Results for: content marketing

4 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Should Be Prioritized

Steven on December 28, 2018

Social media is a valuable tool that should be taken advantage of by businesses. Social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube have provided a platform for thousands of individuals to promote their products and services. Learning how to market your goods and services through social media is a necessary skill. Entrepreneurs are not the only ones who can benefit from using social media. If you’re aiming to start a career in digital marketing, you have to use high-impact resume templates from ResumeSeed to get noticed by employers and have social media marketing skills to help in the growth of the company. Here are a few reasons why you ought to prioritize social media marketing when advertising your brand:

1. You Can Promote Your Web or Mobile App

Social media is one of the largest platforms where different types of consumers are present. You can use this extensive network to promote your web or mobile app and reach beyond your target audience. This is especially helpful if you’re on the website design prototyping phase of your business since it’s easier to conduct a market survey to gauge whether the web layout you’re working on is attracting the right people. Excellent user experience on your website can improve the SEO for your domain. Although social networking sites do not have a direct significant impact on search engine ranking indexes, these are the ways that social media can benefit SEO:

More organic followers – Aside from showing up in unpaid searches, you can gain organic traffic through advertising on social media. Endorse your links on your official profiles and create a consistent online presence. Don’t limit yourself to people who already know your brand. Use sponsored posts to reach more people who have the potential to become paying customers.
Better branding – Providing valuable and compelling content on your social media accounts can help boost the trust that consumers have on your brand. This can facilitate your rise in search engine rankings as people will click on your website if you’re considered an authority in your industry.

2. You Can Enhance Customer Loyalty

Engaging with customers on social media increases their loyalty. By listening to their concerns or thanking them for their support, you show that they’re vital assets to your company. Plus, you can create exclusive discounts and promos for your subscribers through the different channels that you have. Having conversations with your customers also humanizes your brand. Here are other helpful things that you can do:

Showcasing your unique voice and personality through posts – Your content can show the distinctive character of your brand.
Highlighting the contributions of your employees – You can show customers that real humans are working behind the scenes to provide them with quality products and services.
Working with key influencers on various social media networks – Connect more with your target audience by partnering with the people they follow.
Signing your posts with the initials of the one publishing it – If you have more than one person handling your social media channels, letting your followers know who’s tweeting and posting can help them see your brand as authentic.
Acknowledging issues and errors – Sincerely apologize for any mistake that your company has made. When you admit an oversight, you let people sympathize with you.

You Can Get Insight on What Your Customers Want

People are very vocal on social media. Use this to your advantage by analyzing and studying the trends on what your customers are watching and liking. You gain priceless insight into what content works for them. Moreover, you can also check their reviews and comments to see what aspects of the business you can improve on.

You Can Acquire Targeted Traffic

Social media provides you with targeted traffic. This means that the people who follow you on your various profiles are already interested in what you’re selling. They may just need a little convincing to add your products to their cart, but they’re hovering on the brink of clicking that button when they subscribed to you.

Conclusion

Social media offers several benefits to startups and established brands. Publishing content regularly can help put you at the forefront of peoples’ minds. Stay steps ahead of your competitors by developing a steady online presence so that it’s your brand that they remember, not your rival’s. Use social media marketing as a complement to your other marketing strategies.

Local Branding

How to Turn Your PR Disaster into a Marketing Opportunity

Steven on December 22, 2018

There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?

Wrong. On so many levels – more than 3 billion, to be more precise, because that’s how many people are using social media and can witness your public humiliation.

A PR disaster on social media spreads like wildfire, and you can expect a fierce backlash if you step on somebody’s toes. What’s even worse, you can permanently damage your business reputation.

A single mistake could wipe out years of hard work. Like the one involving American Apparel and the company’s infamous Tumblr post containing a picture of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The occasion was the Fourth of July, and their social media manager clearly mistook the Challenger explosion for fireworks. Despite issuing an apology on Twitter, the company stirred much controversy for its insensitive faux pas.

No matter how careful you are, such things happen even to the best of us, so here are a couple of tips on how to save your face and turn a PR blunder into a marketing opportunity.

