Whether you own a bricks and mortar or eCommerce business, a major brand or large corporation, businesses of all sizes can benefit from digital marketing.
We take a closer look at some of the digital marketing options to consider for your business and brand.
Email Marketing
Email marketing remains one of the most successful digital marketing platforms for converting leads to sales. Recent figures show for every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in ROI.
Successful email marketers personalise emails to their consumers, offering real value and content of interest to engage the reader and increase that all important click-through-rate. Targeting niche consumer groups by grouping mailing list recipients into certain demographics such as age, gender, and purchase or browsing history, your company can more accurately deliver the content your customers really want, rather than sending generic mass emails to an entire subscriber list. One recent study found 81% of online consumers are likely to make a purchase after receiving a personalised email.
Websites and Landing Pages
Regardless of your industry, your digital marketing strategy should include a website, and incorporate designated landing pages to promote key offerings. In today’s digital age, your website is often the customer’s first impression of your business. So it not only needs to look great, but your website should also offer an optimised user experience (UX) and feature a call to action (CTA). Integrating easy to use CTA buttons such as ‘learn more’, ‘book now’ or ‘join my mailing list’ encourages time-poor customers to act quickly and engage with your brand.
Landing pages and CTA’s do involve an element of trial and error, as results can vary among different industries, companies and customers. Don’t let this put you off though. Capturing web traffic data from your own website through measures like Google Analytics will provide valuable information about the visitors to your site, and their online behaviour. This allows you to further develop and customise your website to accommodate your customers’ needs and organically grow your ROI.
Content Marketing and Blogs
All too often we see businesses neglect blogs or content marketing, because they can’t see the connection between words and dollars.
Content marketing is an extremely powerful, and underestimated sales tool, capable of engaging, informing and entertaining readers while influencing their purchase decisions.
Surveys have found content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional outbound marketing, and costs 62% less. While digital marketers who prioritise blogging are 13 times more likely to realise a positive ROI.
Blogs and articles have the unique ability to market to a consumer, without making the reader feel like they’re being sold to. Content marketing allows businesses to position themselves as industry leaders, demonstrating their knowledge and skill in a practical manner instead of merely advertising products and services through a display ad.
Social Media
Social media can be used in a variety of ways to market your business, from simply increasing brand awareness and consumer engagement, to being the core driver of sales.
Mark Zuckerberg recently announced the milestone of two billion users on Facebook, making it by far the largest social media network in the world. And that trend is reflected closer to home too, with the 2017 Sensis Social Media Report revealing almost eight in 10 Australians now use social media, along with 47 per cent of small businesses, 49 per cent of medium sized businesses and 60 per cent of large businesses.
The report also revealed 64 per cent of Australians are more likely to trust brands that interact positively with customers on social media.
Although setting up a social media account is free, there are costs involved to maximise your page’s content, reach and engagement. You’ll need to consider how much you’d like to invest in a monthly advertising budget, and think about the time and costs involved in managing and monitoring the page, and planning and creating the content – which might include professional videos, photographs and copywriting.
You can measure the ROI by making use of built-in analytical capabilities that can provide valuable data on how people engage with your social media posts, including click through and conversion rates to your website and sales pages. Most businesses however are happy to measure their success by the growth of their followers and likes, as evidenced in the Sensis report.
When Twitter first emerged, it was famous for being the platform with the 140-character message limit. Since embracing more visual and video content, Twitter has relaxed the word count, but it’s still entirely appropriate for users on Twitter to share a brief text-only message – which isn’t suitable on any other social media platform. Twitter claims 85% of its users believe Promoted Accounts help them discover new businesses on Twitter, which is a promising statistic for businesses looking for consumers in the social media space.
Instagram is a predominantly visual medium, allowing businesses to showcase their products and personality on a digital global stage. More than 80% of Instagram users follow a business, and promoted products have the highest engagement rates of all content types.
With more than 467 million users, Linkedin is the biggest social referrer to corporate websites. The platform provides a targeted approach to digital marketing and professional networking, particularly for engaging the interest of potential investors and corporate employees.
Podcasting
Podcasts are an innovative and influential marketing tool being increasingly used by a growing number of businesses globally. A study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Edison Research showed that 65% of listeners are likely to purchase a product after hearing about it on a podcast, suggesting consumers are receptive to advertisements delivered in the right context or environment. While podcasting has been around for more than 10 years, the number of podcast listeners is increasing. Listeners tuning into podcasts come from a wide range of backgrounds, ages and interests. Recent surveys have found at least 22% of younger podcast audiences tend to listen to more than 10 hours a week, whilst older audiences aged 55 and above tend to listen to around an hour or so in the same time frame. With this in mind, companies have the opportunity to develop podcasts that target and grow their niche audiences, in order to deliver a desirable ROI. And you don’t have to create your own podcast. Brands can enjoy the same benefits from exposure in collaboration with other podcasters.
