Tag: digital marketing

When to Use Emojis and When Not To?

July 4, 2016

Smileys, then emoticons and now emojis; the basic idea behind these stylized facial representations is the same.  Emojis are digital images, not limited to facial expressions, used to express an emotion in electronic messages.  Its use became widely prevalent that it found the place in Oxford Dictionaries as its 2015 “word” of the year. Emojis are not only used casually amongst friends but in businesses across the world. Emojis are used in market research and opinion surveys, charitable causes, business promotion, email marketing, by publishing houses, bloggers, and social media marketers and so on. Digital communication means have evolved over the years and use of emojis has become strikingly significant among people; though it is generally seen that younger generation is more perceptive and receptive to the use of emojis. Smartphones and social media platforms have played a major role in this and have witnessed a steady rise in the use of emojis. Perception about emojis People have a different opinion about the use of emojis professionally. Some marketers think it assists them to connect with target audience while others consider its use unprofessional.  Some feel that it saves time and easily express what they want to communicate while some consider its role very limited. The purpose of emojis in marketing communication is still not clearly defined. Despite the fact, many marketers have already incorporated emojis into their campaigns. According to a report by Appboy, a marketing automation company, emojis are more in use among mobile marketers for email marketing and push notification campaign. It also revealed that retailers and e-commerce marketers are more likely to use emojis in their campaigns. USA today experimented with emojis on front page headline. Many agencies criticized it stating that it compels people to react in a particular manner to a news item. It is tough to express seriousness and sadness with emojis, as found by USA Today, which is not a good news for publishers. This article will help you to understand when it is appropriate to use emojis in business communication. Advantages of using emojis: Emojis bring along an element of fun and excitement into conversation Emojis help you to beat the clutter in emails When words fail to express an emotion, emojis can be your best companions Emojis can be used to give a quick response to something Emojis hardly consume any space especially when you have character limitation as in Twitter Emojis are trending right now. Using them in communication clearly signifies that you are in line with the trends Disadvantages of using emojis: Every brand has a different image in the market. Emojis just can’t gel with brands with a serious image and its forced use may look unprofessional thereby affecting brand image Incompatibility between emojis and device it is consumed on. Emojis may look different on a different device or may not open correctly due to rendering issues.  This may irk consumers and damage brand image A marketer may look desperate with frequent use of emojis in emails. Consumers tend to ignore such emails and your email will soon land up in the junk folder Emojis may look offensive and insensitive to some customers Emojis can be easily misconstrued by the different set of customers. For instance, if you post something on Facebook criticizing a technology or a product. And your customers react to it using an “angry” emoji. It could have different meanings. Customers may be angry with your post (that you criticized something they like) or they could be angry with the technology or product in question. There is ambiguity Is your brand fit to use emojis? Not every brand is suitable to use emojis. A lot depends on your clientele, type of product / service and brand image. Answering these questions may be of some assistance to decide on that. Are you clearly a professional and prudent brand? Do you serve high-profile businesses and individuals? Are most of your customers older? Does your clientele appreciate the use of emojis? Emojis should not be used in businesses where it takes you to extremities or overdoes something. For instance, a customer may generally like to react in a relieved manner for a recurring glitch you were able to resolve. In such a scenario, if you show excitement or great achievement through emojis; you may look foolish or a smug. Though it matters what kind of emoji you use, but at certain places, it may be completely unfit to use. Who can marketers use emojis with? Emojis give brands a chance to customize a part of the digital language. Facebook recently released its new Reaction update that adds six emoji response buttons to existing “Like” button.  The popularity of emojis is expected to rise with this introduction.  However, expressing negative opinions still remains a limitation through emojis. Marketers can selectively use emojis with the older audience even if they are not tech-savvy. Women are more inclined towards use of emojis than men, which is good for women-oriented brands. Surprisingly, emojis can be helpful to motivate employees within a company. However, there should be a serious code of conduct for employees to know what, where and when to use emojis with customers or not use it at all. Conclusion: Can marketers successfully engage customers through emojis? Emojis do add a character to marketing communication, but it is hard to say right now how customers respond to it in the longer run.  Marketing campaigns are resource intensive. Marketers who wish to use emojis should always test them before fully implementing them in their campaigns. No matter what, marketers should pay attention to the context in which they use emojis. These digital images are swiftly becoming part of daily communication and are hard to ignore.  A marketer must be cautious about when to use emojis so as not to offend customers and also to convey the right message in line with brand’s image. It is also important to note that emojis can never replace direct verbal or written communication because