Own it

The worst thing you can do is to try and get away with your mistake by denying it or blaming it on somebody else (just like American Apparel blamed their “young, international employee” who was unaware of the Challenger disaster and its significance in the history). This will most definitely cause a landslide which will bury you even deeper. Take a cue from Apple and their brilliant handling of a PR issue over offering a one-month free trial of its streaming services for which they didn’t intend to pay the artists whose music would be played during that period. Taylor Swift stood up against this practice and called her fellow musicians to do the same and boycott Apple Music. It took a simple “Apple Music will pay artist for streaming, even during customer’s free trial period [sic]” tweet posted by Eddy Cue, the company’s SVP of Internet Software and Services. The aftermath? Taylor Swift starred in an Apple commercial soon after this whole mess was sorted out. Some skeptics believe that the whole thing was staged, but in any case, it was an amazing example of how to deal with PR disasters.

Timing is everything

Addressing the issue in a timely manner is crucial for overcoming the crisis, and you can’t do that if you don’t know exactly when, where, and how the problem appeared. This means that you have to monitor your social media channels very closely and constantly. The best way to do this is to set keyword alerts which will notify you in case that there are conversations with a negative context. Make sure to include different negative keywords which are used in negative comments. Check your hashtags too, because people often use them when they want to call brands out publicly. This is particularly important when it comes to Twitter because this social media channel with 326 million users globally is known to be fast-paced. If you don’t react right away, people will think that you don’t care. Airbnb was heavily criticized when it came to light that there were cases of racial profiling and discrimination on the platform, as many African-American travelers experienced discrimination. The company’s co-founder Brian Chesky reacted proactively and sent an email in which he admitted that they were slow to notice and address this issue, as well as that the management would take action to put an end to discrimination on the platform.

Leverage negative feedback

Negative feedback isn’t a bad thing. Quite the opposite, it actually helps brands realize what they need to fix and improve, thus indirectly reducing customer churn. Many brands make a big mistake by ignoring bad reviews and comments, which only additionally enrages their customers. Instead of that, make sure to respond to every question and criticism. But you have to very careful and formulate your responses properly, especially if a number of customers have the same complaint. Such a situation can easily get out of hand and create a snowball effect. It’s a good idea to consult a reliable digital marketing agency which will help you deal with it like a pro and prevent a major reputation risk. After a recall of 1.6 million vehicles back in 2014, GM didn’t leave anything to chance. The company used Twitter and Facebook to publicly and individually address every single complaint and offered possible solutions.

A friend in need

Sometimes the situation gets critical and you need to ask your biggest clients, partners, employees, and influencers for support. Of course, when something that can damage your reputation occurs, people who are involved with your business have to know everything about it, so make sure not to hold anything back. One of the most important things is to communicate clearly with your stakeholders, tell them your side of the story, and ask them whether they’re ready to stand by you. If you’ve built loyalty with them, the answer will probably be yes. Honesty and consistency are essential for rebuilding the trust and showing that you will go to great lengths to do everything right. You have another card up your sleeve – your social media following. Maybe you can ask them for their opinion as to what you should do to make up for your mistake. And since sharing is caring, offer a generous discount to compensate your customers. Needless to say, this is excellent PR as many of them will be happy to spread the word about your nice gesture.

Don’t dwell on it

After you’ve done everything to prevent and fix your PR faux pas, the best thing to do is to let bygones be bygones and move on. McDonald’s has had a couple of notable social media blunders, and one of the most recent is their Black Friday tweet from 2017 or should we say the lack of thereof. Namely, the company tweeted “Black Friday – Need copy and link”, which didn’t go unnoticed. But, their clever social media manager used this opportunity to masterfully promote one of their products by following up with “When you tweet before your first cup of McCafé… Nothing comes before coffee.”

As you can see, it’s possible to survive a PR disaster and leave without a couple of scars only, but you have to know the drill.

Top Tips For Handling A PR Crisis

It’s a worst-case scenario that can befall even the most prestigious organization: a public relations crisis. From a string of bad reviews to a serious financial scandal, a negative incident can have a powerful impact on a company’s reputation — no matter how small or diplomatic it is. That’s why it’s critical for every business to have a reaction plan in place. Here are some do’s and don’ts when navigating a PR crisis.

In today’s digital age, news can go viral almost instantly. The implementation of a swift and effective crisis management plan is essential. An organization should address the issue head-on, whether it’s with an apology, an explanation or an announcement. If an immediate, informative response is not possible, the business should at least communicate that it’s looking into the issue and give a reason as to why there will be a delay. Above all else, it’s important to take responsibility for what happened.

Before sending representatives to address the media, make sure they fully understand the response strategy and are given enough information to answer questions. If time allows, set up a practice session to ensure they are prepared. Emphasize that the company’s message must be consistent across multiple channels.

Refrain from saying “no comment,” as these are two of the most damaging words in PR. Shutting down communication leaves a gap for others to fill, and what they say may be worse than the truth. If an organization is waiting for more information, it should let the public know that it is working on a response or a reaction to the situation.

