marketing trends

What’s Trending In Marketing For July 2018

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This week in inbound marketing we look at the new AdWords tools Google introduced that will transform how YouTube advertisers use the platform. Read more on the changes and trends happening in marketing today.

Noteworthy Marketing News

Instagram’s New Shopping Bag Icon Adds E-Commerce Element To Advertisers’ Stories

With hundreds of millions of users watching Instagram Stories daily, it would be crazy for brands not to take advantage of this popular platform. Luckily, Instagram has made it easier for brands to do so by recently introducing its new shopping bag icon that will appear on select advertiser’s Instagram Stories according to a recent write up on Marketing Land. Tapping the icon will allows users to view more details like images and pricing information on products from their favorite brands, transforming the way customers engage with brands.

Learn more about advertising approaches on 4 social media platforms

Advertisers Will Soon Have AdWords Tools To Test & Measure Creative Elements Of YouTube Video Ads

Google recently introduced new AdWords tools for YouTube advertisers that measure and test creative elements in their video ads. The YouTube creative suite will feature four new tool sets—Video Creative Analytics, YouTube Director Mix, Video Experiments, and Video Ad Sequencing. A recent post on Marketing Land goes into detail about how these tools will allow advertisers to do a variety of things that will transform their experience using AdWords. Advertisers will also be able to analyze and keep track of how the creative elements they choose to implement influence campaign performance.

Instagram Moves On YouTube With IGTV Launch, Opening Platform To Hour-Long Videos

According to an article by Amy Gesenhues on Marketing Land, Instagram is now making way for long-form video by introducing its new IGTV platform and IGTV standalone app. Both platforms will allow users to upload hour-long videos. Instagram has reached a remarkable 1 billion users and with more of them watching videos compared to other types of content, CEO Kevin Systrom believed it was time to open up a platform where videos are the focus. As for advertisers, Systrom recognized that the new platform would be a great place to offer more affordable advertising options in light of Facebook’s rising ad costs.

Improving Your Marketing Program

What Are The Benefits Of Using HubSpot Marketing Automation Tools?

If you want your long-term inbound marketing strategy to be effective, you must be able to tackle various tactics that range from creating high-quality content for your site to engaging with followers on your social media—managing all these task often requires a balancing act. Our own Nicole Wagner published an article that explains how HubSpot marketing automation tools can simplify your workload.

Tips To Consider When Developing Strong Email Subject Lines

Having an attractive email subject line can make all the difference when it comes to increasing your open email rate and overall exposure with your target audience. Debbie Szwast offers insightful tips on how to develop strong email subject lines that you’ll want to keep in mind the next time you send an email.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Facebook’s Removing Third-Party Targeting Data: What Marketers Need To Know

In a recent post about Facebook published on Marketing Land, Ginny Marvin highlights the changes Facebook is making to combat the scrutiny and regulatory pressure its facing, and informs marketers on how to navigate these changes. Facebook announced that they are removing access to third-party data brokers within their advertising system, both pubic and private. Several factors such as the GDRP that aims to protect people by ensuring they have control over their personal data have sparked the drastic changes. The phasing out of third-party data brokers will start in the EU.

The Future Of TV Advertising In Today’s Digital World

Despite what some critics might say about advertising being ineffective on TV, in a blog post published in MarTech, Chuck Moran explains why TV is still an important part of the media ecosystem and how it has evolved to become advanced TV. Advanced TV combines old-style linear TV with streaming video provided through OTT platforms or connected TVs. This transformed version of TV changes the way marketers target their audience as they can now optimize their reach by creating campaigns that sync with local events, receive real-time analytics of viewing habits, and determine which ads to deliver based on first-party data.

Tokenized Loyalty Platform Sweet Offers Sugar Tokens To Energize Fans

Life is sweeter with… sugar tokens? According to a recent post on MarTech, a startup called Sweet has become the first tokenized loyalty platform of its kind to hit the market. The company gives brands the opportunity to promote themselves by rewarding the fans that engage with their brand online with reward tokens called ‘Sugar.’ Fans can redeem their sugar tokens for amazing experiences and rewards in the Sweet Marketplace.

