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Improve Your Campaigns With These Critical KPIs

What is a KPI?

KPI or key performance indicators are values that you can accurately measure to show progress. It can be used for a business or personal life, or it can be used in terms of marketing. These are essential values that you can measure and can look at those values over time to know if your progress is advancing or decreasing.

Why set KPIs?

By setting KPIs you can make sure that you actually achieve your business goals and also that will tell you if you won’t. So you can go back to your strategy and you can tweak it and try again. They can be anything that is specific, measurable, and relevant to your business goals.

For example,

  • Conversion rate.

By improving your conversion rate at each step of your customer journey you can get more customers.

  • Relevant audience growth

Once you have worked out all your conversion rates, you may discover that your Instagram followers are more likely to buy. So growing your Instagram following could be a KPI.

  • Email subscribers

If you find that your emails are sending you more customers, then one of your KPIs could be growing your email subscribers. When you set KPIs for each phase of your digital marketing and measure it regularly, you will be able to see what’s working and you will be able to go in and adjust your marketing as you go.

Where do you start with KPIs?

Start with your goal and work backwards through the funnel.

  1. Awareness – It helps you to broaden your audience, so you can use things like organic social, advertising, influencer marketing, and large content projects, to help you reach new people. To set a KPI for this, you are looking to grow your audiences on the specific networks and channels that drive the most sales. Start by defining the channels, that are driving the most sales, then devise a plan that is going to help you increase your audience on those channels, and measure the relevant audience growth over time.
  1. Consideration – is the phase, where people are a little bit further through the customer journey and they’re thinking about buying from you. To move more people onto the next phase, you need to reassure them that they are making the right decision. So content like testimonials and case studies, user-generated content, blog posts, and videos that answer every question that your customer may have is what works here. The more of this type of content your customers consume the more likely they are to buy.

What KPIs should we set for this?

  • You can look at the number of pages viewed by each visitor to your website.
  • Look at views on key content that is designed to convert.
  • The time that people spent on your website.
  • Link clicks to sales content from your social media channels and your emails.
  • The number of email subscribers you have.
  • The number of enquiry forms that are filled in.
  • The number of people that are adding your product to the cart.
  1. Sell– This is the ultimate goal. The obvious KPI for base is sales. But there are other metrics we can measure to see how successful our sales process is. This is where the conversion rate comes into its own. For your KPIs, you want to look at the conversion rate for each phase of the buying process. So from a website visitor to a landing page view, from a landing page view to somebody filling in an enquiry form, from an enquiry form to you setting up a sales call, from there to making the sales.

Set the right KPIs for your campaign – Tips

  • Choose KPIs that are appropriate for the campaign’s position in the sales funnel. A direct response agency means that they’re not interested in things like clicks and impressions. When they can, they want to get down to sales and revenue. When a campaign’s primary goal is awareness or reach, they will look at things like impressions clicks, post-per-click, click-through-rate, and even video completions to tell how well or campaign is resonating with the target audience.
  • Be aware of the limitations in your data structure.

The level agency uses the client’s system of record whenever possible for setting KPIs. This is great when the client’s system of record works as it should. When the CRM and marketing automation platforms and the advertising platforms themselves, all talk to each other and pass information between one another, that’s not always the case. If your systems aren’t talking to each other, if we are not passing UTM parameters or other advertising identifiers from the advertising into the sales platform or CRM, we can’t use those metrics as KPIs. That is why it is so important to set up your tracking. If you are not storing information from your advertising campaigns in your CRM, in your sales platform, or your other advertising system of record, you should be.

  • Choose KPIs that operate on a reasonable time scale. Even if your campaign golds are tied to revenue or other direct sales KPIs, if you have a long sales cycle, it can be really hard to use those Metrics to optimize an advertising campaign. You have to go up the funnel to find the directional KPI that will tell us what the sales will be like in the future.
  • Evaluate and optimize.

Once you have established good KPIs and benchmarks or targets that tell you how you are doing against each of those KPIs, it is time to set up a regular reporting schedule. KPIs are only good if they are useful. This means that you need to track your progress against them, and the actions that are coming out of those meetings consistently.

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Data Analytics Digital Technology eCommerce Marketing

8 Ways to Extract Value from Customer Data

Customer Data : How do you use the most of it?

When you have more data than you know what to do with, finding effective ways to use the data can be difficult. 

 For example, with more  people using desktop computers, laptops and mobile  devices, all of which are generating more data, it makes sense that 90% of the world’s data has been created  in the last three years alone. And not just because people create data; this is due to algorithms and other programs that track user behavior and create their own data from it. 

 In fact,  daily  global computer usage currently generates more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, and this number is only growing due to the proliferation of IoT devices. This is a huge, almost incomprehensible amount of information. And only some of them are useful for specific relevant business interests. 

So how can a company sift through the mountain of data it collects every day and find the information that is really useful for improving performance, profits, sales or other operational factors? 

These 5 ways are some of the things a company can do to sift through  information and find what is meaningful and  useful. 

1. Accept that Big Data is here to stay.

Big data can look like a huge and unwieldy jumble of random information when viewed in an unpolished way. And  in that context, the real temptation is to  ignore it. However, to ignore big data is to ignore a major opportunity. For example, data science is a growing discipline because of the value that comes from the ability to sift, filter and interpret what is useful in big data. 

