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Digital Branding

Tips To Prevent AdWords Spend Wastage

Reaching the top of search results organically is a massive challenge considering the competition out there. Where SEO struggles to get you there, Google AdWords can serve quick and effective results. This paid form of advertising can take your website to the top sooner than you expect. However, the major concern is that burning money on AdWords is equally easy. This is because you tend to focus on maximizing your reach to get the highest possible number of clicks.

But you may end up adding those click costs very fast by casting a wide net since a majority of them may be irrelevant. Simply speaking, the number of people clicking your ads increases but a majority of them are not qualified leads. Considering this contradictory behavior of AdWords, you need to look for a strategy that gets you the best results while minimizing irrelevant clicks that cause ad spend wastage.  Here are some tips that can help.

Target specific audiences

The worst mistake that a PPC marketer can make is aiming too broadly. By targeting a broader audience, you may be able to reach a greater number of people. But only a small percentage of the targeted audience is likely to convert. Conversely, your campaign should target specific audiences who are more likely to convert. With this approach, you spend less and still get a higher proportion of conversions with more qualified leads clicking your ads.

Opt for modified broad match keywords

Another good idea to filter out unwanted clicks is to opt for modified broad match keywords. With the default broad match setting, your ads will appear for all the searches which are related to your keywords, not specifically the precise ones. This means that you may get more impressions but they will probably be less targeted. Inevitably, you will end up paying for clicks from the users who are least likely to convert. The solution lies in modifying your broad match keywords by appending more keywords that are likely to match the buyer intent.

Use negative keywords as well

Choosing what not to target is another smart way to curb costs and curtail wastage on your AdWords spend. A negative keyword is essentially the opposite of a regular keyword that you would want to focus on. With negative keywords, you tell Google about the specific words for which you do not want your ad to be served when they are a part of the search query. This strategy lets you eliminate the unwanted traffic and avoid worthless clicks, thus bringing down your ad spend to a considerable extent.

Track and tweak

Though you need to be bang on while targeting your audience and keywords, it won’t be enough. Keeping track of your campaign is equally important. The idea is to track its performance so that you can identify the flaws and tweak the campaign to address them. Tools such as Google Ads Cost Calculator can be of great help. This smart tool lets you know about the money being wasted on non-converting activities. At the same time, it also provides the CPA aggressiveness score for the campaign. With clear numbers, you have a picture of wasteful activities and can easily come up with a plan to reduce them.

Leverage geographic targeting

Not using geographic targeting is another reason why you may be wasting your ad spend. What if you are shipping only to a particular location but running your ads for the whole world? Obviously, you will be getting irrelevant clicks with very little conversions. The best approach is to set geographic targeting preferences for your campaign so that your ad reaches the customers at the right locations. Reaching them at the right times location-wise is equally important. These customers are the ones who can yield conversions and make your AdWords campaign more profitable as well.

Optimize for mobile

And how can you forget optimizing your AdWords campaign for mobile searches! If you are bidding on mobile searches (which you surely should consider the number of people who use these devices), having mobile optimized ads does not remain a choice. These are the ones that are tailored to deliver seamless user experiences for mobile users. Ideally, these ads should have mobile-specific CTAs so that users can easily click them. Further, they should also have corresponding mobile-optimized landing pages.

Undoubtedly, PPC acts as a catalyst for boosting a brand because it can get you on top of SERP rankings with lesser effort. However, it can be a big financial burden for your business if you fail to achieve a positive ROI with your campaign. Only the right mindset and approach can help in this context. While maximizing the clicks is one side of the picture, everything boils down to the relevance of these clicks. These strategies can definitely help you get the best benefits from your AdWords campaign while minimizing the wastage of your ad spend.

Digital BrandingSaaS Branding

How to Get on Top of Competitive Analysis for SEO

Competition is an inevitable and extremely healthy aspect of every activity. Without competition, complacency would set in and there would be no incentive to innovate. Because there is competition, all players are forced to keep on trying to do better in every aspect of their business so that they can steal valuable market share and build enduring customer loyalty. According to https://www.forbes.com, performing competitor analysis enables you to keep on improving and also provides you with an effective benchmarking system so that you know if your marketing strategy is paying off or not. For this to happen, a business has to first identify its main competitors, find out why they are getting better search engine ranks, and then decide what strategy to adopt to get ahead of them. Some practical tips on performing competitor analysis effectively:

Find Out Your Principal SEO Competitors

Most business owners will very easily be able to name the main competitors in their industry; however, it is quite likely that they will end up looking confused if you ask them who their main SEO competitors are because the two are not necessarily the same. It is also quite possible that you may have to contend with several SEO competitors who operate outside of your business niche while competing for superior SERP rankings. The main SEO competitors are those online businesses that rank in the first Google search results page for the target keywords or phrases, irrespective of whether they actually compete with you for the same business. If you operate in several niches, it is quite likely that you will have separate and distinct competitor lists with very little overlap. Luckily, the process of identifying your main competitors is as simple as examining the search results page for every important keyword. You can even use a specialized competitor analysis tool to make the process easier. 