Google Advertising
Advertising through Google’s image ads allows businesses to reach all new heights of consumer targeting and engagement. Google’s highly detailed analytical features allow brands to target specific customers based on their online habits, web browser history and search information.
So if, for example you sell jewellery, fashion or car accessories in an online store, and you advertise using Google’s image ads, you can entice leads to become return customers by having your product galleries display on their web browsers, embedded as a display ad on other websites. Perhaps they visited your online store and popped a few items in the cart but didn’t check out? You can give them a gentle reminder by displaying those same items in front of them while they’re reading the daily news.
While a cost per click (CPC) element applies to this form of marketing, using Google image ads returns a 31 per cent click through rate, higher than Google’s text based ads of 23 per cent. These types of ads are displayed across sites that consumers commonly use including Facebook and other websites on Google’s advertising network AdSense, allowing you to market your business on multiple platforms with a single digital campaign.
Ultimately, all of these digital marketing measures work to drive traffic to your website, and can be used alone or in unison to build a synchronised and multifaceted marketing strategy. Web analytics allow you to track results like web traffic and sales conversions, illustrating the link between your marketing platforms like social media or blogs, and making sales. And while there are no one-size-fits-all solutions when it comes to digital marketing, you can certainly consider these options as some of the most popular and successful platforms for marketing in 2017.
Tag - blogs
Has it Been That Long?
Hello. Anyone there?
The last time I uploaded a post was in August. Seriously. That long ago. Do you remember what you were doing in August? Me either.
What more can I say other than “I have failed you!” You have gone Tick Yes blog-less for almost three months. Inexcusable.
Of course there are 500+ previous posts that you can access any time for your consuming pleasure, day or night, we never close. Then there’s also the small matter of 260 million other blogs you can also visit.
But that doesn’t really cut it, does it. In this disposable, fast paced world reading a post from March 2011 is not particularly appealing no matter how well written it is. Assuming you think it’s well written which is another story altogether!
We used to post 2-3 times per day which was exhausting. And stressful. We walked the talk and we truly were a publisher, exactly like we tell our clients they should be. Boy, it was hard work! Doing that for clients is one thing but doing it for ourselves where we have so many other priorities – like looking after the aforementioned clients – is another thing altogether.
I have tried to assuage my guilt for my posting sloth and indolence over the past few months but it doesn’t work. Slack is slack.
So for you, our loyal – and patient – readers, this post gives you signs of life. We’ve just been REALLY busy, too busy to upload any new well researched and considered posts for some time.
Will you forgive me?
Images:
Serious Numbers
This week we achieved an incredible milestone. Our humble musings about all things digital, marketing and heck, life as we know it clicked over to a zero number of reads; lots of zeros in fact. Since ‘The Message’ was launched in 2011 our posts have been read over 400,000 times; by 266,000++ visitors no less.
Seriously.
So a BIG thank you. It’s astounding that our small blog that we haven’t really marketed in any meaningful way beyond a little bit of social sharing has been so popular. Of course there are many blogs that probably boast these types of figures every month but we never thought we’d be a able to attract even a fraction of the numbers that we have.
Did I mention thank you?
While we’re talking numbers, here are our five most popular posts (in order of number of reads) all of which still get major traffic every month:
1. How social media is helping beat cyber-bullying
2. Caveman porn
3. Instagram Joins the Video-posting Trend
4. A brief history of culture jamming
5. Are Anonymous’ days numbered?
OK, need to get back to work. 500,000 beckons!
The Message is brought to you by Tick Yes – providing solutions for all your digital and content marketing needs.
Images:
In Life and on LinkedIn, Saying “Thank You” Can Take You a Long Way
Your Media Empire
It was a match made in heaven.
The media created content to attract audiences and (primarily) marketing budgets. Marketers, needing a place and a way to disseminate their promotional messages were insatiably drawn to the media because of those audiences.
From print to radio and on to television the symbiotic relationship was simple and elegant and it worked for decades.
But then along came the internet, combined with digital technology and the unexpected happened. Readers, viewers and listeners had somewhere else to go.
At home and on the go there were almost limitless places to get a daily media fix. Add in the ability to run one’s personal life via social media and the previously cosy status quo was gone, never to return.
The impact of the digital age on traditional media empires has been exhaustively documented. Newspapers folding, old media buying new media (whatever you do, don’t mention Myspace to Rupert Murdoch) and, worst of all, audiences fragmenting across countless sites, blogs, online games and apps.
So where does that leave marketers still needing to get the word out?
