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8 Reasons to Invest in OTT Marketing

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As new technologies emerge, new marketing opportunities tend to present themselves. For example, the rapid adoption of streaming services, from Netflix to Hulu, over the past few years has led to the growth or OTT marketing (over-the-top marketing). OTT marketing is a form of marketing in which ads play during the streaming of content provided via high-speed Internet connections. Because it’s so important to stay on top of the latest trends in order to avoid falling behind your competition, OTT marketing is something every business should explore. Of course, that’s not the sole reason why you should consider implementing an OTT marketing strategy. The following are some of the major benefits of investing in OTT marketing:

1. Reach A Huge Audience

It’s estimated that there will be close to 200 million streaming viewers within the next few years. This means that you’ll likely be able to reach a huge part of your target audience via OTT advertising. Not only are streaming channels, incredibly popular, but more streaming platforms are launching every year; both Disney and Google recently launched their own channels. Additionally, users have the ability to stream content on these platforms from almost any device, including TVs, computers, smartphones, and tablets.

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2. Target Your Audience More Effectively

OTT advertising essentially combines the effectiveness of TV ads with the ability to target specific audiences that digital marketing tends to provide. For example, OTT marketing allows you to target viewers in specific areas using GPS data. You can also leverage behavioral data based on the platform viewers are using as well as the content they are streaming. Additionally, you can also target viewers based on demographics.

3. People Will See Your Ads OTT Marketing2

Whereas people often change the channel when watching something on cable whenever there is a commercial break. people who are streaming content rarely do this. This is because they can’t just flip back to the stream they were watching after the commercials have ended. Switching streams is inconvenient and most people are too engaged with the content that they are streaming to constantly switch back and forth. Because of this, people who are streaming content are more likely to watch the entirety of the ads that are shown. In fact, it’s estimated that roughly 98 percent of OTT viewers watch the entire ad that’s shown to them. This means that your OTT efforts are more likely to have an impact on their intended audience.

4. Improve Engagement

Many streaming platforms allow their viewers to choose between OTT ads during content breaks. This helps to personalize their experience; however, it also means that they will likely be more engaged with the ads that play since they chose to view them. As such, OTT ads are a good way to get your message across more successfully.

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5. Obtain Better Data

When it comes to traditional TV advertising, viewing data is based on larger sample sizes. OTT marketing provides much more helpful data in terms of who is watching your OTT content. Some of the data that you’ll have access to includes what demographics were watching your content, what it was that they were watching, exactly when they were watching it, and from what device they were streaming on. All of this data is invaluable in regards to adjusting your OTT campaigns for better results.

6. OTT Campaigns Are Flexible

You’re not locked in when you pay for OTT advertising. Many platforms allow you to start, stop, and resume your OTT campaigns at any point in time. This means you can manage your campaign settings and the commercials you’re running in real-time to obtain better results. As a result, you can leverage the data that you’re collecting on your OTT campaign to make improvements.

7. You Can Test Your Campaigns

Because OTT campaigns are often flexible, you can test your campaigns by targeting different audiences and ads to see what works best. Think of it as a form of A/B testing except for OTT marketing.

8. OTT Ads Are Cost-Effective

Instead of paying for the placement of your ads, you’re paying for actual ad views. Because you’re also able to target specific audiences more effectively, your ads will also likely result in a higher ROI. As a result, OTT ads are actually very cost-effective, especially when you take into account the fact that OTT ads engage viewers and can be adjusted throughout the campaign as well.

These are some of the main benefits of investing in OTT marketing. Although traditional TV advertising can still be effective, OTT marketing is an excellent way to reach your target audience and to complement your existing and future inbound marketing efforts.

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What’s Trending In Marketing For March 2020

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With the Coronavirus halting many events, knowing about current and recent marketing trends, is essential. Now more than ever, it’s important to know how to reach out to your customers, in creative ways that were previously not thought of . As a result, the following articles come from popular marketing blogs and highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Four Tips to Guaranteeing B2B Buyer Loyalty in 2020

Brandon Spear, President at MSTS, shows how retailers and brands can ensure B2B buyer loyalty by creating efficient payment options, removing friction from the purchasing process, and fostering an omnichannel buying experience.  

Coronavirus Creating Disruption, Uncertainty for Digital Marketing Ecosystem

The news cycle has been dominated by discussion and speculation about the Coronavirus or COVID-19. That’s also true in the tech press, as major events cancel, and companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Uber say revenues will likely take a hit because of supply chain issues or declining customer demand.

How Coronavirus (Covid-19) is Impacting Small Business and What You Can Do About It

The spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19) is developing rapidly, leaving many small business owners uncertain about their future. Many expect the coronavirus to have a significant impact on their revenue, and these concerns are proven to be justified. Fortunately, there are some actions that you can take to protect your small business while at the same time, protecting yourself, your employees, and your customers.

