David Moth says, “Later this year – July 4 to be exact – Econsultancy is hosting a new event that will investigate how AI is impacting marketing.As well as looking at how AI will change the way marketers implement CRM and content personalisation, the agenda at Supercharged also includes a few talks on chatbots.This inspired us to launch our own Facebook Messenger chatbot to offer people information about the event. The bot is already live – you can speak to it via our Facebook page or by searching ‘Econsultancy’ in Messenger.At Econsultancy we’ve always been happy about sharing... [...]

Megan Hannay says, “Just last October at the Street Fight Summit, many marketers ranked voice search as the most “over-hyped” marketing tactic of the year. I think this is because many of them aren’t seeing the full scope of the technology. We’re putting on our consumer brains and thinking about the current awkwardness of speaking to Siri in public, not of a future inside self-driving cars or those moments when we just don’t want to get up from the couch.Currently, most voice searches happen on mobile phones. But within the next few years, it seems likely that devices with... [...]

Matt McGee says, “SMX West was buzzing last week, and much of the conversation was about Google’s recent change to how exact match keywords will work in AdWords campaigns.Although the news just came out last week, the SMX programming team quickly organized a “flash session” that happened Wednesday morning before the scheduled agenda began. Panelists including Marketing Land’s Ginny Marvin and SMX moderators Matt Van Wagner and Brad Geddes took questions for almost an hour from a big crowd of concerned advertisers. They covered topics includingimpact on negative keywords.whether... [...]

Michael Sandstorm says, “Everything from music streaming services to healthy sweets are being marketed through free trials and there’s a reason why it’s such an effective marketing tactic.It allows your customers to ‘own’ your brand without initially paying for it, and because once they have a brand they value it more highly, they are more likely to continue using your product.Humans are creatures of habit and comfort, making it highly unlikely that we will give up on what we perceive to be a benefit to us once it has become an established part of our everyday lives. Just as... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “The latest version of Bing Ads Editor is out. Version 11.9 offers support for Enhanced CPC bidding and the ability to export standard text ads to a spreadsheet formatted for enhanced text ads.If you’re not importing expanded text ads from AdWords, you can convert Bing Ads standard text ads to enhanced text ads (ETA) via Editor by selecting “Export as expanded text ads” from the Export tab in the Ads view. You’ll need to manually add a column titled “Title Part 2” to the Excel sheet. Once you update the ads to fit the ETA framework, import them back into... [...]

Paul Randall says, “Website relaunches fail.Sometimes they are big, public ‘blow up in your face’ failures like M&S a couple of years ago. Often they are just a bit of a disappointment – waves of optimism petering out when they hit the shores of reality.But this is 2017. Surely, we have better tools than ever to unearth what it is customers want. We’ve never been better equipped to test web pages before they are rolled out. So why do brands continue to make a hash of launching a new site?One basic reason might be the temptation to go for a big bang launch, complete with PR... [...]

Barry Levine says, “A rebranded startup is today launching an AI-powered social marketing tool that it says can boost engagement, and even write the post.Post Intelligence, based in San Francisco, was founded in 2015 as MyLikes by ex-Google execs Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan. The company is launching today under the new name, as it unveils a beta of its new intelligent social marketing app for Web and Android, called Pi.Pi tracks social trends and a user’s history of social posts to predict engagement (e.g., likes and shares), recommend content, learn what works, and even generate... [...]

Justin Freid says, “There is no doubt the search industry has evolved. Just one look at how search engine results pages are currently laid out shows how things have changed. We have come a long way from 10 blue links.But have we gone far enough? At SXSW earlier this month, information access was a hot topic. People no longer head to Google’s search bar as their only way of accessing content.How we access information is changingSearch engines used to be the primary (or sole) place a consumer would turn to when they needed an immediate answer. You entered in a phrase, clicked a link... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Imagine if, in the movie Her, just as Joaquin Phoenix’s character feels the pangs of love for his automated personal assistant, Samantha, she had said: “I’m not sure about you, but personally I feel Bank of America offers a very competitive mortgage product for first time buyers.”Complete mood killer.For now at least, despite whatever weird Vice documentary you’ve watched, we don’t envisage a future where robots become realistic life partners. But technology is increasingly anthropomorphic (home assistants with names and voices), so... [...]

Matt McGee says, “Don’t freak out. That’s what Google’s Gary Illyes repeated this week — at least three times — to SEOs and webmasters who might be concerned about the upcoming switch to a mobile-first index.“The team behind the mobile-first index wants it to launch this year,” Illyes told our SMX West conference on Wednesday. “We’re still experimenting. We don’t have a timeline. It could be a few months or quarters, but it’s definitely not weeks [away]. Don’t freak out, especially if you have a responsive site.”Illyes first revealed plans to create a separate... [...]