Evaluate the Strength of Competitors

Even before, you jump into tweaking your on-page SEO or adjusting your link-building strategy, it can be a very good idea to analyze the SEO strength of your competitors. Theoretically, you can outrank any competitor for any keyword in any niche; it may not be practically feasible due to the huge amount of resources required. To avoid wasting your resources, you should use a competitor analysis tool to figure out the total domain strength of your competitors. Thereafter, you can analyze specific factors like domain authority, domain age, and location, search engine indexing, backlink data, catalog listings, the volume of traffic and social signals so that you can try to discover any weakness that you can exploit. It is more productive to concentrate on competitors who rank well for niche keywords but have a lower overall score because outranking SEO for strong competitors can be tough and expensive. 

Identify New Keyword Opportunities

Term frequency-inverse document frequency analysis (TF-IDF) is a very handy method for elevating the quality of your existing content with keywords that are being productively used by the competition, according to the CEO of arguably the best SEO Company in Washington. The complicated-sounding expression is a figure derived by the number of times that the keyword appears in the content multiplied by its expected frequency. This method allows you to optimize your web pages better for SEO and also for discovering keywords with low competition that you may have overlooked. By analyzing TF-IDF, you may find out that many of the top-ranking pages that you are competing against have many terms and phrases in common. If you are not already targeting these keywords, you can gain a lot by adding them to your existing content or even building new content to accommodate them to boost semantic search relevance.

Scrutinize On-Page Optimization and Content

The analysis of the on-site SEO of your competitors using any commonly available competitive analysis tool will unearth lots of valuable information that you can work with for boosting your SEO. Factors like the frequency of content publishing, content types, and target keywords can be especially helpful in tweaking your own content management strategy. Among other things, you should focus on things like metadata, title tags, title keywords, length of the title, internal linking strategies, etc. that seem to be the bedrock of their SEO success. By figuring out the things that your competitors are doing especially well, you can adjust your SEO strategies for better performance delivery. Content analysis is also of vital importance; monitor the topics being published, the type of media used to deliver content, word count or length of the videos, the extent of details, etc. as they all are valuable signals that are picked up by Google bots as they crawl websites.

Investigate the Backlink Profiles of the Competitors

The number and quality of the backlinks are very important signals for search engines for page rankings. Accordingly, you should find out where your main competitors are getting their backlinks and what sort of content is attracting the backlinks. Using that insight, you can improve on the quality and relevance of the content of your website so that you become an equally attractive destination for sites with high domain authority. Backlink analysis is best done with a proper competitive analytics tool, as a manual operation is not feasible.

Study the Site Architecture and User Experience

Among the many recent changes Google has made to its algorithm, quite a few have been on focused on a better user experience; these include improved search results, quicker page loading, improved mobile experience, etc. when compared to your competitors, if your website is unresponsive or has a confusing navigation, you should take steps to address the issues immediately. Essential steps include optimizing the sitemap for improved crawl-ability, prioritizing the loading times of pages according to their values, and ensuring search intent is paramount across all pages.

Conclusion

Competitive analysis is not something that you do once and forget about. Remember, your competitors are not asleep and doing everything that they can to rise to the top of search engine page rankings to grab the maximum volume of organic traffic. You need to keep on constantly monitoring them across the most important metrics as well as finding out the impact of Google updates on the performance of your site so that you can stay on top of the situation consistently. 

Digital Branding

10 Branding Strategies You Shouldn’t Miss Out On In 2020

Creating an image of your company that sticks in the minds of consumers is a complex task that seemingly never ends. You should do some tried-and-true things year after year, such as ensuring you have a style guide, adding unique content and getting your name out in the local community and world at large. Each year, you’ll also need to add some new strategies into the mix so that you can reach people you’ve not reached before and reinforced your presence.

In a recent study, researchers found brands with a specific purpose grow about twice as fast as brands without one. Before you implement any of the techniques outlined here, make sure you know what the purpose of your organization is and why you do what you do. Once you have a firm basis to build on, look at these 10 branding strategies to get your message in the right hands.

1. Create Shoppable Posts

Today, social media drives online shopping. Its nature allows retailers to put interesting products in front of the exact target audience they want. Over time, it’s become easier for people to purchase right from the app they are on. For example, Instagram now allows people to purchase via a business post. About 70% of Instagram users state they’ve made a purchase via the app.

2. Engage on Twitter

Gaining followers and engagement on Twitter requires more than throwing a page up on the site. You have to be active on the platform and interact with influencers as well as potential audience members. Add something of interest to a conversation. Provide valuable content they can’t find anywhere else. Instead of selling to people all the time, start relating to them on a personal level.

3. Green Your Business

People who care about the environment will appreciate your efforts to reduce your carbon footprint. Eco-friendly practices can become part of your branding strategy. Look for ways to recycle your company’s waste, and encourage your customers to get active in green living as well.

Don’t just go green to gain customers, though. You have to really believe in the reasons behind environmentally friendly living, or you’ll fizzle out on the effort involved. If you care about this topic, you’ll discover people who seek out like-minded businesses based on their green rating.

4. Host an Experience

People say they connect better with a brand when they are emotionally engaged via real-life experiences. Think about how you can spread the word about your firm by hosting some event or experience. You might invite local media to a soft opening of your new restaurant, for example. You could also pull in experiential graphics and create a one-of-a-kind event with a popular theme, such as images from “Harry Potter” or a popular television series.

