QuickByte: Digital Marketing Trends We Want To Disappear

Quick Byte

Episode Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to the QuickByte Podcast. Your 5-minute digital dose of tech news, and tips, and tricks for digital-first marketing. QuickByte is brought to you by Lance Montana, a digital marketing agency based in Brisbane, Australia.

Lucy: Hi, I’m Lucy. And I’m here with Grace and Laurence. And welcome to Episode 5 of QuickByte.

Laurence: Hi, Lucy.

Grace: Hi.

Laurence: Hello, Grace. It’s exciting to be back in 2019 with our second QuickByte episode for the year.

Lucy: Yeah. So the start of the new year is always a good time to recap the year that was and to look ahead at the year to come, whether that’s big achievements, big events, big trends, and this year is no different. In the last podcast, we talked about the big 2019 website design trends you should be looking to embrace. And so in this podcast, we’re going to be talking digital marketing trends that we think are best left in 2018. So…

Laurence: Lots to choose from. It’s going to be tough to get it in our 5-minute target for QuickByte. I don’t think we’ve ever hit our 5-minute target, but New Year’s resolutions. We can do it. All right. So let’s get stuck in. Who’s going to go first with our first digital marketing trend which belongs to the dead in 2018.

Lucy: All right. So, that’ll be me. Number one, content for the sake of content.

Laurence: And this is coming from a content chief.

Lucy: That’s right.

Laurence: So it’s a big call.

Lucy: So, content may be king. Yes. I definitely agree with that, but bad content is just as bad, if not worse, than no content at all. You know, thin, poorly constructed, not so relevant blog posts can damage your site. You need to be strategic about what you do write about. So make sure they are relevant, make sure they’re engaging, most importantly, make sure they’re well written. This is not specifically a 2018 trend, but in 2019, it’s definitely, one we want to leave behind.

Grace: Yeah. I think we’ve all seen those articles that promise to solve all your problems and then they just kind of talk about nothing and try and get you to buy something at the end of them.

Laurence: You’re never getting that time back.

Grace: Yeah, nope.

Laurence: And Facebook, specifically, is already enough of a rabbit hole, you know? We’re getting lost in Reddit, we’re getting lost everywhere. We just want good quality content. And you’re right, Lucy, in that this isn’t specifically 2018, but it’s definitely come to a head for sure. You know, you can trace this back, from the SEO perspective, back to the Google Panda update and the core algorithm which basically penalized thin, poorly constructed content. And so, you know, fast forward kind of 10 years, and Google is amazing, deducing very quickly the relevance and authority and just general usefulness of an article. So, you just can’t get away with the bare minimum anymore. You know, if you want something to rank, it actually needs to be delivering value.

Grace: Yep. And that brings us to our second point. We’ve got here organic only social media outreach. It’s not necessarily something that we want to see disappear in 2019, but off the back of all the changes happening on Facebook, them changing their algorithm to prioritize posts by family and friends, it’s definitely a little harder for businesses to gain traction on Facebook without quality content that’s engaging and encouraging comments and things like that without, you know, paid boosting.

Laurence: Yeah. I feel like this is like quite a harsh one for us to include, but it’s still the reality of digital marketing in 2019. You know, if you want to get the word out as a brand on social media, you just need to be committed to an investment behind it. Unfortunately, that is the reality especially when you’re kicking off and acquiring an audience.

Lucy: It’s not all bad for brands, paid social media outreach is a good opportunity to, you know, sort of find out really who your audience is and what their behaviors are. Paid outreach provides a much deeper insight than organic posters, so don’t as all doom and gloom.

Grace: Yeah. That can be a little more effective than other methods of advertising as well.

Laurence: Yeah. And Mark Zuckerberg, he’s lost millions of dollars in the last year, so, you know, we should all just make sure he doesn’t go out of business any time soon.

