Catching The Eye Of Our Customers In A Social-Media Led World

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Social Media|Catching The Eye Of Our Customers In A Social-Media Led WorldAs the effective ability of social media to provide marketing to our pockets has taken on its strongest form, consumers have become increasingly adept at phasing this out and instead only searching for the content they want to see. This means that marketing departments must work overtime to fulfill this space but also to get noticed and generate those demands into leads.

Catching the eye of our customers in a social media led world is a tough ask, and it requires more diverse and subtle tactics to achieve. Just as a storefront may use vinyl sheets to help contribute to a wonderful sign bringing in business from the street, we must consider our digital campaign, and how it can differ from others without being ‘too artistic’ or impenetrable.

In this post, we’ll discuss a few measures you can use to this end, and potentially help you establish a better and more reliable online and social media campaign. With that in mind, please consider the following advice going forward from here on out:

Use Targeted Advertising

Targeted advertising can make a whole lot of difference, because today, it’s what you say that necessarily makes the difference in sales, but who you sale. Composing a picture of the general person likely to buy your product (be sure to widen your scope further than you may think necessary), can help you purchase advertising ID-led targeted advertisements that help you develop a more competent means of being displayed on the right feeds. Social media firms and Google Ads actively encourage this kind of approach.

Demand Generation Principles

It’s healthy to use demand generation to help encourage customers to find out more about your brand. Demand generation is, in effect, the art of showcasing why your firm exists and the possible need for it. This might encourage someone to visit your website to see how it could benefit them. For instance, your advertising campaign might heavily showcase why your particular fishing rod is both lighter with more tensile strength, and on average, why this can help those fishing reel in bigger catches with less maintenance of the rod. Putting these virtues front and centre helps you generate demand for your product, by directly challenging old values. This can make a massive difference.

A Unique Pipeline

It’s healthy to have a unique pipeline that helps encourage someone seeing your social media ad to make that final purchase. This might involve immediate links to your store page with an added referral code or discount based on that social media advert, or a link to your reviews page so that before they see the technical specifications of your product, a visitors sees all of the clients you have helped and impressed before now. It’s not hard to see how that kind of effort can be heralded – it makes a tremendous difference in the life of any firm.

With this advice, we hope you can more readily catch the eye of your customers, even in a social-media led world.

5 Online Business Strategies You Need in 2021

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Online Business Strategy|5 Online Business Strategies You Need in 2021The world of business is constantly changing. Online business, even more. The best companies embrace rapid advancements in technology as a part of their corporate infrastructure. However, as a newcomer or competitor to an online business, you cannot afford to ignore specific tools available to you.

For example, and perhaps surprisingly, only 30% of small to medium enterprises utilize search engine optimization. Among other digital and data-driven strategies for business, SEO is a vital aspect that you should incorporate into your broader corporate model. Based on available data, SEO alone will give you an immediate advantage over 70% of the competition.

Automation and AI Tools

The past ten years have been an exciting time for artificial intelligence. Specific AI tools have become essential in modern business and are almost a requirement for your company. Of many of these, you may not be aware. For example, affordable email marketing through automation software like MailChimp has unrivaled power for delivering messages to select groups of people. These AI apps are now used daily by many companies.

Other AI tools are subversive yet used every day. Grammarly, for example, might look like a standard spell-checking tool, but it is a sophisticated AI that analyzes every aspect of the wording or grammar of a document, to fit predefined goals. These goals include structure, style, and tone. Other AI tools work behind the scenes. For example, Amazon’s buying suggestions system is a highly complex AI and machine learning tool that adapts to changing user input.

Branding and Awareness

As a company, it is vital that you seek some branding. Minimally, this includes a company name and logo. More comprehensively, you can develop corporate colors, taglines, slogans, typefaces, and print media such as business cards and letterheads. Any aspect of branding should be consistent and precise across your company as it aims to identify your company immediately. It also aims to separate your company from others.

To help separate your brand from others, you should copyright and trademark all brand material where applicable. Finally, unless you are a qualified designer, you should hire a digital marketing or professional branding company to develop your corporate identity. These agencies are incredibly skilled and can design and produce consistent and recognizable branding aspects that set you apart from everyone else.