Google My Business Temporarily Removes Features Due to COVID-19

As a result of limitations caused by the COVID-19 situation, Google is temporarily removing some features from Google My Business. For instance, Google My Business will not be publishing any new reviews, review replies, or new Q&A until further notice. While at the same time they prioritize reviewing new listings, claims, and verification’s for critical health related business.

Marketing in the Face of COVID-19: Senior Living Teams Get Creative

The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting the senior care industry in unimagined ways, and likely will for the foreseeable future. In spite of lockdowns and precautionary measures taken by operator and owners across the country, however senior living communities remain open for business-and sales and marketing teams are remaining busy but working in drastically different ways than usual.

 Similar Article: What’s Trending in Marketing For February 2020

Improving Your Marketing Program

5 Reasons Why You Need a Mobile Marketing Strategy

Has your marketing campaign lost it’s edge? Maybe it’s because you haven’t introduced mobile. Mobile Marketing is proving to be the fastest, easiest, and most accessible form of marketing today. Seniors, adults, and even teenagers, have had experience dealing with mobile marketing in some shape or form. As a result, nearly every company can benefit from a mobile marketing strategy.

The Importance of Having a Professional Web Design 

It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is, you need a website. If you don’t have a website, you’re without a doubt going to lose out on a lot of potential customers. This is because simply having a website, is one of the most effective ways to generate awareness of your business. However, you will want to have a professionally designed website to ensure that it’s technically sound, visually appealing, and user friendly.

Email Marketing Metrics You Should Keep In Mind & What They Mean 

Email marketing was one of the earliest forms of inbound marketing- and it’s continued to be one of the most widely used due to how cost cost-efficient and effective the strategy is. If you’re implementing an email marketing campaign, then it’s important that you keep track of certain email marketing metrics. That way you can judge how your campaign is performing and identify what is and isn’t working.

5 Mobile Marketing Techniques To Build Your Ecommerce Brand Marketing Trends 2

Whether your company is just starting up or has reached or has reached the point of maintaining a well-established customer-base, it’s important to stay up to date with the most current marketing trends and techniques for your ecommerce business. Therefore, structuring structuring and launching an ecommerce website, is a milestone achievement for any brand.

5 Reasons to Use Hubspot

 There are a lot of marketing platforms out there that can be incredibly helpful when it comes to creating, managing, and tracking your marketing and sales efforts. Out of these platforms, Hubspot is one of the very best. The following article contains five reasons to consider using Hubspot as one of your main inbound marketing tools.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Coronavirus and E-Commerce: It’s Complicated

The assumption that Coronavirus, social distancing, and staying home will boost e-commerce is widely held among digital marketing experts. However, early findings suggest that the reality of the situation will be somewhat more complicated.

Coronavirus: Emarketer lowers Global Ad Spend Projections for 2020

Worldwide ad spending is still expected to grow compared to last year, says research firm eMarketers, but it has lowered its growth expectations by 3%. Worldwide media ad spend will increase by 7.0% to $6.91.7 billion in 2020 over the prior year, down from the earlier growth estimate of 7.4% to $712.02 billion. The updated spend projections, include digital, directories as well as print, out-of-home, TV and radio advertising.

YouTube Analytics Now Lets Creators Compare Metrics Side by Side

YouTube is upgrading its analytics capabilities, allowing creators to compare multiple metrics side-by-side for the first time. This update specifically pertains to data in the ‘deep dive’ section of the YouTube analytics dashboard. The ‘deep dive’ section appears after clicking on “see more” next to any of the metrics on the overview screen.

Real-time Digital Insights & Automation: Powering Digital Marketer’s Performance

Last year digital marketers wasted an average of 26% of their budgets on ineffective channels and strategies. While there are many different reasons and ways in which these marketing strategies have underperformed, the most common belief is the inability to keep up with modern consumer behavior. In this article, we’ll take a good look at two areas of great opportunity: real-time insights and real-time automation, and how they help you tackle these challenges head on.

10 Top Digital Marketing Trends For 2020

The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing. To help you stay ahead of the curve, this article will help you outline the bet digital marketing trends of 2020. For instance, video marketing is and always has been a reliable way of staying in touch with those who are far away. With hosting videos becoming easier and easier, each year sees more successful and ambitious branded videos online.

