A Guide to Improving Your Alexa Rank

 Many people ask us: How can I improve my Alexa Rank? We understand how important this metric is for you and your business. As a public metric, potential advertisers, investors, and partners will look up your Alexa Rank and use it as a way to evaluate the value of your business. For this reason, improvements in your rank can make a real dollars and cents impact on your bottom line.

For those of you who are new to Alexa or unfamiliar with the Alexa Rank – it is a single metric that provides a quick summary of a site’s performance (yours or your competitor’s) relative to all other sites on the web. If you aren’t focused on it, you may not be doing everything you can to maximize the value and visibility of your business. In all, the authority of your site on the web is translated as your Alexa Rank.

But before we dive into how you can improve your site’s Alexa Rank, we should take a step back. It’s important to understand the makeup of the Alexa Rank so you understand how you can make it better.

Let’s get started.

What is the Alexa Rank?
Your Alexa Rank is an estimate of how popular your site is relative to all other sites. The Alexa Rank answers the question: Compared to all other sites, how is my site doing? Note that since rank is a relative measure, your site’s rank is not only dependent on that site’s traffic, but also on changes to traffic on other sites.

How does Alexa get its data?
Alexa has a large traffic data panel consisting of millions of people all over the world. Based on the data from this sample, Alexa estimates the number of visitors to all sites on the Internet. It’s a complicated calculation that involves correcting for biases as well as identifying and discarding fake or spam traffic. Our data scientists are the best in the business and they make sure the data we present is free of noise and non-human data, so you can make the best decisions for your business.

How is the Alexa Rank calculated?
Every day, Alexa estimates the average daily visitors and pageviews to every site over the past 3 months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews over the past 3 months is ranked #1. The site with the least is ranked somewhere around 30 million. If no one in our measurement panel visited a site over the past 3 months there is no rank at all for that site.

How does the number of visitors to a site affect the Alexa Rank?
If you plot the number of visitors to a site versus the rank it looks something like this:

At the head of the graph is Google.com, which gets a huge number of visitors and is ranked #1. The sites at the “head” end of the plot, like Google.com, get a huge amount of traffic compared to the sites on the “long tail” at the other end. The important thing to notice is that because of the shape of the distribution, a very small change in the number of visitors to a site on the long tail results in a large change in rank.

However, the closer you get to the head of the graph, the more visitors it takes to move up a rank. There’s a huge difference in traffic to a site ranked 10 versus a site ranked 200.

Getting a more accurate Alexa rank
To get a more accurate Alexa Rank you can certify your site’s metrics on Alexa. Sites with certified metrics have their metrics directly measured by Alexa instead of being estimated based on information from our data panel. Certifying your site’s metrics provides a more accurate rank, but not necessarily a better rank! There are several other benefits of Certified Site Metrics, but a more accurate Alexa Rank is just one of them.

So, how do you get a better Alexa rank?
There are several tactics that will help improve your Alexa Rank:

Produce engaging, original content, updated frequently that provides real value to your audience. Content that strays from this motivation fails to build loyal audiences. When readers find resources valuable and informative, they engage with future content and share among their networks (link building), introducing new visitors that potentially turn into customers. Quality content is also being rewarded by search engines like Google, which is taking steps to get better answers faster for the end user.

Get more related sites to link to your website. Otherwise known as inbound links, this tactic helps search engines clearly define your niche and also increases the trust and quality of your site. In other words, authoritative inbound links (from sites that are performing well) give your own site credibility. This tactic must be supported by producing engaging, original content, because why lead targeted visitors to your site if they don’t want to stay?

Internal links, on the other hand, are links that lead from one page or post on your site to another. These are beneficial because they guide visitors through your website (i.e. website navigation), keeping them engaged with relevant and related content. They also contribute to site links, which are the sub-links that appear in a search engine below your main page link. But again, creating top-notch content goes hand in hand with any internal linking strategy so make sure the content you produce is relevant and of value to your visitors.

In all, both inbound and internal links help search engines understand the content of your site(s) and determine how valuable it is to visitors. But while an important part of your online strategy, you should use linking appropriately. Excessive linking can reduce the credibility or readability of your site and may be penalized by search engines.

Related feature: Competitor Backlink Checker

Find keywords that are driving traffic to your competitors and optimize your site for them, or buy PPC campaigns for those keywords. By doing a little keyword research you can understand what your audiences are searching for and how. In a way, keyword research is learning to speak your customers’ language in the context of their needs and desires. Inbound Marketing Agents shared a great infographic on the 5 fingers of a keyword placement strategy that will help you pick the right areas on your site to place your target keywords.

Related feature: Keyword Difficulty Tool

Understand your competitors’ marketing strategy and learn what works. There are several reasons why analyzing your competition matters, but in a nutshell competitive analytics puts your own site analytics into context. Thus, giving you a clearer understanding of what metrics are important, what strategies are working (for you and your competitors), and allows you to identify and anticipate industry trends. All of these angles help inform your overall strategy and allow you to make more knowledgeable business decisions that will positively affect your position in the market.

Read more about how marketers use Alexa Rank.

Related feature: Competitive Analysis Tools

Follow SEO best practices on your website. SEO is a very important strategy that deserves a significant amount of your time and attention. But SEO is not just about improving the promotion and visibility of your website. It’s also about making your site better for your customers who use it to interface with your brand. Without a good user experience you have little hope of keeping or converting your customers.

Related feature: SEO Audit Tool

There are countless resources for learning about SEO, but Alexa offers a Marketing Stack that includes keyword research, competitive analysis, and web analytics tools as part of our Advanced plan. You’ll get specific instructions on how to improve search engine rankings, usability, page performance, back linking, and more.

Source- https://blog.alexa.com/improving-your-alexa-rank

Time to welcome Google Search Central and say by Google Search Console

Merriam-Webster claims the first known use of the word "webmaster" was in 1993, years before Google even existed. However, the term is becoming archaic, and according to the data found in books, its use is in sharp decline. A user experience study we ran revealed that very few web professionals identify themselves as webmasters anymore. They're more likely to call themselves Search Engine Optimizer (SEO), online marketer, blogger, web developer, or site owner, but very few "webmasters".

We're changing our name In brainstorming our new name, we realized that there's not one term that perfectly summarizes the work people do on websites. To focus more on the topic that we talk about (Google Search), we're changing our name from "Google Webmasters Central" to "Google Search Central", both on our websites and on social media. Our goal is still the same; we aim to help people improve the visibility of their website on Google Search.The change will happen on most platforms in the next couple days.

