Even with a busy schedule I try and keep an eye on movement in the tech industry. Where money is being placed shows the direction of the market and what the results of all these industry gurus research and decisions are being backed by speculation. Follow the money and you're following the end results of all these great minds. In an article on SIIA.net there's a comparative breakdown of the last three years worth of investments in different sectors of technology that leads in with some analysis on Q1 2018. Out of the gate, 2018 is up 124% compared to 2017 and the money is on tech enabled services up 207%. Marketing, analytics, database and information services have unprecedented increases. With stronger consumer confidence the market outlook for technology related goods and services is very healthy, as a consequence advertising and marketing via tech soars along side. Seems obvious to those involved with technology that this isn't going anywhere but up. Take a read through the numbers, what they mean is a future more interwoven with tech than anyone can imagine. The article is from Matt Kinsman, former vice president at Connectiv now at Accruent.com citing info from JEGI.com.
Although this article is on the subject of content marketing it overlaps into all areas of digital marketing. I found this great article by Richard Darell while doing research for a strategic marketing plan for a new project. There's a detailed infographic included by ZenContent that helped me form the basis of my plan. I was having a touch of writers block getting started on this marketing plan and can see when a business becomes too close to itself to be able to write effectively for their own products. Whether it is the lack of time or just the need for a fresh perspective, consider hiring professional content writers from ZenContent. Promoting your website is essentially content marketing. Quality content gets a new customer to the door and engages the the ones that have already made purchases. Add a great domain name and building more engaging content provides the search engines with a bigger target to hit and will dynamically improve your SEO efforts.
Read more about content marketing at BitRebels.
As we approach the 4th quarter of fiscal year 2015, and soon to be at the midway point of this decade, I started to look at the predictions and indicators for internet growth by year 2020. Sounds futurist the year 2020 and I think we are starting to enter into the steeper slope of the curve now. In 2010 the internet had 1.7 billion users, today it has a little over 3.1 billion and by 2020 it should be at 5 billion. Check out the stats by country here on InternetWorldStats.com.
Forecasting the future of the internet is that hard to predict just look at what we do and ask yourself are we going to be doing any less of it. Twenty-five great points are listed in this article on Marketing in 2020 by Jeff Beer of FastCompany.com. By looking at marketing we can see the direction society is taking by observing the force trying to get in-front of the mass. Some key points I took away were virtual reality is reality, brand transparency and through technology it's about to get really personal.
Don't forget to consider the growth of the machine usage with the Internet of Things IoT. Both machine and human usage almost double in the next 5 years!
Advertising in 2018 and Beyond With the Super Bowl Lll just around the corner, I am always interested in what 30 seconds of air time is selling for and what the best commercials will be. Last year companies spent up to 5 million to get in front of the 111 million viewers watching in the US, and then their money was gone. Advertising online has more than begun it's shift upward while other mediums, aside from radio, are sloping down. In an article on MediaPost.com The Winterberry Group states 2018 will be the year of digital media and spending will surpass all off lime marketing. In 2016 online spending surpassed television, now it's growing overall. That's because online advertising works and everyone is on all the time. As a business owner you know you need to be online, but finding your customers in this digital ocean is the next challenge. SmartInsights.com just released a digital marketing mega-trends guide and they have several digital marketing tool kits. The article was scientific citing the effectiveness of Amazon's trial and errors as they grew. One point not expressed enough is to acquire a memorable and easy to pronounce, easy to pass along domain name. (Note: KeyInsight.com is for sale now. We are asking 185k for the domain today, it may seem like a lot, but in a few years it will be worth the cost of a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl.) Don't delay building your brand, what you put off now, will later only be more difficult and increasingly competitive to navigate.
Go Eagles!
I have been looking at domain name predictions that were made in 2016 to measure how well the analysts are keeping up with actual market movements in 2017. Being now that we're enter into 3rd quarter, it's good time for a halftime report. Overall, the results are on track and moving in the right direction. It's a difficult area to measure as most sales figures are not reported and have NDA's attached to them, but corporate purchases are up and companies are strategically placing themselves for additional accessibility into mobile and online services as workforce's are more distributed along with trying to increase their customer base.
Take a look at these 3 sources and draw your own conclusions. Huge growth is anticipated going to 2024. Strategyr's Domain Name Market Trends Verisign's Domain Name Registrations in Q1 Hover's Domain Name Expert's Point of View
Stay away from 3Essentials.com shared web hosting. Twice in the last month my site was down due to other technical errors on a shared hosting server, so I changed hosts. Essentially up-time isn't guaranteed, nor is the money back or satisfaction guarantees. I hosted with them for awhile, but the show stopper was how long, and how much of a battle it was to get tech support to look into the problems by email. (no phone support)
I expected to get my money back, not that it was a lot, just on principle. But, past 45 days, they'll keep your remaining balance, read the fine print. Since they wouldn't refund, I asked them to re-instate my account, but that's not their policy either.
No reliability, support or money back - three essentials you should be aware of.
There's a insightful article on The Wall Street Journal about the continued closings of retail stores. The Business Insider had an article earlier about the same topic. It's all the more reason to get your business online or tune it up and expand your marketplaces, no matter what type of products you sell. The article focuses on retail outlets declining and how more people are finding the convenience of online shopping. What the article doesn't say is that the shopping habits of retail are being carried over into all business classes. B2B (business to business) decisions are being made the same manor. If your business isn't found or engaging enough, customers are going elsewhere at light speed. To further that statement, the experience they find while using your site, is exactly how they perceive working with your organization to be. It's your corporate image. It's your credibility and it tells how well run your organization is, be it corporate, a government agency or a charitable organization. Not many people will ever see your place of work, but chances are they will visit your website at all hours of the day. Just ask your analytics guy. People follow up in the evening, weekends and at all hours of the day outside of normal business hours. It's how research is done. The more advanced will employ secondary research groups to dig deeper, but generally what they see in the search results or after trying a few URL's (domain names) is it. Two key points for making more money. Get a great domain name for your business and keeping acquiring them while they are inexpensive. Some businesses own hundreds of thousands of names. Disney has about 20k names, some pharmaceutical companies own even more. The internet isn't going anywhere and isn't going to be replaced anytime in the next 30 years. Names you could have bought 10 years ago for a few thousand will never be available for sale again for less. Buy words in English and .com extensions. These will always be the best most memorable search friendly names that bring affluent customers to your door. Build a scalable and dynamic website. Keep adding relevant content and you'll keep driving targeted traffic. If you sell widgets, you want to attract people buying widgets. Your website needs to the best you can present for your market and dynamic. Dynamic is fresh, evolving content and interactive. Interactivity is how you listen to your customer's needs. This is how to communicate, make it easy and make it fun, gamify it. Read more on web development and building your user engagement here.