5. Get Personal

Marketing professionals can access more data today than at any time in history. You likely know where your customers live, what type of browser they use to access your site and even what keywords they searched for before landing on your webpage. With cookies and surveys, you can gather even more information about your site’s visitors. Use the intel and create a personalized experience for them. Offer products they might be interested in based on past browsing or buying behaviors.

6. Find the Right Influencers

Brands will spend an estimated $15 billion a year on influencer marketing by 2022. However, the trend is moving away from seeking out the biggest, most popular influencers and toward finding smaller, niche influencers with specific audiences. When finding influencers for your brand, pay attention to who interacts with their posts and if their followers engage and share. Focus on the type of people they reach rather than how many they affect.

7. Use Immersive Technology

Set your brand apart by using chatbots and other immersive technology to grab site visitors and keep them engaged. Rather than hiring 24/7 live agents to staff your chat, you can utilize a chatbot to answer common questions and collect basic information before moving the user to a trained customer service rep. Look for ways of using technology to set your brand apart from your competitors while keeping the experience affordable.

8. Share Your Story

Every brand has a unique story that starts well before the business opened its doors. Think about your own tale and its differences than the details of other beginnings. What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?

Tug at the emotional heartstrings of your target audience. Once you have your story fleshed out, share it via a video on your website, a series of social media posts or a timeline on your About page.

9. Start an Online Community

Online communities offer numerous benefits to your branding strategy. Members often ask questions and provide solutions, helping keep your image positive. These outlets also allow members to feel heard and instill trust in your company.

Communities have a good return on investment (ROI). After two years, the ROI is around 1,352% for most brands. You can easily start a community via your Facebook page. The more you can tie your group into social media, the more participation you’re likely to generate.

10. Keep Creating Content

You might wonder if it’s still worth your time to create content for branding purposes. The answer is yes.

In a recent report, researchers found 91% of brands still use content marketing to reach consumers. The key to using content for branding is making sure you have guidelines in place about what type of content you’ll use, how it looks and where to place it. Be consistent with the types of information you offer and the voice you choose. Even your images need to have a similar theme and be highly relevant to your business.

Know Thyself

Before you can create a brand image in the eyes of others, you have to know yourself as a business. Outline your principles and your goals as an organization. Then, set out some plans for how you’d like others to see your company. Understanding who you are and what you stand for makes it easier to reflect that vision to other people

Lexie is a branding enthusiast and web designer. She loves checking out local flea markets and taking her Goldendoodle on hikes. Follow her on Twitter @lexieludesigner and check out her design blog, Design Roast.

Digital Branding

Why Is it Crucial to Use Data in Your Digital Marketing Strategy

In the current marketing world, decisions are no longer based upon the hypothesis and past experiences. Big data and analytics help to determine the best influential marketing ideas. By making use of the predictive analysis and past data, businesses can generate a better return on investment (ROI) for providing meaningful insights that lead to effective business strategies and decisions within an organization and not just for the marketing teams.

In this article, we will be highlighting a few of the reasons why data needs to be utilized for making an appropriate digital marketing strategy. Let’s get started with.

Getting the Right Data

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To have accurate data is crucial for making an effective marketing decision but at the same moment having the bulk of the data is harming all of your marketing strategies if you have not used them correctly. Likewise, you can begin with your key performance indicator (KPIs) and the work from the turnaround.  KPI is used to represent the measurable values that show you the performance of the campaigns. It is imperative to have objectives for your advertising efforts to be it more guests to your site, enrollments, email assortments, CTAs and considerably more. 

Research well on your Audience and Channels

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The best part of having the data is to know well and research all of your audiences and the channels that you are targetting in your marketing campaigns. Likewise, you can follow the guest’s sort who go to your site and fabricate personas around the individuals who attempt to connect and afterward target different spectators who are like your potential client base. You can also make use of the data obtained with the help of survey tools from https://conjointly.com/products/free-survey-tool/ that helps to determine what types of things are most interacted by your audiences on your site and in your campaigns like ads and emails.

When you wish to decide upon your audiences to target, at first, you need to determine their intent and this relates back to set all the KPIs for making content decisions that fit your audience. The next crucial data set to take into consideration is your traffic sources from different devices. By having the right channels to contact the crowd, it has an incredible effect on your advanced showcasing system.  All the variant demographics make use of the variant methods to access online data. It is observed that 58% of the website visitors come from mobile devices and with thorough analytics, you can optimize your content to reach them in an efficient manner.

Target for the Right Keywords

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Information figures out what your crowd is scanning for when searching for your item or administration and causes you to focus on each one of those watchwords by driving the traffic to your channels. By utilizing the information that is given by Google AdWords Keyword Tool, you can make sense of the entirety of your potential catchphrases  Also, you can use this tool to check what type of keywords are getting used by your competitors and determine which one of them is worth to big against and which ones need to be skipped. You can conceivably expand your site traffic by using these catchphrases in something beyond advertisement focusing on. For instance – you can insert them into social posts, content on the website and other digital initiatives.