Centralizing help information to one site To help people learn how to improve their website's visibility on Google Search, we're also consolidating our help documentation and blogs to one site.
Moving forward, the Search Console Help Center will contain only documentation related to using Search Console. It's also still the home of our help forum, newly renamed from "Webmasters Help Community" to "Google Search Central Community". The information related to how Google Search works, crawling and indexing, Search guidelines, and other Search-related topics are moving to our new site, which previously focused only on web developer documentation. The content move will happen over the next few days.

We will continue to create content for anyone who wants their websites to show up on Google Search, whether you're just getting started with SEO or you're an experienced web professional. 

Consolidating the blogs The blog that you're reading right now is also moving to our main site. However, we will wait one week to allow subscribers to read this last post on the old platform. Moving this blog, including our other 13 localized blogs, to one place brings the following benefits:
More discovery of related content (help documentation, localized blogs, event information, on one site)
Easier to switch between languages (no longer have to find the localized blog URL)
Better platform allows us to maintain content, localize blog post more easily, and format posts consistently
Going forward, all archived and new blog posts will appear on https://developers.google.com/search/blog. You don't need to take any action in order to keep getting updates from us; we will redirect the current set of RSS and email subscribers to the new blog URL.

Googlebot mascot gets a refresh
Our Googlebot mascot is also getting an upgrade. Googlebot's days of wandering the web solo come to a close as a new sidekick joins Googlebot in crawling the internet.

Googlebot mascot gets a refresh
When we first met this curious critter, we wondered, "Is it really a spider?" After some observation, we noticed this spider bot hybrid can jump great distances and sees best when surrounded by green light. We think Googlebot's new best friend is a spider from the genus Phidippus, though it seems to also have bot-like characteristics. Googlebot's been trying out new nicknames for the little spider bot, but they haven't settled on anything yet. Maybe you can help?

As parting words, update your bookmarks and if you have any questions or comments, you can find us on Twitter and in our Google Search Central Help Community.

When do we need Lead Funnels?

In the previous lessons, we talked about Lead Generation funnels and I showed you an example of how I have built my lead generation funnel. 

We have also discussed that high-end B2B and enterprise products do not need a lead generation funnel and low-end simple B2C products do not need leads at all.

Lead generation is required when you are selling a product that is high-priced, is complex, and the buyer might have a lot of questions before buying your product or service.

 Please note that the requirement for lead generation and the requirement for lead generation funnels are not the same things.

 Lead generation is required when the product price is higher. But when the product price is very high and the target market is very small, a lead generation funnel is not required.

 A lead generation funnel is required when you have a balance between the two. Your products and services are not too cheap and simple, nor too costly and complex.

 A funnel is required when you have B2C products at a higher cost and B2B products at a lower cost.

Examples of products and services where a funnel is required:
High-end B2C Products like house, car, appliances.
Low-end B2B products like software
So how can we visualize this?

I have made this chart which explains it clearly. 

In the chart, you can see that there are two Y-axes.
The marketing effort goes down as the price of the product goes up.

The lead generation effort goes up when the price and complexity of the product increases.

When the price is too low, you don't need leads, so you don't need lead generation funnels.

When the price of the product is very high, every lead that you reach out to will be a very high quality targeted lead, and you do not need a funnel in that case.

For example, Infosys, a large enterprise IT company, would reach out to people who are the right fit for their services. They would already have a fair idea about their target customers. Pinpointing the lead is not a problem at all. They would do cold-emailing, meet, and connect with the right people in conferences and also reach out to them via referrals. The sale is more dependent on the sales effort than the marketing effort.

When do we need lead generation funnels?
We need lead generation funnels when we are somewhere in the middle of the chart that I have shown above.

In the previous lesson, I talked about how I generate leads, nurture them, and filter them to engage with the sales process. My business (the training one and not the agency) is a B2C business. But the products (my training programs) are not low priced. They are starting from 10,000 rupees ($150 approx). 

I cannot just market my products and brand and expect people to buy. That's why I create a funnel.
Let's take a look at one of the B2B products I have - OptinChat.com. It is a lead generation tool for website owners that collects names and email IDs of visitors. The cost of the tool is $49 a month. The price of the product is not too high that I would have a sales team that reaches out to people directly and sells them. The profit from each sale wouldn't be enough to pay the sales team.

So even though OptinChat.com is a B2B tool, I market it in such a way that I would sell a high-end B2C product. There are too many prospects out there for a manual sales outreach to effective.
I generate leads for OptinChat by giving the free version of OptinChat for free and I do webinars to sell the premium version.

In the next email, I will explain how the lead generation funnel for OptinChat (a low-end B2B tool) works. 

The funnel generates the leads, nurtures them to build trust with them, and converts the cold leads into warm leads even before the sales process begins.

How I Generate Leads for my Business

In the previous lesson, we talked about lead generation funnels and why they are important to filter out the high quality leads from the low-quality ones.

Filtering high-quality leads is important because when you are doing high-end B2C sales or low-end B2B sales you will have more leads and a good mix of low quality leads in it.

When you are generating leads via digital marketing a good mix of untargeted and uninterested leads will come into your system.

When you are prospecting for B2B leads and reaching out to businesses, you are generating very high-quality leads.

For example, Clever.com is software for schools for delivering education online. Their minimum pricing starts at $5000 per year. Most of their customers are enterprise customers.

In such cases, they will just reach out to their target customers via a sales force and start converting the leads.

If you are towards the middle of the pricing spectrum you might not have that luxury. That's why we need lead generation funnels.

Before we dive deep into lead generation funnels and how they work, in today's lesson I want to give you an example of my lead generation funnel.

To create a lead generation funnel, you need a lead magnet. The lead magnet is the first part of the entire funnel. Without a lead magnet, you will not be able to generate a lot of leads through inbound marketing.

My lead magnet is my free digital marketing course with 25 videos. For people who want to learn digital marketing, I give away this course for free. But to sign up, people need to give me their name and email ID.

Once they give me their name and email ID, they become my lead. I created this lead magnet a few years back. Once my lead magnet was ready, I went ahead and started driving traffic to it.

First, I used search traffic to get the leads. I used to get more than 5000 visitors a month via the search engines to my blog.

I converted the visitors into leads using this lead magnet. Then I started driving traffic to the lead magnet using Facebook Ads. And then I started using Google Ads to drive the traffic. (Hire Digital Marketing Company to Generate Leads for you)

Once they enter their name and email ID, their course will start. I deliver one lesson every day for 25 days. Until 25 days I do not sell anything. The videos are designed to provide value and build trust with the audience.

Trust building is an important part of sales. Without trust, sales cannot happen. In an offline sales model, trust is usually built via personal relationships.

If a salesman is good at his craft, he would build trust with his prospects and he would close the deals. But when you are generating 100s or 1000s of leads, you cannot have individual conversations with each person who is in your funnel. That's why marketing automation helps in lead generation funnels.

