Stop Using These Digital Marketing Trends!

Video Transcript:

Digital marketing is one of those things that just keeps evolving over time. It never sits still for a minute. So there’s a lot of things that you may be still using that are considered outdated. They could even be harming the health of your conversions and your website. So today I’m going to go over some of those outdated trends you’re definitely gonna want to ditch in 2018, going into 2019.

So let’s get right on with the list. Number one is text based ebooks as a lead magnet. So why is this something that you should ditch? Because a couple of years ago, the thought of an ebook was a little more exciting to people. They thought this is going to be really something big they can sink their teeth into, but so many people have been doing this for so long and most people do it wrong —  and they they’ve just put out really skimpy, unsatisfying ebooks and people have caught onto that. anPeople just know now that they can expect something that’s going to not live up to their expectations.

So what do you do instead? Well, I definitely recommend replacing that ebook with something that’s a little more valuable. Specifically something that’s highly engaging.

I would recommend things like a video series or a quiz or a five day challenge of some kind that really gets people involved, and promises a result at the end of it.

Number two is focusing on quantity of blog posts over quality. So it used to be that people  were on a time crunch and an editorial schedule, wanting to push out two or three blog posts a week thinking that Google was really going to reward the consistency. And to be honest, they used to, but now Google is moving toward user signals. So basically, they’re rewarding things like time on page and how far users scroll down the page as the real signals to determine if it’s good quality or not. So the fix here would just be to focus more on the quality, even if that means you’re putting out fewer posts, you’re really going to make sure each one counts.

So do your keyword research, make sure that it’s a blog post that people are going to be searching for, and then make it long enough for Google to really see it as an authoritative piece.

So what I recommend is generally over 2000 words. Blog posts used to be more around 600 to 1000 words, but Google is now really rewarding those 2000 word plus posts. And not only do you need to use enough words, do you need to use the right words, so instead of keyword stuffing your posts with, with one specific phrase that you really want to rank for, (which was kind of how we used to do it a few years ago.) Now, Google is really rewarding relevant keywords to your topic because Google’s gotten much better at understanding overall topics.

So come up with a lot of relevant words to your topic so that Google knows that you’re putting out a piece with really great coverage on your topic.

For example, for The Deep End’s site, we offer web consulting and web design. So Google would expect to see words like wordpress or ecommerce or development on that page. So go deep with your content, show your expertise without using industry heavy jargon. You’re definitely gonna want to write it conversationally and format it for the web, using short sentences, short paragraphs, bullet lists, images, all that good stuff. Basically, you want to make it really easy for your visitors to scan the page, since that’s how about 80 percent of people will consume your content.

And number three on our list is relying on organic or free social posts alone. Now, the reason you’re gonna want to ditch this tactic is because organic reach has gone down drastically over the past few years, so basically what I’m saying is if you have a Facebook page and you’re just making Facebook posts thinking that all of your page followers are going to see that post that or not, it’s really only about two to three percent of your page fans that will ever actually see your posts.

So unfortunately the time has come to put a little bit of money behind these posts, but it’s not all bad news because they offer really great targeting options so you can not only hit the people that are actually fans of your page. You can also go after highly irrelevant cold traffic, which is the only way to really scale your business because think about it. If you’re only talking to the people that already know your brand, you’re not really able to grow at a high rate, but be careful. Just because you’re going from free posts to paid ads doesn’t mean you should be. You know, hitting people over the head with promotional ads. They should still be helpful, relevant content. Then you can retarget that. The people who have read through that content with the more promotional style ads you may be used to. Okay, next we have generic automated email blasts that just go out to all of your subscribers.

So the reason this is the mistake is your email list is gold. Your email list is still the most valuable resource you have as a business, more valuable than social because you own it. So what you don’t want to do is waste that by putting the same generic message in front of everybody. So what you want to do is segment that list within your email program, like a mailchimp or drip. So you can segment people based on activity level a meaning. Have they read your emails or do they ignore them? You can send different messages to people with different levels of activity. You can also send different messages to, uh, the different ways they got on your list in the first place. So let’s say you have a list of actual buyers customers, and then you have a list of people who have just subscribed to either a newsletter or a lead magnet.

You’re going to want to talk to those groups very differently. For instance, for your existing customers, maybe you want to send them an email about an add on service or product that will enhance what they’ve already got. And just for your more casual subscriber list, you might want to send them an email about sort of an entry level product or service that if they buy that, they’re more likely to buy more down the road. Okay. The next thing I want to talk about is using keyword stuff to webpages. So Google is much smarter than he used to be and it now understands overall topics of a page and it actually rewards pages that go in depth into a topic over just using and reusing the same keyword phrase over again. So here’s the fix, rather than using the same keyword phrase over and over again that you want to rank for in Google, what you want to do is use that phrase a few times, maybe once in a headline and a time or two in the body text, but you’re also gonna want to supplement that with a lot of closely related keyword phrases, specifically phrases that Google would expect to see on a page covering that topic.

So you can go to a website called LSIgraph.com and just put in the keyword phrase you want to rank for and it’s going to give you a list of all the other words that Google thinks possibly should be on that page. Now, of course, use your discretion and only use the ones that really make sense for your specific case. And then you can put in your page in a really natural readable way. Okay, so the next thing you’re going to definitely want to stop doing right now is talking at your potential customers rather than talking to them. So basically, so conversations are the new conversions and if you’re basically just pushing a lot of information out there with no followup and no conversation taking place, you’re really pushing away a large chunk of your business. So what I would recommend here is just simply adding several opportunities for these conversations to happen on your website and keeping up with them.

So for instance, you could have a chat feature on your website that can pop up, um, when someone has scrolled down a certain percentage of the page just asking if they have any questions. And the cool thing about this chat features is it can be wired to go right to your phone. So if someone has a question, it just pops up on your, on your smartphone and you can answer in real time. And let’s say you a blog section on your, on your site or videos. So basically at the end of a blog or the end of the video, you’re just going to want to ask if they have anything to add to the conversation. If they have any questions, just give them the opportunity to talk with you and let them know that it’s expected and it’s okay, but it’s not enough just to prompt these questions. You have to actually respond to them, respond to every comment, every question you get and it’s a great way to build that engagement and really play the long game and in the end you’re going to get a lot more customers from that engagement and that just so happens to segue perfectly into this.

So basically, are you using any of these currently on your site? Are you planning on ditching any of them? I want to know all about it. I want you to leave it in the comments below. Let me know what you’re doing now and how you plan on changing it going into 2019.

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