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The Importance Of Having A Professional Web Design For Your Business

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It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is, you need a website. If you don’t have a website, you’re without a doubt going to lose out on a lot of potential customers. This is because simply having a website is one of the most effective ways to generate awareness of your business. However, just having a website isn’t enough. You will want to have a professionally designed website to ensure that it’s technically sound, visually appealing, and user-friendly. While you might consider building your website yourself in order to save money, the following are a few reasons why it’s worth investing in a professional web design:

1. Build A Unique Website

Building a website from the ground up is something few companies have the resources to do, which means that they end up using basic website templates. A professional web design service will be able to customize your website by tailoring it to your specific needs. As a result, you will be able to provide a unique website experience to your visitors that will help your business stand out. Additionally, they will be able to create a consistent aesthetic that accurately reflects your brand, thereby helping to strengthen your branding efforts.

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2. Prevent Technical Issues

Professional web design services know what they are doing. They have massive amounts of experience and technical expertise. As such, when they develop websites, they ensure that there are no technical issues that will cause your website to crash or to function poorly. Even minor technical issues, such as slow loading times, can hurt your marketing efforts significantly. A technically sound website reflects positively on your brand as well. Additionally, a professional service can monitor your website for potential issues and address them before they have a big effect on your visitors.

3. Ensure Site Securityprofessional web design 2

Website security is incredibly important. If you’re taking personal information from your visitors, such as their names and email addresses, then you have a responsibility to ensure that this data is secure. If you have an e-commerce page through which customers are providing their credit card information, then this is even more critical. A professional web design service will keep your website secure using all of the latest website security tools and practices, including HTTPS protocol.

4. Optimize Website For SEO

Optimizing your website for SEO (search engine optimization) involves a lot more than just throwing a few keywords in your content. A good website developer understands this and will build a site architecture that supports strong SEO. For example, they will build a site map that makes it easy for Google to crawl through your pages and to index them. Without an effective site map, search engines may miss pages when crawling through your website, which means that they won’t be ranked on their SERP (search engine results page). Additionally, proper keyword use in URLs, effective internal linking, and a lack of technical issues all contribute to good SEO.

Similar Article: 6 Web Design Principals to Increase Conversions

5. Update Your Website

New technology is continually emerging, especially when it comes to websites. A brand new website can become outdated within just a year. A professional web design service can keep your website updated and implement new features that can improve the website experience over time. For example, it wasn’t that long ago that chatbots were first developed and now it’s not uncommon for a website to have one. Trying to add new features to your website on your own can be quite difficult and can cause issues with other parts of your site, which is why it’s best to let a professional do it for you.

6. Save Time

The amount of time that it takes to create a website cannot be overstated. Whether you’re building a website to completion or implementing a growth-driven design, it’s going to require a significant amount of time to do. Not to mention that the website will need to be regularly monitored and updated as well. By letting a professional web design service take care of your website, you will be able to focus your time on growing your core business.

7. Save Money

Many companies attempt to build their websites on their own because they think that they can save money this way; however, they’re more likely to lose money in the long run. Web design requires a lot of different skillsets, which means that you would have to take on more employees. Since running a website is a long-term strategy, these employees would have to be permanent. It’s more affordable to outsource to a professional web design service.

Ultimately, your website is a reflection of your business. If it’s of poor quality or appears unprofessional, potential customers will second guess the quality of your products or services. With that in mind, it’s worth investing in a professional web design.

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The Importance of Lead Generation and Content Marketing Agencies

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Your company is struggling to generate leads, and you’re looking for a quick and relatively simple solution. I have the solution, but you’ll probably groan because you’ve heard it before. “Content is king” might be an overused term, but that’s only because it’s proven to be true. A foolproof solution to your lack of leads as well as website foot traffic is lead generation content marketing. Nowadays, the quality of your company’s content is more important than ever before. Granted, there is more space to generate content and share it on the Internet, but with increased space comes tougher competition. We as marketing agencies feel pressure to stand out from the pack with remarkable content that converts our website’s visitors into potential leads. Consistent, quality content will attract the attention of readers, as well as encourage them to trust your company. Content marketing agencies can also help you create effective content marketing strategies and manage your content channels.

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So what exactly is “quality” content?

Quality content has a specific purpose, format, and topic. The purpose should help the users find an answer to their questions or interests. The format you choose should fit your content well. In order to attract more leads, the content in the conversion stage should consist mainly of content offers.

Choose an appropriate formatContent_Marketing_Agencies 2

The format of the content offers can be a multitude of things; such as case studies, white papers, forms, calls-to-action, visuals, eBooks, emails, and landing pages. For example, if you want to demonstrate to users how a product works, you might use the template of a visual, such as a video or an image, rather than an eBook. On the other hand, if you wish to show your readers a how-to process that is also aesthetically pleasing, an eBook format would work better than a visual one.

In terms of topics, your content should be educational as well as specific. You should conduct market research and create content with your buyer personas in mind. Imagine you are your buyer persona: what problems do you need solutions for? How far are you in the buyer’s journey? What language would you use when typing keywords into the search engine? This can help you cater your content towards your target audience.