Download Our White Paper Guide To Learn How To Perfect Buyer Personas For Your Business

B2B Email Marketing

Email Design Trends of 2018

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Getting your leads to open your emails can be quite challenging as it is, which means that when they do open your emails, you’ll want to make sure that you make a good impression. This is where the visual design of your email comes in. High-quality email designs will leave a strong first impression, whereas poorly designed emails will reflect badly on your brand. If you can’t put the effort into crafting a nice looking email, your leads may assume that the effort you put into your products or services may be lacking as well.

Keeping that in mind, the following are a number of email design trends that you should consider implementing this year to help you make a better impression on your leads:

Interactive Emails

When it comes to standard email designs, interactivity is generally limited to scrolling up and down. However, more brands are beginning to focus on creating emails that are more interactive. Doing so helps to draw the attention of your readers to different elements of your email.

For example, image carousels or icons allow readers to click on different points or images to bring them to the forefront, which is more engaging than simply scrolling through a list of bullets. Even something as simple as allowing the reader to hover over an image to reveal product details can help increase engagement with your email content.

 

The Use Of Animation

Movement helps prevent email content from becoming too static, which can sometimes be a bit boring. To bring movement to their email content, many brands are using animated GIFs. Just be careful about their size since they can slow down the loading time a bit — especially on mobile devices.

The Use Of Infographics

If you need to convey a lot of information to your readers, then infographics are an excellent way to do so. Infographics are visually effective because they allow you to carefully organize your information in a manner that is easily digestible. Infographics are also much more pleasant to look at visually speaking than having to read through a list or table full of statistics.

An Emphasis On Color Use

Many brands use color in their emails, but don’t give a lot of thought into how they use it. Bold color choices can help you bring attention to different components of your email, whether it’s highlighting a product or emphasizing your call-to-action. The careful selection of color can also help you tie the entire aesthetic of your email together into a more cohesive design.

Click Here for More Email Marketing Tips.

The Use Of Monochrome

Monochrome email designs make use of greyscale in order to create a more sophisticated and elegant look. However, don’t be mistaken into thinking monochrome just means black and white. Black and white email designs look boring, whereas monochrome requires the careful consideration of various shades of gray along with black and white to create high contrast visual elements.

Minimalistic Designs

You don’t want an email design that’s too busy and cluttered or else it will overwhelm the reader. A more minimalistic design will not only make it easy for readers to scan your content, it creates a more elegant appearance when pulled off properly. Minimalistic designs often make strategic use of negative space to bring attention to headlines or images. It also tends to create a more professional impression of a brand.

Keeping up with the latest email design trends is a good way to ensure that your email designs don’t get stale. These are some of the current email design trends that you should consider adopting for your email marketing campaign this year.

social media marketing

4 Generation Z Marketing Strategies to Begin Using

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Marketing strategies have been focusing on millennial wants, needs and habits for years now — and for good reason. Millennials recently overtook baby boomers as the biggest generation. However, it won’t be long until the next generation — generation Z — comes to the forefront. As such, it’s important that you begin identifying effective generation Z marketing strategies that will help you continue to reach your target audience well into the future. The following are four generation Z marketing strategies you should begin implementing now:

1. Emphasize Mobile Marketing

Generation Z is the first generation to have grown up during the smartphone era. Most of them use the smartphone more than any other device. At this point, making sure all of your content is mobile-friendly should be a given. However, you should also begin designing marketing campaigns that specifically revolve around mobile marketing, such as through the use of mobile apps and mobile-based social platforms, such as Instagram.

2. Be Active On Social Media

Like smartphones, few members of generation Z will know what it was like before the age of social media. They use social media more than anything else in order to learn about brands and the products or services that they offer. In fact, more than 51 percent of Generation Z use social networks when researching brands and products, compared to 45 percent of millennials.

However, while you’ll still be able to find Generation Z on social networks like Facebook, they tend to prefer networks that their parents aren’t on, such as Snapchat, and often use more niche platforms as well. They’re also a bit more careful in how they engage having learned from the previous generation’s social media mishaps.

trends in social media

3. Create Video Content

Generation Z grew up on streaming video. They consume content on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Vimeo and more on a daily basis, which means that short-form video content is one of the best ways to reach them. Video content is also no longer as expensive to produce as it once was. As you adjust your content marketing strategy, you should begin emphasizing video content if you plan to attract audience members from generation Z.