Social Media

It might have been an option in the past, but you can ignore social media no more. Modern platforms are essential tools for digital marketing and business. As of 2021, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram account for 50% of company revenue. Additionally, analyses have found that social media marketing campaigns influence 75% of B2B and 84% of C-level executives.

Implementing a social media campaign is straightforward in principle, but a strong understanding of how the systems work is necessary. Each platform offers unique targeted advertising opportunities leveraged by direct ads, earned media, and influencer marketing. For example, Facebook allows you to specify key demographic information for each of your ads, directing ads to those most likely to click on them.

Pay-Per-Click

The cornerstone of online advertising, Pay-Per-Click advertising is vital for generating sales. If only for the cost-effective methods implemented, you should consider PPC as you only pay for your ad upon a click. While a click indicates that a user is at least interested in your products or services, the trick is in leveraging techniques to convert these clicks into sales. However, a PPC campaign drives traffic directly to your site.

Website traffic is a crucial aim for any online business strategy. A reasonable PPC conversion rate is between 10% and 30%, which means that 70% to 90% of users may leave your site without buying something. But that’s OK because they will potentially return later on. The point is that they see your site, browse it and bookmark it – adding to your direct traffic statistics. Direct traffic is site visitors who visit without using a search engine, i.e., via a bookmark or URL.

SEO and Associated Tools

In addition to direct and paid traffic, you should direct a portion of your efforts to developing organic traffic. Organic traffic comes from visitors who visit your site by clicking a link in a search engine. Organic traffic comes from leveraging search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to associate your website with keywords and phrases. SEO is one of the best methods of increasing business since organic traffic is essentially free with billions of potential clients.

SEO isn’t quick, though, and requires time for research, a long implementation period, and a good understanding of the subject. Search engines like Google can take a long time to begin to associate your business with a specific search term. You can achieve Google ranking through consistent, relevant, and quality information on your site. Items such as blogs, videos, and images contain keywords. However, SEO extends to coding, local information, and backlinking from relevant sources.

The Final Word

Taking your company online is a crucial aspect of 21 century business. From simple automation to complex algorithms, AI can help. Marketing agencies will also help you establish an online identity through branding and marketing campaigns. These campaigns include social media platforms as well as paid and organic advertising via SEO.

The ABCs Of Successful Digital Marketing

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Successful Digital Marketing|The ABCs Of Successful Digital MarketingBuilding an effective marketing strategy should be a priority for all business owners. Whether you’re launching a startup or managing an established SME doesn’t matter. A winning strategy is key for winning new clients and retaining loyal ones alike.

Given its importance on the future of your business, it is very easy to overcomplicate your marketing efforts. In reality, you can achieve greatness simply by focusing on three key steps. Remember your ABCs and you won’t go wrong.

Awareness

First and foremost, it is impossible to generate leads and conversions if nobody knows of your existence. Even if you offer the perfect product for a client, they can’t buy it if they never see it. So, ensuring that your brand gains online visibility should always sit at the top of your agenda.

Search engines remain the most popular choice for consumers to find products. Roughly 85% of people run online searches before making purchases. Working with a professional SEO company to get your business on the first page of the SERPs will bring a huge increase in traffic. The best strategy will extend to cover mobile optimization and voice search optimization too. This reflects the new landscape.

Organic search results can be supplemented by PPC and other paid advertising. Display ads shown on websites and video ads that play before YouTube clips can work wonders. One of the great things about paid advertising is that you can limit your reach. This means that ads are only shown to members of your target market (age, city, hobbies, salary) and should remove wasted clicks.

Social media is another crucial tool for building awareness. Regular interactions with customers will ensure that your brand is seen on their feeds, as well as the feeds of their followers. Given that it is free to set up accounts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, et al. it would be crazy to ignore it.

It is suggested that consumers must interact with a business at least seven times before following up on their interest. Through a combination of search engine, social media, and display ad marketing, your brand will get seen. While it’s not the only key step for success, it will give you a solid platform to build upon.

Branding

Visibility is one thing, but it counts for very little if it doesn’t engage the consumer and make them want to complete a purchase. While the eCommerce arena has scaled new heights in recent times, it should be noted that the competition is greater too. In short, you must ensure that your company stands out from the crowd.

