2017 Digital Marketing Roadmap: What You Need To Know
This Is What You Need To Know Before We Go Any Further
It is not about following the latest technology or social media channel, but more about knowing how your target customers are navigating the internet, where they are most likely to find your brand online, and what it takes to get them to buy.
Here is a rundown on what is happening now in digital marketing for you to use not as a bible, but as a place to start when planning for 2017. I will focus this post on the most important "Channels" as Google Analytics organizes it. Driving more traffic to the website with a focus on best referring channels will inevitably result in more sales.
How to benchmark digital marketing performance and prepare your 2017 plan:
Check your Google analytics (or other analytics platform) and do a benchmarking report to compare improvements month over month, and year over year.
Using Google Analytics to benchmark and pivot: You will need to pivot in 2017 as consumer behavior and platform algorithms will change – quickly.
Set up campaign goals and KPI's including; increases in Organic referral traffic (from Google and Bing), Social referral traffic, and dig deeper into Referring sources of traffic as well. Also look at decreases in bounce rate, and increases in time-on-site as an indication of user engagement. Organic traffic typically sees the highest amount of engagement, which is also why it remains an key digital marketing tactic. Search visibility is critical for any brand, product or service.
This approach to benchmarking at a macro level can be scaled to any business, whether your website gets 10,000 unique visitors a day or 10, and will help to shift strategy, spend and tactics as needed. Now we are ready to talk tactics.
THINGS IN THE DIGITAL SPACE ARE CHANGING FAST, AND SO IS CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR.
1. SEARCH: ORGANIC SEARCH, PAID SEARCH (GOOGLE ADWORDS AND BING)
Google Adwords:
Google Adwords has become expensive. Depending on the conversion, the cost to enter Google paid search may not be as efficient as it once was. It is highly competitive, and even "long tail" keywords and phrases are now out of reach for many brands to buy. This makes the cost-per-aquisition higher, and out of reach for businesses who may have seen great ROI in the past.
I recommend a focus on Organic SEO and Local SEO for 2017 – ensuring that at the very least, your brand or business is listed properly in Google Maps and local listings.
Being found in search is paramount, so be sure to run your website through an SEO check. This will ensure that all the basics are covered including; A check for broken links, proper H1 tagging and meta data, site speed, mobile optimization, Google search console and verification and more. Optimize your website first to be sure the taps are open before you worry about anything else.
Next, plan your content according to the primary search terms, phrases and content that your brand needs to be found for.
For example If you make vintage record players, ensure that all of your Youtube video's, Facebook posts, Blog articles and website content are related both to the product, and the topics that will interest the customer. Blog posts about the resurgence of Vinyl, and where to find records as an example, will speak both to the customer, and to the search engine. Don't forget to SEO optimize product information and product categories – especially if your product is available on Amazon or other marketplace channels. Make sure also to review product listings for duplicate content. Google will penalize for duplicate content and broken links.
Website content and social media:
Keep your content calendar for social media channels, articles, Blogs, and videos focused around the target topics, keywords and phrases for your business. Drive links back from social posts for increased "Social Signals," and tag all of your content. Social Signals are important to SEO.
TAKE ACTION:
Bing Organic search has picked up steam in recent months. I have also seen some great success with Bing PPC over the past 12 months.
Why? Microsoft reached 21.9 percent marketshare in July 2016, up 0.1 percent from June, while Google dropped 0.4 percent to 63.4 percent. This brings Microsoft close to 22 percent market share in the US search business, making it the second most important player after Google.
Take some time to verify your website with BING (as well as Google search console), and budget for some BING PPC for 2017.
2. PROGRAMMATIC AD BUYING AND RE-MARKETING:
Digital display and paid search marketing has certainly become smarter, and marketers have learned more about what to do with it. Is a programmatic ad campaign a silver bullet? Probably not. But used as part of a fully integrated plan to increase reach, website traffic, and even to "steal" reach from a competitor, programmatic media buys have proven to be extremely efficient.
The key is to understand what will work with your target audience, and what it is that you are looking to achieve.
As it is with re-marketing – the general population is on to us. They know we are following them. In some cases they are glad we are, and are happy to allow it – as long as there is a benefit to them. Benefits include time savings, ease of booking or a special price offered for booking direct.
With programmatic ad campaigns and other display and ppc remarketing buys, the key is to do it well. If programmatic advertising is "not working" for your brand, I would suggest checking the user experience; the landing pages, and desired conversion point for your campaigns. If reach or website traffic are your desired KPI's, then ensure that your spend on programmatic is proportionate compared to your other tactics. If an increase in sales is the objective, then ensure you are A/B testing campaigns and working with your agency to define objectives.
