Email Marketing Analytics: How to Measure And Report On Key Metrics
The importance of email marketing has been discussed countless times as part of a good marketing strategy. We could even talk about how to optimize emails and improve them or the common mistakes to avoid. Nonetheless, does any of that truly matter if we don’t know if they are generating any valuable results? Are the email campaigns working as we hoped they would? How can we measure whether the email campaigns are helping in achieving our marketing goals?
While each business has different needs and goals, there are some basic points that almost every business should be tracking with their email campaigns to measure success. Read on to learn more about the metrics you should consider with emails.
Why You Need Social Media in Your Marketing Strategy
5 Inexpensive Marketing Ideas For Small Businesses
Small businesses can build effective marketing strategies with inexpensive marketing ideas and tactics that build brand awareness and achieve marketing objectives. Marketing is possible on a small budget or, in fact, no budget as you can adopt marketing strategies and ideas that will reach and engage your target audience.
Marketing is a great way to improve your bottom line, increase sales, and introduce new customers to your business. Every small business can implement marketing, and with the right strategies and marketing plan, your business can expose its brand identity and build stable relationships. Ensure you are following the proper steps to jump-start your marketing and exceed your expectations by commencing some of the following inexpensive marketing ideas for your small business.
1. Social Media Video Content
As we live in a highly digital-savvy world, all businesses should have active social media accounts. Social media has the power to develop meaningful relationships and attract new customers with engaging regular content, and best of all, it’s free. Social media, in particular, video content, is an inexpensive marketing idea to connect and reach a vast majority of users quickly.
By using video content, your small business can catch the attention of your target audience with creative and exciting topics that can be informative. Your business can use gifs or short ‘how to’ and demonstration videos to educate the audience as to why they should purchase your product/service.
2. Hashtag & Tag On Social Media
Another marketing idea that embraces the digital age and is completely free is to optimize your social media posts and content with hashtags and tags. Your small business can tag particular followers, companies, partners, and even employees on social media to immediately increase the post reach and attract attention. By tagging other companies and influencers affiliated with your brand, you can enhance brand awareness and reach a larger audience.
Additionally, you can incorporate hashtags in your captions to reach accounts that follow a specific hashtag. Ensure that you use relevant hashtags to your business and products/services to target your desired audience and reach stakeholders interested in your industry.
3. Build LinkedIn Connections
Although LinkedIn may be less exciting than platforms such as Instagram or TikTok, it is an essential tool to use in your marketing strategy and to reach your business objectives. LinkedIn allows you to form strong connections with potential customers and network within your industry.
LinkedIn ensures your brand can be recognized by other professionals in your field and boost sales through connections and positive word of mouth. LinkedIn additionally provides you with the ability to form an alliance with other professionals and help your small business build creditability. It’s imperative to interact with professionals in your industry and, importantly your customers on LinkedIn. You can do this by posting regularly or through direct messages about your workplace, services/products, company news, and updates.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great inexpensive idea that markets directly to existing customers and can improve your bottom line. Your customers are aware of your brand, have purchased your products/services, and therefore you have the opportunity to turn them into repeat customers. Email marketing is used to send a direct message to customers and is one of the most reliable ways to achieve a strong return on your marketing investment.
Reaching out to existing clients can streamline sales while creating a strong brand connection with customers. They can keep up to date on company news, gain access to exclusive deals, and view your business benefits. Each email marketing campaign allows your small business to maintain a strong relationship and communication with customers while enhancing website trafic. Often customers enjoy maintaining a strong brand connection, and effective email marketing can help you achieve this.
5. Create Blog Content to Boost SEO
It’s vital that you promote your small business in a way that drives traffic to your website and generates leads. This can be done through blog posts on your website and SEO. Your small business should create a blog page on your website if you already have one or update your existing one with regular blog posts each week. Blogs posts are the ultimate marketing tactic that enables your business to write about your product/service insights and benefits, industry news, company updates, client case studies and your workplace. It’s critical to remember that blog content should be engaging, creative, and diverse with specific hyperlinks and subheadings to hook the readers and effectively reach your desired audienc.