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Common Mistakes that Mobile Ad Strategies Encounter

March 30, 2016

With mobile marketing taking center stage in companies, it is becoming increasingly clear that people are making a number of mistakes. While it is a good thing that companies are actually focusing on mobile, where the most number of visitors are, they are still not able to distinguish mobile marketing from desktop marketing. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, they may not understand how people use mobile devices. Secondly, they may not understand who are using what kind of mobile devices. If the companies are not using big data to gain access to data analytics, they may also not understand buyer behavior and user preferences. Thus, mobile marketing needs a multi-pronged approach which is best handled by an experienced digital marketing agency. With that in mind, it is also important to know what mistakes others are doing, so that you can avoid them in your own mobile strategy. This will help you to create a mobile strategy that is devoid of errors or loopholes, ensuring that you will reap the most number of benefits your investment can provide you. Here are the most common mobile ad strategy mistakes.  1. Rehashing desktop ads for mobile devices Most companies make this mistake. They believe that mobile advertisements are similarly structured as desktop ads are. However, this is very far from the truth. Mobile ads are not only different they also need to be structured differently. Most of the times, desktop ads that appear on mobile devices do not attract the kind of hits that an ad publisher might like. Mobile advertisements should be specifically designed for mobile devices. This helps the viewer to grasp the marketing communication easily. In the end, what really matters is how put-together an advertisement really appears and when it does look designed for the device its being viewed on, there is a great chance of conversion. 2. Making ads for the mobile browser While companies may have a mobile strategy, they may feel most people use mobile devices using browsers. So, mobile ads are built around mobile browsers. Now, most people use their cellphones and tablets to access applications. Very few people use the mobile browser all the time. If we are to invest a lot of time and effort on mobile ad strategy, it is better to do it for applications than for just mobile browsers. Mobile browsers continue to be important for people to browse but most of the visitors access your advertisements on applications. Choosing the right app used by your target audience may help you better. 3. Ads are not responsive One of the most important things to make sure of is whether an ad is responsively designed or not. Responsive ads are designed in such a manner than they adjust to the size of the screen of the device on which they are being viewed, regardless of which one it is. This requires special skills and may prove to be costlier than regular ads. However, if we are going to opt for mobile marketing, ads should be designed for mobile devices. This means responsiveness has to be taken into account. 4. There is no monetization strategy A number of applications do not have any strategies to make money. If you release your own application, there has to be a mobile monetization strategy. Companies usually design an application and then wonder how to monetize it. Instead, one should design an application only after a monetization plan has been decided upon. This might mean you have to find out ways to enhance subscriptions, in-app purchases and other methods to help improve the monetization. Needless to say, one must also think about how to place advertisements within an app so that more subscriptions are registered. 5. Lack of market research It is important to understand your market before unleashing any kind of mobile ad strategy. If one does not understand what really is happening with the market that you are targeting, you will not be able to come up with a strategy that works. A number of companies avoid engaging into serious market research or they may just touch the surface.This results in a mobile ad strategy that is not completely in sync with what the market might demand. Investing in market research techniques is very important to come up with a mobile ad strategy that works.  6. Lack of insight into psycho-graphics Psycho-graphics help in understanding a target audience’s behaviors, personality quirks and lifestyle choices. With a lot of big data analytics being offered by cloud enterprises, it is easier now to tap into the psycho-graphics of your target audience. While demographics can easily be obtained, psycho-graphics help you to understand why people make the choices they make and what motivates them. Unfortunately, most companies do not involve psycho-graphics into their marketing strategy. 7. Verbose or lengthy ads Nothing is more off-putting than an advertisement that is very verbose or lengthy. People who are on their mobile devices do not have a lot of patience and it is important to convey the message in as tiny an ad space as possible. The more time and effort it takes the viewer to process your marketing communication, the less likely they will actually process it. They may just ignore your advertisement altogether. In order to avoid that, you should ensure that your advertisements are short and crisp and attractive to look at, especially on a small screen. Do not make the mistakes others have made Certainly, it becomes clear that we must not make the same mistakes that everyone else has been making. However, companies still repeat mistakes others have made and end up suffering losses. Mobile marketing presents a very attractive opportunity. One just has to understand how to tap into this amazing opportunity without making mistakes. It is quite easy too, with all the consultants and agencies around who are there to help you. After all, when one invests money into mobile marketing, one is looking at returns, and not at