An automated sequence of emails builds trust with your audience on automation. You don't need to lift a finger. Setup the email sequence, get the leads and the trust-building happens automatically. But as we all know, without sales the funnel is not going to sustain itself.

"Sales" is the power source of the funnel. Sales give us transactions and transactions will give us profits.

When we make profits, we can reinvest the money back into the creation of lead magnets, back into traffic driving mechanisms like SEO, SEM, and Display Ads, and back into CRM and Marketing Automation tools that help us build trust with the audience.

So how do we sell in B2C when there is a funnel?

As we have discussed in the previous lesson, we need to pick out the high quality leads from the low-quality ones to engage them in a sales process.

That's where the concept of lead scoring comes in.

I score the leads based on their behavior. For example, let's take 2 leads. 1 lead is highly interested and there is a high chance she will buy. One lead is not so interested and has a very low chance of buying.

The highly interesting lead will open all my emails and read through all the lessons. The less interested lead will hardly open any emails. If I give 1 point for every email open and 3 points for every click inside the email then I can find out who are the highly interested leads and who is not so warmed up to my offer. (Learn Digital Marketing to Generate Leads for your Business)

I would end up calling the highly interested leads and engage them in a sales process.

"Sales" is a separate topic in itself and deserves a series of lessons on its own but you get the idea.

What are Lead Generation Funnels?

In the last three lessons, we talked about lead generation for high-end B2C products and high-end B2B products.

We also understood that low-end B2C products that are simple don't require lead generation.

The effort that is invested in lead generation is not worth it because the profits that we make from each sale is not going to be enough to justify the efforts in lead generation and sales. Also many times, the end customers do not want to share their contact information and talk to a salesperson when they are buying something simple. They just want to make the payment, purchase it, and use it.

If they have to give the contact information and wait for a salesperson to get back, they might not like it. Imagine the last time you ordered something from Amazon. You just ordered it. We don't want to talk to someone in such cases even if someone is available to talk to. It takes time and time is limited. Time is money.

So lead generation is only required when the price of the product is high and the product is complex. Like a house or a car.

However, as a business, if you are generating a lot of leads then you will not be able to call all the leads and serve them.

If you generate 1,000 leads a day and you have 10 salespeople who can call only 10 leads a day then what will you do with the rest of the 900 leads?

If your sales team tries to pick leads randomly and call them, there is a high chance that a lot of these leads will not be interested. It would be an inefficient use of the time of the sales team. And you as a business cannot hire 100 salespeople because that would be too costly.

As a thought experiment, consider that you can hire 100 salespeople and each person calls 10 leads a day. And you are generating 1000 leads a day. What do you think would be the conversion?

Let's say out of every 100 calls to the leads, 1 person converts into a customer. At this conversion ratio, you are going to generate 1 sale per salesperson for every 10 days on average. That means each salesman can convert 3 leads into customers a month.

Recap of the numbers:

Leads generated per day: 1,000
Total salesmen: 100
Calls per day per salesman: 10
Calls per month per salesman: 300
Conversion ratio: 1/100 (1%)
Conversions per month: 30
Conversions per month per salesman: 3

Now the biggest problem you will face is that 3 sales are not good enough for you to make enough profits and pay the salary of the salesperson.

The salary or the commission you pay the sales guy is going to be more than what you make as profits.

So what we need to do here is increase the conversion ratio of each salesperson.

Instead of each salesman converting 1 lead into a customer out of 100 leads, we need to get each salesperson to convert 10 leads into customers out of 100 leads. And this can happen only if you create a lead generation funnel.

There is no lead source in the world which will give you high quality leads out of the box.

Every traffic source online will send you all kinds of leads and we need to filter through them. It's like mining for diamonds. You need to process a lot of coal before you can find the diamonds. That's what a funnel does for you.

A funnel will filter out the high quality leads from a heap of leads and gives you the best quality ones.

Getting back to our example, remember we are generating 1000 leads a day and we do not have 100 salespeople. We have only 10. Each salesperson can call only 10 leads a day.

So what we need to do is find out what are the top 100 leads out of the 1000 leads so that we can assign 10 leads to every salesperson.

We find out the high quality leads in such a way that the buyer is in one of these 10 leads.

It's like predicting which area of the coal deposit will have a higher concentration of diamonds and processing just that instead of processing the entire coal deposit in that area.

That's why we need Lead Generation Funnels. The funnel is a filtration mechanism to find out the best leads that can be engaged with. With a funnel, we can get the same conversions with 1/10th of the sales team. The funnel does the rest of the work for us. That's why marketing automation is important. It cannot automate all the tasks, but it can make us more efficient.

Recap of the numbers with a funnel:

Leads generated per day: 1,000
High-quality leads identified: 10% (100 per day)
Total salesmen: 10
Calls per day per salesman: 10
Calls per month per salesman: 300
Conversion ratio: 10/100 (10%)
Conversions per month: 300
Conversions per month per salesman: 30

In the process, the funnel also builds trust with the leads and converts the cold leads into warm leads.

I hope in today's lesson you understood the importance of lead generation funnels.

In the next lesson, we will look at an example of how a lead generation funnel can be applied to B2C leads, and in the lesson after that, we will look at how the same technique can be applied to low-end B2B products as well.
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Lead Generation for High End B2C Products

Hera today we learned that we do not need lead generation for basic B2C products that are low priced and simple.

For example, if you are selling candy or a pen, it is a simple low priced product and doesn't need lead generation.

The sales cycle is short and the decision-making process is easy. Many of these products and services are bought on impulse.

Even if the end consumer makes a wrong purchase, it is not something to worry about. If I spend 10 rupees on a pen and if it doesn't write properly, I will not lose sleep over it.

My time is more valuable than going back to the shop and asking for a refund. However, when it comes to high-end B2C products, we need to do lead generation.

Let's take two examples of high-end B2C products.

What are the biggest purchases that a consumer will make in his lifetime? It is easy to guess.

The biggest purchase would be a house.

People end up spending their entire life savings to buy a home. The next biggest purchase that they will make will be a car.

Let's first think about buying a home.

The Process of Buying a Home:

If someone is interested in buying a home, he/she will look at an ad and will call the number on that ad. Or they will look at an ad online, click on it, visit the landing page and fill out a form with their contact information.

This contact information becomes a lead for the seller. As we discussed in lesson 1, this is a lead because it leads to a sale.

This contact information is the connecting link between the buyer and the seller. Once the seller gets the contact information he will call the prospective buyer and schedule a site visit.

Without seeing the house in person, the buyer cannot make a buying decision. This is a complex product and once the purchase is done, it is difficult to reverse the transaction.

