Basic Digital Marketing
Lowering cart abandonment rates and successfully increasing profits in the ecommerce space involves utilizing numerous strategies to do so. Fast shipping, low shipping rates, and good packaging are all enticing but there’s more to it than just these bullet points. If you’ve been having trouble reaching your full ecommerce sales potential, look at the mistakes that other businesses have made and save yourself the hassle.
Providing multiple shipping options for customers
Customers like to have choices. By not providing them shipping options, you run an increase in risk of cart abandonment. Customers with cost preferences or arrival time requirements should have the option. If cart abandonment is a big issue on your ecommerce platform, considering free shipping may be an ideal way to increase sales conversions.
Don’t ignore customer reviews
Customer reviews have the potential to permanently wreck the reputation of an online store. Customer reviews are where prospective customers get their info from. If there are complaints about delivery delays or damaged product, this amounts to a big problem that should be addressed immediately.
Drone tech has hit the mainstream in a big way, being featured on everything from personal YouTube videos, to Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl halftime show, to major Hollywood film marketing including recently for Wonder Woman. The advancements made in drone tech and its subsequent popularity among general consumers is hard to deny. Any marketer seeking to find ways to incorporate drone technology into their marketing plan, consider these four ways to do so.
Capturing perspective from a drone camera
Drones are a cost-effective marketing tool, able to provide perspectives that would not otherwise be possible without big budgets. No longer does a marketer need a helicopter or a crane to capture exquisite aerial shots of a construction project, a real estate property, or event promotions. As long as you use a drone, a marketer has the opportunity to acquire high-definition video of their products and/or services that can then be shared online. The impressive video quality for most of these drone cameras make it an opportunity that many can’t pass up.
In-the-moment marketing pushes
Part of drone’s appeal is their ease of use. By reading the manufacturer’s instructions and browsing a few quick tutorials, anyone can get a drone up, flying and controlling it at will. For a small business, having a drone can mean an easy way to provide an in-the-moment marketing push that only requires a few minutes to get the drone camera up and the footage captured. Record and create content in real-time, and then send it out to followers. Fast, effective marketing has never been this easy.
We have several parents on our team at Unlimited Exposure and we understand the value in ensuring that our children are making smart decisions online. As sons and daughters continue to explore and learn about the internet, it’s important for the experience to be a positive one. To make the most out of one’s time on the internet, there are a number of things to keep in mind and to discuss with one’s child.
Evidently, the biggest difference between the internet when we were growing up compared to the internet today is that children have it at their fingertips on a multitude of different devices. There’s the potential for influence, positive and negative. When online, children need to be encouraged to continue being as smart and kind as they are offline. A large part of learning about appropriate behaviour online has leaned on industry leaders to provide protection, encouragement, and assistance. Recently, Google launched its Be Internet Awesome initiative, encouraging digital safety and citizenship among all users of the internet.
Be Internet Awesome is divided into five key lessons that are designed to help kids navigate the internet safely and efficiently – ‘Be Internet Smart; share with care’, ‘Be Internet Alert; don’t fall for fake’, ‘Be Internet Strong; secure your secrets’, ‘Be Internet Kind; it’s cool to be kind’, and ‘Be Internet Brave; when in doubt, talk about it’.
This past Black Friday, the Chinese shoe company Kaiwei Ni launched a rather unusual Instagram marketing ad. The company created an advertising image with a fake strand of hair embedded into it so that every time a user viewed the ad, it would appear as if a strand of hair was on their screen. To get rid of the strand of hair, most people swiped the ad which, in turn, opened it.
This strategy has received much criticism from marketers and simultaneously, props from many Instagram users. Admittedly, it is a bit clever. That said, it’s also a little low. Tricking someone into visiting your website is not recommended and here’s why. This type of strategy does not even remotely qualify the consumer. In this example, they ended of swiping to get rid of a strand of hair on their smartphones and ended up on a site with discounted shoes for sale. While it’s unclear how many sales were actually generated from this, we would guess not too many.
So is it smart to use these type of techniques to reach consumers and generate buzz – to put it succinctly, no it’s not. The buzz that a company assumes it will generate only ends up resulting in articles like these, using this Kaiwei Ni ad as a terrible example of growth hacking and marketing. As creative as this may be, it’s dishonest marketing. After the ad had been brought to Instagram’s attention, they removed it immediately and banned the official company account, ensuring that permission was revoked from allowing them to continue posting on the site.
If you’ve never hired a digital marketing agency before, there’s some basic questions that you will want answered before making any financial commitment. Digital marketing takes a lot of work and with so many different approaches out there, not every agency works the same. By deciding to outsource to an agency, ideally, you want to find the one that is best for your category of the marketplace and who are able to provide the right answers to your questions.
How they approach digital marketing and what their process is
This is the first answer you want to get from a digital marketing agency. Find out how they work, see how they approach specific aspects of digital marketing (i.e. social media), and how they intend to generate leads. This is their opportunity to sell themselves on why they’re the right fit for your brand.
Knowing who on their team would be assigned to you
When it comes to digital marketing agencies, knowing that you’re working with a team of individuals with specialized skillsets can be very attractive. By knowing what specialists would be assigned to your case, you know where priorities will like. Get a sense of who will oversee what and inquire about their experience in the area where you hope to grow.
The rise of voice interfaces in business environments is happening as more companies are seeing the value in it. Devices such as the Amazon Echo and others have the potential to support executives sitting in on business meetings, to procure relevant data in real-time on demand, and to provide a direct connection with a multitude of different analytics.
Interacting with a computer’s voice is something not all consumers are yet adjusted to but it is happening. As the minds of everyday consumers change, the business community does follow. Decades ago, one couldn’t imagine operating in a business setting without a mouse or keyboard to draw from. Now we do it every day as we gather data and communicate with our smartphones. Behaviours have changed and voice interfaces, in a decade’s time or likely less, are going see huge integration into our lives.
Amazon is introducing Alexa for Business which is a slightly modified voice interface designed to be used specifically in business environments. This cloud service uses voice to navigate its contents. This is among the first products Amazon has released in this category specifically targeting businesses and there may be more in the pipeline in the years to come. There are already companies who have independently integrated Amazon Echo into different tools.
Imagine the year is 2020. The ways in which marketing has evolved by this year are uniquely impressive. Key technologies that were just bubbling under the radar years earlier have come out in full force and consumer trends have overtaken the industry.
Between today and 2020, a lot is expected to happen in the marketing world. Though unexpected developments are sure to arise, we’re pretty confident in making at least a few predictions. For example, the upward trend of mobile is expected to continue. Today it makes up more than 50 percent of all web traffic and by 2020, that percentage may have soared to break the 60 percent threshold. Though there are other technology trends that will see their fair share of publicity leading into 2020, mobile is still expected to be the dominant trend. To a lesser degree, expect ongoing trends such as VR/AR, wearable tech, smart virtual assistants such as Google Home, and block chain technologies to all have grown in their corner of the marketplace. How much growth actually exists in these areas between now and then however is unclear.
Content marketers swear by documented strategies to help them work more efficiently and deliver effective campaign performances. By documenting your content marketing strategy, it puts stakeholders at ease and clearly defines where things need to be took next. Creating documented content marketing also addresses the challenges at play, and the solutions that will be required to overcome them.
Defining KPIs
No documented content marketing strategy works without first defining the objectives and KPIs. To anyone you show your content marketing plan to, expect them to ask about objectives. Address the problems your campaign will solve, what success is to this project, and ensure that stakeholders agree on this point of view.
Addressing the Target Audience
Compile relevant information that defines your target audience, including keywords, demographic data, and consumer behaviours. Thoroughly examine and acquire the necessary insights to plan for how to appeal to the intended group. Every target audience has a uniqueness to it. By addressing the challenges and goals that face those you are trying to market to, you can better create content that provides them with value.
As voice-controlled home devices such as Amazon’s Alexa have been on the rise, content marketers have long predicted a dynamic shift in the industry. As customers and marketers have now been interjected into a new arena to connect in, users are almost begging for interactive, entertaining ways to connect with their favourite brands.
There are some companies who have already adopted voice-enabled content marketing strategies to take advantage of tech like Alexa. It’s by their example that we highlight the future – and, actually the present – of content marketing, at least according to how smart home devices are guiding things.
Marketing School
Neil Patel and Eric Siu have teamed up for one of the first marketing strategies specifically targeting Alexa. Every day, the team releases to its subscriber base roughly ten minutes of marketing tips, tricks, and advice, almost like a personalized mini podcast of sorts. By having an established brand and speaking on subjects that their subscribers care about, this type of strategy which has been aptly named “daily briefing” is working!
There’s been mass interest in artificial intelligence (AI) with companies such as Google investing billions of dollars annually in developing different AI-related technologies. The rate of expansion for AI is unlike anything we’ve seen before with healthcare, education, and finance each putting forth big investments. Mobile app developers have taken notice of the ongoing developments in AI, beginning to incorporate them into app personalization. The result – significant improvements in user satisfaction and retention.
Within a mobile context, there are few restrictions to how AI can be used. Currently, AI has taken the form of chatbots and context-aware sensors though there are endless uses for the growing body of tech. Some of the world’s biggest companies have been paying attention. It is estimated that more than 200 of the world’s largest companies will accommodate AI into enterprise mobile applications by the end of the year.
At the centre of the rise of AI in mobile applications are user preferences and consumer trends. Putting it simply, users want to have personalized experiences with their apps. The expectation is increasingly predictive mobile applications and in order to deliver a strong performance, artificial intelligence is almost a requirement. There are numerous applications who use AI to fulfill a range of requests including food orders, such as with Taco Bell’s TacoBot and Starbucks’ My Starbucks Barista. These are early examples of how applications are going ‘smart’ with AI in large part to thank. Smartphones are ideal devices to use for AI-infused apps as they provide location information and have the potential to access microphone or camera with consumer permission. The latest release of smartphones even have face recognition AI tech embedded into the devices. Through features like these, it becomes easier than ever before to create customized consumer experiences that are accurately contextualized to a consumer’s behaviour and preferences.
There’s a lot to be learned about how to manage a company’s professional reputation from some of the world’s biggest corporations. By learning how to combat challenges, those that overcome succeed towards the future while those that struggle with PR nightmares see major losses. For businesses of any size, it doesn’t hurt to take a read-through of these reputation management lessons that can make the world of difference in your credibility and competence.
#1 – Be Proactive, not Reactive
Managing a business online means staying ahead of any negative comments that could be affecting your company. Keep ahead on Google reviews, blogs, and review forums (including Facebook). Some of the world’s biggest companies have entire departments tasked with handling negative remarks online. Though you may not need a whole department to keep up, invest in techniques such as setting up a Google Alert, an account at Mention.com, and/or regularly checking review sites online.
#2 – Innovation makes a Company the Authority on a given subject
When you innovate, it puts you at the forefront. For example, Apple has dominated the conversation in several product categories throughout the past two decades because of their long-term commitment and financial investments to innovation. Take a look at your competitors and see where you can improve upon the gaps in their products or services. Browse online reviews for ideas. When you have a key piece of innovation developed and ready to execute, promote it.
It is unfortunately way too common in content marketing to settle into a single approach that may work well initially but, over time, may stifle growth. Always, content marketing should be evaluated to see where there are opportunities to potentially evolve the way content is being created and released.
Quantity or Quality; there are Arguments for both
Among the most common questions clients have about content marketing is how often to release content. The answer begins with consistency. Whether content is being released once a week, monthly, or quarterly, the most successful content marketers adhere to a consistent schedule. Secondly, it is important not to saturate the content market so ideally a release schedule should have dates spread out appropriately. Thirdly, it is true that less is more – usually. Instead of writing and releasing fifty average-sounding blog articles, focus on five or ten unique and exceptional pieces that will attract views. To this point, finding niches that resonate with your audience can help in elevating the quality of pieces and in finding readers on social media.
Investing in inbound marketing efforts can lead to high costs that customers may not always understand. Where all that inbound marketing money is going is no trade secret. It’s usually based off of one of two models – cost plus or value-based. In terms of inbound marketing agency pricing standards, you likely fall under one of the two. In this article, we hope to outline a little bit about how each model uses its resources and to define what exactly it is that you are paying for.
Cost-Plus Inbound Marketing
The cost-plus model is built off of overall costs including a mark-up which may range from thirty-five percent to 100 percent or more depending on the digital marketing agency you selected. The costs paid on a cost-plus model are going towards the oversight required to complete a project, in addition to overhead and the general costs of doing business.
No two agencies divide their costs the same, sometimes making it difficult for the consumer to choose the right one for their needs. For example, one agency may pay $20/hour for a service that another agency pays three or four times the same rate. Also, if one were to compare two agencies offering a $3,500 monthly fee, it does not necessarily mean you will be getting the same services from both. Thereby, cost-plus hinges on knowing what services you are being provided with and what costs make the most sense for your business.
It’s been well publicized how social media platforms are constantly evolving. In turn, social media marketing has been subject to major changes throughout the past year. In the year to come, as we look ahead to how to promote on social media, these social media marketing trends are set to re-define how we do business in 2018.
#1 – The growing platform of Pinterest
Pinterest is somewhat underdeveloped when it comes to social media marketing. As Pinterest continues to make itself more advertiser-friendly, expect better keyword search to take hold this year. The platform has already committed to delivering better ad targeting. The rise of Pinterest’s video feature is also expected to continue to gain acceptance among users.
#2 – Choosing YouTube for Lead Generation
Ad costs are rising across the board. In an effort to generate leads for free, YouTube may be your best bet. Though largely untapped, YouTube provides the opportunity to reach consumers with attractive, informative videos that provide real-time value. Think of all the times we type in something to search on YouTube, whether it be instructional videos, news reports, music, video games, or whatever the case. YouTube is a hotbed of qualified leads that are there for the picking.
Digital marketing agencies sometimes come with a price tag that not every client is willing to accept. In an effort to save money, some go the route of hiring a digital marketing consultant instead. Though hiring a freelancer instead of an agency has its benefits, there are many reasons not to consider it.
To begin with, hiring a freelance digital marketing consultant online does not guarantee you will find someone from Canada or the United States. In many cases, small businesses may find themselves challenged by international off-shore marketing consultants who lack quality and experience, unable to deliver the results you desire. In the short-term, they may be cheaper but no one wants their business to be represented by a consultant who does not understand your business or how to do the agreed-upon work.
The nature of freelance digital marketing also means that you’re investing a lot of time and money into one specific person. Your business will suffer if this one person ever unexpectedly gets sick, is in a car accident, or simply disappears. Sure, you can always hire another but then you have to re-educate a new consultant on your business. Why not to hire a digital marketing consultant boils down to the fact that the risks outweigh the costs. As a short-term fix, there’s not enough value in it to seriously consider anything less than some form of an agency.
As we look ahead towards the changing landscape of social media and the internet, it’s clear that digital marketing is in for quite the overhaul. Numerous trends are on way to disappearing and here are just a few.
Long-form, “expert author” e-books
E-books are still a great marketing tool – they’re just going to have to be a little bit shorter. Every year, consuming content gets a little bit faster and a little more instant. To build authority, e-books have their limits. If you’re writing one today, making it short, informative, and to the point is recommended. The days of long-style e-books designed to generate leads is all but dead. Invest that time and effort in other places.
Say bye to an organic Facebook
Facebook’s organic reach has long been seeing diminishing returns. At this point, if you want to reach an audience on Facebook, you’re going to have to enact paid ads. There’s almost no way around it. Sadly, organic reach has come to its end. Even at the current 5-10% organic reach that some brands have today, we can expect it to fall even further in 2018.
Hiring a digital marketing agency sometimes doesn’t get you everything you wanted from the relationship. We’ve had many clients approach us with these concerns and/or past experiences of having worked with digital marketing companies who did not follow through on their promises. Lately, if you’ve been thinking that you might be wasting your time or money on a digital agency, here are some things to consider.
#1 – Do you Have established Marketing Goals?
Digital marketing companies should always be hired with specific goals in mind and not just under a general purpose. If you have not established clear marketing objectives or if a digital marketing agency has not committed to achieving defined goals, there may be no way for them to attain the success you expect from them.
#2 – Marketing is not always Responsible for Sales
There are times when the problem is not the digital marketing company but is instead something else. There are always other factors at play, such as product accessibility, pricing, and other elements that are not in direct control of digital marketing. Consider that there may be a disruption somewhere else in the sales chain.
There is a revolution happening in the world of smartphones and mobile screen devices!
Smart home devices, Bluetooth software development, and audio-friendly wearables such as the upcoming Apple Watch release all mark a shift in consumer behaviour, from screen to post-screen. The Apple Watch, in particular, is a unique example as it comes with LTE cellular connectivity and has the potential to become the world’s first major post-phone digital device.
All of this means that it’s now possible to play music, text message, make phone calls, retrieve directions, and to Google without ever seeing a screen. Today’s landscape is dominated by screens however tomorrow’s won’t be. This equates to marketing needing a desperate change in focus.
More than 90 percent of all online searches are conducted through either Google, Bing, or Yahoo. As someone working in website marketing and search engine optimization, it’s easy to get caught up in satisfying the three big names in internet searching. These are big companies, yes, who dominate the marketplace however these are far from the only search engines out there.
Why you might want to do some research into alternative search engines is because there are a handful of companies gaining notice that may provide hefty benefit if you know how to work them. There are literally dozens of search engines out there, each with their own growing fan base and niche. Here’s our list of some alternative search engines to keep an eye out for.
Whipping up a quality resume is far from the only thing you need to worry about when getting ready for a job interview.
Today’s technologies have advanced to the point where it’s now possible to use emotion analytics to read facial reactions not visible to the everyday human eye.
It’s been suggested that using this software could assist HR reps in deciding whether you fit the job or not.
Imagine the impact it would have if a computer could read the involuntary facial reactions that happen to anyone in a job interview. It’s a little twisted, is it not! Instead of being judged on the merits of your qualifications, your appearance, your accomplishments, or your conduct, emotion analytics software some argue is a more accurate way of hiring in some fields.
For businesses having trouble finding ways to attract people to their site, in Pinterest lies an amazing opportunity to generate more traffic and build a growing subscriber base. More and more, Pinterest is attracting marketers, advertisers, and entrepreneurs for these reasons. We love it! See big results with these tips and tricks on how to attract more customers with Pinterest.
Create Big, branded Graphics and Images for your Page
Pinterest hinges on the visual. To keep a user on your page and attract more eyes, you need to have big images, appropriately branded, and in a vertical, easily digestible format.
Let’s say you’ve never done graphics or images before. No worries! Building from a simple guide of two fonts or less, three colors or less, and ensuring the background image is relevant and high-quality can be a starting point.
Also, make sure your domain is featured in your image so that people know where it’s from.
It’s not uncommon for the average user to choose some scarily easy passwords that are easily guessed. For hackers, the easiest way for them to find their way into a system is by guessing a password. Though there are many things that can be done to create more secure passwords, few people do them. To create a stronger log-in, here are the 7 things we recommend starting with.
Password Managers will Protect your Passwords
Every internet user should have a password manager to create and secure for them strong passwords. Instead of using easy passwords across every log-in – or worse, the same password for all accounts! – a password manager will generate individual passwords for you. If you’re concerned about having to remember all of your passwords, this is precisely what this tool is for!
See all of your passwords in one place with secure authentication in place, ensuring no one gains access other than you. Choosing a high-quality password manager, you should be able to sync these to any desktop or mobile device. In this day and age, there’s no reason to not have a password manager set up so be sure to check out some to find what appeals to you.
Augmented reality is changing the way that customers interact with brands. The day when the screen experience shrinks down to a pair of glasses or even contact lenses, AR is going to have an even larger impact on the way we live our lives.
In 2018, a number of brands are taking advantage of AR – building innovative releases, finding new ways to penetrate markets, and delivering to the marketplace unique, personalized content experiences.
This year, if you’re interested in building or getting involved with AR, here are some key recommendations to follow.
Buzz Fades quickly so act fast
When a new piece of AR hits the market, it’s never fast before it’s duplicated by others. Any novelty AR release needs to be enacted quickly for maximum ROI. For releases like Pokémon Go, there’s always a window. That said, even the biggest of these releases don’t have a lot of staying power. Being first to market is key for novelty AR applications.
For those that know, the PayPal-owned and operated Venmo app is likely one of their favourite payment methods. For that that don’t know, they should. In the fact of Apple Pay, Square Cash, and other competitors, there is one name who is dominating the payment app space and that is Venmo.
In three short years, Venmo has gone from quarterly volumes of $1.3 billion in person-to-person payment processing in the first quarter of 2015 to $9.0 billion in the third quarter of 2017. There is no other payment app that has been able to demonstrate this level of growth, including Apple. As one of the first in the marketplace and one of its biggest names currently, Venmo may
Let’s make no mistake, the competition is pretty fierce. Apple Pay has the licensing in place and the technology integration behind it to reach a wide range of consumers. For example, earlier this month, Apple introduced its Apple Pay Cash feature into iMessage. This feature allows any user to send money to family and friends easily through their messenger app. Though PayPal provides this same service, it does not quite have the integration that Apple Pay has
The progression of AI is an inevitability in the next decade and may in fact re-design the way human beings interact, in the same way that computers, text messages, and smartphones have.
There’s no denying the impact that computers have had on our lives. It’s been a long, long time since the first general purpose computer was commissioned by the United States Army. Today, consumers everywhere have computers surrounding them and in their pockets.
Since the 1970s, computers have been used to augment human intelligence. The calculator may be the simplest example of this, supporting and expanding the problem-solving skills of a user.
Throughout the past few decades, scientists have struggled with what the next major step in computers is with regards to human problem-solving. There are some who have aligned with intelligence augmentation (IA), which is the building of systems designed to encourage collaboration between human being and machine. Then, there are those who have put their eggs into the basket of artificial intelligence (AI), which is to outsource intelligence tasks to machines without any human involvement in the process.