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The Best Practices of Video Marketing for eCommerce

August 31, 2015

A number of companies are realizing the importance of video marketing when it comes to boosting profits and reaching to a larger target audience. The fact is, many people prefer an audio-visual experience more than a textual one. This is apparently true among younger audiences and those who are unable to read for a long time. For such people, video marketing may seem like a better option. Moreover, very busy people will probably want to watch a 30 second video to understand the crux of the matter than read it. In this article, let us take a look at some of the best practices of video marketing for eCommerce. 1.      Start making explainer videos Explainer videos are videos that offer reasons and explanations as to why an individual  must choose a particular service or product. An advertisement is persuasive but an explainer video is informative and persuasive. It helps to know why we must buy a particular product and how it can be used. Explainer videos briefly describe the uses of explainer videos and ensure that people understand the need for a solution, how it can be solved with a certain product and finally, actually buy that product or service. 2.      Make a paradigm shift from textual content to audio-visual content Most companies still believe that textual content is all that their clients and customers want. This is not quite true. It is a well known fact that people process more information when information is provided in an audio-visual format. This helps people to understand what you are talking about in a very short period of time, instead of having to read through reams of textual content. Moreover, people are gradually realizing that they do not have a lot of time to spend on reading. Thus, they end up watching videos on YouTube, Vine, Vimeo and other websites where one can learn about products. Thus, making the paradigm shift from textual content to video is becoming apparent. 3.      Keep your videos short Videos should be short and sweet. No one really has the time to spend a lot of time on watching your videos, if they run into more than 60 seconds. They simply will get bored of your product and will move on to the next one. If you are making videos to market your products, you should ensure that they are around 30 seconds and that they explain clearly why a person must choose this product over some other product. Short videos help to retain people’s attention, and they will also be able to remember what they watched when they are short. Thus, it is important to keep marketing videos short in order to achieve eCommerce success. 4.      Make videos an important part of your marketing strategy While content writing is still the most important form of our marketing strategy, one must also make videos a part of our marketing strategy. ECommerce sites do not exist in islands. They depend on social shares, viral sharing and conversations on the Internet. For this to happen, a video is the best bet. One can easily make videos a part of a company’s marketing strategy and also save money in the process. There are professional agencies that make explainer  and other forms of videos in a short period of time and will also teach you how to market those videos to boost traffic to your eCommerce website. All that you need to do is include videos as a part of your marketing strategy. Final thoughts Video marketing need not even be expensive. Some of the techniques used in video marketing include using videos instead of blogs and marketing with product videos, video ads and explainer videos. It is important to remember that reading takes a lot more effort and time for people than watching videos. With these factors in background, it is safe to say that a number of companies are looking towards video marketing solutions. Ecommerce websites are particularly interested in video marketing as it helps to showcase products and services in a better light, and in a more sensual way (audio and visual senses). If you wish to increase sales and boost traffic to your website, choosing video marketing may be one of the better options.

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5 Effective Online Marketing Channels for Successful SEM

