VM Weekly Roundup #thisweekineverything

Welcome to our industry news roundup, where the rubber meets the roadmap.

Ad Personalization:

Google Will Stop Scanning Your Gmail Messages to Sell Targeted Ads

Ad personalization is one of the hottest and most-talked-about digital marketing tactics today, but Google’s latest announcement may signal a much-needed check on marketer enthusiasm towards the practice. The platform recently announced that it will be discontinuing the practice of using data from (algorithmically) scanned Gmail messages to place targeted ads directly in the email client.

10 Second Tip: The change comes after Google admitted that it’s had difficulty convincing more enterprise clients to take advantage of their cloud storage services due to trust issues from their known email-scanning practices. Even though Google claims the email-scanning ads were always limited to personal accounts, and never targeted enterprise emails, Google ultimately seems to have concluded the practice did more damage than good to their brand.

Test Drive: If even Google, one of the most dominant platforms in the market, can make a significant misstep in its ad personalization efforts, we should all take the opportunity to take extra care with the way we choose to implement personalized ads. The line between convenience personalization and perceived privacy violation can sometimes be a thin one, and it’s hard for a brand to earn back trust once it’s lost.

UI Design

 Designing the Perfect Accordian

A how-to guide for the UI design nerd in all of us: Smashing Magazine puts together a perfectly detailed post about all of the considerations user interface designers need to keep in mind when designing custom website navigation.

10 Second Tip: Your eyes may glaze a bit on this one if you’re not a designer, but the navigation interface of your website is the main tool your users and potential clients have to find what they need. That means clarity of design and content is more important here than arguably anywhere else.

Test Drive: Take another look at the way your website navigation is designed. If you can, ask a few unbiased acquaintances to take a fresh look for you and report back how easily they could find their way around. If you think there’s room for improvement, you might want to shoot this blog link over to your web designer.

B2B

The Top 8 Ways B2B Brands Are Reaching Customers in 2017

B2B marketing can be a tough road. Business content is always niche, and that can make it hard to cast a wide net and reach the right audience. Digital Marketing Philippines put together this helpful infographic of B2B-specific trends to watch out for to give you something to latch onto.

10 Second Tip: 93% of organizations expect marketing to become a bigger focus for their business in 2017, and 62% plan to increase their marketing staff or services to make that happen. Getting your product or service seen online in 2017 requires more than just putting up a website, and more businesses appear to have gotten the memo.

Test Drive: For 2017 strategy, start by putting your focus on existing clients. Hosting client events or classes for client retention and highlighting client testimonials are set to be big trends in 2017, and it’s always smart to start with the resources you already have that may be underutilized.