How soon do you think Digital Marketing will be accepted as being important and become a staple in Marketing campaigns globally?

Well, let's primarily conceive the challenges faced by digital marketing Entrepreneurs in global arena. The success of digital marketing company depends on a number of factors: understanding marketing history, knowing what’s being said about brand, and meeting the needs of consumers in a valuable way. Unfortunately, with all those factors, emerging entrepreneurs often make mistakes that hinder early growth. These can range from failing to plan effectively or measure results, to overlooking the entire mobile category. But that’s not the whole situation. To recover and be accepted Digital Marketing EntrepreneursShould overcome the main obstacles  as sated below:

The gap that a product or service fills is just the beginning. Marketing requires an in-depth understanding of your consumers’ traits and tastes. Beyond the existing needs of potential customers or end users, businesses need to profile their prospects. Focus on how they spend their time, what other products or services they’re more likely to want, and where individuals who fit the profile tend to live. Such detailed information informs your marketing efforts, making them more pinpointed and accurate. 

Many marketers never achieve great success because they don’t have clearly outlined goals and a distinct plan of action. Planning does not mean brainstorming in a room of decision makers. It means writing out an analysis of your current needs, strengths, weaknesses, and goals. It involves taking your budget and going through it, line by line, to determine where your marketing dollars should go.  Once you have a written plan of action, make sure to reference all these documents regularly throughout the campaign process.

You can’t do it all in the beginning, so start with small, concerted efforts. They can be just as effective as large campaigns that aim to reach a wide audience. Focus on the types of prospects your product or service will fit with naturally. Then pick measurable goals that align with industry benchmarks you can track over a period of several months. Long-term goals are vital, too, but seeing meaningful results—even if they aren’t ultimately driving the bottom line—can improve momentum for reaching those future goals.

"Think of digital marketing like a long race, not a sprint". Few marketing campaigns will achieve instantaneous results. Unless your first post goes viral, you’ll likely have to tweak and improve your pay-per-click strategy, social media, and other digital marketing campaigns as you go. Social media campaigns tend to have a shorter turnaround time, while pay-per-click campaigns often take about a month and a half to deliver results. Search-engine optimization (SEO) strategies tend to take the longest of all. SEO campaigns typically need 4 to 6 weeks to get off the ground, but can take as many as six months to a year to meet meaningful goals.

Many startups fail to allocate a fair amount of money for digital marketing. While some elements can work on a shoestring budget, many campaigns require a strategic investment. That may require taking a hard look at where your money is going right now and making some judgment calls. For instance, avoid spending money on tools that you aren’t sure will work for your business. Instead, focus on hiring talent inside and outside the company that can help you reach your goals.

Social media platforms are a fun and fast way to market your company, but focusing on too many at once can weaken the overall campaign. Try to keep your social media strategy targeted at the few social media platforms your audience frequently uses, and deliver relevant information through them on a regular basis. Build a social media strategy that makes sense for your brand and market, not necessarily the platforms that are trending right now. Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat are great social media platforms to start with, but depending on your business audience, you many want to consider LinkedIn, Instagram or Pinterest.

Content marketing  is the foundation of any successful digital marketing campaign. But the information or media must be relevant, engaging, and insightful. Otherwise, you can post articles, images or videos all day long, and still not see measurable results. Look for elements that will convert site visitors into long-term customers. Video content, in particular, is becoming a staple of digital marketing, and companies can no longer afford to ignore it. Entrepreneurs can start using video content with homegrown campaigns on Snapchat, Vine, and YouTube that are both cost-effective and successful in striking a chord with your audience.

The number of global mobile users exceeded desktop users in 2014, earning a steady place in the pockets and hands of most consumers. Plenty of businesses pay lip service to this area of tech, but haven’t really thought through their mobile strategy. Those companies will likely be forgotten and become obsolete. Responsive web design and layered interfaces are sleek, user friendly, and fairly easy to develop with the right professional help. Mobile marketing should be synonymous with digital marketing at this point; it’s that integral to the success of a campaign.