August 24, 2015

An online marketing channel can either make or break your search engine marketing campaign. It is important to know what one is getting into and which channel is most suited for one’s needs. On this note, it makes sense to familiarize oneself with the five most important online marketing channels that have been around for a while, and that which refuse to vanish from the face of SEM. These online marketing channels ensure that you have a good traffic driven back to your website. They also ensure that you get the kind of traffic you are looking for. In this article, let us take a look at five of the most important online marketing channels which help in optimizing search engine marketing. 1.      Search Engine Optimization done the old-fashioned way Organic SEO depends on good quality content and ethical SEO practices. This means, fixing your meta-tags, adding images in the right places, fixing broken links, weeding out spammy backlinks and ensuring that the website is administered well. It also means that you will often need to maintain the website so that error pages, slow browsing and other problems are weeded out in order to boost traffic. Organic SEO is still one of the most important sources of traffic and it is known for its high quality leads. 2.      Search engine advertising Advertising on Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines are very important to divert traffic. Paid advertising is a tried and tested online marketing channel that ensures a high rate of success, when it comes to driving traffic. There are different kinds of paid advertising and you could choose the one that will best suit your company and its products. Pay Per Click, Pay Per Impression, Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Action and other forms of paid advertising have been around for a long and will continue to be so. 3.      Referral and affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing is still one of the more reliable forms of SEM. They can be particularly useful for retail ecommerce. Performance-based marketing can be very useful, and, as it makes use of the Internet to get referrals, it is one of the cheapest and most effective forms of search engine marketing (SEM). Another way of getting traffic and leads is through referral traffic. This involves capitalizing traffic that arrives from other blogs and websites. This kind of traffic depends on a number of factors and one needs to work constantly on nurturing those referral sources. 4.      Content marketing and its growing importance This is one of the most important forms of online marketing channels today. While it is not as obvious and in-your-face as a banner ad or a PPC campaign, content marketing builds referrals and helps you with organic SEO as well. In the long term, publishing great content and marketing it to the right target audience will help you to crystallize your authority and thus gain a higher SEO ranking. Ultimately, content marketing is one of the most important channels of SEM and this phenomenon is only likely to grow and increase further. 5.      Social media, social signals and social networking With the advent of social media marketing and with Google placing importance to social signals, SEO professionals have realized the importance to marketing on social networking sites in order to boost SEO. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have all proven to be important platforms to market online. All of these social platforms offer various advertising options to companies. Moreover, being active on these social platforms will help to build audience organically, which place an important role in ensuring that you rank high in search results. Looking forward Every business wants traffic that could probably lead to more sales. This means, we need to channelize traffic from sources that are reliable and targeted. We must remember that all channels are not made equal and, some channels may work great for some, while others may not work at all for someone else. With this in mind, the 5 tried and tested online marketing channels we discussed above will surely boost traffic to your website and help you with your SEM, no matter what kind of business you run.  

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How Mobile Devices Are Driving the Future of Search

August 17, 2015

Back in March 2014, a study conducted by online advertising platform Marin Software revealed that more than 50% of all paid search links would arrive from mobile devices by the end of December, 2015. Jessica Lee wrote that cost per click (CPC) on mobile devices increased at an incredible rate, when compared with CPC on desktops in 2013. Moreover, tablet CPCs outranked desktop CPCs. A lot of naysayers had predicted that tablets would be irrelevant. Throughout 2014, we have only seen people purchasing more tablets and cellphones with which most people access the Internet today. In fact, a majority of search queries come from mobile devices, as opposed to desktops. This fundamental change in the way people access the Internet has contributed to a paradigm shift within SEO circles. Today, SEO professionals understand that the money is in mobile devices. People simply do not use computers anymore, especially, in developing countries where large computers are more expensive and unaffordable for a large number of people. Thus, mobile devices have given the power of using Internet to many people who, otherwise, would not be privileged enough to be online. It is not just the poor who access the Internet using mobile devices. Most affluent people use mobile devices to conduct searches, look for products and also to simply browse. This change in user habits is mostly because of increased screen sizes of mobile devices. In this article, let us take a look at how mobile devices are driving the future of search. What is the status of mobile Internet usage today? Today, it is no longer relevant to describe how important mobile devices are and why we need to focus our SEO strategies on mobile devices. What is important is to understand the statistics so that we are in a position to create targeted search campaigns, which help us to create SEO strategies that are effective and useful. Danyl Bosomworth wrote that a whopping 80% of people used smartphones to search the Internet, whereas, another 47% of those interviewed used tablets as well. 91% of those interviewed still used a PC or a laptop to search the Internet. What this really tells us is, mobile devices cannot be ignored anymore. They are an important part of the search ecosystem and it is crucial to understand how people use their mobile devices when they search so that we can build better websites and come up with more targeted SEO campaigns. Searching begins on search engines but mobile apps are not far behind Danyl also wrote that 48% of them start searching on search engines. Another 33% start searching on branded websites, whereas, 26% of those interviewed searched on branded apps. This piece of data gives us a very valuable piece of information. People have already begun to use branded applications to search for products. For instance, people would download Macy’s application to check which products are available because they trust Macy to sell the best. Likewise, it is becoming increasingly clear that people now use applications to search for not only products but also trivia, information, news and many other things. We have already moved towards an app-centric world, where the browser is slowly losing its significance. This is not really a bad thing to happen. It is just that we need to get used to the new way of browsing and searching for information. The future is the mobile app Mobile apps are going to get bigger this year and this will partly be the reason why it is important to focus our SEO strategies on optimizing applications for search. This will help us to guide users to arrive at information that they want and also help clients in increasing sales. Applications will continue to take precedence over websites in the near future. He also continued to write that 89% of time spent on media by users was through mobile apps. People spent only 11% of their time viewing media on mobile browsers. This leads us to believe that if people are going to look for images or videos on their mobile devices, it is mostly through applications. If you have an e-commerce store, it makes more sense to make it app-friendly, rather than having a completely new mobile website. This also brings us to the topic of responsive websites. Responsive web design for better mobile search With mobile devices coming in different screen sizes, designers need to focus on various screen resolutions. This impacts the way online search takes place. If websites are not optimized for a mobile experience, they will receive very few visitors and search traffic. Responsive design ensures that a website looks good on all screen sizes, thereby, enhancing the stickiness of a website. Responsive design is also SEO-friendly and is a great method to ensure that mobile websites are SEO-friendly too. It also removes the need to design separate mobile websites. Local search and geo-location data If you have ever used one of those taxi-hailing applications, you will know the importance of geo-location data. Dating applications have mushroomed over recent years, thanks to GPS and the ability to locate like-minded people nearby. Searching on mobile phones is more local than ever. In fact, local search is the singular most unique feature of mobile search. Businesses can now optimize their physical stores to appear in the search results of mobile users who are in the vicinity. If you run a restaurant that sells Thai food and someone who likes Thai food is nearby, you will probably end up in the search results. All that you need to do is optimize your store locator pages in order to help the searcher locate you. GPS has, in fact, changed the way we search completely. Searching has truly gone local, thanks to geo-location information. One does not need to describe one’s physical presence in detail. Turning on the GPS needs to be enough to help customers locate your office or store. Moreover, a mobile user’s geo-location data gives you