So the buyer will visit the house (or a model house if it is still under construction) and then will ask a lot of questions to the salesperson.

Does it have a good water supply?
Is this a good neighborhood?
What about the facilities in this apartment building?
What about the security and so on.
These are the questions and objections that the buyer has before he can go ahead with the purchase. The decision-making process can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months. The sales cycle is long in this case.

The seller needs to generate the leads, profile the leads, score the leads, and then close the sale with constant follow up. (All these strategies will be discussed in the future lessons).

Now let's take another example of a high-end purchase.

The purchase of a Car: After a house purchase, the next biggest purchase for an end consumer would be the purchase of a car. It is not a one time purchase but it can happen once in 3-5 years. Since it is a complex product, lead generation is required for this.

This is how the process would flow:

The buyer sees an ad online for a car.
He visits the landing page and downloads a brochure.
He gives his contact details to download the brochure.
Then he watches a welcome video.
Below the welcome video, there is a link to request for a test ride.

The form asks a lot of questions such as:

What car do you currently own?
When are you planning to purchase the new car?
Will you be buying it as an individual or as a company?
When do you want to request for a test ride?
Do you need financing for the car or will you pay the full amount upfront?
The questions that are being asked in the form is very important to score and profile the leads. The salesperson may not have time to call every lead and give the test ride of the car to them.

He has to filter out the highly qualified buyers from the unqualified ones. Many car enthusiasts who don't have the money to buy cars would still request for a test ride.

The information filled in the form will help the salesperson to prioritize the leads. That's why lead profiling and scoring becomes important. In future lessons, I will show you how lead-profiling and scoring works in real life with practical tools.

You can see that in both the cases mentioned above the sale cannot happen without lead generation.

No one will see an ad and swipe their credit card to buy a home or a car. Lead generation and sales are required in this case because the buyer has a lot of questions that need to be cleared before the sale can happen. And that can be cleared only by a salesperson. And for that, the salesperson needs the contact information of the buyer.

That's why lead generation becomes very important. The same method can be applied for any B2C product that is high-end.

If you are selling an interior-design service or an appliance that is high priced, you need lead generation.

In the first few weeks, we will be focusing on the theory and fundamentals of lead generation which is very important. Without understanding the principles and fundamentals, the strategy and tactics will not make any sense.

If you are looking for tactics and strategies that you can apply immediately, please have patience, they are coming to you in the future lessons. If you understand the principles properly, you will be able to come up with your own strategies and tactics.

That's it for today's lesson on lead generation for high-end B2C products and services. In tomorrow's lesson, we will talk about lead generation for low-end B2B products and services.

Lead Generation for B2B and Enterprise

In previous post, we talked about why it is not required to generate leads for B2C when the products are simple and low priced.

Consumers need not go through a long decision-making process to buy such products and most of the products are purchased on impulse.

There are cases where you will need to generate leads for B2C products, but we will look into it in future lessons.

Today let's discuss Lead Generation for B2B and Enterprise products.

Is lead generation required for it?

Absolutely yes.

Without generating leads for a B2B product or service it is very difficult to sell it.

The products are high priced and also complex in nature.

For example, if I have to sell my digital marketing services to a company, I have to generate leads.

The number of people who can be my potential customers is very low and I cannot do mass marketing or advertising for my services.

Do you think I would end up getting customers for my digital marketing agency if I put a billboard in a busy junction? It might help in brand awareness, but people are not just going to see an ad and buy a complex service with a 6-months contract.

When you are selling high-end services and products for B2B and Enterprise, lead generation is also easy.

You might be thinking that isn't lead generation difficult in such cases?

No.

Lead generation is easy - but the sales and conversion process is difficult.

To sell well, you need a brand, a personal brand, and a good offer combined with a strong sales pitch.

Let's look at an example from my own experience.

I sold a digital marketing funnel building service to a big publication. The publication was Your Story. I had a feeling that if they did digital marketing well, they would be able to scale up their revenues fast.

I wanted to get in touch with their CEO and I was able to do it. It took a lot of patience and persistence, but when I got in touch with her, I requested a meeting and I got it.

In the meeting, we pitched our services and we closed the deal along with some advanced sales and negotiation tactics.

Here, the lead generation was not difficult. We knew their contact details. But I was able to get a response from them because I had a personal brand for myself as a Digital Marketer and they have heard about me. I also did a very strong sales pitch and used my negotiation skills to close the sale.

Let's take another example of a company with products and services for high-end clients. Wipro serving HDFC Bank. If Wipro has to sell their software development services to HDFC, they will not be generating leads online nor will they advertise their services. They will get in contact with the right decision-makers.

Getting a response from the decision-makers and closing the deal is not easy, but the lead generation is not difficult. You just know who your target customers are and you get in touch with them. Your target customers will be very low in number.

So what I am trying to tell you here is that lead generation is NOT required via digital marketing if you are selling very simple B2C products , or very high-end B2B and Enterprise products.

Lead Generation is required when you are selling high priced complex B2C products or low priced B2B products. We will discuss this in the next lesson

If you have any questions about this lesson, let me know.

Do we need lead generation for B2C

If your business doesn't need lead generation, then there is no point in trying to learn how to generate leads, right?

So when does a business not need lead generation?

A business doesn't need lead generation when it is selling low priced consumer goods that are simple in nature.

When consumers need not go through a tough decision-making process to buy something, and when they do not need a lot of time to decide, generating leads is pointless.

Here are some examples of low priced consumer goods:

• Candy
• Soap
• Pen
• Cookies
• Body spray

These FMCG (Fast-moving consumer goods) products are simple, low priced, and attract a lot of repeat buyers.

Companies that sell FMCG products do not need lead generation.

Imagine how difficult it would be if you had to generate leads for someone who is interested in a bar of soap, have a salesperson call them and convince them to buy the soap and close the deal.
It is not practical because the amount of profit that you make from the sale of the soap is not enough to pay for the sales person's time and you would end up making losses with the sales process.

It is also not required because the decision-making process for buying soap is simple. Only when a product or service is complex and has a lot of questions to be answered about it, a salesperson needs to be involved.

Many FMCG products are simple products and decision making is usually impulsive. In such cases, brands will engage in marketing activities to raise brand awareness about the brand and get a strong market positioning within the market that they are operating in.

For example, Gillette is a good brand for men's razor blades and they have a strong market position as the leader when it comes to razor blades. They do not generate any leads for the sales of their products. They just advertise and build brand awareness.

What would you do if you had salespeople that do not take a salary or a commission from you? Would you employ them to sell your low priced, simple B2C products? Probably yes. But in the real world, you cannot hire people at no cost. But you can close yourself digitally and use marketing automation to sell without any human effort.

