8 Elite Digital Marketing Trends to watch out for in 2020 by Matthew Bertram Part 2 #477

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, one of the owners here at eWebResults. My name is Matt Bertram, one of the solo office goers here at eWebResults. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 477. I got to jump into a review. This is part two of your personal article, and I couldn't be more proud because there's this review. It's from Ryan Gakula. Is that a... I don't really know his name. Is this you? Did you leave a review for yourself under a synonym? And it is, of course, five stars. Wow. I am mind blown with the strategies for 2020. Thanks for the great content on videos. It levels the playing field, especially when you don't have great pieces of recording equipment for as long as you know that you can give tons of value. It does not have to be Hollywood worthy. It just needs to have a clear message that engages your target audience. Patiff to you, Ryan. That's exactly right. And yeah, I'm proud, man. I wrote this article, getting reviews just for you, leaving me out, leaving me out. You can write the forward. I'll write the forward. So basically what we're talking about, actually, the teaser is we're going to finish talking about eight elite marketing actions that you can take in 2020. And I think we changed the title and then that's adjusted a little bit. If you're in a position, we'd love for you to tweet. We'd love for you to share. Just connect with us. Connect with us. And one of the things we're going to start doing is have like a live question answer. Okay. So we're going to get more consistent on our podcast. You went to a whole podcasting adventure. Not just adventure. It was totally an adventure. A podcasting conference. And so came back with a whole bunch of new ideas, which we'll be jumping all over as soon as we can. We're already starting to work on

bestseopodcast.com page or website and kind of add some of those things that we learned. It was a great conference. I don't know. And it was the last conference before everything got a little bit crazy. So this is part two. If you want part one. So part one is going to be the first four elite digital marketing actions that you need to take in 2020. If you go to part one, you need to go to our podcast number 476. I'm going to skip some of this stuff and let's just jump into the meat. Let's just get going. I mean, we've got the review out of the way. Let's get going. Okay. So number five is shoppable posts, right? Talk about shoppable posts. Let's talk about shopables. Someone is much more likely to convert if they can click on the item they like in the photo. So I think you've got a particular platform in mind. Well, Pinterest. I don't know if we talked about this the last podcast or not, but we can talk about it again because I think it's super, super important. So I actually think Pinterest is going to be the platform that outperforms any other platform in the future because you're interwoven what you like with what you're buying. You're kind of personalized. Right? So it's like, oh, I like this room and you can see what's in the room and then click on it and buy it. I'm even seeing interior design commercials that are talking about you throw your picture in there and you can build the room and see what it's going to look like. Fantastic stuff. Yeah. So I'm really excited about the future of shoppable posts. Amazon, right? Amazon Prime, buying all those different kind of movies here, it will give you a little teaser. You can click on it. I mean, maybe it's not a shoppable post, but it kind of is. I mean, even Instagram and Facebook are kind of getting into the game. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity. At the

end of the day, you just want to make it as easy as possible for your clients to convert. Yes. Yep. I like that. One hundred percent. Number six is voice search. Wow. You had to throw voice search into your article so that we could look, you mentioned me right away in voice search. I do. I know how much you love it. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah. It's my thing that I like to talk about the most. Yeah. Let's hear what you, let's hear about it. So voice search is obviously important because a lot of voice searches are happening. And it's certainly very important brick and mortar restaurants, like without a doubt, you want to be able to place well. And at the end of the day, most voice searches end up with like one piece of information with no end goal and target. People typically don't voice search and say, hey, give me the best reviewed, give me the best reviewed, I don't know, book about X. You don't voice search that typically, at least I don't. Maybe that's about to happen. What I think is also happening, not to talk just about the commercial component of it, but like Alexa skills. It's really about customizing your own personal assistant. Right. Right. And utilizing home automation and just that kind of merger between, you know, digital or access to what you're currently doing in your daily life. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. And we've, we've debated enough about voice search on a podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Listen to some pests. Just know if you're not targeting this, if you're not thinking about this, at least there's a 66.4 million searches that are going to be happening. It's almost a quarter of the adult population has an Alexa. So yeah, you probably, you know, want to keep that in mind. Number seven, quicker page speeds. How many, how many times have you actually like clicked on a page and it's taken too long to load and you're like, yeah, I'm done. Yeah. Yeah.