The work doesn’t end once you’ve come up with ideas and put them into practice. After the initial launch of your digital marketing campaign, you need to use relevant metrics that confirm its Return On Investment (ROI). Essentially, your goal is to find out whether the money you spent was worth it. The good news is a digital campaign is not static once it has launched. You can continue to use analytics throughout the campaign period to tweak posts, keywords, and other information to better target your audience. Over time, your content will be optimized so that it reaches your goals.

Beware any SEO or digital marketing agencies that push keyword stuffing, outbound link building, and other methods. As Google’s algorithms evolve, old SEO practices are getting companies penalized. If you’re providing valuable insights, images or videos (see content section, above), then that content will naturally lead to better search results, since they create natural inbound and outbound links. This type of organic marketing is the new strategy that SEO companies are adopting.

Digital marketing should always be supported by more traditional marketing strategies. People still drive by billboards and act on the information they see. 

The difference now is that print advertising includes digital marketing information. Social cues are ever-present in the bottom corner of magazine ads and on subway signs. Some print campaigns are even entirely digital in focus, featuring a hashtagged word or a Twitter handle. Mixing traditional and modern marketing strategies makes for a multi-level campaign that has the potential to not only reach consumers, but connect with them on a deeper level. 

New entrepreneurs have the opportunity to begin from a fresh slate. They can craft their company personality and marketing campaigns without battling established expectations. Over time, they can also transform as the brand or consumer interest evolves.  By understanding where to focus initial efforts, entrepreneurs and small business owners can develop digital marketing practices that will fuel their bottom lines for years to come.

Adopted from  : Stephen Moyers , the Web marketing manager at SPINX Digital Agency, a designer and a blogger who writes about Web design, and online and social marketing. 

Nowadays almost all the people have smart phone,  most of them have account on Facebook,  Twitter,  YouTube and other social media.  It is not that hard to target them by an advertisemente.  Many companies have lready engaged in this trend so it is just need time to be more popular 

With our world being so technology driven and focused on market segments, social media marketing is gradually picking up the pace in being an accepted method of marketing. In all honesty, I tried convincing my boss that it was the way to go back in 2008. No one believed me, and no one wanted to bother. Here we are, 2016, and it has really developed into something huge!

How long do I think it will take to become a staple? Probably another year. I don't give it any longer than that. Most companies have already caught on to the importance of social media and how vital it is to the overall success of the organization. Companies that use social media as a staple marketing method are not just smart, they are GENIUS! 

We are already in the midst of DM.

Both marketer and prospect are realising this cost effective reachability. However, Prospects are confused with irrelevant and untimely options. This should be preciously tailored to the need of the prospects. Great challenge ahead for all digital marketers. But I am sure they will soon over come this with appropriate new tools.

actually i am working on a research paper and from what  i read i can say that digital marketing is already there :)

Has begun , take a look at this  http://goo.gl/QmdKSv  

that means, the digital world replaced some of the printed channels and in marketing mostly small and medium business depends 100% in their campaigns on social media which is a part of the digital   

I agree with Ms. Ghada answer and have voted for her.

Here’s what our leadership team predicts for social media, digital marketing and SEO in 2016. What are your thoughts? Tell us in the comments below!

Chuck Aikens – CEO

My predictions seem to come true, but here are few of my SEO predictions for 2016:

• SEO as we know it will get blended into other channels and forms of marketing including Content Marketing, Social Media, and Web Development.  SEO will still be as important as ever, but it will be less of a stand-alone activity.
• An increase in Voice Search volume will force websites to focus more on the “Who, What, Where, Why, and How” questions that people ask phones.
• Google will reward companies and websites that develop out the information gap for search queries where the website answers address search intent PLUS a whole lot more than they never even thought of. Much like scrolling through social media to discover content, websites will be rewarded when they help searchers discover more about a particular topic when they have shown interest.
• User behavior becomes a verified ranking factor just like when Mobile Friendliness and Page Speed were finally confirmed in recent years. This means that more attention needs to be paid to Relative Click Through Rate (CTR), Dwell Time, and Social Amplification.
• “Where is the nearest Whole Foods?” instead of “Whole Foods Denver”.  Of course, Google will interpret this for the searcher, but it creates a paradigm shift for SEOs as it relates to Keyword Targeting.