Can you think of all the products and services that do not require lead generation?

What is a Lead and What is not Lead

As Digital Marketers we use the word so much. Get Leads, Convert Leads, This Lead, That Lead, and so on. However, what is a "lead" in the real sense?

That's what we are going to learn today

There are a lot of people out there in the real world who would want to buy your products and services. You are here with a product or service that you want to sell. How are you going to reach out to your potential customers?

A lead is called a lead because it leads to a sale.

A lead is a connecting link between you (your business) and your prospect who is out there in the real world.
A lead usually consists of the following 3 things:

• Name
• Email ID
• Phone Number

Sometimes the leads do not contain the names. Sometimes it is either the email ID or the phone number.
The Email ID or the phone number helps you reach out to your potential prospect and have a conversation with them so that you can tell them about your products and services.

• If you want to have a sales call, you need leads.
• If you want to invite people to a webinar, you need leads.
• If you want to invite people to an event, you need leads.

What are not leads?

When we are talking about what are leads, it also helps to talk about what are not leads.
A lot of people focus a lot on building their social media following. But they are not your leads.
All these are not leads:

• Facebook Fans
• Instagram Followers
• Twitter Followers
• YouTube Subscribers

You are having a connection in someone else's platform and that is not going to be helping if you want to sell something to them. Many times, you will not be able to get 100% reach (or even 30%) because they are the users of the platform and not your users. Hence you will not be able to reach out to them on demand.

In this era of paradigm shift, do you really feel turning to DIGITAL?

Few days back, while reading an article in a world famous magazine, will mention its name in the consecutive paras, that the time is moving with its own pace, wherein I read that few Entrepreneurs not giving a damn thought to optimize their digital products which could adversely affect their latency to attract their potential customers.

I am pretty sure, many of you must have started their ventures with a thought to take it to next level with each passing phase but the end result is, you’re getting very limited clients that too through your existing business relationships. Dear, now is the time to digitally engage your prospective customers.

Many businesses stillbelieve on the former marketing trends including advertisements, and other forms of marketing, which has a very limited geographical reachand sometime costly too.

However, Online marketing tactics made it easier than ever to target local customers to generate brand value locally, definitely by deploying specific realms of digital marketing for local positioning of the brand.

I am sure, that by now you must be thinking to practice Digital marketing tactics for your business. Thus, before a digital marketing firm, being a smart Business owner, you should know digital marketing basic terms like Digital Marketing, What is SEO, what is ranking etc. let’s start one-by-one

What is SEO?
According to Forbes, SEO is the process of optimizing your website in order to get organic or unpaid traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing. It increases both the quality and quantity of your website traffic.

What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing works for companies with a global reach as well as for local businesses.

What is ranking over SERP?
Whenever you type a keyword on any of the search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing and press enter, you see a list of websites with a particular keyword you mentioned. This is called SERP ranking of a website.

Now! Let me ask you, do you really think that your business needs a Digital marketing services?Might be some of you say yes or some says no, but reality is Digital marketing is the best option in present scenario that not only gives you more n more reach among your potential customers in lesser time and economical ways but also build your brand value. Now, you will ask, HOW? Let’s go deeper

Cost-Effectiveness in the Targeted Customers For the marketing of any business, the cost always matters, so with traditional marketing tactics like ads on TV and print media, charges are very high, moreover, some businesses faces a hard time in competing with bigger Brands for ad space to gain attention of the consumers. While most of the digital marketing platforms are either free or are cost effective. Like for the paid campaign also you can measure the reach.

Targeted you Customers
In any marketing plan reaching out to the right audience is very important, digital marketing tactics helps to targeted people who would be atleast 95% interested in your company and products or services being offered.

Similar in paid campaigns, you can set your target audience using PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ad or a Facebook ad. You can set different attributes like age, gender, hobbies, occupation and others to target your audience. You can be as specific as you are willing to, when you’re targeting customers through your digital marketing paid campaigns.

Highly Measurable Results
One thing in digital marketing that will definitely help you to grow your business is, you can have a view over yourdigital marketing results and measure-them too. This means you could figure out whether your marketing campaign is performing well for you or not, giving any output or not, you can track everything in digital marketing.

Digital marketing has no room for guesswork as is the case with Traditional marketing. Each and every tactic used in any digital marketing campaign is measurable.

With the data offered by Google Analytics and other similar tools, you can have a look if a particular approach is effective or if it needs some tweaking. You can also use the things you learn and apply them to future campaigns to ensure better success rates.

Conclusion
Thence, to Conclude, it's time to think where you stand for your potential customer and whether what and how you are actually doing to bring them at your door to buy your services or products.

Most common reason for failure of startups

Before sometime I read an article in Fortune.com as per that article nine out of ten startups get failed and not even survive in the market for a single year. It looks very shocking! But unfortunately it’s the brutal truth of stratus.

Because most of the startups started by seeing the shining face of business owners where they worked and think that "If they can why not I" but actually they are unable to stay in the competitive market for a few months and close their startup business abruptly. But if analyze their targeted audience and they take some steps timely then they can survive and grow within a year.

Demand and Supply law is still working
Yes! the fundamental law of the economics i.e demand and supply is evergreen law of market, so before launching your business, you must understand the demand in the market and how much supply already their and if you are going to supply what unique thing you have to deliver. As not properly analyzing the needs & demands of your targeted customers is a very big reason due to around 42% startups fail to succeed.

Do you having User-Friendly Website
The present era is the era of online or we can say digital era, people wants everything over the internet, problem, solution, suggestions, advice, products, services, education everything, so this starts from website, so if you not having a very good user friendly website than your customer can go back from the landing page.

So, the question could be come to your mind that what is a user friendly website? this is the website which must hold all the information that your target customers want, have pages like About Us that tells about your company and business,there should be products or services pages so that they can read in details what you are going to sell.

Do your Logo Memorable?
Wow! its amazing! what a question, I spend a lot of money to design the logo it has a lot of information. Absolutely you are right but is it memorable? actually no one has accurate answer of this question,as everyone loves their business logo and everyone neglect others business logo untl unless they are not associated with that business, but you business logo must represent your business means if you see your own logo you think that it is associated with my business, as this association help you to build a brand identity.

Is your business present over Social Media?
In present scenario social media is reached at every home by smart phone, every single user spend at-least 4-5 hours in a day over social media, and we do not know which person become our client in future, so make your strong presence over Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn, if you have no enough time then hire an agency for social media activities that can do this work for you.

Do you Managing Company Cash Flow Effectively?
Hope this question made you little upset, as it directly questioning about your financial position, but this is very required for a better results, as per a survey 29% startups often struggle to keep their finances uptight, so try to keep operating costs low in the starting.

