The online marketing industry is complex and volatile, but an exciting one for anybody who stays up on modern trends. Each year, new hardware, new software, new companies, and new user preferences dictate a host of sweeping changes that either get adopted or ignored by the businesses of the world. Early adopters get a leg up on the competition, appealing to new markets or cementing their reputations as industry leaders, while those lagging behind miss out on a key opportunity to retain their positions.


2016 looks to be a great year for online marketing, and I anticipate it shaking up the game with these seven trends:

1. Video ads will start dominating. Video ads are certainly nothing new, with social channels like YouTube dedicated to hosting billions of videos and advertising platforms like Facebook and Bing already offering advertisers video options. 2016 is set to be different because Google is finally getting on board with in-SERP video advertising. It’s a sign that users are becoming more accepting of video ads online, and as that trend continues, expect to see more types of video ads popping up in more unexpected places. With Google’s ownership of YouTube, the possibilities are virtually limitless.

2. App indexing will lead to an explosion of apps. Google has offered app indexing for a while, but as the ranking possibilities for apps become more complex, 2016 will be the year more business owners realize the online visibility advantages of a dedicated app. A mobile-optimized site works wonders for appealing to the mobile crowd, but soon, apps will begin to replace them. Apps can do everything that websites can, except in more intuitive, convenient, accessible ways. We’re still several years away from apps completely replacing websites as a medium, but 2016 will be a pivotal year in app adoption from business owner’s perspectives.

3. Mobile will completely dominate desktop. 2015 was a big year for mobile—not only did Google announce that mobile traffic finally overtook desktop traffic in 10 different countries, it was also the year they released the “Mobilegeddon” algorithm update to phase out sites not optimized for mobile. But apparently, you don’t have to have an optimized desktop site in addition to a mobile version—according to Google, a mobile-only site with no desktop counterpart is perfectly acceptable. This alone won’t be enough to drive down desktop traffic, but it’s clear what side of the fence Google’s on; they’re banking on desktop traffic fading away, meaning the smart money rests on mobile-focused online marketing.

4. Digital assistants will lead to a new kind of optimization. Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising are two highly popular strategies for getting your site seen by thousands of previously unknown visitors. But the rise of digital assistants is going to lead to a new kind of optimization. Digital assistants like Siri and Cortana do utilize traditional search engines, but only when necessary to find information. The key to optimizing in this new format is to make sure your business information is easily accessible to these assistants, rather than trying to funnel people to your site specifically.

5. Virtual reality will emerge. There are dozens of different virtual reality devices set to release in the next few years, some of which are dedicated for specific applications like video games, and others which are available for general use. Oculus Rift, arguably the most hyped VR device, is set to release in the first quarter of 2016. Oculus Rift and other VR devices will introduce an entire new medium of online advertising, with integration to popular social media platforms, video channels, and even forms of direct messaging. There’s always a chance VR could fizzle as a temporary fad, but there are billions of dollars of funding in limbo, ready to bet otherwise.

6. Wearable technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) will pave new ground. While not quite to the level of virtual reality, wearable “smart” devices should start gaining more traction into 2016. 2015 saw the unveiling of the Apple Watch, a first-generation smart watch, but more smart watches and similar wearable devices should start emerging next year. Such devices will change the landscape of local marketing, and will do more to blur the lines between “online” marketing and “real” marketing.

Author: Jayson DeMers http://www.forbes.com/

CPM, CPC, CPL, and CPA are all acronyms that are used to describe online marketing methods. All the methods are related, as they are the costs of having ads display on websites. How they differ is in how the cost of the ads is calculated.

The acronym CPM stands for "cost per mille", with "mille" meaning 1,000. This type of ad campaign is purely based on numbers, with the cost of the ad determined for 1,000 page impressions (each time the ad is shown). An advertiser using such ads will be quoted a guaranteed number of page impressions for the ad, and then the cost will be set based on the number. For example, if an ad site has a CPM rate of $10 US Dollars (USD) and guarantees 100,000 page impressions for the ad, the cost to the advertiser will be $1,000 USD ($10 x 100). Publishers are paid a share of the revenue generated by the site selling the ads, which is usually around 45% or $450 USD for 100,000 page impressions from our previous example.


