Future Trends in Digital Marketing

Virtual Reality

According to TechTarget, virtual reality relates is a software created to make the user accept the environment shown on the technology device. It is a technique becoming more popular in digital marketing with many companies such as IKEA and Samsung. Samsung have created a VR (Virtual Reality) headset. It shows you a completely different setting and location, making you feel like it’s real.

 

An example of a company who use Virtual Reality is Samsung. The video above shows exactly how it works and why it was so successful. Customers experience something they never do in real life, and that’s what makes it stands out above other headsets in the market.

According to the insider, there are many future trends to come in the new year. ‘In digital, the key to success is knowing which platforms and technologies present the best opportunities for your business and audience.’ This statement shows how important digital marketing can be for business when it comes to engaging with customers in the right way in order to gain success. There are many examples of future trends in digital marketing.

Video Advertising

This method of advertising is becoming more popular and is used by many companies world wide. According to the insider, 43% of customers said they would prefer to see more video content in marketing. There is an increase in the younger population who view more video content on their mobile devices than ever before. Video advertising in this case would prove to be very helpful for companies. It would steer the company in the right direction in terms of connecting with the customers in the most effective way.

Social Media Advertising

Today, there is also a higher usage in social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. Companies can take great advantage of this and gain the attention of their consumers on these platforms. Several makeup brands & artists advertise their products & service over snapchat e.g. Inglot (popular makeup brand in Ireland). They would always announce their new updates on Facebook to increase interaction on their snapchat. Other companies that may use Snapchat for advertising would be fitness/gymnastics. They may post content in relation to healthy foods, different work outs etc. This type of advertising is a great way to target the correct segment of the target audience.

 

 

Brands using Pinterest

Companies on Pinterest

Pinterest is a free website used by many companies, who post images of products and services their business provides. I will discuss three companies that use Pinterest on a daily basis. Two Irish brand that use Pinterest are Dunnes Stores & Aerlingus, and the finish brand I chose to research is Finnair.

Dunnes Stores

Above is a screenshot of the first thing you see when you click on their page. They have 2.252 followers and are following zero users. This indicates that they provide a Pinterest icon on their website which helps to spread word of mouth and boost interactions in various platforms. They didn’t have to follow others to receive a follow back.  When you click on a product, it directs you to their website on a new tab. This is a very good feature to have as it means less effort for the user having to go searching for the website themselves. Straight away it provides you with the price and how to purchase the product.

For Christmas their advertising was very relevant and inviting, using vibrant and appealing images. Their pictures drew people in and got them into the festive season. They contain pictures of people wearing winter clothing perfect for that time of year, making them look even more attractive in such attractive photos.

Aer Lingus

Aer Lingus is one of the most famous Irish airlines today. Their Pinterest account consists of many different types of imagery. They post different holiday posts during the summer, such as hotels & swimming pools in hot countries.

They sponsor the Irish rugby team, which they post about daily. This is a very good way of spreading brand awareness and helping customers perceive your brand in a positive way.

Finnair

This is a very popular Finish Airline. They include different travel destinations and travel inspiration quotes on their Pinterest platform. When you click on their images, it takes you to a new tab that provides information about that destination in that image. It also gives you the option to book flights with Finnair to that actual destination. Some of their images even bring you to a blog (‘Finnair Blog’) written about a particular city, where a lot of their customers book flights to.

 

 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

 

What is SEO?

According to Red Authority, SEO is an activity that helps to improve the search engine rankings when browsing. When users search on google, websites that come up on the results page contain the key words in the content of that website. It also conducts a page ranking process, which refers to the most popular visited pages being at the top of the list. It also analyses the quality and number of links coming from other web pages. If web pages link to each other, search engines rank them higher. Examples of such search engines can be Google, Bing/Yahoo. High quality content encourages people to link to your site, this leads to search engines ranking your page higher.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/palomagomezg/

The video below includes information about what SEO is and what it is used for. Key factors such as on-page, off-page, page ranking, and key words are also discussed. It helps us understand the importance of SEO, especially for business’s who want to direct online browsers to their website.

On-Page SEO

According to the Moz blog, on-page seo mainly refers to the content of web pages. It ensures the optimization of web pages individually, resulting in more relevant content in search engines and higher ranking. Brian Dean states in his blog that there are a list of factors that search engines love, examples include:

• Start your title with key words

This is the most important factor, because the closer your key word is to the title, the better.

• Add modifiers to your title

Examples of modifiers: ‘2017’ ‘best of’ ‘reviews’ – ensure higher ranking of the website.

• Posting longer content 

Long content on certain pages tend to rank higher much higher thank others – ”length is strength”

• Optimization of Imagery

Always ensure that your target keyword is part of the image text in the content.

