Categories
Content Marketing

How to Great Customer Reviews #101

“The word of the mouth” is a term that has been used across several sectors. It is of great importance when it comes to transferring information. Especially when it comes to online shopping. In this sector, word of the mouth is simply the review a website gets for its services and products. It was found in a survey that more than 70% of consumers go through the reviews and critics before getting a product and around 63% show that they are more likely to buy from a site that has product ratings and reviews. It has also been noted that these ratings and reviews play a more dominant role in converting leads to customers than the actual content strategy of the brand. Hence a brand’s growth needs to get great reviews and have a very accommodating customer community.

Here are some efficient ways to increase the number of Customer Reviews:

Ask at at the Right Moment

It is very important to approach your customer at the most comfortable and right time for a review. Asking for a review at the wrong time can simply backfire and give you a very negative response. Hence you need to make sure to get in touch with your customers depending on the product and the convenience of the customer. Such instances could be after they experience or demonstrate success with your product or service, When they post an overjoyed post about your brand on their social media, when they re-purchase or re-order, if they spend time on your website browsing other products or services or if they refer another customer to you. These are extremely favourable situations that you should leverage and it could just you with an amazing review boosting your whole company outlook in front of the consumer community.

Use a Variety of Platforms to Get Reviews

One should seize every opportunity the virtual world presents to get a review from a customer. It is important to have fresh reviews about your website as the dated ones are valued less by the new consumers. It is hence pivotal to curate content and be active in all possible and popular social media platforms. And through all these channels make sure to revitalize your connections with your customers and find the right timing to get the reviews from them. Also, make use of the brilliant tool of email automation and as thank you emails and other newsletters make sure to add a link for the consumer to give a review for his or her experience. Also, make sure to strategically post SEO content on your website to make it more accessible to the customers.

Keep it Easy and Simple

The modern man resorts to whatever is the most simple and the easiest. This is very much seen as a trend among all kinds of customers. Make sure that you give them different kinds of options to submit the review. Examples include simple MCQs, polls, Ratings etc. Also, make sure to let them know the time they will have to devote because people often assume giving feedback to be a lengthy process and refrain from doing so. The simple tagline of “it will only take you a minute” can actually take you miles ahead. Keep the friction of the whole process low by giving them links that will directly take them to the review page and hence save their time.

Keep in Touch

Make sure to revert and appreciate the ones you get a glowing response from with a small thank you token or a surprise discount coupon. This will improve their experience even more and by incentivizing your review process you could take your company to new heights as more and more people will be interested in giving you reviews.

Also, make sure to get in touch with the ones that reported a bad review about your brand or product. This is very pivotal for the growth of your brand and for nurturing a healthy customer community. Make sure to respond with your testimonial on the social platform or the mail itself along with mentioning the customer so that your response shall also be known. All of these actions can actually gain a good amount of trust in the customer community as they will feel more prioritized as a customer, hence giving them the feeling of “Customer being the King”.

Give them a Reason to Review

To expect great reviews you should obviously provide great service and impressive customer support. It is quite vital to provide immediate assistance whenever necessary for your customers. Also when it comes to writing the review itself give them questionnaires and hints on a particular service on which you would like to know the customer’s experience. Also, make sure that you give them open-ended questions so that they have enough room to think about the review as well. The idea is simply to make the process, simple short and sweet for the reviewer. They should find it as an activity out of the joy they received through the product and not as something they are forced to do.

Following up with your buyers, running interesting contests and campaigns and rewarding reviews are all measures through which you emerge in flying colours when it comes to getting wonderful customer reviews. Incentivizing the process by automatically signing them up for a contest, or by sending them a surprise discount coupon are all brilliant measures to make your customer feel warm about giving you a review. With satisfactory customer support, quality service and implementation the efficient ways to ask for reviews that were discussed above getting great reviews and being the #1 option for future customers could become much more easier. With happy customers comes happier reviews, and with great reviews comes great website traffic!

Categories
Social Media

WhatsApp Marketing #101

Why do you need WhatsApp marketing?

