Creating A Website Isn’t As Daunting As It Sounds – Here’s How To Start One
Whether you are looking to build a new start-up website or make your current site more effective, understand how and what to do when creating a website is important. While creating a website on the surface may seem complicated with the number of variables and choices available, it’s a relatively straightforward process. As society places increasing importance on being digital, creating a website is crucial for success as this is the central focus of all online marketing efforts. Did you know it takes 50 milliseconds for a potential customer to form an opinion about your website.
4 Marketing Trends to Outrank the Competition in 2021
Marketing dynamics have changed dramatically in the past year, in the wake of a global pandemic, providing an ever-growing reason to be aggressive in your marketing strategy and find the pockets of opportunity dotted across the new terrain. With a reduction in the size of the global economy and the number of entrants remaining high due to government support, competition within the global economy has never been higher. Thus, providing evermore reason to consider an overhaul on your current marketing strategy. Here are some of the biggest marketing trends to look out for in 2021 and capitalize on the upcoming opportunity.
The Year of the Chatbot
The explosive growth of the eCommerce market has seen the need for online support grow ten-fold. Chatbots’ use has become ever-growingly popular, with companies who use Chatbots saying they saw a 50% growth in sales.
Since an automated system can handle common customer questions and basic tasks, the use of Chatbots can cut costs by up to 30%, allowing companies to produce higher profit margins and maintain a high level of customer satisfaction. Using an automated system allows more questions to be answered within a given time, whilst delegating the more complicated tasks to support professionals. IBM says that superior software development has seen that Chatbots can answer 80% of standard questions. The increasing use of Chatbots sees the enhanced utilization of professionals whilst still speeding up customer response times.
A recent survey by Drift shows that of respondents, 37% of people chose to use a Chatbot to gain an answer in an emergency because the service provided a quicker response time than their human counterparts. It’s becoming clear that people are becoming more time-pressed to get answers to questions, hence diversifying the range of communication tools to increase customer satisfaction.
The Popularity of Short-Video Content
With more people confined to the four walls of their own home, people were looking for new and creative ways to stimulate themselves, to cope with the ‘new normal’. A new trend that became dramatically popular overnight was the use of short video content.
A survey by HubSpot shows that of survey respondents, 80% of video marketers claim that video has “directly increased sales”, indicating that short videos are becoming widely popular. The curation of short videos published across a wide range of media could see the acquiring of customers from different areas beyond the traditional.
Now that videos also show up on Google and other search engines on the results page, this is a great time to incorporate your video marketing content into your SEO optimization program.
For instance, watching the rapid uptake of TikTok has provided invaluable evidence that this trend is increasing amongst the younger generation. TikTok’s global penetration is currently standing at 18% of global internet users. With 32.5% of those aged between 10 and 19, incorporating video content into your marketing campaigns could be crucial if your brand’s target audience sits at a younger demographic.
Statistics show that people’s attention span for irrelevant content is shrinking with the average Facebook video watch time to be 10 seconds. Effectively meaning that if you are looking to gain new customers or get a message across to a disinterested or new audience, doing so in under 10 seconds is your best way to do so.
The curation of Instagram reels supports evidence that short-length video content is viral and is here to stay. Currently, many of the content is individually created and was initially designed to express themselves during the pandemic. Still, the whole market is yet to be capitalized fully by the commercial industry.
Virtual Life is here to stay!
The explosion of Zoom and other virtual event hosting platforms seems like it is here to stay. The new way of connecting with friends, family, and co-workers has tapped into a completely new market, bringing about a whole new level of convenience to those who prefer their ‘at-home’ comfort and convenience.
With virtual events lacking the need for transportation to and from, no lodging and being much more affordable for smaller businesses, the appeal in virtual events has never been higher to both the company and the customer.
A new market has been discovered, and it looks like it’s here to stay. Although it might not tap the same type of audience, 52% of organisations say they see the same or more attendance than expected to see at an in-person counterpart.
By incorporating both in-person and virtual events into your marketing strategy, you are diversifying and expanding your hosted events’ reach.