Well, for a time it was all very confusing. Should we do banner ads or Google ads, Facebook ads, build a website, launch a social media program, create an app and write content or…or…? The options and the decisions to make were even more confusing.
It’s not to say that any or all of these options are not worth doing. The big question is where to start.
You start at the end.
Focus on where you want to end up. That’s when you feel that you’re as set as you once were with your nice, easy to understand media plan leveraging someone else’s audiences.
Today, being set as a marketer means being master of your own media destiny. Sure, other people’s audiences still help but now there’s an even better way to reach and influence people: create your own audience.
This is not just an option; your future success relies on it. I know this may sound like an absurd, overblown and completely unrealistic idea.
It’s anything but. By cultivating your customers and prospects and leveraging every touch point with them, before you know it you’ll have your own mini (or maxi depending on the size of your organisation and your commitment to stay the course) media empire.
Keep them informed, engaged and amused and your audience will at the very least listen to what you have to say when you want to promote your products or services. Yes, being a media proprietor may be out of your comfort zone but consider it this way: it’s your core business now.
Digital is where your customers are and digital communications, for most of us, is what our customers are doing every day, hour and minute. So using digital to serve and sell your customers should be central to what you do, no matter what that is.
And here’s the golden nugget: most organisations don’t get it. Sure, they may be tinkering around the edges with digital marketing, heck they may even have an eager beaver Digital Marketing Manager or a hip, happening digital agency. There are plenty of people to tell you what to do but not enough to tell you why you’re doing it.
In a sea of digital implementations, an integrated strategic backbone to everything you do gives you the best chance of a) standing out and b) succeeding. And the best way to achieve a) and b) is to build a database of people who hungrily want what you’re selling.
What’s the best way to build a database? Do what the old time media proprietors did: give audiences reasons to keep showing up.
Nirvana? Yes. Easy? No. Possible? Yes.
The Message is brought to you by Tick Yes – providing solutions for all your digital and content marketing needs.
Images: www.inkace.com; bendalls.com.au; bizweb2000.com
How bloggers changed the face of fashion
The fashion industry is proving how online content can be harnessed to establish and promote a brand’s voice
What would a magazine be without a fashion section? It doesn’t matter how high- or low-brow it considers itself, but virtually every mag, from the glossy weekend newspaper supplements to the weeklies and monthlies (aimed at both sexes), invariably features ridiculously good-looking people modelling occasionally ridiculous styles. The Message is no different. Only, our take on it is a little unusual…
Considering it wasn’t so long ago that social media was being dismissed as a ‘fad’, it’s a little ironic that, today, we can point to the fashion industry (which, after all, is all about creating and effectively marketing styling fads) as proof of how successful social media and online content is in reporting and promoting a trend, a product or even an entire industry.
The face of fashion reporting used to be a smooth, thin, mirco-dermabrasioned scowl hiding behind an oversized pair of sunglasses. Now, though, thanks to bloggers, a new, far more diverse picture has emerged.
A new era
Amateur fashion reporters have been harnessing the tools of the Web to publish their sartorial opinions since the term ‘blog’ was first coined at the end of last century. The mainstream fashion media was aware of these enthusiasts, and rather patronisingly dismissed them.
The fashion industry itself, however, recognised fashion blogging for what it was – a direct dialogue with the most passionate consumers, making the bloggers themselves buzz-generators who were fresh, novel and had a desire to provide the missing link between the labels and the street.
By 2005, fashion bloggers were sharing front-row show seats with the likes of famed Vogue editor Anna Wintour – and were commenting in an unbiased way on the latest offerings from some of the world’s most exclusive labels.
Technology raises the bar
In the recent (northern) Spring/Summer 2011 show season, the instantaneous fashion journalism pioneered by the bloggers and since adopted by the mainstream media was the only acceptable kind. Bloggers have raised the bar for coverage and timeliness. Images and opinions from shows are available often minutes after a show has ended – or even, thanks to live video streaming, during it!
Brands embrace social media
The traffic fashion blogs receive around fashion week has been extraordinary for several years, and labels and brands are now beginning to realise the opportunities this offers. As a result, labels like Calvin Klein, Vera Wang and Oscar de la Renta this year hosted live video streams on their websites and are now using Facebook and Twitter to enhance buzz.
Quality control
Fashion consumers get a thrill from vicariously experiencing the previously exclusive shows through the lens of a fashion blogger. Many believe, rightly or wrongly, that blog accounts a far more authentic than a magazine write up that could be coloured by the needs of the magazine’s advertisers.
This is social media doing what it promises. In the eyes of fashion consumers and lovers, the playing field has been levelled. Labels are being judged not on the size of their advertising budget or the exclusivity of their parties, but on the strength of their creativity.
The Message is brought to you by Tick Yes – providing solutions for all your digital and content marketing needs.