1. Emergence of New Ad Formats to Dupe Ad Blockers

One of the biggest hurdles that online advertisers face is the ad blocking software. According to statistics, ad-blocking software cost online advertisers 20 billion dollars in 2015 alone, which almost doubled up to reach 40 billion dollars in 2016. With Google and other tech giants releasing tools and technologies to deliver an ad-free user experience to web users, online advertisers will use different tactics to circumvent this nuisance. This will result in the emergence of new ad formats that have a propensity to evade these ad blockers and render your ad visible in front of your target customer.

2. Machine Learning Will Transform Ad Management

Whether you are running an ad agency or are an important part of one, I have some bad news for you. Machine learning is about to take your place. More and more businesses will opt for machine learning platforms that can manage their ads more efficiently as compared to an ad agency. Machine learning tools that optimize your ad spending by harnessing the power of advanced machine learning techniques and algorithms are already available in the market. All digital marketers have to do is to determine the basic parameters for their advertising campaigns and leave the rest in the hands of these machine learning tools.

3. Native Ads Will Dominate

According to Business Insider, native advertising will account for 74% of all ad revenues by 2021. With people always looking for information regarding local businesses, it is not surprising to see native ads become the preferred choice for digital marketers in 2018. Combine that with the promise of higher exposure and engagement rates as compared to traditional banner ads, and it becomes quite evident why businesses are taking the native advertising route. Do not be surprised to see spending on native advertising go up significantly in 2018. With the ability to tweak the ad copy to target the preferences of customers, native ads will be even more effective.

4. In Car Ads Will Become a Norm

All mammoth car manufacturers such as Audi, Volvo, and Mercedes Benz are betting big on self-driving cars because it is the future of transpiration. With self-driving cars making their way to our roads, we might see a new form of advertisement emerge. Alleviating you of the need to engage yourself in the hassle of driving, you are free to consume more content. Digital advertisers will capitalize on it and lace that content with in-car ads. Get ready to see more brands jump on these marketing channels for promoting their products and services.

5. Influencer Marketing Will Be the Next Big Thing

According to statistics, 80% of Gen Z and 74%of millennials reported that social media influences their shopping habits. More importantly, for every dollar your business spends on influencer marketing, your business earns $7.65. Very few marketing mediums can deliver the same return on investment as do influencer marketing. Almost 95% of marketers who use an influencer marketing strategy,consider it effective. Many fashion and beauty brands have already achieved success with influencer marketing. Businesses are forever in the throes of unearthing relevant influencers to promote their products and services.

6. Linkedin and Instagram are the New Twitter and Facebook

Social media landscape is in the throes of significant changes. Big names such as Facebook and Twitter will lose ground against the likes of LinkedIn, Instagram and Snapchat. Don’t believe it? Just check out the growth rate of Instagram and Snapchat and compare it with Twitter and Facebook, and prepared to be awe-struck. With more than 800 million monthly active users and growing, Instagram will soon become the next Facebook. On the other hand, Twitter is dying a slow death, paving way for LinkedIn to take over. This means that you will have to choose your social media channel prudently.

7. Bots and AI Tool Will Automate Website Messaging

Gone are the days when you had to hire a separate customer support executive to converse with your customers and pacify their queries. With AI tools and chat bots on the loose, you have one less thing to fret over. 57% of marketers are already getting high on AI. Technology giants such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook are investing profoundly in chat bots and are reaping rich rewards. The pace at which AI technology is evolving, we will not have to wait long to talk to a robot instead of a customer support representative.

8. Voice Search Optimization

According to Google’s data, they receive 20% voice search queries and this number is projected to escalate to 50%. This reflects the exponential rise in the number of voice search queries. Voice assistants, smart home speakers, and other automation gadgets have further fueled the growth of voice search. Online advertisers have to tailor their keywords according to the voice searches completed by users. This allows them to offer quick and relevant answers to customer’s queries. With search engines getting smarter, you need to be able to guess the intent of the searcher correctly to be more effective.

Conclusion

Akin to 2017, 2018 is bound to be an action packed year for digital advertisers as we see the digital advertising industry go through a major paradigm shift. The focus is diverging from TV ads to native ads, in-car ads and influencer marketing. With social media landscape experiencing a major overhaul, you should have a social media strategy on the go and the right social networks at your beck and call. Voice based searches will account for more than half of all search queries. Finally, we will see the impact of machine learning, chatbots, and artificial intelligence on digital marketing and online advertisement realm.

Are you ready for all these changes? How would you adjust and deal with these changes? Feel free to share your feedback with us in the comments section below.

