Changing the Game! Three Changes Coming to Digital Marketing in 2019 That You Need to be Prepared For

So you’ve probably heard us say ad nauseam that search engine optimization is always evolving, and you know what? That’s not going to change in 2019.

But there are couple other digital marketing elements that will be transitioning this year as well.

Count on your friendly digital marketing team - who recently won the 2018 Best of McAllen - here at Cobalt Digital Marketing to keep up-to-date on these changes. We’re beefing up our Cobalt Formulaᵀᴹ in 2019 so that your business can reap all the rewards.

Let’s get started.

Digital Marketing in 2019

1. A New Addition to SEO

When you think about it, SEO is something similar to “the blob.” You know, that slimy monster that consumes everything it wraps it gelatinous mass around. When the blob finally makes its way to an unlucky individual, it will consume him or her with its acidic embrace. With SEO, the same is also true when it encounters improvements to technology, Google updates, and/or new digital marketing tactics and strategies — sans the acid, of course.

Remember when digital marketers learned that billions of people the world over used their smartphones to search for products and services on the Internet? Businesses worldwide started optimizing their websites for mobile devices. Google not only updated their algorithms to reward those sites that were optimized for mobile, but they also made page load speed a focus because of it.

While plenty of websites have optimized for mobile — or at least are in the process of doing so — the work of digital marketers is still far from done. As tech items like Alexa and Google Home become more popular, voice search is something that is going to have to be properly optimized within our SEO strategies.

And it’s only a matter of time before voice search becomes the next big thing. In fact, by 2020, it is estimated that 50 percent of all searches will be done by voice search, and 30 percent of web browsing will done without a screen. Searches will be done, instead, through products and services like Alexa.

It would be in your business’ best interest to start optimizing your digital marketing strategies to include this new variant of search.

2. Embrace Multiple Channel Development

You just can’t “one-and-done” it anymore. Your digital marketing plan, in order to be successful, needs to embrace many other avenues of exposure rather than solely through content marketing or social media outreach.

One avenue just won’t cut it.

The thing is, it’s slow growth if you’re only focusing on building on one marketing channel in general. You need to expand to other potentially beneficial marketing channels as well. That means having your social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, and paid ads all working in unison.

Does that mean opening a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and any other social media account and manage them all simultaneously? No.

But put simply, you should have at least have one social media profile for your business that matches the messaging and aesthetic of your website. Then you’ll want to take advantage of other avenues as well. Have an email campaign going on for interested subscribers who can learn more about your business and products. Practice proper SEO and make sure that your content attracts traffic with the right keywords.

And while we’re at it, you should also consider mastering SEO outside of Google. YouTube and iTunes make a killing in the video content and podcast niches, so learning how to attract more traffic through their respective search engines through optimization may be the extra push you need to draw in plenty of conversions to your website in 2019.

In the end, all of this is a smart idea because it prepares you for any kind of fastball that may occur.  Using multiple avenues means less dependency on just one part of digital marketing that can go awry.

3. Budgets Will Start to Shift Into Conversion Rate Optimization

Let’s face it. Cost-per-click prices are rising, and you can bet that Facebook Ads prices are, too. While companies are shoveling mounds of cash into Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, they’re getting limited results.

Yet, there is another marketing avenue that is making huge ROIs that is being overlooked at by pretty much everyone.

Conversion Rate Optimization.

What is CRO? In short, CRO reflects the process that increases the percentage of website visitors that take the desired action, much like a call-to-action. It could be anything from enticing customers to purchase a product on your website to requesting a quote about one of your services. It literally pays to understand how a visitor moves through your website, what actions they take, and what obstacles are stopping them from completing their conversion.

In short, conversion rate optimization is improving the effectiveness of your sales funnel in a digital marketing space, and there are two ways that you can do that effectively:

1. Analytically – You get hard numbers and data from Google Analytics, giving you insight into how visitors actually behave when they are navigating through your website. Then you track their conversions, looking for key areas in your sales funnel that either turned them off or weren’t as effective at converting them.

2. Qualitatively – This people-focused method also uses data pulled from a web analytics platform like above to help you identify visitors that haven’t completed the conversion. Typically, the purpose of this method is to answer the “why” a visitor did not convert into a customer. To do so, you’ve got to optimize for the ideal customer you are trying to attract and collect the “whys” through an on-site survey, satisfaction survey, or even A/B testing.

While analytics and surveys will only go so far in telling you how a visitor ended up on your site, or what turned them off from converting, it will show you just enough regarding what you need to know to improve your sales funnel and conversion rate.

Reach your sales goals in 2019 by contacting Cobalt Digital Marketing today.

While these changes may seem challenging to process, for experienced digital marketers like our catalysts at Cobalt Digital Marketing, it’s nothing that can’t be handled.

Enlist the aid of a digital marketing company that takes pride in your business’ success. Contact us at 956-303-6555 for more information on developing your custom Cobalt Formulaᵀᴹ today.