Similar Article: The Importance of Lead Generation Content Marketing

Be consistent

Another factor that makes content “quality” is frequent and consistent publication. If your readers know they can count on you to publish a semi-weekly blog in a specific time window, they are much more likely to see you as reliable. Webdam’s statistics show that blogging consistently has led to B2B marketers generating about 67% more leads marketers who do not, which is a huge advantage. After you’ve earned their trust, a number of your visitors will subscribe to you and convert to leads.

Lead generation content marketing is a proven way to get the word out about your company and have potential customers become interested in your business. Without good, consistent content, people will have little reason to visit your website or truly believe that you’re a leader in your field. Don’t let this happen to you.

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Digital Marketing Changed By Visual Search

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Search marketing is constantly evolving, requiring businesses to adapt their digital marketing tactics accordingly or risk falling behind. Not only is Google known for continually adjusting and improving their search engine algorithm (often requiring SEO strategies to be adjusted to keep up), but new forms of search are emerging. Over the past few years, we are all becoming accustomed to the rise of voice search; however, visual search is advancing in leaps and bounds as well.

Visual search has been around for a few years now. According to a report published in 2017, 27 percent of all searches across ten major online platforms (including Google Images, Google, Amazon, and YouTube) were visual searches. With that in mind, visual search should be implemented into your digital marketing tactics.

Visual search is exactly what it sounds like — performing a search on the web using a visual. While this might not seem very convenient when done on a desktop or laptop, it makes a lot of sense when done on smartphones. Essentially, a consumer can take a picture using their phone’s camera of a product in-store to perform a search on that product. If the company producing the product has optimized for visual search, then that customer should be able to pull up valuable information on their phone. This isn’t the only way visual search can be accomplished. For example, someone could take a picture of a tree to find out what type of tree it is.

30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips

What are the Benefits of Visual Search?

Brands that sell products that are more visual have the most to gain from implementing visual search. For example, some of the most common products that users perform visual searches on include fashion, home decor, art, food, animals, and vehicles. One great example of visual search in action is Pinterest. They allow users to take pictures of objects in the real world, which will then pull up results of similar-looking objects featured on Pinterest. The following are a few of the benefits of implementing visual search into your digital marketing tactics:

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Improve the shopping experience

There are several ways that visual search can improve the shopping experience. For example, a customer that sees a product that they want to buy can use visual search to find similar products and compare prices. Retailers can also make product recommendations based on the visual attributes of the products the customers have been searching for using visual search. This allows for a more personalized shopping experience.

While many businesses monitor social media for mentions of their brand, few employ visual search. Using visual search, allows you to look for your brand logo across social media. This can be very helpful, especially on social channels that are more visually-based, such as Instagram. Take for example, Starbucks. They used visual search to discover that customers were filling their Starbucks cups with whipped cream and giving them to their dogs. Such a trend can be taken advantage of as a marketing opportunity — and they would have never known about it without a visual search.

Identify influencers Digital_Marketing2

Building relationships with brand influencers is an effective way to gain access to large target audiences. However, finding those influencers can sometimes be a challenge. Many influencers do their “influencing” with visual content. For example, it’s well known that there are many influencers on Instagram. Performing a visual search can help you find influencers that are posting visual content related to your company’s products. It’s a more effective way of finding relevant influencers than through text-based searches.

Engage users more effectively

Simply optimizing for visual search can help you engage with your users more successfully. This is because people are visual beings. They engage with and relate to visual content much more than they do with text. This type of digital marketing can also improve your conversion rates. The ability to take photographs and obtain information or recommendations based on those photographs will go a long way toward keeping your brand on the top of their minds.

Attract more mobile users

Considering how important the mobile market is, visual search is an excellent way to attract more mobile users. Visual search is a very mobile-centric feature, after all. Few people are going to use visual search on their desktops or laptops due to their static or bulky shape. Smartphones and tablets make it easy to snap photographs whenever users want.

Visual search grows more prominent by the day. The ability to perform searches using images can help to greatly improve your user experience in many different ways. If you have a visual product, then you should begin thinking about how you can employ visual search into your digital marketing tactics.

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5 Reasons Why You Need A Mobile Marketing Strategy

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Has your marketing campaign lost its edge? Maybe it’s because you haven’t introduced mobile. Mobile Marketing is proving to be the fastest, easiest, and most accessible form of marketing today. Seniors, adults, and even teenagers have had experience dealing with mobile marketing in some shape or form. As a result, nearly every company can benefit from a mobile marketing strategy—here are just five reasons why.