People who choose to ignore big data because of its volume are putting their business at risk. The first step to obtaining valuable customer data is to recognize that good data exists and be prepared to mine  it. 

 2. Invest in Analytics

The key  to getting the most out of big data, once you recognize its potential, is having the right tools and talents to wade into the ocean of data and find the most useful data. . . sense to you 

You should seriously consider allocating some operating budget to analytics. Larger companies may have entire departments dedicated to this work, but while this scale yields results, it is not the only way to obtain useful analysis. Even small and medium-sized businesses can find an analytics solution that fits their size and budget requirements, whether it’s staffing or software.

3. Use Historical Data

People often think of data as a way to  predict the future, but some of the most important lessons  data can teach us  come from the past. A good long-term plan for using customer data is to analyze historical data. 

Businesses should always be aware that  the best available data is a set collected over time. For example, you should not ignore sales data from the last 5-10 years, even if it is not part of your current digital infrastructure. 

Use document management systems and archive this data if necessary, but analysis tasked with obtaining past customer sales data can reveal incredibly useful information about customer behavior and buying habits. If you have existing data, even if it’s not digital, digitize it and make sure your software can access it. Under the right circumstances, it can be much more useful than you think.  

Of course, getting information about customer behavior and other data sets can  help  increase sales, but don’t forget that another way to make more money is to spend less. In addition to increasing sales, the right kind of customer data can also help  increase efficiency and reduce waste,  which can increase your bottom line. 

For example, your customer data shows that more and more of your marketing responses are coming from YouTube and Instagram, and less  from Facebook. This may indicate that for your product and target market, you can spend less or reduce your Facebook spend altogether and focus more on platforms that perform well. Let customer behavior data simplify your business.

4. Analyzing Customer Loss

“Customer loss” is a term used to describe the turnover  of customers or clients from  regular buyers to doing business elsewhere. This is another area where big data combined with analytics can make a big difference. 

 The purpose of this process is to review your user data and draw conclusions that help explain why some customers remain loyal and others support your business for a  period of time and then leave. You may find correlations between declining customer retention and the discontinuation of certain products. Alternatively, you may find that certain sales or seasons bring you a large increase in customers, but they don’t stick around afterward. By focusing on the specifics of customer attrition, 

 Analytics helps you understand how you can retain more customers and thus generate more consistent profits.

5. Social media is too much data

Up to 80% of the information produced today consists of videos, documents and images, a large part of which is published on social media. Analyzing social media and using the unfiltered, unsorted data it reveals can be extremely useful in not only identifying your niche, but also  what the market wants or is looking for. 

 It is important to understand that the content that appears on social networks can be a symptomatic indicator of other trends and factors that benefit companies that are turning around. So don’t think of social media as a channel to reach  your market, but realize that it can also be a window into what that market might be looking for, and you can get ahead of the market to give it to them. Don’t ignore trends, take advantage of them. 

Conclusion

More data is generated every day than any human or group of humans can reasonably track. Beneath that data, however, is a wealth of useful and actionable insights. Businesses can only increase sales through strategy and sensitivity when selecting, analyzing, and using the right data correctly.

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5 Technologies That Can Help Enhance Customer Experience

Tech that will enhance your brand’s customer experience

In the digital world, exciting new technologies such as virtual reality, cloud computing, big data, real-time video connections and “smart” chatbots are redefining how companies interact with their customers. 

Staying on top of these developments and trends requires mastering these new innovations and using them in innovative ways to communicate, engage and promote. Organizations willing to embrace the creativity that technology offers and go beyond the “norm” will differentiate themselves from the competition and offer new and richer customer experiences to their customers. 

 This article examines five of the most talked about technologies of the moment, providing insight into their potential to deliver the best possible customer experience. 

1) VR: Engage and Immerse

Perhaps more than any other technology today, virtual reality has the potential to fundamentally change the way we define  customer experience. 

 Customer Experience VR, used by many brands, can engage consumers by providing them with new  product or service experiences. Designed to provide a sensory experience, it captures the consumer’s attention and imagination like no other technology, and visionary marketers  are making the most of its uniqueness. Image of 

 Guinness VR booth  

  Guinness has developed a new VR tasting booth for consumers in Tesco stores in the UK that stimulates all five senses. To present the new beers –  West Indies Porter, Hop House 13 Lager and Guinness Draft – the brand used the expertise of Guinness Brewer Peter Simpson to narrate an immersive 360-degree video, while a food and taste scientist from the University of Oxford. Colors, textures, movements and sounds were used to ensure they matched the taste of each beer. 

 “We have never stopped innovating  beer, taste and technology. VR is an immersive way to bring our beer flavor profiles  to life. We hope that buyers will appreciate Guinness beer in a new light – and maybe, as a beer, they might not have thought to try anything else. – Halie Ritterman, Global Head of Digital and Data, Guinness.

2) Artificial Intelligence: Communicate and Learn

Although since the 50s, brands have  started to effectively use AI  for core consumer services. The ever-evolving AI has tremendous potential to help improve customer self-service, improve personalization, and respond to individual customer wants and needs in  unique ways. 

 For example, the Hilton hotel chain. The brand wanted to make artificial intelligence part of its customer experience and partnered with IBM to create the industry’s first robotic restaurant concierge service Watson to answer customer questions. Using cognitive reasoning and robotics, the bot provides  unique interactions with consumers, and the more it interacts, the more it learns  to provide assistance. 

