Digital Marketing

When you ask a professional handling social media accounts for a business about the most difficult part of their job, they would most probably quote “coming up with new ideas.”

Social media marketers are expected to juggle multiple accounts for multiple businesses and keep each stream fresh and updated. The same posts cannot be recycled as it poses the risk of making the social media pages look stagnant.

Let’s face it, we have all hit a creative block somewhere down the line, not knowing what to post next on social media.

It is definitely not a simple task to come up with fresh ideas for social post content, yet it is imperative to be consistent in posting valuable posts.

Understanding the difficulty involved, we at Digital X have curated a list of ideas for social media content that you can use when you face a roadblock!

Post About Your Workspace

Give your followers a view of your workspace, or if your handling another business’s social media account, give their followers a snapshot of that company’s workspace. You can keep the image minimalistic or take a wide view of the office and include your colleagues in the picture. Such posts build trust with your followers and will help convert prospects to your customers.

Create A Series

Create a weekly series or even a monthly one. This will keep your followers intrigued and looking forward to the next post in line. The series could be interactive and revolve around trending, current topics that the audience is eager to know about. You can work on the series based on the audience’s reactions. Actively engaging with the audience shows them that you care and this, in turn, helps build trust. A series is a good start for your posts to show up on their feed.

Post About Your Pets

You can get creative with your pet posts and this one usually comes along easily. Take adorable pictures of furry animals and use quirky taglines. Such posts capture people’s attention and keep them interested in your social posts. You sure can expect an influx of likes, comments and shares with such pet posts.

Run A Giveaway Or Contest

Running a contest or giveaway is sure to bring in interaction from the target audience. The word ‘free’ has a magnetic force about it. 

Although this is one of the most impactful methods to engage the target audience, it should be implemented occasionally and not frequently as it would lose its power, plus one cannot afford so many giveaways from a business perspective.

Here is a list of thing you require to run a giveaway contest:

• The giveaway product/service
• Point of contact after the contest
• Terms and conditions for the contest
• An engaging way to participate in the contest that benefits your business4

Opt For Social Media Takeovers

Changing the shade of your social media feed will help gain more followers and increase engagement. Allow someone else, an influencer or another person you admire, to take over your social media. This will bring about an air of freshness to your stream. 

Handing over the social media account to the other person for a period of 24 hours or for even an entire week is how social media takeovers function. The person taking over the account will create content from their own perspectives, include their styles and methods and give your account a spin.

Repost, Retweet And Reshare

It serves good to remember that not every content piece on your social media feed should be generated by you. Promoting other brands, which add some relevance to your target audience or complements your business offerings, helps with keeping your social media page alive. Resharing posts will show your audience that you are keeping yourself up-to-date with the industry and it also helps build a follower base.

Quotes

Use relatable quotes. Use quirky quotes. Use motivating quotes. Ensure the design doesn’t steal the attention, but the quote stands out to the reader. The design could be minimalistic with the text as the focal point. Thought-proving quotes have an inspirational effect on the readers and this makes them revisit your post or social media page in general.

Showcase How-To Tutorials

Such videos that help explain how to perform a specific task adds great value to the audience. With clear and concise video tutorials that takes a step-by-step approach and remains to the point, you can expect your posts to be reshared and can even see an increase in the number of likes.

These ideas should keep your social media pages active enough. You could use trending topics and latest news to generate content based on any one of the ideas mentioned above. The key is to get creative with what you have. 

Another practice that helps is taking notice of other brands’ social media accounts. Look at what they bank upon and how they manage to keep their page active and alive. 

Which idea are you going to implement first?

Do digital marketers throw around the words ‘landing page’ when they talk about lead generation for your business? Do you understand what a landing page is and how it can generate relevant leads?

Here is everything you need to know about landing pages and how they work.

What Are Landing Pages?

The term landing page can be taken in its literal sense – the first page where visitors land, upon reaching your website. A landing page is created to help convert your website visitors to quality leads. The page provides means to capture visitor email Ids and essentially, these captured Ids would belong to quality leads who have a genuine interest in your product or service offering. 

A landing page is different from other website pages in that:

• It includes a form that allows capturing of visitor information in exchange for an offer made such as a newsletter subscription.
• Its sole objective is to generate leads by converting visitors; whereas another page on the website such as the ‘About’ page serves the purpose of explaining the business and giving out other information as well. 
• The landing page will not have any navigation buttons other than to submit details such as name and mail Ids.

In simple terms, a landing page is one without any diversions and calls a visitor to take the single action of filling up the form on the page. 

Below is an example of what a landing page looks like:

The Elements Of A Landing Page

Below are the various details that blend together to create a landing page:

• The offer made on the landing page; the page will not have any navigation buttons to concentrate the focus on only the offer being made.
• A compelling headline that piques the interest of the visitor to read further.
• An explanation of how the offer adds value to the visitor thereby driving them to leave behind their email Ids.
• The call-to-actions – either an image or a text line – that call upon the visitors to take a specific action.
• A visual representation of what the offer would look like.
• A form that captures visitor information such as name, email Id, phone number and any other information related to the visitor’s persona.
• Means to deliver the landing page offer – the ‘Thank You’ page.

