Marketing News Overview for January 2020

To stay relevant you need to forecast, to stay competitive you need to act and to be competent you need to measure, so staying on top of marketing news is essential. Whatever is new and relevant in the world of marketing today tends to have a lag time of 10 – 15 years to widespread market adoption, sometimes even longer! (The opportunities some industries are missing!) This is one of the reasons why many traditional sector businesses are now struggling to maintain and grow. This monthly is an attempt to bring current marketing news, developments and ideas to businesses that are useful and easily actionable, delivering an immediate effect on your marketing efforts. The feedback loop should always be measured! This collection encapsulates some of what we discuss in our meetings of how we keep our clients ahead of their respective markets, enabling them to be more competitive with a meaningful, measured and structured approach.

SEO/Google Search Marketing News

• Google released data suggesting that up to 30% of their searches will be conducted by voice this year. This means that when we’re writing our metadata we need to be mindful of the differences in the ways that people phrase searches when speaking rather than writing. This is especially paramount for when we’re writing good quality Rich Snippets.  
• Further studies on using blog comments as backlinks demonstrate that there’s lots of Link Juice still out there! A strategy that was considered BlackHat a few years ago. Recent evidence demonstrates that if you use this strategy in a structured way, it’ll give your website a lot of Link Juice. The magic bit – if you search “title=”CommentLuv Enabled”” KEYPHRASE “dofollow blogs” in Google it’ll show you all the blogs that have CommentLuv enabled meaning that you’ll get a good amount of Link Juice just from commenting and leaving a link. Also, Followlist is worth looking at, it’s a directory of blogs that have dofollow links. Ensure that your comment is useful and relevant. 
• I’ve written about Google’s Algorithm – ‘E-A-T’, Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness in a few of my blog articles. Google is now looking for evidence of your educational and public backgrounds from websites and social media profiles to decide whether you’re an expert in your field. This means that whenever you post or whenever you are mentioned on another website, we need to include a short bio. On social media profiles too, you should include a lot more about your professional abilities.

Social Media Marketing News

• The way that we engage with social media is changing drastically. There’s been a lot of content about the psychological effects that social media has on how we feel and behave. Many people now feel overwhelmed, in fact, 29% of people that left social media in a Smart Insights study stated this, and 27% of people said they left social media due to addiction. How do we combat this? More specialised groups that give useful, specific content for segmented audiences. Creating spaces where people can feel like they aren’t truly public yet get the information they want or need.
• Organic reach on all platforms is heading for a nosedive due to too much noise and some gaming of the platforms’ algorithms either by financial or strategic means. We’ve also noticed that influencer marketing budgets are now decreasing massively across all sectors and that the reach of influencers is decreasing too, meaning that the cost to hire an influencer is at an all-time low. Good riddance? From us, the answer is a definite yes! We saw the hype for what it was some time ago. 
• (Pinterest Trends) – Pinterest has launched the trends tool that provides data on its top search terms for the previous 12 months on the platform. This is obviously extremely useful when it comes to campaign planning. 
• (SnapChat and AI) Snapchat has just bought a startup ‘AI Factory’ for $166 million. They’ve done this to introduce a new video service called Cameos. This gives users the functionality to take a selfie that can then be animated and used in one of their 150 video templates, what was I saying about the importance of video?
• (TikTok) – As the platform reaches 1.5 billion users, it has announced a monetisation functionality. You’ll soon be able to add links to the user bios and eCommerce URLs into the uploaded videos. This is going to take TikTok out of the ‘not to be taken seriously box’ to become a real contender for online sales funnels, ‘pay attention’ it’s inevitable.
• (Facebook) – Mark Zuckerberg has announced an ad cap on businesses by mid this year. This will limit the maximum amount of ads that each business page can run at any one time. He’s not given a number and it could be lip service due to the fake news scandals, we’ll have to wait and see.
• (Video) – According to Social Media Today, video content will make up 82 percent of all internet traffic in 2020! What can we do to stay relevant? Make more interesting, engaging and value-driven video content. 
• (WhatsApp) – They’ve launched a new function ‘business catalog’ that can change individual pages into business pages, in a similar fashion to what Facebook did, ‘there’s a reason for that!’. They’ve also launched another function that’s currently only available in India, ‘WhatsApp Pay’. This means that WhatsApp is becoming a contender in eCommerce. Should personal messaging also be used by marketers? Personally, it’s not for me. Imagine every time you want to text someone you get an ad that covers your screen…

This wraps up our first month of marketing news and industry updates to keep you satiated and busy! There’s a lot to implement. If you follow me on LinkedIn you’ll also see my daily updates and news, and if you want to stay fully ahead of the game I recommend subscribing to our Mantra monthly newsletter to learn about developments in our industry, client stories, more marketing news and about the wider world of Mantra Media.

If you want to improve your brand awareness, tighten up those client acquisition funnels and have a more cogent approach to your marketing, work with us at Mantra Media. We have an incredible track record, supporting new and established brands to reach their campaign goals. Could we be the secret sauce to take your business growth?