WhatsApp is a powerful and useful messaging app that anyone can use, be it for personal use and also for business purposes. If you want to use a free messaging app for connecting with your friends and family, you can download the WhatsApp Messenger personal app. For business purposes, you can download the WhatsApp Business app to showcase your business profile and connect directly with customers or potential customers. When using the WhatsApp personal app, sending too many messages might put your account at risk. This is where WhatsApp business becomes the best option. It’s possible to showcase your business on the WhatsApp business app. You can use features such as the status to show a demo of your product and remember to build a trusting relationship with your regular and potential customers, give value and don’t expect every message you send them to make a sale or you might risk losing your customers. You can also use the WhatsApp web through web.whatsapp.com. WhatsApp web mirrors the WhatsApp personal app on your mobile phone. It saves you time. Today, WhatsApp is the most widely used messaging app. It is a free platform that anyone can use to send messages to anyone under WhatsApp contact lists. WhatsApp is the most popular messenger application which is widely used. 

WhatsApp has a very wide global reach. And by using the app you can talk to people and impact people in your country. You also get to have a great chance to reach your target market. With the help of messaging services, people communicate fast, active users are making use of the various features of WhatsApp and smart businesses are using it for their benefit.

Different ways to use WhatsApp as a marketing strategy

  • You can provide fast customer service to your customers. You can get in touch with their customers and respond to their enquiries and solve their issues right away. By doing this, your customers will experience great support from your business. After-purchase support is very much important for the customers if your product is great. But then your customer support is bad, especially when complaints arise, it will make your business be rated low by your customers, and it will ruin your business’s reputation and will turn off your potential customers.
  • Send exclusive discounts on WhatsApp.

 If your customers are aware of your WhatsApp business account you can use it to send them offers and promotions. In addition, vouchers or coupons can be sent as discount privileges to encourage your customers to purchase the product. People love getting discounts. so even if they don’t need your product for service coupons where they can get use discount will urge them to buy from you.

  • Send creative promotions to your contact list. 

WhatsApp isn’t limited to sending plain text messages to people on your list. You can send messages as videos which you can use to promote new products or services, as people love watching videos more than reading text products or still photo promotions. You can also share pictures that you have created for a particular campaign for upcoming products that your customers can look forward to. You can also share voice messages, if you prefer sending recorded voice messages, you can use WhatsApp to ask your customer you give a review of a product or service used by your business. 

WhatsApp Business

WhatsApp Business is a mobile application from WhatsApp, that is meant for small-scale businesses. It will be easier to respond to customers using the WhatsApp Business app. You can even set auto-replies if a customer sends you the same messages, and instead of answering the same question every day, you can set a default answer to such questions. this is very helpful if you are a very busy business owner who needs less time in handling thousands of messages every day. This business app will save you time. So you can spend more time on more important business activities. you can also present your business, by creating a business profile with all the necessary information that your customers will need if they visit your local business address, know more about the business or contact you. Facebook owns WhatsApp. So a feature of WhatsApp Business that is driving an increase from your Facebook page’s advertisements to your WhatsApp business account is available. So when your customers click the message button shown in your Facebook ads they will be automatically directed to your WhatsApp Business account page. Businesses can now enjoy the benefits of the features of WhatsApp Business, regardless if they are using an Android or an IOS mobile phone. They are both usable on both platforms. WhatsApp Business app charges the businesses on those messages which are not attended to for more than 24 hours. This feature encourages business owners to offer the best customer assistance and service, which would help in building a good trusting relationship with their customers. We all hate it if our inquiries for complaints are not attended to right away. This feature helps the customers, in getting their concerns addressed by these business owners in less than 24 hours using WhatsApp Business. There are features on the business app which are not available to the personal app.

Messaging tools

  • Pre-Defined Greetings

When someone sends a message on your WhatsApp business account for the first time you can automatically send them a greeting message. It serves as a welcome message for your customers on your WhatsApp business account. It will help improve your customer experience and customer satisfaction with your business. You can set your greetings relevant to what your business promotions are. You can also set customer support greetings as well. You can also collect leads using your greeting message. For example, inform them that you cannot respond at the moment and tell them to leave their name and email address so that you can get back to them within business hours. 