For more tips on how to handle a PR crisis, see the accompanying infographic.

News Exposure provides a variety of media monitoring services, including TV broadcast monitoring.

Digital Branding

How to Incorporate the Functionality of Instagram Questions in your Marketing Strategy?

Steven on December 17, 2018

Have you ever wondered how Instagram questions serve you for your marketing strategy? You are not the only one. Because of this, we have created this article to give you a general guide on how to use this new tool and increase the visibility of your brand in front of the almost 105 million users that Instagram has today.

1. Frequently Asked Questions about what you want

Frequently Asked Questions are essential when helping our brand’s customers and users. You can use the Instagram questions to offer direct contact with your followers, helping them with the questions they have about your products or services. You can choose a day or a few hours during the week to open this section with a post and then answer the questions you want.

On the other hand, if you are scared that there are malicious comments or too strong, the questions have two advantages for you. First, the question will be hidden if you decide not to publish the answer; and second, the question is not anonymous and you can manage the request privately. This is one of the best options that you buy real Instagram followers for their stories they have. Instagram stories are the latest trending features on Instagram. There is a scroll option and even you can skip your desired photo or video. Instagram also introduced once new feature IGTV for the people who want the longer videos than 1 minute.

2. Test field for something new

Are you about to launch new products or services and do not know if they will work? Then hurry up and ask on Instagram. Remember that marketing is also reading the market, and this tool allows you to know opinions directly with customers.

Do not be afraid to ask what you want, people are sincere in social networks and you can quickly know if your idea can work in the future.

3. Instagram questions as expectation

Every day we have ideas to tell and we want to give a small expectation to achieve impact by revealing the new thing we have. So, if we combine the question with images about the new thing that we are going to reveal, we can create an expectation about anything.

For example: If there is a contest, you can show part of the prize and ask something about the mechanics, like Do you want to win this…? or What do you think will be the prize for our contest? Also, you can use it for new products, relocation of venues, or whatever you decide.

4. Ask about the products you want to promote

At times our marketing strategies are focused on the promotion of specific products and services. That’s why IG followers questions allow us to put in the minds of our followers what we want. You can use this tool to ask about the models or types of preferred products within the category that you must promote and, even, to inquire about what kind of promotions or discounts your customers expect.

Digital Branding

Google AI Beats Turing Test: Should Content Writers Be Concerned?

Steven on December 17, 2018

Photo credits: https://pixabay.com/en/google-search-engine-browser-search-76517/

Technology is a gift. The ability to create, invent, and innovate has always been humanity’s greatest advantage, yet it has also been our greatest curse. We are incredibly capable of creating things that are as wondrous as they are terrible. The Internet, the atom bomb, cars, and now, artificial intelligence.

And why is artificial intelligence so scary?

Well, first off, scary may be a bit of an exaggeration. Its disadvantages,however, are real in the fact that artificial intelligence has the capacity to replace its human counterparts, whether it’s at work or in daily activities such as driving. The fear may stem from the fact that AI may not only be just as good as its human counterpart, but better.

So, what exactly is the Turing Test, and why is it relevant to know that an AI actually beat it?

The Turing Test is the most recognizable method of measuring the ability of artificial intelligence to mimic, or even emulate human intelligence. This test was designed by English computer scientist and mathematician, Alan Mathison Turing in 1950 in an attempt to measure a machine’s ability to showcase intelligence. The premise of the Turing Test was that only a human can truly be a judge of whether or not a machine is able to mimic human intelligence.

So, in the Turing Test, there are three parties involved:

The Evaluator (Control Variable)
The Computer (Test Variable)
The Human (Control Variable)

The test is simple. All three participants would be separated from each other. The evaluator will then interact with the human and the computer through a text-only medium. The evaluator then has to correctly discern between the computer and the human, and to identify which is which.

Enter Google Duplex. This is a new Google Assistant feature that is capable of making automated calls on your behalf. It even comes with a human-sounding voice. What sets Google Duplex apart as an AI is that it’s able to recognize fast speech, complex sentences, and long remarks.

This uncanny ability to sound human and to carry conversations can be seen in the technology’s blog where several recordings of phone conversations between the AI and human callers can be found. The results are as astounding as they are borderline worrisome.

However, Google itself makes it clear that the objective of Duplex is not to mimic humans. Rather, it’s meant to simply respond to a constrained scenario in which probable responses are easy to predict. While Google Duplex is, without a doubt, capable of making reservations on your behalf, you definitely won’t be able to make it call your mom in your place.

