Is There A Digital Dashboard For Marketing Strategy?
A digital dashboard is a visual representation of marketing statistics such as data metrics, data points and KPI’s. It helps improve aspects such as turning data into business value by showing only the most important data points and better leverage statistics in order to improve business decisions. Every company should use a digital dashboard, but which one would be best suited to your company and your marketing strategy?Read more
Your Strategic SEO Checklist to Building a High Traffic Website
Everyone wants a website that sees a lot of traffic, high engagement and a high conversion rate. Unfortunately, with over 1.86 billion websites online, creating a highly engaging, competitive website that generates a lot of traffic is easier said than done. Fortunately for marketers, there are a range of tactics available to help build a search engine optimised website designed to outperform the competition.
Here’s your SEO checklist to strategically build an optimised website designed to draw traffic.Read more
The Ultimate Marketing Technology Stack for 2021
The incredible growth of marketing technology cannot be understated. We have seen from Gartner’s 2018-2019 study that marketing technology or “martech” is increasingly becoming a focal point of most businesses marketing budgets, accounting for roughly 29 percent of marketing expenditures on average in 2018.
It has been one crazy year for businesses everywhere, but it is finally time to get back on track and make the most out of our marketing budgets, and we are going to show you how by optimizing your marketing tech stack.
What actually is a marketing technology stack?
First, we need to unpack what a martech stack really is before we can build one.
A marketing technology stack is a grouping of technologies that marketers leverage to conduct and improve their marketing activities. The focus of martech is to make difficult processes easier and to measure the impact of marketing activities and drive more efficient spending.
Marketing technologies are used to streamline internal collaboration, analyze the performance of marketing campaigns, and conduct personalized and efficient communication with customers.
With so many different marketing tools available to choose from, it can all get a bit confusing; but with any marketing process, you must start with the strategy.
Defining Your Marketing Strategy
A marketing strategy is your blueprint for achieving your business goals. Once you have designed one, you can identify which marketing initiatives align most effectively with your business goals, and begin to implement your designs.
Ultimately, martech is about deciding on the technology and tools that will help you execute your marketing strategy, which means you have to first create a strategy that suits your business and your product.
Narrowing Down the Choices [Creating Your Marketing Tech Stack]
Unfortunately, it is not as simple as us giving you a template marketing stack, every business has different needs, different strategies, different products and different customers.
The type of business you have impacts the technologies that will be important to you and how you will incorporate them into your marketing strategy.
The majority of businesses have alternate channel structures and ways of appealing to current and potential customers, meaning the tools each business use will vary.
However, we can help you narrow down the list of options, by showing you ways to entice, engage and maintain your customers using a marketing tech stack.
The Inclusion of Robotic Marketer
Choosing the technology to help you achieve your business goals is the simple part; it is creating a strategy that is the hard part.
Not anymore, the future is here, and it does not disappoint.
Introducing Robotic Marketer, the world’s first marketing strategy software that is based on artificial intelligence (AI). This technology utilizes machine learning and big data, transforming information on your company, business goals and marketing plan into an actionable and detailed marketing strategy.
Created by Robotic Marketer and Marketing Eye consulting agency founder, Mellissah Smith, this incredible tool is utilized by marketing consultants all over the world to produce marketing strategies faster and smarter, with a greater capacity to be more successful as technology improves and has reduced human reliance.
With Robotic Marketer, not only will you be able to define and create your marketing strategy with ease, this innovative, first-of-its-kind tool can be used in correlation with other tools and technology to improve your marketing activities greatly, and make it much easier to achieve business goals.
Enticing Customers
One of the biggest challenges in marketing no matter who your customers are is generating leads and traffic for your business, which is why we recommend analyzing the following tools to see which will enable you to achieve your marketing strategy in the most efficient manner possible.
Google Ads
Probably one of the most commonly used platforms, Google Ads works as a tool where advertisers can bid to display different advertisements, service offerings and videos to web users, acting as a way to utilize tactics such as remarketing and search engine optimization.
With this technology, you will have no trouble advertising your brand effectively, as the tech enables you to target customers with a direct interest in your product.
Hootsuite
Social media management is a must in today’s technology dominant world, and there are multiple tools to choose from such as Sprout Social and Buffer that can offer similar results.
However, Hootsuite allows you to manage all your social media platforms and channels in one spot.
Here you can manage all your insights across your social channels, ensure you schedule and publish content to the right channels at the right time, and have multiple marketers or consultants working on the account at the same time.
