Digital marketing is booming and for a very good reason. It’s at the center of any growing business whether or not it’s called digital marketing. There are fading digital marketing trends though.
In 2018 there are 8 specific digital marketing trends that are fading or possibly set to expire depending on how you look at it.
This post is all about looking at those 8 fading digital marketing trends.
All of these 8 items are from an infographic that Kuno Creative created I’m assuming sometime in late 2017. You can find the infographic below this article.
Each item below is my writing but it’s based on the infographic.
Most of the items are within my direct expertise and deep understanding but some are not. I will definitely let you know and you’ll be able to see by the brevity of those few items.
The title of the infographic is 8 digital marketing trends set to expire by 2018. I didn’t really like that title nor do I agree with it. That’s why this post is renamed while still keeping the core 8 items and showcasing the infographic (which is great).
The infographic is well done and the items are well researched and make sense for the current digital marketing landscape. The title is just a bit unfortunately wrongly named.
These items aren’t set to expire nor will they by 2018. They are going to go long past 2018 unfortunately but they will fade more and more over time.
The 8 Fading Digital Marketing Trends in 2018
Enough with all this talk about the infographic and such.
It’s time to get down to the 8 fading digital marketing trends of 2018.
They haven’t expired, stopped, or anything else but they are merely fading away over time.
1) Drip campaigns lacking personalization
Nothing in digital marketing is as effective without personalizations as it is with.
Drip campaigns are no exception either.
Segmentation is what it’s all about whether you’re sending a regular campaign or a drip campaign.
You’ll be able to send targeted relevant emails to each one of your subscribers with good segmentation.
I’ve heard many stories of people this past holiday season who were interested in buying one product but got a coupon for a different product. That’s bad segmentation.
You want to send emails that are relevant and likely to be of interest to the person you’re sending it to.
2) Long boring eBooks
Who likes long boring anything?
Only good books can be long and most topics from a company aren’t all that interesting.
That means they need to be short, to the point, and as visual as possible.
The more you can boil the content of an eBook down to just the necessary information the better off you are.
In fact, as far as lead magnets go, quick tips, checklists, and things of those nature are much more effective.
I along with most others would rather download a quick reference rather than an eBook that’s 100 pages of text.
The time where people wanted those long boring eBooks is gone.
Enough people have downloaded them only to realize they sit in Evernote forever collecting digital dust.
I have tons of them sitting around never read.
3) Quantity instead of quality
I don’t know if quantity instead of quality ever caught on en masse in digital marketing but it’s definitely fading away now.
If anybody’s tempted to try an churn out massive quantities of content just to have more they’ll soon learn how effective it is.
It doesn’t take long to understand that it’s not going to do anybody any good.
A more effective way of content creation is to focus on quality instead of quantity. No more five 300 word blog posts a week that only covers the surface content.
One really deep blog post a week is better than five shallow posts. Unless you can go sufficiently deep into a topic, don’t rush it.
4) Complex lead scoring algorithms
This is one of those topics I’m not deeply versed in. It’s more of a marketing/sales blend which sales is admittedly my weak point.
Complexity always breeds confusion though. Keep it simple and don’t get too complex or your lead scoring algorithm will be shunned by employees and start to become ineffective.
Simplify things by scoring in increments of 10 from 1 to 100 instead of more granular scoring that gets too complex.
5) Marketing automation overload
Overload is a loaded word. That line is hard to draw in general though because it’s specific to each individual company and task.
I recently wrote about 3.5 digital marketing trends that will explode in 2018 and automation was one of them.
Well, it’s still true that marketing automation will explode. It also remains true that overloading on automation will hurt your marketing.
When you overload on anything, bad things will happen. With automation that bad thing is the loss of the personal touch.
That doesn’t mean automation is bad though.
This only means that automation has to be done within purpose. Find the right balance of automating your digital marketing while also maintaining the important personal touch.
6) Organic only Facebook strategy
Organic reach on Facebook has been either gone or dwindling for years now for pages.
The recent algorithm updates on Facebook all but ensures page updates will reach as few people as possible.
For businesses that means you have to pay to reach your audience or reach them elsewhere.
Facebook has been pay to play for some time but now it’s even more so.
That means you’re going to have to start boosting posts and coming up with a Facebook advertising strategy that costs money.
My favorite is to use remarketing on Facebook so it’s merely a supplement to my organic website traffic.
7) Email only c-suite outreach
This is admittedly the one that I’m most unfamiliar with. I don’t have to reach the c-suite and unless you’re in a very specific role or serve a very specific audience then you probably don’t have to either.
This may have to do simply with not using one method of marketing to reach your audience.
If that’s the case, yay! That doesn’t just apply to the c-suite. It’s almost impossible to reach anybody in your audience with only one digital marketing strategy.
Effective digital marketing requires a whole lot of eggs in a whole lot of different baskets.
If I’m off on this topic please feel free to explain in the comments section, I’d love to learn more.
8) Only text-based SEO strategy
Search engine optimization (SEO) is such a diverse topic these days. Many even lump in social media marketing with SEO.
While I don’t always understand that, I do understand that SEO means optimizing our content for interest and meeting a need.
If content does that well then it’s also very shareable on social media.
SEO goes beyond social media though, it has to be anything and everything.
Infographics, videos, images, GIF’s (with a hard G!), and all that stuff is an important part of an SEO strategy.
All you have to do is scroll down this page a little bit more to see an infographic that is linked to another website. That right there is SEO with an infographic.
If you create great content then people are bound to link to it eventually. You just have to be consistent with good content and keep on doing it.
You know, you have to create that 10x content that everyone loves. That’s another one linked to because of an infographic.
These companies aren’t getting links back to their content because they have a 10,000-word blog post (unless it’s really spectacular). Nope, it’s because they create an interesting infographic.
I’ve received several links to the perfect social media post infographic but it doesn’t have to be an infographic.
Social media demographics are pretty popular and I created a pure, 100% HTML web page that presents information in an interesting visual format. That is a great reference point for other articles and one that has proven link worthy.
Fading But Not Gone
The title of the infographic insinuates that these digital marketing trends will expire by 2018. Even if this infographic was from 2015 that’s a long-shot.
This is the reason I renamed it to fading. They won’t expire, nothing expires in digital marketing but their effectiveness fades and therefore their use also. I backtrack though.
Take a look at this infographic, take these 8 trends to heart. If you’re using any of them then it may be time to reevaluate your digital marketing strategy.
A good place to start reevaluating your strategy might be to request a free Online Presence Report or perhaps just schedule a free consultation. Either one is a good place to start to figure out digital marketing solutions that may help grow your business online.