CPC stands for "cost per click" and, in this case, the publisher is paid each time a visitor clicks the ad being displayed, delivering the visitor to the advertiser’s website. No matter what action is taken at the advertiser’s website, all that matters with this cost model is that the ad was clicked. The companies that sell this type of ad also monitor the number of clicks the ad gets, preventing the publisher from artificially inflating the number to try to generate revenue. The pay rate for CPC ads ranges from a few cents to a few dollars, depending on what the advertiser has paid to have the ad displayed.

CPL stands for "Cost per lead " is often used by companies that want to have visitors sign up for something, called a lead. The ads can be banners, hyperlinks leading to the advertiser’s website, or both. When a user enters his or her e-mail address to sign up for the offer, the publisher is paid a certain dollar amount. Pay rates for CPL ads also range from a few cents to several dollars, but are usually much higher than CPC ads. The rate is determined by the business and what the advertiser is willing to pay.

CPA, or "cost per acquisition/action," is similar to CPL in that the advertiser pays when a visitor takes a particular action upon arrival at the advertiser’s site. Again, these ads can be banners or hyperlinks leading directly to the website. The advertiser decides on the payable action, which might include downloading a game or program, purchasing an ebook, joining a course, or something else. The payout is determined by what is involved in the payable action and how much effort is required for the advertiser to make a profit, with rates ranging from cents to tens of dollars.

CPS (Cost Per Sale) – The cost paid per sale generated from an online advertisement or affiliate link.

CR (Conversion Rate) – Percentage of site visitors that take a desired action.

CTR (Click Through Rate) - The percentage of visitors that click-through an ad impression/link compared to the total number of visitors that viewed the ad impression/link.

Click through – The process of clicking on a link to visit another page or site.

Search engine optimization has significantly changed in recent years much to the amiss of Google’s guidelines. As you move into 2015 and look to grow your website’s organic  traffic, what will be most important for you to use for on-page SEO? Here’s a list of on-page SEO techniques that you are probably already using but are still important in 2015 and also some newer developments in SEO that you should consider in your strategy.
Include These On-Page SEO Tips In Your 2015 Strategy:

1. Optimize Your Site Page Around One Keyword Or Topic
The days of keyword “stuffing” are over, but you still need to keep your site pages optimized around one central idea and keyword. Keywords should appear in important on-page elements like the page title, heading, image alt text, and naturally throughout the page copy, but you should still be sure to craft each of these items for humans, not search engines.
2. Remember That Keywords Are Important But Not Verbatim
Considering Google announced in 2014 that their paid search services, AdWords, would no longer rely on exact match keywords but also co-varieties of a keyword, it is likely that the same holds true for organic search, although it has not been explicitly announced.  Keywords no longer need to be the exact same variation as displayed in your keyword tool. For example,  the plural keyword, “inbound marketing tactics,” is equivalent to “inbound marketing tactic” in singular form with AdWord’s new targeting strategy. In addition, even if a searcher misspells, Google will still help them find your website despite the variation of the keyword optimized on your site.
3. URL Structure Should Be Short, Descriptive, And Help To Categorize Your Website
A URL is one of the first things a search engine uses to determine page rank, which is why it is really important to make your URLs easy to crawl. You can do this by keeping URLs short (this is also beneficial for UX), aligning to the page’s topic and keyword, and ensuring that URLs help you to categorize your site pages.

