Marketing Channels to Focus On in 2019

Marketing Channels to Focus On in 2019

Like the rest of the internet, digital marketing evolves every year, which means that digital marketers and the businesses they work for have to shift or intensify their focus every so often to address and incorporate current marketing trends into their campaigns. This year, these are the marketing channels you should focus on (if you're not already) and the reasons why they're so important this year.


Voice search is a relatively new marketing channel connected to SEO. It allows users to speak keywords or phrases into an electronic device for search purposes. Speech recognition software within the device interprets exactly what is being said, and then reads aloud results for the user. Current programs and software such as Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Siri, and Microsoft Cortana all make use of voice search.

Search engines like Google now give voice search optimization more significance within their algorithm in order to make the user experience easier and search results more accurate. This information means voice search will play more and more into SEO rankings as time goes on. As of January 2018, internet users conducted over one billion voice searches each month. Voice search is projected to make up about 50% of all online searches by 2020.

While search engines and particular devices can be optimized for voice search, so can other brands, websites, and platforms. Sites like Wikipedia and Spotify are set up so that Amazon Alexa can easily search and scan their sites, showing how these sites decided to optimize their site interfaces to work with voice search.

Keeping the aforementioned information in mind, you should also optimize your site, platform, or overall brand for voice search. Here's what you need to do to accomplish that:

1)    Search engines like Google favor fast-loading sites. Be sure your website can load quickly by making sure the following factors are addressed:

a.       Your site is responsive, including mobile-responsive

b.       Your images are optimized

c.       Your files are compressed

d.       You're using website caching for better page-loading speed

e.       Your server's response time is decreased


2)   You should write your site content to read the way people speak. For regular search, you would simply write in short phrases, but for voice search, this not only means short phrases, but also natural-sounding long-tail keywords. Typically speaking, voice search results are written at a 9th grade reading level at best. However complicated the information you're presenting is, be sure to simplify it so that anyone reading it can easily understand it.

3)   Include featured paragraphs of content that act as featured snippets that Google and other search engines can present to searchers. A featured snippet – also known as position zero, answer box, or quick answers – is basically a summary answer from a web page and appears after pay-per-click ads but before search listings. A typical voice search result is around 29 words long. That's about how long your featured snippet should be. The snippet content should be a summary of your site's main content. Include anything that is easily readable by Google spider bots such as H-tags, bullet points, and lists. Also, include long-tail keywords within the snippet content.

4)   Focus on having your site content presented in local searches by including phrases like "near me" and your business' physical location (city and state) within content when it makes sense. 22% of voice searches are for content based on specific locations. Creating locally-focused content means you'll have a better chance of producing voice-search based content for Google and other search engines to present to searchers.


Despite all of the previous predictions about the death of email, it is still around and still very popular. In fact, according to a Statista study, email usage has increased since 2012. Currently, about 75% of the U.S. population uses email.

Many companies use email as an inexpensive and easy way to reach their current and prospective customers. It typically takes 6 - 8 touch points (whether that's via email, tweets, Facebook posts, etc.) to produce a solid sales lead.

You can make your email campaigns more engaging and reap higher click-through rates by following these steps include: personalized email greetings, write concise but intriguing subject lines, include a signature (that may or may not link to your business’ website, and use incentives to grow your email open rate. You should also do A/B testing on different portions of certain emails whenever you can so you can refine your email marketing for better results.

Getting people to subscribe to emails and consistently engage with email content can produce even more leads and revenue for your company. Overall, your ability to grow your subscriber list will also be an indicator of relevant, quality content that people connect with and value, particularly when they likely receive so many emails from your competitors.


Many people use social media as a break from daily life, as well as to amuse themselves and connect with friends, family, and others. However, many companies ignore this, and instead try to promote to as many people as possible. Social media is full of branding noise, and overwhelmed users are quickly tuning out irrelevant or uninteresting content.

The best way to avoid having your brand content tuned out is to have relevant, engaging posts and videos, content that is informational and insightful instead of promotional content linking elsewhere, and consistent communication with followers.


The best marketing channel for drawing attention to your brand is a search engine (or series of them). According to Google in 2015, 89% of business-to-business buyers and 81% of online consumers used search engines to look up new products and services.

SEO also has a high conversion rate. Because people are actively looking for answers and solutions to their questions and issues on search engines like Google or Bing, they're more likely to click on links, download information, or sign up for special offers and/or free trials if the offers and trials address what searchers are looking for.

One way to build and grow an organic online presence is to set up topic clusters and pillar pages. A topic cluster is a group of articles or blogs focusing on a single general topic. The pillar page features a relatively detailed overview of the topic, as well as links to the articles/blogs within the topic cluster that will function as subtopics. Not only do the overview and links help signal to search engines that your pillar page is an authority on this particular topic, but it will also extend domain authority across that cluster of articles or blogs so that they receive an organic boost. This also helps the pillar page rank higher, especially if they're ranking for the particular keywords you're aiming for.


Local SEO is growing in popularity and is increasingly important for businesses looking to be found online. More recently, mobile devices have been able to track a user's location and then provide local search listing suggestions (restaurants, stores, etc.) based on that location.

90% of purchases still take place in brick-and-mortar stores. 80% of disposable income is spent within a brick-and-mortar store within 20 miles of a consumer's home. In order to attract customers, businesses must be certain that customers’ searches are leading them to the right place, yield relevant and trustworthy information, and allow them to make an informed decision.

Incorporating these marketing channels and the associated information into your business' overall marketing campaign can make everything else your business does more effective, resulting in your business expanding its audience and increasing sales and profits.

If your business is ready to improve marketing efforts, but you don't know where to start and want assistance, please contact MAXtech Agency. You can submit your questions and concerns through the form on our Contact Us page, or you can call us at 614-401-8800 to set up an appointment.

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