I just don't do that anymore. Like I, I, if it doesn't load immediately, I'm gone. Yeah. Right. I think a lot of people are like that. Really. One of the things I want to mention is like PWAs. A lot of people have not talked about PWAs. They don't know what PWAs are. Progressive web apps. Basically back in the day there was, right, a mobile version of your website and there was the, you know, normal version, a desktop version of your website. Those merged into dynamics, like dynamic responsive websites, right? Pages. Well now, take it to the next level. They're merging now apps, right? Into the website. Into the website. So you have a, like a app and a website merger, so you don't have to have both. Right. And one of the big advantages of apps that I saw was kind of push notifications, which you can do that with websites now too. Yep. So. Although with websites it's an opt-in, right? So you actually have to opt-in. You click the button. Like, I mean, I almost want to just always click those buttons. Yeah. I usually click no and I don't know if I'm representative or not, but I'm certainly representative of a certain amount of the population. When you get them to download an app, they, the only option if they don't want to receive the push notifications is to uninstall the app. So if you're delivering value with the app and probably giving them a little bit of control over how many push notifications they see, that still is going to be better than that. You want to use it sparingly, right? Like if you're spamming anybody or you're not adding relevant content, people are going to get out of it anyway. Yeah. Same thing like with the Facebook group or anything else, like we're getting over-inundated with content. Yeah. Right? You know, open rates of like SMS messages are higher, but I'm starting to get spammed like crazy. Yeah. I'm starting to get like robo dial calls, push notifications can fall

into that category. It's kind of like you opt in for kind of alert message that can get pushed out. I think that there's a real opportunity there, but that's really the only advantage I see with the apps from a marketing standpoint, right? From a community, from a lot of other things, it's debatable. But if you can do that, I think the PWA is the last kind of point I want to say that I think is cool, specifically for us. So we built bestseopodcast.com as a PWA. Right. You can click the button up in the little kind of navigation bar and download it. Okay. So you can watch it offline. Yeah. Now, I mean, everywhere has Wi-Fi now, but like you could download and listen to episodes. If you're going to be driving through a remote area of the country and you're not going to have internet. Yeah. I mean, I think it's cool. But what I can tell you is Google loves it. And without doing very much like off page SEO, it was already ranking quite well. Yeah. Right. I would say, I don't know if we've gotten into it. I'll let you kind of get into the article. There's a couple other things with site speed. Speeding up. Yeah. That's just so important. So just here at eWeb, we use DigitalOcean or Google Cloud for those clients who are kind of really the clients who are spending top dollar and looking to extract the most value out of their marketing dollars. It's money well spent being on a fast server because the speed is so important. I mean, speed is so important. That affects your SEO. That's actually what we recommend to clients. If they don't have a big marketing budget, what's the one thing they can do to impact their results with the least amount of cost? Speeding up your website. Right. I would also say that another topic that maybe is debatable with you and I is AMPed pages. Okay. Yeah. That's debatable. Why don't you kind of give everybody your

take on AMPed and I'll give my take. And I think we actually had interviewed Dan Forrester quite a while ago and he thought it was a big thorn in his side and he's actually, I think, Search Engine Journal. Forrester was Bing and we never got him on. We never. I think you're talking about Dana. No. There was a... This was like a year and a half ago or so. Yeah. The year before last. Yeah. It was at the end of the year. And it was the owner, I think, of Search Engine Journal. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. A lot of crazy things going on right now. Okay. I don't remember his name. Anyway, he was talking about how much of a pain in his side that this AMP pages was for him. And he has a digital publication and that's where AMP pages are almost required and are really valuable. They just... I've heard a lot of bad things about them. I haven't heard that many good things and it's probably not that hard to convince me. Well, they're not as hard to set up as you would think. Right? And if you build into the site structure, those AMP pages... Now, what an AMP page is, is just a reduced content page that loads faster. Yeah. Right? So it's got less media on it. Maybe no pictures. Yeah. Less stuff to load. We've added these to most of the sites that we're building now and Google loves it. So you can fight the current, but if Google wants something, figure out how to do it. With that, I will not argue. Really, that's what we had to overcome is, okay, how do we do this? And how do we do it well? And how do we do it right? And we've worked on the website process and that's running quite smoothly and those are getting built into every new website we build now. And the only debate here really goes back to kind of the fundamental premise we talk about all the time. If you're