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How to Leverage Social Media for eCommerce Marketing

August 5, 2015

There is a lot of noise about using social media for eCommerce marketing. If you don’t have a digital marketing strategy, you can consider yourself a little outdated, to say the least. You might have a website and a blog but that doesn’t mean that just your online presence is enough. You will need to start spending time on social media and discover how you can optimize your digital marketing plan with the help of social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. However, do not forget that social media is just a platform and not something that will sell your products magically. Everyone is eager to monetize social media but the important thing to evaluate is to see how it is going to benefit you. Statistics show that only 12% of the companies feel that their social media strategy is working out for them. As Cyriac Roeding, CEO of ShopKick, a social commerce app, said, “Don’t mistake social as the core of the shopping experience. Social is a means to make shopping better, not vice-versa.” You can connect to a large audience and market your product to them. Social media also helps in finding out whether your customers are satisfied with you or not. It also acts as a monitor to show you who is talking about your product, whether they like your product and what are they talking about it. All these provide you with a heads up about where you stand in the market. You need to understand that your objective is to sell. So, use the media to attain that. Also, social media can add to your business other than direct sales. You can use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as an extension of customer service or to build brand awareness, this can be a place where you can improve customer engagement & gain insight into your customers’ interests. All these contribute in increasing overall sales. Finally, making your social media strategy a success requires time and unwavering commitment. Follow the given instructions to leverage social media for e-commerce marketing. 1. Involve your audience Your website needs to be designed in such a way that it aims at enhancing customer friendliness. Add social media into all aspects of your e-commerce website. Give your customers the option of using an existing profile to log in. By doing so, you can avoid unnecessary steps that require a user to create an account or register. Make sure your home page, product pages and other pages also have easy sharing buttons. The power that a simple share button has can’t be undervalued. New customer would want opinions of the veterans in the business, rather than the companies blowing their own trumpet. Involving your audience can give you an edge over others. 2. Don’t oversell Many businesses who fail to engage their audience on social media commit to self-serving. Talking about new products or sales is great but you need to know where to draw the line.  Try to engage your audience with the company itself and not just buying or selling. You can do this in multiple ways by resorting to contests, quizzes and tips. Make the questions interesting enough to generate discussions. Try to keep promotional posts only up to 20% and the rest needs to be what the audience connects to. It could range from current news to popular TV shows that have link to business. However, make sure that all your conversations are related to the kind of products that you sell on your e-commerce website. 3. Visual creativity Visuals attract crowd better than words and there is absolutely no doubt about it. You can use this for your gain. A collective of all social media platforms, photographs are the most shared. Photo sites such as Instagram and Pinterest can be the perfect platform to showcase your company with a creative streak. You can choose a wide range of things to post like photos, cartoons, caricatures and even a small text message in a quirky font and an attractive background to catch the eyes of your audience. Philosophical quotes and motivational messages never grow out of fashion. Build a relationship with your customer that is interesting and fun. Last but not the least, use visual creativity to showcase all your products from their most flattering angle. 4. Scope for improvement Social media is the best place to know where you went wrong or what else you could have done due to the immense information available about your performance. You can measure your activity and learn about social media marketing & the important nuances like the best time to post, the trending topics, which products are popular, who is doing what to promote their brand. Combine all of this knowledge and monitor your own performance to create a power-packed e-commerce publicity campaign. The trick is to never stop experimenting or never stick to one particular strategy. Experiment with your strategies to keep your audience engaged to your company. 5. The third wheel content Like mentioned earlier, you don’t have to limit your posts to e-commerce topics. You can use other interesting matters relating to your business. Likewise, you can share content from other websites that are related to your business but with due credits to them. Even if you curate content from other sites by sharing, try to add a creative description along with the shared content to captivate your audience. For example, if you are a telecommunication brand, and you come across some interesting things related to telecom sector, share it on your web page. But don’t forget to mention and give credits to the source, you got the information from. 6. Crack a sweet deal The secret code to successful e-commerce marketing is to make your audience feel special. Focus on showing what you can offer rather than making them purchase. Talk about attractive deals and exclusive offers to show how special they are. You don’t have to make grand utopian gestures; a simple “thank you” for their purchase will work wonders.