The post What will the Online Marketing and Advertising Landscape Look Like in 2018? appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

Here is a list of movies every social media manager, entrepreneur, and online marketer should watch when their brains are possibly fried, crying for a reprieve. Get some pop corns in the microwave, whip up a cup of Joe, and cozy up for a dose of entertainment!

Related Read: Calling All Social Media Managers! Avoid These Instagram Marketing Mistakes

Chef

First up on our list is Chef, a comedy trail that is sure to bring a smile to your lips and infuse you with renewed hope in your hectic life. The visually inspiring story teaches us about the power of social media. Starring Jon Favreau, Dustin Hoffman and Scar Jo, the plot follows a chef who loses his job as a result of declining to compromise his creative veracity. Not wanting to be a servant to his owner’s whims, he decided to test stranger waters and started his own food truck. He leveraged social media to bring all the customers to his yard, and show us at the end that the grass is indeed greener on the other side.

The chef in the movie capitalizes on various social media platforms, such as Vine, Facebook and Twitter, not only to build lasting and meaningful relationships with his customers, but also to increase his reach as he went from city to city, and boost brand awareness by getting the word out about the #ElJefeFoodTruck. Another great lesson that the movie teaches us is that what you do or say on social media can have a long term repercussion on your business. After all, not all viral publicity is good exposure! If you are seeking to get your feet wet in social media marketing, this movie is a goldmine for you.

The Square

On a serious note, “The Square” is an emotional human chronicle of the Egyptian protest movement from the year 2011 revolution of a military leader Hosni Mubarak through the ousting of Mohammad Morsi in 2103. The film is based on the story of young, energetic individuals struggling to collapse two governments in order to build a democratic culture.

This film is a great fit for digital marketers as social media can be a true revolutionary form of communication that has the propensity to bring massive changes in society.

Related Read: Social Media Terminologies that You Should Know

Office Christmas Party

This epic comedy movie starring Jason Bateman, Olivia Munn, T.J. Miller, Jennifer Aniston, Kate McKinnon, Courtney B. Vance, Jillian Bell and Rob Cord dry revolves around a Christmas party held by a branch manager in an effort to impress a potential client and save his job and that of his co-workers.This movie shows how networking and creating a lasting impression on your clients by portraying your business in a positive light can do wonders for your organization.

Jerry Maguire

If you haven’t yet seen Tom Cruise’s masterpiece, then you should as it’s worth a watch. Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) is a successful sports agent who works at a sports management firm. He pens a genuine company-wide memo that immediately gets him fired. The story is based on the earnestness of a sports agent who wants to find greatness and happiness in an occupation where only success counts. The movie teaches us how to value something more important than money.

Social media managers can learn how to provide immense value to their audience before promoting any products. Instead of simply marketing and selling your products, think about delivering valuable content, and fostering long-term relationships with your audience.

Joy

The story revolves around a humble-rooted woman who invents a Miracle Mop and becomes an empress in her own right. Jennifer Lawrence plays the character of Joy Mangano. The movie demands the attention of audience to become emotionally invested in a mop. The movie is an apt embodiment of a true boss of family and enterprise. The movie’s best lesson that entrepreneurs and social media marketers can take away is to get ready to go to war every day – whether it rains or the sun shines. If you really want to build and grow your company, follow your passion, do whatever you want to do, don’t quit, make your employees happy, and remember – hard work does pay off in the end even if it seems otherwise at times!

Related Read: 9 Social Media Books You Must Read

The Social Network

The film outlines the happenings surrounding the development of Facebook and the subsequent rise of the social networking giant. The movie tells us to follow our dreams and surround ourselves with the most talented people we can find. Remember, Facebook came into inception because Mark Zuckerberg had the confidence, the vision and the discipline to make it actually happen. If you have a great idea, invest your efforts, attention and time to turn it into a reality. If you want to succeed in your business endeavors, learn how your products or services can solve problems. This is the key to huge success.

The post 6 Movies Every Social Media Marketer Need to Watch Over Holiday Break appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

To boost the productivity and simplify the lives of their vendors, the Shopify App never falls short of offering a plethora of awesome and intuitive apps. In fact, currently the Shopify app store boasts more than 1800 apps, and most of them are free of cost! The free apps greatly pique the interest of store owners, since they allow them to maximize sales and generate a greater revenue stream, without breaking their bank.With such a wide array of awe-inspiring apps, entrepreneurs might be spoilt for choice and a little confused about which apps to choose and which ones to avoid.

To make the choice easier for entrepreneurs, here are the best Shopify apps that will help you increase your sales.

1. Boost Sales

What is the first name that comes to your mind when you hear about “E-commerce brands”? Is it Amazon or eBay? Yes, I might not be a clairvoyant, but I am pretty sure I got that right! What makes them so popular in the E-commerce industry? Despite a host of reasons, one probable reason is their prowess when it comes to cross-selling. Amazon is a champion when it comes to cross-selling their products and services.

