Content is a very powerful tool in the world of online marketing, so it’s important to keep your content marketing strategy right at the top of your priority list. In order to deliver consistent and valuable information to your customers, you need to look at your strategy every few months, to make sure you are getting the most out of your content.
If one of your top goals is to generate more leads, then content is what you should be focusing on. Companies that blog regularly get around 60% more leads than companies who don’t. You need to provide content that offers a solution or value if you want the best results.
Your content also helps to build customer connections. Social media has been a real game changer when it comes to the way you can engage with your audience. These days, people no longer use social media only to connect with friends; they use it to learn more about brands and companies before making purchasing decisions. Surveys have shown that many customers feel better about a company that takes the time to deliver custom content and are more likely to buy from them. Using Facebook and Twitter to respond to customers who comment on your content (positively or negatively) creates a relationship of loyalty and trust that ordinarily would take years to build.
Everyone knows that for a website to be successful you need traffic, which is where search rankings come in. Your SEO is bigger than just generic keywords – regular, informative and authoritative content means higher search rankings. Websites with no blogs trail behind the ones with them, since search engine crawlers reward sites with ongoing and recent postings. Be sure to keep abreast of changes and updates regarding SEO – using the same tactics from a few years ago could actually damage your rankings.
Content is the perfect way to strengthen your brand – posting content related to industry news, or providing tips and statistics gives your existing and potential customers reasons to return to your site, to learn more about your brand. It’s a good idea to keep your content consistent on the various platforms you use. While you can adapt content to suit different social media platforms, don’t be casual and funny on one platform, very serious and formal on another, as this will confuse your audience.
Content is more important than ever, so if you need help with your strategy, content creation or blogs, contact us. We’d love to assist in building a content marketing strategy that generates serious leads for your business.
In a nutshell, marketing is all about researching, developing, promoting, and selling products or services to target customers. A lot of organisations have an ongoing inter-departmental argument going as to whether marketing is regarded as an expense or an investment.
Luckily, in this era of digital marketing, the overall marketing spend has the opportunity to come down while reach goes up. How is this possible? For starters, inbound marketing relies on blogs, podcasts, video, eBooks, newsletters, whitepapers, SEO, physical products, social media marketing, and other forms of content marketing to attract customers through the different stages of the purchase funnel.
And these don’t need to be printed and distributed, but rather are shared electronically. It really is a win-win situation – as long as it is well planned, meticulously executed, and monitored. In other words, a digital marketing campaign is only as good as it is managed.
Determine your marketing objectives
The results of a successful marketing campaign are not only measured by sales figures. Marketing can also be used to:
establish brand image
develop product awareness
mend a tarnished reputation
As with managing any goal, having a clear vision, a precise roadmap, and measurable results is essential.
Set a budget
Marketing of all types takes time. Digital marketing is no exception. Although there are distinct cost-saving advantages to marketing digitally, it is by no means a shortcut. Poor quality content and cheap tricks are easily called out. Establish and stick to a budget that fits your brand’s needs and strategy.
Consider hiring an agency
You are where you are today by drawing on your personal skills and expertise in your industry. Chances are, you’re not an expert in content creation, website design, or link building. Instead of distracting your focus from the real job of running a business, bear in mind that agencies can offer you objectivity and creativity.
Monitoring your program
Regardless of whether you hired an agency or you launched a campaign yourself, a critical part of digital marketing management is to watch over and monitor the program.. Decide on the frequency of monitoring the program, and the measures to be monitored.
Assessing effectiveness
To assess the campaign’s value, refer back to the objectives you set in step one. The more comprehensive your goals are, the easier it is to determine whether you have been successful or not.
Change and improve
While there is a wealth of information on social media marketing, search engine optimisation and so on; each and every business is unique. Your industry, your culture, your customers all add to the mix of what will or won’t work. So take the time to analyse the results of your digital marketing campaign so that you can tweak it where necessary. Keep reassessing the campaign and implementing changes to improve its effectiveness.
For more information on how we can support the effectiveness of your campaign, please contact us today.
Everyone wants more subscribers, right? But when it comes to sales, it’s not just numbers you need, it’s the loyal subscribers you want – the ones who share your content, the one who buy your products and recommend them to others. So how do you go about finding more of the dependable subscribers?
According to brand and advertising surveys, over 90% of people trust and prefer word-of-mouth recommendations over any other form of marketing. This is quite a big deal, meaning you have to get your current subscribers to refer you to their contacts. Meaning you have to keep them happy, engaged and keen to help. Hmm, so why not just ask? Once you have a new subscriber who has signed up for your freebie, special offer or free download, follow it up with an email asking them to share it. If your offering was a good one in the first place, most people would be happy to spread the word.
Another tactic is to have more than one opt-in button. While you don’t want your email or landing page to look like the Vegas strip at night, having more than one button will increase your chances of getting more subscribers who might be speed-reading and missed the one at the top. Placing opt-in on various pages of your website can also increase your subscription – especially on your About Us page. This is one of the most frequently visited pages on a website, so if people like what they read about you, make it an easy step for them to follow you.
Using quirky or clever lines from your blog in a tweet is an easy way to get more shares – each time you write a piece, choose a snippet or two and tweet them, just make sure you include a link back to your original blog. If you use plugins, tweets couldn’t be easier, as you just select the phrase or sentence you want and create a tweet out of it.
Use your influencers to help you – reaching out to key influencers in your industry that you follow can be the kick start you need. If you have mentioned your influencer or refer back to something they’ve posted, let them know and they could share your blog with their entire community, which is a lot bigger than yours.
Don’t overlook the power of your social media profiles – instead of just putting a link in your Facebook profile, use the About section to mention your free download, special offer or discount. That way people will get to it and your opt-in quicker.