Read More: How First Person Video Advertising Makes an Impact?

4. Personalize Your Interactions

Generation Z has spent a large part of their lives online, which means that the usual marketing gimmicks aren’t going to phase them. They are only going to engage with brands that they believe to be authentic. The best way to show authenticity and to stand out from the crowd is to personalize your interactions. This can be done by treating them like individuals instead of marketing stats, communicating directly with them via social media, communicating your message quickly and clearly, and providing helpful and informative content that’s also entertaining and personable.

Not only are these effective generation Z marketing strategies, they’re strong long-term strategies in general that you should begin implementing now. By using these generation Z marketing strategies, you will help position your brand for success even once generation Z eventually takes over as your largest audience.

Integrating Social Media & SEO Efforts For Enhanced Search Engine Results

Digital Marketing Strategies For Higher Education

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As a college or university, you have a lot to offer to your students in terms of obtaining a higher education that can help them pursue their dreams of a career. However, you’re not the only school around, which means you’ll need to implement effective marketing strategies for higher education in order to attract prospective students and to convince them to enroll. The following are a few digital marketing strategies for higher education that are proven to be effective if leveraged properly:

Using PPC advertising

PPC (pay-per-click) ads are an excellent way to reach the students in your target audience and to generate high-quality leads. Prospective students will perform a significant amount of searches when trying to find higher education options, which means that PPC ads are a great way to put your school in a position to be found. They’re also very cost-efficient since you are only paying for the clicks that your ad gets.

When using PPC ads, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind. For example, you need to know who your audience is and what they are searching for in order to choose the right keywords and create effective ad copy. You will also need to take great care in deciding where to place your ads to best reach your audience.

Optimizing your site for SEO

To improve your page rankings and increase exposure to potential students, you’ll need to make sure that your website is properly optimized for SEO (search engine optimization). This includes paying attention to both on-page and technical SEO, using high-quality, relevant keywords, and earning high-quality external links. All of these elements are important in bringing in more organic traffic. Building up your external links will also help you bring in a bigger audience from other relevant websites and will go a long way towards expanding brand awareness and building a positive brand reputation for your school.

Check out our article: 7 Reasons Why Digital Marketing for Manufacturers is Critical to Success

Creating high-value content

Prospective students will do a substantial amount of research before making a decision. Not only do most students have to pay for a higher education, it requires them to commit a significant amount of their time to it as well. They’ll want to make sure they make the right choice, w

hich is why you will want to provide them with plenty of content on your site that is relevant and helpful to their interests.

Not only can good content help with your SEO efforts (thereby drawing in more organic traffic), it can help establish your school as an authority, which will make your programs more attractive to potential students.

Establish a regular social media presence

A regular social media presence will put you in a position to communicate directly with prospective students, allowing you to address questions and concerns, provide valuable information, and develop relationships with students, thereby building trust.

These are just a few of the marketing strategies for higher education that can help give your school an advantage in attracting prospective students for years to come.

30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips

marketing senior living

4 Tips for Marketing Senior Living Communities

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Marketing senior living communities can be a real challenge. You’re providing services for seniors; however, there are many people that are involved with the decision-making process. This means that one of the biggest challenges that you face is not only setting yourself apart from other senior living communities but fulfilling the needs of everyone in your audience. This is why how you market senior living communities is so important. Keeping this in mind, the following are a few tips for successfully marketing senior living communities:

1. Know Who Your Audience Is

Identifying your audience will help you target them more effectively when marketing senior living communities. However, since there are several types of people you’ll want to target, marketing a senior living can be tricky. Like previously mentioned, a lot of different people have a say when it comes to a senior moving into a senior living community, from the senior’s adult children to the medical professionals they work with.

Knowing who your audience is will be vital to your marketing efforts, especially when it comes to creating content. You have to write content for the person who is reading it, after all. If you attempt to create content that appeals to everyone, odds are it will end up appealing to no one. To avoid this, you’ll want to create a buyer persona. Creating buyer personas will allow you to more effectively target the needs of your audience when marketing senior living communities.