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How to Optimize Landing Pages for SEO

July 29, 2015

Landing pages are very important tools in marketing your products or services or calling your prospects to take action. In fact, most landing pages ask a visitor to take some kind of action. It could be subscribing to a newsletter, reading a message, sharing a link or even going ahead and making a purchase. Landing pages gained popularity simply because they are akin to main websites but have a specific function – call to action. Thus, the importance of landing pages is only growing across the world. With their increasing importance, there also comes the need to design them in a better and more accessible manner. This involves building landing pages according to the changing needs of SEO. As we all know, SEO is something that continuously changes over a period of time. In this article, let us take a look at how you can optimize your landing pages for better SEO and ultimately, get more people to respond to your call to action. 1. Focus on your URL When it comes to landing pages, we often think it is not important to focus on the URL. The idea is, the URL of a landing page is unimportant because one just has to link it from an external website where no one will actually see the actual URL. They would either click on a banner, an image or some sort of textual matter. However, it is very important to have a unique URL for your landing page. It is important to have a custom tail end, which is not only descriptive but also specific. Of course, you need not be stuffing your landing page’s URL with keywords though it helps to keep it descriptive. If it is a Twitter campaign, you could have a /twitter-campaign as your custom tail end. If you have a number of such landing pages, it makes sense to organize all your landing pages with custom URLs so that you can identify your landing pages in a clearer way. It is important to install Google Analytics script on every landing page so that you can measure and track your progress as it happens. A number of people overlook the importance of custom URLs in landing pages but now it is quite clear that they are important. 2. Maintain brand uniformity There are a number of companies, which fail to realize the importance of brand uniformity. They have landing pages designed by someone else in a completely different manner because they fancied a new design. They are making a fatal error. A landing page is a subsidiary of the main page, even if it is able to stand on its own. Thus, you need to ensure that your landing page has the same design, color scheme, font and format as your main page or any other online property. In fact, you can use your landing page to get people to visit your main website. When your website looks completely different from your landing page, the visitor might find it jarring. Even psychologically, it creates a sense of disconnect, which you don’t want to let happen. A landing page needs to, thus, have your core message and core branding factors inscribed into it. Always ensure that you keep your landing page’s design in sync with your regular branding. This helps to keep your landing pages, your website, your blogs and just about anything else in a cohesive fashion, tying everything to the company you are eventually trying to promote. 3. Focus on your content Your copy need not be verbose and professorial. Nobody has the time to read through a lot of statistics and figures when they visit your landing page. Your landing page’s copy is either persuasive or it is not. If it is not, people will simply not spend more time on your landing page, leave alone responding to your call to action. The trick is to write copy that is simple, minimalist and effective. It need not be concise and you need to hire experienced copywriters in order to achieve the intended result. You need not ever stuff your content with keywords and you need not use complex jargons. In fact, we can say that your landing page copy need to be similar to your web copy, albeit much more minimalist and simpler. Do not copy and paste all your landing page content from some other page of yours. This will affect not only your visitor’s perception but also a search engine’s idea of how unique your website is. Write copy in a persuasive way, which answers the questions you probably had asked when a prospect had clicked on the link. Ensure that your landing page answers the questions for which the prospects arrived on the page to begin with. 4. Keep the design minimalist While it is true that your landing page needs to look similar to your main website, it need not also have the same amount of images, texts and other content, which might distract the visitor from the main purpose – call to action. It is very important to keep the landing page plain and simple. This helps to keep the attention of visitors focused. Your landing page need not end up becoming a platform for you to brag, boast or promote aspects of your company that is not related with the actual purpose of the landing page. The design needs to be similar to the main website but it needs to be a stripped down version of it. Also, make sure that you do not ask too many questions to the prospect. Just asking them to fill out their first name, last name and email address would be sufficient. If you ask for too many pieces of information, they will simply close the page and move on to the next website. It is very important to not distract the visitor and ensure that they respond to your call to action. For this, you will need to keep the design as minimalistic and simplistic