Do you have Right Team?
As per the study 23% startups fail due to not having the right team, as per an article published at Entrepreneur.com before some time it says that forming a right team is perhaps the first critical step to building a sustainable company.

Remember, only an effective team can quickly make adjustments with your any situation and quickly pivot to the ever-changing market conditions, so it makes sense to invest in a good team to steer your startup towards success.

Is there any Lack of Commitment?
I seen so many business owners do not maintain the initial level of high commitments with client, as they they start very well at initial level but lose their focus and determination to succeed due to different reasons.

Many business owners left their business with no enthusiasm if they face any obstacles in their, like if they do not get the customers’ response then they lose patience and interest with client and then shutter down.

In this situation you have to restore your commitment, maintain high level of energy and interest, and if required then take help of experienced people to enable yourself to understand the problem and solve it.

Do Having a Powerful Internet Marketing Strategy?
As per the survey, more than 70% people worldwide looking for services, products, education, training etc over the internet, I can say mainly over the search engine so your internet marketing strategy must be includes search engine marketing, email marketing, display marketing.

Means if your business website is not ranking high up in the search engine results when a potential customers type some business oriented keywords on Google, you will not get the customers.

So, your business website must come up at the top search results for different business oriented keywords. So, are you equipped with a sound internet marketing plan? No! then you can contact with a digital marketing agency for these all works.

The Conclusion - How To Ensure Success

• Make an effective business plan
• Estimated cost of your business running for next 4 to 5 months.
• Be prepared to work hard to realize your business goals as it require extra efforts.

As so many business startups fail and abruptly close because they do not plans so many things. They have very little information about target market and customers. They do not make marketing efforts to make a meaningful visual communication with their potential customers. Also, they do not take care of their financial aspects of business.

Which SEO tool is Better - SEMrush or Serpstat

As we know that SEOs are worldwide using so many tools, but a few tools are very popular among the SEOs, so we are today going to comparing in between Serpstat vs SEMrush and try to find out which one is better for the SEOs.

As with the help of these tools SEOs can go in-depth of the analysis about the business, keywords and competitors and actually this is the prime part of Good SEO practices, because on the basis of these our work can ensure a business will be found in the top of the search engine results when users are searching for the service or product you are offering with the help of keywords associated to your business

The Main Differences Between Serpstat vs SEMrush

As per me both tools like Serpstat and SEMrush are all in one SEO toolkits having various other tools inside and features that can allow you to analyse for your SEO works, and able to know are you doing well, and you can show the improvements. These tools can also help you to find profitable keywords that you can use within your website or blog to get ranked and more page views.

S. No	Serpstat	SEMrush
1	Keyword Research Tool	Organic Research
2	Search Analytics	Advertising Research
3	Advertising Analysis	Display advertising tool
4	Content Marketing Ideation	Backlink analysis tool and backlink research tool
5	Competitor Research & Competitor Analysis	Keyword research
6	Rank Tracking / Rank Tracker	Product listing ads
7	Market Intelligence	Traffic analytics
8	On-Page Site Audit Tool	Market explorer
9	Reports and Infographics	SEO Writing assistant
10	API	Project tracking
11	White Label Reports	Site audits
12	Backlink Analysis	Social Media Tracker
13		Social Media Poster
14		Brand monitoring
15		On-page SEO checker

As per my analysis Serpstat does not having any social media tools inside, whereas SEMrush has social media tracking and posting tools included so that you can analyse and compete with your competitors’ social media strategy

Serpstat does not have SEO writing, whereas SEM rush has an SEO writing assistant feature that helps you to make sure that all of your content is optimized

Know about Serpstat

Serpstat is an all in one SEO toolkit that can help you to automate your SEO processes. It has a range of different modules to help you with different areas of your SEO campaigns, and it helps you keep track of your results and analytics from one central place.

Serpstat is not just for SEO professionals, it has also been designed to be used by analytics experts, content managers and PPC specialists, and digital marketers, so although it’s features are advanced, it’s suitable for anyone to use.

Mistakes and issues that you can find using this tool include:

• Links verification
• Correct interlinking verification
• Robots.txt settings
• Missing Pages
• The relevance of content within Meta Tags and length in title and description
• Headings (H1, H2 etc)
• Duplicate content
• Creation or correction of sitemap
• Problems with images
• Presence of “display:none” hidden content and frames
• Reports and Infographics

The reports you create can be fully customized with your branding and logo so that they are fully white labelled. This is a great feature if you are providing SEO services for another company or working as an agency. There are no limits to the number of reports you can export, and you can export them in multiple formats depending on what works best for you.

The Benefits of Using Serpstat

• Serpstat is an all in one SEO toolkit that will be able to handle all of your SEO needs.
• The user interface and dashboards are very easy to understand and use, even if you are a complete beginner.
• Serpstat can create white-labelled reports, which is a great option to have if you are working on an SEO project on behalf of a client.
• You can have unlimited users for your account, so you can add in your colleagues or your boss so that they can easily view statistics and reports.
• There is a free plan available with access to some useful features.
• The pricing is affordable compared to other SEO toolkits.
• The reports are presented visually and are easy to understand.
• The Downsides to Using Serpstat
• The customer service team can be a little slow to respond during peak times.
• There have been reports that the keyword difficulty can occasionally be inaccurate.
• White labelled reporting is only available on the ‘Enterprise’ plan which is very expensive, so not suitable for everyone.

Know about SEMrush

SEMrush is an all in one marketing toolkit that gives you everything you need to grow your online presence through SEO, PPC, and content marketing. As well as helping you see how your own sites are performing, you can also use SEMrush to analyse your competitors’ strategies and work on outranking them in SERP results.

This tool allows you to:

• Optimize the links on your pages (internal and external)
• Add in any missing tags
• Optimize titles, meta descriptions, and HTML tags for search engines and users
• Check for and correct any broken images
• Detect and erase any error pages
• Find duplicate content
• Perform HTTPS checks
• Backlink Checker

The metrics you can track include:

• Changes in your number of followers, compared to your competitors
• Engagement levels over time
• Find the hottest topics through the hashtag reports
• Find the most engaging social media posts
• Analyze publishing trends over time
• See who’s mentioning you or your competitors

The Benefits of Using SEMrush

• SEMrush allows you to spy on your competitors’ SEO strategies so that you can compare them with your own and find new link building opportunities.
• The SEO writing assistant helps you to ensure that your content is always fully optimized for search engines.
• You can easily do organic and paid keyword research, find competitive keywords, long-tail keywords, and related keywords to enhance your keyword strategy for your SEO campaigns.
• SEMrush has advanced reporting and analytics features, so you can easily create professional reports with all the information you need at the click of a button.
• SEMrush offers good value for money when you consider all the tools and features it includes.
• The Downsides to Using SEMrush
• There are so many tools available that it can be a little confusing to navigate everything at first.
• It’s not always clear how to use all of the tools at first, so there is a learning curve.