Shoppable Social Media
If 2020 has taught the world anything, it’s that online shopping is the future; expecting consistent growth over the coming years. The pandemic has seen the rise of shoppable posts where content is posted to social media with a direct link or opening a pop-up window for purchase within the same app. The process of scrolling your social media to purchasing a liked product has never been more straightforward.
This trend has seen the extensive use of social media influencers, who are the main subject of this marketing trend. For instance, the growth of eCommerce has increased by 44.5% year-over-year due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Popular platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Pinterest all uphold colossal power when capitalizing on influencer marketing and social media marketing. Businesses effectively now can create their entire physical store into a social media account, heightening the convenience to the customer again.
To stay ahead of your competition, creating a digital presence is essential for building customer relationships and adding to the ease of online shopping.
The marketing world will never sit still, especially in such volatility. If there was ever a time to capitalize on the opportunities available, attracting new customers and expanding revenue – then now is a perfect time.
Creating the perfect marketing strategy encompassing the latest and upcoming trends can be complex. Robotic Marketer represents the pinnacle of marketing strategy development and can help businesses of any size encompass these new and upcoming trends of 2021 to stay ahead of the crowd.
5 Reasons Why it’s Time to Rethink Your Digital Marketing
It’s almost 2021 and it’s impossible to think of marketing without digital marketing. If you are a business owner, you are sure to be using at least one form of digital marketing in promoting your products and services. According to DigitalMarketer, “Digital marketing is the act of promoting and selling products and services by leveraging online marketing tactics such as social media marketing, search marketing, and email marketing.” Here are five reasons why it may be time to rethink your digital marketing strategy.
Reason #1: COVID-19
If it weren’t already obvious, COVID-19 has created waves all across every industry, the digital marketing space included.
According to Bernard Marr’s Forbes piece, COVID-19 has resulted in many businesses depending largely on their digital marketing strategies, even to the extent that it may, in many cases, “be the deciding factor in whether they make it through the tough times ahead.”
Many businesses rely on having face-to-face meetings, attending and hosting events, conferences and tradeshows and entering awards to market their brand. However, with these avenues being entirely blocked from access due to the pandemic, it’s time for marketers to get creative.
Marr explains that B2B companies particularly depend on tradeshows and exhibitions to network and build customer relations. While larger companies may be investing equally in online efforts, they would have no doubt lost millions of dollars due to canceled events. This means bringing back the focus to social marketing, content marketing, SEO and influencer-led campaigns.
Reason #2: Your digital strategy lacks clarity
Smart Insights finds that many companies (regardless of whether they have a digital strategy or not) tend to lack direction in terms of their online marketing strategies. This could be a lack of clarity in terms of their digital strategy to gain customers, retain existing customers or any other marketing goals they may have.
If your digital marketing strategy lacks direction, it’s time for a digital marketing refresher.
Start by thinking of your digital marketing objectives. Taking a SMART approach is one way to articulate this – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.
Reason #3: You’re missing adaptive content
Adaptive content is simply the opposite of static content. While static content stays the same throughout all social media channels, adaptive content is content that is tailored to each digital channel, whether it is your blog, website content, EDM, social media or other channels.
While the substance of your content can stay constant, it is really important to use the correct style, structure and length to meet each digital channel. For example, while blogs are allowed to be long-form, someone browsing your content on Instagram is not likely to read an extravagantly long caption.
Reason #4: It builds credibility
A clearly defined digital media strategy starts with your target audience.
This involves ideating and creating buyer personas to be able to target your market better – ensuring that your message reaches each target segment effectively through appropriate channels. For example, while Instagram has seen a heavy increase in popularity among people up to the age of 30, if your product is mainly aimed at people in their 40s, the message will be lost through this channel.
Similarly, Twitter users are more likely to buy a product promoted by an influencer, rather than based on a television ad. Therefore, targeting your audience appropriately can help with solidifying your brand image but building trust.
A clearly defined online customer value proposition targeted towards each target segment will help you articulate the value you can add through your online services. Develop a competitive content marketing strategy to generate new leads and keep existing customers loyal.