Understanding how consumer minds work is vital. They are shown to remember visual and audio content far more than anything they read. You can still remember commercials and radio jingles from several years ago. It’s never a bad idea to utilize these concepts to your full advantage. Once you have planted the seed, your brand will stay fresh in their minds whenever considering the products and services you sell.

Consumers are increasingly determined to work with businesses that they can relate to. Therefore, joining corporate social responsibility situations is highly advised. Aside from impressing customers with your commitment to creating a better world, it can influence employees. Above all else, focusing on issues that you actively care about will deliver a sense of self-satisfaction.

As mentioned, visual and audio elements can work well. And that’s because content is king. With this in mind, creating a blog or using social media live videos to provide insight into the people behind the brand can work wonders. This allows you to market the business with ideas that you wouldn’t necessarily use with traditional channels.

While you can embrace a host of marketing traditions and trends, it’s important to show a unique element too. Doing things your way is what will ultimately grab the attention of your target market. And build the sense of excitement that will make them seek more info about your products and services.

Care

Consumers have greater demands than ever before. So, simply getting your brand noticed isn’t enough. You need to show that they can trust the company and will be treated as more than just a number. In fact, studies show that up to 88% of people would pay more for a better customer experience. Embrace it.

The client support features should be a key component of your business model. Returns policies, live chat, call redirection and showing consistent fairness are the key issues to consider. When clients are treated correctly, they will come back for more.

Most people will read reviews, and they are a great way to establish trust from new leads. If they can see that you’ve done a good job for other customers, they will be inclined to trust you. The power of recommendation is as strong as ever, people just now look online for the referrals. You can capitalize on this further with social media influencers and affiliate marketing schemes. Positive words from other people will have a huge impact on client decisions.

Customers want to feel valued and need to see that you are responsive. Investing in an email marketing strategy that sends automated messages as soon as they have provided their details is key. This quick response sets a winning tone while it also promotes products while they are still fresh in the user’s mind. Sending an email on their birthday is another way to show a sense of genuine care for the customer too.

As a business, you can no longer focus solely on the short-term goal of getting a sale. You need to think about long-term aspirations and building a fanbase of loyal customers. It’s always easier to gain repeat sales than target new customers, which will make your life a lot easier in the long run.

The Final Word

Marketing is a complex matter, but building a solid strategy needn’t be too taxing. And once you find a strategy that works, stay consistent while ensuring it also evolves with the latest consumer demands. Strike a winning balance and your success will last for years to come.

4 Essential Tips For Successful Email Marketing

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Email Marketing|4 Essential Tips For Successful Email MarketingEmail marketing is still one of the most effective ways of reaching new clients as well as convincing current clients to buy from you again. However, for your email marketing efforts to be successful you need to consider the following factors.

Personalize

No one likes to think they are being sent an automated email, so make sure you personalize your communication with prospects as much as possible. One way to do this is to use a [email protected] email address, and adding in each recipient’s name can help a great deal too.

Additionally, coming up with creative subject lines (emojis seem to work well), and ensuring the content held within the email you send is personalized to your audience can make sure that you use the human touch to your advantage.

Increase your email list

Email lists are not static things. They are always changing as sometimes people will ask to be removed, while others will ask to be added. Although, as a business, your target should be to maintain a list that has enough addresses for your purpose. Just be sure to remember that the number of emails you send out will be much higher than the ones that provide you with the response you are looking for.

Indeed, with that in mind, there is nothing wrong with using some techniques to get email addresses on your list either. One way of doing this is to include a signup button on your website, social media profile, and just about anywhere else that will encourage people to opt in to your emails.

You can also use conferences, and events to collect email addresses as well, something that you can do by offering entry into a competition, or free gifts. It’s even possible to buy email list to help swell your business’s database. Indeed, by purchasing email contacts in this way you can ensure that you get the contact info of people more firmly in your target demographic, something that can help you turn such contacts into customers much more easily later on.

Before you send – TEST!

Every marketing email you send reflects on your business, and if you want to ensure they do so positively it’s vital that you edit and test every single one before you send it! Check every link, image, and shortcode on your copy and as they are displayed on different providers too. Then you can be sure that each recipient will get an optimized experience, and that each email will have maxim efficacy.