For more on building a solid email marketing subscriber list and any other digital marketing service you are interested in learning more about, contact us. We’d love to help you implement these tips and many more to boost your business.
Statistics show that content with images get a whopping 94% more views than those without! Content with visuals is not only more shareable (Facebook posts with images get 87% more shares, Tweets with images get 18% more clicks, 89% more favourites and 150% more retweets), but they give your piece personality. They also break up long pieces of content that can be off-putting to a reader with little time. While you think your content may not have a suitable image to enhance it (so why bother?), even a quirky or funny image that has the smallest link back to your article, can be the difference in its success.
In a survey conducted by Buzzsumo, posts with an image every 75-100 words got the most shares across various platforms. Without counting the words of your blog and getting uptight about it, the general rule is to place an image right near the top of the post, one after every two or three paragraphs and an image in every section, especially if sections are broken up with subheadings.
Colourful images work better than black and white – like advertising, bright and bold visuals sell products.
Colour catches the eye
If you have strong brand colours, try to incorporate these in with your content – it all goes towards strengthening your brand.
Use different types of images too, not just photographs. Pie charts, graphs, cartoon figures and infographics hold just as much appeal. Remember to use your logo if you are creating the visual – a good infographic is often one of the most shared images on social media. A good blend of entertaining and informative images is a balance to strive for.
When using stock or free images – which is most of us, since not many small businesses can afford a photographer or graphic designer to whip up the perfect visual whenever you need one – try to avoid the overused ones. Choose an image that conveys an emotion, however tenuous the link.
Finally, use keywords to optimise your images – this will help your search rankings enormously. Use the keyword(s) you are targeting in your image file names, as well as in the alt text field describing the image.
For more on content marketing and blog writing, contact us. We’re here to make your digital marketing easier and more productive.
It’s great to have a huge database of existing customers and a long list of potential ones, but over time, it’s the small core of loyal and consistent customers that you depend on. If these types of people have been with you a while, you are clearly doing something right, but you can work on deepening these relationships, to increase the size of your core group.
To connect with your customers, you need to learn about them, share your knowledge with them, listen to what they have to say and make them part of a larger network. Today’s facilities make a digital marketing campaign both easy and effective, offering you a variety of ways to connect with your customers. Here are some ways to build those lasting relationships:
Ensure your communication channels are open and clear
There are many ways to stay in touch with your customers, from emails to social media, blogs and business network posts, to phone calls to old fashioned snail mail. It’s really important to make yourself as contactable as possible and to reply to enquiries as soon as you can. During a project or protracted sales negotiation, regular updates can go a long way to keep the momentum. Pre-empting problems is only possible when you and the customer are in constant communication. There is nothing quite so frustrating as trying to reach someone when you have an urgent request, to find out they are on leave for the next few weeks. All it takes is organisation and a schedule with reminders to touch base, to get your customers feeling like they’re special to you.
Share your knowledge
When a customer comes to you for a product or service, chances are your knowledge and experience with it is vastly superior to theirs. Instead of using this knowledge to maintain the upper hand, sharing it will make your customer feel included, more likely to engage with you further. Getting to know your customers and understanding their problems, gives you an opportunity to go beyond being just a service provider. This should boost your customer’s confidence and hopefully pave the way for a long and mutually beneficial relationship.
Invite them to be part of your network
It’s quite likely that your customers will be looking for other products or services than the ones you provide and you are in the position of sharing reliable and trusted contacts from your network. Doing this is most probably going to result in your customers having more respect and trust for you than before. They are also likely to reciprocate by inviting you into their networks, giving you more potential customers.
Make sure you meet your deadlines
Tardiness in business is a sure fire way to lose credibility. Whether it be a project plan with deliverables across multiple timeframes, or as simple as delivering a product when promised, time management is a reflection of the way you run your business. If you know this is a weak point for you, use diaries, calendars, reminders or software packages to help you get it right. When setting deadlines, rather overestimate the time it will take you, so you can aim to deliver early if possible. Trying to please a customer by cutting down on much needed time to deliver a quality product, will either result in an inferior product, or an unhappy customer.
None of this is rocket science, but putting in that bit more effort can be the difference between customers who interact you sporadically, when they need something, and customers who stay loyal to your business for many years.
If you want to find out more on digital marketing and building customer bases that last, contact us. We can assist with your social media, email marketing and so much more.
If inbound marketing is all about creating value for your customers and prospects in order to grow organically into an industry leader and esteemed brand… is paying for advertising not a cheat?
Yes and no
As with so many things in life, there is no definitive answer. Paid advertising a case of not “what”, but “how”.
No one likes to be bombarded with annoying, intrusive ads. However, finding a gem of a product or service through an ad is a treat.
Inbound approach to paid advertising
A service like Google’s AdWords, allows you to “be seen by customers at the very moment that they’re searching on Google for the things you offer.” While Facebook’s Adverts, allows you to select an audience who “are more likely to care about your business.”
Neither of these would work if you didn’t approach your ad creation with an inbound mindset. Because paid advertising leads to something of value to your fans, it is more relevant for the people who see them. That, in turn, increases leads and customers – a real result. When done correctly, paid advertising leads to good content, and is an extremely effective contribution to a well-rounded inbound marketing strategy.
It’s cost-effective too
With the advances in technology which allows service providers to know so much about their users, these digital paid ads are very accurate in targeting the right prospects. So much so, that PPC stands for “pay per click” – in other words, you only pay when they click to visit your website or call.
So whether your marketing goal is to bring in new website visitors, grow online sales, get the phones ringing, or keep customers coming back for more; let us help you generate new leads today.
Contact us today to review your PPC ads, analyse your landing pages, and suggest ways to improve your overall campaign.