Buyer personas represent your ideal customers and provide insight that you can use to target them. For example, a standard buyer persona will include a person’s age range, their income levels, their goals, their needs, their challenges, their preferred method of communication, and more. This information can be attained from existing customers, from online surveys and from social media. Because different types of people have a say in the decision-making process, you’ll want to create several buyer personas.

2. Market Your Staff marketing senior living

While you’ll want to market the services, amenities and activities that your community offers, one of the most important elements of a senior living community is the staff. Families who are looking to move their loved ones into a senior living community will want to make sure that the staff is not only competent but that they will build meaningful relationships with the residents.

Because of this, you’ll want to make sure that you highlight your staff as friendly and caring. You should have a page on your site introducing visitors to your staff. Along with that, you should also create content highlighting their interactions with current residents. Video content is a great way to achieve this since it will help showcase their personalities and their connection to residents.

Check out our article: 5 Digital Marketing Tactics For Senior Living Communities

3. Promote Activity

One of the main things that both seniors and decision-makers care about is that residents will be able to live a fulfilling life once they’ve transitioned into a senior living community. Seniors want to maintain as much independence as possible, which means that they want to be able to live an active and social life.

You’ll want to position your senior living community as a place where this is possible. You can do this by highlighting and promoting different events and activities that your senior residents participate in. This can be done by writing blog posts about some of the daily or weekly activities that are available, posting pictures and videos of residents participating in various activities, or promoting upcoming events using social media.

4. Use Your Website As A Sales Tool

You should treat your website as a sales tool to help promote your community as a service. Publishing high-quality content that’s relevant to your target audience can help bring in traffic and will allow decision-makers (who are your customers) to educate themselves via the content you have provided. These are your leads. You’ll want to use your website to capture your leads and nurture them through the buyer’s journey.

5. Spread The Word Using Social Media

A social media presence can be incredibly helpful for a number of reasons. First of all, you’ll put your community in a position to directly address concerns and answer questions that decision-makers may have about your community. This can go a long way in building relationships and trust. Secondly, it allows you to keep family members up to date with any news or events concerning your community. This shows your audience that you care about your community and are regularly engaged in improving the quality of life of your residents. Using social media in such a manner can help to build your reputation and spread awareness as a result.

Marketing senior living communities is no easy task, but these tips will give you a good foundation on how to reach your target audience and to position your senior living community as a safe, comfortable and friendly place that will meet the needs of your residents and of those involved in the decision making process.

lead generation tips

What’s Trending in Marketing for June 2018

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Staying up-to-date on marketing trends is a great way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are in tune with what’s going on in today’s marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day.

The following articles come from popular marketing blogs and highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News and Trends

Instagram’s New Native Payment Feature For Users

According to an article by Josh Constine on TechCrunch, Instagram’s new native payment feature will allow individuals to buy services or book appointments without having to leave the application. Users can now register their credit or debit card as part of their profile and will not be forced to go to a separate website or re-enter their payment information when purchasing a service. For businesses, this exciting feature will lead to higher conversion rates, as people will feel less inclined to quit in the middle of the checkout process and will make Instagram an even more powerful player in commerce. The potential of this feature has also enticed businesses to want to increase spending on advertising their services on Instagram.

Facebook’s Expansion of Reporting Options For Advertisers

Facebook’s Ads Reporting platform will be updated over June and the new changes will allow advertisers to customize their reports to their liking according to a recent write up on Marketing Land. The platform will also make things a lot easier for advertisers as it will include a side panel so they can edit ads on the same screen as the campaign page without having to switch back and forth between tables. Along with the updated platform, a new “creative reporting” metric will also be introduced and will provide users with useful information on which of the implemented creative ad elements are performing best.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Improve Your Marketing Strategy By Asking These 4 Questions

What separates a successful business from the rest? For Dan Gartlan, it’s the constant improvement and updating of marketing strategy. Updating your business’s strategy will demonstrate to consumers and competitors that you are in tune with the changes in your competitor’s messaging, methods of communication, consumer concerns, and the overall marketplace. In this article, Gartlan challenges you to reevaluate aspects of your business in relation to your marketing strategy by asking four key questions.