1) Text Messages See Results

When you have a call to action that needs to drive results, and drive them fast, text messages are a great option to have. That’s because 99% of text messages are read and responded to within 90 seconds of receiving them. This puts text messaging at a higher end of the spectrum in regards to reading and response rates.

Time was a crucial element when the Sierra Club wished to inform supporters of last-minute rallies. With less than a day to act, Sierra Club used text messaging to organize its supporters. Over 2,500 people texted in within a matter of hours! These kinds of instantaneous results are a hallmark of mobile marketing. Text messaging’s high open rates help ensure that your mobile campaign will be a more efficient communication channel.

2) Shoppers Rely on Mobile-Based Searches

These days, 40% of consumers utilize their mobile devices in order to make decisions about who to buy from. Most look at a cluster of review websites before making final choices about which supplier to purchase goods or services from. Reviews are so easy to find online and they help consumers decide between a plethora of suppliers and providers.

The smartest way to put your best foot forward is to register your business website with an array of consumer promotion websites. Also, encourage your loyal clients to leave reviews of your business at these websites. The more positive the online review, the more likely you are to get sales from customers. Specifically, from those who shop around online via their smartphones, tablets, notebooks and iPads.

Enjoy the Article: The Benefits of Mobile Marketing Automation

3) Virtual and Augmented Reality Offers New PossibilitiesMobile Marketing 2

Virtual and augmented reality are two of the newest opportunities in digital marketing, and in some cases, all a user needs is a smartphone to enjoy it. Besides emerging as a key resource for both mobile ads and shopping on social platforms, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are a preserve of native apps in terms of performance and functionality.

According to statistics, virtual and augmented reality will be an $83 billion dollar industry by 2021. Whereas virtual reality simulates entire environments through a smartphone; augmented reality literally “augments” the appearance of what’s in front of a user when they look through their mobile screen. Numerous companies have already taken advantage of this technology to offer branded experiences to their customers and even help them make better purchase decisions.

4) Apps Are Incredibly Popular

Statistics demonstrate that adults in America spend an average of 91 hours a month using apps on their mobile devices. So creating you own app will be a great way to connect with new and loyal customers. With just a few engineering resources, you can attract your audience through app marketplaces native to various smartphones. You can also customize the app, depending on the goals your company is trying to achieve.

Apps can be informative, entertaining, or both. There are app creation software packages available, which are pretty affordable and easy to use. While you spend more for custom app design, doing so should be an option as an app has the power to strengthen your brand in a powerful and long-lasting way.

5) Mobile-Friendly Email Gets Results

While texting offers the fastest and the best response times, it’s safe to say that email still gets results. This is why sending out promotional emails that are mobile-friendly will add tons of value to mobile marketing campaigns.

Effective and responsive email design is all about creating messages with shorter line lengths, pre-header text, concise copy, few or no images, and calls-to-action, which appear early on in emails. Something to keep in mind is that mobile is responsible for at least 50 % of all email open rates. So, make sure the email newsletters you deliver to your subscribers are on most mobile email platforms.

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what is an ad exchange

Types Of Advertisement Opportunities For Popular Streaming Services

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For years, the only way to reach audiences was through traditional types of advertisement such as print, TV, and radio. While these types of advertisement methods are still available, new methods of reaching your audience have opened up online; for example, streaming platforms. If you haven’t looked into advertising on a streaming platform, then you should.

Advertising on Streaming Platforms

Streaming platforms, such as Netflix or Spotify, are like the online versions of radio and TV. The only difference being everything is available on demand. Essentially, the programming is more customizable. Which allows users to create a more personal experience in regards to what they listen to and what they watch.

Therefore, streaming platforms have more data available when it comes to the individual user and their watching or listening behaviors. While traditional TV and radio is limited to the number of people watching or listening to any given program. It means that advertisers will be able to leverage their buyer persona information to more effectively reach their target audience with different types of advertisement methods using streaming platforms.

Because of the nature of streaming, advertisers often receive more exposure as well. For example, instead of running an ad on a show that airs once a week, you can run an ad on a show that can be streamed at any time. Since many consumers binge-watch their shows, you can gain massive amounts of exposure. All the while, staying at the top of mind by advertising throughout an entire season or series of a show. You’ll also be able to target more niche shows, podcasts or musicians that you know your specific target audience is more likely to be engaged with.

Learn More:An Advertising Approach On 4 Social Media Platforms

The following are some of the different types of advertisement options available on some of the more popular streaming channels:

YouTube TV

YouTube TV is YouTube’s attempt to develop their own content streaming platform. This stream provides viewers with 50 live TV channels for a monthly fee. They’ve also made some innovations in regards to their different types of advertising options. For example, you can now target your ads to viewers that watch most of theirTV online (also known as cord-cutters). You’ll also be able to use their DoubleClick Bid Manager. DoubleClick Bid Manager specifically targets viewers who are watching YouTube TV on their TV screens. This allows you to tailor different types of advertisements based on the environment in which they will be shown.