To ease your minds further, the answer is that AI simply isn’t advanced enough to completely replace humans (currently). This fact is further compounded when you take it in the context of professions that require a great deal of creativity.

It’s simple, really. In order to be able to attract human beings, you need to be able to be relatable to them. And well, machines simply cannot do that. So, tasks like content creation will definitely require the human touch at the helm. Therefore, gaining publicity through guest blogging is still going to be a relevant method of generating traffic and building relationships with partners. It’s simple marketing and psychology, after all. How can you attract someone who doesn’t understand you?

Digital Branding Legal Branding

Social Media Marketing Advice To Ease Your Mental Health

Steven on November 27, 2018

Using social media in order to market your business may sound like a good idea, but sometimes, doing so can sap away your energy and lead to anxiety. If you find yourself anxious with a sense of dread before logging in, here are some of the ways that you can alleviate these feelings:

1. Take A Break

Though some online sources will have you believe that if you step away from your social media page your business will die, it’s simply not true! Only come back to social media marketing when you feel at ease doing so and can give it to you all. Sometimes, that feeling never comes, and that’s okay, too! There are other avenues in order to reach out to potential and existing clients. In the meantime, allow yourself to recharge by focusing on the more relaxing creative aspects of your business.

The fear of losing clients is real, but do keep in mind that the people who like you will follow you wherever you go. The people that were disinterested or casual dealing with your business were simply never serious in the first place!

2. Don’t Get Overwhelmed

One of the reasons that business owners dread the thought of posting online is simply because they have too many social media pages to create content for according to Chicago based psychologist Clarity Chi. However, one way to circumvent this problem is to become more selective and focus on one or two social media pages that you feel confident working with. For example, some business owners really like how concise Twitter is and it doesn’t need you to post photographs with every Tweet. You can let go of the pressures associated with running online social media accounts by channeling your energy into one or two pages. Most importantly, you can use this time to put more effort into building personal connections with clients.

3. Post Less With Quality Posts

Most business owners make the mistake of choosing to post several times a day in order to get better search engine rankings. Unfortunately, what everyone ignores is that making many posts in one day really just burns you out and in turn, your content quality will start to suffer. Only post when you have something informative to share with clients that they will find helpful.

Does your content matter? Take a moment to consider what you’re about to post, how it can help others, and whether it makes sense to let it go to the public domain. This type of self-reflection gives your content a much-needed boost. Build a network of solid friends equaling a few hundred versus a network of many friends. Numbers do cause undue stress and also make it hard to curate content in your feed that won’t cause depression.

4. Step Back For Creativity

Did you ever notice that the more time you spend online, the more doubtful and competitive you become? When searching through hundreds of feeds and pages a day, it’s only natural to feel like you’re not good enough compared to other people. Take a few days off and go back to the basics of your business. What is it that you love to do? Whether it’s web design or making pottery, get creative and lay the foundation for a better “you”!

5. Be True To Yourself

Authenticity is a word that we often hear, but it isn’t always applied to social media. When you post information online, you have to remember to be as honest as you reasonably can be. You create a persona when you post snippets of your life online, and you want people to connect with you, not just an entity. What causes the most anxiety when it comes to social media is putting up a fake front and acting differently from how you would normally act.

You can combat anxiety by deciding to be true to yourself as well as your brand while promoting your own personal values. Don’t forget that the pressure you put on yourself is the pressure that’s often reflected in your own social media posts.

Former CEO and co-founder of YouTube, Chad Hurley, described the feeling of pressure most people associate with social media the best. He explained that sometimes, you’re most effective when you ignore what others are doing. Many people copy the latest trends and jump on bandwagons without setting their own paths to success. The point is that you don’t need to mimic others when there are so many opportunities out there for you to individually shine.

Not everyone responds to pressure in the same way, but it’s clear that social media is not a one-size-fits-most solution to business marketing. Sometimes, we need to step back to really understand the role that social media plays in our business strategy development. Instead of choosing to follow the crowds, you need to evaluate how you want to proceed with your company’s marketing.

Digital Branding

Video Marketing Tips to Get You Ready for 2019

Steven on November 26, 2018

Video marketing and video content, in general, will become more prominent in 2019. More and more marketers are using video content to convey key messages for one simple reason: the audience responds better to videos.

The video marketing landscape is about to get more competitive as we get closer to 2019, so it is time to bring your best game and craft a campaign that separates you from your competitors. These next tips and tricks will help you get ready for 2019.