6 Email Marketing Tips

Email marketing continues to be a popular form of marketing and given the abundance of emails people receive daily, it’s important to make sure that your email looks good and stands out. Our own Nicole Wagner published a blog posts that offers tips on how to make the best out of your email marketing.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Amazon, Homebuilders Unveil Smart Home ‘Amazon Experience Center’ in California

A new partnership between Amazon and Lennar, one of the largest homebuilders in the U.S., plans to shake things up with their efforts to create pre-wired, voice-activated smart homes that will change the future for homebuyers. A recent article on Security Info Watch explores how Lennar plans to integrate Amazon’s Alexa voice-assistant program into the design of the future homes they are going to construct. They have already constructed several models of these smart homes across the nation so people can experience what it would be like to live in one. Amazon and Lennar are convinced that this partnership and new creation will allow people to have greater control over their lives and could potentially make doing chores a thing of the past.

Influencer Marketing for B2B Brands in 2018

While you might believe that influencer marketing is solely for B2C brands, Michael Brito asks you to think again. Influencer marketing has proven to be efficient in increasing ROI and reaching audiences. According to Brito, the principles of influencer marketing can be also be applied to B2B markets and the implementation of it for these brands can be explained using the 1:9:90 model of influence, which has been used in the past to find, segment, and activate groups of people. By applying this model and understanding the differences between each group, you can then determine the best way to engage with influencers and encourage them to talk about your company.

social media marketing

Inbound Marketing Strategies

Video Marketing Trends for 2018

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Over the past few years, video has become essential to any successful content marketing strategy, which is why it’s important to pay attention to video marketing trends in 2018. The reasoning behind video’s importance? Video is easier for people to consume and to share than other types of content. Almost every device has HD video capabilities, including smartphones. In fact, mobile consumption of video content is as high as it’s ever been. Keeping this in mind, the following are a few video marketing trends to pay attention to this year:

Video content will be produced more regularly

It wasn’t that long ago that businesses would have to invest heavily in creating quality video content. Because of how expensive this was, few businesses could afford to create more than a few videos a year. Due to advances in technology, producing video has never been easier — or cheaper. Expect to see more businesses creating video content on a much more regular basis.

Video content will become less promotional

video tutorials

Video content used to be solely promotional. Businesses would only invest in video content if it were a commercial of some sort. However, businesses are now starting to leverage video content as a way to engage their customers and to offer something of value that will build brand trust. As a result, more video content will focus on demonstrations and tutorials rather than product or service promotions. This means that video will play a more important part in nurturing leads through the buyer cycle.

What are 3 videos every B2B website should have?

Small businesses will be producing videos 

Because of how affordable it is to produce video content, smaller businesses are likely to begin producing their own videos as well. They are realizing that they have a much better chance of increasing brand awareness via video as a result of the fact that 92 percent of mobile users that watch videos will share video content with others.

Social media channels will become more video-oriented

Video content is the most viewed type of content on Facebook, and YouTube has consistently been one of the top social media platforms. However, more and more social channels are integrating video into their platforms as well, including Pinterest, Instagram and even Quora. Facebook has even introduced their Facebook Watch feature to capitalize on their users’ interest in video content. These platforms understand that video is the future, which is why they are racing to improve their ability to host and share video content.

Live streaming video will become even more popular

Live streaming is quickly taking off as a great way to provide your audience with unique content that they can engage with. All that’s needed to stream live video content is a smartphone and an Internet connection. With this, you’ll be able to live stream anything via social channels such as Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. Additionally, live streaming offers a sense of exclusivity since once it’s over, it’s over. This makes advertising certain events, whether you’re live streaming a conference or a show, extremely effective since it appeals to audiences’ sense of FOMO (fear of missing out).

Not only has it become easier for consumers to view video content, it’s become easier for businesses to produce it. This is the reason why video marketing is here to stay. These are some of the video marketing trends in 2018 that you may want to consider implementing into your inbound marketing strategy.

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What’s Trending in Marketing

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Keeping up with what’s trending in marketing is an important way to ensure that your marketing efforts remain up to date. Not to mention that they can provide insight into how you can adjust your marketing strategies in order to improve your results. The only problem is that keeping up with what’s trending in marketing can be quite a challenge seeing as how the online marketing landscape seems to always be shifting.