  • Away Messages

The away messages help inform your customers that you are not currently available to send the response at the moment. It also reassures them that you can reach them once your business is back from a temporary vacation or business activity. If you don’t enable this feature, your potential customers might lose interest in doing business with you. if they are informed that you are away for a specific reason and tell them when they can expect to receive a message from you, then they will be eager to wait for your response at the set date. 

  • Quick replies

WhatsApp quick replies are saved messages that you can easily use to send frequently asked questions. This helps you respond to users without typing the same messages to different contacts. Quick messages help improve your response time and it is easier to keep the same tone of voice when your business team is sending messages to your customers. 

  • Labels

Users can mark chats from their contacts with the label. it can help you categorize the chats you receive from your recipients. it will allow you to add labels and organise chats with the color coding scheme. you can set labels such as new customer, new order, pending payment, paid, order complete, and you can add more labels that you can customize for your business needs. 

  • WhatsApp Short Link

If you have customers, you can allow them to send a message and chat with your business directly. When you want to share your WhatsApp contact number faster, you can use the WhatsApp short link feature. Using a WhatsApp business app you can create a generated link to use for sending to multiple customers. 

  • QR code

You can also use a QR code and share them with your customers instead of using a link. This is useful when you have a physical store and you want to use this QR code so that your customers can easily send a chat with your business. this also saves them time rather than saving your contact number. you can also use this QR code on other social media platforms so that your visitors can send you a direct message on WhatsApp. 

  • Business Profile

Your WhatsApp business account should have details about your business including your business name, business category, description, business location, business hours, email address, and your website. Your business profile is important as your customers may check out your business profile before they choose your business.

  • Catalog

WhatsApp Catalog helps businesses share their products with their customers. It can allow your customers to enjoy online shopping using your catalog. Instead of sharing photos of your products with any potential customer, who asks about what products you are offering, you can save time by adding items to your catalog. It can allow your business to showcase your products on one page. it can result in a better customer experience and an improved shopping experience with your business. 

  • Using cart

With the use of carts, customers can place orders from businesses that have an existing catalog under the WhatsApp business app. Customers can place orders quickly, ask questions about the items in your catalog, and place an order for multiple items simultaneously. 

  • Collection

This feature allows businesses to organise their catalog and group similar items into categories. This is helpful for your customers to browse the items in your shop without scrolling through a list. 

  • Advertise on Facebook

Advertising is essential to promote your business. You can create an ad that can help you reach customers on Facebook and send them directly to your WhatsApp Business account. 

Categories
Content Marketing

Why SMBs need digital marketing

If your product and services are good, customers will automatically increase with time and your business will flourish. But there’s just one twist, this is not the case for most businesses. At some point in time, you have to focus on marketing, and being early into it will only do good for you. After all, you can’t have a market without marketing.

It’s much easier to give your business a great headstart with online marketing and even when premium toolkits are recommended, you can start for almost free. A big part of e-Commerce is social media marketing, which is basically free if you don’t consider promotions.

It’s just a matter of time until you get your first return on investment and start investing more in your marketing after realizing its potential. Let’s see how marketing helps Small to Medium scale Businesses (SMBs)

Pros of Online Marketing

The audience that you reach is massive and diverse, ranging from different age groups, people with different interests, and from all over the world, possibilities are endless. On top of that, all this massive reach is effective & affordable.

The scale of online marketing Is not limited, small to medium to large, any kind of business can explore and benefit from online marketing. You get interactive access to your users and queries can be solved almost instantly, providing for easy feedback and thus faster upgrades.

The ability to reach your targeted audience anywhere around the world, at any given time, gives e-marketing an edge over traditional marketing. You can construct a strong customer base from around the world and launch loyalty programs among this group.

Knowing the incredible possibilities of e-marketing, let’s see how to get started with marketing your own small-scale business.

How to get started?

The Internet is vast and so are the possibilities to advertise, here are some of the known strategies to get started with marketing:

  • Pay-per-click (PPC) or Ad campaigns
  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • AI marketing
  • E-mail marketing
  • Social media marketing
  • Content marketing

We’ve covered all these strategies in-depth in our other blog posts. All these strategies combined with a smart marketing plan will help your business grow faster than ever. Having pre-established goals for your campaign is going to help you a lot.