With so much information generated for you daily, social media management tools such as this are a necessity for your marketing technology stack, as you will be able to easily optimize your social media strategy and reach your audience in the most efficient manner possible.
Ahrefs
To really attract the right customers, you need the right SEO tools to ensure you are on the right track.
Ahrefs can easily help your business grow your search traffic and identify the keywords and topics your business should try to rank highest for.
Their formula that is used across their multitude of SEO tools will enable your company to promote the right search keys, build links to them and rank them as high as possible.
Microsoft Teams
A technique we have seen become more commonly used this year in light of the worldwide pandemic is online webinars that can be used to push prospective customers to your website.
Whilst there are other applications that have become common use this year such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams can enable you to host webinars and conferences without putting a cap on the number of participants or a time limit.
Engaging Customers
Enticing customers can often at times be the most expensive step for marketers throughout the entire marketing process, meaning not enough time is often devoted to what we can actually offer customers once they have gotten to our website.
Engaging customers is not as hard as it used to be, as there are a number of tools you can adopt for your marketing stack that will keep consumers interested in your brand and products.
HubSpot
Marketing automation has been made simple with well-known businesses like HubSpot, as it is one of the largest and multi-faceted platforms available for use today.
With so many cheap and free tools engaging in SEO, advertising, social media, blogging and many more, it is a must-have for your martech that is suitable for businesses of any size.
Outreach
This tool is a necessity for monitoring and improving your business’ sales engagement, as Outreach recommends future communications and actions you should take to retain customers, based on the data analyzed from interactions with current and past customers.
Marketo
There is a reason Marketo is one of the oldest and most popular marketing automation tools around today, it is tried, tested and proven to be one of the most powerful and reliable parts of marketing stacks.
From acquisition to advocacy, Marketo enables businesses to market to a large audience by automating so many marketing processes, including finding the right customers for your company.
Maintaining and Getting the Right Customers
It is always hard to measure whether you are getting the best results possible from your marketing activities, or whether you could be doing better than you actually realized in the first place.
That’s why we have chosen some tools to add to your marketing tech stack that will show your business your true marketing effectiveness, and what you can do to improve your customer base and generate even more future business.
Google Analytics
Probably the most popular and reliable tool available, there aren’t many businesses today who aren’t utilizing the power of Google Analytics.
One of, if not the most highly used tool available, Google Analytics allows you to know where your website clickthroughs are coming from, what they are viewing, how they got there, and how long they were on your site.
This tool is the most efficient way to understand the character of your typical shopper and provides you with so many opportunities to improve your customer interactions.
Hotjar
Conversion rate optimization is needed if you are to see who your website visitors are and what they are actually doing whilst on your website.
Hotjar can be combined with Google Analytics to give you a more in-depth understanding of what goes on in your website – using analytics features and user feedback tools on a single platform for quick actionable results.
This is just a snippet in regards to the potential of marketing technology stacks. It is up to you to discover which tools are best for your business and it is up to you to define and layout your marketing strategy, which now, thanks to Robotic Marketer, is easier than ever before.
How Google Analytics has changed
Google Analytics is a powerful free and paid web analytics tool for businesses to track their web or app performance. Launched on November 15, 2005, following the acquisition of Urchin Software, Google Analytics has changed significantly in the last 15 years. Google Analytics started with the vision to speed up website tracking results processing, cutting processing time from 24 hours to 15 minutes. This was designed to be an add-on to the web hosting and development tools Google already offered however, it turned out to be a completely new product that outperformed competitors’ products.
Growing from its beginnings in tracking website results, Google Analytics goes well beyond simply analyzing the number of visitors on websites and apps nowadays. Today, nearly 40 million websites use Google Analytics as a part of their business. However, not many businesses understand the importance of Google Analytics and how to gain the maximum value from it. At Robotic Marketer, we monitor and analyze your data and analytics to reveal your secrets to success.
Evolution of Google Analytics
With the age of the internet, online payments, and data collection, companies have an abundance of data but often do not use it optimally. In 2005, Google released V1 of Google Analytics, to help companies improve their online interactivity, recognizing the potential of this data. In the week following the release of the first version, 100,000 new accounts were created on the platform, causing it to be shut down due to high demand. Google Analytics then became available only through an invitation system which enticed other users to use Google analytics. Google also created hype by sharing the stories of customers who experienced 50% growth in web traffic in a year. Since then, Google Analytics transformed from an add-on application to an integral element of Google’s offering.