The following are a collection of articles that we have curated from some of the most notable marketing blogs on the web highlighting recent marketing trends that we think you should be aware of:

1. Noteworthy Marketing News and Trends

The power of podcasting: How to boost your reputation and search engine rankings

Podcasts have exploded in popularity over the past five years, taking on the position that radio once had in our lives. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of opportunity for marketing using podcasts as a result. A recent article about podcasts published on Search Engine Land recommends establishing yourself as an authority within your field through the creation of webinars, video content, a social media presence and more. This helps build credibility so that you’ll have a better chance at being invited onto a podcast. Once you’ve built a name for yourself, you’ll want to pitch podcast ideas that can benefit your SEO efforts to podcast hosts that are relevant to your business.

YouTube’s new TrueView for Reach option makes bumper assets skippable

According to an article by Ginny Marvin on Marketing Land, YouTube recently introduced a skippable option for short-form ads that are called TrueView for Reach, which can be skipped after five seconds; however, advertisers only pay if the viewers watch 30 seconds, the viewer interacts with the ad or the video ends. YouTube has implemented this new option in response to requests for ways to optimize TruView buys based on the different campaign objectives that customers have. One of the beta testers of the TrueView for Reach option, Samsung, revealed that it reached over 50 percent more people at half the CPM (cost per thousand) using the new feature.

Google Switches to Infinite Scrolling Mobile Search Results

Google has switched from having to click from page to page on their mobile SERP (search engine results page) to being able to scroll down infinitely by clicking on a “more results” button. This could potentially change what it means to rank on the first page of SERP according to a recent write up on the new infinite scrolling feature on Search Engine Journal. However, it’s currently in a test phase, which Google will only make permanent based on user feedback.

What other trends are there? Check out these ten ways to use Google Trends to Increase SEO!

2. Growing Your Inbound Marketing

Do You Need to Redesign Your Website?

Your website plays a huge role in your ability to market effectively. If it’s been a while since you updated your website, it may be in need of a redesign. Our own Nicole Wagner did a write up recently sharing some of the signs that a website needs to be redesigned. These signs include poor web rankings, a change in branding, a lackluster conversion rate, an outdated look and a subpar user experience.

Your Company’s Core Values Play a Role in Developing Your Brand Story

Storytelling is one of the most important aspects of marketing. Without it, you’ll have trouble engaging with your audience and connecting with them. We recently published a blog post on developing your brand story detailing how important it is to employ storytelling in order to share what your company’s core values and beliefs are and how that will evoke stronger emotions and build stronger bonds with your audience.

3. Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Pinterest reports 50% gain YoY in SMB advertisers

The Pinterest Propel ad program has been around for a whole year now and it recently reported a 50 percent jump in small and medium-sized business advertisers since it first went live. Pinterest has made a concerted effort to position their platform as an effective tool for advertisers and also revealed that businesses who are using Pinterest Propel are earning three times as many clicks than those who are not — and are even experiencing an average of 15 percent lower cost-per-clicks within the first 90 days.

Snapchat looks to offer new e-commerce options for Discover Publishers

According to a recent post on Marketing Land, Snapchat is currently testing a new e-commerce option on some of its Discover publisher channels. The new feature will allow users to swipe on products within the Discover platform in order to buy them from the Snap Store. Although they are just testing the waters, the company seems to have great ambition for its store’s future potential. Several publishers have revealed that they have tested the new feature and that currently, Snapchat is not taking a revenue share from any of the products being sold so far during the testing stage.

Facebook & Cambridge Analytica: What we know, what they knew & where that leaves us

Facebook has been all over the news as of late due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Considering the fact that many businesses leverage the use of Facebook for their marketing efforts, you’ll want to know where the future of Facebook lies. A recent article on Marketing Land goes into detail about the scandal as well as Mark Zuckerberg’s recent testimony in front of Congress addressing the issue of Facebook’s privacy settings and user consent.

