Victoria Greene

Your Complete Digital Marketing Checklist For Q1 2018

• Video

• You can incorporate video into almost every aspect of your digital marketing. Convincing a potential customer to watch a short video clip is easier than convincing them to read your marketing message.  

• Embed video in your email, your product pages, or your landing page. Anywhere you’re trying to convey a message to a customer, you will see more success with a short, snappy, video clip, than a paragraph of text.  

• It also gives you finer control over how you want to say things. It can be tough to convey your brand’s identity over text, but with video, it’s a breeze. Quality video content has also been shown to boost your SEO, and does a better job of converting on mobile.  

• Facebook Ads 

• Organic reach has been steadily declining on the world’s largest social media platform, in order to counteract this, you will need to invest in paid advertising. Facebook offers a wide range of ad types and making use of this to create a diverse campaign will improve your results.  

• If you want to target mobile users, then the kings of conversion are ads that keep the user on Facebook. When you don’t make click-through you primary goal, the ‘friction’ of you campaign is lowered and you can expect much higher mobile conversion rates. Lead ads are a great option for this.  

• Facebook has also recently announced their plans to begin testing pre-roll ads, they will only be available on limited content at first, but it’s one more option to keep in mind for the coming months.  

• Mobile SEO 

• Google’s mobile-first index is likely to be ready in 2018, so it’s going to be more important than ever to optimise your site for mobile users. Failing to do so could result in heavy penalties that ruin your chances of being found in search results.  

• The mobile-first index is being run as mobile searches outnumber desktop searches, and the results that are returned have to be compatible with your device, in order to ensure a good experience with the search engine.  

• We also have to take into consideration the rise of voice search via digital assistants. In order to cater to these searches, we need to consider the type of language people use to perform voice searches, and choose appropriate keywords accordingly.  

• Influencer Marketing 

• The Internet has created a new kind of celebrity, there are thousands of them spread across every social media platform, and many other sites. They tend to have a deep connection with their audience, and can provide instant credibility to your brand, should you decide to market through them.  

• You can have them read ads on their content, wear your merch, or review your services. At the end of the day you have effective marketing that reaches the customer through a credible source.  

• Privacy

• While this won’t technically come into force in Q1, you will need to be prepared in advance. The European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will require your compliance if you are handling the data of EU citizens.  

• If you’re active in the marketing world you’re probably well aware of this, but it’s important enough to warrant some double-checking, as failing to comply could cost you up to 4% of your annual turnover.