Pop-up ads is our third digital marketing trend that we hope will die a long slow death of a 1,000 cuts in 2019. We basically just hate all pop-up ads, pop-up anything to be honest. I’m speaking as a proxy for our technical director, Pav Rarta, who is so sick today. He couldn’t join us, unfortunately, but he is just the epitomy of the developer who can’t stand pop-ups. He’s got ad blockers and all kinds of, you know, software in place to make sure that his daily existence isn’t ruined by a crappy banner ad that pops up that has nothing to do with him or, even worse, has been tracking his search history and has popped up like 100,000 times like in the last month. Just get with the program people, you need content that people want to engage with. It needs to add value. It needs to be exciting. It needs to tell a story. Interrupting style pop-up ads need to die.

Lucy: Yep. I think with mobile devices and mobile-first design, you know, sort of at the forefront as well, there’s nothing like a pop-up jumping up on your phone and not being able to find out how to get it down, just taking up your entire screen.

Laurence: Or, like, putting the little X on, you know, the left side but then the next time putting them on the right side. Damn you tricked me, little ad algorithm, I hate that.

Grace: They’re doing everything they can. And you can just tell, you can see right through it.

Lucy: Yeah. Who likes to be interrupted?

Laurence: You know, if you have to trick people to click on your ad, you need to rewrite your ad. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Digital marketing gurus. I think we’re gonna all agree on this one. Everyone was pretty excited about putting this in the list of things that need to alongside dead in 2019. Who wants to paint a picture.

Grace: I don’t even know if I can talk about it, it’s too painful! Okay. So, basically, you’ve all seen the ads of guy that’s standing in front of his Lamborghini or his mansion and he’s using an automated funnel to sell an automated funnel.

Lucy: I particularly like the copy that starts every sentence with an emoji, sort of a boxing glove emoji or it’s a pointed finger emoji. And it just really…

Grace: Get the motivation up, yeah.

Lucy: Yeah. Yeah.

Laurence: Look, it’s important that there are some scantily clad women in the background, perhaps just by the pool, can’t be too obvious about it, and then the camera juts pans past them momentarily. Look, it’s awkward that, apparently, this kind of marketing is still successful in any way. If Mark Zuckerberg is listening, we promise to pay for more ads on Facebook if he can downgrade these ads. It should be so obvious. Just get rid of it, it’s embarrassing.

Lucy: Yeah. We say, faux gurus, be gone.

Laurence: And the last digital marketing trend to die a long slow death in 2019, if we all have our wishes, is mismatched inauthentic influencer marketing. Yeah. So, look, it’s a big deal. Obviously, if you want to have a real effect, word-of-mouth is the most important kind of, you know, business lead you can get in terms of the quality, in terms… for a lot of small businesses, particularly, their entire business model hinges upon word-of-mouth. And influencer marketing is a beautiful natural extension of that when done correctly, authentically, in a way that’s considered with the brand values and your audience.

Lucy: Yeah. I think, you know, there’s a massive amount of sort of mismatch and insincerity. And so, there’s lots of horror stories of brands, you know, throwing big dollars at sort of big influencers only to sort of find out that actually their audience is, you know, middle-aged men, when what they were sort of hoping to attract was sort of older women, you know. There’s just a big mismatch there. You’re far better off finding an influencer who has a smaller really engaged following, you know, more natural alignment with the brand and a persona or lifestyle that a customer can actually relate to.

Laurence: And they’re honest enough to admit to paid sponsorship. Right on top of the post. Yeah, that wild west kind of behavior I think is gonna be brought into line by all the major platforms.

Lucy: There definitely needs to be more regulations right across all of the social platforms for sure.

Laurence: That’s probably an entire podcast episode. How are we going for time Grace?

Grace: Let’s see. Do you know I think we might be close, but I’m not sure if we got to quite five minutes. But we’ll give it a really good go next time.

Laurence: Thanks for listening, everybody. Catch you next time on QuickByte.

Lucy: See you.

Grace: Bye.

Announcer: Thank you for listening to the QuickByte Podcast. This has been a production of Lance Montana, a digital marketing agency based in Brisbane, Australia. For more great, free resources, go to lancemontana.com.au.

Show Notes

• The digital marketing trends we can’t wait to disappear
• How to make sure your content isn’t hurting your website
• Whether or not organic social media marketing is worth the effort
• How to do influencer marketing the right way