Tag: Digital Marketing Strategy
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.
A How-To Guide To LinkedIn Sponsored Content Ads
Creating sponsored content ads on LinkedIn is a great way to make sure your content reaches your target audience. In this blog post, we discuss how you can go about creating LinkedIn sponsored content ads:
- Choose The Content
The first step is to choose what content you want to promote. It may be a blog post or a web page featuring a promotion. Copy the URL, go to your company page on LinkedIn and paste the URL into the update box where it reads: “Share an article or photo” and post the article, photo or link.
The post will now appear in your timeline. Above the post, you will see a grey arrow with the words “Sponsor now”. When you click on the link, you will be taken to your LinkedIn campaign manager.
- The Campaign Manager
Once you are in your LinkedIn campaign manager, you can go through all the processes you need to in order to promote your content. LinkedIn’s campaign manager is very similar to Facebook’s campaign manager. Click on the article link that you want to promote and click on “create a campaign” in the top right corner.
You can choose whether you want to promote your content with targeted native advertising, drive traffic from the desktop with ads, or send targeted messages directly to people. If you want to sponsor the content, click on the top option that reads: “Promote your content with targeted native advertising”.
Next, you will name your campaign, choose your objectives, select your audiences, the location you want to target, and how you want to target them. You can target people by fields of study, member groups, job titles, job function, years of experience, and a host of other options that aren’t available to you with Facebook ads.
If you want to improve your social media marketing strategy or your online reputation management, then LinkedIn Sponsored content ads are a great way to do this. Contact The Digital Marketing People for advice today.
A Guide To Using Facebook Insights To Monitor Your Social Media Campaign
One of the best parts about conducting social media marketing is the ability to measure your ROI and the effectiveness of your campaign. Facebook Insights, for example, gives you direct, accurate insights into your page’s performance, how engaged your followers are and how you can possibly improve your campaign going forward. Here is what you need to know about this invaluable tool:
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Keep An Eye On Your Competition
While you obviously do not want to copy anything that your competitors are doing when it comes to social media marketing, it helps to have an idea in terms of their successes and failures to point you in the right direction. Facebook Insights allows you to keep an eye on your competition by clicking on ‘Pages to Watch’. It is also great for following influencers that you’d like to learn from. Using this page to your advantage, you will be able to see the following:
- Their total page likes and the percent change from the previous week,
- How many times they have posted to Facebook this week, and
- Their weekly engagement.
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Optimal Posting Times
What is the point of uploading a campaign post when nobody is online to see or engage with it? Luckily, Facebook Insights makes it possible for you to monitor exactly when your target market spends most of their time on social media. You can coordinate your posts to go out at these specific times and keep monitoring whether or not you have seen an improvement in your reach as a result.
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Monitor Performance Of Individual Posts
This is probably the most beneficial way to find out at a glance what is working and what is not in terms of your campaign. Facebook Insights will provide you with important information such as what your posts have achieved in terms of:
- Overall Reach
- Reach: Organic/Paid
- Impressions: Organic/Paid
- Reach: Fans/Non-Fans
- Post Clicks/Reactions, Comments & Shares
- Reactions/Comments/Shares
- Post Hides, Hides of All Posts, Reports of Spam, Unlikes of Page
- Engagement Rate
Here at The Digital Marketing People, we specialize in social media marketing, digital marketing, online reputation management and the creation of social media marketing strategies. For more info regarding how we can help you, please feel free to get in touch with our team.
What Is Your Inbound Marketing Strategy For Christmas 2018?
Marketing is an essential part of every business. Digital marketing has grown in leaps and bounds with the advent of the internet and has become a major part of every marketing strategy. With digital marketing, inbound marketing has become a lot more successful. But what is inbound marketing? Well, simply put, inbound marketing is a form of content marketing designed to bring prospective clients to you, rather than you going after them. So, in what ways can you implement this?
- Search Engine Optimization.
Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is a method of inbound marketing that targets people looking online for a product or service that you offer. SEO is a form of website optimization that makes your website appear close to the top of the Search Results. If you are reading this article, it is because the SEO worked. This Festive Season, Christmas themed SEO will add relevance to your website.
- Content Marketing
Content Marketing is the act of creating free content to distribute to create interest in your product or service and entice the potential lead into taking an action. SEO and content marketing often go hand-in-hand, as the content can be used for SEO. A good example of such content would be this article.
- Social Media Marketing
The Festive Season is a good time to engage with your customer base. Social media marketing allows you to speak directly to your customers and get feedback, build brand loyalty and even launch campaigns directly with your audience.