The ‘Thank You’ page completes the landing page experience. This page is a separate one that appears once the visitors submit their information. The page delivers the offer made in landing page and also provides means to navigate the rest of your website.

The Research Before Creating One

To build an effective landing page, it is paramount that research is carried out and relevant information is collated. Here are the elements one needs to understand to build a robust landing page:

1. Buyer’s persona

   A buyer’s persona is a representation of the target audience or customers. Researching the buyer’s persona helps you understand how the customers think, their likes and dislikes and what is likely to trigger them to take a specific action. Once you gain a proper understanding of the buyer’s persona, you will be able to create convincing content that adds value to the buyer.

2. Deciding on the offer

   An offer made on the landing by the business will have a greater convincing effect on the customer. The offer could be anything from free newsletters and e-books to free tip sheets and seminars. The offer could be anything downloadable content that shares information about your business, products and services. The offer should be in line with the buyer’s specific pain point or problem as well as the specific stage of the buyer’s journey they are at. 

The stages of a buyer’s journey:

• Awareness stage
  The stage at which the buyer realizes they have a problem or a requirement.
• Consideration stage
  The buyer clearly defines their problems and considers various options to solve the problems.
• Decision stage
  The stage at which the buyer has decided on a solution or an approach to take and is looking into multiple vendor options.

The Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

We have put together a few pointers and best practices that will help you build a great landing page. An ideal blend of these elements will increase the conversion rate of your landing page.

• Script a compelling header. The heading is one of the first things a visitor will look at and you want it to be catchy enough to entice the visitor to read further.
• Communicate the offer effectively. Coveying the offer to the visitors should be done in a clear and concise manner. Any excess information will cause the visitor to disregard the landing page.
• Build a sufficient form. The form fields should be aligned with the visitors’ stage in the buyer’s journey. Too many fields or too less will have an impact on the conversion rate.
• Utilise images. The image should be highly relevant and capable of drawing the visitors attention. A good image will cause visitors to stay longer on your page, giving them time to consider your offer.
• Remove any site navigation buttons. Any distractions on the landing page will decrease the probability of conversion. 
• Proofread the landing page. A minor mistake can cost a valuable conversion.
• Test the landing page. Ensure that all the links are functioning properly and that every step unravels correctly from a user’s perspective. 

Once the landing page is built, that’s when the real work start. That’s correct, you read right! Web users who are your ideal target audience will view your landing page only upon promoting it. At Digital X, we not only build great landing pages, but we also promote the pages effectively and analyse the results to ensure you are getting high and relevant conversions.

Brands no longer take the centre stage, it is the customer who does! In such a market environment, influencer marketing thrives as a strong element in a business’s marketing strategy. Leveraging industry leaders to deliver a brand’s message to the larger audience is what makes up the crux of influencer marketing. Through influencer marketing, a brand inspires the larger customer segment to make a purchase decision rather than taking the direct marketing approach. These influencers could be anyone from celebrities and high-quality content creators to promoters and employees.

Breaking It Down

Influencer marketing at its base is a type of branded engagement that involves marketers connecting with industry influencers who showcase a strong social presence. Influencer marketing goes hand-in-hand with social media and content marketing. Social media elements act as a base for most influencer marketing campaigns – influencers use their social media handles to spread the word by creating engaging content to influence the target audience into considering a specific product or service. This does not make influencer marketing and content/social media marketing the same though.

The main goal of influencer marketing is to introduce and sell products or services via these social influencers by leveraging the trust established by them with their audience. This trust is established by these influencers by publishing authentic content. Insincere content tends to scrape off the influential power the person holds, rendering them ineffective for influencer marketing purposes. People gravitate towards influencers who create original content. Businesses develop strong relationships with such influencers and position their brand’s message in the content created by these influencers, thereby marketing their products or services via a trusted source. 

When brands are looking to target a specific segment of the audience, they approach influencers to attract people from that segment, engage with them and convert them to prospects and even customers. The content published by influencers encourages discussions, shares and likes. When a brand is being talked about with a positive tone, it earns greater trust from consumers.

 Is Influencer Marketing The Same As Word-Of-Mouth?

Although the two terms are used interchangeably, there is sufficient differentiation between the two types. Influencer marketing resides on the concept of leveraging the influence of key influencers to spread the word amongst a wide target audience, whereas word-of-mouth marketing is an organic way to communicate a brand’s message to friends and family, i.e., a smaller target group. Essentially, most influencer marketing involves word-of-mouth elements, whereas not word-of-mouth marketing is not propelled by influencer marketing campaigns.

