2018 will be a rough yet promising year for content marketers who are giving it their all. An idea on the trends that would potentially dominate 2018 can help them prepare an effective content marketing strategy. This year, videos retained their importance in internet marketing. And it looks like videos and original content would still be of great benefit to enterprises next year as well.

Let’s get on with what awaits content marketers next year.

Blogging just won’t be enough

An active, engaging blog has always been effective when it comes to getting people’s attention and getting links for a website. The commonly practiced strategy was to make the blog visually appealing and relevant by including infographics, videos etc. If done on a regular basis, brands wouldn’t fall behind.

However, 2018 will be a bit different. It’s just like when content marketing was a fresh concept. Back in the days, people just posted as much content as possible stuffed with keywords for SEO benefit. Online marketing matured over time, replacing quantity with quality. Now we need to measure not just the reach but also engagement.

Though good blogs can still be useful when it comes to engagement, just that alone won’t be enough next year. Marketing teams won’t be able to do much just with a writer. They will have to make use of different content formats and find creative ways to engage people.

A good example is the new trend where enterprises release creative short films that increase brand awareness, and attract the audience to check out what they offer. Experimenting with apps, podcasts, and new ways to get people to look at your services won’t hurt your brand in the long run.

Content will be consumed away from screens

This has been a topic of discussion in TED talks for a while now. The advancement of technologies, particularly the advent of IoT, might very well lead people away from screens. Content marketers have already started exploring marketing potential with Amazon Echo and Google Home. Developers have started building voice-activated apps thanks to Amazon Alexa Skills, opening doors to new content formats.

Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) are not to be taken lightly, as many haven’t considered their impact on digital marketing solutions and services. Planning for leveraging them effectively in 2018’s content marketing strategies is a good idea.

Content marketing is not a collection of advertisement campaigns

Considering the potential of content marketing, many companies are now prepared to allocate more budget for it.

In a study by Content Marketing Institute (CMI) this year, it was found that 32% of B2B marketers are expected to increase their budget for content marketing over the next 12 months. Investments are clearly increasing.

However, Joe Pulizzi of CMI notes that a majority of these budgets are campaign-oriented i.e. most companies seem to have the wrong notion that content marketing is a collection of advertising campaigns scheduled to be done one after the other.

Campaigns are an important component for any content marketing strategy. But the purpose is not just to advertise. The essence of content marketing is to provide content that’s relevant to users so they will know about the kind of services your business provides and what makes you different. It can build loyalty and relationships. This is why it shouldn’t be treated as a string of ad campaigns but something more that gives better results. Even with a big budget, if there are no relevant or compelling content, the marketing strategy would end up as a failure.

Creating content for micro-moments

What Google identified and named as micro-moments is a specific type of consumer behavior where we impulsive use our phones to search answers for a question that suddenly popped up in our heads. It can be anything like ‘Do crocodiles eat other crocodiles?’ or ‘where can I play arcade games near me?’

Every time someone does this, they would be expecting a relevant answer to their query. This is why consumers of a business expect to easily find and understand information about that business. They wouldn’t want to spend time digging up that information from the business website or social media.

This means the content marketing team should focus a good amount of effort to develop content for every stage of the sales funnel – anticipating what a customer would be seeking and providing answers so they won’t have to seek it for long. A content audit can help a lot in such a scenario.

This is probably where content marketers are going to spend the most time next year.

Conclusion

Content marketing is becoming more comprehensive and sophisticated. To keep up, marketers will have to find the right mix of creativity, planning, and scheduling. 2018 will certainly bring big benefits from content marketing alone but the strategies we are now going with, won’t be enough in the long run.

The post Content Marketing Trends That Will Make a Difference in 2018 appeared first on Software Development Company Dubai UAE - Verbat Technologies.

What is Marketing Automation?

Simple on the outside, but complex on the inside. This pretty much sums up marketing automation. In a nutshell, marketing automation is a digital marketing solution or approach that’s aimed at improving relationships with customers.

It uses automation software for delivering personalized emails and messages to leads and customers. This ‘personalization’ depends on various factors including but not limited to the spending habits of your contacts, where they are in the sales funnel, their past interactions with the website etc.

Marketing needs to make sure people get content tailored to their needs and aligned with their interests. Marketing automation pretty much does that after determining what the user would want. This helps build stronger relationships subsequently increasing conversions. Automation also streamlines your operations to an extent letting you focus more on other tasks.

So Marketing Automation essentially combines various aspects of digital marketing including email marketing, conversion rate optimization, lead generation etc.

Now let’s take a look at the common misapprehensions about marketing automation.

