing conversions, specifically those on mobile.

“While mobile commerce grew more than three times as quickly as commerce on desktop websites in the first quarter, the percentage of people who go on to buy something after clicking an ad is lower on phones than on desktops,” says Re/code’s Joshua Del Ray. “But if you let someone buy a product directly from the ad on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or Google – through, say, a Buy button – the thinking is that conversion rate will improve. And when conversion rates improve, advertisers buy more ads.”

Whether you like it or not, the buy button will continue to grow in popularity in 2016 so marketers must adapt.

These top ten trends are just scratching the surface of what’s to come in 2016, but one thing is for certain — the digital space will continue to grow, innovate, and amaze our marketing minds.

 

Image Credits

Features Image: Image by Margot da Cunha
In-post Photo: Image by Margot da Cunha
All screenshots by Margot da Cunha. Taken December 2015.

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6 Soft Skills that Today’s SEO Should Possess by @neilpatel | Dramel Notes

It’s cliché to say that SEO is a changing field.

By now, we all know that. Google’s world-dominating algorithm adjusts multiple times a day. Major algorithm updates make national headlines and spawn cottage industries and strategy shifts.

What’s the obvious response to the ever-changing nature of SEO?

The easy answer is this: Learn the new skills that are required to succeed.

But there’s another, deeper answer. SEO isn’t just about the technical skills. It’s also about the soft skills.

For both agency and in-house SEOs, soft skills are essential. I intend to explain the what, why, and how of soft skills in SEO.

What are Soft Skills?

First, let me define soft skills.

The simple definition is this: “Personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.”

Soft skills are the personal qualities of the SEO, and they translate into how effective or ineffective the SEO is at managing and interacting in a professional environment.

Hard skills, on the other hand, have to do with SEO’s specific training, experience, and technical acumen. They may include things like creating meta-tags, mapping URLs, developing a content calendar, or improving site speed.

Soft skills are completely removed from the analytical data-driven repertoire of the SEO’s technical capabilities. Soft skills are focused on people, behavior, and interpersonal situations.

Soft skills are so much a part of a job that some employers view them as the yang to the hard skills’ yin.

From a neuroscientific standpoint, this very well may be true. The conventional bifurcation of right brain/left brain thinking does an adequate job of differentiating soft skills from hard skills.

Left brain thinking involves logic, analysis, facts—the SEO’s ability to parse data, configure robots.txt, and analyze ranking factors. Right brain thinking involves persuading the content team to implement longtail keywords, and explaining to the development team the importance of minifying CSS to improve site speed.

Most employers look for soft skills, whether they are explicit about it or not. As an example of this, I searched “SEO jobs,” and clicked on the first result that came up from Indeed.com.

The application is standard and straightforward. The agency needs an individual who is adept at paid search technology and strategy.

However, the job posting is replete with understated references to soft skills. I skimmed through the bullet points and identified the need for a candidate who is driven, strategic, a leader, a communicator, curious, a learner, and an educator.

A Federal Employment agency study of job openings in the IT industry found that job postings were filled with soft skills.

Obviously, soft skills are critical. But why?

More specifically, why are soft skills important for SEOs?

Why Are Soft Skills Important for SEOs?

Hard skills are the skills and abilities that enable the SEO to do the job, but soft skills enable them to get the job done. In other words, the SEO can’t effectively do their job unless they possess the right soft skills.

You’ve probably heard of the concept of the T-shaped marketer. The idea is that every successful marketer should possess a broad array of skills, but go deep in a particular area.

In any given SEO agency, you may find an individual who is really good at technical SEO. Perhaps this person also dabbles in social media marketing, video, blogging, and email marketing. Nevertheless, her primary skill is technical SEO and its attendant tasks, but she has an awareness of the other essential areas of marketing.

The T-shaped concept is really helpful, but it only focuses on technical skills. Behind this T-shaped marketer is an entire halo of important skills. They are less objective, more intuitive, and no less important.

These are the soft skills of the SEO. Although we can and should identify our T, and the T of those we hire, it’s also important to be aware of all the soft skills that go into allowing the person to thrive.

Here are some of the concrete reasons why SEOs should possess soft skills:

• To coordinate: Many agency SEOs have the important task of getting various departments to work together. Unless you get your dev team talking to your creative team talking to your design team, while all talking to you, you’ll get nowhere fast.
• To learn: This article opened up with the statement that SEO is constantly changing. The field, by its nature, demands SEOs keep pace with the change, and continually upgrade our knowledge and skills. We can’t rely on last year’s strategy to make an impact this year.
• To adapt: Adaptability is key. Pivoting from a defunct strategy to an innovative new channel is part of the fun and confusion of being an SEO.
• To educate: A lot of people still don’t “get” SEO. The SEO’s job is more than doing. It’s also explaining. Whether you need to explain responsive design to the CEO or the importance of site speed to the designer, you’ll constantly be in teaching mode.
• To persuade clients to act: As Grant Cardone wrote, “We’re all selling, all the time, whether we know it or not.” Selling requires persuasion. Perhaps you need to persuade the client to purchase your services. Perhaps you need to persuade the client to implement your advice. Perhaps you just need to persuade your boss that content marketing is indeed important. Whatever the case, persuasion — a soft skill — is required to make SEO work.