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LinkedIn Pulse Posts Bring More Eyeballs to Your Content

July 20, 2015

Every writer would agree to the fact that one of the toughest parts of blogging is actually to build the right audience. However, getting it published, generating interests and leads and the social media activities are something that most of the bloggers struggle with.  The content that you consider to be the best ever written can go unread and unshared simply because it is not reaching the right audience. All you need is more eyeballs on your content. Social media networks are helping you to accomplish your goal with its never-ending contributions. One such contribution is seen from LinkedIn publishing platform through its LinkedIn Pulse, a news application allowing LinkedIn members to create and share content written by various influencers across different industries. Members can get access to the valuable content, displayed in a photo-based grid. Besides, it also allows the members to tailor their news feed by selecting the sources and subjects that interest them the most. Unlike LinkedIn Today, that made readers leave the LinkedIn website to consume more content, Pulse encourages readers to reside on LinkedIn by producing unique and genuine content. How Does Marketing with Pulse Bring in More Traffic? The marketing potential of Pulse is untapped by the majority of marketers. However, it’s time to try this new publishing platform to connect with the right audience at the right time. Without a shadow of doubt, you’ve enough compelling reasons to explore this interesting destination… Enhanced Brand Awareness and Reputation With its ability to deliver great articles from top influencers and publishers, LinkedIn Pulse is more efficient in attracting audience’s attention. The more you publish your article, the more you’re increasing your brand reputation as an expert. One article that can take a long time to get views on your website’s blog can easily get thousands of views through this application. If your posts get featured more often, LinkedIn can even label you as an influencer. More Number of Viewers, More Potential Leads If your articles are really interesting and deliver value to your readers, the views can possibly mean having hundreds of likes, shares and new followers right on your company page. This definitely ensures the possibility of potentially new leads and clients. Besides, the notification that followers receive when you post content, your posts also show up directly on the followers’ feeds and increase your content visibility further. Add Link Back and Get More Traffic Once you add links back to your website, your LinkedIn Pulse posts drive traffic and click-throughs directly to your site. Here are different ways to add links back: Link Back with Banner and Image Pulse allows you to add images and link them to your post. Most importantly, Pulse posts have little to no distractions as it does not contain any advertisement and the focus is mainly on your content. Link Back to a Valuable Resource As you link to other valuable posts on your blog, do the same by linking a relevant and useful resource on your website. Simply link back to a post or two on your site that adds value for the readers. Link Back to Squeeze Page Link to a page that encourages visitors to share their email addresses in exchange of something, which is of value to them and start building your list of leads. Now, the traffic that you get to your site tends to be of high quality, as expected. Pulse Articles are Search-Engine Friendly LinkedIn is a highly trafficked website. This means Google is more likely to index the Pulse content and put in Google search result than the content you put on your personal blog. This augments your search engine visibility and also steers the readers towards your other social accounts and posts, which are displayed under the photo at the top of your profile. You Network with the Best Influencers of Your Industry LinkedIn is all about networking. It’s the only platform that has the perfect mix of professional and social context. You get more mileage from your best article in Pulse. The entire platform is made to help you make connection by giving you access to the right influencers. However, those 300 million sets of eyeballs can even glaze over your post, if your content lacks a compelling and click-worthy headline. For that matter, your entire content has to be extremely engaging. The Best Practices for LinkedIn Pulse Article Publication You can effectively drive Pulse article engagement through the following practices: Choose your topic and its title wisely. Avoid covering too many topics in the long-form post and keep your writing focused. There are no limits on word count; the long-form posts can be more than three paragraphs. Add images, videos or presentations to your content. Place three relevant tags that represent the content of your post. Publish whenever you’ve something valuable to share with LinkedIn members. Keep your content authentic. Make your most valuable content published on LinkedIn and get your voice heard and your company seen by numerous potential clients.