Boost Sales is one Shopify app that not only helps you in upselling and cross-selling, but it goes one step further by telling you which products you should recommend to your customers by analyzing your sales data. With cross-platform support and integration with different tools, you can easily provide a unified shopping experience by integrating all your Shopify sites.

2. Mail Chimp For Shopify

Email marketing is an important weapon in your digital marketing arsenal that helps you inform users, engage them and persuade them to purchase your products and sign up for your services. MailChimp is a popular email marketing tool that lets you automate and streamline your email marketing efforts. Whether it be sending abandoned cart emails or promoting the latest discounts on your products, MailChimphas you covered!

3. Swell

One Shopify app that did not get the attention it deserved from entrepreneurs and is usually left out from the best Shopify app lists, is Swell. Entrepreneurs are well aware of the fact that it is easier to retain customers than acquire new ones. No strategy is more effective at retaining customers than a reward-based loyalty program. This is where Swell comes into play.

It helps you put together personalized loyalty programs with a few clicks. It gamifies the whole process by awarding loyalty points on each user activity, which keeps the users engaged and interested. If are a big fan of customizations on product pages, then Swell will surely appeal to you.

4. Sales Pop

Who says that you cannot achieve success overnight! In fact, this is exactly what Sales Pop did. Since its launch in early 2017, Sales Pop broke all popularity records and became one of the most popular free Shopify apps in the world in just over two weeks. With more than 25,000 active users and 2400 reviews, the future looks great for Sales Pop. You can easily track sales with its efficient notifications. These notifications provide you a sneak peek into consumer behavior and make sales tracking much easier.

5. Oberlo

Oberlo takes the hassle out of import drop-shipping products by letting store owners import goods with a mere few clicks. With its quick and efficient delivery, store owners won’t have to wait long to get the products in their stores. You don’t even have to manage your inventory and the app also saves you a lot of money you would spend on designing a product. Processing orders is a breeze too. Starting a new business and managing it has never been easier, thanks to Oberlo.

6. Yotpo

Have you ever thought about leveraging user-generated content to give your business a boost? No? Then you need to do it now. Yotpo helps you do that. It highlights user-generated content in such a way that it reaches the right shoppers and goes well beyond search and social media. You can easily listen to what your customers are saying about your products, measure success and take steps to make future improvements to your products or services. Boost conversions and nurture trust by letting your customers do the talking.

7. Better Coupon Box

Another Shopify app that has made a huge impact is Better Coupon Box. Ranked as the number one free app in marketing category, Coupon Box has won the hearts of more than 70,000 Shopify store owners and gleaned 2300 reviews. There is also a premium version of this app that lets you tweak coupon pop-ups according to your preferences. You can even control which pages the pop up will appear on and which target group it will be visible to. The added advantage here is that you can even track the intent of the customer when they exit your site, which will give you a clearer picture of what needs to be fixed.

8. Kit

Kit is a customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation tool. It automates your marketing campaigns and notifies you when you need to post fresh content on social media. Creating discount codes is a matter of a few clicks with this app and you can also send emails to your regular customers. Store owners can also promote their stores on different social channels by creating ads using Kit CRM. Best of all, it can integrate with other marketing tools to help you manage everything in a hassle-free manner.

9. Instagram Shop

Did you know that more than 15 million businesses have a business profile on Instagram? With more than 600 million users and 400 million daily users, you cannot go wrong with marketing your business on Instagram. Backed by Instagram itself, Instagram shop app lets you convert your Instagram feed into an online shopping experience, letting your audience purchase specific products right from the app.

This saves your buyers from browsing the entire online store just to buy a single product, which makes the overall shopping experience much more convenient. Keeping an eye on Instagram analytics will provide you with some useful insights to improve your business process and increase sales. Instagram analytics tools can help you in this regard.

10. Plug-In SEO

Who doesn’t want their business to show up on the top three results on Google? Unfortunately, it is easier said than done. In order to increase sales, you can use advertising but you also need some organic traffic as well. Optimize different elements of your website to make it easier for search engines to crawl your website. This is where Plug-in SEO comes into play. It is one of the best Shopify plugins out there when it comes to SEO. It lets you evaluate your website for search engine optimization based on different metrics and tell you what you need to fix to rank higher in search engines. With more than a thousand five star reviews under its belt, this app deserves your attention.

Which Shopify apps do you use? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below.

The post 10 Shopify Apps that will Boost your Sales in 2018 without Costing you a Dime appeared first on Branex Official Blog.