Most programmatic ad buying platforms can give marketers specific information about "lift" in search terms and other KPI's outside of just CPM and CPC metrics. Make sure to work with your vendor and agencies to identify specific goals and optimize the user experience to get the best results.
TAKE ACTION:
For 2017, you might want to explore programmatic ad buying for a specific campaign, brand launch, as a supplement to another larger multi-media buy. Try it instead of, or with some of the Google Search Display or PPC allocated Adspend if conversion is your main objective.
3. FACEBOOK:
Facebook initially drove organic reach and audience engagement in droves – for Free. Then it didn't. Now it does again – you just need to pay for it. Not unlike any other digital medium, Facebook has tested the waters with many different monetization models. Just last month the algorithm removed much of the advertising from newsfeeds, most likely in an attempt to reassure users.
As of this week, it looks like those ads are right back in the newsfeed. All business and brand pages now need to pay to "boost" their messages to get into user newsfeeds – this has been the case for some time now. Make sure to allocate adspend to this in 2017.
There is no organic reach for Facebook business pages without some kind of paid boost and adspend. With that said, Facebook has been collecting demographic, psychographic, emoticon reaction data, location data, brand preferences, facial recognition data, relationship status, and the name of our cats, dogs, fish, kids and BFFs for years now – and their advertising platform uses all of this insight to serve its users Ads. Now, as it was once with Google Adwords, the cost to entry for advertising or boosting Facebook page posts is relatively low compared against some other digital media tactics.
You can read more about Facebook's changes in my recent article "Facebook Zero: RIP Organic Reach on Facebook." I would caution that anything can (and will) shift with Facebook over the coming months – including the cost of entry to advertise.
This is still early days and your budget will most likely need to increase over the next year. Now is the time to test what ad units and content work best.
TAKE ACTION:
If you have not tested Facebook as a paid marketing channel – you are missing a great opportunity. Set up some content testing and target groups that include friends of friends, interests, geographic region and more. Video posts tend to get the most reach, followed by photos, and now LIVE content. Make the content short and sweet – and make sure to link back to landing pages on your website. Those "Social Signals" back to the website are good for SEO.
You might also consider a Facebook Live strategy in 2017 depending on your business.
Make sure that you are not simply repurposing content from Periscope, Meercat or even from YouTube as both Facebook and YouTube will index native content better. (Native content is content produced for the channel and originally posted to the channel, then re-posted somewhere else).
It is good as a general rule to keep content "native" to the channel you are distributing it on whenever possible.
4. SOCIAL MEDIA: INSTAGRAM, SNAPCHAT, TWITTER
Note that I did not put Facebook in the "Social Media" section of this article. Facebook is pure marketing channel now, and should be approached this way – outside of measuring the "Social Signals" or referrals back to the website. Don't bother with any content on Facebook that is not purposeful – and boosted with ad dollars.
Snapchat
Yes Snapchat – or now "Snap" is a game changer, but unless you are a YouTuber looking to attract more audience, a celebrity, or a brand with a whole bunch of money to throw into a channel that may drive some reach, I would not place budget towards Snapchat just yet. More on Snap – and other game changers in my next post.
I would however put resources and a plan in place for Instagram.
Instagram runs on Facebook's Ad platform, and now with the addition of "Instagram Stories" Instagram is looking to keep their user base growing, and to keep the users who may have moved on to Snapchat as an alternative right where they are. The jury is out whether or not Instagram stories can be monetized, but with Instagram's reach and tie into Facebook's Ad platform, it will become an important channel for both customer acquisition and engagement.
TAKE ACTION:
Define a strategy for Instagram and reserve some resources to test adspend in 2017.
Put a plan in place for leveraging social media and crowd sourced content to drive traffic to the website, or place of conversion. Consumers will continue to flock to Social media channels with media time spent increasing just as fast as user adoption.
4. TECHNOLOGY:
The Marketing technology of today has given us a tremendous amount of time and resource savings, workflow efficiencies, creative efficiencies, extension of reach, smarter targeting and more. I bring this up in this post specifically because technology costs money.
If you are going to adopt technology to improve your marketing efficiencies – ensure that there is a defined ROI that can be associated with each tool. Marketing technology should allow you the ability to add more dollars towards ad spend, or to maximize resources in driving the bottom line.
Technology is only as good as its implementation. Remember this when looking at adding the new shiny objects to your marketing tool kit.
WHAT'S GOING TO BLOW UP IN 2017?
Although it is good to have "what's next" on the radar, ensuring success with your marketing investment for 2017 means staying focused on tactics that move the needle – channels and tactics that have proven successful to drive brand reach and sales. In my next post, I will highlight what I think will be "game changers" for digital marketing in 2017. These game changer's will most likely not make it into your marketing plan until 2018.
Alicia Whalen
Digital Media Professional
+1-905-401-2249
aliciawhalen.com