Serpstat vs SEMrush FAQs:

Does Serpstat offer SEO or PPC services?
This platform is more focused on marketing professionals, which means it does not offer SEO or PPC services to their customers.

What Google Volume does Serpstat show?
Serpstat does not collect data in real-time, nevertheless shows the monthly average keyword volume of the last year and third-party services.

Serpstat vs SEMrush Compared: Which is better?

After comparing Serpstat and SEMrush side by side, it’s clear that both of these are great SEO toolkits.

But which one is better?
Well, that depends on your needs really.

Keep in mind that Serpstat allows you to use its basic features for free (within usage limits), whereas SEMrush offers a 7 day free trial with access to all features, but you will need to provide your credit card details when you sign up

What is White Hat, Black Hat and Gray Hat SEO

As with the name you can assume that black hap means not fair, white hat mean fair while gray hat mean something situation in between fair and unfair, might be you can think that from where these terms came, actually these terms came from film industry or theater where hero and villain identified by their hat, I think no need to tell you that who used which type of hat obviously hero wore white hat while other one is other one hat.

Now the second question would be your that what is association of white hat with SEO, so here the practices we do as per the Google's guidelines come under white hat while those practices are not allowed by Google came in black hat, so further question will be..what are the Guidelines of Google, here are a glimpse of those

Google’s Guidelines

Google explained quite clear webmaster's guidelines that are used by worldwide SEO professionals to identify what could land a website for ranking.

Google calls our attention to the “Quality guidelines”, those that denote “the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior” over the web-pages.

In these guidelines, we can see name of some activities like “cloaking”, “doorway pages”, and “scraped content”.

The guidelines directly relate to the changes in Google’s algorithms over the years.

Penguin, Panda and Payday all included measures to lessen the presence of websites in the SERPs that don’t follow the guidelines.

What is the difference Between Black Hat & White Hat SEO
The basic difference between the black hat and white hat SEO is whether you are working in the spirit of the search engines’ guidelines.

There may be nuances to the guidelines that you find unclear, but are you working to meet the guidelines or get around them?

What is Gray Hat SEO?
As with a lot of SEO, there are differing opinions on what gray hat SEO is.

Take the first page of Google’s results on “what is gray hat SEO” and you’ll see articles with a mixture of definitions, broadly falling into the categories of:

• It’s a mixture of white hat and black hat techniques.
• It’s a tactic that is currently either white or black hat but with changes to the ways search engines work could become the opposite in the future.
• Both of these definitions have a commonality.

1. Gray hat SEO is neither black hat nor white hat, but something in the middle.
2. Either transitioning between the two, or a mixture of the two.
3. It’s a blurred line.
4. Not something that you would willingly inform Google you are doing.
5. Not something you should automatically be penalized for.
6. It’s not necessarily a bad practice, but it is being done with the intention to get ahead in the rankings.

Why Do These Definitions Matter?
Essentially, the use of white, black, and gray hat terminology is arbitrary.

Black hat techniques, ones that deliberately go against the search engine guidelines, carry risks.

As such, websites that go against the guidelines could be penalized by an outright, or partial ban from the search engine.

That’s very serious if the website isn’t your own.

You may cause a business to lose its largest source of income if it can no longer be found through its main organic source.

In the absence of a governing body, clients of SEO pros do not have much to go off, except:

“Do you use only white hat techniques?”

A question I’ve heard prospective clients ask. "What are some activities you could place in the black, white, and gray hat categories?"

Link Building
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines state:

White Hat
Creating content of value to users with the goal of educating, informing or delighting them. Just so happens that the content is so good that other sites want to link to it as a resource.

Black Hat
Private blog networks (PBNs), adding your website link to any blog comment you can, and paying for links. These all clearly go against Google and Bing’s webmaster guidelines.

Gray Hat

Creating content purely for the sake of gaining links could be considered against Google’s guidelines by the definition given above. 

Companies are Turning To Digital Marketing To Survive during Corona pandemics

“We are in uncertain times, but with the increase of remote working and a collaborative approach, companies are turning to digital channels and embracing the transformation. We have seen a real spike during the last few weeks from companies wishing to create or update websites, launch new e-commerce channels and create social media campaigns focused on home-workers and a real focus on using influencers and SEO to reach new audiences.” Said by Scott Jones, CEO of 123 Internet Group

As we all know that, all the countries are facing the problems due to Corona Virus i.e Covid-19 and this will be create a big problem in upcoming some months or even years, so we can understand that all the profitable business of the world will be digital marketing dependents in the coming time.

So many companies are going to shutdown forever, and so many are closed for now, and bu, business gone in total lose where people come for a face to face business, in brief you can understand that the business where the physical engagement of the people required is gone down but those can wake-up those can run online, so now only those business can survive those can switch to online. So many B2B companies and various small companies those used to getting new customers through word-of-mouth publicity will be in very trouble, as the end customer is now not interested to enjoy their life so everything going to stop a some time.

Digital Marketing companies are likely to be the clear winner here, and companies – including ones that may not so much as had a Facebook page before – will need to move into social marketing, content marketing, SEO and influencer-led campaigns.

Of course, if you are a B2B supplier in an industry that has been slow to adapt to digital marketing will not survive. So the key factor is adaptability as soon as you adopt it. Adapting may mean opening new channels over web or social media platforms where introductions can be made and relationships fostered. In the coming months, your prospective clients are going to be less open to the idea of letting you walk through the door and shake their hand – and no-one really has any idea how long this will last and whether this will lead to longer-term change.

“There’s a window of opportunity here – when things are back to normal budgets will be going back into live events and that’s what they will be spending their time on.

“But if they see the benefits and opportunities that digital channels can offer, this will become part of their long-term marketing contingency plans.”

It’s certainly true that the coming weeks, or months – or however long this situation lasts – will be a challenging time for every company that isn’t ready to think about how they will replace the opportunities that have been lost.

As soon as businesses will shift strategically to digital marketing, there's no reason why it should just serve as an emergency fill-in, but could carry on providing long-term value when the world eventually gets back to normal. And of course, it would make companies more resilient to deal with any future un-predicted pandemics.

Future of Digital Marketing in India

As per the statista.com the internet users in India are 560 million and it is the second largest online market in the world the first one us off-course china due to its population, and we hope that by the 2021 the internet users in the India will be 600 million.