These five inexpensive marketing strategies when performed consistently will help your small business boost sales, increase brand awareness and achieve marketing and business objectives. You can immediately develop a strong brand identity by utilizing social media and the other marketing ideas listed above while connecting with customers and encouraging two-way communication.
If your small business requires a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes more inexpensive marketing ideas and an in-depth analysis of your brand and competitors, contact the team at Robotic Marketer today to learn more.
Image: Shutterstock 1157182405
How To Leverage SEO To Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy
Are you looking to improve the competitiveness of your brand online? Then leveraging SEO through content marketing may be the answer.
Today, we spend the majority of our time online – using it practically for everything – from searching for our favorite brands to collecting reviews for our next purchase. There’s nothing that Google can’t answer. Such is the power of a search engine.
Research reveals that content marketing gets 3X more leads than paid search advertising. So, as a company existing on the world wide web, the success of your performance digitally is determined by the content you develop and how searchable it is to your target audience.
However, before we discuss techniques. Let’s first gain some basic understanding of the key topics discussed in this blog:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing your site visibility for easy search and increased attention amongst your target audience. Success here entails the increase in your website’s ranking on search engines like Google.
While there are a variety of factors that contribute to SEO, content marketing is probably the tried and tested tactic employed to drive optimization.
Content Marketing
Useful content should be at the core of your marketing – making it one of the most important factors in your marketing strategy. It’s the creation of marketing materials that attract and retain your target audience.
Content creates value to a brand in the form of imagery, videos, and vocabulary and allows customers to understand, be educated and entertained with a brand, service or product.
Now, let’s look at techniques that can leverage SEO to drive your content marketing efforts:
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Write down the goals you want to achieve:
This will set a clear path on what you want to achieve, then you can determine how. Ensure that your content marketing and SEO goals align with your marketing strategy to guarantee consistency.
A great principle to follow is the SMART acronym:
S- Specific: Be specific and not general, adhering to your overall marketing objectives and use specific wording.
M-Measurable: Ensure you can measure the successes or failures of these goals for example tracking the popularity of keywords you implement on your website.
A-Attainable: Can you meet these goals? Are they realistic?
R- Relevant: Do these goals meet the specific needs of your brand and target audience?
T- Timely: Set a realistic timeframe to meet these goals and ensure it’s realistic, brands don’t start Christmas campaigns in August for a reason.
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Research, research, research!
This step is key to determining how you can successfully reach your SMART goals. During this step, you want to find keywords that are relevant to your brand and target audience.
Keywords are the heart of SEO and will determine what your audience is looking for in search engines. You can then leverage them in your SEO strategy to get a higher rank.
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Identify top-performing content
So now you’ve determined your goals and you know the keywords to implement, what’s next? Take a look at your analytics and determine what type of content works well for your brand.
By identifying these strengths, you can harness them to create shareable content. Understand your impressions, clicks, ads results, social media feedback and time users spend on a page to see where your strengths and weaknesses currently lie.
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Leverage your content
Now, it’s time to start planning your content. This is an important factor as you want to ensure you are aligning content with SEO. Start by creating content calendars that include your keywords and where you want to implement them.
Suggested places to leverage your content for improved optimization:
- Social media- Create a strong online presence and engage with customers and prospects. Since over 45% of the population globally use social media, this is a good place to start!
- Blogs– Blogging is a great source to organically generate more leads and achieve your SEO goals. Sites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages meaning it’s easier to rank on search engines.
- Metadata- Incorporate your keywords into meta tags, meta descriptions, tags and categories on your website to leverage your SEO.
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Track your results
Once you have actioned your plan and the wheels are set in motion, regularly monitor your progress to understand the successes and failures. Here you can alter any factors that aren’t working out and use stronger tactics to further your success.