Why Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing has brought about a change in the way customers make a purchase decision. Nearly 90%^[1] of marketers proclaim that influencer marketing is equally effective or even better than other marketing options. With an increase in the efficiency of collaboration, the marketing campaigns have exhibited exponential growth by the year. The 2nd quarter of 2019 witnessed an 18%^[2] increase from the previous quarter and nearly 84%^[2] of marketers run more than just a single campaign each year.

With this type of marketing facing such increasing usage and demand, the influencer segment is employing more streamlined solutions, taking advantage of influencer networks and programmatic tools that aid different brands to tap into the influencer marketing with greater ease. Brands that aren’t embracing this path are losing out in the market space. With greater control taken by consumers on the buyer’s journey, it has become more difficult to reach out to them and influencer marketing works best in such scenarios.

According to a report by Adweek^[3], the influencer marketing industry will reach $10 billion worth by the year 2020. Under the influencer marketing umbrella, Instagram takes the leads in the platforms being used by influencers, while other platforms do have their own influencer group with different demographics.

How To Leverage Influencer Marketing?

Before one starts charting out a strategy, a few key elements have to be established:

Defining the target audience

The most common mistake a brand makes is to filter down the influencers they would like to approach. Although this is important, before doing so, one must determine the audience they are trying to market to, ie., the target audience. 

Setting clear goals

A brand needs to have clear goals as to what it wants to achieve via the influencer marketing campaigns. Some of these goals could be: convincing people to buy a specific product, brand awareness, gaining social media followers and so on.

Defining the KPIs

It is essential to define the parameters used to measure success, ie., the key performance indicators or the KPIs. These KPIs add to the overall marketing goals. On can identify a consumer’s position in his decision-making journey by setting up the correct tracking systems. A consumer could be in any of these stages of the decision journey- awareness, buying consideration, preference or loyalty.

Once these elements are decided, an optimal influencer marketing strategy can be built. The steps involved in building an influencer marketing campaign are:

1. 1. Planning for an effective strategy
      This requires the adoption of a careful process of thinking and planning. Studying case studies and undocumented examples will help with this step.
   2. Identifying relevant influencers and choosing amongst them
      One can identify influencers depending on the scope of the influencer marketing campaign. A brand can turn to databases, networks and market places to filter down and approach influencers who are relevant to the brand’s goals.
   3. Setting the campaign workflow
      The key element of a great campaign is great content that can convince the target audience and effectively deliver the brand’s message.
   4. Optimizing the distribution
      Creating compelling content and posting it on their social handles is an influencer’s basic function. Beyond this, a brand can create a content strategy that spans the overall marketing strategy, distributing the influencer as well as user-generated content across multiple platforms used.
   5. Monitoring and tracking the key metrics
      Depending on the goal of the campaign, different metrics can be measured to measure success. These metrics at different stages of the customer journey could be:
      • Reach, Views at the awareness stage.
      • Clicks, Votes, Views, Comments at the consideration stage.
      • Sharing, Likes, Social Listening at the preference stage.
      • Add to Cart, Conversion to sale, using Coupons at the purchase stage.
      • Sharing, Referrals at the loyalty stage.

   With the advent of social media, influencers today are able to reach a larger target audience and this has increased the value of influencer marketing to brands and businesses.

Artificial intelligence has become a continuously growing element in today’s world. According to Alice Bonasio, a technology writer, AI research exhibited a 12.9% annual growth over the past five years and is successfully being used by multiple businesses to increase productivity and optimize RoI. Just as artificial intelligence successfully invaded multiple domains such as marketing, banking, finance, agriculture and more, it has also effectuated the digital designing domain. 

We have explored a few, extremely interesting, AI-based developments in the designing world, below.

Doodles To Landscapes

With AI in place, designers can now generate landscapes that are so realistic that it would make you wonder which part of the world the particular piece of land exists in. This goes beyond the enchanting photos taken by master photographers of the natural wonders and beauties that are a part of mother nature. Now, all that is required is a minimalistic doodle to develop a hyper-realistic landscape designed to match our imaginations. 

A deep learning model that uses generative adversarial networks or GANs is used to convert doodles to such images. This model is trained with more than a million images that when a doodle is created, the neural network adds layers of details, such as colours, textures, reflections and shadows, learnt from the images and generates a vivid landscape. Making changes to such AI-developed scenery can be done with extreme ease. Such a tool is beneficial for landscape designers, architects and game developers.

Grainy To Crystal Clear

Removing noise grain from images to produce remarkably clear results is an advantageous development facilitated by artificial intelligence. Many real-world scenarios can benefit from this AI application, including astronomical imaging and MRI scan images. The noise from grainy pictures or images can be removed using AI to reveal the original content underneath with high clarity. Here as well, a deep-learning algorithm developed and trained with myriad images converts corrupt pictures to clear ones without any compromise on details or quality. This application not just works on noise, but the text on images, such as watermarks, can be removed as well. 

In general, rendering an image might take several minutes to even hours, whereas, with AI-based applications, it takes just milliseconds to render the target photo.