Get up-to-date with your Website and Campaigns

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You can utilize your past information for foreseeing the future results of our advanced crusades. By taking a gander at the presentation of your past crusades and as-focusing on endeavors, you can distinguish what is functioning admirably and what should be restored. If you find that your Facebook ads are outperforming your Google advertisements then you may wish to allocate your budget more towards Facebook. Also, you can optimize variant demographics within your targeted audience. On the off chance that your venture serves a changed scope of items and administrations, at that point you can target various personas.

Opt for ROI

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Stakeholder wishes to see that all of their money is spent on the accurate digital marketing which can be represented in the data and that’s how it should be having on profit. Each of an actionable item like form or a CTA buttons which helps you to drive traffic towards the needs should be taken into consideration in some data set. You can also try to add the tracking parameters to URLs within your campaigns and get to know which channel is helping you to drive the mist traffic by relocating the digital spend. It is seen that email marketing is grabbing the highest ROI for any of the marketing methods. It is a conversion machine where you only need to build your email list with the potential subscribers and deliver the highly relevant content in their inbox.

Wrapping Up

Here, we come to the end of the article. We hope you have understood the need for analyzing the data records in digital marketing in order to attain the desired results. Implement the given strategies and also you can suggest a few more to work upon. Till then – keep learning!

Author Bio

Shira Gray is working as a Business Development Executive at Mobile App Development Company – eTatvaSoft, you can learn more about her company. She writes about emerging technologies. Being a tech geek, she keeps a close watch over the industry focusing on the latest technology news and gadgets.

Digital BrandingSaaS Branding

SEO Trends You Need to Know Before 2020

As business competition in the online stratosphere becomes ever more intense, with thousands of websites being launched, it is vital to re-strategize your content marketing techniques and methodologies. 

There is no question technological advancements have become more rampant, consistent, and streamlined, which means you cannot afford to be stuck in the past. You have to position your online business for the future, making changes and adopting newer, more evolved trends and changes. You can get in touch with a SEO Company Singapore for the same purpose.

You see, one of the effects of the changes in digital marketing is the fact that it is now not merely enough publish content, no matter how unique or relevant it is. The content you publish must aim to solve your target audience’s problems. 

Moreover, there are plenty of variables you need to implement to make your website compliant with powerful search engines such as Google. And this is essentially where search engine optimization comes into play.

But you already know that you know how SEO quality standards are essential for Google to rank your website at the top. You know designing a website with user-friendly navigation will help stand out from your competitors, especially when it comes to attracting users to find what they are looking for at your website.

However, what you may not know are the various SEO trends that online businesses should be on the lookout for in the coming year (2020). There are some notable trends you can take advantage of to get ahead of your market rivals and provide prospects that are more favorable for your customers. In light of this here are:

Four incredible SEO strategies and trends that are going to be big in 2020

 

1. Voice searches are going to be increasingly popular

 

In the current digital marketing landscape, knowing how to enhance your e-commerce site for voice search will propel your organic traffic, that is, if you learn and integrate conversational searches in your SEO campaign. 

Voice searches have a powerful influence on your SEO; it is all about triggering the best questions via voice instead of enhancing your search queries. It is increasingly evident that search terms have transformed into more conversational elements, and are targeted more. 

However, it is vital to understand that when you integrate voice search queries, the search engine will put in a lot more work to leverage unique and relevant information that your target audience is looking for at the moment they are searching for information. What that means is working on integrating short, choppy keywords is not necessary anymore, and neither is it overly fruitful. However, this change in search trends is very close on the horizon as 2020 comes nearer. According to research, it has been determined that more than 50% of all online searches will be voice initiated. That is why it is so important to gear your SEO and content marketing around this trend.

 

2. Website dwell time and CTR will become powerful components to drive significant ranking factors

 

As more and more people get comfortable with crazy high-speed internet connections (5G), and have access to even more information on their fingertips 24/7, website and email CTR (click-through rates), and website dwell time (which is the amount of time a user spends on a web page before moving on to another site), will become even more integral for your SEO campaign. 

Both elements are vital as they provide useful insight into how satisfied that user is with your website. By knowing how long a potential customer stays on your website and navigates it or how long he lingers on your website before clicking on another page will tell you how interested that target audience is in your website content. Here, you can take Outlook Studios for an example. Their web content acts like a spellbinder and visitors don’t feel bored even for a second. 

3. Quality content will always remain “king.”

Online advertisements are still a useful tool for driving more sales, but in 2020, it is suspected that the price of online ads will exponentially increase. However, it is still going to be a risky investment as there is no guarantee whether your target audience will respond to your online adverts or not. 

You would be surprised to know that up to 91% of online advertisements are not even viewed for more than a second. And in 2017, this is what caused the industry to waste a whopping $38 B in digital advertisements!

The point is, you are going to have to be consistent in upping your content quality, think of it as a fundamental tool for enhancing your SEO. Moreover, you need to understand that your content has to help solve your target audience’s problems. Quality content can go a long way in doing that. But it has to be timely; it has been relevant, unique and immediately actionable. 

 

4. Artificial intelligence and SEO

 

AI has become an integral part of the digital stratosphere, and it is going to take over in the coming years. For example, search engine giant Google has been implementing artificial intelligence to enhance its user search results, especially when you talk about all the unique searches that take place daily. So, how does AI boost SEO? 

