Category: Digital Marketing
Our Guide to Marketing Your Business on Instagram
Instagram has grown at a remarkable pace over the last few years – a whopping 3,233% increase in five years from 30 million users in 2012 to hit the 1 billion user mark in 2017. No business can afford to turn its back on such a meteoric growth in reach.
Why Choose Instagram to Boost Your Marketing?
The vast scope of Instagram is just the tip of the iceberg. One of the more noticeable aspects of Instagram posts is the use of #hashtags – keywords that summarize what is being said in your post. This makes it easy for you to be found and to be recognizable.
Because it was created in 2010, Instagram truly is mobile-first. This means that you can be in the pocket of your prospects and customers – increasing your engagement with them through high-quality photos, local hashtags and even by uniting with other brands.
Instagram recently launched Instagram Shoppable Posts which allows users to tag and shop products directly from organic Instagram posts. Simply add tags to the products in your photos with links that include the product description, price and the ability to “shop now”, which will lead the user to your online store.
How to Set Up Instagram For Your Business
- Start by setting up a business Instagram account or converting a personal account to business.
- Decide on an appropriate social media marketing campaign, bearing the following in mind:
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- Who you are marketing to?
- What stage of the customer journey are you targeting? Is it the awareness, engagement, conversion or the customer?
- Why you are marketing?
- What are your goals?
- How will you measure marketing success?
- What is your timeframe?
- When you will be posting? (Keep in mind that a regular posting schedule is imperative.)
- Optimize your profile for the best results.
- Test and measure using Instagram Insights.
The Digital Marketing People
For more information on our social media marketing, digital marketing, online reputation management and social media marketing strategy solutions, contact us now.
What is Your Unique Marketing Point?
Often referred to simply as “UMP” – and often confused with USP – your unique marketing point is a phrase coined by Samantha Noble and refers to the “data and insights on visitors that come and interact with any of the platforms that belong to you”, which cannot be replicated by your competitors.
Where to Gather Insights
The platforms you use each have their own built-in tools to gather the data that you can convert into usable information to boost your marketing campaigns. Below we investigate a couple:
Google Analytics
Google is such a household name that it has become a verb! This makes their analysis tools particularly powerful. It does require commitment, though, as Google Analytics is known for its thoroughness, not its user-friendliness.
Top Tip:
Once you have added your Google Analytics code to every page template on your site, go to the “Audience” section, and from there “Demographics.” Here you will learn who visits your site – age and gender, types of content that they browse online and the types of products or services that your customer base are also in the market for.
AdWords
Hand-in-hand with Google Analytics is AdWords. Used to track campaign statistics or view specific data for ad groups, ads or keywords, AdWords breaks the data into finer sub-sections.
Top Tip:
To get the best indication of what is or is not working, import a Google Analytics view into AdWords and examine these data columns:
- Bounce Rate,
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- Pages/visit,
- Average visit duration, and
- % of new visits.
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In Their Own Words
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- Bing Ads Intelligence is a powerful keyword research tool that allows customers to build and expand on their keyword lists using the Excel interface. Customers can easily gauge the performance of relevant keywords and apply those insights to improve their keyword selection and campaign performance.
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- Facebook Audience Insights gives you aggregated information about two groups of people – people connected to your Page and people on Facebook – so you can create content that resonates and easily find more people like the ones in your current audience.
The Digital Marketing People
For more information on innovative solutions for your digital marketing, social media marketing, and content marketing, contact us now.
These Email Design Tips Are Key to Your Marketing Strategy
Email marketing is still the most effective way to reach your audience and convert them into paying customers. Sending regularly-scheduled emails to everyone on your list keeps you top of your fans’ minds and allows you to nurture strong relationships with your contacts.
How To Keep Subscribers Engaged
Hands up, if you have been tickled pink by a company and you, therefore, happily subscribed to their newsletter. However, fast-forward to a couple of months later, and your inbox is overflowing with newsletters you haven’t even opened, and your enthusiasm has waned considerably. As with all types of marketing, success is not guaranteed when it comes to email marketing. Spam traps, unsubscribes and ignored messages are just some of the stumbling blocks to the success of your campaign.
So, how do you keep your subscribers hooked and interested with your email newsletter design? Here are a hand full of tips:
Know Who the Message Is Aimed at
All the platforms available for automating your email marketing include the necessary tools to keep your business GDPR compliant, to keep your records accurate and up to date and to filter or segment your database according to your subscribers’ interests and needs.
Getting your email to the right contacts increases your conversions – and keeps your readers wanting more.
Keep it Short and Sweet
Ask anyone how they are, and ten-to-one they’ll reply “Busy!” Bear that in mind as you design your email and make it easy for your readers to scan the content so as to get your message across in minimal time.