Say no to SPAM

Your emails won’t do much good if they only ever see the inside of a SPAM folder! With that in mind, you need to do all you can to ensure they hit the recipient’s main inbox.

One strategy for achieving this is to make sure that all the HTML that your emails contain is formatted properly, as this can set off SPAM filters. Also, one of the best ways to stay out of a SPAM folder is to not send SPAM. This means adhering to the regulation on this subject and avoiding cheesy subject lines and crazy punctuation.

2 Ways Your Business Can Benefit from Integrating SEO & PPC Processes

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |SEO and PPC Processes|2 Ways Your Business Can Benefit from Integrating SEO & PPC ProcessesSEO and PPC are two of the most popular and widely used digital marketing channels. While there is a lot of instruction and discussion out there when it comes to individual optimisation strategies for these respective channels, there is perhaps a lot less said about how these two channels can actually work well together.

In this article, we want to explore two specific ways in which your business can benefit by having your SEO and PPC processes aligned.

This is equally applicable whether you have an in-house team or if you’re working with a specialist SEO agency or a specialist PPC agency.

Keyword Research

One of the first and most obvious ways in which PPC and SEO can be aligned is when it comes to keyword research. Both channels require keyword research which is the process of finding out what exact words prospective customers for a business are using to find what they’re looking for online.

You then look for how much search volume there is against each individual keyword, as well as other metrics when it comes to PPC such as the average cost per click and how much competition there is to appear for a particular keyword.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of areas in which SEO insights can help PPC and vice versa.

PPC is usually much more directed at the lower end of the funnel, which means the PPC team will usually only be spending ad budget on keywords that convert or have a very high likelihood of converting or assisting a conversion.

Therefore PPC is actually a really good way to test whether or not a keyword is relevant and will ultimately help business objectives before investing a lot of resources into it to help it rank at the top of organic search results.

On the other hand, the SEO team may be able to provide some useful insights to the PPC team when it comes to keyword research as well. Usually, the SEO team will also look at what other websites are ranking for a particular keyword and that will give them a hint as to the intent behind the search query because that is what Google takes into consideration when choosing which websites to rank for a particular term.

In that research, the SEO team will usually also look at the landing pages and on-page copy of competing websites that are appearing for a particular search term.

This usually provides a lot of insights into what types of customer fears, motivations, and values appear to be important, which competitors are trying to target with their own page copy.

All of this can be particularly useful insights for the PPC team, especially if they choose to target a keyword and then produce a landing page specifically for that keyword.

User Behaviour Insights

One of the other ways in which both the SEO and PPC teams can work well together is by looking at the behaviour of users once they arrive on the website, whether that is through paid search or through SEO.

With SEO, you will tend to have a broader spectrum of keywords driving traffic to the website, because with PPC, you will tend to only spend money with a very specific objective of driving a very specific action through your ads.

With SEO, you have a little bit less control over what keywords drive traffic to your website, but of course, you can shape this somewhat.

One of the best ways of understanding how effective and relevant a particular keyword is by analysing the behaviour of users that use that keyword to arrive on your website and seeing what they do next.

You will be looking at which pages they tend to engage the most with and which sections of those pages they tend to engage the most with. Of course, you’re able to do this through tools such as Google Analytics.

You want to see: are there any particular pages that have very high bounce rates? i.e. are people leaving the website right after visiting that particular page? Now, of course, this doesn’t automatically mean that there’s something wrong.

They may have simply received the information that they were looking for and then chosen to leave. However, sometimes high bounce rates can be indicative of a problem with the user experience that you can then go and fix and hopefully improve your conversion rates.

Similarly, the paid search team can provide insights into what types of copy and message are working better because they’re able to produce specific landing pages for particular keywords and campaigns.

They’re able to test a lot more than perhaps the SEO team can, therefore they’ll have a much richer data set of what types of keywords and messages tend to convert better, which can then be utilised on the SEO ranking landing page.

Closing Thoughts

These were just a couple of ways in which having SEO and PPC processes a lot more integrated can benefit your business. There are many other benefits of having SEO and PPC working in tandem, such as capturing more SERP real estate and optimising ad spend, which perhaps we can get into in a future article.