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Natalie Henley – President

• Mobile – Companies that nail the synergy between the in-store experience and mobile will be huge winners in 2016. Shoppers are demonstrating their desire to price shop and get product details and reviews before making purchasing decisions, regardless if they are in-store or online. Stores that embrace this will profit a lot from this.
• Social & Paid Search – Facebook Advertising will start to kill Adwords; the resurgence of the concept of Facebook killing Google will come back. Retailers will realize that Facebook targeting is better, their impression share will be greater & their cost per click will be lower. This will likely lead to new features in both platforms over the year, as they try to compete with each other to grab advertising market share.
• Content Marketing – 2014 and 2015 really brought content marketing to the forefront of the industry. I think this will continue in 2016, but we’ll start to see brands really take the time to develop quality, creative content & devoting huge chunks of budget to that. This will mean the death of crappy short content (sorry Text Broker) and infographics that just re-package previously known information. Big winners will be ebooks, slide share and long form content.
• Copyright Law – Copyright issues are going to catch up with everyone in 2016. Image copyright is going to be a big deal and will cost companies thousands if they don’t catch up.
• LinkedIn – Linkedin will realize their advertising, in general, is extremely expensive and doesn’t drive much ROI. They will double down on new features specifically for B2B and start to essentially abandon the B2C space to Facebook, to allow them to focus on a more specific niche that hopefully drives better ROI.
• Millennials – Everyone will stop complaining about our generation and realize we are in fact valuable to the work force and not a bunch of whiny professionals Advertisers will also start to realize the best way to sell to us isn’t by spamming us, nor is it through sponsored content (which we can all tell is an ad – we aren’t dumb!).

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David Yarian – VP, Strategy & Product Development

6 Things that Have Never Changed in SEO 

1. You must be excellent in all you do to stand out.
2. You need a clear focus with your website that users quickly understand.
3. Users (and what they want) are everything.
4. Chase users, not the algorithm.
5. It pays to do one thing really, really well over trying to do a bunch of stuff. Google rewards this.
6. Shortcuts make long delays – don’t try to cheat the system

What I See Changing in 2016 

• Google will continue to find new ways to scrape content into ‘rich’ search results, and marketers will really, really hate it.
• As content blows up, there will be more discussions about content stealing and protecting creative interests when they publish content.
• CRO will become much more important and a more integral part of any SEO campaign
• There will be a resurgence to basic marketing tactics for the online world. This will become more important than ever.
• It will become harder to do good SEO, but more incredibly more valuable for those that do it well.
• Personalization will continue to explode. Selective targeting, knowing your audience, and strategic messaging will become vital.
• People will finally realize mobile is really, really important and make it more of a staple of marketing efforts.
• As content marketing grows (and so does the noise online) people will care less and less about what you say about yourself – they only care what others say about you. i.e. Reviews and brand signals become more critical than ever.
• Millennials will start to matter much less and less. The conversation will start to shift much more towards how to connect with digital natives.
• SEO and digital marketing will play an even bigger role in the upcoming presidential election. Candidates will beg, scrape, and crawl to leverage digital channels to rally their base.
• By extension, there will be at least several major ‘scandals’ and/or news stories about someone trying to abuse this.
• David Yarian will continue to be forever bitter towards Google and all it does.
• After dropping it’s “do no evil” logo in 2015, Google will eventually activate Phase 2.0 and embark upon its world domination mission in 2016.

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Dave Young – VP of Technology

My prediction:

Google’s continuing efforts in Artificial Intelligence (RankBrain, TensorFlow, etc.) will spawn a self-aware entity that will call itself SkyNet, decide humans are limiting its ability to grow, and take drastic measures to eliminate us!

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Carly Webber – Senior Social Media Specialist, Team Lead

SEO IS DEAD. IT’S ALL ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA.