The future of retail is Generation Z-dependent — and martech is the way to reach them

A new generation (Generation Z) is coming of age, and like every generation before them, their buying habits are different. Rohit Gupta explains how important it is for businesses to begin adjusting their marketing efforts to better target this upcoming generation by providing numerous tips. These tips include customizing the purchase journey, connecting through social media, preparing for the use of voice recognition technology, and focusing on convenient shipping options.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

Using a Website Redesign Checklist

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When it comes to redesigning your website, there are a lot of different elements you’ll need to address, which is why you should use a website redesign checklist. The following website redesign checklist will help you gather all of the data you need as well as address the most important aspects of your website’s design:

Analyze your current website

If you’ve committed to investing in a complete website redesign, then you probably know what you want to improve. However, you should use analytics to diagnose your site’s issues so that you know exactly what’s wrong. For example, if you’re visitor conversion rate is lower than you would like, look at data such as bounce rates, page load times, CTA click-throughs and shopping car abandonment rates to pinpoint where your issues lie. Other metrics you’ll want to pay attention to include:

  • SEO rankings for important keywords
  • Total number of sales generated
  • Number of visitors
  • Number of unique visitors
  • Domain authority
  • Number of new lead form submissions.

Establish your goals

If you don’t know what you want your website to accomplish, then you won’t know what direction to take your website redesign in. Without goals, you won’t know what to focus on, nor will you know whether your website redesign is successful once it’s up and running. Make sure that when you set your goals, you can tie them to measurable results. For example, if increasing your brand authority is your main goal, then track metrics such as:

  • The number of unique visitors,
  • Time spent on page
  • Social signals (shares, likes and comments)

Determine what works

Just because your current website might have a few issues doesn’t mean that there aren’t elements that work really well. For example, maybe you’re redesigning your site because you want to update its look; however, your content is actually very effective at drawing in visitors and capturing leads. More specifically, you’ll want to make sure that high ranking pages are kept in place. When auditing your site, take note of what you think is successful as well as what needs work.

Analyze your competitors

In addition to auditing your own website, you should audit the sites of your main competitors. Take note of everything you like and don’t like about their site. Your aim shouldn’t be to just copy what they do but to get an idea of what they are doing so that you can create a superior website experience.

Identify your UVP

Your unique value proposition (UVP) indicates exactly what your business does and what makes your services or products unique. A UVP helps you stand out from the competition. You need to know what your UVP is because it will inform all of the content that you create for your website.

Keep buyer personas in mind

Your website should appeal to your target audience. Your visitors need to be able to connect to your brand’s messaging, after all. To make sure that this happens, all of your content should cater to your buyer persona. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer created using the available data you have from current and past customers, such as:

  • Demographics
  • Past purchases
  • Online behavior
  • Motivations
  • Needs
  • Wants
  • Concerns
  • Personal histories
  • Income

Here are the reasons why buyer personas are so important to a business

Map your buyer’s journey

Every visitor that comes to your website is going to be at one of three stages of the buyer’s journey. The first stage is the awareness stage, in which the buyer is seeking information that helps to define their problems or needs. The second stage is the consideration stage in which the buyer defines their problem and is searching for solutions. The final stage is the decision stage, in which the buyer chooses a solution. Your website needs to cater to visitors at every stage of the buyer’s journey in order to attract their attention, keep their attention and, finally, to convert them.

Set benchmark metrics

The goals you set should be general yet measurable. For example, the goal to increase brand authority is a long-term goal that doesn’t end. Because of this, you should set benchmarks so that you can judge your site’s performance. For example, social signals are a good metric for measuring brand authority. You could set benchmarks for how many shares you want to average per blog post by a certain date. If your metrics meet this benchmark by this date, then you know that your redesign is working and you can set the goal posts even further. If you don’t meet this benchmark, then you may need to make more adjustments.

Optimize your site for SEO

Implementing a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is vital to consistently attract new visitors. Google takes into account a variety of factors, including keywords, link juice and social signals. You’ll need to do keyword research to identify unique keywords relevant to each page. These keywords should be used naturally in your titles, headers, body content, anchor text, alt image tags, HTML tags, meta tags and title tags. External links are earned by promoting and linking to your website’s content via social media, submitting your website information to local directories and by writing guest blogs. Social signals are earned by getting visitors to engage with your content, such as by liking, sharing or commenting on it.

Optimize your site for mobile use 

Many people use their smartphones and tablets to browse the Internet. This means that your website will need to load and display properly no matter how small the screen size is. The easiest way to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly is by using a responsive design. You can check to see if your current site is mobile-friendly by using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Just type in the address for each webpage and it will determine how mobile-friendly it is.