Analyze which channel will give you a higher ROI by knowing where your target audience dwells. This way you can invest more into that particular channel of online marketing. Here we are briefly covering the above strategies while explaining each with an example:

Pay-per-click (PPC) or ad campaigns

The first preferable step in getting started with the online outlet of your business is creating a beautiful website for it. Your website should be a depiction of your brand value and should also serve as a catalog for your products and services. Your site should be fast, responsive, informative, and easy to navigate to ensure higher conversions.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is the primary goal once you’re done building your site. Write blog posts and articles that add value to the user and make them a part of your loyal group of potential customers. Implement the best SEO strategies to make your blogs rank and reach a more diverse audience. 

AI marketing

Just like the other strategies, we’ve discussed this vast topic in another blog. AI marketing has taken over much of the human hard work as it can do almost all the data-fed work, also making personalization way easier. You can opt for AI marketing if your business is a medium-scale business.

E-mail marketing

E-mail marketing refers to newsletters as well as an e-mail with personalized recommendations to serve the user better. They can also be used in retargeting a previous customer and bringing them back to your page by providing them with exclusive discounts and offers.

Social media marketing

Marketing on Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media platform comes under social media marketing. You can start by creating a business account and posting regular updates about your products. Gradually start promoting your posts and as you gain more reach, you’ll develop a user base that is interactive and ready to convert.

Content marketing

Engage in more than just blog posts or articles, put out video content, podcasts, infographics, guides, and more. Combine and interlink your content together, for example, you can embed your videos in your relevant blog posts or you can link your relevant blogs in the caption of your video content as a transcript, possibilities are endless.

Any tips?

As we mentioned before, all these strategies have been covered in detail in our other posts, make sure to check them out before starting up. That said, here are some things you should keep in mind while putting these strategies to use.

  • Increase engagement – With the upcoming features in Google AdWords, you can place your contact on your ad. This will bring the customer directly to you and will boost lead generation. Be present on your social media handles and constantly engage in conversations with your potential customers.
  • Online presence – Your online presence is of utmost importance, don’t miss out on any social media platform, don’t miss out on articles and blogs, and don’t miss out on collecting feedback. The feedback in the form of reviews is very crucial and will be used by the user to judge the quality of your services.
  • Competition – You’re in a world of constantly growing competition and you must know what your contenders have on the table. Be aware of the next move your competitor makes and stay one step ahead. This doesn’t necessarily mean copying your competitor but thinking more productively than them.

Maybe now it goes without saying, that online marketing is way cheaper than the traditional ways and would earn you a higher ROI for the same amount. Social media is one such aspect of e-marketing, that will increase your reach to people who are searching for relevant content and separate you from the uninterested audience.

Another thing to keep in check is your originality, while maintaining your brand value, you should also convey the emotion or expression of your brand. People relate to brands that have a human touch to them, so don’t hesitate to add a little bit of humor to your pages.

Lastly, don’t forget to tag or mention the location of your business, they massively help in driving sales locally. This way you can utilize your online marketing in traditional ways too. Be consistent and keep hustling.

If you liked this article and don’t want to miss out on premium content like this, then make sure to subscribe to our newsletter. If you’ve any doubts or queries just drop them down in the comments. Or if you want any suggestions from us, hit us up on social media.

Categories
Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Changes you should be making to your PPC Campaigns

Digital tools and channels have become the great equalizer for companies in all industries, making it increasingly difficult to achieve both brand visibility and  competitive advantage. Paid advertising is undeniably necessary if you want to make sure you have every chance to compete with SERPs and convert customers. 

PPC can generate positive results and revenue for any brand, regardless of their budget. It is a cost-effective and efficient bidding model that allows you to manage your budget completely and in detail. With well-executed ads and strategic targeting options, PPC advertising helps you  target the right user at the right time and maximize your spend in the process. But according to Unbounce, 98% of advertisers waste money on ads.

It is not enough to recognize the benefits of PPC – you must be able to create and execute your campaigns effectively. It can often be  difficult  to master, so we decided to share with you small changes that can make a big difference in your PPC campaign.

