This Week in Digital – The Rising Importance of Inbound Marketing for SMEs & Startups, ‘Snap Publisher’ released by Snapchat, Amazon releases ‘Amazon Spark,’ and Google’s new #OnGoogleMaps ad campaign

Another week, another round of digital trends and news. Here are the major developments in the digital world that have happened this week:

#1. Inbound Marketing – a boon for SMEs and Startups – Ritesh Singh, MD #ARM Worldwide

• Marketers are finally realizing the importance of Inbound Marketing.

• Empowers potential customers by creating content that people volunteer to utilize.

• Focuses on nurturing leads by gathering relevant information and gain insight into consumer needs.

• Can be used by marketers to create meaningful content for different buyer persona accordingly.

• Hubspot is a Marketing Automation tool that leverages Inbound Marketing to bridge the gap between Sales and Marketing and increase the overall efficiency of the company.

#2. Snapchat releases unique ad creation tool called Snap Publisher

• Advertisers need to create ads from scratch in order to facilitate the vertical nature of Snapchat.

• To mitigate this issue, Snapchat released a browser-based ad creation tool that can be used to create vertical snap-based ads.

• It enables advertisers to automatically turn any photo or video – including the horizontal kind – into a vertical video ad.

• It also has an option for brands to pull photos and videos from their websites.

#3. Amazon releases new social feed called ‘Amazon Spark’

• Amazon Spark is a rather Instagram-like service to facilitate an effective social shopping feed.

• The objective is to create social engagement on the Amazon app that will lead directly to product purchases.

• Users are asked to identify topics of interest from an extensive list.

• This list extends beyond product categories to various lifestyle areas and interests as well.

#4. Google launches new ad campaign i.e #OnGoogleMaps

• Google has quietly begun an ad campaign promoting its Maps feature, by using lesser-known figures and celebrities.

• Ads on Maps are meant for businesses that want to be more visible when consumers perform searches online.

• Advertisers can also place a brand logo on Maps or offer in-store promotions.