 While creating a robot may seem like an extreme example of  technology, it shows the potential of artificial intelligence to deliver an unparalleled customer experience. A technology that should not  be ignored, it has the potential to communicate and learn, making it a useful technology to improve the customer experience.

3) Chatbots: Improve Responses

Whether or not you believe the Microsoft CEO  that “bots are the new software”, the fact is that these particular tools are turning heads. Today’s industry-standard chat, with algorithmic learning that allows it to learn from past conversations and adapt responses, is a great step forward for brands that want to turn simple, routine questions and meetings into an intelligent system. 

 Adidas Studio LDN Chatbot 

 Let’s take Adidas as an example of a brand that has figured out how to use this new technology. Using Facebook Messenger and a specially designed AI bot, Adidas was able to increase consumer awareness  and engagement with its new community space, Studio LDN. Designed to drive brand engagement, the studio offers free weekly training sessions for women that can only be booked through the chat. 

Using this bot helped reduce the time and effort required to sign up for  Studio. Realizing that their target market lives fast and busy lives, Adidas has developed a powerful intermediary to ensure optimal conversion. 

The campaign resulted in nearly 2,000 people signing up for Studio LDN within the first two weeks, with 80% repeat usage. Adidas believes that 60 percent weekly consumer retention has helped the bot-based booking system speed up an otherwise tedious process and significantly improve its bottom line.

4) Internet of Things (IoT): Multiple Connections

According to studies, businesses are the biggest adopters of IoT solutions due to the benefits it offers. It can improve a company’s bottom line by reducing operating costs, increasing productivity and helping brands expand into new markets or develop new products. 

Furthermore, the extent to which  IoT enables synergy and connectivity between platforms has catalyzed the growth of new types of products. Brands can now use this technology to foster direct connections between physical activities and digital interactions to execute advertising campaigns across platforms. It also enables an engaging story that allows customers to interact with your product or  service. 

 Products like the FitBit are a perfect example of real hardware that provides users with valuable social capital. Because it’s essentially integrated into the Internet, it’s easy for customers to upload their workout results to platforms like Facebook, which in turn inspires new audiences to buy their own FitBit.

 Fitness groups, personal training programs and hobby clubs have all been developed across Facebook, using FitBit to track progress and share data. Simply put, FitBit’s embrace of the Internet of Things ushered in a new fitness paradigm online.

5) Programmatic Advertising: Superior Targeting

With  programmatic spending, growing brands are investing in using data to ensure the right ad reaches the right person at the right time.  The key to programming is that it uses technology and the resulting analytics to help brands understand as much as possible.

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Best Analytics Tools to Use for Digital Marketing

What are Analytic tools and how are they useful?

Analytics tools are software that helps businesses collect, process, and analyze data to understand their online performance and make informed decisions. These tools provide valuable insights into various aspects of a business’s digital marketing strategy, such as website traffic, number of visitors, the sources of traffic, and user behavior on the website.

Web analytics tools 

These can help businesses understand which marketing channels are driving the most traffic and make informed decisions on where to focus their efforts. These tools help businesses track and analyze data in real time, allowing them to make quick and informed decisions based on the latest data. This can help businesses stay ahead of the competition and make the most of their digital marketing efforts.

Social media analytics tools 

These are designed to help businesses track and analyze their social media performance. These tools provide insights into the reach, engagement, and impact of a business’s social media campaigns. Social media analytics tools can help businesses understand how their social media efforts are resonating with their audience and make informed decisions on how to improve their strategies.

Email analytics tools 

These are designed to help businesses track the performance of their email campaigns. These tools provide insights into email opens, clicks, and conversions, and offer a range of features to help businesses create and optimize their email campaigns. Email analytics tools can help businesses understand the effectiveness of their email campaigns and make informed decisions on how to improve them.

With so many analytics tools available in the market, it can be overwhelming to choose the best ones for your business. Here are some of the best analytics tools for digital marketing:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that provides insights into a business’s website traffic and user behavior. It is a free tool that offers a wide range of features, including audience demographics, acquisition channels, and real-time data.

One of the key features of Google Analytics is its ability to track and analyze website traffic. Businesses can see how many visitors they are getting, where they are coming from, and how long they are staying on their website. This can help businesses understand which marketing channels are driving the most traffic and make informed decisions on where to focus their efforts.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media analytics tool that helps businesses track and analyze their social media performance. It provides insights into the reach, engagement, and impact of a business’s social media campaigns.

Hootsuite offers a range of features for businesses to track and analyze their social media performance, including the ability to schedule and publish posts, track engagement, and measure the impact of campaigns.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an email analytics tool that helps businesses track the performance of their email campaigns. It provides insights into email opens, clicks, and conversions, and offers a range of features to help businesses create and optimize their email campaigns.

Mailchimp offers a range of features for businesses to create and send email campaigns, including templates, A/B testing, and automation. It also provides insights into the performance of these campaigns, including the number of emails opens, clicks, and conversions.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a comprehensive analytics tool that helps businesses track and analyze their search engine performance. It provides insights into keyword rankings, backlinks, and paid search campaigns.

SEMrush offers a range of features for businesses to track and improve their search engine performance, including keyword research, technical SEO analysis, and backlink analysis. It also provides insights into paid search campaigns, including ads, spends, and performance data.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a powerful analytics tool that offers a range of features for businesses, including website traffic analysis, lead generation, and customer relationship management.