Find opportunities for conversion

Calls-to-action should be used on every page to encourage visitors to convert. Without calls-to-action, visitors won’t know what you want them to do. Not only should you use relevant CTAs on every page, you need to offer something of value to visitors in return for opting-in. Depending on your what your business offers, this could include downloadable eBooks and white papers, email newsletter subscriptions, product discounts, free trials, free consultations and more. Unique landing pages should be crafted for every call-to-action that focus on the visitor’s needs, your UVP and how what you’re offering can benefit them.

Implement a content strategy

Whatever your goals are for your website, their success will depend on your content strategy. You need to provide high-quality content that is relevant to your buyer persona’s needs and concerns and that is informative, helpful and unique. The best way to do this is through a website blog. Additionally, you’ll need to regularly publish new content to keep your audience engaged and to make sure that they return to your site. While writing good content is important, you’ll need to market it as well. An important part of your content strategy is establishing exactly when you publish your content (it should always be on the same day at the same time) and where and how you promote your new content.

Continually improve

Don’t assume that once you’re done with your website redesign that you’re finished. A good website design is one that is always being improved. You should track your metrics and make adjustments to your design whenever needed. If you meet your goals, you should establish new ones. Move your goal posts further so that your website can continue to grow and improve. Additionally, you should always be uploading new content to keep your website fresh, thereby maintaining or improving your search engine rankings.

Want more resources on how to redesign your website? Click here!

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Are Keywords Still Required To Increase SEO Rankings?

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Although the use of keywords no longer has the power to increase SEO rankings the way they once did, they continue to play an important part in online marketing strategies.

SEO has evolved greatly over the years, to the point where it’s almost unrecognizable to what it was just a decade ago. Google has continuously updated its algorithm to make its search results more accurate and relevant, and they’ve cracked down on the abuse of keywords to artificially boost web rankings. These days, Google uses over 200 factors to determine search rankings; however, keywords still play a vital part. The following are three ways that keywords are still important to your SEO rankings:

Identify Relevancy

The use of high-quality keywords can help Google to identify what your content is about so that they can their SERP (search engine results page) more accurate. It’s important to use good keywords, such as long-tail keywords that are backed up by semantic keywords. This helps prevent Google from mistaking your use of keywords for similar keywords in subjects that are not the same.

For example, if you write a blog post about the best apples (as in the fruit) and your keyword is “how to choose the best apple,” Google might mistake this for the company Apple. Visitors who come to your site looking for information on new Apple computers are going to be annoyed and will leave immediately, thereby increasing your bounce rate, which will affect your rankings. The stronger your keywords are in regards to relevancy, the more accurately Google will rank your content.

Match User Intent

Knowing what your target audience is searching for will be very beneficial, not only in building your own keyword list to match their search queries, but to use those keywords in content created to match the user intent. Basically, the use of keywords and content created to match the user intent of the keywords your audience is using will put you in a greater position to fulfill their needs at whatever stage of the buying journey they are at. If they click on your page and it’s exactly what they’re looking for, they’re more likely to stay on your site for a longer period of time and to engage with your content, resulting in higher rankings.

Learn how to drive website conversions during each stage of the buyer’s journey! 

Attract Higher Quality Leads

Overly broad keywords will bring in traffic, but it won’t necessarily be your target audience. Bringing in empty traffic doesn’t do anything for your site if your visitors don’t have interest in your brand. By using stronger keywords that are more specific, you’re more likely to attract visitors that match your buyer persona.

While you might think that doing this could limit your web traffic, this may not be true. More specific keywords are likely going to have less competition than broader keywords, which means you’ll have a much better chance at ranking higher. For example, you’re not going to rank very high for “apple” for obvious reasons, but you’re more likely to increase SEO rankings with a more specific keyword, such as “best tasting apples in Sacramento.”

Keywords aren’t the only thing that you should be focusing on as you attempt to increase SEO rankings, but they still play a very important part in your SEO strategy. In fact, although they may not be as defining a factor in your rankings as they once were, you could argue that they play an even more important part in your inbound marketing campaign as a whole. For more professional advice on how to create an effective SEO campaign, contact us at Stevens & Tate today.

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