Growth and development of Google Analytics
In 2007 and 2008 Google made major changes in the V2 platform, where they updated their reporting system, allowing businesses to locate and share data, seeking to promote greater customization and collaboration.
From 2008 to 2012, Google was in a stage of intensive development, launching V3, V4, V5, and creating a new slogan: “Enterprise-class web analytics made smarter, friendlier and free”. During these years, Google enabled users to analyze data and create subdivisions, providing the flexibility to analyze conversions, traffic, customer reports, and build a dashboard. The dashboard was a game-changer as it allowed users to navigate different profiles and simplify data.
In the V4 version, Google took strides with website performance and ROI features, allowing the user to analyze traffic across multiple platforms and implement retention strategies. V5 was a powerful update, allowing users to monitor their data in real-time while the campaign progressed. This version was created with a vision to be developer-friendly and make JavaScript possible for websites and SDK for apps.
Delivering more value
2013 was a huge year with Google introducing 70 new updates to create a better user interface, integrate with different platforms, introduce new APIs, and real-time behavior reports. In 2014, Google introduced a paid version of Google Analytics with additional features like real-time data visualization, SEO campaigns, and a deeper understanding of the data. They added more features to the free version by styling dashboards, creating a better user interface, and rebranding Google Analytics.
In 2016, Google launched Google Analytics 360, replacing Google Analytics Premium with 5 new products targeting SMBs, including audience targeting, increased analysis, and robust reporting. It allowed businesses to combine offline and online data to deliver a personalized experience.
Google Tag was a new product launched in 2017, allowing a user-friendly approach for non-developers to add website tags without any hassle, allowing data to be sent to Google Analytics and Google Ads. The sole purpose of Google Tag was to unify the multiple tags and simplify implementation.
In the following year, Google launched the Google Marketing platform, combining Google Analytics and Double Click Management within a single platform. The platform created an effective marketing suite to buy, measure and enhance the customer experience.
Google Analytics in 2020
2020! The year of data analytics and improved customer experience. From in-store to online purchasing, companies have collected a lot of data and generated more web traffic than ever before.
Google saw this opportunity of massive data collection and launched Google Analytics4 or GA4. The GA4 has machine learning at its core, providing a complete understanding of customers, smarter insights when it comes to the sales funnel, and different touchpoints to improve ROI.
Google Analytics now provides a complete understanding of how customers want to interact with the brand. Online purchasing has provided greater knowledge about consumer insights which showcases the buyer’s journey from acquisition, conversion, and retention.
How has Google Analytics changed the way we do business?
-
You can now track how customers find your website.
In 2005, companies didn’t have much information about their customers. They would have several visitors but not a clear understanding of where the customer came from. In 2020, businesses have changed the way they market. Marketers have a better understanding of the user’s journey to the website, for instance, whether it is through EDMs, Instagram ads, Facebook ads or other paid advertisements. Looking to track who visits your website?
-
Tracking how much time the user spends on the website (Behaviour Report)
In 2020, the analysis of users is very important as it allows the businesses to understand which page, blog, article or post is generating traffic on their website. The Behaviour Report allows you to make changes to your website or app and showcase the well-performing content to users. Want to understand what your customers think of your website, product, or services?
-
Track who is visiting and what they’re browsing (Bounce Rate)
Online shopping means lots of scrolling but less buying. How can you create engagement with your customers? The Bounce Rate is an important metric to determine if the messaging is failing to keep the user engaged with your website.
-
Tracking conversions (Acquisition)
Google Analytics has Acquisition reporting as an in-built feature with your marketing plan. This allows you to track conversions and adjust marketing, for instance tracking the successful conversion of a customer with items in their cart and then readjusting marketing efforts to focus on building loyalty with the brand, rather than bombarding them with further promotion. Do you have a lead generation model?
- Report generation (Data visualisation)
Still, going through excel sheets and the data sets? Gone are the days of manually processing complex data. Data visualization with Google analytics has helped businesses make strategic decisions based on market trends and user profiles. Want to know how you can visualize your data?
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!
Know Your Audience, Engage Actively With Target Audiences
You’ve streamlined your product. It’s ready to fly off the shelves in droves. But, where do you find customers that want to buy it? Don’t let your product die on the shelf or spoil in a digital cart. Develop a loyal target audience that fits perfectly fits your product design.
SEO and The Robots Improving It
Last week, we talked about the importance of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and how they can secure leads for your business. Next up on our list is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Why is this feature so important and how exactly can you implement it within your business plan and marketing strategies?