providing a good experience to the Google user, then Google is going to like what you're doing. If AMP pages with less images and probably no videos or whatever is the good experience for the Google user, Google is going to recognize that and reward you. Right? That's the only thing that matters. So yeah. And I would say too, depending on where you are in your technical knowledge, okay? So what I'm really seeing is there's this divergence, which I've talked about a little bit of people commercializing their website, right? The faster servers, the AMP pages, like are people continuously generating content? Are you doing things to keep up with the times? Because we're really seeing this divergence in like search overall. Now on the flip side, okay, if you're the technical, you don't have a webmaster, you don't have someone doing SEO or who's building your websites, not maybe building in AMP pages because it takes a certain technical level of knowledge. I believe probably at some point, right, you got those Google websites that you can build in G and B that are not as nice, but those are basically like AMP pages. You can rank and capture about 30% of the search market, just getting in that three pack. Right? And so a lot of clients might not have a website and want to invest all this in it. And they just want to go after that 30% volume and be in that three pack. So there's strategies and ways to do that. I think that that comes back to really going, okay, what is my digital strategy? How do I want to get to my end goal and what's the best way to do that? And that's really one of the services we're offering so much more now is let's set up that digital strategy, not continuously doing stuff. We're building these kind of quarterly campaigns. And so everybody knows what we're measuring, what we're doing, how to get there and getting in alignment with those strategies. And so if SEO or content's not

the way to go, how do you go after the maps, right? Or do you just speed up the website or, hey, we need a big commercial website. There's going to be a lot of people researching. We got to do this right. Or maybe you have to podcast. And I will tell you, I will tell you actually, yeah, there's a lot of ways to get content out there. But what I will tell you, an analogy that I'm using, right? So we get a lot of websites coming in that we evaluate through audits if we can do SEO on that website or not. Because people think they're mutually exclusive. No. That's why we're building a lot more websites to build the foundational structure on the front end. Yeah. Okay. Because what's happening is here's the analogy. Tell me if you like this or not. It's like people are building a really pretty house and there's no wiring and there's no plumbing yet in the house. Like it's not, it's not fully built or hooked up on the back end. And it's not easy to go and lay in the wires on a completed house. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's basically remodeling. So some, some houses we can remodel. Some we have to recommend to rebuild. Right. And I've used some of those examples before, but that is honestly what I'm seeing. I think probably in the last two months I've seen about one to two websites per month that actually the SEO on the back end was built properly. Like I mean, so people are going, Hey, it's SEO optimized. It's not. Right. Okay. It's usually not. It's usually not. And so that's one of the things that I want to do in, uh, I guess a webinar. I don't know. Um, but a masterclass is, is lay out how you should be building this properly because Google will take care of you if you're connected into the like search engine or search engine jet like energy or juice because you, it's like electricity, you plug it

in and it'll, it'll kind of blow up. Maybe that's a analogy. Blow up in the rankings. Yeah. I like that. Blow up in the rankings. Blow up in the rankings. Like boom. No, just kidding. It's, it's, it's, it's like Kapow or I'm kind of thinking of like a bouncy house, really Chakao. Uh, all right. Well, that was like a whole, yeah, those old eight, eight elite digital marketing action steps that you can take in 2020. Uh, and the last one is video. Uh, you could make an argument that this is the most important one. Well, that's why I left it for last. I mean, I really could do like multiple articles on just how important video is. And one of the things is that actually the engagement and trust is higher with homemade style videos, which, which that review that we just read three X tied in three X is what the data says. Cause it feels like, I think the, the, whatever the, the understanding is, is if you see something that's well produced, then it's intentional and it's potentially less authentic, et cetera. And then when you're just doing something off the cuff, it's very hard to be unauthentic when you're just off the cuff. People want to know what's really going on. People want to see behind the curtain. Right. I mean, like look at, for example, the Kardashians, right? That's all about behind the curtain. That's just all about what's going on behind the curtains and people are interested in that. And so, um, you know, video connects you, right? It's like one to many. Um, uh, it, it, it lets people know who you are. It kind of goes back to the no like and trust. Um, we've really, uh, started to build out our, uh, videography business based upon like, you know, CRO or conversion rate optimization as well as SEO. Like we're seeing, um, that dynamic medium help with that and it helps tell the story better. Right. And so, um, we've just incorporated it into our services

and with, with, with really outstanding success. And so, um, like I think that video and even podcasting and long form content is becoming more and more relevant, um, in today's world. Yeah. So very important. All right. So that's digital marketing trends. I'm going to leave it. You probably have some summary here. What would be your summary of the, uh, eight elite digital marketing action steps you should be taking? Well, you know, so, you know, I know we're not supposed to talk about what's going on right now. Okay. I mean, like, I mean, I don't want to focus on that. I'll do, um, you know, we'll, we'll talk more about that, but I, I look through these steps, right? These are trends that are happening. Right. Um, you know, stories, stories, storytelling, not chasing likes, which, you know, basically, you know, we were talking about Instagram and like, they never really got rid of, uh, the, the likes, the hearts, you know, or whatever. Um, but, but I think that you're trying to connect with your audience. So, so you want, don't want to post that chat bots still, still relevant, shoppable posts, voice search, quicker page speed videos there. There's nothing about these trends that have changed. Okay. And, and really overall, if we're talking about businesses, um, you need to create an experience where it's virtual, right? If you have a brick and mortar store, you need to get online. If you're online and you don't have a full customer journey kind of walkthrough, which we can talk about, um, you should do that. Right. You know, how are you doing delivery? Can you do delivery? Can you know, can you ship to them? Um, there's all kinds of things that you need to consider in today's world, but people are going online more and more. Yeah. The screen time is going up and up. Yep. And so you really need to look at, uh, not just the trends that you can ride up, um, but overall digital, which everybody listening to this podcast