HubSpot provides insights into website traffic, including sources, behavior, and conversions. It also offers a range of features for lead generation, such as forms and pop-ups, and customer relationship management, including email and live chat.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is another popular social media analytics tool that helps businesses track and analyze their social media performance. It provides insights into social media metrics, such as reach, engagement, and sentiment, and offers a range of features for social media management, including scheduling and publishing.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is another popular email analytics tool that helps businesses track and analyze their email campaigns. It offers a range of features for email marketing, including templates, automation, and A/B testing, and provides insights into email performance, such as opens, clicks, and conversions

Conclusion

Analytics tools are an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. They help businesses track and analyze their online performance and make informed decisions. The tools mentioned above are some of the best analytics tools available in the market and can help businesses of all sizes and industries.

We hope this article helped you learn something new and added value to your time. Want to stay up to date with the latest in digital marketing? Catch us on social media on our handles below and we’re there to help you.

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AI copywriting and PPC performance

The fact that this technology works by feeding a system with loads and loads of data, setting up systems to help the computer analyze the input and generate fitting output from the existing data in a different language, makes it clear that AI is not here to replace humanity, instead, it works like smart storage or a smart encyclopedia to aid the work process and help people work faster. AI copywriting can simply translate to a productivity hiking mechanism in a simpler language.

What is AI?

AI, or artificial intelligence, refers to the ability of a computer or machine to perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence, such as learning, problem-solving, and decision-making. This is achieved through the use of algorithms and machine learning techniques, which allow the AI system to analyze and interpret data, and make predictions or decisions based on that information.

AI systems can be trained to perform a wide range of tasks, from recognizing objects in images and understanding spoken language, to playing games and making predictions. Some common applications of AI include image and speech recognition, language translation, and autonomous vehicles. 

One of the key characteristics of AI is its ability to adapt and learn from experience. This allows AI systems to improve their performance over time, and to handle more complex tasks. This technology can be applied to a wide range of fields, including healthcare, finance, transportation, and manufacturing, among others.

What is AI copywriting?

Machine Learning and AI opened a whole new world of ideas and techniques for us to experiment with. AI copywriting is the process of using artificial intelligence (AI) to create written content. This can be used for a variety of purposes, such as generating marketing copy, news articles, or social media posts. AI copywriting can be done using natural language processing (NLP) algorithms and machine learning techniques, which allow the AI system to understand and generate human-like language.

There are several benefits to using AI for copywriting. For one, it can save time and effort by automating the writing process. Additionally, AI systems can generate high-quality content that is consistent and free of errors. AI copywriting can also be personalized, allowing for the creation of customized content for different audiences.

Another major use of this tech is in copyediting, AI has built-in tools to correct grammar and vocabulary. They can also offer beautifully fabricated rephrased sentences. This software is generally driven by loads of well-written texts such as dictionaries and books from famous authors. Some of the most famous pieces of tech among these are Grammarly and Quillbot.

AI in Digital Marketing

AI has proved to be unexpectedly useful in a lot of ways in digital marketing, specifically designed for these tasks, it’s pretty fast and accurate. Here are some of the most evident uses of AI copywriting.

Generating ideas

AI can help generate ideas for topics to write about, by analyzing data and trends to identify potential angles and topics that are likely to be of interest to readers.

Research Assistance

AI can help with research by quickly and efficiently gathering information from a variety of sources, allowing writers to focus on the creative aspects of writing.

Content creation

AI can be used to generate initial drafts of content, which can then be edited and refined by a human writer. This can save time and effort on the part of the writer, allowing them to focus on more complex or creative tasks.

Editing and proofreading

AI can be used to assist with editing and proofreading, by providing suggestions for grammar and style improvements, as well as identifying potential errors or inconsistencies in the text.

Personalization

AI can be used to personalize marketing messages based on individual customer preferences and behaviours. This can make the messages more relevant and engaging to the recipient, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Optimization

AI can analyze data from previous marketing campaigns to identify patterns and trends that are associated with higher conversion rates. This can help marketers optimize their messages and tactics to improve their effectiveness.

Testing and experimentation

AI can be used to quickly and efficiently test and experiment with different versions of marketing messages and tactics, allowing marketers to identify the most effective approaches in a shorter amount of time.

SEO

AI copywriting can help with SEO and keyword selection by using natural language processing (NLP) to analyze a website’s content and determine which keywords and phrases are most commonly used and relevant to the site’s content. This can help the site’s content to rank higher in search engine results for those keywords, which can in turn drive more traffic to the site. 

Additionally, AI copywriting tools can help to generate new content for a website, using the same NLP techniques to ensure that the content includes the most relevant and effective keywords for SEO. This can help to improve the overall quality and relevance of a website’s content, which can also contribute to better search engine rankings.

Conclusion

AI copywriting can be used in digital marketing to generate high-quality, relevant content for websites and other digital platforms. This can help to improve a company’s search engine rankings and drive more traffic to its website, increasing its online visibility and ultimately leading to more sales and revenue. AI copywriting tools can also be used to analyze a website’s existing content and suggest improvements, making it more effective at attracting and engaging visitors.

Thanks for sticking with us until the end! We hope that this post was insightful and that it has sparked some new ideas for you. Be sure to find us on social media for more such relevant content, it’s free!

