New Marketing Tactics to Consider in 2018

As we wrap up 2017, it’s time to look ahead in marketing your small business in 2018. Though some of the suggested tactics aren’t new, if they’re new to YOUR marketing, it’s time to add these new marketing tactics to your strategy going forward!

Content Marketing Distribution

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that content marketing is important. We even shared our own suggestions for content marketing ideas for your blog. If you’re keeping up on an active onsite blog, congratulations!  Content marketing will continue to be important in 2018, but now you need to make sure people are actually seeing your content; this should be one of your top new marketing tactics! So how do you do that? You’ve got to think about how you can distribute your content better than anyone else in your space. This goes beyond social shares.  Content Distribution is the act of promoting content to online audiences in multiple media formats through various channels. These channels can be categorized into three groups: owned, earned, and paid.  What do these mean?  According to Outbrain:

• Owned Content Distribution:  distributing content to web properties that belong to you, like your onsite blog, email newsletter, or social media.
• Earned Content Distribution:  press coverage, guest article contributions, retweets or shares, or product reviews.
• Paid Content Distribution:  when you pay for content distribution such as a cost-per-click (CPC) model where the owner of the content pays a certain amount every time someone clicks through to view the content.

Leverage all three tactics in 2018 to get a better bang for your content.

Put more personalization in your content

The mantra, “People don’t buy from businesses, they buy from people” continues to ring true today, and will increase in importance in 2018. Don’t just create marketing messages; tell a story. People are looking for the human connection so let them see behind the curtain. Share images of your company’s office, people, and work that you do. Personalization gains trust with your audience, so drop the formality and act like a human in your marketing message!

Optimize your marketing for voice search

People are using their smartphones more and more to connect with services and products, and they’re using voice search to do that. Make sure your marketing leverages long-tail keywords and featured snippets to get your content found. Sometimes called rich answers or answer boxes, these live at the top of the search results like Rich Answers and Knowledge Graph results, but they differ in that Google pulls the information from one of the organic listings on the first page of SERPs. Google gives the website credit via a link.

Got videos?

2018 is the year to start!  52% of people consume video content thoroughly, and by 2020, online videos will account for more than 80 percent of all consumer internet traffic. Bringing video content into your small business marketing strategy might seem like a big undertaking, but you can (and probably should) start small. It doesn’t have to be the sole focus of your budget or even the biggest portion of it to be valuable. Not sure where to start? Here’s what you need to know about small business video marketing.

With so many different marketing tactics, it’s hard to cut through the noise and determine which tactics are right for you. If you’re not sure where to start, how much to spend, or how to measure results, work with a small business marketing consultant to help you get on track for 2018.