knows is the future. Yeah. I like the, the statement like when, when somebody finally picks up the phone, let's say that your, your sales process involves a phone call. When somebody finally picks up a phone call, I think most business people out there think, okay, great. This is the start of my sales process so I can hone it here. And what they miss is, yeah, 80, 80, 88% of people are through the buying funnel, uh, before they pick up the phone. Right. So you really just, if you've done it right, you really just are only in a position to screw it up. Like they've gotten 80% of the way through the buying process. I mean, they're basically ready to buy when they call you or they're vetting you versus a couple other people. Right. All that research, everything that's done is done, uh, online. Yeah. Right. And so if you're talking to friends or testimonials or all that, but yeah, it's, it's, it's already baked in. Right. So just don't screw it up. So if you don't have the stories, um, pursuing the right social media, if you don't have the chatbot that interacted with them, if you don't have micro influencers doing stuff for you, shoppable posts, voice search, quicker speed, page speeds, and videos, then you're at a disadvantage when it comes to what guiding people through 80% of the sales process. You said 88%. So yeah, it's going to depend on businesses. That's like an average, but what we're seeing is like that Venn diagram of sales over here and marketing over here. Marketing can take more and more of that process and you can put people mainly through, uh, the entire sales process online. And that's, you know, honestly what you want to go after is, is like a process where you, it's automated. Right. Or, or you can, or you can really, um, slim down maybe your, your salespeople and this generates lead gen for you or, um, you know, everything's changing, right? Automated Salesforce. Automate, delegate, eliminate. I think

that's it. That's the phrase. Yeah. All right. So, um, let's wrap up this podcast. If you like this podcast, please tell, and by the way, we've only got one review on that article. Uh, you can find it on our, on our website. So go check that out and leave a review if you could. It's on my LinkedIn. Um, you know, and you know, we were waiting for the new website, uh, and we're going to put it on there and really how you should do just so you know, um, for like agile or medium or even LinkedIn, what you should be doing is publishing the long form article on your website and then writing summary versions to push on there and then link it back. Like that's actually the correct structure, I believe, to set it up. Um, you know, we're just, uh, we're going to get, uh, the EWR digital website up, uh, you know, this month and then, uh, we're going to be moving a lot of stuff around. So cool. If you liked this podcast, please tell three friends about the podcast. If you want to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet, call Ewebresults for increased revenue in your business, 713-592-6724. If you have a referral as somebody who's interested in some aspect of internet marketing service, send them our direction. We're working with a lot of referral partners, uh, and we've got a lot of referral situations where we're ending up compensating the people who sent the referral to us and we've got lots of ways. It could be a charity. It could be direct to you. It could be free services. Yeah. It could be free services. I just had a meeting this morning about that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you can get transcripts, video and audio of this podcast and we, and we do bestseopodcast.com. We do have all the transcripts. Okay. The another thing that I am doing that I learned from the conference, right, was we have the transcripts up. We've SEO'd a

lot of the transcripts. Really, uh, we need to be converting those like this was like a no brainer into like a blog format. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not you and me back and forth. Yeah. It's more digestible. Yep. Um, and so being able to do that, uh, helps improve the readability, helps improve your SEO. So I definitely learned something. And if you were going to leave Matt a review of his article, um, that's on LinkedIn. Also please take the time to leave us a review. You can leave that at ewebresults.com slash G plus forgive the G plus that's been terminated. It's just easy to do and you will remember it. So please go do that, uh, until the next podcast, uh, you guys have made us one of the most popular internet marketing podcast, the most popular SEO podcast. Uh, thank you. Until the next podcast. My name is Chris Burris. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye bye for now. The answer is just like on cue banter. And go. We really need more buttons. We need like the whole button kit, right? Yes. I'll try not to do that. Does it look okay? We'll just lock it. It's on the other side and you push the lever down. Lean it forward. The other side. It's my side. The side closest to me. And there's a little lever and you push it down. Yes. There's a lever. Right. Two hours later. And then there's the paddle. Okay, fine. That was painful to watch you cross your legs. It's like, I'm fine. Ooh. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.