5 Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2018 | Small Biz Marketing Specialist
5 Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2018

5 Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2018

So out with the old, some not so old, and in with the new in your 2018 marketing efforts. “Digital Dave” reviews the digital marketing landscape for small businesses in 2017 and recaps the 5 Top Digital Marketing Trends from MSNBC in 2018.

Source: MSNBC – Top 5 Marketing Trends for 2018

Episode Transcript

Hello, hello everyone. This is Digital Dave back for another episode of Where Marketing Meets Technology. It’s almost the end of 2017. It’s really, really, really hard to believe this year just disappeared. The first thing I want to do today on our episode is I want to give some gratitude for our listeners and our customers and we want to thank you so much for all of your feedback and input and listening to our podcast and watching our videos this year. I just want to express our gratitude in 2017 for being such a great audience and we hope you’ll come back in 2018 for some more great marketing and technology information.

On today’s episode we’re going to do something kind of fun. We’re going to cover the top trends going into the year 2018 in digital marketing.

We’re going to cover some information that will give you some insight into what some of small business owners biggest marketing challenges in 2017 as well as some of their statistics on how they’re doing as far as getting their marketing done and where they’re doing the marketing. And then we’re going to look at the top five digital marketing trends according to MSNBC in 2018 for you to focus on. Let’s go ahead and get started.

5 Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2018

Digital marketing success remained elusive for most small business owners in 2017. That was the number one trend that Infusionsoft, we thank Infusionsoft for this infographic (above), came out with about small businesses going into 2018. That’s not surprising. 46% don’t know if their marketing strategy works. That’s not good. 17% know their strategies aren’t working and 37% can say their marketing efforts are effective. Some people are getting it done, a lot of people have no idea. Some people just clearly know that they’re not getting anywhere with their marketing currently in 2017. In 2018, according to Infusionsoft and their small business clients, they said that 2018 will be the year of social media marketing. That’s interesting. Seems to me that’s a little bit behind the curve. Being that we’ve been pushing social media to our clients for years, trying to get them to step up their social media presence. We’ve got a surprise for you in the 2018 marketing trends from MSNBC on where they think the biggest social media bang for your buck is going to come from. We’ll get to that in just a little bit. Let’s go ahead and look at some of these statistics.

71% plan to use social media content to acquire customers and 75% will use Facebook. Well you know Facebook is the big hairy gorilla in the room. They aren’t going away. It’s a great place to be to market your business, but for some small businesses, it really depends on the type of business you are. If you’re business-to-business business, not so much on Facebook. If you’re business-to-consumer, I can certainly say that we’ve had great success in 2017 on Facebook for those types of businesses.

Spending percentages for the top three digital marketing tools. Social media management was 38%, SEO and digital ads were 30% and 24% were on web analytics. That’s where people are spending their marketing dollars in 2017 going into 2018. Over a quarter of small business owners will try to get by in 2018 without spending more on digital marketing. That’s a tough trend. I would think that we would be looking to put more, putting more dollars in 2018, since things are definitely heating up and getting more competitive out there.  28% said they won’t increase their digital marketing budget. That means that maybe 72% will increase their digital marketing budget in 2018. That’s a trend to look for.

And then finally, the biggest challenge for 2018 is finding the time or resources for your marketing. It says that more than one in five small business report their greatest challenge in finding the time to properly market their business. We agree 100%. We are the Small Biz Marketing Specialist, and you are the heroes. You are the small business owners. You’re the entrepreneurs. You’re out there putting everything on the line and it’s a shame that many business owners feel that they aren’t getting their marketing done because they can’t find the time. They can simply call us up and we will take care of your marketing for you. That is where we really believe that we can help you fix this trend in 2018.

With that, I want to switch over and spend a few minutes talking about some of the trends that the top five trends that MSNBC felt were the top five digital marketing trends for 2018. Some of these were really, really, really interesting. They were to me, some of them were way out there and that they were ahead of curve as far as I’m concerned with the digital marketing. But, again, these things are coming and we’re going to have to grasp them and we’re going to have to get involved with them and we’re going to have to use them in our marketing. Let’s go ahead and go through the top five trends that MSNBC reported as the top trends for 2018.

