If you’re in Europe this week, why not join us in Munich for the annual Online Marketing Meeting?
The event brings together marketers and business owners who want to learn how others are succeeding in the online world. Speakers from across Europe deliver keynotes, and networking opportunities are available throughout the day.
Here’s a round-up of the biggest news and stories making headlines during the last year and going forward into 2019.
Instagram Slideshows And Shorts
Instagram rolled out a set of features that allows marketers to create longer-form content in the form of slideshow stories and short-form videos.
Posting a slideshow on your Instagram is easy, and if you have a substantial amount of content to showcase, it’s the perfect format for doing so. Think of a big wedding or event you’ve attended in the last year. You could create a showcase of the most iconic images from the day, and let your followers browse through the content in full-screen mode.
Shorter videos are also easy to post, and if you want to experiment with video on your Instagram, you can always use a service like TikTok to quickly and easily test out different ideas. The key takeaway from these two features is that Instagram is looking for ways to keep users engaged, and to attract new users to the platform.
YouTube Trends And Metrics
YouTube introduced a set of brand metrics designed to give creators, content creators, and marketers a better idea of the influence of their content.
One of the most useful tools for this purpose is the Trending tab, which shows you the most popular videos across the platform, determined by the number of views they get. You can also see how many times your video has been recommended or “included in a trend” on the YouTube platform.
The Trends tool can also help you see how your content is performing compared to others in real-time. For example, if you notice a particular video you’ve posted is attracting a lot of views, you can check the Trends tool to see if this is a trend elsewhere on the platform. You can use this data to determine the popularity of your content and where you should focus your efforts to get more views.
In addition to viewing trends, marketers can also use YouTube metrics to analyze their content’s performance. For example, you can use the Impressions metric to gauge the number of times your video has been viewed, and the Top Videos chart to see how your video compares to the others on the platform. You can also find out how many times your video has been shared, liked, or disliked, and how these numbers compare to other videos on the site.
Facebook Live Video
Facebook brought its video tool to the masses this year with the introduction of Live Video.
The feature allows users to broadcast themselves playing video, live-streaming video content to their followers on the platform.
The advantage of this tool is that it’s easy to use and allows for instant feedback from users. However, the disadvantage is that as an audience member, you’re unable to interact with the streamer other than to like or comment on their content. If you want to engage with the content creator in some way, you’ll have to use another channel like Twitter to do so (and even then, it may not always be possible).
Virtual And Augmented Reality
Marketers have been experimenting with VR/AR for marketing purposes for some time now, but 2019 was the year these features truly came into their own. The growth of VR/AR content creators and marketers, as well as the increasing availability of affordable devices make these tools much more accessible.
VR/AR marketing presents some exciting opportunities, but also some unique challenges. The ability to reach users in an immersive, three-dimensional world makes these tools particularly useful for marketing campaigns. However, the lack of a viable interface for users to understand and navigate makes these tools less ideal for use during a live chat session (a phone call might be a better option).
Mobile
Mobile platforms represent some of the most exciting opportunities and challenges for marketers in the next 12 months. The explosion of gamers on mobile devices, the continued growth of TikTok, and the huge audiences on Instagram and Facebook represent a huge market and an incredibly fertile environment for marketers to grow their businesses.
Instagram recently introduced a button that allows users to download a free demo of the App. The move is in line with the company’s continued effort to attract more users to the platform. In 2019, marketers should be thinking about how to take advantage of mobile platforms and the massive audiences they offer.
PPC Campaigns
Pay per click (PPC) campaigns became significantly more affordable this year, as the major search engines (like Google) slashed their fees. As a result, more and more marketers are taking the plunge into PPC management.
The good thing about PPC is that you don’t necessarily need to have a big budget to run successful campaigns. You just need to know how to navigate the major search engines and how to measure the results of your efforts.
Social Media Marketing
Marketers constantly evolve with the times, and social media marketing is a perfect example of this. The biggest platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram introduced major updates this year that re-engineered the way users experience the content on their platforms. As a result, social media marketing is evolving, too.
The advantage of social media is its near-universal accessibility. No matter what device or platform you use, you’ll be able to access social media, whether it’s through an app on your phone or through a website.
The disadvantage of social media is that the content is often fleeting. You’ll never know if a user will come back or visit your page again. The good news is that since social media is so easy to access, it’s a perfect place for marketers to test out different marketing campaigns and see what sticks. We’re already starting to see marketers test out different strategies and see which one works best for them.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is another area of marketing that’s been around for a while and has seen massive change this year. Platforms like HubSpot and Marketo continue to evolve and become more accessible to marketers, letting them reach their audiences via email campaigns even if they don’t have a huge marketing budget.
One of the biggest advantages of email marketing is the ability to segment your audience based on what they’re interested in. You can send them content that’s related to what they’re looking for, and you can also track the success of your campaigns through email marketing software. The disadvantage is that with every technological advancement, email marketing has become more of a hassle to manage. It requires a significant amount of effort to maintain email campaigns, especially if you want to keep up with the frequent algorithm changes that make the platforms more difficult to optimize for.
Email marketing is a must for any marketer’s toolkit. It’s easy to use, and it allows for quick and easy delivery of content to your audience. Plus, you never know when a marketing email might just be the key to getting your product or service in front of the right audience.
Branding And Marketing On TikTok
Since its invention in early 2018, TikTok has become a cultural phenomenon, amassing over 500 million monthly active users around the world. It’s currently one of the top apps on the Apple iOS App Store and Google Play Store, and it continues to grow.
TikTok users can upload funny, quirky, or stunning videos that often serve as a window into the personalities of the platform’s creators. This has lead to some incredible success for marketers, too, who have realized the potential of this platform to engage with their target audiences.
It’s important to note that while TikTok is a popular place for brands to engage with their audiences and test out new products, the platform is not without its challenges. The most significant challenge for marketers who choose to use this tool is the algorithm that determines which content users see first. Since the algorithm is constantly changing, it can be difficult to determine how much impact your marketing content will have on your audience. This makes it more important than ever to monitor the performance of your content on this platform, so you can determine the success of your campaign.
Cross-Platform Measurement
While platforms like Google Analytics give you a comprehensive set of tools to track the performance of your website, YouTube, and Facebook pages, as a marketer, you might not have the time or the expertise to manage these tools, especially if you’re already managing a full-fledged marketing department.