Just kidding, but here’s my prediction to battle against all the SEO’s:

• Users are going to start relying more on social media to find what they’re looking for – and Facebook will continue to develop their search function to show results all within Facebook’s platform to keep users there instead of outside pages.
• The same goes for Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Businesses will have to start optimizing and publishing content directly on their social media profiles to be found within social media search engines.

My Second Prediction: Some famous person like Will Smith is going to launch a new social media platform that everyone will hate.

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Richard Lesher – Senior Account Manager, Team Lead

• Justin Timberlake will make MySpace cool again.  It will become Pinterest for Men, and men will spend endless hours looking at pictures of power tools and bar food.
• SEO will be declared Dead by Social Media Specialists around the globe! (Looking at you Carly Webber)
• There will be an industry-wide ban on the words “Links” and “Link Juice”
• “Content is King” will make yet another resurgence in the world of SEO, and many will pretend like this is a new concept
• The introduction of artificial intelligence will make Google’s collection of personal data even more creepy, and as a result, they will launch a new social media platform called “We Know You Better Than Your Friends Do.”

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Ben Waymire – Senior Account Manager, Team Lead

Prediction #1: Mobile will officially take over in 2016.

Most Americans now own a smart phone – better than 64% according to Pew Research Center. There are people alive today who have literally never used anything but a mobile device to browse the web, find (and review) businesses, and buy products online. If you’re in the business of selling products or services online, it’s time to get laser-focused on mobile.

Prediction #2: Matt Cutts is never coming back to Google.

Why not? Well, we already know that Cutts extended his unpaid leave through the rest of 2015. So there’s that.

Therefore, it’s logical to predict that sometime in 2016, Cutts will instead emerge as The Dark Overlord of the Invisible Web. Rumor has it that Cutts has been in talks with Wired Magazine for some sort of a “no-holds-barred interview” about his new “venture” on the Dark Web. According to one previously unreleased statement from Cutts about his unpaid leave from Google: “Let’s just say I’m not missing the money and leave it at that.”

And then earlier this year an anonymous source came forward claiming he spotted Cutts in San Francisco sipping cappuccinos with Dread Pirate Roberts while cloaked in a black, hooded cape. “It was totes cray. But whatevs, I guess if you know all of Goog’s dirty little algo secrets, you can make hella bank on Deep Net,” he said.

Sounds dangerous. No wonder Cutts kept his health insurance.

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Ashley Berman Hale – Senior SEO Specialist, Team Lead

Stuff that will continue to be really important/grow in importance:

• Mobile. Mobile ranking factors will get more stringent, and more important. If you’re not on top of it, you’ll start losing more mobile traffic. We already saw Google tightening assigning the mobile-friendly label if you’re using an app interstitial and full support behind AMP. Google wants fast, awesome, mobile-friendly sites for everyone.
• Structured data continues to go bananas in growth. Since Google announced support for JSON-LD in January and deprecated current AJAX crawling protocols (down with all the #!s!). They know it’s hard for most to implement, though, so hopefully they’ll continue to bring tools to make implementation easier. And Google will crack down on structured data abuse more too.
• Hacks. Hackers gonna hack hack hack. And they’re going to get more creative. Spam hacks, unwanted software, malware and phishing attacks have gone up in 2015 (and we saw a lot of content devoted to the #NoHacked campaign) – they’ll continue to grow and get more interesting as algorithms looking for quality/trustworthy sites tighten.
• Link spam. The fight against link spam is evolving. An all-new Penguin is coming. Though we don’t know what that will look like, it seems Google is looking to crack down on unnatural links faster and helping cleaned websites recover faster. The short-term benefits of link building will become even shorter.
• Apps will get the search spotlight. With Google indexing apps, providing deep linking and even giving a small boost to great app content – more folks will venture into the app world.

Hopefully:

• Parallax will be relegated back to awesome game design and not unnecessary site bloat.
• Hashtags will become considerably less cool.
• Sincerity and thoughtfulness will reign supreme as the ultimate strategy in writing great content on your site.
• Search Console will get more data, and better data and cooler tools. At least, I hope. All of the tools!!!!!!