5 Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2018

One is to optimize for voice-enabled devices. That’s not a surprise. I’m guessing that the number one selling item, this holiday season, and the number one selling item out there is probably the voice-activated home systems like the Echo and the Google Home and so on and so forth. They’re saying that you should optimize your content for these voice-enabled devices using long tail search terms that people will be searching for. This is the whole point of these devices is for them to get answers to their questions. We want to be there and we want to be part of those searches in 2018.

Here’s the surprise in social media marketing, according to MSNBC, LinkedIn will become a social powerhouse in 2018. If you haven’t been on LinkedIn or you haven’t used LinkedIn in your marketing, LinkedIn is an awesome way to network, get credible content and engage with other business professionals. This is truly a great place for those B to B (business-to-business) type businesses to be spending some of their marketing time and dollars. We actually agree. We agree that people will be spending money on Facebook in 2018. That trend will continue as well. It’s just that if you were looking for the newcomer to really stand out in 2018, MSNBC is really hanging their hat on LinkedIn for 2018.

This is not really a trend, this is more of just something that a lot of people this year felt they missed the boat on and that is don’t stress about missing out on Snapchat. Snapchat is a tool that is out there, it’s very focused on Millennials and Generation Z. But the top influencers usages have dropped significantly in 2017 on Snapchat, meaning that this trend is likely to continue into 2018 and may turn around, and it may not. But the point being is that if you’re not on Snapchat, the good news is that it really didn’t come to fruition like everyone expected in 2017. They lost a lot of social engagement from their top influencers in that social media platform.

Then number four, which is really cool is to look at artificial intelligence. This is coming. The artificial intelligence; things like chatbots, things that send out automated messages, augmented reality will be a great thing. Getting people involved in augmented reality with your experience, and I’ve even seen some of this from Disney. I play 3D games, virtual reality games using my Samsung virtual reality. Within those experiences, guess who’s in there? Disney. Disney’s in there promoting their content. Look for these augmented and virtual reality content opportunities. And ways to find and use machine learning to engage your audience in 2018. And have fun with it.

Finally, make your brands personal story a star. This is a big one. This is where you are going to bring your customers behind the scenes. Let them know your staff and what goes into making your product or providing your service. Get them engaged and involved in that. Become part of your team. And most of all, and most critically, put your mission statement right out in front and center of them. Where they can see it all the time and get them engaged in your story in 2018.

Those were the top five digital marketing trends for 2018 from MSNBC. We like them all. We really think that these will come to fruition in 2018. Some more than others. However, again, marketing a lot of it, is being out in front of the curve if you want to get ahead of your competition. This is Digital Dave, I hope you got some useful information out of this podcast. Again, we thank all of our listeners. We’re grateful for you listening to our podcast, watching our videos, giving us comments and feedback in 2017. We want to wish everybody Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year and we look forward to coming back in 2018 strong with some really great content for you. And we hope you’ll check back for our next episode soon. Thank you again.

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About the Author smallbizmarketing

Stacey Riska, aka "Small Business Stacey" is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about saving small - and not so small - businesses one marketing plan at a time. She helps business owners become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz by teaching them marketing strategies that get MORE: MORE leads, MORE customers/clients/patients, MORE sales, and MORE profit. Stacey's in-demand "Small Biz Marketing Success Coaching and Mastermind Program" is transforming the businesses - and lives - of those who want wealth, freedom, and market domination. Her highly acclaimed book "Small Business Marketing Made EZ" lays out the 6-simple-step plan to get your marketing into ACTION - literally and figuratively. Stacey is also the creator of Cups To Gallons, the place where independent coffee, smoothie, juice bar, ice cream, dessert and snack shop owners go to learn how get into lucrative catering so they stop selling by the cup and start selling by the gallon. In this program she teaches from experience, as it was the key strategy that transformed her coffee and smoothie business from being $500K in debt to a 7-figure profitable business. When not saving the small business world, she enjoys sipping red wine, eating chocolate (who doesn't!) and spending time with her amazing husband.

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  • Cheryl Spencer says:

    Wow, really wasn’t thinking about voice enabled devices for marketing … but I got one for the holidays so really makes sense. Thanks for the great insights for 2018

  • Marcus J. says:

    Great article. These are some eye opening statistics too.

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