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4. Optimize Page Titles
A title tag is used by search engines to display a page in search results and can also be found at the top of your browser. Title tags tell search engines and searchers what the page is about. Since Google will only display between 50-60 characters in the title tag, you should keep title tags under 55 characters and try to drive people to click with compelling copy. You should also put keywords or topics towards the front of the title.
5. Utilize Proper Heading Tags
Heading tags should clearly tell the reader and search engines about the page’s topic. A search engine is able to identify the heading when it is tagged by bracketing text in within the page’s HTML (Note: If you have a CMS or COS like HubSpot or WordPress, this is usually coded in the background). Heading tags help tell a search engine the level of importance of the content by also using <H2> and <H3> tags. You can check your site’s current heading tags by viewing in HTML view.

In addition to what you should do with heading tags , you should also avoid a few things including:

    Avoid using generic terms like “Home” or “Products”
    Don’t put important information that would likely be your as an image.

6. Optimize Image Alt Text
While you should not hide your heading tag in an image, you should still give search engines more opportunities to link to your website by adding keywords in the image alt text and file name.
7. Grow Natural Links
Google continues to use natural, quality inbound links as a main ranking factor. In 2015, you should closely monitor inbound links to ensure that they are constantly growing and that the inbound links come from quality websites.
8. Increase Site Speed
Since 2011, Google has made it apparent that site speed matter in search rankings, and today, with a bigger emphasis on the user experience than ever before, site speed will continue to be a critical ranking factor. Users don’t like to wait, and we are becoming more and more accustomed to the fast load times, which means your site will be left in the dust when a user must wait. There are a few important things you can do to speed up site speed:
    Test site speed using Google or a built-in CMS tool like utilized in HubSpot
    Ensure your web server can handle you size of your company and website needs. Overloaded web servers can slow down load times.
    You may also find that one of the following culprits is slowing down times:
        Embedded videos or media
        Using a lot of images
        Images that are not compressed to minimize pixels before uploading
        Clunky coding
        Using a lot of plugins

If you suspect any of the above are causing slow load times, you can find experts to help clean up your site or minimize the use of each.

9. HTTP Vs. HTTPS: Why They Matter
With a big push to make the web world more secure, Google has began emphasizing the importance of utilizing HTTPS. While many websites have traditionally ran on a Hyper Text Transfer Protocal (HTTP), a Hyper Transfor Protocal Secure (HTTPS) ensures that a website is encrypted and cannot be hacked. With Google beginning to test the waters in using HTTPS as a ranking factor, it will be important to secure your website with HTTPS in 2015.

10. Mobile Search Implications
With nearly 40% of organic traffic coming from mobile devices in 2014, it should come as no surprise that mobile-friendly websites will rank better with Google. To ensure you are mobile optimized, you should be avoiding common mistakes described by Google including faulty redirects, mobile-only 404s, blocked media, and slow mobile load times.

Although it may feel like Google is trying to make our jobs as inbound marketers more difficult, they ultimately want to provide the best user experience, which should be the goal of your website as well.

Permission-based email marketing has a higher return on investment than unsolicited email, direct mail, or traditional advertising and has revolutionized the way we do business. Backed by measurable results, studies show email marketing is the marketing tool of choice for businesses looking to attract, retain, and grow loyal customer bases. Businesses all around the world use email marketing to:

Boost sales Generate leads Strengthen relationships Increase website traffic Build brand loyalty

As the popularity of permission-based email marketing grows, so does the amount of email in every inbox. Are you doing everything you can to make sure your emails are opened, read, and responded to? You know your business best, but here are 34 tips to maximize permission-based email marketing success.

Know your Audience You could have the best message in the world, but without the right audience it means nothing.

