Saturday, September 3, 2016
MobileFuse partners with Cuebiq to offer first measurement of mobile 'Dwell Lift'
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Friday, September 2, 2016
6-Step Checklist for Revamping Your Small Business' Online Presence
6-Step Checklist for Revamping Your Small Business' Online Presence written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
photo credit Pexels
It's 2016. The days of prospective customers sauntering down Main Street or even flipping through the Yellow Pages in hopes of stumbling upon your business are long gone. We live in the Age of Information now, and the Internet is king of the castle. When someone needs a service or product, they go online to find the appropriate business and its contact information. According to Adweek, 81% of consumers conduct research online before making a purchase. You almost certainly already know this and pivoted your business online years ago, but unless you've stayed remarkably vigilant of the latest trends, your online presence could probably use a facelift.
As changes continuously sweep across social media, Google, and the content marketing world, your business' online presence must evolve or you risk receding into obscurity, stagnating with an out-of-touch website or, god forbid, a MySpace page. For the most part, small businesses aren't maximizing their online presence. Less than half of small businesses advertise online, pay attention to Search Engine Optimization, or have a social media presence, and a quarter of small businesses don't have a website at all.
For those who wish to gain a competitive advantage, consider this 6-step checklist for revamping your online presence in 2016:
1. Reassess and Segment Your Target Market
Before you jump into any actual changes, it's important to sit back and reconsider your target market. Get into the psychology of your consumer and begin to identify common characteristics of your target market. Now, segment your market into specific groups of people. It might be tempting to think that you want to sell to everyone under the sun, but without segments to focus your efforts on, you will never have a highly-focused campaign geared towards a specific group and will risk not reaching anyone effectively. Consider an online clothing store. They've segmented their market–men's and women's–to push customers down the sales funnel toward their desired destination. Customers are looking for something specific from you–they're not just there to visit–so direct them to that segmented goal.
2. Listen to and Engage with Your Audience
Now that you know who you're selling to, engage with them and test the waters. Find the best channels through which to interact with your past and potential clientele. Since social media platforms break down along demographic lines, it's easy to focus your attention on one of your segmented groups at a time. Have a professional, career-oriented customer base? Try LinkedIn. Focused more on female creatives? Try Pinterest. Demographic-specific e-mail lists for newsletters are also effective in focused communication with specific segments. Once you've zeroed in, engage with your audience, track their online activity, and see what they are saying about you via Google Alerts to figure out how to best design your online presence to suit your audience's tendencies.
3. Optimize Your Landing Page for Conversions
The central motivation of revamping your online presence is to maximize conversions, turning a visitor to your website into a customer. Your landing page is the most crucial part of this–most site visitors only spend up to 8 seconds before bailing on your landing page and moving on to your competitor. This means your page must utilize the most effective design tactics possible to keep your visitor's attention and readily satisfy their needs. Videos can increase conversions by 86% and a clear Call-to-Action button (like, “Buy Now!”) is similarly important, so consider implementing these elements onto your own page.
4. Don't Forget About Mobile
91% of small business websites aren't optimized for mobile. This should be a major concern, considering mobile accounts for over half of web searches. Despite the countless how-tos that break down mobile optimization tactics concerning page speed and design, optimizing for mobile is a difficult and technical process that flies right over most heads. To make the most of your efforts on your landing page and mobile, put your DIY instincts on hold and hire a freelancer who works in responsive design, who can create a flexible web page for both desktop and mobile. It may be costly, but keep in mind a responsive redesign can increase conversions by up to 590%.
5. Revitalize Your Social Media Accounts
In order for your social media presence to translate to greater exposure and thus more customers, you must provide consistent, quality content and actively engage with comments. Create a selling strategy–how is your social media use going to get people in the store and ordering your product? With that in mind, be authentic and emphasize engagement, speaking with and caring for your customers, over hard selling. According to Magic Commerce, only 20% of your content should be promotional while the rest should get your audience involved in conversation on topics relevant to your business.
7. Take Advantage of Google
Google knows all, right? Maybe, but your business likely won't show up on Google Maps unless you've claimed your Google My Business. Drop everything you're doing and fix that right now. Google's incredible market share of desktop search engines hovers around 90%, meaning that if you're not maximizing your use of all that Google has to offer, you're basically invisible to most potential customers. Beyond getting on Maps and My Business, be sure to use Google's new 360-degree virtual tour, Business View, if you have a physical location. It will feature next to your business details on Google Search and give prospective walk-ins more reason to trust your business.
Whether you've run a small business for 10 years or 10 months, these 6 steps can help you embrace a fresh approach to your online presence and maximize your ability to retain and gain customers in this increasingly digital world. Have another piece of advice on getting a business up to snuff online? Share your comments below!
Ellie Martin is Co-founder of Startup Change group. As writer and author, her works have been featured on Yahoo! , Wisebread, AOL, among others. She currently splits her time between her home office in New York and Israel. You may connect with her on Twitter.
The Power of Instagram in Email Marketing
Since October 2010, Instagram has seen massive growth in its user base. In the first two months after release, Instagram hit 1 million users. Two years later Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. The world didn't understand how a tiny company that helps share photos could be worth so much. How could Facebook justify paying that much for a tiny competitor? Well, today they've grown to over 500 million users globally with around 100 million users in the U.S.