If you want to kick all your content marketing goals, the best way to ensure this is by integrating SEO to further impact and visibility. The two marketing tactics complement each other and together are the ultimate powerhouse for digital success.
5 Reasons Why Webinars Are Great for Your Business
In an era, post-COVID-19 the internet is taking over. Now a necessity to humans, companies are looking for newer ways to establish a long-lasting connection with their consumers over the internet.
Webinars are taking the business world by storm. A way to connect with your consumers, business partners, and employees in real-time, it breaks geographical barriers. According to the State of Webinar’s 2019 report, 79% of the people admit that a brand’s video has influenced them to buy a product. Now that this trend is back on the marketing brand wagon, here’s why your business should be a part of it!
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On a budget? Webinars are the way to go!
Many businesses are looking for cost-effective ways to up their marketing game in the economy today. Webinars are an inexpensive way of connecting with your desired audience. With tools like Youtube, Google Hangouts, Instagram live, Facebook live and so many more, you won’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to book a venue. You’d be surprised how much a stable internet connection, a working computer with a camera and good content can do!
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Build that database:
The beauty of webinars is that it will allow you to build an audience from any part of the world. It’s a great way of expanding your current database or even conducting a survey for your next big product launch. Every new guest has the potential to be an advocate of your business and if the guests on your webinar have their followers, get ready to serve a new pool of audiences for your business.
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Marketing 101: Increases brand awareness
The main aim of every business is to increase brand awareness through engaging marketing tools. Having a webinar will allow audiences to get a visual feel of your brand, resulting in getting your brand in the buying consideration set. You can do it through aggressive marketing or engage your audience in some knowledgeable information about your brand.
81% of marketers claim that videos help them to acquire new leads for their companies, according to Click Meetings, state of webinar report. You can reach your audience, live, and afterward!
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Invite a social media influencer or your business partner across the globe
On-demand webinars are convenient because everyone just needs to have an internet connection to access it. Conducting webinars can allow you to connect with your desired audience at the comfort of their own home.
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Webinar engagement converts to brand engagement!
The beauty of scarcity is one of the greatest assets of the marketing community. If you are conducting a live event and do not plan on leaving any digital footprint of it, and if your audience shows up late, they miss a part of it. If they don’t show up at all, they miss all of it. The power of scarcity forms the foundation of the webinar campaign, leaving a feeling of FOMO.
With webinars, your audience gets a voice, they can provide you with real-time insights, ask questions, and chat. When the conversation starts, it’s a snowball effect for brand engagement.
How To Use Live Broadcasts For Your Company
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
Implementing a live video experience for your brand is an incredible opportunity to bring your audience together. Whether you are filming product demonstrations or a roundtable interview, your audience can use your live broadcast as an opportunity to stay informed on what your business is doing. There are plenty of platforms available to produce your live broadcast, so it’s easier than ever for companies to do this. Below, we have a few pointers for businesses to consider before implementing a live video experience.
Content creation
Live streaming is an opportunity to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. While a professional, polished video is certainly a good look for your branding, live video requires you to be creative on the fly. It’s a raw and off the cuff experience that’s a great showcase for your authenticity. Deciding what you want to talk about is the crucial first step. An easy way to get started on creating your live content is treating your broadcast like a case study. Pick a common pain point in your industry and discuss how your company has navigated situations like this. Whatever topic you choose, it needs to be accessible to current customers and prospects. Effective videos don’t alienate any segments of your audience.
Content promotion
Once you’ve done the hard work of creating your live video content, the next step is making sure that people see it. If you’re broadcasting on social media, the option to share that content is already built into the platform. After you’re done recording, take the time and effort to reshare that video content to grow your audience. Organically, you can share your live broadcast via social posts, your website, or even an email campaign. It’s typically best to announce that you’re going live with the date, time and appropriate links, but it never hurts to share after you’ve gone live.