In simpler words, artificial intelligence has increasingly and successfully progressed to learning all the different attributes that go into making a published blog or article valuable or not relevant. And through automated processes, AI is able to categorize different web pages, classifying their rankings with streamlined precision. This is currently what Google is doing. 

The bottom line

Search engine optimization is an invaluable tool for all online businesses, big or small, regardless of the type of industry you are in. And it doesn’t just refer to the use of keywords, but its utilization has increased to even optimizing your website’s content for your target audience. 

After all, all major search engines like Google and Bing process critical information depending on how users search for something and the type of behavior they exhibit while searching for any type of information online. In addition, it is also essential to understand that SEO is getting more accurate, spawning newer and more enhanced trends that will completely alter the way websites will publish information.

Legal BrandingLocal BrandingPersonal Branding

7 Tips for Becoming a Successful Brand Manager

A career in marketing is one of the most lucrative ideas that an aspiring professional should have in the business world. Why? Well, because there are more enterprises out there than ever before and even one-person startups often need consultation services from renowned brand managers. Still, how does one become a brand manager or, even more importantly, how does one become successful and gains renown in this field? Well, here are the top seven tips for becoming a successful brand manager.

1. Get some formal education

The first thing you need to do in order to be taken seriously in this field or even get a chance is to get some form of formal education. At the very least, you need a Bachelor’s degree in a field that’s relevant to branding or marketing. So, business, administration, or science are your safest bets. Science is particularly effective, seeing as how an efficient brand manager spends so much time analyzing and interpreting harvested data. Also, make sure that the university that you go to has all the right reputation and accreditation. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a bit of a pickle. 

2. Develop a necessary skillset

As always, a degree can only get you so far. In order to really make it in the field, you need to possess the right skillset. When it comes to being a brand manager, you need to have great analytical skills and attention to detail. Also, you need to possess a thirst for knowledge and self-improvement, seeing as how trends evolve and new emerge on a daily basis. Then, you need to know how to do the right budgeting and be resourceful with the budget you have. Lastly, you need to be creative and possess the right team working (even leadership) skills. With all of this under your belt, you just can’t fail.

3. Get some experience in the field

The next thing you need to understand is that no one has ever started as a brand manager. Before that, you need some experience in the field, in the form of an entry-level job or at least an internship at the esteemed branding agency. Then, you need a letter of recommendation (or a couple of them) as well as a professional portfolio. Any major project that you’ve collaborated on needs to be listed. Even more importantly, you need to understand that you’re not really doing this for the portfolio. You’re doing it for experience, so try to learn something from each of these projects.

4. Get tech-savvy

Due to the fact that you’ll mostly work in a digital environment (via collaboration tool) and employ services of those from the same branch, it’s incredibly important that you get tech-savvy as quickly as possible. Your smartphone is your office and the more specialized tools you get to use, the greater your efficiency will be. Even your payments need to become smarter, which is why you might want to apply for  a payroll card. With so many freelancers and telecommuters on your retainer, managing all of their wages becomes so much easier this way.

5. Focus on networking

One of the most important things in the field of brand management is definitely networking. Why? Well, because you can’t manage a brand on your own. You need content writers, web designers, analyst specialists, social media managers, and more. Even if you do some of these things (for smaller projects) on your own, you still may need someone to ask for advice when going gets tough. In other words, start mingling with professionals from your industry.

6. Keep growing as a professional

The field of branding, marketing, and brand management in general, is the one that evolves quite rapidly. This means that you’ll have to follow journals, do independent research, and keep attending seminars, trade shows, and keep taking courses on new trends. Also, regardless of how long you spend in the field, you can always use it with a bit of mentoring from someone a tad more seasoned than you. This is why networking is so important and should never be neglected. Furthermore, every single one of these courses and seminars that you get crossed off your checklist should be listed on your resume and included in your portfolio.

7. Build a personal brand

Previously, we’ve talked about a formal education, experience in the field, and seminars that you need to attend in order to grow as a professional. Well, wrapping all of this up in a unique nice-looking package can be even more important. What you need to bear in mind is the fact that building a personal brand takes time and patience. First of all, you need to make your own website, start a blog (this is paramount), and start producing some niche-relevant content. This establishes you as an authority within the field. You can also leverage your social media influence by being active on your social media profiles. Needless to say, LinkedIn always takes precedence.

Conclusion

In the end, one of the things you need to consider is actually talking to a brand manager and inquiring about their experience in the field. Ask them to tell you the truth about what it’s like, seeing as how it’s not an easy career path to tread upon. Only when you’re 100 percent certain should you proceed with some of these steps.

Digital Branding

What You Learn by Studying Digital Marketing

When it comes to digital marketing, taking online courses is one of the many ways you can go about acquiring the basics. But what exactly are you going to learn when taking digital marketing courses online?

Well, it depends on the course you are taking, of course! But there are some common themes you’ll learn, regardless of which area you choose to study and which provider you enrol with.

According to Mallory, digital marketing has 6 major activity types: content marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media marketing, affiliate and influencer marketing, and email and message marketing. Let’s have a look at some of the topics so you’ll know what to expect by taking digital marketing classes.