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First-Party Data – The Future of Digital Marketing

The internet is more privacy conscious than ever. Some of the biggest tech companies have made the move to ban third-party cookies, which track people’s activity across the web. These cookies provided detailed customer information to advertising platforms and allowed businesses to create ultra-targeted campaigns. For those wondering how the ad campaigns will succeed without this data, the solution is first-party data. 

What is first-party data?

First-party data is information about your audience collected by your business. You don’t purchase or use insights from another business. Instead, customers directly provide you with their information. First-party data may be anything from customer emails to a record of different actions someone takes on your website, like purchases or content downloads.

You don’t need to manually track every interaction with your customers. Great tools exist to help you manage your first-party data. They are a customer relationship management system (CRM) and a customer data platform (CDP). Both of these technologies gather first-party data that helps you gauge where your potential customers are in the sales pipeline and how you can best interact with them to make a sale. CRM software offers you a way to track interactions between your team and your customers.

It is a Central location for remembering customer interactions like sales calls, deals won, and contact information. A CRM makes a huge difference for your sales team. A CDP helps you track the interactions a customer takes after they discover your business. This gathers information like website behaviour and user demographics to help you understand more about your audience. A CDP can help make your marketing strategy more personalized and effective. 

Why does it matter?

  • From a data compliance perspective, there is very minimal risk for business owners. 
  • From a quality perspective, there are a lot of questions about the likes of Google and the other conglomerates about the quality of the data that is accessible. 
  • From an accuracy perspective, as you collect it, you understand the quality of it, and then you know it is accurate because it is very much one-to-one. 
  • From a relevancy perspective, if you collect it in a correct way, and you use it correctly, you have greater insight into the relevance of the specific audiences so that you can use it later on in ways that apply to your business.
  • Cost-effectiveness – It is very cost-effective to use your data in your customer base because it provides a strong return on investment results.

Benefits of first-party data

  • Reach consumers who expect to hear from your business

It might be easy to tap into third-party data. But what you save in time and effort, you pay for in a lack of marketing effectiveness, especially as these capabilities start to disappear. First, party data is collected from your website visitors, email subscribers, and current customers. They have chosen to make a purchase, contact you, or take another action with your business.

Your marketing messages are likely to be welcome, not ignored – especially if it is useful to them in their journey to make a purchase. In fact, research shows that brands that use first-party data in their campaigns see improvement in their conversions, brand awareness, and other business metrics. 

  • Tailor the brand experience to your customers.

More than 60% of consumers expect businesses to use personalization. One study revealed that 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a company if they experience personalization. Using your customer data you can craft ultra-targeted ads based on different interactions with your business. You can send extremely relevant emails to people who fit your ideal customer profile.

You may even upload a list of contacts targeted with Google ads customer match. First-party data can lead to more successful, personalized campaigns for your business. 

  • Increase your marketing ROI

Targeting people who have shown significant interest in your business means you don’t have to waste money or time on irrelevant low-quality leads. You can focus your budget on the people who are most likely to convert with the highest customer lifetime value, leading to less wasted spending and a positive return on your marketing investment. 

How to collect first-party data?

Make sure your customers know to process their information and what you will do with it once you have it. In addition, give people a way to opt out, if they only want some marketing messages or decide that they want none. A tried-and-true strategy to collect first-party data is to offer something valuable in exchange for customer information. 

Tips for gathering first-party data 

What can you offer people that makes them want to give you their emails, names or phone numbers?

Some strategies to gather this data include: 

  • Ask people to fill out an email subscription form on your website to receive a helpful newsletter 
  • Offer a rewards program in which people share their information to get special deals and benefits when they shop with you. 
  • Track customer information when they make online and offline purchases
  • Provide a unique piece of content to those who give you their contact information.
  • Sharing an information-packed webinar with people who RSVP via email.
  • Adding a contact form to your website that asks people for their information.

And with that we come to the end of this comprehensive journey, do let us know your thoughts and takeaways from it in the comments down below. Throw us a follow on social media on the below handles to stay updated. Till then, we’ll catch you in the next one.

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Cracking the best times to post on Instagram

If you have been seeing a decrease in the number of views that you are getting and the number of followers you are getting on Instagram it is probably because you are posting at the wrong time. The best time to post on Instagram has recently changed and if you don’t update the time that you are posting, fewer people are going to see your content which means you are not going to be getting as many views, not going to get as many followers and you are not going to be able to take advantage of the organic reach. It is easier to grow on Instagram right now than it was earlier. 

Now is the best time to grow on Instagram, as it is fully monetizable. You can get paid just for uploading reels, and as long as you are posting at the right time, you are going to see a massive increase in both the amount of use and the number of followers that you are getting on Instagram. 

What does Instagram say about the best time to post?

The CEO of Instagram Adam Mosseri has said the following things:

  • Know where your target audience is located
  • Post before peak times
  • There is no perfect time to post. 

Does the time you post on Instagram matter?

Choosing the right times to post or publish your content is often said to maximize the reach and post engagement, which in turn helps in earning a great return for the marketing efforts. So, to think about the best time to post varies according to the industry, or the day of the week. 