Single Image To Video

The AI system developed by researchers at Moscow’s Samsung Artificial Intelligence Center (SAIC) can convert a single portrait or picture into a video- a talking head. The neural network system is trained with a multitude of videos. The system learns to identify facial features and to map eyes, nose, ears, mouth and other details on the face. 

With this learning, the system generates a ‘talking head’ from just a single picture or even a painting. The realistic nature of the ‘talking head’ only increases as the number of images supplied — of the same person — is increased. Check out some quirky examples below.

Real Or Manipulated?

The combined efforts of researchers from UC Berkeley and Adobe resulted in the development of an AI system that can detect any manipulations done by Adobe’s Photoshop liquify tool on the faces in pictures. A convolutional neural network (CNN) was trained by the researchers with the aid of thousands of portraits on which the liquify tool was used. 

Post-development, the AI was able to accurately detect more than 99% of the manipulated images and specific manipulations. The AI upon detecting the manipulated part of the face was also able to undo the changes and thus reconstruct or restore the image back to its original form.

Automatic Separation 

The Semantic Soft Segmentation is a technology created by Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) of MIT. This technology used artificial intelligence to separate the various layers or objects in an image automatically. This automatic separation grants ease of image editing and now we can easily change the background of any image or project objects of one image onto a completely new background or scenery. 

Image separation is usually a tedious job done using Photoshop but with this technology, this hassle can now be cut down. The system begins by detecting the various regions in the target image. Following this, it detects soft transitions in the image, such as fur, hair or grass. The image pixels are then associated with each other based on colours. Combining all this information, the technology identifies the various layers and processes the image rendering it ready for editing.

The AI Faces

‘Generative Photos’ developed by San Francisco-based Rosebud AI offers a library consisting of 25,000 high-resolution stock photos of people who are not real. Every face in the library is AI-generated. An exciting feature of ‘Generative Photos’ is that we can customize an image by combining any face with anybody with just a single click. This ability to choose among the various skin colours, features and ethnicity helps brands serve ads to a variety of audiences. 

A business or a brand can create its own model, completely unique from their peers. With this development, we can use these stock photos for designing purposes without the fear of being repetitive within the industry.

These advancements in the designing world have coped to meet the changing expectations of consumers, delivering personalizations and enhanced customer experience. With AI changing the process flows in the designing vertical, the functions of a designer will also change to include and employ AI-based tools that will only make the work of a designer more efficient and easier to furnish. 

2020 is not exactly a month away and the time has come to define a plan of a concrete arrangement for the following year. One year from now additionally denotes the start of another decade and can conceivably check the start of another period for advertising. 

Here are a few patterns that you should look at while drafting your marketing strategy and plan of action for 2020. 

Pattern #1: Personalization Will Conquer Marketing In 2020

Straightly put, your buyers will need to be personally addressed. It has begun occurring for the recent years and 2020 will just fortify personalization.

The present purchasers are spoilt for decisions and they need to be dealt with right. They need to see that brands care about them and that these brands are ready to pay heed to them.

What number of newsletters do you get a day? We get many newsletters from brands that we have decided to interface with. Unfortunately, huge numbers of them push the substance they believe is applicable to us. As a general rule, we spend hardly 10 seconds leafing through a newsletter, since we see no significant substance. 

Tip:

It’s the ideal opportunity for brands to take responsibility for their data and information. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been picking up force and brands should take advantage of it more. Utilize the information to dissect who your purchasers are and what they need. Stop hard-selling in your correspondence, rather associate with the group of spectators.

Pattern #2: No more reasons for terrible UX

Essentially, a well planned UX will play a significant role in your business and do the work for you. In fact, it is the most essential job to satisfy your clients’ needs. Positive client experience keeps your clients faithful to the product, business and your brand. Imagine if your customer visited your website just to get himself lost in the clicks, the odds of him revisiting your website is null. And the result will be – a poor experience, no enquiries and hence, no client.

On top, a coherent user experience adds to general marketing efforts. It characterizes and comprehends the client journeys on your website and gives insights for any changes on your website.

It is very well known that — consumers are spoilt for choices these days, especially with the gargantuan rise of mobile phones and social media. With this uprise, there can be no reasons or excuses for a terrible client experience.

Pattern #3: Subscription model for promoting

This methodology is one of our top picks at Digital X. We unveiled that initially, it may not work for much diverse business verticals, however, some businesses should be prepared for it and think about inculcating it into their future arrangement for 2020. 

For instance, today we are subscribing to the espresso at the office. How? Basic. It is likely to gauge to what extent we will utilize a specific item before it finishes and we’ll have to get it once more. 

Think about it. We are a team of 10 and we drink espresso once every day. It implies that a 500g espresso bundle goes on for approximately a week. Our online espresso merchant can calculate these depending on the norms (what number of spoons of espresso we use per cup at the office, and so on.) and gauge when the espresso is going to end. Prior to that day, another pack of newly simmered espresso gets conveyed to our office. 

By assessing the utilization with a few basic inquiries, organizations can guarantee a consistent encounter of supply to their clients. 