If we talk about the ratio of population, it is around the percentage of total population of India, it is around 34% and 30% of total Indian population access the internet by mobile and in this around 50% to 70% people use smart mobile phone to buy the products and devices online.

Hence, we can say that the businesses can not go beyond the online market and can not ignore their digital presence to reach the potential customers, and in straight word in the absence of your digital presence, your would be customers can go bound to discover and opt for the services of your competitor and they already have mastering in digital marketing.

Time to become a digital marketing expert

Here are top 6 areas that need to be focused by by you to promote a business:

• Social media marketing – 88.17%
• Search engine optimization – 70.97%
• Content marketing via blogs – 56.99%
• Email campaigns – 55.91%
• Landing page optimization – 55.91%v Search engine marketing – 55.91%

More than 1.5 lakh jobs about to created in India due to digital marketing, so there couldn’t be a better time to become a digital marketing expert, being a digital marketing expert you will perform following activities to promote the business:

• Search engine optimization
• Paid search
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing
• Content writing
• Inbound marketing
• Conversion rate optimization
• Web analytics and reporting

How to become a successful digital marketer

You may ask this question to your trainer, so here to become a successful digital marketer, you have to develop these skills:

Creativity: You need to come up with come creative ideas to set campaigns, and conversations to differentiate a brand from their competitors.
Analytical ability: Analytical skills is very required as it gives you measuring ability what’s working and what’s failing.
Willingness to experiment: The digital marketing is fast changing domain. As of now there is no any set rules to get success, so you must be open to do experiments explored ways to run campaigns.
Copy-writing: The content if king and duplicate content can harm the ranking and brand, so as digital Marketer you job to involves in copyrighting for sales copy, A/B split testing and to create keyword rich content.
knowledge about technology: Knowledge is the key of success so you must have sound knowledge about your domain as well as know some basic HTML coding, graphics designing and content writing.

Conclusion

As Indian and world facing the lock down period, but business never stop, it runs in the mind and online, so you must learn digital marketing because after the lock-down either you can take up a full-time job as the digital marketer of any company or take up consulting or freelance opportunities as a part-time digital marketer. There is a very big future in digital marketing after the lock-down so you should make yourself ready for the upcoming opportunities.

Reasons Why Digital Marketers Can Win 2020 And Beyond

One survey conducted by an online research firm i.e eMarketer and according to this firm people changing their interest from traditional marketing to online marketing, because traditional marketing is one time show off in a single cost while online keeps their foot prints.

The traditional marketing is based on the local data with very poor analysis while digital marketing is clubbed with artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analysis and social engineering by that an user get the information of their choice as per their behavior, because people spending more than 3 hours in a day over the internet without proper work, they spend this time just for the surfing and search.

In honor of the latest digital marketing milestone, here are three reasons why digital marketers have more opportunities to win this year and beyond:

Innovations in Social Media platforms
We’ve watched as social media has been used to keep in touch with people, form new connections and promote brands. Innovations along the way have created a digital social world where marketers can experiment with new marketing strategies, captivate audiences and compete at high levels to reign supreme. Facebook’s introduction of augmented reality ads, Instagram TV and in-app checkout, for example, have given marketers compelling new ways to connect with their audiences.

With social media maturing, there are large platforms (like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram etc) that now represent mass audiences and smaller networks that engage tight niches. Identifying the right platforms to best engage with your target audience is the key to success for earned and paid social media campaigns. For example, Strava is a social network for runners and cyclists that launched a new “streaks” feature designed to encourage users to commit to athletic challenges.

Whether your focus is broad or narrow, the key to social media success is staying authentic and becoming part of the community. You can establish a strong presence by positively engaging with followers through comments and posts and by always remembering to keep your brand voice in mind before interacting in order to remain true to the brand’s vision and keep a healthy line of communication open.

A Strong Generational Shift In The Use Of Technology
As the digital savviness of older generations vastly improves and social media remains a key platform for news and connectivity, digital immigrants and digital natives are slowly becoming one audience. The percentage of people aged 65 and older using at least one social media site grew from 7% in 2010 to 40% this year, according to the Pew Research Center.

More than three-quarters of 55- to 64-year-olds use smartphones, and 85% use the internet. What was once a clear difference in online engagement between a 60-year-old and a 26-year-old consumer is now hazy, as both can be engaged with influencers, authentic content and the right messaging.

I believe it's still important to understand how different generations engage online. Many members of Generation Z, for example, seem to prefer personalization to privacy. One study found that while 38% of Gen Zers "prefer online ads to be related to their browsing history or entertainment preferences, the cohort is less concerned about privacy, with 32% saying they aren't concerned that companies will use their personal online data in a way that could harm them.

" Conversely, baby boomers are more restrictive when sharing personal information. Ultimately, it’s important to identify your audience and understand that not everyone within each generation reacts the same. Both factors are key when trying to engage different generations online.

Marketing Technology Has Just Scratched The Surface
Artificial intelligence and automation continue to entice digital marketers. The development of these advanced tools has significantly enhanced marketers’ abilities to target specific audiences, personalize messages and measure the success of campaigns. And with just 51% of marketers using artificial intelligence (AI) as of March 2018, it’s clear that marketing technology has plenty of room to grow.

Today's marketers have the option to avoid an influx of data and instead use AI to analyze information and structure insights in a way that makes them actionable. Google has notoriously been using AI — machine learning-powered offerings include responsive search ads and bidding tools — to help marketers maximize campaigns.

Marketing automation, which can put AI-based insights into action, can be used in almost every critical point of marketing and sales funnels. Many brands are investing in this technology — one report found that "marketing automation software was a $3.3 billion market in the U.S. in 2017," and that 67% of marketing leaders were using a marketing automation platform.

AI also helps marketers analyze performance before campaigns are launched. Predictive modeling shows advertisers what audiences, media channels and messages could come together with the most success, as the model uses data to quickly test multiple possible scenarios and give marketers a prediction of the best future outcome.

But as of 2017, less than a quarter of the organizations surveyed for one study were using predictive analytics. I believe this indicates that advancement in marketers' use of predictive modeling is still to come.

For marketers who want to take the early lead, the time for predictive analytics adoption is now. The first step is to partner with a company that's already using AI, automation and predictive modeling, and absorb as much insight as possible before trying to deploy AI yourself. Learning from your partner’s past mistakes and successes can help prepare you for such advanced technology and determine which strategies will work best for your marketing objectives.

Digital marketing has provided businesses with stronger and more cost-effective marketing opportunities that consistently deliver results. It's also given marketers the tools and insight needed to innovate and succeed within ever-evolving industries. The possibilities for future innovations are seemingly endless, and as marketers, that’s music to our ears.