Instagram in Email Marketing
Before contextual email technology was available, inserting social media content into an email template wasn't easy. Social media's quick tempo left slower email messages lacking in content relevance. Email marketers began cross-channel marketing with social media icons to decrease the amount of content upkeep. Almost overnight, graphical social media icons became the standard for integrating social media into email consistently.
Email technology has evolved significantly. Now, an email can display up-to-the-minute posts with imagery. As the email opens for each recipient, social account information is pulled in real-time. Instagram can become a portion of live content in an email instead of just a logo - social content is synchronized across both channels seamlessly.
A excellent example of a live Instagram feed in an email is CheapCaribbean.com. They've not only begun pulling a live Instagram feed, but they've also customized the feed to become their branded content element.
Instagram was added to their current email campaigns with a small line of HTML code after a few minutes of customization.
Email Marketing and Instagram: Better Together
Infusing these two online channels improves online brand visibility and email relevance from the start. Instagram's attractiveness brings a refreshing visual element to email's already proven return on investment. Conversely, email marketing drives loyal inbox readers to follow Instagram - strengthening the omnichannel business-to-consumer relationship.
Increasing Email Engagement
Adding a live Instagram feed into your email isn't just another way of inserting a social media logo. With active Instagram users engaging on that network up to eleven days a month, weekly or monthly emails could benefit dramatically from an increased lift in email content interaction. A feed can be added to an automated campaign, preventing constant updates, thus saving marketers time and money.
Email & Instagram Tips:
Adding a live Instagram feed to an email template isn't the only benefit to cross-channel marketing between the two mediums. Here are a few other items to try:
- Promote email registrations in Instagram using contests or giveaways
- Use Instagram imagery for email creative
- Create an Instagram hashtag that only applies to email users, promoting benefits of signing up
- Use an Instagram hashtag to filter images that are pulled into the email for a custom display
The creative aspect of email is just one part. To make sure your messages make it to your recipient's inbox, download the Email Deliverability Guide for Modern Marketers.
Online Marketing News: Millennials on Social, Digital Lead Generation & Email Secret Sauce
Survey: 41% of Millennials Use Facebook Every Day (Infographic)
A recent study showed that millennials spent the majority of their 'online time' on smartphones. The same study showed that Facebook was the most popular social network among millennials and non-millennials, followed by YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat. SocialTimes
The Most Effective Digital Lead Generation Channels (Report)
A new report found that 45% of business people surveyed thought that content marketing and email marketing were the most effective online tactics used for lead generation. Following behind at a close second was social media marketing (39%) and SEO/landing page optimization (38%). MarketingProfs
Are Weekends The Secret Ingredient For Email Marketing?
According to a recent report, emails sent on Saturdays generate a 60% higher than average conversion rate, with Sunday driving the second highest conversion rate of 40% above average. Emails sent on Thursdays received the highest level of engagement. Of course, these stats should be taken into account with other factors, like industry and seasonal trends or events. MediaPost
Facebook now officially showcases vertical videos in mobile news feeds
After realizing in testing that users watch vertical videos longer and with the sound on when using mobile when presented vertically in the News Feed, Facebook is taking vertical video support out of the testing phase and rolling it out platform wide. This is in contrast to their traditional treatment, where they crop the video into a square format and the user has to click into it to view the full image. Marketing Land
Twitter to Open Pre-Roll Video Ad Program to Influencers
Twitter is opening its pre-roll video ad program to influential Twitter users -- allowing them to capitalize on their social efforts. According to AdAge: "The ads play before the videos that people share on the platform, and they come with a skip button, much like the one on YouTube." AdAge
Here's What We Learned Analyzing 30 CMOs on LinkedIn
Direct Marketing News recently conducted a study of 30 CMO LinkedIn profiles and found some interesting results. Only 10% of the CMOs studied majored in marketing for their undergraduate degree, with 20% actually majoring in engineering. About half of CMOs had a graduate degree. Another noteworthy find is that their colleagues endorse them on LinkedIn most commonly for strategy/marketing strategy, start-ups, and product marketing. Direct Marketing News
Social media marketing spend has surged over the years, but falls short of estimates
ClickZ reports the CMO Survey, conducted by Deloitte and the American Marketing Association found: "Marketers' spending on social media has tripled in the past seven years but falls way short of where marketers expected it to be when they peered into their crystal balls in 2009." ClickZ
Google updates local reviews schema guidelines
Google has updated their local business reviews guidelines in terms of when you can and when you can't use schema markup on reviews. Guidelines include that reviews must allow for both negative and positive sentiment, snippets can't be written or provided by the business, and duplicate reviews are not allowed, among others. Search Engine Land
What were your top online marketing news stories this week?
I'll be back next week with more online marketing news. Have something to share? Write a quick note in the comments or tweet to @toprank!
The post Online Marketing News: Millennials on Social, Digital Lead Generation & Email Secret Sauce appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.
MobileFuse partners with Cuebiq to offer first measurement of mobile 'Dwell Lift'
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.