This model may not be reasonable for all organizations, yet on the off chance that it is likely, we figure more organizations ought to apply it. It’s amazing showcasing from purchaser’s point of view. 

In addition, this likewise works impeccably well with the primary point — personalization.

Pattern #4: Evolution of shoppable posts

Social Media isn’t going anywhere in the near future. Rather, it’s evolving daily. An ever-increasing number of brands have already begun exploiting shoppable posts to attract their audience and customers to purchase directly from the social post. This concept has grounded its base strong in 2019 and it’s sure that the brand will continue gaining more momentum in 2020 with social media’s directly shoppable posts. 

Indeed, when you consider it, shoppable posts or advertisements can turn out to be amazingly incredible. They allow brands to show things, all things considered, circumstances, for instance, worn by individuals, set as a stylistic theme in the house, or anyplace else. 

When a customer taps on your picture, the product tags will appear over the things that are sold. In the event that a customer is keen on a specific thing, they should simply tap on the product that will automatically redirect the customer to the website and even specifically, to the product’s page.

This stands as a ground-breaking business opportunity for organizations via social media’s dominant visual platforms — Instagram and Pinterest. The two platforms are the basis of decision-making at the ideation phase of what to purchase substantiating with genuine photographs of products, thereby creating an urge to customers to buy all the more suddenly. 

This has opened doors to enormous organizations, given that 72% of Instagram clients have purchased a product directly on the application.^[2] In the U.S., 55% of Pinners use Pinterest to shop, while 67% view saved content on Pinterest while shopping. 

Pattern #5: Emergence of brief, short and engaging videos

With a quick move into the 5G network, videos are probably going to keep picking up energy. An ever-increasing number of individuals over the world have access to faster internet and by and large, the total populace is well equipped with cell phones. 

Did you realize that 67% of the total populace are mobile users?^[1] In the meantime, 45% of the total populace are active social media users.^[1] 

TikTok application is worldwide popular and everyone has heard about it. Who hasn’t? It has essentially detonated to be one of the most downloaded applications from nowhere. What’s more, it just proves every time that short video streaming is on the uprise.

Brands should take advantage of short video marketing in 2020. The best part about it — it doesn’t cost a ton to create a video since it’s short and ought to regularly be beginner. Customers are worn out on non-engaging, long video promotions that simply occupy their time. 

Have you noticed that each time YouTube is going to show you a video ad or a promotion, you are most likely to keep your mouse pointer alongside the time to turn it off right away? This is on the grounds that we by default realize that the promotion we are going to see will only be a waste of our time. It will neither be relevant nor helpful.

However, on the other side, Short Videos – the ones we see on the TikTok platform, are connecting, engaging and they seize our attention. That is the place where video marketing should begin making a beeline for in 2020.

Pattern #6: Content will remain the King

“Content is the King” is a typical articulation in marketing. It’s nowhere to change in 2020. 

Quality, engagement and valuable content can and will, in any case, fortify your brand’s awareness. Additionally, it likewise shows your mastery and enables you to cooperate with your crowd with a specific level of power. Being a specialist inside whatever you do is amazingly significant and it will be increasingly significant, as the challenge will just develop. 

It additionally is a fact that content will help you in search. On that note, creating a high-quality and the most engaging content to represent your brand will be a hit amongst your customers.

In any case, be innovative and take an expansive meaning of content. Anything that you make is, indeed, content. Work on your social media posts and art, populate engaging, educative and useful blogs for your corporate website, create captivating and funny short videos, go Live on Instagram for your brand, and significantly it will all become more content. Make it work for your brand.

Remember that your content ought to be educative and informative more than just for sales purposes. Customers have become unsusceptible to sales and marketing content, for example, brochures, flyer ads, web advertisements, sales vouchers, etc. 

Did you know that, by and large, Americans are presented to between 4K to 10K promotions every day?^[4] That is crazy! No big surprise, consumers have become resistant and just choose to ignore the sales material.

People are becoming more sophisticated, the technology is evolving at a rapid rate and digital advertisers are keeping up with the changes by employing advanced tools and techniques; native advertising is one such format that allows marketers to convey their messages more efficiently to the customers.

Introducing Native Advertising

“Ads that blend in”

Native ads are paid ads that blend in with the content being consumed. These forms don’t stand out obviously as advertisements unlike banner or display ads; rather they fit in with the content flow of the site in which they appear. This ‘fitting in’ is because the ads mimic the function, look and feel of the site or the app in which they are placed. Such seamless integration with the user experience imparts a certain amount of trust to the audience. 

With the change in user behaviour towards discovering and consuming content on media, and with increased resistance toward traditional ads, digital marketers are leaning towards native advertising to cater to and engage with modern customers.

A Brief On The Types

Native ads, just like other forms of advertisements, have different formats as illuminated below.

In-feed ads

In-feed ads are those that are seamlessly displayed in our social media feed or publishers’ websites such as The Times Of India. These placements are paid for and appear in-line with other published content without any flow disruption.

