Basic Digital Marketing

Snapchat has 100s of millions of daily users and over 10 billion video views per day. It’s an underrated and oftentimes forgotten about the way to generate leads, attract customers, and maximize brand awareness.

Although Snapchat maybe a little less friendly to advertising than Facebook or Twitter, the platform still has a huge audience to tap into. It’s a unique design, offering a different way to construct a brand narrative and to pursue digital marketing.

When you get Snapchat social media marketing right, the rewards can be astounding. Achieve a big return on your Snapchat spending by following what’s worked in the past for other brands and pursuing what works for you. Here are a few of the most successful Snapchat campaigns in recent memory.

Content is a powerful tool to reach prospects and convert leads into ready-to-buy customers. Content can exist in a variety of formats, from blogs to infographics to YouTube videos. One content type some brands discount is the power of downloadable eBooks.

eBooks can communicate a sense of value and importance a series of blog posts can’t. As a digital marketing tactic for lead generation, eBooks can be used to gather contact information and email subscribers while making long-term fans. eBooks are one of the most underrated yet effective lead generation tools a brand has and is supported by marketing storytellers like Neil Patel among others. Here are 3 ways of writing an eBook can elevate your business and drive more leads.

As daunting as it is trying to build a brand from nothing and with only a limited budget, it can absolutely be done. In the world of digital marketing, it’s not about who has the biggest pockets. It’s about the most effective messaging and the most efficient way at delivering this message outwards.

Against well-established competition with more momentum in the digital marketing game, you need to work harder, smarter, and be more creative. No matter your circumstances, here’s an opportunity to get some attention on you without much of a budget. Be it on social media, YouTube video marketing, email marketing campaigns, content marketing, SEO, or otherwise, there’s organic growth for you out there waiting to be had – all it takes is learning how.

For consumers searching out products or services like yours, the first place they go is Google. If your website is not included in the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs), you more or less don’t exist.

Did you know the first rank on a Google search enjoys a 33 percent uptick in traffic compared to other listings – it’s true? As important as branding, social media, quality of product and other factors are at publicizing your business, organic reach is still so important. It provides significant momentum which you can ride for months and even years, always finding new leads. Increase the organic reach of your website by following these tips, tricks, and strategies as a guide.

In its simplest definition, digital marketing is a series of strategies designed to engage existing customers and prospects. This can be accomplished through content marketing like blogs, web design, social media, video, email, podcasts, and more. For beginners all the way through to expert digital marketers, there are a number of tools which can make the job so much easier. Here’s just a few.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media marketing scheduling software that can help distribute content across numerous platforms, allowing you to also set times for posting. On top of that, Buffer also has extensive analytics that gives you the opportunity to see clicks, likes, shares, and so much more.

Hotjar

Hotjar is a very interesting digital marketing tool that provides visualization analytics, monitoring interactions on-site and with your content. See heatmaps, video recordings, and more. Hotjar makes for a unique presentation tool, for the most part, but is still preferred by some websites.

Buyer profile + buyer insights = all the information you need to cultivate leads, conversions, and sales.

That’s the equation the most successful digital marketing companies have used to plan campaigns and create content. Engaging your target audience is a necessity to any sort of success in business. A buyer persona is where this starts. ‘Buyer personas’ represent different segments of your customer base, identifying their needs, lifestyles, and how your products or services solve their problems.

The first step in the ultimate guide to buyer personas is one has to invest in doing the necessary research to understand their audience. Identify who they are, what they want, and the types of products they’re looking to buy. Launch surveys and polls if you have an existing customer base, interview customers one-on-one if you have a brick-and-mortar location, and/or look at your competition’s clientele to see where customers are coming from.

Few people out there aren’t carrying around a smartphone on their person when they leave home. This just goes to show how interconnected the offline and online world is. For digital marketing, this has also opened up whole new avenues for brands and websites to explore.

