What’s Coming Up in 2018? Digital Marketing Pros Weigh in!

Happy New Year  Vizion Interactive Reading Time: 5 minutes

Happy New Year from Vizion Interactive! As we dive into 2018, we were excited to chat with our team and also some of our favorite digital marketing pros from Dallas Digital Summit this past December, about what’s coming up for them this year. Check out their predictions, strategies, and exciting new projects they’re working on for 2018 below. Let us know what’s in store for your New Year in the comments!

Mark Jackson“I would say that 2018 is going to be a challenge for Google, as much as it might be for SEOs.
For SEOs, we should focus on getting better at information architecture, taxonomy, and content (those things that we can directly control). We should also focus on the user experience and conversion rate within the websites, to – again – focus on things more in our direct control.

By optimizing the websites to ensure that they are mobile friendly (same content on the mobile version as the desktop?) and presenting quality content that is relevant to queries that we know can lead to getting prospects/sales into the pipeline, we are fulfilling our end of the bargain.”
– Mark Jackson, President & CEO, Vizion Interactive

Thom Craver What’s Coming Up in 2018? Digital Marketing Pros Weigh in! Vizion Interactive

“Schema will continue to grow. From a news standpoint, truthfulness in news will be a big deal. Facebook and Google especially, are both leading different efforts to make that happen, and there are schema that will continue to grow for making sure that data is real, facts are real, etc….” 
– Thom Craver, Senior SEO Analyst, CBS News

Tyler Farnsworth What’s Coming Up in 2018? Digital Marketing Pros Weigh in! Vizion Interactive“We keep hearing about ‘make short videos, that’s all people care about, that’s all people have time for’. I disagree with that. I think you have to create things that are intriguing enough for people to give their attention. It’s not that people don’t like ads, they just hate terrible experiences and they hate things that look, sound, and act like ads. If we do something a bit different, that causes someone to say: ‘that was fun, that was cool, that was a good value’, then that’s where we need to be. So in 2018, I think the people who are going to be successful, are the ones who get that and start living into it in a big way.”
– Tyler Farnsworth, Managing Director, August United

Josh McCoy“2018 will be a year where more marketers are paying attention to featured snippets and how they craft content to potentially rank here. This is the first step towards future years’ focus into voice search as these will be pulled for voice search results. I think we will see a withdrawal of long-form content in favor of succinct content pieces that answer questions directly in under 100 words, provide lists, etc., all that considered to help one gain entry into “position zero” rankings.” 
– Josh McCoy, Digital Marketing Strategist, Vizion Interactive

Robert Bochnak What’s Coming Up in 2018? Digital Marketing Pros Weigh in! Vizion Interactive

“In 2018, we’re going to step up our work on Instagram, and do more videos. We’re doing our Year in Review pretty soon, where we ask alumni: What made 2017 one to remember? We’ll take their responses, put them on Storify, and we’ll also make a video and share that with the broader community.”
– Robert Bochnak, Director of Social Media, Harvard Business School

Melanie Deziel What’s Coming Up in 2018? Digital Marketing Pros Weigh in! Vizion Interactive“I’m really exciting for 2018. I’m working on a course that I’m developing from scratch, for Fairleigh Dickinson University, a Masters course in Content Marketing. So, getting to take all the things that I’ve learned and put them in an academic context is an exciting new challenge.”
– Melanie Deziel, Content Strategy Consultant, The Overlap League

Morgan Spurlock What’s Coming Up in 2018? Digital Marketing Pros Weigh in! Vizion Interactive“The biggest thing coming up in 2018 is, I made a sequel to Super Size Me, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September. We’re going to Sundance in January for the U.S. premier, and then it’ll come out in March, and it’s Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken, where in this one I don’t stuff myself with fast food, but in this one I open my own fast food restaurant so I think people are going to dig it.”
– Morgan Spurlock, Award Winning Filmmaker & Producer

Joshua Titsworth What’s Coming Up in 2018? Digital Marketing Pros Weigh in! Vizion Interactive

“It’s really hard to predict what’s going to happen with the loom of Net Neutrality going away. Depending on how this gets rolled out I feel we are going to see a big shift from organic search and social to more paid advertising. Digital marketing itself will never go away. Brands can still be authentic in ads, brands can still connect with users in ads, brands will still have to pay attention to user experience on their site when users get there.

Digital marketers will have to evolve and change their tactics to meet a pay to play world that’s coming. Be it 6 months to a year from now. The use of paid ads is going to become more and more competitive.”
– Joshua Titsworth, Digital Marketing Specialist, Vizion Interactive

Loren Mcdonald What’s Coming Up in 2018? Digital Marketing Pros Weigh in! Vizion Interactive“On the content side, especially for agencies, this year we did a study with eConsultancy around what brands are expecting from their digital marketing agencies. So, we’re going to follow that up in 2018 with: What does all that mean? What’s the future of digital agencies? How can they tap into, and take advantage of all these technologies and data, to help their clients have more success? That’s all coming up in 2018.”
– Loren McDonald, Marketing Evangelist, IBM Watson Marketing

Jenny Mallory What’s Coming Up in 2018? Digital Marketing Pros Weigh in! Vizion Interactive“Now that mobile accounts for over 70% of digital media time, we will expect to see companies increase the media budget for mobile advertising in 2018. Programmatic will start growing in the media mix with advertisers. The ability to optimize media placements across all screens (mobile, tablet, desktop, smart tv) will have a big impact on display advertising ROI.” 
– Jenny Mallory, PPC Specialist, Vizion Interactive

Jay Baer What’s Coming Up in 2018? Digital Marketing Pros Weigh in! Vizion Interactive

“We’re working on a book right now about the Talk Triggers concept, the subtitle is: The Complete System for Word of Mouth Marketing and Creating Customers for Free. We’re finishing the book right now, and it will be out October 1st-ish next year (2018), so super excited about that, look for that in all your bookstores.”
– Jay Baer, NY Times Best Selling Author and President, Convince & Convert

Shanti Headshot What’s Coming Up in 2018? Digital Marketing Pros Weigh in! Vizion Interactive“Success over your online competition is going to come down to making sure you increase your marketing and branding budgets both online and offline while also laser focusing your online development on your mobile site and schema markup to have a successful 2018 business year.”
– Shanti Shunn, Digital Marketing Strategist, Vizion Interactive

To see the full exclusive video interviews with the speakers at Dallas Digital Summit, click here.