Cut unnecessary noise and focus on only one message you want your readers to remember.
Share Your Personality
Simple formats are the easiest to read. But that doesn’t mean that you need to be boring. Add some personality to your emails to reflect you, your company and your message with originality.
Be Bossy
At each pause, make sure that it is crystal clear to your readers what your call to action is.
The Digital Marketing People
To find out more about how we can help you with email marketing, content marketing, marketing automation and more, contact us now.
Running an E-Commerce Business? These Are Your Most Important KPIs:
Whether you own or do marketing for an e-commerce business, you need to know which KPIs to track. These are some of the indicators that should be on your radar:
- Sales
The first indicator is pretty obvious – sales:
- Sales And Customer Growth
Sales and customer growth are always the most important indicators of health for a business. Every business tracks sales on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and/or quarterly basis. You also want to track your sales by promotions and channels so that you know which acquisition efforts are working, where they are working and when they are working. This will help you to spend your ad dollars more effectively.
- Average Sale
You also want to track your average sale on a customer’s first, second and third purchase. Knowing this will give you insights at how purchasing changes over time, such as whether it increases or decreases after the first sale, so that you can develop strategies to improve growth.
- Profit per Order
Profit per order is something else you want to track. It’s important to understand who your high-profit clients are and where they come from.
- Retention Rate
The next thing you need to track is the retention rate, with a ‘retained customer’ being described as one who has purchased from you three or more times. Your e-commerce business’ retention rate is important because it helps you understand how customers feel about your brand and whether they will become advocates or not.
Retained customers are your most profitable customers. A great example is from Zappos: 70% of the company’s sales come from retained customers, in other words – those who have made shopping at Zappos a habit.
Web design, SEO and content marketing are all tools that can help you to improve the KPIs of your e-commerce business. Contact the Digital Marketing People for more advice today.
What is Data-Driven Digital Marketing?
Data-driven marketing is the latest buzzword in the industry, and for good reason. It is really all about driving more relevant conversations with your audience and the customers in your organization.
It makes a huge difference when you are able to give the right message to the right person at the right time and place. While this may sound simple enough, it can be tough to get right. When you are having conversations across so many different channels, you will quickly realize that you have opportunities on mobile, social media, through your website as well as your call centre.
Customers are looking for an experience that ensures regardless of on which platform (where) they are interacting with you, you need to know everything about them. They expect you to know that they were just on your website and are now calling the customer help-desk about a specific problem.
Most of us have had some kind of disastrous encounter with a call centre, where you explain your problem to one person, only to get put through to the next person (where you have to explain the problem yet again). It’s bad enough when this happens on one channel, but when it happens across multiple channels, the effects can be harmful.
This is the type of problem that data-driven marketing promises to solve. With the proliferation of data, the Internet of Things and cloud computing, we have more information on customers than ever before. We are now at the tip where the opportunities of what we can do to create better customer experiences will explode.
Data-driven marketing, when combined with smart digital marketing strategies, can help to set you apart from your competitors. Contact the Digital Marketing People for more information about small business marketing today.
A Practical Guide to Cross-Channel Marketing
If you are creating content online and want to attract new business online, you need a cross-channel marketing strategy. This type of strategy will set out to ensure that as many potential clients as possible are exposed to your brand and messages online, regardless of where they spend their time.
Before you start to create social media profiles on every platform available, there are a few things you need to determine, such as:
Who Are You Marketing To?
You not only need to know exactly who your ideal clients are, but also what their needs and desires are. By knowing who your target audience is, you will be able to create content that appeals to them specifically.
Where Do They Spend Their Time Online?
You likely have a few ‘ideal customers’, with some of them reading white papers and the others waiting for more visual content on Instagram. Knowing where your audience spends their time will help you tailor your cross-channel marketing strategy for your brand.
What Challenges Do They Face?
Instead of writing about how great your product is, write search engine optimized blog posts that address the problems they have.
A visual representation of this information will help you identify the trigger points where you can engage with the right customer at the right time. If a person has downloaded your mobile app, then triggering a push notification if they haven’t opened the app yet is a good example of a cross-marketing trigger point that can be automated as part of your digital strategy.
Customers expect a seamless experience with brands. According to Oracle, close to 80% of consumers now use at least two communication channels before making a buying decision. In addition, 30% use three or more channels before making a buying decision.
Map out every possible scenario of consumer engagement with your brand to find new communication opportunities. If you need help with your small business marketing, SEO or social media marketing, contact the Digital Marketing People today.
A How-To Guide to Interactive Email and Email Automation
Interactive email and email automation are both highly effective email marketing tools. They are used for reaching out to your desired target audience, through content marketing, and can drive sales and revenue to your business.