SEO and Keyword Research

You can’t live without search engine optimization today. SEO is at the heart of everything. Online courses will teach students how to:

  • Properly target keywords based upon a specific niche/industry, website they’re building, or client needs
  • Create enriching content online to ensure a website outranks competitors in organic SEO searches
  • Incorporate the right keywords, phrases, and “search friendly” details on a website, to ensure they rank highly in organic SEO searches
  • The basics of mobile websites, fast load times, product descriptions, blogs, and relevant content, to guarantee higher rankings online.

Without the right keywords, and without properly optimizing a website, it is going to falter. The right courses will teach students the basics of building a website with SEO in mind, to ensure it ranks well within a specific niche for a search demographic.

Social Media and the Importance of Localizing

Think of a popular website today. Does it have a social media presence? If you say no, you’re fooling yourself.

The same goes with local search tools. Many companies today have a Google My Business page. They also have local search terms, city names, local phrases, and popular search terms on their website.

What’s the reason for these things? They matter! Today, websites must:

  • Cater to their searcher (include local searches as people will include words like “near me” or include city/state when searching for something online)
  • Include social links, in order to engage with their audience and be viewed as a likable company
  • Incorporate YouTube, Instagram, Facebook ads, and more.

Basically, companies have to cater to their audience. Almost everyone’s on at least one social media site. So, companies have to be as well.

Marketing courses will teach you how to build an online reputation, how to incorporate localization into website design, and how to interact with audiences, through multiple social media platforms.

How to Monetize a Site

Customers want to make profits. Working in marketing, designing websites, or creating content as a marketer, means you’ll have to help clients monetize their site. Basic marketing courses will teach students the power of:

  • Content marketing
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Blogging and guest writing
  • Email marketing and building campaign lists
  • Utilizing online podcasts and YouTube marketing
  • PPC (pay per click ads) … and more!

There are several ways to monetize a website. If you don’t know how to utilize these tools as a marketer, you probably won’t go far in the industry.

Study Digital Marketing Online

Most marketing careers relies on technical skills and knowledge of online platforms. You need to embrace technology since that’s the most powerful way to connect to customers.

The crucial role of technology makes mean studying online is a natural fit. Online Study Australia has observed, “Studying marketing in an online environment makes great sense with the rise of digital and social media marketing. Marketing professionals need to be skilled at connecting customers to products using technology.”

The different types of marketing courses you can do range from watching YouTube videos, to short diploma courses, to full university degrees. A combination of online courses is perhaps the way to go. Get a grounding by doing a long course and then keep updated and refreshed with shorter courses.

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Digital Branding

How to Quickly Convert Customers Need Into Sales

In the competitive marketplace, instantly converting customers’ needs into sales is key to the success of any business. Clearly, customers are the crucial factor to determine your business’ longevity and progress. Hence it is undeniable that high product and service quality is always prioritized to win customers’ hearts and then capitalize on your sales. Yes, we may know that strategy like the back of your hand; however, it is not easy to quickly drive customers’ initial thought from “I need to get a gift” to the ultimate decision to purchase that gift. It is not only a matter of time but also competitiveness. 

In fact, customers demand varied differently, and the fiercest business rivals are trying to stay ahead of you by offering many attractive promotions, innovation, etc. to get as many customers as possible. Now, the game is at your hand! If you are finding a solution to Convert Customers Need to Your Sales or in other words increase conversion rate with ease, we are all about! Let’s see what we have for you.

I. Identifying Customer Needs

1. The importance of understanding customers needs

No matter how excellent your product is, the simple truth is that no one will purchase it if they do not believe they need it. You can not successfully persuade anyone that they want or need to buy unless you clearly know what it is your customers really want. Therefore, understanding customer needs is at the center of every successful business. Once you can acquire this knowledge, it is at your hand to persuade customers that buying from you is in their best interests.

When customers buy your product, not your competitors, they need a reason that we call Unique Sales Proposition (USP).  Your business or your market changes leads to the shift of USP, and you can use different USPs for different types of customers. For example, a flower shop could offer a free same-day delivery service for customers within a local area – a compelling USP for customers who need fast delivery.

The more you know about what your clients are looking for, the more effective your sales and marketing strategy will be. It’s worth making an effort to find out: who they are, what they buy, and why they buy it.

2. How to understand customers need

There are several ways to gain insight into what your customers need from you: focus group, social listening, keyword research.

Focus Group

A focus group is a market research technique in which you collectively interview a small group of people who represent your target audience.

With so much data available through the social network, we may forget that the best way to get to know your customers is to connect with them directly. That open and honest dialogue with your customers helps you develop a profound knowledge of the customer’s response to your business, your product that you provide. 

Social Listening

It is the process of tracking and analyzing what the public said about your business on social channels.

According to a recent, over 80% of people seek recommendations before purchasing by consulting on a social network. Therefore, keep up with customers on social listening will help you reveal your customers’ expectations as well as how good you are delivering on those expectations.

Keyword Research

This method can also give you valuable insight into what your customer needs from you, your business, and your product. If you know what your customers are searching for online and more importantly, what they are searching for your product, you can determine what they’re looking for. Once your research is completed, you can channel it into creating a product or service that better aligns with those needs. For an ecommerce business, SEO is one of the vital tools to advance in the marketplace.