Photo credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/two-person-watching-video-on-laptop-1321732/

Tell a Story

I cannot stress enough how important it is to tell a compelling story when producing video content for marketing purposes. While promotional videos worked really well a few years ago, the way forward is capturing the stories around your products and delivering those stories in a positive and engaging way.

Storytelling should be a big part of your video marketing campaign. The best agencies like Spiel Creative now focus not just on the short-term, in-the-moment stories, but also on the bigger picture; they use long-term brand stories to convey their message to the audience. You should too.

Make Demos Interesting

Just because you need to start telling stories, it doesn’t mean you should drop making product videos altogether. There are still ways to utilize product videos and product-related tutorials to engage the audience. That said, you need to make demo videos and other relevant content more interesting.

One of the ways you can do that is by employing 360-video technology. Rather than displaying the product in a more conventional way, you can add a 360-degree view of the product in video format. You can then use the content on your product page and other outlets.

Go with Explainers

Animated explainer videos, as well as whiteboard videos, are also going to be more popular in 2019. They are as effective as they were this year, but with a few added tweaks you can now use to boost the level of effectiveness further.

For example, you can make an explainer video that also works when the audience is only listening to the audio rather than actively watching the video. This is a content consumption pattern that it is certainly a trend you want to follow.

Think Mobile

Don’t forget that the majority of your viewers use mobile devices, which means you need to start tailoring your content for mobile audiences first. Avoid text and captions that are too small, elements that will not work on smaller screens, and videos that will not work without sound.

The latter is another data-driven strategy based on viewers’ content consumption pattern. We see people staring at their screens without wearing headsets, tuning in to videos with clear captions and engaging content that they really enjoy.

Rely on Data

Analytics and data-driven decision making are also becoming more prominent in 2019. The decisions you make regarding your video marketing campaign and the content you put out must take the available insights into consideration whenever possible; by “whenever possible,” I mean most of the time.

Data and other supporting information give you the reasons behind usage patterns and other insights you gather from the market. A good video marketing campaign is one that gets evaluated and refined regularly. The more you rely on data, the more you will understand your users and how to best cater to their content needs.

(Always) Deliver Value

While storytelling is the core of many successful video marketing campaigns in the future, delivering value remains one of the most important objectives to achieve. You cannot expect viewers to continue watching your videos when they don’t deliver value.

At the very least, you must deliver relevant information about your products and services. Adding information about how to benefit more from the products and services you have is also a good way to add value to your videos.

Commit!

Consistency is another important element if you want to have a successful video marketing campaign. You cannot build a larger and stronger audience base when you only upload one video every two months.

You need to invest in making more content while maintaining – if not improving – your production quality at the same time. Ideally, you want to release a new video every week to keep users excited and wanting for more. That takes a lot of commitment.

Involve the Customers

Telling stories about your products and services doesn’t always mean telling YOUR SIDE of the story. You can also explore the products’ stories from the customers’ standpoint. In fact, you should. Testimonials and user stories are some of the most engaging video content to produce right now, and it will continue to be impactful in 2019.

Always find ways to connect with your real customers and the audience in general. You can feature their stories to build even stronger relationships with the viewers. Besides, you can never go wrong with investing in relationships and maintaining genuine connections with your audience.

Use Video in Other Activities

Video marketing – just like other digital marketing instruments – cannot stand on its own. However, there so many ways to use video content to help the rest of your digital marketing efforts. You can, for instance, use videos to boost conversion rates with a stronger and more compelling call to action.

There is no better time to start crafting and fine-tuning your video marketing campaign for 2019 than right now. We are still a few weeks away from the New Year, but getting a head start is never a bad idea.

Digital Branding

How to Generate More Sales with Digital Marketing Campaigns

Steven on November 22, 2018

In 2017, advertisers spent 209 billion USD on digital ads worldwide compared to only 178 billion USD for their more traditional TV counterparts. The statistics show that the future of marketing is increasingly headed towards the digital space, as more and more businesses compete, promote and sell their products and services online.

You may have always wanted to use digital marketing to do the same for your business, but you’ll need to initiate a series of actions known as campaigns to convert a potential customer into a buyer. But how can you generate more sales of your products or services with digital marketing campaigns? Here are some of the ways:

Build a website for your business.

Businesses that originated prior to the Internet’s existence had to have a brick and mortar location so that people knew they were around. However, in recent years, it’s easier to start a business of your own even without the initial need for a physical address. All you need to do is to establish your presence on the Internet through the creation of a website where you can sell whatever products or services that you want your target customers to avail from you.