What Is an Interactive Email?
An interactive email allows your reader to perform an action which activates or sets off an event within the said email. Using interactive email in email marketing is a very effective tool as it keeps the user intrigued and in the inbox for longer periods of time as they perform the required actions.
Email Automation
Email automation allows for an email to be automatically sent when a specific trigger or action has been met. For example, when a user subscribes to your webpage an automated email welcoming them and helping them to get started might be sent.
Now that we understand what interactive email and email automation are, we can look at what steps need to be taken to ensure a successful email campaign.
Step 1 – What Exactly Would You Like Your Email to Achieve?
It would be in your best interest to understand your goals and know exactly what you would like to achieve through your email campaign, as this will ultimately determine who needs to be targeted, what type of email is to be sent and what marketing automation content is required.
Step 2 – Build Your List of Email Addresses
This can be done in one of two ways depending on whether you want to target existing users or rather obtain email addresses you might not have already:
- Existing Customers
If it is existing customers you plan on getting in touch with, you can simply import a list of your known contacts’ email addresses into your chosen email marketing tool. - New Customers
On the other hand, if it is new customers you plan on acquiring, then this will be done by manually building a new list from scratch.
Step 3 – What Type of Email Campaign Is Needed?
Should you be sending out a newsletter, a marketing offer, an event invitation or simply just an announcement? Ultimately what you decide on here will be influenced by the goals you decided on in step 1.
Step 4 – Create the Desired Email Campaign
Now that your goals are decided on and you have built a list of email addresses and selected the type of campaign you would like to send out, you can begin to build your email. In short, it should be easy to read, have engaging images and visual content, be personalized and be relevant to each subscriber.
Follow these four basic steps to be able to quickly and easily start your email marketing campaign, and send out that first email which will deliver amazing results for your business.
A Checklist for Your Christmas in July Content Marketing Campaign
Christmas in July is often unofficially celebrated by countries in the Southern hemisphere as their winter falls in July. By doing so, they are able to enjoy the winter feel commonly associated with the traditional Christmas in December.
That having been explained, July is around the corner and it is time to plan a successful content marketing strategy for the upcoming event. The average American will spend close to $1000.00 on presents during this time, and they are more than ready to start clicking and spending on their holiday shopping.
Let’s take a look at your social media marketing strategy together, shall we?
Give Your Website That Holiday Feeling
Capturing the emotions and setting the festive and jolly mood commonly associated with the Christmas holidays are essential at this time of year. By bringing a sense of joy and festivity to each and every webpage you will ensure your visitors’ enthusiasm and keep them clicking on your website.
Offer Prizes in a Contest
People love getting a little something extra such as a gift or prize at this time of year. What better way to do this than to hold an online contest. Extra traffic and higher engagement numbers will be seen as a result of a contest associated with the holiday festivities. Likewise, it will also encourage new subscribers to your webpage.
Utilize the Power of Pinterest
Visual content is essential at this time of year as people search for gift ideas, recipes, handmade Christmas cards and ideas that might inspire them. Create a post that showcases your product in the true holiday spirit. And, do not forget to add a link to your website.
Create a Sense of Urgency with Last Minute Gift Ideas
Gift buying can be a challenge when buying for certain people and this often means that it is left to the last minute. By offering last minute gift ideas you are giving your customers valuable advice and saving them from the embarrassment of not finding the right gift on time.
Launch a High-Impact Email Campaign
Customers are eagerly awaiting your emails that offer pre-holiday discounts, especially if they are festive in nature, incorporate beautiful images and if they capture the Christmas in July holiday vibes. Stay cool and simply time a few emails effectively. Here are a few more tips:
- Offer early bird discounts a few months prior already,
- Offer online purchasing only discounts,
- Incorporate an exclusive discount code in the email,
- Create a sense of urgency by sending out a last chance for online ordering email, and
- Finally, send out a simple holiday greeting and merry Christmas email a few days before.
By following these few easy guidelines in your SEO and digital marketing strategies you will hopefully spark excitement and a sense of holiday festivities in your clients and your business brand.
How To Convert More Leads Without Generating Any New Traffic
When it comes to landing pages, the numbers are skewed. Landing pages do a staggeringly effective job at converting site visitors into paying customers. But directing customers to a standalone landing pages is an underused tactic.
We’ve touched on this concept before: when the numbers don’t add up, it means there’s an opportunity for businesses. Even though landing pages are slowly becoming the standard, implementing them now will still give you a significant edge over at least a few of your competitors. Leveling up your landing pages can improve your conversion rate, which impacts your bottom line. And the best part? You can do it without increasing the number of visitors to your site.