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II. How to Quickly Convert Customers Need Into Sales

1. Use your understanding about customers to tailor your product

As a customer, there are categories that they can use to evaluate your product: functionality, price, experience, convenience, reliability, design, performance, efficiency, compatibility. Once you know exactly which criteria they are looking for, you can easily create a well-tailored product that customers will love. Follow four key points, and you will be on the way to delight the client in no time.

  •  Have recognition of product alignment
  •  Be flexible 
  •  Hone your product to particular niches
  •  Make sure your product relevant

2. Improve customers’ experience

Customer experience is one of the decisive factors for any Ecommerce retailer who seeks to win and retain customers online. You may know these facts (researched by Medallia.com), but they seem to be still unbelievable :

  • 89% of clients stop doing business with a brand after a bad experience
  • Only 1 in 26 people complain after a bad experience; the rest just leave
  • It takes 12 positive client experiences to make up for one negative experience
  • Clients are twice as likely to share bad experiences than talk about good ones
  • Customers are twice as likely to share bad experiences than talk about good ones
  • Increasing customer retention rates by 5% can increase profits from 25% to 95%

 

 

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To truly improve customer experiences, online retail stores need to consider two critical things.

First, you need to think about the long-term strategy you’ll adopt for researching and implementing improvements in the face of business and customer needs. Second, you need to think about the reactive strategy you’ll utilize for responding to customer experience issues in real-time.

So what are the ways to enhance the customer’s experience? The traditional way to improve experiences in online retail is conversion rate optimization. However, conversion optimization is persuasion-centric, not customer-centric.

The more advanced method is through digital experience optimization. When going shopping online, of course, a high-speed loading site is what customers expect. The store owners can take advantage of technological tools to improve their site. It is evident that no online store wants to challenge the customer’s patience when they have to add filters after filters to get the favorite item. To get rid of these problems, you may consider using  Layered Navigation Ultimate, which is considered as an adequate layered navigation system with multiple- filter navigation, price slider, AJAX loading technology and shop by brand function for Magento 2 stores.

3. Promote marketing strategy 

There are available guidelines online for marketing strategy improvement that we all love to follow, such as abandoned cart emails, upselling, product recommendations, etc. However, it is difficult to cover all these methods within this article, so what we highlight here is content writing, which is considered as the most important part of the marketing field in the world of ecommerce. 

Writing content for your e-commerce brand seems like a difficult task, as these types of websites are structured differently than traditional sites. It’s not as much a matter of writing blog posts and landing pages as much as it needs to be engaging and convincing and optimized for search engines. Here are must-have tips for excellent content writing:

  • Focus on your audience first, Google second
  • Include customer testimonials 
  • Pay attention to word count
  • Avoid duplicate content
  • Let your content sell

III. Final Words 

In a nutshell, driving customers to need to sales in a short time has never been easy when you do not develop a deep understanding of your customers and your business in the competitive online marketplace. Your practical application of this post is a great encouragement for us to write more quality content. Thank you for spending time reading. 

On the other hand, sometimes it can come to an increasing price, which is not very convenient. This sales training can help you handle that situation.

Author Bio

Daisy is a Mageplaza passionate expert writer about Ecommerce. For many years of working closely with clients seeking solutions on the Ecommerce platform, she tries her best to give readers the most useful advice on online business issues.

Digital BrandingPersonal Branding

9 Blog Promotion Tactics That Every Blogger Should Know

As far as working from home jobs are concerned, blogging is one of the highest-rated activities or businesses that an individual can run. Blogging does not require a college degree nor does it require years and years of technical training. It does, however, require passion, great grammar command and the willingness and tenacity to work. Many people hear about blogging and think that it is a breeze, an easy way to make money. The truth is, it is very difficult to make money from a blog unless you have what it takes. This means you have to have great content, garner a sizeable and commendable audience, and most of all, have the necessary know-how in effective ways to monetize your blog. Monetizing your blog is the ultimate test when it comes to blogging success. This involves extensive marketing for no matter how monetized your blog is, if it does not get the necessary and right traffic, it will still be useless to you. Getting your blog noticed and standing out from the millions and millions of blogs online today is no easy task, it takes quite a bit of skill. Here are 9 blog promotion tactics by http://socialmarketway.com that every blogger should know.

Go social

Other than Google, social media sites command the highest amount of online user traffic today. Facebook is second only to Google. Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and the rest are not so far behind. This means that these social media sites are where your audience is to be found on a regular basis. If you want to effectively direct this substantial amount of traffic, then you need to engage with the community in general, the easiest way to do this is through these social media sites. The thing to remember is this, a social media campaign can look a lot like spam. This is mainly because people come here to interact with one another and share ideas. Unless you are actually contributing to the conversation in a meaningful way, simply posting a link to your blog will be considered spamming and this will result in you getting banned. You need to interact with the community. This involves taking an interest in what they are discussing and contributing relevant information which you can then link to or from your blog.

Target a ‘sharing’ audience

This should be part of your strategy. Try as much as you can to make your target audience the sharing type. There is certain demography of people that is more likely to share material online than others. Audiences that include people looking to lose weight, bodybuilders, technologically astute people, and serial shoppers are all examples of audiences that will willingly help spread the word about you and your blog. This is provided the content is relevant and useful.