- Relevant Landing Pages
The landing page a customer gets to after clicking a link should be directly relevant to the link or search term that led them there. This is the last part of their journey and is critical to the success of your inbound marketing campaign, so ensure that your landing pages are relevant.
The Digital Marketing People are experts in SEO, social media, digital and content marketing. For more information, contact us today!
How to Grow Your E-commerce Business over the Festive Season
For any business, both traditional and e-commerce, the holiday provides a great opportunity to increase revenue and lift sales and awareness. Digital marketing is more important than ever at this time of year, but more than that, you want to be able to engage with your clientele to give them a more personal touch this holiday season. And the best way to do that is by employing social media marketing. The Digital marketing People are the experts at implementing a social media marketing strategy, and we have compiled a few ideas to think about this festive season.
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Engage With Your Following
Social media is unique in that it allows you to engage with your audiences, and it also allows your client base to engage with your business. The festive season is the ideal time to encourage client engagement with your business on Social Media. For example, offering a discount to those who upload photos of them posing with your product. This social media marketing strategy engages with clients and acts as an online reputation management tool.
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Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
Over 60% of adults who are online access the internet through their phone. While most e-commerce transactions still take place on a desktop or laptop, most users will browse a store on their mobile beforehand. That means that you need to ensure that your site is optimized for mobile and tablet viewing to ensure your inventory can be seen.
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Market to Cart-Droppers
It has been shown that people who have previously visited your site are much more likely to buy something from you than those who have never been to your site before. With that knowledge, you should start orienting your digital marketing campaigns to market to cart abandoners more than new users.
As a premier WSI certified company, the Digital People are fully equipped to take on any social media marketing challenge you may have. For more information, contact us today!
5 Essential Online Reputation Management Tips from Digital Marketing Specialists
Warren Buffet knows a thing or two about business, and he noted, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you will do things differently.” What sets today apart from the 1950s when Mr. Buffet started out, is that your standing is now done, made or broken largely by digital means. Thus, online reputation management must be a key element in your digital marketing plan.
Here are our top tips for managing your online reputation:
- Make It Easy to Complain
Yes, you read that correctly! By making it easy for your customers to complain, you are also making it easier for you to monitor. Oftentimes people do not complain to a business when they are dissatisfied because they could not be bothered, do not think it will do any good, are in a hurry or even because they do not want to get an employee in trouble.
As many as 96% of customers who have problems do not complain – they just do not go back. Though they may not be talking to you, they are definitely talking about you.
- Respond Quickly
As part of your social media marketing strategy, plan how you are going to handle negative feedback. Then make sure that your initial response is sent immediately. Even an automated reply is better than hearing nothing when you are in the position of the seething customer.
- Apologize
Even if you are not at fault, apologize. Bottom line: you are sorry that someone is unhappy with your business. Make sure the apology is sincere and inspires confidence in the customer’s mind that you will resolve the problem.
- Investigate
In a non-defensive manner, ask probing questions to uncover the problem. Ask clarifying questions to reveal the cause of the problem. Only then can you offer alternatives and solutions.
- Ensure Closure
The problem is only resolved when your customer says so. Avoid making promises you cannot keep and be honest about obstacles you may encounter. Most importantly, follow up to make sure that your customer is completely satisfied – hopefully enough to write a glorious review of how you handled his or her complaint!
The Digital Marketing People
If you would like expert advice on online reputation management and other aspects of social media marketing, get in touch with the Digital Marketing People today.
Don’t Let Your Brand Make These Hashtag Mistakes
Hashtags are a way of grouping together topically related content. They can be a little confusing on Instagram, however, hashtags are one of the top ways to boost your engagement and follower count.
The social media marketing experts at The Digital Marketing People list some hashtag mistakes you want to avoid:
- You’re only using hashtags specific to your own business. If you are a wedding photographer, for example, and you are only using hashtags related to weddings and brides, then you are missing out on reaching quality followers through other hashtags. The location of where the wedding is or the hotel or resort could also be used as a hashtag. Using hashtags that are outside the ‘popular’ realm of your business will get your photo seen by more people.
- Only using popular hashtags. This will get you the wrong type of followers. Hashtags such as #instamood, #instagrammers, #love, etc. move way too quickly because so many people are using them. Stay away from only using popular Mix up generic hashtags with ones that are also specific to your business.
- Not using hashtags that are relevant to your location. Tag your city, region, or any other landmark in the area as all of the hashtags will be relevant to your post.