It’s entirely up to you if you wish to build a website on your own, if you have enough coding and web design skills under your sleeve, or outsource it to a web development agency instead. No matter the current size of your business, you shouldn’t skimp on building an updated website unless you want to earn a bad reputation for being out of touch with the times. Remember, the website is the face of the company.

Optimise your business website for search engines’ top ten results.

Even if you already have a business website built, don’t expect it to generate a decent amount of visitor traffic and eventually sales of whatever products or services you offer on its own. To organically increase the number of potential customers visiting your business website, you should make some adjustments to it such that it would consistently appear in the first page of results of every search engine with the use of search engine optimization (SEO) practices.

A few of those adjustments you can make right off the bat include naturally incorporating keywords throughout your website content that your target customers would most likely type, putting descriptive and relevant alt text in all of your site’s images, and ensuring that every webpage of your business website has an easily readable URL.

After all, you wouldn’t want your business website to die a silent death after it gets listed anywhere other than search results page one.

Make your business website mobile-friendly.

In 2018, mobile users make up a majority of Internet users. It only follows that you should make your business website mobile-friendly so that you can attract more customers who might chance upon it while casually browsing on their preferred handheld device. To optimise your business website for mobile, you should use responsive design wherein its layout as well as all images in it would adjust themselves to scale no matter the size of a device’s screen. All buttons in your business website’s mobile-friendly version should also be large enough to prevent anyone accessing it from tapping on the wrong button or link.

Consider setting up a blog for your business as well.

Even if you’ve already established a website for your business, your target customers would want to seek a more genuine connection with you. They want to feel that they’re more than just mere digits to your business’s sales figures. That’s why aside from putting up a website, you should also consider creating a blog for your business as well where you can connect to your target customers and sell you’re your products or services without sounding too cold and distant. You can incorporate it as part of your business website just like how most others do it – though you can also try making a standalone business blog as well if your budget permits you to do so.

Just make sure to craft content for your business blog that’s uniquely yours, interesting, relevant, informative, and of added value to your target customers all at the same time. For best results, combine long-form content that anyone can easily finish in less than five to ten minutes, the occasional infographic, and video posts in your business blog.

Use social media to your advantage.

Assuming you’ve already built a website and blog for your business, you might find their visitor traffic to be quite lacklustre. You can remedy that by tapping into the vast pool of potential customers known as social media.

You’ll very rarely meet anyone interested to avail of a product or service who still doesn’t have any social media account nowadays that it’s only logical for you to set up at least one for your business as well. However, you should identify which social media platform a majority of your potential customers often use. If most of your target market is on Facebook, for example, it won’t make any sense at all to sell your products or services via Twitter.

Conclusion

While traditional marketing has yet to go completely extinct, its digital counterpart threatens to displace the decades-long monopoly it once had, especially as more and more people learn about the products and services being sold by different businesses online. That’s why as someone who has a business of your own, you should allocate a good portion of your budget on doing the above-listed digital marketing campaigns to generate more sales of the products or services that you offer. But in case you find it difficult to implement them yourself, you can consider hiring a digital marketing agency instead – though you should ensure that they use a large file transfer service whenever they send their work back and forth with you.

Digital Branding

Guest Post and SEO Digital Marketing Training: Your Course Review Benefits

Steven on November 15, 2018

Guest posting and SEO (search engine optimization) digital marketing have become relatively common nowadays in the blogosphere. In our world today, both of these have become crucial in driving traffic to your website and business. Guest posting and SEO digital marketing are excellent strategies to build traffic, establish your brand, and boost search engine rankings.

Assuming you’re already aware of guest posting and SEO digital marketing as online strategies, are you also informed of their benefits? Both of these methods are actually useful for any business in all industries. If done correctly, guest posting and SEO digital marketing can lead to unique hits or traffic to your website or blog allowing you to reach more potential customers. If you’re into e-commerce, blogging business, or just any activity that requires marketing on the internet, you may want to consider training in guest posting and SEO digital marketing. In this article, benefits regarding a guest post and SEO digital marketing training course will be discussed.

1. Effective Guest Posting and SEO Digital Marketing

By joining this type of training course, you’ll be able to make use of more effective guest posting. Guest posting is as simple as having someone else write material on your site — or vice versa. Guest posting works both ways for the site owner and writer. Site owners receive more content to publish, while writers get to feature their content to a new audience. Doing guest posts correctly, you’ll be able to reap the benefits by having more views and traffic.