Since in-feed ads fit in with the content flow of each site, their appearance varies from site to site, depending on the user experience offered by each of the sites.

Paid search ads

Advertisers and marketers use native ads as a form of search engine advertising. These are basically ads that appear on the top of the search results page. These native paid ads look like organic search results instead of standing out as an advertisement. This blending-in makes these ads more likely to be clicked by the users.

Recommendation ads

There are other spots on publisher sites, search engine results page and social media, where one can find a native ad. These are the recommendation widgets that appear at the side of the page or the bottom of an article. These ads recommend other content that we may like.

Sponsored ads

Promoted or sponsored ads appear when we use e-commerce websites or shopping apps. When we perform a search for a particular product, these promoted listings, which are similar to our searched product, appear in the search results and look similar to organic listings. This appearance prompts a customer to click on these promoted products as well.

Native display ads

These are display ads with native ad elements. They are similar to any other ads we might see on the web, but the difference is that these ads will have contextual relevance; they will not look out of place on the page where they appear.

“A/B test no matter which type you choose”

Parties That Benefit From Native Ads

We might believe that it is just the companies and businesses that gain from native advertising, but here is the case:

• Users also gain benefits from native ads! Native ads cater to the tastes of the consumers. They can discover and engage with the content of their interest or preference when such native ads are displayed.
• Native ads benefit publishers as well. Publishers monetize their content across multiple devices and platforms using native advertisements.
• Of course, businesses as well gain benefits using native ads. They use native ads to reach target audience at impactful moments when users are already consuming similar content.

“Consumers engage 53% more with native ads than other types”

Choosing The Right Platform

To optimize native advertising, one needs to choose the right platform for content discovery. The platform should be capable of reaching a substantial number of users for effective functioning. Taboola is one such platform that has gained traction. These content discovery platforms use predictive algorithms to show users those ads that are aligned with their interests. Below, we have listed out the prerequisites to check before choosing a content discovery platform.

• Network quality of the platform: The websites and page placements to which the platform has access.
• Platform compatibility: The platform should be checked for its compatibility with various software solutions such as CRMs, operating systems and various devices as well.
• Tracking functionality: One should be able to track the required performance metrics.
• Targeting capability: We should check the targeting and retargeting capacities of the platform, the possibilities for B2B and B2C targeting, targeting based on demographics, behaviour and more.
• Reach: It is also critical to check if the platform can reach a large user base in the targeted regions.
• Service: It is a huge added bonus if the platform offers flexible self-service options as well as account management support.

The Programmatic Native Ads

Programmatic native advertising is nothing but serving native ads to targeted consumers in real-time. Businesses and brands can optimize their already advantageous native ads for RoI by using programmatic auctioning of the ads in the real-time bidding process. This process happens within a fraction of a second to deliver the best user experience. Programmatic native advertising helps optimize campaigns by pausing ads that don’t work and investing more in those that do work. These ads increase user engagement and this translates to higher conversions. 

“Native ads have a significant positive effect on purchase behaviour”

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to boost business is no longer an anticipated future. Companies have already begun exploiting AI and ML, although the comprehensive effects are not yet completely foreseeable. With the rapid advancement in technology, today marketing and ML function in tandem.

As with many other sectors, the emergence of AI and ML is impacting the landscape of digital marketing as well. It provides marketers with data insights that help gain a deeper understanding of the target audience and efficiently anticipate their behaviour. This is the key to establishing enhanced interactions with them by streamlining marketing efforts. According to a Gartner report, 85 percent of customer interactions will be facilitated without a human intervention by 2020.

Companies that use AI and ML will reduce their time spent in certain business functions and thus can invest this additional time to focus on other key areas such as innovation and strategy. To remain competitive in this rapidly evolving marketplace, it has become imperative for companies to advance and equip themselves with the new tools. 

This writeup explores the influences of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in different aspects of digital marketing.

Content generation and curation

Although it is impossible for AI and ML tools to replace humans’ perspectives, news pieces and reports can be generated by ML tools based on the available data and inputs. Tools such as Quill, Articoolo and Wordsmith are already being used to compose news by the likes of Forbes and are efficiently acquiring clicks to the respective websites. By creating ‘fill in the blanks’ to input relevant keywords and data, the tools can generate content that appears human-written. We have all been exposed to AI-generated content from big names such as Reuters, New York Times and BBC.

AI is beneficial not only for content generation — with AI and ML it is possible to curate highly relevant content to showcase to website visitors. The advanced tools can add a touch of personalization by analysing and identifying the type of content and keywords that are most relevant to the target audience. A visitor is more likely to spend time on a website where their interests are being recommended and displayed on the screen.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO is essential for a robust digital strategy. With the recent advances in the way a user makes a search, it is time to rethink the methodology of content optimization. Today, a user can search the web using the voice search. Google Home, Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri and Amazon Echo are innovations that are here to stay and considering this, web content needs to be optimized to provide the best results from the interpretation of the voice searches. Given that voice searches taken on a more natural, conversational tone, keywords will no longer be of high relevance. The quality of the content itself will matter when voice search takes over completely. Google’s RankBrain, a Machine Learning algorithm can efficiently interpret voice searches and extract highly relevant results.