Mobile Internet use surpassed desktop back in 2014, believe it or not. A few years after that, Google made the decision to adopt mobile-first indexing in their SEO algorithm. Mobile-first indexing means that sites that are equipped to be mobile responsive will rank higher than sites without this ability.

Prior to this switch a few years ago, Google valued desktop websites more however as the usage trend has changed, the algorithm has had to adapt. So what does this mean for your website – well, if you have an SEO digital marketing strategy and your site is not mobile responsive, you may be wasting your money.

Have you recently started your first website? Are you wondering why it’s not ranking as high as you’d like on search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing? Sometimes even the simplest mistake can completely jeopardize a website’s SEO rank. Here’s the most common SEO mistakes new websites make and more importantly, how to fix them.

Bad title/content.

Sometimes a website doesn’t rank well because, plain and simple, the content’s not very good. Producing visually attractive content that’s meaningful, informative, and authoritative is what drives organic SEO growth and ranking your site on the first page of Google.

Attracting and engaging youths under-25s keeps a brand connected to what’s trending in culture, something very important to some companies. With billions of people online and competition up the ying-yang vying for their attention, strategizing for under-25s is a challenge.

Fortunately, there are numerous digital marketing channels and platforms to use, and plenty of ways to reach out. If you’re looking to increase your audience of university-age youths under 25 years old, here’s 7 ways to get it done.

Mobile.

Under-25s are flooding their smartphones every day with queries and searches. Few of them use desktops. If you’re not already on a mobile-first mindset, get on one. Every digital marketing campaign should be mobile-first.

Developing a successful Instagram marketing strategy can be hard to come by in the busy landscape of the social media platform. There are still ways to cut through the noise though. Instagram marketing can elevate a brand, growing them in size, popularity, reputation, and revenue-wise. Here are the five basic steps towards leveraging Instagram to build your ideal community of buyers, clients, and long-term customers.

Hashtags.

So much of Instagram's popularity is built around hashtags but remember to choose yours wisely. They should be relevant, creative, and hopefully recognizable. Constantly, brands should be optimizing their hashtags. Use general ones year-round, campaign-specific ones that engage specific segments of the audience, and always ensure you’re tracking hashtags. There are Instagram hashtag tracking tools to help analyze and optimize a brand’s page. The more analytics you have on what’s working, the more guidance you’ll have on what to pursue.

The right marketing moves will bring in the audience you want. For new small business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketing managers, money might be tighter than you’d like. Even on a smaller than preferable budget, we believe you can still get results. By investing smartly, you don’t need $1,000s to see your revenues climb with a smart digital marketing campaign. Too many companies find out too late that, even when their momentum is down, if they don’t market properly soon they may not have a company to work with at all.

Personalization.

Although you may be tempted to target new customers – and you certainly should – it’s equally important to look at your existing customer base. Email marketing and subscriber lists are an inexpensive way to keep in touch. Use these to send personalized messaging to your existing clientele, ensuring they are appreciated. Provide them with the occasional discount or offer to keep them as customers. This is the base from which you can build.

For every minute of the day, there are more than 100 hours of video content uploaded to YouTube. There is no hub of content creation more advanced and growing than YouTube, with billions of users regularly going to the platform to consume. Its’ online community is strong and in an era of increased emphasis on video marketing, YouTube has got the market covered. Unfortunately, for most brands, YouTube goes underutilized.

Any brand building a social media marketing strategy, of course, there are advantages and reasons to consider Facebook and Instagram. There’s opportunities there to advertise and increase leads but these are very populated, busy, and cluttered platforms. They also don’t have the algorithms or advertising support YouTube does. Every website should be investing in a YouTube video marketing strategy and here are just a few reasons why.

eCommerce product pages are secret weapons in SEO, as both a lead generation tool and a conversion method. Getting product pages right are a must. Prospective customers are arriving at your site ready to buy. If you have product pages properly set up alongside a customer-centric sales message, you’ve got a lot to gain. Here are 6 digital strategies to get you to optimized eCommerce product pages.

Video.