In a nutshell, the SEO needs soft skills in order to succeed. It’s just that simple.

In one study by Right Management, nearly 1,000 professionals were asked about the factors that lead to “accelerated performance.”

You would think they would pick things like “experience,” “knowledge,” and “skills.” Those were indeed part of the overall picture of success, but not the predominant parts.

The biggest components of success — 78% — had to do with soft skills.

Even If you possess the world’s deepest and most advanced SEO knowledge, you’ll be ineffective in an agency or business if you don’t have honed soft skills.

So, let’s talk about those soft skills.

What Soft Skills Should an SEO Have?

1. Persuasiveness

An SEO who is a skilled persuader will be a powerful force in any organization.

SEO requires persuasion on many levels. You may need to persuade skeptical customers to purchase your services, or skeptical executives to implement your strategy.

2. Adaptability/Flexibility

I can’t emphasize this point enough. Adaptation to industry changes and flexibility to bend marketing strategies are a regular part of the SEO’s job.

Take a look at what SEO used to be versus what it is now.

How much time has passed since the “old SEO?” Just a few years. How much adaptability have SEOs had to embrace the mean time? A whole lot!

A 2014 survey of marketing soft skills identified “the ability to embrace change” and “adapt strategies quickly” as the top two skills.

The field of marketing is always changing. But the field of SEO is particularly affected by this constant change. SEOs, as players in the most change-vexed field of marketing, must be highly flexible.

3. Patience

SEO doesn’t produce instant change.

Sure, there may be some rapidly indexed pieces of content, and some quick wins due to some optimization, but overall, SEO demands a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race approach.

While it is true that SEO rapidly evolves, it is also true that consistent gains require a substantial amount of time.

Google’s algorithm has shown us that it is quick to punish sites (you could drop out of the ranks overnight), but slow to reward sites (gaining a few positions in the search results takes months).

What this means is that SEOs should possess the soft skill of patience.

4. Strategy

SEOs should learn to embrace all of marketing, not just their own niche of SEO.

SEO is a very narrow slice of the great big marketing world. SEOs need to integrate disparate strategies, approaches, and methods in order to make a meaningful impact.

UpCity’s Guide to Hiring a Professional SEO paints a picture of the SEO as someone who can integrate different types of marketing into a strategic whole.

How can we define an integrated approach? An integrated approach views SEO as part of the digital marketing milieu. SEO is a marketing methodology, and it must interact with other methods such as paid search, content marketing, branding, PR, and social media. ‘Strategy’ runs the risk of being a buzzword. Nonetheless, an overall strategic vision is critical. SEOs with a strategic mindset can better adapt to the integrated approach discussed above.

The greater amount of strategy the SEO possesses, the more successful they will be.

5. Curiosity

SEOs should be curious.

Why? Because there are constantly new strategies to learn, new techniques to investigate, and new data to learn from. A high degree of curiosity will enable the SEO to successfully understand more about their job and how to improve.

6. Team Player

Even though “team player” is last on my list, it’s one of the first soft skills that an SEO should possess.

What do I mean by “team player?” A team player is someone who can easily interact with, enjoy, and provide value to his or her team members.

Why is this so crucial in SEO?

Here’s why: SEO is no longer the realm and responsibility of one person in an organization (an in-house organization); nor is SEO a single department in a marketing agency.

SEO is everywhere. SEO has wormed its way into everything tech and marketing — mobile, content, paid search, UX, design, personalization, customer personas, conversion rate optimization, split testing, user testing, coding, everything.

SEO is also an imperative for any type of business — local, global, or anything in between. From legal agencies to manufacturing behemoths, SEO plays a role in the business’s success and survival.

Keith Goode, the Chief SEO Evangelist at seoClarity, calls this the “democratization of SEO.” As he explains, “SEO [is] embedded into the fabric of your organization.”

The SEO’s role becomes intensively team-focused, since the SEO must both train people, and then have those individuals champion the cause of SEO.

SEO needs to be backed by an alliance of knowledgeable individuals within the organization who understand SEO’s principles, and realize SEO’s value in the overall success of the company.

What does this require? It requires the SEO be a team player.

Conclusion

Each SEO has a unique blend of technical skills. In the same way, each SEO has a unique blend of soft skills.

If every SEO had the same soft skills to the same degree, the world of marketing would be boring and predictable.

As you assess your own soft skills and those of the SEOs around you, you’ll see a huge variety. Whatever kinds of unique approaches, abilities, and idiosyncrasies you identify, you’ll no doubt see the importance of soft skills.

What soft skills do you think are important for SEOs to possess?

 

Image Credits

Featured Image: Pressmaster/Shutterstock.com
All screenshots by Neil Patel. Taken November 2015.

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How to Make Your Own Christmas Card in Photoshop | Dramel Notes

Generic Christmas cards are boring. They’re all trite messages, clichéd pictures, and cheesy greetings. If you want to have a really interesting Christmas card, you need to make your own.