Email marketing

Businesses are utilising AI and ML to analyse user preferences and behaviour patterns. With the insights gained, the marketers are personalizing email marketing campaigns to appeal to individual users more effectively. This touch of personalization will be pivotal to a prospect converting to a client.

With Machine Learning, one can analyze large sets of data and peg down the best days and times to contact a prospect, the ideal frequency for communicating with customers, the specific content that grabs their attention and even the email titles and subject lines that have high potential to generate more clicks from the audience. With such detailed insights, time spent on A/B testing can be reduced and marketers can easily personalize their emails to each subscriber. Some of the AI-based email marketing tools are Phrasee, Persado and Boomtrain.

Website design and UX

We might not require a programmer or a developer moving forward. AI-based applications such as Grid can build a professional website in no time and at a reasonable cost. The application attains user-provided data, such as call-to-actions, images, specific texts with the help of AI and based on these, it builds a website that highly appeals to the user. 

The user experience on a website can also be personalized using AI. With AI and ML, large sets of data, including devices used, locations, demographics, interactions with the website can be analysed for a single user, which can then be utilised to display content and offers relevant to the specific user. This personalized user experience is capable of driving high conversions.

Chatbots

Chatbots are virtual robots that are capable of engaging in conversations with consumers through text or voice. For digital marketing purposes, chatbots can be used to interact with specific target groups in a personalized manner. With the diminishing patience of humans, chatbots can be taken advantage of to provide immediate responses to user queries, perform quick and relevant searches for users and provide appropriate information on time. Chatbots with natural learning process (NLP) are capable of conversing in human-like tones and this, in turn, enhances the user experience. Via Machine Learning, these chatbots can learn from the user interactions, collect and interpret the data and provide accurate responses with time. An AI-powered chatbot will be able to answer open questions and not just the frequently asked ones.

The advantages of a system that can quickly chart out patterns, recognise trends in real-time and return appropriate responses are unparalleled. This facility to learn on the go will make Machine Learning an indispensable asset for marketing in the near future. Adopting such advanced tools to provide optimized solutions will prepare the business for an AI-dependant future.

Consumers also begin to change their expectations with such advancements. This, in turn, gives companies an opportunity to develop new products and services that meet the changing consumer needs. One such product is Baidu’s deep voice which is capable of generating synthetic human voice by imitating the pitch, pronunciation and tones of real human speakers.

As final thoughts, regardless of the presumption that tools will soon replace human services, AI and ML are merely meant to assist and enhance the role of digital marketers; human intervention will never lose its significance. At Digital X, we are ever-thirsty for knowledge and adapt quickly to changing business-scapes. We do not limit ourselves to our existing skillset; we believe in continual learning for the purpose of your growth and therefore ours!

The latest trend observed in searching for information is the ‘voice search’. With the diminishing patience of people, newer ways to get quicker results are being sought after. The voice search helps in finding information on the internet much easier while reducing the time and effort in doing the same. The voice search technology is undergoing exponential growth every year. This promising future of this advanced technology is causing major brands like Amazon and Google to leverage it.

Explaining The Voice Technology

The voice search technology allows users to search the internet using just spoken words (voice). There is no more need for typing out the queries. One can just voice out their questions to their smartphones, computers and other smart devices to trigger an action — a digital assistant will answer the query. This voice technology is not limited to just browsing the web and getting queries answered. Other domains like playlist management, placing a call, calendar management, email management, shopping and more are being served by this technology, with this list only growing by the day. Today, some of the popular and effective voice-based systems that answer questions are the Google Voice Search, Siri, Cortana and Amazon Echo. These are basically dialogue-based systems, making them quite interactive.

Below is a list of the top devices and software that allow voice-based search:

• iPhone – Siri
• Amazon Echo – Alexa
• Smart devices like laptops and smartphones that have Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana
• Google Home

Voicing Out In The Future

In the constantly evolving digital sphere, the progressive changes in user demands are the main drivers of this shift toward voice-based technology. In a quest for optimizing the efficiency, speed and user convenience, the voice technology evolved creating a new trend. The millennial consumers are demonstrating greater comfort with using this technology. The increased adoption of smart devices based on IoT is another major factor that is fuelling the demand for voice technology. Smart IoT-based devices such as speakers, thermostats, remotes and appliances are paving the way for voice technology in the consumers’ lives. The usage of this technology might not be restricted to just basic home and office needs. Experts predict that most applications will be integrated with voice technology in the coming years, making it a fundamental of the modern-day.