For SEO Digital Marketing, a training course will guide you on which relevant keywords to choose by having a clear website and quality content. Main goals will be:

A user-friendly website
Easy navigation
SEO keywords
Optimized tags and title tags

This course will also teach you to pay attention to details like keyword themes and relevant links to build more web traffic.

2. Guest Posting and SEO Digital Marketing Strategy

Next question you’re probably asking yourself is how posting can earn you traffic. A training course will teach you which ways your guest posting can influence traffic. These include:

Direct referrals
Social traffic
Organic traffic
Name recognition
+ more

These are key strategies that can make your website reach its optimal level.

As for SEO, this makes your website easy to find, navigate and categorize. By helping out customers easily browse through your site, you drive more people to your business and online platforms. Factors that come into play are the selection of right keywords, behavioral marketing, mobile advertisements, banner advertisements, social media marketing, and others. This course will train you on how to achieve just that and more.

3. Increased Rankings

Guest posts earn backlinks that can help you rank higher on Google, which in turn, creates more traffic to your website. SEO will also help you gain higher website ranks in the SERP (search engine result page) by performing well on social media marketing and digital marketing. The perfect guest post and SEO digital marketing training course will help you position yourself as a well-respected blogger as well. The course will teach you how to create the buzz that gets other people curious to look at what your site has to offer.

Digital marketing is a never-ending process, and you must be equipped enough to handle the ever-changing behavior and trends of your target audience — all of which will be taught in the training course. Numerous factors that will affect your site’s popularity and the time viewers spend on your page will be discussed in the training. Be the top ranking webmarketing123.com website by signing up for training today.

SEO and guest post best practices are constantly evolving — and a training course is the best way to stay on the top of the game. Has this article given you a more unobstructed view of the benefits of SEO digital marketing and guest posting? Digital marketing can be challenging and entail a great deal of work, but once you learn the ropes, developing strategies will be a walk in the park. You’ll have a well thought out optimization plan and traffic acquisition strategy once you take a training course if you’re up for it.

Digital Branding

How to Create a Successful E-commerce Marketing Funnel via Email

Steven on November 9, 2018

It’s frustrating for e-commerce marketers like you to blast emails regularly and still get low to zero conversions. No matter how much effort you exert, it doesn’t seem to work. What’s wrong?

Let’s look at the numbers first. A Statista report showed that e-commerce made up to $2.3 trillion in sales and is predicted to hit $4.5 trillion in 2021. It also represents almost 10% of U.S. retail sales and is expected to grow by nearly 15% annually. E-commerce also influences up to 56% of in-store purchases.

It should go without saying that e-commerce is taking the Internet by storm. This also means that the competition is becoming stiff, and a sound strategy is a must. Sending out generic emails to your contacts doesn’t work anymore. First, you must understand where your customers are coming. From here, you can use an e-commerce marketing funnel to help you map out your email strategies in a way that you’re targeting the right customers with the right message and at the right time.

https://www.pexels.com/photo/laptop-technology-ipad-tablet-35550/

What Is an E-commerce Marketing Funnel and Why Is It Important?

A marketing funnel illustrates the journey customers go through as they interact with your business, from the first time they learn about your brand to the exact moment they become paying customers. The different stages of the customer journey distinguish the problems customers are trying to solve at that point in time. By adopting this model, you can craft targeted email marketing strategies for your e-commerce business to keep customers engaged and moving in their journey until they take your desired action.

Read on to know how each stage of the customer journey differs and how you can use your email marketing automation software to create a successful e-commerce marketing funnel.

Top Funnel: The Awareness Stage

It begins with the top funnel where potential customers become aware of your e-commerce business and how you’re relevant to their problems. It’s your first contact. At this point, the goal is not to sell your products or promote your business but to ‘attract’ them with relevant information. Here, you are identifying potential customers who have problems you can address. Potential customers, on the other hand, become aware of their needs by showing interest in your e-commerce business.

To meet this objective, use these email marketing strategies for your top funnel:

Capture contact information, including email address, through sign-up forms on your website.
Offer free content such as guides, cheat sheet, and checklists which potential customers can download in exchange for their email address.
Invite your website visitors to subscribe to your newsletters, weekly updates or daily deals.

Once you have their contact information saved in your email marketing automation software, it’s time to educate them and tell more about your e-commerce business.

Create a welcome series where you can introduce your e-commerce business and your service, but try not to sell hard.
Educate them with helpful blog posts to make them realize the need for your products. It can be tips, hacks or guides. Explore your options.
Familiarize them with your brand story as well as your mission and vision. Make them know that you can offer solutions to their pain points.