Engagement
When you’re choosing a platform to broadcast your video, make sure that there are features that allow your audience to be a part of the conversation. Audience engagement is a massive opportunity for companies who choose to use a live broadcast, and your viewers may want to weigh in on the ongoing conversation. Engagement goes both ways, so it’s important to respond to the questions and comments as they come in.
Data collection
The biggest advantage of using a platform for your live video broadcast is the ability to track and collect data. With a basic platform like Facebook or LinkedIn, you can observe metrics like views, shares, and comments to give a better idea for how your video is performing. But if you want the good data, invest in a live video platform that will find you deeper insights about your audience. With a platform like this, you can track each viewer and know exactly when they have tuned into your broadcast. Deeper insights can help to push your audience to make purchases down the road.
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing Strategy
We receive meaningless and irrelevant information from companies all the time; most of it landing in our spam folders.
The truth is, traditional advertising methods are becoming less effective by the day. Rather than interrupting customers to get noticed, content marketing attracts customers to the business. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are creating relevant content to your target audience. In doing so, you are building trust and customer conversions.
Benefits of Content Marketing
By creating content that is relevant and valuable for the reader, you will develop a clearly defined audience. With the acquisition of this target group, you will be able to drive profitable consumer action through directed marketing and advertising strategy (which we will speak about soon). But first, let’s go over the benefits of content marketing:
- Cost savings: Awareness is built through the development of relevant and informative content rather than the implementation of costly traditional advertising mediums. Creating content is not a costly process, since distributing your content online can be completely free.
- Acquire better customers: Distributing relevant content can help businesses connect with customers who are best suited to the brand’s offerings. High-quality education will build trust and loyalty over time, as it will reflect your company’s ability to satisfy the needs of the consumer.
- SEO Optimization: The use of relevant keywords in your content will allow it to rank higher in search engine results. SEO demands content and posting consistent, relevant content to your website will inevitably optimize your search engine rankings.
Traditional Marketing and Content Marketing
It is important that you continue your traditional advertising strategy as well. In considering the buying process, we know it is made up of 4 steps; awareness, research, consideration and buying. Content marketing is great when it comes to the first 2 steps:
- Awareness: A customer may have an unsatisfied need and are searching the web for a solution to fulfil it. Your content will provide them with the information they are seeking.
- Research: Your content may inform these customers of a solution that they otherwise would not have considered. By educating them about your offering, they may consider your service as a potential purchase.
Traditional advertising can have an impact on the first two steps; however, it excels in the final 2 stages of the buying process:
- Consideration: The customer will begin comparing different products from competitors. It is up to advertising to build value in the mind of the consumer.
- Buy: The customer buys the product and receives post-purchase services.
Steps to Construct a Content Marketing Strategy
- Know your purpose: Start with a vision and then work toward a plan on how content will help you achieve that vision. Why are you creating the content and how will it provide value for your business?
- Define your audience: By clearly defining your target audience, you can develop content that is designed to appeal to them. Research what sites they frequent and what platforms they mostly utilise to get a better understanding of where you should distribute your content.
- Brainstorm ideas and create content: Provide content that resonates with your customers. Rather than promoting your brand, the purpose is to write content that benefits the reader. If you are struggling to develop ideas to create content about, research the topics that get the most engagement on other websites (especially likes and shares). While most content will stay relevant for lengthy periods, you should not disregard viral or timely topics. You can present your content in a variety of ways including:
- Blogs
- Podcasts
- Templates
- Videos
- Books
- Publish content and monitor performance: With the aim of exposing your content to as much as your target audience as possible, it is imperative that you distribute it through as many suitable mediums as possible. Also, with a content calendar in place, you will ensure frequent and consistent content is posted to your website.
The Importance of Social Media with Content Marketing
Social media is pivotal in amplifying your brand’s reach. As you are attempting to distribute your content to the largest audience possible, you must consider posting your content through additional mediums. Research the primary platforms that your target market is most active on and begin delivering content through these mediums where you know a potential customer may be exposed to it. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest are the main platforms that should be considered. However, your content may require repurposing to appeal to the audience of the platform in which it is shared.