For the year 2020 and beyond, let’s have an overview of the major elements that this technology might leave a mark in:

Search Behaviour

Voice search is something that is already in use, especially by the millennial crowd. It is predicted that the search behaviour will take a long leap forward by dominantly using the voice search. Juniper Research predicts that ad revenues generated by employing voice tech will reach nearly $19 billion by the year 2022 and that this will be driven by the increased establishment and usage of voice search apps on smartphones. There is now a shift from touchpoint to listening points, making organic search extremely critical for brands. Data from Comscore show that by 2020, 50% of web search will be via employing voice tech. With the advancement in voice tech, marketing and advertising agencies will also shift to the new platforms and align their marketing strategies that will include different formats of paid messages to their strategy.

Voice Push Notifications

Push notifications focus on re-engaging customers with apps. These notifications are generally user-centric, aiming at customer retention. Voice technology will change the means of distributing these notifications. As an example, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant now allow consumers to hear rather than read the notifications from any compatible third-party apps. These notifications could be calendar appointments and reminders.

Device Integration

Integrating voice technology to multiple smart devices allow manufacturers to create custom voice-assisted products that will continue to carry out the innate functions. The foremost examples are the integration of Amazon’s Alexa to a wide range of products like Samsung’s Family Hub fridges and Alexa-enabled wall clock. The usage of such voice-assisted devices is set to grow exponentially in the year 2020. These devices could include mid-level devices that do not have full-blown smart speakers but rather function via Bluetooth connectivity to other smart devices like smartphones where any processing would take place.

The Helping Voice For Your Business

As the voice technology proceeds towards becoming a necessity in tomorrow’s business-scape, here are strong reasons why you should embrace it:

Voice-optimized SEO to drive website traffic

SEO depends on the search terms users type in their web browser, but with the voice technology replacing the habit of typing, a fundamental change in SEO practices is something that one cannot ignore anymore. Voice-optimized SEO successfully established for your website will mean, tomorrow when users search online for information using the voice search, your website will appear higher in search results. This increased traffic to your website will reflect in the growth of your business.

To stay a step ahead of your competitors

Charting out a strong voice-based marketing strategy is not only essential to allow your customers to find you, but it is also required to ensure that your prospective customers do not find your competition instead. There is a high possibility that when a voice-friendly user searches for a product or service offered by you, he or she can be directed right to your voice-optimized competitors. To have a leg up in the competition, adopting voice technology is the path to take.

To nurture loyalty amongst customers

Employing voice technology is not just required for staying ahead in the competition — it can also help you offer excellent customer experience. The voice recognition skill can be used generate more personalized content and responses, enabling a more natural interaction with your brand for each individual. With the speed of voice search results, a customer can experience instant gratification in today’s busy life. This personalization combined with high speed encourages customer loyalty and retention.

Let’s Talk Stats

The numbers below show that voice technology is here to stay!

• The global market for smart speakers reached a tremendous 20.7 million units being sold in Q1, 2019, which accounted for the triple-digit 131% growth in that quarter.
• Alpine.AI’s 2018 stats revealed that as of January, the number of voice searches averaged 1 billion per month and this number has only been growing since then.
• Global Web Index studies show that 34% of people who do not yet own a voice-assisted device are interested to purchase one.
• Sourced from BrightLocal, it is shown that 76% of those who use smart speakers perform weekly voice searches.
• Another information sourced from BrightLocal shows that 51% of users use voice search to get information on restaurants.
• PwC’s report states that 93% of users are highly satisfied with their voice assistants.
• By 2022, voice-assisted consumer spending is expected to increase to 18% as per Martech.
• Gartner data reveals that 30% of internet browsing will be screenless by the year 2020.
• Comscore experts predict that 50% of internet searches will be via voice search by the year 2020.

From starting out as a novelty feature to becoming a modern-day trend, the voice technology is witnessing tremendous growth with the capabilities of becoming fundamental in the near future.

The Required Tuning

Though the voice technology has become a popularised one, there are still certain problems that need to be addressed for the optimal usage of this technology.

Of these issues is the challenge of visibility during voice search. The visual interface has been a neglected element when developing voice assistants. Consumers will not be able to see the voice interface unless connected to the app for Google Assistant or Alexa.

Another issue currently faced by the consumers is phrasing used in searches. The UX that is employed relies on specific phrases that trigger specific results. People expect conversational functionality from smart speakers without being replied to with “I’m sorry, I do not understand the question.”

Trust and privacy are other major concerns when it comes to using the voice tech. On a day-to-day basis consumers can research a place, shop, book cabs and make voice payments using this advance technology, but the concerns regarding sensitive information being secure are well-founded. Keeping customer sentiments in mind, security should be a major focus as the voice tech is being improved to suit the evolving consumer demands.

There is no doubt that voice search will be a milestone in the technology space, but the issues currently faced have to be resolved to reach the prime. By keeping an eye out for growth in voice tech, brands can keep themselves abreast of the market by adapting to it at the right time and exercising the appropriate marketing strategies. Here at Digital X, we help companies and brands stay informed about the technology trends so that they can make informed decisions without any delay.