- Not testing new hashtags on a regular basis. You need to go deeper to get the results you are looking for. Play around with different hashtags strategically to attract the particular customers you want.
- Not researching hashtags. Before you use a hashtag, type the hashtag into a researching tool to see what types of images and posts come up. Some of the best tools for this include Ritetag, Tagboard, Hashtags.org, and tagsforlikes.com.
Need help with your social media marketing or online reputation management? Then get in touch with The Digital Marketing People today.
What Is Data-Driven Digital Marketing?
What makes digital marketing so fascinating at the moment is that there is a proliferation of data. There are concepts such as the Internet of Things and cloud computing, and although those are very specific things, they are all coming together to create enormous opportunities for businesses.
When it comes to digital marketing, all decisions are based on the data that is available. Before data was available, it was hard to tell who was interacting with a television or billboard ad, for example. With digital marketing, everything is being recorded so decisions can be driven by real data.
Many times, people don’t accurately measure all of their different interactions online. This could refer to the organic reach of your website, your engagement rate with Facebook ads, or any other type of digital campaign that you are running.
While most internet marketers are familiar with Google Analytics and other social media tracking apps, ‘data-driven digital marketing’ today often refers to big data marketing. Big data is our ability to take massive amounts of data and derive a story from it. This opens many doors because a few years ago, most of this data was gibberish to us. The entrance of distributed computing and parallel processing changed all of that. Now we can analyze the data, detect patterns and make predictions. With big data, you can now predict customer needs, pain points and even future needs.
Netflix, for example, essentially uses big data to design the success of their product offering. When Netflix created the House of Cards series, they tapped into the massive amount of data that they had collected over the years to guide the creative direction of the series. They were so confident about the show that they signed off for two seasons even before the pilot episode has aired.
Data-driven marketing can change the way you do business. Get in touch with The Digital Marketing People to learn more today.
The role of content marketing in your overall strategy
Content is part of any digital marketing initiative. Whether you’re publishing a video, trying to educate customers on new developments in your industry, or giving feedback to queries on social media, content forms part of every single aspect.
When used strategically, content marketing can have a phenomenal impact on your digital marketing campaigns. SEO, for example, is almost impossible if you don’t have the content to back up the keywords you are trying to rank for in Google. When you launch a content marketing strategy, you can weave your targeted keywords into the blog posts, news items, white papers and company announcements that you are publishing.
Many times, written content can also be repurposed into other types of media to extend your reach. A blog post about seasonal trends, for example, can be repurposed into an infographic that is shared on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. A commentary piece about a new research paper could similarly be transformed into a PowerPoint presentation that is published on your company’s SlideShare page.
Content is the backbone of any digital marketing strategy and it’s also the vehicle you need to use to get your message to more people. Before you embark on any content marketing strategy, it’s important to think about what your goals are. Are you trying to sell products online, increase brand awareness or show your thought leadership in the industry? You can choose a few goals and tailor each piece of content to help you achieve these goals.
One of the things that many businesses struggle with is producing content. It’s not easy to produce article after article on a topic and most people simply don’t have the time. When you partner with The Digital Marketing People, our team of copywriters, Social media marketing strategy and digital marketing experts can help you with every part of the process. Contact us for more information today.
5 essential principles of social media customer service
In today’s day and age, customers expect the same type of customer service on social media marketing strategy that they would get from a customer service agent if they visited a company in store. If you are providing support on social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook, here are a few essential principles to stick to:
- Give timely feedback
There’s no point offering support on social channels if you take days on end to respond. Make sure that someone is checking social profiles at least twice a day so that queries and complaints can be responded to in a timely manner.
- Make sure your community manager is empowered
Your community manager or social media manager needs the right level of authority to make decisions on your behalf. They should be able to advise people on returns or escalation procedures as opposed to simply telling them that they ‘will follow up’ about the query.
- Streamlined information sharing
If at all possible, give your social media manager access to your company’s CRM system so that they have background on client issues and purchases.
- Don’t delete negative feedback
It’s never nice to receive negative feedback, especially not on a public forum where other people can see it. Avoid deleting any negative feedback simply because it portrays your brand in a poor light. Rather respond to the feedback and ask if you can contact the client to discuss the matter offline.
- Keep an eye on customer service trends
If there is a specific product or service that is generating a lot of complaints, or if there are seasonal trend queries, use this information to be proactive in the future. You can create blog posts and other types of content that can help your customers before they have to resort to contacting you on social media.
The Digital Marketing People can help you with everything from social media marketing to online reputation management and digital marketing solutions. Contact us for more information today.