Hulu

Hulu is a video streaming platform with over 17 million subscribers. It is unique as it offers multiple ways to target your audience, and has numerous customization options. For example, their Targeted Blitz ability allows you to target by demographics, geographic area, genre, content length and more. Whereas Splash allows you to intercept almost every unique viewer on a single day. Additionally, you can align your brand with episodes of specific shows. Hulu will even help hand-pick shows based on thematic relevance to your brand.

Spotify

Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming platforms on the planet. As of January 2018, Spotify boasted 70 million paying subscribers. However, there are more than 157 million active users since the service is free with advertising. Besides running targeted audio-only ads, there are plenty of other advertising opportunities available on the platform. These include podcast partnerships, sponsored playlists, and more.

Pandora

Pandora‘s streaming platform is based on being able to create personalized radio stations. Roughly 78 million people listen to Pandora every month. Pandora allows users to customize their listening experience, giving them access to extremely valuable data. This data can then become leverage to target your audience. Pandora also only serves one ad at a time, which means your ad won’t get buried under a sea of running advertisements.

Google Play Music

Google Play Music is another popular music streaming platform that boasts access to more than 30 million songs. Their advertising platform provides access to both Lightbox ads and TrueView video ads; both of which are mobile-optimized and easy to set up. You will be able to use keywords, remarketing, and affinity audiences in order to target your audience at the right time. Google Music Play allows the use of Google AdWords to set up marketing campaigns.

DirecTV Now

DirecTV is a streaming service that provides users access to more than 25,000 on demand shows and movies. They currently have slightly over 20 million subscribers. DirectTV allows you to run your ads on the most popular shows, and on demographically targeted networks. You can also, lock into marquee programmings (such as season premieres and finales), and reach your audience across multiple devices. You can even run ads that viewers can interact with directly on their screens.

These streaming platforms have enormous audiences and can provide you with a great chance to boost your brand awareness. Additionally, they offer a variety of different types of advertisement options to help fit your brand’s specific needs.

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6 Behavioral Market Segmentation Examples

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When it comes to marketing automation, few techniques are as beneficial as segmentation, which allows you to categorize your leads based on data that you’ve collected on them. This, in turn, allows you to personalize their experience more, thereby making your nurturing efforts more effective. However, normal segmentation is based on who the user says they are; often provided by the information they fill out in your opt-in forms.

Another effective form of segmentation you should look into is behavioral market segmentation. Behavioral market segmentation segments your leads based on how they behave. This behavioral data comes from analytics. The following are six examples of behavioral market segmentation that you can benefit from:

1. User Purchasing Behavior

Basic purchasing behavior can be broken down into four categories:

Complex– When the user is highly involved in both the purchase and decision-making process between two very different brands.

Variety-Seeking- In which the user isn’t that involved in the purchasing process. However, they may choose a different brand just to try it out.

Dissonance-Reducing– Where the customer is happy with their brand, but they know other options that could be better. This also happens, when the customer needs to make a major purchase, but there’s not much difference between the products they’re considering.

Habitual– When little involvement is needed and the product doesn’t vary much from brand to brand. It’s mainly just personal preference that matters. 

These behavioral market segmentation categories make it easier to identify what users are more likely to make a purchase and how you can make your product and brand stand out from the competition.

2. Occasion-Based Behavior

User behavior is sometimes identifiable by special occasions. For example, consumers often make more purchases around the holiday season or for special events in their own lives, such as birthdays and anniversaries. Occasion-based behaviors can be split up into universal occasions, regular personal occasions, and rare personal occasions. This will allow you to tailor content to all of these different occasions in a more personal manner.

3. Usage Rate

Usage rate divides your users into heavy, mid-level, and light users based on how often they purchase your products or services. When segmenting your audience based on their usage behavior, you’ll be able to focus on turning light users into mid-level users and mid-level users into heavy users while keeping heavy users happy.

Similar Article: 5 Ways To Improve Your Relationship Marketing Strategy

4. Purchase Reasoning

Different users have different reasons for purchasing your product or service. Knowing what those motivations  will make it easier to meet their needs. For example, if you are selling business software, it may have many benefits, including ease-of-use, affordability, scalability, and integration capabilities. If you have an article about the affordability of your solutions to a user that purchased your software due to its scalability isn’t going to be an effective way to engage with them.

5. Customer Loyalty

Keep in mind that just because a customer keeps buying your product or service doesn’t mean that they are a loyal customer. Customers that are continually in need of the product or service that you offer are habitual customers. Whereas loyal customers only purchase your products and services, ignoring your competition.

