Weekly News: Digital Marketing Predictions, The Rise of Visual Search, Google Ads Arrives

Here is this week’s roundup of the top news items related to local marketing and advertising, local media, technology, local commerce, consumer behavior and more.

Insight & Commentary

Top Digital Marketing Predictions for Local Brands (July 24, 2018) LSA Insider: “Since you follow the digital marketing industry, you probably know that industry blogs are saturated with posts about top predictions and trends during December and January every year. During this wave of pontification last year, I remember thinking, “Why is this the only time of the year that anyone does this?”” Report: E-Commerce Sites Must Fend Off Looming Challenge from Social Platforms (July 26, 2018) Street Fight: “The straightforward days of yore when e-commerce sites like Amazon made their money selling users products and social platforms like Facebook made their money selling advertisements that capitalized on users’ attention have come to an end.” Retailers Lag In Meeting Shoppers’ Digital Expectations, Study Finds (July 25, 2018) MediaPost: “Retailers are embracing digital marketing. But their investments have not kept pace with customer expectations, according to Retail’s Digital Crossroads, a study by Incisiv in partnership with Windstream Enterprise.”

Strategy & Tactics

6 Ways Marketers Are Personalizing Digital and Voice Experiences to Drive Revenue (July 26, 2018) LSA Insider: “According to Salesforce’s 2018 report, 56% of B2C customers said a tailored experience based on past interactions is very important to winning their business. In addition, just over two-thirds of B2C customers said their standards for good experiences are higher than ever.” Voice Control Forces Marketers to Think Differently (July 25, 2018) eMarketer: “Research conducted in the US by PwC in February 2018 found that searching for information, playing music, sending messages and shopping were among the activities conducted by large percentages of voice assistant users.” The Rise of Visual Search: How Brands Can Adapt (July 26, 2018) Search Engine Journal: “With new, intelligent, visual search technology being incorporated into branded apps and websites as well as improved visual search functionality being built into platforms such as Pinterest, Bing, and Google, visual search is changing the search marketing landscape as we know it.”

Stats & Studies

Report: 36% have done ‘local search’ on smart speaker (July 23, 2018) LSA Insider: “There are somewhere between 45 and 50 million smart speaker devices now in US homes, with some people owning multiple devices. Adoption is clearly starting to have an impact on the growth of other smart home tools and appliances.” Study: Social Media, Websites, Email Are Top Channels Used by Medium-to-Large Digital Marketers (July 25, 2018) LSA Insider: “In an increasingly omni-channel world, marketers must invest in multiple digital media channels. But where they should invest is not always where they do invest.” Study: Mobile dominated competing retailers’ impressions on Amazon’s Prime Day (July 19, 2018) Mobile Marketer: “While mobile shopping continues to grow, the BIScience analysis reveals that desktop display is still a valuable format for Amazon and other retailers, as shoppers often rely on both mobile and desktop during a shopping session.”

Industry News

Survey: SEO Least Popular Strategy for Enterprise Digital Marketers (July 24, 2018) LSA Insider: “Search engine optimization (SEO) has evolved over the years, with many people pronouncing it “dead” periodically. Regardless of the label we use, digital presence management and optimization for search remains a critical marketing tactic.” Facebook, Twitter, Google & Microsoft partner to launch the Data Transfer Project (July 20, 2018) MarTech Today: “The open-source initiative aims to build a framework that makes it easy for people to transfer their data between online services.” Google Ads arrives. So long, AdWords (July 25, 2018) Search Engine Land: “The new Google Ads logo appears at the top of the platform’s web interface on the initial welcome page, and the Google AdWords Twitter account has been replaced by a Google Ads account. Followers were automatically transferred.”

Member News

Yext Launches Integration With Amazon Alexa (July 25, 2018) GeoMarketing: “As a result, businesses can now feed their digital knowledge directly to Alexa — a big step in an increasingly voice-first world.” Bing Ads Can Now Have Security Badge Annotations (July 18, 2018) Search Engine Journal: “Bing Ads advertisers can now add a new type of annotation which lets searchers know that a site is secured.” Duda Certified by Local Search Association & Presented with Seal of Trust in Digital Marketing (July 20, 2018) Duda: “To qualify for this certification, Duda passed a rigorous review of its sales and business operations and verified that the company engages in best practices as set forth in LSA’s Certification Standards.”

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