The average consumer spends 5.5 hours a day consuming video. Especially with social media marketing abound, video is an ideal way to communicate with your existing and potential audience. In fact, eCommerce sites like Amazon have seen an increase in purchases of 6-30 percent on product pages with video embedded.

Why half of Toronto businesses do not have a digital marketing plan in place is beyond us. Marketing online is seemingly a necessity to survive in today’s marketplace. Although far more businesses than half are engaged with Internet platforms, to fumble one’s way through social media or to have an informal strategy that’s not well defined is not a great idea.

Digital marketing has got so much behind it. You’ll find revenue growth awaiting, a whole new consumer base looking to connect with brands like yours, and so many opportunities to expand your brand and get it in front of qualified leads. To seek success offline is expensive and not altogether feasible for many people. Seemingly, the only reason why a Toronto business would not want to pursue a defined digital marketing strategy would likely be because they don’t necessarily know what to do with it.

Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies are all about delivering to your site organic traffic. How we do that is by getting your website ranked close to the top on the first page of Google.

There are on-page and off-page SEO strategies which can be used to accomplish this, with a variety of SEO tools making an increase in web traffic so much easier to arrive at. Through advanced SEO tools, you get more functionality in your analytics, more insight into the competition, and more power in your link building.

Something else you’ll notice about the SEO tools mentioned is their ability to assist with keyword research. Keywords are still so important to search engine optimization. After all, when a user searches something on Google, they’re using a keyword in their search query. As a brand, you want to ensure you have the right keywords to get you the traffic you want.

To succeed online, it can’t be emphasized enough that strong customer relationships are a necessity. Easy and efficient ways to connect with your target audience exist, thankfully. Cultivating an online community begins with recognizing the social channels available, learning how to interact with customers, and employing strategies to generate discussion. Here are nine ways to build an online community to spur your website towards being the success you know it can be.

Personality.

Humanize your brand by bringing personality to the conversation. Be fun and vibrant. While you don’t want to overshare, be inappropriate, or get too far away from what your brand’s about, personality is important to help let people know there’s someone real behind the computer and not just a corporate robot.

Tech’s been driving society for years now, and business in Toronto has seen many changes in recent decades because of the technology which has come and gone. Smartphones, iPods, social media, digital marketing channels, and how we interact person-to-person has all had an effect on business.

Data.

It’s easier than ever to accumulate data and analytics, which has helped digital marketing agencies in Toronto a great deal. Some data is more important than other data though and so companies are challenged to know which metrics are most important, how to process these analytics, and how to use this information to personalize content to your customer base.

There’s a lot of debate, these days, on what the best social media site is. Truth be told, each brand may have their own personalized answer based on where their audience is and what’s appropriate for them.

Analyzing current social media trends in digital marketing, Instagram is the #1 social media platform in the world right now followed closely by Facebook and Twitter. A huge social media trend that we’ve found is that while Instagram growth rates are the highest of all social media sites, Facebook and Twitter is growth is slowing down rather quickly. Although B2C brands still go to Facebook, waning interest means in 5-10 years’ time, Instagram might be where you want to invest your time.

In 2019, the top 3 social media platforms are Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter based on how marketers are using these sites. Approximately 94 percent of marketers use Facebook for social media marketing while 73 percent use Instagram and 59 percent are using Twitter.

Creating content for social media marketing for most companies is one-size-fits-all. You may be cutting down on the effectiveness of your digital marketing by doing this, however. Each social media platform has its own audience, rules, and trend on content engagement. Not every platform is equal to the next.

Building your social media strategy, approach each platform as if it’s its own unique digital marketing channel. Depending on where your target audience is, some may be more appropriate than others. Also, if your brand is naturally inclined to produce a certain type of content, you may be better suited to sticking to a specific social platform. For example, Twitter is very journalism-heavy and ideal for short text-based messaging while photos and videos are better suited to Instagram. Here are some general rules to social media marketing.