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How to Personalize Shopping and Improve Conversion Rate?

July 17, 2015

It is often one of the most important questions that a marketer might ask himself or herself. How do we personalize shopping and improve conversion rate? The answer seems to be a little convoluted. We need to understand how a website works and who is visiting that website. That tells us a lot about the demographics and psychographics of the audience. It also helps us to know who is actually visiting the online store and becoming customers in the process. Of all these, we need to remember that personalizing the shopping experience is key to ensuring that a customer will stick on. When companies do not understand this simple fact and continue to market products in a mechanical way, with a one size fits all approach, it just does not attract potential customers. In this article, let us take a look at how to personalize shopping and improve conversion rate. At the end of the day, we are all trying to convert leads into customers and this article will discuss how to do that with the help of personalizing of the shopping experience. There are, in fact, many ways personalization can impact purchase decisions and thereby, increase sales. Understand your customer The most important thing is to understand who your customer is. It is important to ask yourself questions such as “Is this person really interested in the products we sell?”. It is not worth the effort if your product is not relevant to the target audience. You need to understand their cultural habits, their lifestyle, their socio-economic status and a lot of other things. Your marketing campaign needs to be customized and personalized to suit your audience. This will attract those who fall into the bracket of your target audience and eventually, this will help you to make more conversions, which is the ultimate goal of all marketing exercises anyway. Show that you know your audience Once you understand your audience, it is important to show that you understand them. You need to use promotional events, advertisements and even web copy to display your empathy for your audience. When you treat them with empathy, customers will feel naturally inclined to buy your products because they feel “understood”. They can feel “understood” only when you decide to customize your marketing and promotional campaigns. This helps to build goodwill as well and that is very important to retain customers and also turn them into advocates, who will, in turn, bring newer customers as well. A lot of people are influenced by ergative reviews online. Thus, you need to customize your marketing approach to ensure that those negative reviews do not hamper your marketing strategies. Get the right visitors and create a space that is customized for them Use all the data that you can lay your hands on and ensure that you are able to create an atmosphere where your prospects and leads feel comfortable. Once they feel comfortable, you could be rest assured that you will end up converting them into either advocates or actual customers. Thus, customization of reaching out plays an important role in increasing conversions and this is very important for all businesses. You need to prepare marketing strategies that are completely customized for your audience. The script, the branding and even the products themselves need to be customized for your customers. The more you customize, the deeper your relationship will be with your customers. This is what is required to move towards success. Conclusion If you notice these points, you will realize that customizing the way you market your products and services will help you to build long term relationships with your customers. Customizing is one of the most important qualities of successful businesses. By remembering your prospects’ birthdays, anniversaries, marriages and other such important dates, you could wish them & send custom messages. You might also want to seek the help of professional agencies who are specialized in creating custom marketing and ad campaigns based on the tastes of your target audience. If you are unable to do it on your own, you could seek professional help. If you have felt customizing your business and marketing strategies helped you ever, do let us know in the comments section below.

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