Middle Funnel: The Consideration Stage

At this point, potential customers are already aware of their problem and are looking for ways on how to solve it. In short, they are considering their options, and you want to be on top of their list without being too pushy. This is where you take your nurturing game a notch higher.

Do this with the following strategies:

Teach them tips or ways they can solve their problem.
Use their email and website activities to give proper recommendations.
Show them testimonials from happy customers to solidify your credibility further.
Provide comparison guides to highlight your best features.

Bottom Funnel: The Decision Stage

Now that it’s clear to potential customers that a purchase has to be done, they move to the decision stage. What they need here is a more compelling reason to make a purchase. So it’s time to put your best foot forward and give them some push to finally take action and convert into paying customers.

Implement these strategies to motivate them to click on your Buy Now button:

Give special discounts on their desired item to make them feel that they are getting more value from their money.
Offer freebies or free shipping to entice them.
Use a countdown timer to give a sense of urgency on your expiring promo.
Provide more detailed product descriptions highlighting the specs so they can appreciate the fact that they are getting more.
Write and design a compelling CTA and make sure that the placement in your email is easily noticeable so they won’t miss it.
Use different psychological triggers such as loss aversion, reciprocity, and authority.

Understanding the marketing funnel and knowing how to apply it to your e-commerce business can help you come up with targeted strategies. Again, customers are at different stages of the buyer journey, so use your email marketing to design an efficient e-commerce marketing funnel. Many advanced email marketing automation software today are built with features you can use to set up workflows and strategies for each funnel stage. Use them wisely!

Kimberly Maceda

Kimberly Maceda is a Content Writer for ActiveTrail. She writes for some top online marketing sites and blogging advice on email marketing and marketing automation. ActiveTrail is a leading provider of professional-grade email marketing and automation software for growing businesses.

Local Branding

4 Branding and Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs In 2018

Steven on September 21, 2018

Photo credits: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-and-black-barcode-1243362/

Starting a new business can be very overwhelming sometimes. Entrepreneurship is definitely not a piece of cake, but once everything falls right in the place, you will definitely enjoy the fruit out of it. There are two things that you need to be successful in life, hard work and dedication. There is no such thing that you cannot achieve, if you have enough interest, you are going to get whatever you set your eye on. Obviously, in the beginning, there are going to be some hurdles, somethings might not go as you have planned them to be. Sometimes you might have to change the direction of your work as well, but continuous work will definitely take you somewhere.

Here are some branding and marketing tips that will definitely help you in making progress.

1. Be different

No matter what your field is, try to produce unique content. Sometimes you are selling some ordinary product, which has been a common attraction already. But if your content is attractive, you will be able to form a market and attract more people to yourself. Even if it requires the following things that are not usually common. Find your own way of doing things and work on your own strategy. Remember, your main target is people, you have got to leave an impact on them, so your content should be influenceable. Especially, when you have got to post some content on your website, you should be able to define your statement in just one look. Make your site as presentable as possible.

2. Make use of social media

Social media is the biggest platform to get people under your influence. Just make one post, and thousands of people are going to see it. If your post is interesting enough, obviously you are going to get some shares, which can be very helpful. The best part about social media is that, once you make enough audience, half of your work is already done. People are going to see whatever you post and that way you can attract more people on daily biases. If you are having a problem with getting your stuff noticed, you can also boost up your posts. First, you will have to through in some money, but later, when you will be able to get likes, your business will grow rapidly.

3. Do constant advertisement

One of the most important business tactics is to do constant advertisement. Yes, everyone tries it at first, but if your efforts are not noticed at first go, many of us give up. The key point is to no matter, if you are getting a response or not, keep on advertising. Every single platform that you see, avail the opportunity and keep posting. If you have a new offer coming up, advertise it as much as possible. Do countdowns, make posts every day. Remember one thing, as soon as you stop posting, people are going to forget about you. So, make sure your option comes up every time they are searching for any product.

4. Make business contacts

Being social can benefit you A LOT! Try to have good relationships with other businessmen and industrialist, so that they can pass some customers to you. Sometimes a little favor can help you in ways that you cannot think of. It works in both ways, sometimes you can help them out in difficult situations too. Having relations like this are big support, in case of any problem, you will have something to fall back on. Also, try to make no enemies, when you are working on such big level, obviously there are going to be some people who are going to create problems, try to ignore them, instead of creating any further problems.

This guest post is submitted by Qurban Shah from reviewsbite.com