They are important because they end up generating most of your revenue and aren’t that expensive to cater to. As a result, it’s important to be able to identify who your loyal customers are from your regular customers. That way  you can focus on building your relationship with them.

6. Consumer Status

Determining a user’s status will help you figure out how to best approach them. For example, non-users need to be aware of what their problem or pain point is before you can offer your product or service as a solution. Other types of consumer statuses include prospects (who are learning about your product or service), first-time buyers (who may need to learn how to get the most out of your product), regular users (who may benefit from supplemental products), and defectors (who are ex-customers that have chosen a product from a competitor whose trust you need to try to regain).

These are six types of behavioral market segmentation examples that can help you to more effectively–and efficiently–engage with your users and to continue building relationships with them over the course of their buyer’s journey.

25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales
email marketing metrics 3

Email Marketing Metrics You Should Keep In Mind & What They Mean

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Email marketing was one of the earliest forms of inbound marketing — and it’s continued to be one of the most widely used due to how cost-efficient and effective the strategy is. If you’re implementing an email marketing campaign, then it’s important that you keep track of certain email marketing metrics so that you can judge how your campaign is performing and identify what is and isn’t working so that you can make strategic adjustments as necessary. The following are some of the most important email marketing metrics that you should be following:

Click Through Rate

Click throughs refer to how many recipients are clicking the links in your email. The higher your click-through rate is, the more enticing your content was to your recipients. A poor click-through rate means that you’re not connecting with your readers. A/B tests, which help find new ways to get more clicks in your emails, also make use of CTR’s.

Unique Opens

Unique opens refers to how many people open your emails. If you don’t have many unique opens, it means that your subject lines need work — or you may not be timing your emails properly and they’re getting buried in the inboxes of your recipients so that they don’t see them.Email Marketing Metrics 2

Forward Rate

Forward rates weigh the percentages of recipients who share your posts. A high forward rate is a good sign that you’re doing something right. It means you’re providing content that recipients believe is helpful and informative. As a result they then forward it to friends, family members, or coworkers.

Bounce Rate 

The bounce rate measures how many subscriber email addresses didn’t receive your email. A soft bounce means that the email address is valid; but the inbox was full or the server was down. A hard bounce means that the email wasn’t valid. To avoid a high bounce rate, periodically update your email list and remove old addresses.

Similar Article:Exploring The Differences Between B2C and B2B Email Marketing

Deliverability Rate

The deliverability rate refers to the percentage of emails that reach your recipients’ inboxes.  Factors that may prevent your emails from being sent include email addresses that don’t exist or no longer exist or emails that are spam.

Click-through-rates only refers to how many times your links were clicked. However, Clicks per link is a more detailed metric. It shows which links get more clicks on your campaign; not counting how many times each recipient has clicked on the link .

Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate, will assess how many people click on the link and then complete a specific action. A low conversion rate means that your content isn’t connecting or your calls-to-action aren’t effective. Similarly, conversion rates give unique insight into your return investment. When you know how much you have spent, and how many subscribers have converted, it easier to determine whether or not the money you put in has paid off.

Unsubscribes

The higher your unsubscribe rate is, the more likely it is that there’s something wrong with your email campaign. There are two potential causes for this — you may be sending out too many emails to the point where your recipients are unsubscribing because you’re filling up their inbox or the content of your emails isn’t relevant to your recipients.

Once you’ve launched your email campaign, it’s important that you track how it does. You can make adjustments to your email marketing efforts throughout the campaign, after all. If things aren’t working, you won’t want to just let it fail — you’ll want to right the ship. To track how your campaign is going, be sure to keep these email marketing metrics in mind.

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5 mobile marketing techniques to build your ecommerce brand

5 Mobile Marketing Techniques To Build Your Ecommerce Brand

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It should come as no surprise that a strong mobile presence is indispensable in today’s market. After all, the average user spends most of their Internet time on their smartphone as opposed to their desktop.

Whether your company is just starting up or has reached the point of maintaining a well-established customer base, it’s important to stay up to date with the most current marketing trends and techniques for your ecommerce business. Structuring and launching an ecommerce website is a milestone achievement for your brand. Therefore, it’s crucial to invest in effective mobile marketing techniques, and here are five tips on how to do so:

1. Website Design

A website is your most important marketing and communication tool, as it connects you with your user. In a world so dominated by mobile devices, most brands cannot afford to miss the mark with a website that is NOT optimized for users on smartphones, tablets, or whatever their device of choice may be. If you’re an ecommerce brand, you want to make sure that your website is ready for their devices.