To give businesses an idea of how much of a difference landing pages can make, we found some stats highlighting Why You Need To Level Up Your Landing Pages.
Since you’re looking for information on landing pages, you’ve probably heard using a homepage as a landing page is a bad idea. Unfortunately, most businesses take this to mean they can create one landing page – a home landing page – as a catchall for every campaign they’re running. In fact, 52% of marketers (for shame!) don’t even create a new landing page for different marketing campaigns.
In the same way it’s suboptimal to send every single site visitor to your homepage, it’s a mistake to send email subscribers, social media follows and PPC traffic to the same landing page. Each of these channels has unique methods for getting visitors to click through, and different promises and goals once they do – so why would you send them to the same generic page?
Start embracing the power of landing pages by creating specific pages for each of your various traffic streams. It won’t be long before you experience more success and higher conversion rates!
The maxim “less is more” applies to many things – landing pages included. However, the fact that 48% of landing pages contain multiples offers suggests the majority of businesses haven’t yet made the connection. The temptation to cram more than one offer onto the page you know visitors land is strong – but don’t do it. Customers don’t want to be confused or oversold and offering something other than exactly what they’re expecting actually does both. Craft strong, confident offers and trust your landing pages to do their work! Oh and don’t forget to include a call to action as a single call-to-action button can increase conversions by 62%.
If you have a couple of landing pages and aren’t getting the results you want, don’t give up quite yet. As we’ve discussed, the more you connect the messaging of your landing page to the arriving audience (and the channel they used) the better results you’ll get. If this means creating more landing pages – even different ones for segments of the same audience group – then do it (the stats have your back).
If all else fails, try adding some short explainer videos to your landing pages. Using videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 86% – anything capable of producing results that good is worth a shot!
One of the biggest factors that stunts the success of marketing campaigns is not testing vital components like landing pages! The fact is landing pages are where the magic has to happen, so absolutely need to be sure that every aspect of the page is contributing to conversion! You’ve spent the money and dedicated time to funnelling visitors to a certain page with an exact message – but then you don’t test to make sure the headline or call-to-action button isn’t confusing customers?
61% of customer do less than five tests per month on their landing pages; excuse me for saying it again but – this is an opportunity! Test your landing pages components, tweak based on your findings and enjoy the increased conversions with just a little bit of extra work.
Last but not least, we come to a pretty straightforward fix for an all-too-common landing page mistake: too many form fields. Yes, we live in the Information Age, which means every little detail you can pull from your potential customers can be used to your advantage. But you know what? One or two pieces of information are a lot better than zero, which is what you’ll get if you present customers with a 15-field form!
The proof is in the pudding: a company found that reducing the number of form fields to 10 or under increases conversions by 120%. I’ll go a step further and suggest you keep the number of form fields to less than 5 as I’m a firm believer in keeping things as simple as possible.
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That’s it for this infographic summary. Here’s the full infographic, for your sharing pleasure:
Unsubscribe Numbers Got You Worried? Here Is What to Do:
A great deal of time and effort has gone into building up your email marketing list and you have written amazing content. You have formatted an easy to use sign-up form and offered hard to resist deals to entice your audience. You send out your first email to your target market via your marketing automation system. Yet, people still unsubscribe.
Don’t panic! Every email marketing list has people who unsubscribe. The only way to avoid this would be to not have an email list at all.
Identifying the reasons for people unsubscribing from your email marketing list is key to bringing those numbers down. Here is what to do:
Do Not Go Overboard in Your Subject Lines
Overuse of caps, emojis, exclamation points and keywords such as “free”, ”give away”, “sex”, “deposit”, and the like, can identify your email as spam and move it to your junk folder or cause your reader to hit the unsubscribe button.
Write Engaging, Well-Thought-Out Content
Your content should have a clear and concise purpose, which starts with the subject line, is carried through in the following paragraph and continues to be elaborated on throughout the email body. Finally, your message or point should be brought to a strong conclusion in your CTA.
Deliver on What You Promise
Your reader opens the email, intrigued by what is offered and clicks on the CTA link in the hopes of finding that something amazing – which was promised to them. At this point, if they are unhappy with what they find, they will hit the unsubscribe button without a doubt. Your subscriber needs you to deliver on what you promised – each and every time!
Make Unsubscribing Less Obvious
Legally an unsubscribe option is required in your content marketing, but this can be done in less obvious ways. You don’t want to make unsubscribing too easy. Try writing it in smaller text next to other options such as “please provide feedback” and don’t allow too much white space around it.
Email marketing is highly effective and, therefore, important. By following the few basic guidelines above, your unsubscribe rates will drop for sure.