It isn’t personal

People tend to think that because it’s automated, marketing automation isn’t personal. In all fairness, it can be impersonal if not done properly. When done properly, marketing automation is certainly personal. A solid marketing automation strategy will have a human touch as well. The process just makes it easier to get the right messages out to the right people. The right messages are often tailored by marketers.

It’s spam

When it comes to spam, a marketer knows best. Spam is essentially an unsolicited message from a company, promoting something that’s not relevant to the recipient. Marketing automation, on the other hand, delivers relevant messages to interested users who have provided the sender with their email addresses.

Though marketing automation can be completely promotional, the end goal is to build better relationships. This means they can deliver non-promotional content that are valuable or relevant to users.

It’s a fully hands-off process

The word ‘automation’ in marketing automation is easily misunderstood. It gives people the wrong impression that the whole process is completely automatic, and that they need only set it up, run the software, and watch it work like magic. That’s not how it works. An effective marketing automation process should always be monitored, tweaked, and refined to ensure that it retains the success quotient.  The marketer will also have to run tests and analyses to understand how people respond to specific types of content, designs, CTAs etc.

It’s just email marketing except that a software sends the mails

Though marketing automation mostly involves sending various types of emails (Welcome mails, Thank You mails etc.), it isn’t necessarily a synonym for email marketing. There are fundamental differences between the two. In email marketing, emails are sent to every contact in the list. Marketing automation avoids this, and tunes each mail depending on the recipient’s interests and needs.

There is little segmentation in conventional email marketing, while marketing automation allows segmentation and is systematic. The latter is also easily measurable, and offers better insights but is generally effective only if the business has a large enough contacts database and the resources to use the automation software to its fullest potential.

The post Common Misconceptions about Marketing Automation appeared first on Software Development Company Dubai UAE - Verbat Technologies.

What better way to brand a business than use social media!

It is now a vital part of online marketing especially in the UAE. Social media marketing in Dubai has become a competitive sector with changing trends and a customer mindset that a business is not worth checking out if it doesn’t have an active social media page or account.

Businesses have now realized that maintaining a positive image in social media is crucial in achieving the desired results with more traffic to their websites and more sales, in turn. However, they have a lot on their plate to invest more time and money on social media marketing. They either have to keep an in-house digital marketer or hire an online marketing expert.

But these aren’t the only reasons why they need help from external sources. Dubai houses many reputed social media marketing firms that can get the job done affordably. Check out a couple of reasons why it’s best to outsource social media marketing to Dubai.

Saves time

Yes, this is obvious. Hiring a social media marketing company can save a lot of your time. Coming up with creative social network campaigns, keeping track of other departments of your business, updating business events in social networks and marketing your business’ services, optimizing your website for search engines are just a few things you will have to do for your business.

Obviously, you won’t be able to finish everything in time. You will have left quite a lot of to-dos unattended. So, hire a reliable social media marketer in Dubai and let them do what they do best while you focus on your responsibilities.

Needs the brains and experience of professionals

Marketing is like a magic trick when it comes to execution. It requires expertise and skill. Social media marketing is similar, and would be the most effective if it’s handled by someone who knows the tricks of the trade. If used properly, social media marketing can completely refine your business’s brand image.

Even if you are an expert, you still need to spend a lot of time in this, which you can’t afford while you manage your business. So why not hire a social media marketing professional with the brains, expertise, and experience to get the job done and make it worthwhile for your business?

Cost-effective? Yes

Why is social media marketing cost-effective? The answer lies in how many people use social media in the world on a daily basis and how much it costs you to depend on print and television media advertisements to promote your business. Social media networks are undoubtedly the best platforms to build business relationships and exhibit your business brand for the world to see.

Social media marketing costs significantly less than traditional marketing media, while providing quantifiable results. You can improvise your marketing campaigns for better results. In Dubai, many online marketing companies only require a small investment from you for marketing your business in social networks.

Results-driven

When a popular internet marketing company accepts the job of marketing your business in the social media, they will have to stake their reputation to get you the desired results. They will be motivated to make sure the marketing objective is achieved in an affordable budget.

With each results obtained through multiple effective strategies, they can match action plans and other tools and techniques to achieve better results next time. So there’s room for progress.

Think about it.

This concludes our topic, but if you notice closely you will be able to spot the fact that time is a critical factor for social media marketing. You won’t be getting results overnight. However, building relationships, communities and a dedicated social networks following can significantly benefit your business in the long run, provided your campaigns are well thought-out and properly executed.

The post Why it is Best to Outsource Social Media Marketing to Dubai appeared first on Software Development Company Dubai UAE - Verbat Technologies.