If you’re running a business in NZ or Australia – whether you’re just getting started or you’ve got a nationwide presence with a large market share – these digital marketing tips will be essential for everyone to not only capitalise on a golden opportunity in the digital space but also stay relevant. Because remember, if you are not moving forwards, you are moving backwards!

Digital marketing moves at such a fast pace, but I’ve been careful to not include things such as voice search that is currently blowing up in America but hasn’t quite penetrated the New Zealand market. This is not to say it won’t be relevant soon and we should be paying a close attention on that one.

For now, here are my top five digital marketing trends and things you should be looking at putting energy and effort into, in 2019.

1) Video content

Creating value-based content for your niche market and sub-niche markets and categories and then distributing this content effectively across social media and other channels. These channels could include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blog sites, email distribution, chatbot distribution and more.

Although people have been talking about this for a long time, in 2019 video is exploding and people are demanding it! More than that, a lot of industries are completely untapped, and the position of authority or “throne” is yet to be taken in a lot of industries. A way to do this is through building a personal brand that is linked to your business and consistently high-quality content for your audience specific to each channel. If you’re thinking about this and don’t take action or put this into the too hard basket over the next couple of years it may be too late.

An effective way of getting enough content is by focusing on the big core pieces that might range from 20-40 minutes long such as recording an event, discussion, rant, product walkthrough etc. You can then chop this core piece into micro pieces of content for the supporting channels. I will talk about this more in a future post.

Tips: Shoot on your smartphone to begin with – you can grab a cheap tripod and away you go, document what you are already doing rather than create specific pieces in the moment and talk about things you are passionate about and enjoy to ensure success.

2) Chatbots

When I talk about Chatbots, I’m not talking about an awkward shopping assistant that doesn’t work and you get stuck. I’m talking about using these as a way to build data just like you would on an email list. Delivering your messaging via the Facebook Messenger platform will enable your business to see open rates around 90-95%, these tools are the equivalent of email marketing back in 90’s. It’s insane, and the good thing is not everyone is building or utilising Facebook Messenger properly right now and so there is a huge opportunity to move there first in your space.

Tools you can use: My personal favourite is ManyChat which is perfect for professionals and service based businesses. It’s easy to use, it’s free and has a lot of functionality, however if you’re in the e-commerce space and wanting to implement tactics like abandoned cart messages to Facebook Messenger and other smart e-commerce flows than Octane.AI is the way to go.

3) A multi-channel approach

Digital marketing has to be multi channel – companies that have been using only one channel and have their eggs in one basket will start to lose quickly. Multiple touch points and social proof is so important, as well as these channels are getting more and more saturated so you need to combine your efforts across more places where your customers live and how the customer purchase journey really looks like. Having a full digital strategy that uses all channels such as Google search, social media, content marketing, your website and more.

You don’t start a business without a business plan, and I believe you shouldn’t jump into digital marketing without a digital strategy.

Tip: You can download our free digital marketing strategy playbook by clicking the tile in the top right or going to http://www.digitalmarketingstrategy.co.nz/free-book

4) Conversion rate optimisation

Sending traffic to poor landing page experiences and websites will not only waste money but will become even less effective moving forward in 2019.

When someone clicks on a Google search ad for an example, they want to be fed highly relevant information to exactly what they’ve searched for initially. Not only that, but the customer experience on the web page needs to be clean, clear and user friendly. If you’re not ticking these boxes, you will pay more money in your campaigns due to quality score being low and you’re going to see a high bounce rate. You’ve got 3 seconds to win them over and convince them they’ve landed in the right place.

Tips: You can use free tools such as Hotjar, Crazy Egg which analyse your website, record live visitors and allow you to make better decisions to keep your visitors happier and converting more. Our digital strategy playbook also goes through the framework used to optimise a landing page and what to think about.

5) Influencer marketing

Influencers are people on social networks such as Instagram, Facebook and Youtube that have a large and loyal following that you can now tap into.
Influencer marketing is a great way to drive ROI through endorsed posts but it also helps generate credible quality content that can be used for your other campaigns, so I really like it.

You can reach out to micro influencers with less than 10,000 followers and if you have a great product, and can sometimes get posts up for free in exchange of sending your product or service. It’s super easy to message someone and ask them, the worst thing that can happen is they will say no and give you their rate card so you know how much it costs anyway.

And there you have it – the top 5 digital marketing areas I believe businesses will need to focus on in 2019 to get ahead of the curve and smash their growth goals.

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GET ANTHONY BAXTERS DIGITAL STRATEGY PLAYBOOK, INCLUDING THE FRAMEWORK FIREFLY DIGITAL USE TO HELP BUILD AND GROW SOME OF NEW ZEALAND’S LEADING BRANDS, AT WWW.DIGITALMARKETINGSTRATEGY.CO.NZ/FREE-BOOk


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