Any brand, business, or organization lives and dies by the leads it can generate and convert. Struggling brands need to get smarter with how they find leads. How to do this can be done in many ways. Here are 7 highly effective lead generation tactics we would recommend to any website or brand who are not generating the leads they want.

Use a quiz

For all the high-tech advanced digital marketing strategies we can suggest to generate leads, something as simple as a survey or quiz can help provide lead info. Consider creating a quick on an important subject and then, inside this quiz, ask for a user’s contact info. Encourage them to share it with friends on social media. This can be a huge lead booster!

To become a dominating brand, it takes a lot of effort, financial investment, and luck. Even corporations and companies who succeed, success is never guaranteed.

Did you know, more than half of Fortune 500 companies since 2000 have either gone bankrupt, were acquired, no longer exist, or fell off the list – it’s true. Some brands seem to have the Midas touch however all eventually come to be challenged by a market competitor.

In the past two decades, for many companies, the difference between success and failure in digital marketing. In digital marketing, you have elements like social media, video publishing, email newsletter, blog writing, web design, organic growth through search engine optimization, and more.

The benefits of SEO include ranking higher on search engine results, reaching more visitors, and generating organic momentum that can help carry a business to massive popularity among their target audience. If you’re operating a business online, search engine optimization is a smart strategy to implement.

The most effective way to drive traffic without paying for ads is SEO. Even businesses with small budgets can participate and help elevate themselves up to the level of the biggest corporate competition. It’s key to note that 32 percent of people end up clicking on the first Google search result. If you can get on the first page and up to the first result for relevant search queries, your company’s going to grow at a fast rate. Here are six SEO tips in 2019 to help grow your site user by user.

Simple site structure.

Don’t over-complicate your website design. You want a structure that’s easy for search engine crawlers to navigate. Pages, categories, sub-categories, internal linking, and headings are important. The more hierarchy you have, the easier it’s going to be for Google crawlers to search and classify your website according to the most relevant terms.

There’s a lot Amazon has done to become the top-selling eCommerce site in the world. It’s no coincidence. A lot of the investment has been made into eCommerce marketing. Not only has their marketing caused them to rise to become one of the most valuable brands anywhere but it’s also allowed them to keep that top spot likely for decades to come.

If you’ve recently started an eCommerce company or are seeking ways to improve your eCommerce marketing, Amazon’s marketing strategy is a smart place to look. Here is a little insight into how the corporation continues to prioritize customers to maximize brand awareness, lead generation, convert leads, and achieve record revenues.

Loyalty programs.

By building a community, you build value. Amazon Prime members spend almost twice as much annually as regular consumers. Use your eCommerce site to build a loyalty program, providing exclusive discount codes, promotions, and more. Consider using Amazon Prime as a model, judging what’s most appropriate for your brand.

Email marketing is a lead nurturing strategy, sales technique, and an overall excellent way to reach your customers. Through email, an eCommerce company or any brand can feature products, videos, and send personalized messaging straight to a user’s inbox. Judging what makes your email marketing strategy successful, there are several metrics to pay attention to. Here’s a quick list of the five most important email marketing KPIs to keep in mind.

Unique opens

Unique opens is how many people have opened your email. This gives you a clear picture on how much interest your email is generating on its’ own, prior to any open. It’ll indicate how enticing your subject line is and how engaged your customers are with your brand. If you find you have a low ‘unique opens’ or if it’s going down, some tips to get it up include expressing either exclusivity or time sensitivity in the subject line, using numbers in the subject line, and personalizing your emails based on geography.

More than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices. If you’re not already optimizing your email marketing for mobile, you’ve got to start. Desktop platforms are seemingly on a steady decline. The Internet is moving to mobile. Increase customer engagement and acquisition through these mobile-based email marketing strategies.

Subject line

So much focus for email marketing is placed on the subject line. Short, succinct, compelling, and informative, choosing what is most likely to engage your audience can be tough to think of. Be sure to invest the time to come up with a subject line you can be proud of and which will deliver the messaging you want in a click-friendly phrase.