1. Start by building a permission-based list. 2. In exchange for contact information, offer your customers something of value: a newsletter, a free seminar, or more information about your products & services. 3. When gathering contact information, only ask for the information you really need. Asking unnecessary questions annoys people and may keep them from signing up. 4. Be sure to include a way for people to unsubscribe in all your email campaigns. Unsolicited email or spam can be damaging to your reputation. 5. Manage your contact lists so you can respond quickly and efficiently to requests for more information or to unsubscribe. 6. Since email addresses can change frequently, keep your list current by carefully tracking the number of bounce-backs or undeliverable emails after every campaign. 7. Be sure you have a clear and concise privacy policy that details how you will treat your customers’ personal contact information. Include a link to it in every email you send. 8. Respect the terms of your privacy policy and never breach your customers’ trust. Craft your Message An interesting message that offers value is critical to the success of any email campaign. 9. See what others are doing. Take a few minutes and sign up for email newsletters from competitors. Choose a few on your favorite hobby or a topic you’re interested in too. 10. When you get online newsletters from other companies, pay attention to what makes you open some and delete others without reading. 11. Before you create the right message, develop a marketing strategy that addresses goals and objectives. 12. Use email marketing to accomplish what email does best: increase revenue, generate leads, strengthen customer relationships, increase website traffic, and build brand awareness. 13. Get the length right. A good rule of thumb is the more frequent your emails, the shorter they should be. People will open a short "Tip of the Day", but almost no one wants to get something longer on a daily basis. 14. Keep the message personal and casual. Think like a customer and write in a conversational tone. People want to see a little humanity behind the corporate mask. 15. People respond best to messages written by one particular person at a company who they can get to know over time. This is part of building relationships. 16. Personalize the ‘From’ part of your email and be clear who the email is from. 17. Avoid using ‘FREE’ in your subject line since it has been abused by spam marketers and arouses suspicion. 18. Be honest in your subject line and make sure it reflects what’s inside. State a clear benefit that makes the recipient open your message. Only messages that seem relevant and offer value will be opened. 19. Choose a subject line that grabs your reader’s attention. Avoid vague content like "Our September Newsletter." Instead, use an interesting topic or headline from the newsletter, such as "Best Practices for Email Marketing" or "Inside: Exclusive Interview with Tiger Woods!" 20. Encourage forwarding right in your subject line. The Association for Interactive Marketing (AIM) always adds "Pls. Forward" to the ends of their newsletter subject lines and they report it's more than doubled their circulation! 21. Personalize each message and watch response rates climb. At the very least, always include the recipient’s name. 22. Write your messages so they appeal to customer interests and hobbies. Ask your customers what they want to hear about: special offers, new services, etc. Choose the Right Format Once you have the right message, you need to present it in the right way. 23. HTML and Rich media messages that include audio, video, and animation generate high response rates, but it’s still important to always have a text version for people who prefer or can only receive text. 24. Always include a hyperlinked table of contents at the top of your message so people can click or scroll right to the section of their choice. Usability studies show most people won't look beyond the first screen if there's not something immediately interesting to them. Give them a reason to scroll down! 25. Use bullet points and lots of white space for plain text messages. 26. Minimize the use of ALL CAPS and italics as they are hard to read. 27. To make it easy for readers to scan your message, keep columns of copy narrow. 28. Test your messages through a number of email accounts to make sure they look good in all mainstream email clients. 29. Consider writing your message in the same format it will appear on your customers’ screens so you can see what they will see. For text-based emails set your font to 10 point Courier going 60 characters (five inches) across. 30. Unless your newsletter is unusually long, recipients will probably read it on their screen. Your job is to make this as easy as possible. For headlines, use a larger, bold font that can be scanned the quickly. Look for Measurable Results Being able to measure your email marketing efforts is key. Measuring allows you to understand what works and what doesn’t so you can improve each and every campaign. 31. Gathering results through trackable links and having access to real-time reports will help you understand what works and what doesn't. 32. Test using different subject lines, copy, offers, and creative designs, etc. Use real-time results to see which get the best response rates. Consider sending out an A/B test to two sub-segments of your email list to see which is more successful. Refine, and then send the more successful email to your larger email base for better results. 33. When running a series of email campaigns, tweak your message as soon as you understand the results of your first campaign. 34. Above all, take the time to understand email as a marketing medium. Always analyze results and think of new ways to provide value to your members and customers.