• Include keywords in the first 100 words

This helps the search engine identify the text of the content quicker.

•  Correct URL’s

URL’s should be SEO-friendly, short and include the main keyword.

ahttps://www.flickr.com/photos/150256907@N06/

 

Off-Page SEO

According to search engine land, off-page factors are ones that publishers cannot control directly. These factors are also used by search engines, as they found that relying on publisher-controls didn’t always provide great results. Alex Chris states that off-page SEO mainly refers to actions performed outside of the boundaries of your page. Three most important consist of:

Off-page SEO refers to activities you can perform outside the boundaries of your website. The most important are:

• Link Building

This is the most popular and effective method. This helps compete with competitors           and rank higher within search engines

• Social Media Marketing

There should be a direct link to your website from all social media accounts.

• Social bookmarking

Not the most popular method, however still gains more ranking.

Social Media Survey

Why Social Listening is Vital for Brands

What is social listening?

According to TrackMaven, social listening refers to monitoring what customers are saying about you and your brand on social media websites. Company’s mainly use social listening for zooming in on customers main points, providing direct answers to customers questions, opinions and complaints. It is also used to help differentiate their product and brand.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/

Why is social listening important?

Social listening allows marketing teams to  evaluate feedback from the public. This feedback can be used to create more offerings, both in the form of product and services as well as advertisements.

According to SproutSocial, analyzing the context of what people are saying about you’re brand on social media gives you a valuable insight on how to serve your target audience. For example, there are over 20 billion social interactions on Twitter that take place each day. This offers a good opportunity for the customer to express their feelings like no other and show their cultural insights. It is impossible for customers to focus on every individual comment & tweet, you look at it from the bigger picture and categorize peoples views.

The article Small Bizz, social listening is important in many ways. Business’s can now listen to their customers and create an interaction between its brand and their customers. This helps them understand the level of needs and wants from their consumers. Business’s can learn a lot about what they are doing right by social listening, and more importantly, what they could be doing wrong. This is one of the main reasons why social listening is crucial when doing business’s, as it can be the key to success.

How to develop your strategy

Identifying which platforms your customers engage with would be the very first and most important step. If the first step is incorrect, the results wont be of any relevance to the business. It is recommended that the strategy should be based on questions and specific outcomes, and be able to answer these questions in relation to your products at the end of the research.

References

Grace Evans, R. (2015). WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE A SOCIAL MEDIA LISTENING STRATEGY. greenlight.

 

Social Media usage by Millennials

Who are millennials?

Social media is a constant in the lives of western millennials. There is some dispute on how to categorize millennials. According to Wikipedia, millennials were born anytime between the late 1980s to the early 2000s. “Millennials are shaping the twenty-first century” according to Shaper Survey 2017.

According to TechTarget, Millennials have grown up surrounded by electronics, technology and social media. This generation is one that has received the most popular marketing attention. This is mainly down to the fact that Millennials tend to be tolerant when it comes to change. They have been raised in a certain way, making them feel ‘special’ and boosting their confidence as they get older.

TechTarget Statistics also show that Millennials have the highest number of Facebook friends, containing an average of 250. 55% post selfies on a regular basis to various social media sites. They send roughly 50 texts a day if not more.

Millennials in Ireland

According to Gretchen Hoffman and his recent studies, Facebook is the most popular social media platform used by Millennials. Majority of Millennials that use social media most frequently are female. This can be down to a number of reasons:

• 83% of Millennials consult at least one social media platform when making the decision of doing online shopping & looking into fashion categories. This is good for business’s who target Millennials on social media, using appropriate advertising during the right time of year such as winter clothes when coming up to christmas.
• 28% are known as ”social shoppers” – This refers to women whose buying decisions are based on the products and brands used mainly by their friends. This is appropriate for all ages of Millennials.

 

Admin presents this graph, showing the usage of different social media sites in Ireland. Facebook is the most popular social media platform, just as it is in majority of other countries. Facebook is the first place Millennials will go after something exciting has happened, e.g. posting birthday pictures on Facebook, monitoring how many likes one gets on their profile picture etc, all this is very exciting to them. Millennials also now tend to use Facebook Messenger more frequently for texting friends.

Instagram being one of the second most popular, also owned by facebook, has an entirely different use to Millennials. It is only used for image sharing, and does not include posting statuses of new updated sections on their websites. Hashtags are often used, making it easier for users when searching for a specific image.

One of the most popular social media sites today is Snapchat – Which is not included in the graph above. According to Robert McHugh, 83% of Millennials use snapchat in Ireland today. This figure has been constantly increasing since 2015, as a lot of the younger population is now beginning to use this social media platform.