3 Best times to post

  1. The first best time to post is from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. You need to make sure that you are posting at the general best times to be posting. Posting somewhere within this time frame should give you a boost in reach, views and engagement. There are two reasons why this time frame is effective. The first is that it covers lunchtime. People who are on lunch break, and taking a breather from their daily duties will check their phones while they eat. The second reason is that a lot of people’s morning schedules are hectic. 
  1. The second best time to be posting on Instagram is from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. This is going to be the time frame that people are leaving work or school. To find out the general best time to post, to make your post go viral, you need to look at the best time to post for your specific account. For this, you need to go into your analytics, see when your followers are online, and begin posting during the time slot where the majority of them are online. You need to wait at least an hour in between each post unless you are doing a story post. 
  1. The next best time to post on Instagram is from 8 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. This is the time when we see a surge in app usage. You need to be posting at these times, for your followers’ time zones wherever they over-index, that is a time zone that you should be posting in when it comes to the best time to post specifically for your account.

Best time to post on Instagram according to the content

1. Instagram feed 

Wednesday – 11 am

Friday – 10 am – 11 am

2. Reels and IGTV

Monday – 5 am

Thursday – 5 am

3. Instagram Live

Monday – Friday – 11 am or 7 pm – 9 pm

4. Instagram Stories

Monday – Friday – 11 am – 1 pm or late afternoon.

As per the research done on over 30,000 different accounts on Instagram, by Sproutsocial, which is a social media management and intelligence tool, here are the best times to post. 

  • Monday- 11am
  • Tuesday- 10am- 1pm
  • Wednesday – 10am -1pm
  • Thursday- 10am-11am
  • Friday- 10am-11am

The best days to post on Instagram are Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and the worst day to post is Sundays. Loading up reels should be avoided. Posting too much on the story or posting too much on the feed, should be avoided. It makes people ineligible to be able to see your content, which means your reach is going to decrease. You need to be waiting on your feed, for at least an hour in between each post. You should only be posting one to four times a day on Instagram. 

Just because you are posting at the right time on Instagram doesn’t mean you are going to go viral. It doesn’t mean you are going to get more followers. It isn’t just the time you are posting, it is the hashtags that are used, the topic you are using, the length of your video, the sound that you are using, and all these other things that are going to combine to make your post go viral. The posting time is important, but it is not what makes or breaks the reel. Good quality content has great importance for it to perform well. 

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Content Marketing Digital Technology eCommerce Marketing Social Media

Cracking the best times to post on Twitter

What is the importance of posting at the right time?

Twitter has been running its feeds since 2016, like other social media platforms on a popularity basis or an engagement, and not on reverse chronology. But now citing users’ feedback Twitter allows people to switch their feeds from top-ranked tweets to the latest post tweets in a click. A reverse chronological feed shows the Twitter users a tweet as they are getting posted. As time passes, more recent tweets would replace these on the top of the feed, and that is why you need to publish your tweet when most of your audience is online.

The average best time to tweet on Twitter?

Just like most social media, Twitter has no best time to post either. This is simply because different businesses have different audiences and so are their preferences and content posting time. But then you can always check out popular social media marketing companies suggesting when brands should post on Twitter. Twitter provides all the tools. Dig into your Twitter analytics. Your Twitter analytics provides a complete overview of your profile visits, tweet impressions, and other engagement factors. You can also use Twitter Analytics to track your progress over time and make new posting strategies accordingly. 

To make it easier you can also use Twitter analytics tools. Log in to your Twitter first and click the more button and go to the media studio. There you have to click on the insights button and then click on the audience. The graph provided by Twitter insights there shows when your followers and your audience are watching videos the most on the platform. In the graph each square represents an hour-long block, the darker the square the more active your audience is during that hour. There are also social media sites like sprout social that are dedicated to social media research. 

You can go there and find the best times for Twitter global engagement, and there you can find the best times for posting. Check the date on the articles that you read, to confirm that you are looking at the most recent data for the best time. This is because the times that are the best to post on social media and Twitter specifically change almost weekly. The best day to post on Twitter is Wednesday and Thursday. And the worst day to make a post on Twitter is Saturday. The best time to post on Twitter is Wednesday and Friday at 9:00 a.m. In general Monday to Friday between 8 am and 4 pm are great times to post on Twitter. 

When to post on Twitter for the most engagement?

Considering the recent Twitter algorithms, engagement plays a pivotal role in tweet rankings. When something is posted on Twitter, the common goal that all brands have is to connect with their audience. If you wish to stand out among the tweets of all other brands, you have to be thoughtful, creative, and in harmony with your brand’s tone. 

Things to keep in mind

  • On average, the tweets that are posted between 2 to 3 am get the most engagement. The least amount of engagement happens during work hours i.e between 9 to 5 pm. 
  • The highest number of retweets and favourites happen between 8 pm and 11 pm.

Experts say that it is not a specific time like 8:00 a.m. or noon. You shouldn’t be tweeting during a specific time of the day, you should be tweeting throughout the day from morning to night, when people are sleeping, there are people all around the world. When you are sleeping someone else is awake. So why not tweet and engage? Business never sleeps. If you want to do well, be out there each and every single hour of the day. 

You can use tools like Meet Edgar which will make the whole process easier in which you can keep promoting your content 24/7, so that way you can generate traffic from social sites like Twitter even when you are sleeping. You need to be tweeting multiple times a day, ideally once per hour, and you need to be doing this seven days a week. 

The best thing to do is to test out different post timings using a Twitter scheduling tool. Here you will have to experiment. Try to post your tweets in the morning, noon and evening at specific times and see what works and what doesn’t.

