According to a recent survey, more than 80% said they are watching more online video today than they were a year ago. Overall, 65% have visited a vendor’s website after watching a video. Hubspot’s Consumer Behavior Survey confirms this trend. Over half (55%) of users say they consume an entire video (when distributed through Social Media), compared to 29% for blogs and 33% for interactive articles. If you want your entire message to be consumed, video tends to be the preferred medium. Still, many smaller businesses have no clear strategy for making Social Media work for them and say they need help with this form of content marketing.

Accenture study found 87% of customers think brands need to put more effort into providing a consistent and better customer experience. Aberdeen Research Group study found that companies with multi-channel customer engagement strategies retain about 90% of their customers, as compared to 30% for companies with weak multi-channel strategies. Also mobile experience is key as 52% of customers are less likely to engage with the company because of bad mobile experience.

For decades long, there has always been the talk about some salespeople being simply magnificent at their job. Well, in almost all cases studies, that particular salesperson was an expert in the product/service field they were selling. People do not want to buy from someone who is selling a product. They want to receive an insight and they will continue to gravitate towards "Subject Matter Experts". That is why they are called the new "Rainmakers".

Human-machine interactions are now tilting towards voice-based interface, and Social Media engagement continues to skyrocket to new heights. In particular, search engines will need to evolve and compete with new apps which will hugely influence the world of business search ranking, SEO and search marketing, as mentioned earlier. Big brands have plans to commit to a very large investment in social media campaigning and marketing in 2018, as they did when Social media marketing budget experienced a huge growth in 2017. SEO for Google Search is coming to an end, since now everything is a search engine, not just Google Search. The days of ranking a page for purchase-intent keywords on Google Search, are limited.

Everything is a search engine now, not just Google or Bing. Facebook is a search engine. Twitter is a search engine. Amazon is a search engine. Quora is a search engine. Pinterest is a search engine. YouTube is a search engine. See my point? Most of these search engines offer some kind of reviews, maps, and other features users were getting from Google Search in the past. This is now an extra step which people will bypass, sooner or later. Do you go to Google to find a Website you already know has what you want? Didn't think so.

Local focus in Social Media interactions and their search results (localized social platform) in 2018 and beyond will continue more rapidly as this gives consumers what they keep asking for: local focus. This also gives local businesses the chance to compete with even the biggest brands for consumer attention, but they will certainly have to fight for it.

For some time now the trend on the rise has been a strong emphasis on mobile. Advertising has een swiftly transitioning to digital and mobile advertising and businesses continue to shift their spending towards digital marketing, in particular in Social Media, since smartphones continue to proliferate and digital advertising continues to dominate. The newer generations (Millennials and Z-Gen) are so use to (and confortable) with smartphones that they find laptops/PCs as almost antiquated and primitive. Yes, mobile will continue to grow - even more.

Successful companies are quickly adopting a full integration between the front-line sales teams to identify topics for content marketing, and the content marketing team to develop content online to help sales professionals to effectively use this content in the sales process by answering customer questions and concerns and develop loyalty and reputation. Most of this takes place over the Social Media, where customers are relaxed and are enjoying interactions with their friends. Obvious.

Professionals (attorneys, doctors, dentists, chiropractors, accountants, bookkeepers, etc.) often complain about marketing as they don't have the time to both market to customers and deliver their professional services. Many campaigns in the past did not work either due to poor judgement in vendor selection or the wrong marketing method/media that did not complement the overall business or strategy (or even lack of strategy). But that all has to change, sooner for the better - or later for the worse.