Luckily, it’s never been easier to do this sort of thing yourself — and I’m here to make it even easier. In this article I’m going to walk you through making your own card.

Prerequisites

To create my Christmas card I’m using Photoshop but any good image editing app will do. PC users can try Paint.NET, while Mac users should check out Pixelmator. There are plenty of Linux alternatives but I’ve never used any.

This project is really simple but the more familiar you are with Photoshop the easier you’ll find it. Our designer Bohed (who does all the wonderful article images) put together a four part Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop which you should check out first.

• An Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop, Part 1: Easy Photoshop
• An Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop, Part 2: Useful Tools & Tips
• An Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop, Part 3: Pro Tips
• An Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop, Part 4: Advanced Features and Fun Photo Effects

Step One: Decide What Kind of Card to Make

Most home printers aren’t able to print a nice Christmas card — they can’t handle heavy card and are rarely able to produce vibrant color — so the first thing to do is decide how you’re going to get your card printed; this will determine what kind of card you can make. In the past I’ve used two major options, a local printing shop to create a proper Hallmark-style, double-sided card and the FujiFilm print kiosks you find in drug stores to make postcard style cards.

The proper cards require more work and take time to get printed while a postcard can be put together and printed in an afternoon. You also need to place minimum orders with print shops so if you only want a few cards, photo printing will be a lot cheaper.

Decide what kind of card you want to make. If you’re going with a professionally printed card, contact your local printer and ask them for their Photoshop templates. These will ensure that what you design will be printed correctly. For a regular card there will be two templates, one for the outside and one for the inside. Each template is different so follow the instructions that come with it.

For a postcard style card, just use a 6″x4″ Photoshop document and save the image as a JPG. You’ll be able to print it from any kiosk.

For this article, I’m using a very simple template for a double sided card. Either open your template or create a new 6″x4″ Photoshop document to begin.

Step Two: Placing Your Image

With the document open, it’s time to add the image you want to use for the card. If you’re printing a folding card half the document will be the front and half the document will be the back. You only want to place the image in the front half of the document.

Go to File > Place Embedded and then select your chosen photo to add it to the document. Position it so it covers the full front of the card. You may need to crop or mask your image for this to work.

And yes, I’m using a selfie. Selfies are the best.

Step Three: Adding a Border

Next, I want to add a red, Christmassy border to the image. To do that I’m going to use the Marquee tool. Create a new Layer and then select the Marquee tool from the tool bar or press the M key.

With the Marquee tool, drag a selection around the front half of the card. The marching ants will show you what has been selected. If you’re using a template, there should be a guide to help you position your selection.

With that done, from the menubar go to Select > Modify > Contract.

Make sure “Apply effect at canvas bounds is checked” and enter a value of around 50 pixels.

Now we have selected the interior of the selection. We want to select the exterior. From the Select menu, choose Inverse to do just that. When you do, however, you’ll notice that the back of the card is now selected. To deselect the back of the card while keeping the border area selected, use the Marquee tool while holding down the Alt or Option key. Rather than selecting this removes from a selection.

You should now have a crisp 50 pixel border around the edge of the front of the card. To fill it, choose a color by double clicking on the front color swatch in the bottom left corner.

With the color picker, choose a nice red or green, and then select Fill from the Edit menu.

Make sure Contents says Foreground Color and then press OK.

Step Four: Adding the Text

Your Christmas card should be beginning to take shape. Next, it’s time to add the message on the front of the card. Use the Type Tool which can be selected by pressing the T key.

Add your message. I just went with “Happy Christmas”.

To position it where you want on the card use the move tool which you can grab with the V key.

Step Five: Adding Snowflakes

To finish the front of the card I want to add some snowflakes to really bring home the Christmas theme. I’m using this set from Brusheezy user hawksmont.

If you want to use them to, download the ZIP file, unzip it, and double-click on the abr file to load them into Photoshop.

Press B to select the brush and then from the Brush Presets Panel select one of your recently added snowflakes. Add a new layer and then click anywhere in the image to add them. Be careful not to paint over the important details!

That’s the front of my card done but you can play around and at as much or as little as you want.

Step Six: Finishing the Card

If you’re creating a Hallmark style card you also need to add your message to the inside.

Open the card inside template you’re using and, with the same techniques, add whatever you want.

You should also clean up any remaining template elements. If you’re using a well designed template they should be in a single group and easy to delete all at once. If not, you’ll need to delete them one by one.

When the card is ready it’s time to get it printed. If you used templates, save your work and send it off to the printers, they’ll know what to do. If you made a card you can print from a photo kiosk, save your work as a full resolution JPG and put it on a memory stick. It’ll now print like any other photo.

Wrapping Up

Creating your own Christmas card is a lot of fun. It’s a great way to send your friends and family a personalized holiday message. It doesn’t matter if you put a family photo, a picture of your dog, or just a silly message on the front, they’ll know it’s from you.

I’d love to see what kind of Christmas cards MakeUseOf’s readers can come up with. If you follow my instructions in this article, please share your results in the comments.

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