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Data Analytics Digital Technology eCommerce Marketing

Broad Match #101

It can feel like we are always on high alert in the world of digital media, particularly in paid search, waiting for the next product announcement or new beta that will help us squeeze incremental performance out of our paid marketing budget.

Therefore, it may seem counterintuitive that the product that has been around since Google AdWords’ inception, more than two decades ago, will be the single most significant addition to your paid search program in 2022. That product is Broad Match.

What is the prize’s value?

Google’s internal research indicates that advertisers using broad match and smart bidding experience a 30% average conversion increase at a similar CPA. If your KPI is conversion value rather than conversions, for instance, the exact figure you hear will not deviate too much from this 30% mark, although the exact nature of the test may influence the quoted figure.

In order to provide our clients with the most effective solutions, it is our responsibility as an agency to carry out our own experiments that either confirm or disprove the claims made by our media partners. We have made significant investments in this capability at Brainlabs, and our “Hippocampus” database enables us to track the outcomes of all agency-wide tests.

Two significant findings emerged from our extensive recent testing of Broad Match.

  1. Google’s claims were supported by convincing evidence that we discovered. The median uplift we observed was +19%, which is not a figure to be laughed at even though it was just below the 30% mark.
  1. Perhaps even more intriguingly, our analysis demonstrated how much can be concealed behind an average. Not only did we observe a remarkable median uplift, but we also observed that broad match consistently delivered successful tests. Broad match emerged as the winning variant on 46 of the 54 tests we have documented. A success rate of 85 percent is almost unheard of in digital media testing given the wide range of external factors that can influence it.

But let’s step away from the finer points for a moment. You can’t afford to ignore that number, regardless of whether the increase is 19 percent or 30 percent, especially for a feature whose implementation requires almost no effort. The good news is that your budget doesn’t have to stretch as far as a 19% increase: Instead, you can use that added value to improve your CPA or ROAS goals by enabling broad match and maintaining your current investment.

Broad match is the only solution to paid advertising’s problems.

How did we arrive here?

It’s not hard to understand why broad match has earned a bad reputation over the years. In the past, the presence of a broad match in an account was a sure sign of a hands-off management style, which resulted in subpar results and ads served to users who were not even close to buying your product.

The rise of the broad match has been the story of steady and gradual technological advancement over time. Even though there is a lot of talk about it now, few people outside of Google’s engineering and leadership teams probably could have predicted how big a hit it would be more than three years ago.

In February 2021, there was a turning point if ever there was one. Google informed the industry in one of its most important announcements of the year:

The fact that the algorithm had fundamentally shifted away from syntactic matching to semantic matching was encapsulated in that small print. As a result of this change, broad match stopped being a firehose and became a really useful tool for accurately expanding your ad targeting.
The item upgrades haven’t halted there, and today, Google’s vision for wide match keeps on mirroring a gradual process of updates and execution improvements:

Using cutting-edge natural language recognition algorithms, continuously improving data quality and infrastructure, simplifying broad match management, updating the keyword prioritization process, and establishing a joint optimization process for creative, bidding, and keyword targeting. Of course, Google’s current approach to discussing broad matches with advertisers and agencies is anything but subtle.

One of the opportunities that consistently rank highly is the “upgrade your existing keywords to broad match” call to action, which can be found in the recommendations tab of Google accounts all over the world.

The steady stream of product modifications and enhancements will continue despite Google’s bolder communication strategy, with the possibility that many of them will go unnoticed for the most part.

When Is a Broad Match a Bad Match?

In paid search, auction-time bidding is table stakes, as you probably already know. However, this is especially true when the broad match is used. If you aren’t tailoring your bids in real-time with this Google Ads feature, a broad match will almost certainly result in you spending a lot of money on a lot of users who have very little interest in your product at the moment.

However, in the opposite direction of that logic, it is essential to recognize the value that some of those queries that appear to be more fragile bring to the table when combined with smart bidding. We can easily read a search query report, find a few questionable examples, and overreact as humans: We must exclude these queries because they will almost never convert for us!

However, as long as those users have a probability of conversion that is not zero, you are justified in serving an advertisement by setting an appropriate low bid. To be clear, we are not advocating completely hands-off handling of search query reports; you will still need to employ some human judgment. However, if you’re after performance, you should try to give the algorithm as much freedom to optimize as you can handle.

Focusing on the wrong metrics is another common error. After implementing broad match, your paid search account’s dynamics will change, but that’s okay because the numbers you care about will be moving in the right direction. If everything else is equal, switching to a broad match should typically result in the following changes to your campaign metrics:

It is true that some of these numbers are negative, and the less confident marketers in the room are already asking, “Why are my CTR and conversion rate going down?!?”It must be driving less qualified traffic through the broad match!”But the point is that you’ve added value and increased conversions with that additional traffic, and your CPA and ROAS haven’t changed because your bid strategy has paid less for clicks.

Lastly, being able to direct Google’s automation in the right direction is becoming increasingly important. Remember: An algorithm will optimize solely with the intention of achieving a conversion objective. Therefore, you should be prepared to see an increase in low-quality customers if you haven’t developed a conversion goal that is sophisticated enough to distinguish between your most valuable and least valuable customers.

That could mean MQLs that never turn into sales or one-time customers who never return for more purchases, depending on your business. This trade-off can be mitigated by sharing first-party conversion data with Google.

Conclusion

You have every right to be skeptical of broad matches as a mature, world-weary PPC marketer. Make an effort to overcome that, and keep in mind the steady advancements in machine learning.