Some brands quickly jump to a mobile app when it’s time to make “mobile decisions”. However, it’s not always the most efficient choice for each and every brand. Ultimately, they should be developed once you already have a mobile-friendly website as well. 9 times out of 10, an app should not be created in place of a mobile-friendly site, but instead in addition to it. Apps can be costly endeavors, and to be successful they must offer some sort of value that the mobile site doesn’t, otherwise there is no real incentive for the user to download the app and use it on a regular basis.

Particularly with ecommerce brands, a responsive design is incredibly important. The size of a mobile screen is significantly smaller than that of a desktop. As a result, the website should appear a bit differently. However, you want to ensure that your customers do not face any issues. This can range from viewing product images, scrolling through pages, clicking on buttons, finding a certain product, or typing in billing information into form fields. Websites that aren’t responsive in their design typically contain flaws with these key elements. These can act as a major deterrence in the mobile user completing the purchase. If you’re implementing mobile marketing techniques to drive mobile traffic, you want to make sure your website is ready to perform. Preferably before you begin marketing to your mobile users and driving traffic to your website.

2. Referral Marketing

We are all social creatures, and we love sharing our experiences with our families and friends. If we have a good experience, we’ll want everyone to know about it. It is for that reason that referral marketing (also known as word-of-mouth marketing) is one of the most powerful, yet underrated ecommerce mobile marketing techniques available. Referral marketing  is when you deliberately influence the process of word-of-mouth. Whether it is encouraging more sharing, or positioning the sharing to be positive. Referral marketing is a secret weapon that many ecommerce companies embrace. It benefits advertisers too-we help each other avoid bad experiences, and encourage each other to support places that provide an excellent experience.

The fastest and easiest way to kick-start  referral marketing is to set up a referral program. If you have the resources, you can hire a developer to custom design a referral program for your store. This allows you to have full control over your referral program, but the work may be tedious and resource-intensive. An alternative is to install a referral program app. A referral app allows you to get started quickly, as everything is (almost) done-for-you. However, if you do not promote your referral program, nobody will know of it. So do all you can to promote it, and let people know about it.  Share it on your social media and send it on your email list. Invite all of your past customers to join your referral program. You will be sure to notice results.

3. Mobile Friendly Email MarketingMobile Marketing Techniques 3

Most ecommerce customers check their inbox from their smartphone, not from a desktop. Emails that get opened on mobile devices yet aren’t optimized for those devices typically get sent to trash. It’s a waste of time and budget to produce emails that are too difficult to read on mobile, or do not render correctly on mobile devices.

To ensure that your efforts are not wasted, it is worth checking to make sure your email marketing is mobile-friendly. Use a responsive design for all of your emails so that the content renders well regardless of device. This is one of many options that can help create an optimal experience for your email recipients. As a result they can actually see your perceived value and subsequently visit your mobile-friendly site after receiving the message.

Some visual tips to include are fonts that are easy-to-read, stick to one column of text, use compelling imagery, and always include clickable icons and calls-to-action (CTAs). Think about subject line, and how character count is more limited on mobile inboxes than desktop. Best of all, these guidelines help offer a greater experience on mobile devices, and are beneficial to those on desktop.

Similar Article: How To Outshine Your Competition With Effective Ecommrce Marketing

4. Proper Mobile Friendly Content Marketing

Mobile optimization refers to the elements found on your site infrastructure. As such, consuming content on mobile devices is different than on desktop. Proper content marketing can attract more positive attention, interaction, and sustainable conversions in a way no other marketing method can. That’s because the Internet is content. By creating and promoting original content you are ensuring that your audience is receiving new information that matters to them on a continual basis.

Brainstorm with your team to imagine a list of the different types of content you wish to create. This can be blog posts, videos, and newsletters. Also, make sure you are utilizing your marketing budget by consulting with experts, outsourcing work when necessary. Invest in high-quality software, subscriptions, employees, and training for your team.

You will also find that if you work with the right people, many of the things you’ve paid for in the past can be done internally. Create diversity within your team and listen to everyone’s ideas. It is also a good idea to create content based on Pareto’s 80/20 rule, which means that your promotions should comprise of 80% informational content, and 20% promotional content. All of the content you publish should be relevant, interesting, and unique.

5. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is one of the most powerful mobile marketing techniques available. It allows you to communicate with your industry, customers, and market in a personal way. You can utilize social media to generate engagement and interaction, boost traffic to your website, and develop a larger base of customers.

Utilizing different social media platforms for different purposes also creates a rich presence for your company that diversifies your abilities and efforts. This will ultimately help you cater to your customers’ needs in a way that grows your business over time.

Maintaining a solid tone and personality of your company through social media is very important because consistency is what will create trust within your audience. In order to develop and maintain brand recognition and authority, make sure your outreach efforts are unified; by ensuring your team is on the same page with your company’s communication style.

 A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES