Basic Digital Marketing

As we transition into the last quarter of the year, holidays start to come to mind. And with all the excitement surrounding Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s, companies have a great opportunity to launch a holiday-themed email marketing campaign. Here are a few ways your business can get the most out of the holidays.

 The timing of marketing emails is crucial, as messages that are sent too early or too late can deter recipients and knock several potential customers off of your mailing list. Avoid having your emails ignored or deleted by sending them at off-peak times when very few other companies are sending out their own. Your recipients will pay more attention to them and take the time to look through their content. If you’re having trouble determining the off-peak hours for your industry, look through the data on open and clickthrough rates and use that to experiment with different sending times.

 Start targeting lapsed customers during the holiday season. If they haven’t received anything from you lately or haven’t bought anything from you in a while, sending them a holiday-themed email can be the perfect prompt. To get their attention, be creative with your titles and introductions. Put interesting visual content and useful information into the body of your email to pack enough value to spark curiosity in the recipient, giving them reason to visit your website and perhaps purchase something while they’re there. It won’t work every time, but it’s much more effective during the holidays.

Sometimes the best way to get the word out about your content is through a content marketing agency. There are many available to companies who are willing to pay the price for one, but which of these agencies will meet your needs? Choosing one at random can be dangerous, so look for the signs below on your search for the ideal content marketing agency.

 Most agencies are ready and willing to help their clients, but neglect to ask what the client’s goals are. They should help companies form a business strategy by taking their goals and creating achievable checkpoints throughout the journey that the company can meet to near the end result they want. The ability to come up with a solid plan is the first and most important sign of a good content marketing agency.

 When you’ve come up with a realistic plan, your agency should prompt you to or help you with ideas as to where you can put your content and how you can adjust it to fit to each platform. Blogs are great, but they’re not always the best option if you want your content to be seen quickly after posting. The agency you choose should work with you to come up with new and interesting ways to put your content out into the world. This can include podcasts, videos, slideshows, infographics, and other underused formats that could be of use to your company.

In today's digital landscape, video marketing has emerged as a powerful tool that can significantly impact a business's success. With the rise of social media and video content's increasing popularity, brands recognize the immense potential of incorporating videos into their marketing strategies. From engaging and captivating storytelling to boosting customer engagement and conversion rates, video marketing offers many benefits that can propel businesses to new heights. This article explores why video marketing is crucial for business success and how it can revolutionize your marketing efforts.

Every company wants to be seen as an authority figure in their industry, but few companies actually know how to get there. We’re here to tell you that you can achieve authority status, regardless of the industry you’re in, and you can do it through content marketing.

 Before you create and publish article after article in a race to the finish line, realize that making yourself an authority figure takes time and planning, even if your products and services are amazing. First decide which area of your industry you want to cover. If you’re trying to become the industry’s number one influencer, your goal is too broad and difficult to meet. Choose one facet of the industry before you claim the entire thing.

 Only after you’ve chosen your industry sector can you start writing. And this writing can’t be standard: you need to find a way to separate yourself from the rest. How? Take an idea that’s been done before and add to it. Improve upon a concept that you know was well-received and you’ll draw attention to yourself, which is exactly what you want.

It’s easy for someone with enough passion and drive to jump right into a project they’ve always wanted to complete. Unfortunately, not knowing what they’re in for can spell out failure down the road. There are obstacles in any task, whether big or small, and content marketers can’t afford to ignore them due to the very nature of their work.

 Most people who take on the role of content marketer don’t know what kind of content is best to create. It’s always somewhat dependent on the company it’s promoting. Photos, video ads, live streams, podcasts, and other visual content in the marketing sphere today can be effective when used appropriately, but they often lack one of the most influential components of content marketing: good writing.

 Companies who opt for content marketing services need to employ good writers to develop clickable titles, interesting scripts, and multi-faceted articles to make contact with the audience they’re reaching for. It’s good for more than just gaining new customers and building your authority, however; it can also teach you more about the industry you’re in. Here are the most crucial parts of writing well.

 Start with a strong introduction. You want to get your readers hooked, and the best way to do that is to use a question, a story, or a quotation. It’s something small and personal that they’ll be happy to read more about. If you want to go one step further, try including a decent amount of keywords in your opening paragraph. You’ll push your Toronto SEO ranking up and make it clear which topics you’re addressing.

With nearly half a billion registered users and individuals from more than two hundred countries engaged on LinkedIn, there is no better network to tap into if the intention is professional growth. Learning how to leverage a LinkedIn profile to generate higher sales, more qualified leads, and to build more effective business relationship is a skill every user should have. Yet, many don’t. The days of in-person business card exchanges being a businessperson’s primary networking strategy are over. If you haven’t already, join LinkedIn. Here’s why.

A LinkedIn Profile is your Online Business Card and it’s One you Need to Have

Every person on LinkedIn is there for more or less the same reason – to connect with other like-minded businesspeople and to expand their network of friends. Here is an opportunity to represent you and how you see your business with your name, title, and photo. Make every detail count. Choose the photo that best represents your intention and communicate professionalism with every visual or written opportunity.

Connecting with Others and those Business Relationships are Key to Success

No one becomes successful in business on their own. They become successful by surrounding themselves with a team of driven people with a similar mindset as their own. Invest some time into scanning through the ‘people you may know’ list on LinkedIn. If anyone interests you professionally, take the opportunity to send them an invitation to connect. If it is accepted, follow up with a friendly message just to say hi and to give a little detail on why you wanted to connect.

You may be surprised to hear that many marketing companies who took to social media sites in their early days didn’t think they would last as legitimate advertising platforms. At the time, it made sense: most things, both online and offline, that gain a huge following in a short period of time tend to die down in a few years, months, or even weeks. Now that we know social media isn’t leaving anytime soon, however, companies that are taking advantage of its marketing features are reaping the rewards.

 The main reason why businesses either give up on social media marketing or don’t bother to do it at all is because they don’t know how to do it the right way. It’s a sad reality, especially for smaller companies that are desperate to reach more of their audience in a quick and easy way. But it does leave more advertising opportunities open for willing companies.

 Social media has remained a central part of communication for over a decade for many reasons. The first of these reasons is its incredible reach, connecting people from across the world to individuals and companies they never knew they needed. Social media sites are also cheap to advertise on with their free use and low campaign costs. Best of all, each site has its own layout, giving marketers variety in what they create and share.

People who have adjusted to the practically instantaneous functions of mobile devices now expect everything related to the digital world to be brief and valuable. As frustrating as this can be for companies who exist almost exclusively on the internet, consumers aren’t exactly to blame for the craze. Technically, the creators of high-speed apps and gadgets are the true culprits, pushing the envelope in terms of innovation. But in many ways, their numerous tech ideas have improved our lives. Companies simply have to deal with the consequences of this reality.

 It’s critical for businesses to know the intentions of the majority of their target audience to better cater to their needs. Because the emphasis is so much on speed nowadays, it’s not too farfetched to guess that customers expect to complete the interactions they have with companies in just minutes. They want to load a website as soon as they click its link, purchase an item as soon as they see one, and receive a response as soon as they’ve asked a question. They also seek information relevant to their situation.

 Now that this is the reality of digital marketing and mobile marketing, companies who manage to satisfy their customers’ need for instant gratification tend to come out on top. The speed at which you do things can really make you stand out if the quality of what you’re offering is the same as that of your competitors. In most cases, eager customers are willing to pay a higher price to get what they want sooner. This is why things like Amazon Prime and Netflix Premium work so well.

You may not think to use Facebook video ads for marketing, but it can come in handy for many companies looking to expand their reach. In fact, if you use this feature correctly, it can pull loads of new consumers into your sales scheme and eventually have them purchase your products or services. But first, let’s go over the most common type of sales scheme.

 Most marketers opt for an awareness plus remarketing framework when they aim to gain new customers. You first need to introduce your company to the members of your target audience that haven’t yet heard of it, and this is where videos prove their worth. Video content is currently the most consumed type of digital content that exists, and they naturally capture and keep the interest of viewers longer than text and photo content do.

 As an advertiser, you can even direct specific video content towards certain sectors of your target audience by analysing who watched what and going from there. Unsurprisingly, this works well on most consumers, especially those who feel as if they’re being catered to. We’ve got some tips to help you get started with your Facebook video ad campaign.

One blog post containing everything you need to know about a specific topic simply doesn’t exist. That’s why the source of information about a particular subject is the blog as a whole, not a single post within that blog. Companies that choose to start a blog on their website must build upon their marketing strategy with each post they create, and the best way to do that is with internal links.

 Backlinks are great for proving your credibility, but enhancing your authority on the subject you’re writing about is best done through links to your business website. Your readers will still get the information they need: they’ll just get it from you instead of an outside source. Because it’s important to include a decent amount of new content in each blog post and avoid link overload, it’s a good idea to follow a framework.

 Don’t go throwing internal links into your content wherever you can. Come up with a structured plan first. The best way to do this is to review your most recent blog posts and the destination pages of your most popular products. Once you’ve found old content relevant to the new content you’re creating, select three or four from the list of posts you’ve compiled and put the links in suitable places.

 A good way to use internal links is to insert them when a separate topic that the reader may not know about comes up. You can link to a blog post that you’ve already written about that topic to avoid stuffing too much information into a single post and demonstrate that you have knowledge on a wide range of subjects. Your user will appreciate not being redirected to a different website with each link and will naturally start to trust you more when they see how much information you have.

Every business campaign is different, but each successful one follows the same basic rules. The only industry-specific part of the formula is the amount of emphasis you put on any given component. You may have already figured out what your company needs to succeed in its campaigns, but in case you’re still uncertain, keep reading and discover the factors that will make it work.

Before you start your marketing campaign, you must define your target audience. Advertising to anyone, anywhere, at anytime may have worked before the age of the internet, but it certainly doesn’t work anymore. With each new decade came a new marketing strategy, promoting products to the consumers they were originally intended for through television, radio, newspaper, and billboard advertisements.

Products for children began to appear in places children were the first to see them, as did products and services for parents, teenagers, men, women, students, workers, and any other distinctive group in society. Marketers were beginning to learn how to tailor their advertising techniques to those who bought from them.

Now advertising space is everywhere, and any company with enough money can take advantage of it. You only have to be strategic about what you choose. Investigate the behaviour of your buyers, taking note of what they like, what they dislike, and what they’re willing to pay for. Come up with creative ways to appeal to their age, gender, role, and social status through your advertising. If you’re struggling, get the help of the numerous tools available to marketers everywhere.

With the many changes the technological world has faced in recent years, it’s been difficult for marketers to maintain their SEO strength. Website blogs tend to suffer the most, unintentionally neglecting the simplest strategies anyone can employ to give their search results ranking a boost. It’s true that SEO is constantly evolving, but its basics are still relevant. Is your company forgetting about foundational ranking tactics? Read on to find out what they are and how you can use them.

Although keywords aren’t everything, they’ve always been an important part of SEO, and that hasn’t changed. They still need to be included in the right places without being overused, as keyword stuffing can lead to harsh penalties for marketers. Creating blog posts about general topics isn’t enough to show up on the first page of related search results.

Niche-specific keywords must be incorporated into blog content in order for that content to reach its target audience and turn curious readers into useful leads. Blogs contained within websites should include more long-tail keywords and advice-related terminology that members of the audience are likely to look up. It’s also a good idea to optimize tags and headings for keyword searches, as they can increase your ranking and draw in readers who click on your content.

These days, the focus of content marketing is too much on SEO and not enough on emotion. Showing up on the first results page is the best way to drive more traffic to your website, but people aren’t going to keep going back to a website if its only goal was to be more visible to people. All of the content you put out must be written in an interesting way to keep customers around, and not all of it has to contain cold, hard facts. Companies who play into the emotions of their target audience generate more revenue long term. We’re here to show you the six main ways in which you can persuade your customers, courtesy of Dr. Robert Cialdini.

Reciprocity is the first and most simple of the persuasive elements. It describes how people who have been given something at random and at no cost to them feel the need to return the favor. We feel this way because the social exchange is a norm in our society. Apply reciprocity to your writing by including useful pointers without requesting anything in return. In your customers’ minds, you become a great resource they should give back to. Customers will loyally return to your online shop or ecommerce website because of this.

Now that the world has gone almost completely digital, every company needs to make a good first impression online. They need good content, an attractive layout, and a sufficient amount of information on every platform. But they also need to appear trustworthy to gain the personal details of potential customers for successful marketing, and these details need to be kept confidential.

It’s not often that new organizations consider implementing a digital information policy for their customers because they work on a small enough scale that they assume they’re not at risk of theft. The sad truth is, security breaches can happen to anyone. They’re expensive, prohibitive, and simply alarming, often causing a significant decrease in customers. So how do you prevent them from happening? You take a step-by-step approach.

Social media marketing is made easier by the fact that every popular social media site is free for anyone to use. In exchange for a bit of personal information, you get access to loads of information and connections you wouldn’t have otherwise. Unfortunately, marketing on these platforms is so common that you have to put in endless hours to not only stand out, but also to have any effect on your revenue.

Contrary to popular belief, you aren’t doomed to follow this time-consuming routine for the rest of your company’s life. You can save tons of time on social media advertising while still being successful on every social media platform, and it’s simple to do. How? You’re about to find out.

Google added a question and answer feature to its Google Maps app a few weeks ago, which is available for use on Android phone systems and mobile web browsers. If you’re not an Android user, you might be in the dark. For anyone who has yet to learn about the new addition, here’s everything you need to know about how it works and what it means for users.

Some users haven’t yet seen the feature despite it being out since mid-August. If you’re encountering this problem, make sure you’ve allowed the app to complete its latest update. The feature should become visible after you’ve enabled the update.

The importance of content marketing is being emphasized everywhere, and for good reason. Modern-day buyers want high-quality advertising that isn’t too hefty, and companies who deliver in all of their departments fare better than those who ignore or avoid the trend. As time goes on, consumers demand better content, and companies that create it will be rewarded. To make sure your business is creating the kind of content your audience wants, you’ll want to become a part of the content as a service marketing sector.

Before you join the group, go over what your existing content is, where it resides, and how easily it can be reformatted to fit other devices and platforms. A thorough analysis could bring about the realization that a lot of your content is locked up and segregated, creating the potential for inconsistency or redundancy in your company’s ideas.

The much-anticipated Canvas ads from Facebook have finally entered Instagram territory. More than one year ago, the social networking site announced that its Canvas advertisements would begin to show up in people’s Stories on Instagram as a sort of success test.

The Facebook-owned, photo-based social media platform recently confirmed the suspicions of curious companies and users. Canvas ads have begun to appear in Stories as well-integrated marketing tools for advertisers who want to take full advantage of Instagram marketing features. For now, only a select few companies are trying it out, but it will soon become available to the masses.

Still getting used to modern day marketing? You’re not the only one. Fortunately, no one is doomed to continue down the dead-end path of poor advertising. Making changes doesn’t come naturally to everyone, though, which is why we’re here to help. There are many easy ways to improve your marketing strategy, and you’re about to find out what they are.

No matter what you’re trying to sell, direct your content towards the way your audience is acting now rather than the way they’ve acted in the past. No era is exactly like the one before it, and technology is speeding up the pace of our world now more than ever before. If consumers start to spend more time watching television, put out more commercials. If consumers continue to favour their smartphones, dedicate your time and money to mobile app development and mobile ads. The marketing world won’t change to suit your needs; you as a marketer must adapt to it.

Mobile has become the new standard for organic searches and general browsing on the web. That’s why Google has taken the past several months to talk about shifting gears to a mobile-first index. More than half of Internet users choose search engines on mobile devices over those on computers. Many companies will be inevitably affected, especially those who rely solely on the web. Your company may have to make some changes to adjust to the new system.

Google rankings are currently decided partially by the computer usability of a business website. Now that mobile devices are receiving a larger chunk of customer website perusal, the usability ranking element will be decided based on the website’s mobile format. This becomes a problem for companies who haven’t bothered to make a mobile-friendly website , or those who have done so but have left out vital pieces of information.

There is no set date for the switch, and Google’s only criteria to instigate it is for results to be quality neutral. This will likely happen by the first few months of next year, though the tech giant originally planned to make the change at the end of this year. It’s also possible that the transition will occur in phases, slowly changing with each new group of switched sites.

Every marketer knows that their audience does not necessarily share their passion - or, at least, they’re not as invested in it as the company is. That’s why it’s important to convince your target audience that your products, services, goals, and values matter.

When you create content explaining why you do what you do as a business, you’ll write it in a certain style. Unfortunately, this style won’t always hold the attention of your readers. You need to direct your content towards the right crowd, of course, and write in a way that makes you likable, trustworthy, and authoritative. When it comes to content marketing, you need to persuade them to believe in your company and what it stands for.

Although this technique is effective in the short-term, keeping it up can be damaging. Why? Because constantly trying to get more people on your side takes a lot of effort, and that effort could instead be put towards catering to those who are already interested in your brand. Starting over with a new group each time you promote your company will stunt the growth of your sales.

Focus on the consumers you know have a decent amount of interest in the products or services you offer. The same way not everyone you meet will like you, you won’t be able to convince everyone to care about your brand. Expect and accept that. It’s true in every industry, no matter how passionate or efficient the company in question is. Go for the ones you know will care.

Marketing is becoming more innovative than ever thanks to the fast pace of technological advancements. You’re probably trying all kinds of different things to get your customers hooked, but have you ever considered using a chat service? Both Viber and Messenger can help companies simultaneously interact with members of their target audience and promote their products. If you use the chat feature well, your loyal customers could become the main providers of social proof for your company.

Chat extensions increase your business website or app’s reach to a surprising degree. Messenger and Viber each have their own way of integrating things like videos, music, and fast action apps. Viber did it first, giving users access to gifs, Spotify, Vice, and more. Messenger followed suit a year afterward, employing chat extensions like Kayak and Swelly to increase reach and customer satisfaction.

So how can you do the same? It’s certainly possible, as several other brands have done it. We’ll go over which companies have dipped their toes into the pool of chat marketing, as well as how they did it and the results they’re seeing from it. Prepare to find out what chat marketing can do for you.

If you’re looking for some new tools to liven up your marketing strategy, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we’ll list some of the best new programs and apps for digital marketing. Read on to find out what these game-changing - and affordable - new tools are.

First on our list is Loom, a Google Chrome feature that turns recorded content into a shareable video immediately after the recording is complete. You can easily share these videos by email, with the options of downloading, deleting, and assigning passwords to them. If you already have Chrome on your computer, you can download Loom for free and send its contents to recipients on any platform.

Just Good Copy is a website that provides visitors with examples of quality email copy. Type in any email subject in the search bar or tag function and conveniently browse the plethora of results you’ll fobtain from popular sites like Trello, Dropbox, Upwork, and Pinterest. You’re bound to find something helpful, no matter your situation.

Have trouble organizing your browser tabs? Sort them out with TabCloud, a free program that can open and group together the sites you visit most often. For a seamless experience, sync your setup to other web browsers and use it for this purpose as well. TabCloud is currently only available for Android but will soon be compatible with iOS operating systems.

Keeping track of your company’s accounts across several social media platforms can be tricky, especially as those platforms become more and more different from one another. With the continuous evolution of each social media site, companies are forced to create content that fits the identity of every social media platform they’re a part of.

Although tweaking photos, videos, text, and ad formats to match the layout of the five social media platforms your company is present on can be tedious, it’s necessary for the continued success of digital marketing. Users can tell when a post was made for a different platform and has simply been copied and pasted to a new one to increase your company’s reach. It’s visually strange, and it rarely turns out good results.

When you join a new social media platform, take the time to learn more about it. Collect information on its setup, posts, users, algorithms, and anything else that’s relevant to your marketing scheme. Don’t create an account for a new site simply to be seen by more of your target audience. Instead, consider how you as an individual would use the platform. Adhere to the theme of each to fit in and appeal to potential customers.

As they grow, most companies find that some platforms are better for connecting to and interacting with consumers than others. You should certainly still advertise on these platforms, but less often. Video-centric applications, like Instagram and Snapchat, focus more on getting the word out to teens and young adults in a clever and visually interesting way. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are more about communicating information through text, usually to young adults and middle-aged individuals.

Today, more than half of Americans are on Instagram, and at this rate, that number will only increase. As a result, companies are taking advantage of Instagram marketing, but some are in the dark about how to reach their audience on such a big platform. Fortunately, the social media site comes equipped with many tools that marketers can use and has few limitations as to what strategies they can use.

Making your company’s profile visible on Instagram starts with the platform’s analytics. Look for features that help you measure the effects of your current marketing strategies. There are lots of features to choose from, so focus on finding something that can quantify the performance of individual posts by analyzing click-through rate, engagement, and reach.

Certain tools allow you to automatically post content at times you specify. This can help your company reach its audience after regular work hours and at times when your audience is most likely to see your content. Some features can even track relevant keywords and hashtags so you can better interact with your customers.

Take advantage of user generated content. If a satisfied customer makes an unsponsored post about your product, like it, comment on it, share it, or bookmark it to use later as a sort of testimonial. Many social media platforms collect user generated content, but because of its visual appeal, Instagram is the best platform to use it on.