Keep your attention on the goals of your marketing while you undergo that mental shift, and ideally, consider ways to advance these goals to better target your most valuable customers.
However, the most important thing is to act immediately—do not let the 19% increase pass you by. It would not be an exaggeration to say that broad match has reached the point where we would consider it an essential component of your search strategy. If it isn’t on your list, figure out how to bring it to the forefront and start testing right away.

Categories
Content Marketing Digital Technology eCommerce Marketing Industry Insiders

How to Lead Your Digital Transformation with Marketing 2023

Every marketer wants to create a better customer experience. The prospect or consumer experience is key to not only conversion and increased revenue, but also customer loyalty and advocacy, so this is what makes or breaks your business.

The Marketing Evolution: The Leadership, Transformation, Skills, Challenges & the Future study found that 71% of senior marketers and 61% of mid-tier marketers are responsible for their organization’s digital transformation.

Yet, according to The 2021 State of Digital Transformation, only 23% of CMOs are supporting digital transformation, with more IT taking the lead.

However, that is not the case as the leader and her team are perfectly positioned to play an active role in the transformation. This blog validates the skills and knowledge that will level up your marketing to accelerate and execute some of the best digital transformation strategies.

Why is a marketing manager best suited to lead?

The role of the marketing team is to inform, influence and transform. This requires unique skills and broad insight into how companies and clients work. When it comes to creating a digital transformation strategy, marketing leaders can step back and look at the big picture. Create a vision of where your company is and needs to be.

This applies to the company as a whole and its functions, not just marketing. Because digital transformation must focus on the entire customer lifecycle, not just part of it.

Know Your Customers Your job is to keep up to date with new trends and developments. This includes not only technology but also customer needs and behaviours. This is important for any business when planning scenarios and looking to the future.

The importance of customer experience cannot be ignored either. Customers are becoming more sophisticated and demand a consistent and seamless omnichannel approach across all touchpoints across the organization.

So when your customers click on your social media post to learn more about your new product, make sure the next touchpoint is related to that product (such as a custom landing page) and mentions your brand. Otherwise, you will quickly lose your customer’s attention.

Understanding Data

Marketing leaders rely on data. This can help you make better decisions, whether it’s paid advertising performance or conversion rates.

There may be vast amounts of data, but it’s the ability to uncover critical insights for your business. You need data that drives performance, leads, and sales. Your marketing team can help your business get there.

Developing a strategy for digital transformation requires not only understanding business data, but also the entire ecosystem. Do you know what your competitors are doing? What is your industry overview and what are the key developments over the next 12 months?

Market research and forecasting are part of the CMO’s job. It’s about assessing the external environment and understanding how companies fit into it. This allows you to improve where it matters and focus on areas that may be underdeveloped or under-resourced within your organization.

Soft Skills

Technical knowledge and skills are essential in today’s work environment, especially in marketing. But it’s not the whole picture.

Equally important are soft skills, also called power skills. This includes behaviour, personality traits, and work habits. It also helps form diverse and agile teams. This is essential to any digital transformation process.

According to ‘The Future of Work:

2022 Global Report’, the top skills employers are looking for are soft skills such as reliability, flexibility, problem-solving and teamwork/collaboration. Other Soft His skills include creativity, innovation, curiosity and persuasiveness.

What Every Marketer Should Have:

1. Agile Strategy

Agility is essential to digital transformation. It helps companies respond to internal and external changes. This rapid pivoting capability helps maintain or improve customer engagement and fosters employee harmony by creating productive and engaged employees.

This is why a marketing leader and his team should adopt agile strategies. But what does that mean?

Enterprise agility is not just about delivering products and software, it’s about how a business is structured, operated and behaved. It’s about establishing deep connections, new directions, and operational flexibility.

2. Enterprise Agility

This should not only focus on being customer-centric, it should also focus on internal talent. Optimizing skills and knowledge through simple upskilling with continuous learning and integrated agile thinking.

Ultimately, it is a holistic and integrated view of the entire business environment, where everyone is working towards a common goal and ready to adapt as needed.

How do you make a difference?

Leading and embracing change can be difficult. But in today’s fast-paced environment, you have no choice. The pandemic shows how quickly the external environment can change without warning, and how we respond can make or break our success.

There are five easy steps: 

1. Listen

This focuses on listening to customers and employees. Take an interest in customer feedback, such as reviews and phone calls, and involve customers in surveys and focus groups. Create a feedback environment for your employees and hold regular meetings to gain insights.

2. Evaluate

Focus on business objectives and relate to KPIs. Then use the data you want to see where you can make the biggest changes. Empower marketers with the information they need to make informed decisions, rather than waiting for more data.

3. Implement 

Educate your team and prepare for change. Each team member should know what, when, and what is expected of them to achieve it. This includes providing training where necessary and being able to discuss the ‘why’ for further development.

4. Execute

This is how you execute your decisions and follow up with your team. This phase asks for you to communicate the firm’s expectations and identify early adopters.

5. Iterate 

Commit to the changes you are making and bring the team along. If you made any changes, go back and repeat these steps for subsequent changes. Change is hard but ultimately worth it.

Conclusion

And with that, we come to the end of this brief journey, hoping that by now you have a rough sketch of the strategies and plans to ride this wave of digital transformation that’s committed to last at least this decade. See you in the next one, catch us on our social media handles below.

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