Content marketing provides various benefits that traditional advertising strategies cannot obtain. It supports digital marketing channels through improving SEO and link generation, whilst attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience. The development of suitable and well-constructed content can drive profitable customer action and therefore should not be ignored.
The Viral Power of Storytelling in Content Marketing
Source: Jeff Bullas
In the dark-dark city, on the dark-dark street, in the dark-dark office, there was one dark-dark company, but no one knew about it because the company couldn’t tell people about itself…
Modern information consumers want more than just data. People of this generation are used to getting accessible news, ideas, information, and knowledge; they know the tricks and cannot stand importunate marketing. The more promotional lines they see in a text, the faster they stop reading it. That is why storytelling is a great idea for any marketing campaign.
People love stories. They are thrilled to read about something similar to what they’ve experienced, to delve into one’s dirty laundry, to see love stories, etc. Storytelling can be a very powerful tool for content creators. They can influence people’s emotions and get those precious likes and shares.
Source: Jeff Bullas
4 Reasons Why Having a Blog Helps You With Your SEO
Blogs are considered to be an invaluable tool for organizations to utilize. However, their effectiveness is more than often overlooked by companies who either completely ignore blogs or do not utilize them to their full potential.
Possessing a blog is a fantastic way of improving your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This is due to the ability of blogs to position your website as a relevant solution to customer search queries. The more relevant your website is, the greater the chance of being ranked higher in search engine results and increasing the amount of visitors to your site.
Despite this being a general, overall advantage of possessing a blog, four key reasons why having a blog helps you with your SEO are that:
Blogging helps you target long-term key words
When conducting SEO, a lot of organisations strive to make their website extremely relevant in order to present itself to potential consumers who are looking for their products or services. In order to be relevant, it is best for specific keywords relating to the business being used to increase overall exposure. However, lesser known companies may struggle to compete with well-established companies that currently exist in the market.
In order to compete with this, blogging provides companies with the opportunity to embed longer, more specific keywords within their content which are congruent to the phrases or search terms that their potential customers are entering into search engines. By doing this, it increases their overall relevance and is likely to rank them higher on the search engine results page, thus increasing the likelihood of customers visiting their page.
Blogs offer a stream of fresh and relevant content for your website
Obsolete websites that haven’t been updated in years aren’t necessarily the most reliable sources of information. Nor are they at the top of search engine’s priorities to display to searchers as they don’t want to deliver them with outdated information. Instead, websites that are regularly updated show search engines that the website is active and providing fresh content. In addition to this, it gives the search engine algorithms more of a reason to index your website. Therefore, blog offer a great way of regularly updating your website and providing a stream of fresh and relevant content.
Blogs keeps people on your website for longer periods of time
The primary purpose of any search engine is to provide its users with the information that they are looking for. When someone clicks on the first link displayed and leaves the website immediately, it signals to the search engine that the first result wasn’t helpful or relevant. Conversely, when a link is clicked on and someone stays on that website for a period of time, it signals that the website offers relevant and helpful content.
Therefore, when someone visits your website from a blog post displayed in the search results, it increases the likelihood of that individual staying on your website for a prolonged period of time, meaning that search engines will deem your website to be more relevant compared to a page with less information or text.
Blogs help you connect with your target audience
When your audience reads a blog that they find extremely informative and enjoyable, they’re likely to share it on social media. By sharing it with their friends and followers, it has the potential to drive traffic to the website and increase the amount of visitors. If these viewers enjoy the content provided, they are more likely to return to your website to view more of your content. A website that receives a lot of traffic and repeat visitors indicates to Google that people enjoy your website and, as a result, raise your level of authority in their algorithm.
Recognition on search engine platforms is more vital than ever in this highly technological era. By ensuring that your website possesses a blog section that provides engaging and contemporary information, this greatly assists in enhancing the probability of your website being displayed higher up on search engine results pages and being viewed by potential customers.