Guest blog

Once you have found a niche, look for other authoritative sites and blogs within that niche and guest post on them. This involves writing articles, following forum threads and interacting with the site administrator and the audience. Once you have gained their trust and your opinion is valued, you can simply request the site administrator to let you link back to your blog. This way, you will gain their audience and hopefully the people they recommend.

Appeal to the vertical markets

You have to make your blog an authority with relevant content as well as offering solutions to the society at large. This means FAQ pages and several ‘How To’ articles. Feature different industry trends with credible and verifiable statistics. Once this is done, your blog will be regarded as a valuable resource and this will keep people coming back.

Participate in forums and discussions

These are platforms where likeminded people go to hold meaningful discussions. Once you have found your niche, find all the highly-trafficked and relevant forums and actively participate. Give relevant advice and links to actionable and useful information. As part of this advice, you can send them over to your blog. Remember, these are serious people and spamming will NOT be tolerated.

Include your blog in everything about you

This means that you should always mention your blog whenever and wherever your name appears. In your bio, your online resume, your other websites, your email signature, your internet profile, your social media accounts…anything that features you should also feature your blog.

Utilize bookmarking sites

Making use of social bookmarking sites can be a very resourceful way of gaining backlinks. These are ways through which you can widely advertise your blog without paying for it. You can always opt for paid advertising.

Make your content SEO friendly

When it comes to blogging, the number one rule is quality content. In your struggle to churn out high-quality content, make sure that it is SEO friendly. As mentioned earlier, only the various search engines like Google have more traffic than social media sites. This means that the majority of organic traffic can be found in search engine page results. Properly optimizing your blog content gives you an added advantage of getting this organic traffic.

Use web analytics

This is similar to carrying out a survey. Analytics gives you a break down on where most of your traffic comes from, which pages and content they spend more time and what they actually think of your blog. Paying attention to these statistics and tweaking your blog in accordance with the results will go a long way in improving your performance. It is a way of giving the client what he/she wants.

Call to action

Sometimes you just have to be blunt and tell your readers what you want them to do. In every article or comment you make, find a way to include actionable and relevant information that can link back to your site. This way you can simply tell them to click over to your blog for further information. They know what they are getting and you are not being vague about asking them to switch over.

These are 9 Blog Promotion Tactics That Every Blogger Should Know. However, what you need to remember is this, for your blog to succeed, you need to be passionate about what you are writing. Without this passion, you will not be motivated to churn out high-quality content consistently, which is the core of every blog.

Digital Branding

How Web Push Notifications Provide An Edge to Ed-Tech Industry?  

Marketers from the education industry face huge challenges and immense setbacks while communicating with their target audience; hence, they are constantly on the lookout for a solution. Web push notifications, the latest marketing innovation is the answer to their problems!

Web push notifications, be it browser or app have been brilliant in reaching out to prospects in a timely manner alongside encouraging them to register or perform the desired course of action. With its customization and personalized features, it helps segment the user groups conveniently hence, it is one such channel that can help marketers of the online education industry. Let’s have a look at how!

Meanwhile, you can refer the elearning browser push notifications guide to be well-acquainted about what exactly push notifications are, how to use them, browsers which support push notifications, their impact on different industries and others such.

Retargeting

This is one of the most significant ways which helps the ed-tech industry reach out to their customers. Upon successful completion of a particular course, users may not come to your website. So, it is the right time for you to target them with push notifications about other highly demanded courses they would like to take up. Make them realize the true potential of the course and how it can help them enhance their skills, which in turn, gives with an edge over others in their domain.

Content Marketing

Polish your audience’s knowledge by regularly delivering interesting facts and information like key strategies, difficult problems, interviews with industry experts and other such relevant details about your courses. Moreover, you must encourage them to visit your website and also take up a quiz or a mock test.

Course Updates

Reach and re-engage online learners by providing them valuable course information and its related updates. Make sure to keep them informed regarding course timings, concepts in brief, and other such information. All of this information is imparted to users in no time through web push notifications.

Discount offers

Sending across discount offers’ information as a part of push notifications is one of the preferred ways to attract the audience’s attention as these prove to be a win-win situation. Offers such as ‘sign up for a free course’, ‘get a free trial today’ and the like, grab numerous eyeballs and the audience is tempted to click on the link, thereby maximizing profits.

Cross-sell and Upsell

With cross-sell, the idea is to sell more by leveraging less effort. So, while you promote your new course to your prospects, try and sell a guide along with it. Because clearly, a person who is interested to take up a new course would also want some guidance to refer to, increasing the chances of a transaction. This not only increases the chances of larger revenue but also improves customer satisfaction which is, in fact, higher when users receive these kinds of notifications.  

On the other hand with upselling, as soon as you see that a user is almost done with a course, you need to make sure that you don’t lose them. So, provide them with information about the advanced level of that course or something that is related to it. Moreover, you can offer to give them a one on one interaction with one of the lecturers to clear their doubts and so on.

Web push notifications are being used by various tech companies as a part of upscaling their marketing efforts which helps them generate more leads and increase user engagement. Now that we’ve mentioned how the education industry can reap the benefits via leveraging this latest tool which reaches users in no time, marketers must not wait to put it in use to replicate the tech giants’ results.