It’s all about getting the right message out at the right time, building trust and credibility and consequently, boosting sales.
Reason #5: It can make or break your business
The present is online, and the future will be online. Marketing without digital marketing can be equivalent to running on a treadmill – you’re putting in the work but not really getting anywhere.
According to Digital Marketer, having a strong digital marketing strategy will help to create awareness and engagement both before and after the sale, build brand loyalty and allow consumers to promote your content too.
So, if you haven’t already begun to rethink your digital marketing strategy, now might be a good time to start!
5 Reasons You Need A New Digital Marketing Strategy
Source: Marketing Eye Australia>Marketing Eye Australia
Whether you are a start-up that didn’t get off the ground due to COVID, a small business, or a large corporation, you are faced with uncertain times and a very volatile marketplace which means that your online performance and in particular your digital marketing strategy may not be working quite as effectively as it should.
When I look at the market today, I see change. With this in mind, it makes sense that businesses look in-ward to look outward and make the necessary changes to any type of marketing strategy that is in play.
So many businesses are rethinking their business plan, how they go to market, who their target audience is, and what their value proposition entails – all with good reason.
How that affects a digital marketing strategy is easy to see as the changing mindset of buyers and their current circumstances in comparison to what they may have been a year ago are relevant.
Here are 5 relevant reasons why you need to rethink, re-engineer, and re-purpose your digital marketing strategy:
Business Goals are no longer aligned to marketing goals
With the changes in the current business environment, many businesses have changed their goals. Their sales forecasts may be lower than previously anticipated, their expansion plans put on hold and their target audience may be different. If your business goals are not aligned to your marketing goals it is impossible to reach them. Adapting, changing, and testing new waters is often the only way to create business goals that have any type of substance in today’s marketplace.
Adwords campaign is no longer effective
When companies are no longer getting sales the way they once were, they often put a knee-jerk action in place. What many companies have done is put the budget into Adwords as part of what they consider a quick fix, only to find out that it isn’t working. There are many reasons why an Adwords campaign may not be working but one of the first factors to consider is that competitors are turning to Adwords using the same keywords as you. This means that you are all paying more for impressions and campaigns become less effective. Ascertaining whether or not you should put ALL of your budgets into Adwords is critical to lead generation campaign success. Using platforms that help you spend your marketing budget in the right places can help reduce wastage and do more targeted campaigns. We use Robotic Marketer as our tool as it is AI-powered and more likely to give us a good cross-section of marketing and communications platforms to diversify our marketing spend.
Engagement on social media was strong but is no longer the case
At the start of the pandemic, many people were online and therefore actively using social media platforms. Small businesses were able to capitalise on this and do marketing campaigns with reasonable effectiveness. Then that wore off. I kid you not! The market changed and consumer behaviour rectified itself steering away from overconsumption of social media. What that means for brands is that we are forced to rethink the way we connect with the same audience and how we disseminate information.
Website traffic has dropped
This is a huge issue that companies are facing today and one that can be fixed. It’s just knowing how to do so. Doing a audit of your website is necessary and using technologies like SEMRush and Alexa to better understand traffic alongside Google Analytics.
Many companies set up SEO then forget about it. Worse still they may employ third-parties to do their SEO and not monitor the results. Ensuring that your website has the right traffic and enough of it is critical to lead generation.
Leads have stopped coming
When prospects no longer contact your firm, you are forced to focus heavily on outbound marketing technologies as a quick fix. This is a costly exercise and takes time. When leads stop coming into your company, it doesn’t take long to realize that your business is no longer viable. This is when cuts occur across the entire business. When the market changes, you should always change with it running a nimble organisation that has the ability to be flexible when need be. Using a platform that allows for flexibility can mean the difference of your business shutting your doors or staying open. Once again, we use Robotic Marketer which has a multi-user, multi-strategy platform (newly released) allowing companies to re-process their marketing strategies according to new business goals. It’s best to know what to do and when to do it, with the right messages and marketing campaigns.
Technogies we recommend: SEMRush, Google Analytics, Robotic Marketer and Alexa.
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
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.