Digital Marketing Forecast – Entrepreneur Show Pilot with Kimber Leigh and Matthew O’Brien

I enjoyed being a guest on the Entrepreneur Show pilot with host Kimber Leigh at the world headquarters of HD Broadcast, thanks to Craig McClure and Eliances. In this segment, we discuss the major shift in the web world and that businesses are not paying attention.

All unprepared businesses will felt the impact of these subtle yet substantial changes to digital marketing.

Predictions/Trends for 2017 and beyond:

• Web apps will begin their slow and long declining death.
• Websites with great rankings and poor user experiences in mobile will begin a slow and abrupt traffic decline.
• Local businesses will scramble and play catch-up with location-based search marketing (roughly 90% of all businesses).
• Early adaptors of mobile-first best practices will experience an all-deserving advantage with online marketing and the physical web.
• Watching the video will account for over 70% of our time online.

We touched on a few of these points in the interview, with more to share in the upcoming year.  Here is the transcript from the show in November of 2016.

Kimber Leigh:  Matt, you look like you’re so excited to leave your clothes on today’s interview.

[laughter]

Matthew O’Brien:  Thank God.

Kimber:  Though that is not your business, what is it that you do as an entrepreneur?

Matthew:  We market businesses online. We help businesses to get their voice. You can think of us as an associated press for a business online. We develop the content model, but most importantly, we bring the message to where people are. We’d love for them to come to their website, but three out of four people never make it there.

We’ve got to find where that target audience is, what message will lure them, arguably back to their site, or at least get some response so that we can put them into a marketing funnel. We figure out the passions and personas for our clients and put a model together that gets their attention.

Kimber:  Do you think websites are obsolete or becoming obsolete, or is it truly the marketing aspect that really needs to be relooked at?

Matthew:  Now, you open up a big question there. The challenge today is some people have apps; some people have websites. It’s got to look good on a mobile device, on a tablet, and desktops. There is a major change going on. Essentially, there is one web that’s being developed.

What’s interesting is the announcement Google recently made. They’re a big name in this space. They announced that they would bring on a billion new users in the world, into third world countries that essentially don’t have any Internet connectivity. How are they going to do it? They are going to do it on a mobile device.

What’s interesting is there’s this new realm. Unfortunately, every business needs a new website because this new architecture will make it so lightweight that a website will work offline. No apps, everything is done on a browser, and you can do it on a mobile device. In fact, in the last couple of weeks, Google just said that mobile-first would surpass any search results in Google.

Kimber:  You’re getting up to speed with your company, ensuring that you can supply all the needs of every entrepreneur out there and do it that’s going to promote their company best.

Matthew:  Absolutely. Technology is a challenge.

Kimber:  Yes, it is.

Matthew:  We’re entrepreneurs. We’ve got to run our business. We don’t want to worry about this stuff. It’s just putting the baby steps in motion. In fact, 93 percent of businesses haven’t even claimed their listing in Google.

I asked them, “Are you a local business, a national business, or an international business?” Regardless of their answer, everyone is local, local first. You’ve got to put yourself on the map. We don’t really care about your business until we know who you are as a person and how you’re helping our community. Now, I’m interested in learning about your business.

Kimber:  Yeah, and you have to get your home front fixed first and notice first before you go outside of that. Local first, get on the map and extend from there. Many people want to go out there and reel it all back in and work backward, which seems more difficult.

Matthew:  Absolutely, and if you’re international, you’re really multinational. It would be best if you were a pillar of that community wherever your business exists. It’s a different type of thinking. There are a lot of businesses out there that need help. Most of them can’t afford the cost, the maintenance, and the time investment.

It’s this major investment of someone’s time. Is there a simple way to market your business online, do the simple things, and have more free time to focus enjoy life while running your business? We’re not in this to work all the time. We’re in this to enjoy our lifestyle. This is why we picked our career so that we can be passionate about our business.

Kimber:  The simple thing would be to hire MINTSocial.com to help them. Thank you so much. I see you doing great things for others.

Matthew:  Thank you so much.

Don’t get left in the digital dust in 2017. Learn more about your options for a forward-thinking digital marketing strategy to get ahead of your competitors in 2017 and beyond.