 1. Split test ad text 

Running PPC campaigns is incredibly easy to manage and measure, but the initial setup is extensive, from creating audiences and keywords to setting budgets, choosing the right targeting options and finally creating the ads themselves . In this context, the ability to deploy and test multiple ad variations can seem  a bit tedious. However, if you take the time to test your ads, you can gain invaluable information that will show you the best approach for your PPC campaign and help you  maximize  conversion rates. 

The overall goal of any effective PPC campaign is to drive your audience to your landing page or social media profile and encourage them to take further action, whether it’s liking your brand’s Facebook page or buying a product. It’s easy to achieve with simple optimization, but it’s clear that only 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates.

 If possible, you should create at least two variations of the ad. The following elements are divided in the test: 

  •  Titles: is a short and concise title more effective than a longer detailed title? 
  •  Descriptions: Should you focus on product features and benefits or use your personas more creatively to try to pique the user’s curiosity? 
  •  Call to Action: Is “Lean More” Slightly More Persuasive Than “Buy Now”? 

 By analyzing the effectiveness of each ad (it is recommended to run it for at least a week to measure more accurate results), you will eventually arrive at a copy that works perfectly! 

 2. Use images 

The effectiveness of text ads varies from campaign to campaign and depends on several factors, including  targeting options and overall goals. Since the launch of Google AdWords expanded text ads last year, advertisers have been able to communicate with potential customers in more detail using additional characters. In fact, most of them increased their click-through rates by at least 28%. 

However, an improved PPC campaign should include both text and image ads so that you can benefit from different types of content  and campaign messages. 

Image and video ads offer the perfect opportunity to present your brand in a visually impressive way. For example, on the Google Display Network,  you can choose and upload an image and your brand logo. On social media, native ads like Sponsored Updates fit seamlessly into a user’s news feed—and the likelihood of getting clicks increases exponentially when you include an image or video. It’s also a much more effective way to get your campaign message to mind – once people hear the information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of the information after three days. However, when the corresponding image is associated with the same information, people retained 65% of the information after three days.

Images is an exemplary way to increase engagement and expand your brand’s reach. For example,  beer brand Heineken Light created a Facebook video advertising campaign that reached 5% of the target audience (which was 35 million people) and increased brand awareness by 11% in just three days.

Beer brand Heineken Light created a Facebook video advertising campaign that reached 5% of the target audience (which was 35 million people) and increased brand awareness by 11% in just three days. 

 3. Organize Your Account Structure 

 Just like creating multiple ad variations, setting up your AdWords or Facebook account  can seem unnecessarily time-consuming, especially if you’re not starting from scratch. But if you want to ensure the best possible conversation  for your campaigns, this simple setup is essential. 

You should have multiple campaigns in your account to effectively track ad performance. A campaign, on the other hand, contains several different ad groups. Campaigns can be determined based on several factors, such as your overall budget or the geographic locations where you want to show your ads. For example, you might be an online fashion retailer whose largest customer segments are  in the UK and Ireland, and you might want to create two separate campaigns for those UK and Ireland customers. 

There are several ad groups in the campaign. It’s important to keep these ad groups  small and fluid. You may want to organize your ad groups so that you have one per product page or category, for example. The smaller your ad group, the more specific your keywords  and the more relevant your ad will be by default. 

Similarly, organizing keywords into ad groups for greater relevance is equally important if you want to achieve higher click-through rates and more results. 

Use Negative Keywords 

Another often overlooked but very important aspect of any PPC campaign is negative keywords. You can spend a lot of time researching keywords and trying to find the perfect balance between part, phrase and specific search, but what about the search terms  you don’t want associated with your ads and wasting your budget? Adding negative keywords is an important step because they maintain  high relevance for your campaign. 

A good starting point is to think of  phrases and keywords that you don’t want your ads to trigger and add them to your negative keyword. You can then take a more specific approach, such as adding keywords that may be similar to your chosen keywords, but are actually related to another product or service. 

By regularly reviewing your search term reports in Google AdWords, you can see how your ads are performing when driving real searches. Find out what terms unrelated to your brand have been used and you can quickly add them to your negative keyword.

Categories
Industry Insiders

3 Marketing Bloopers Digital Marketers Can Learn From

When we think of speakers, we usually think of actors spouting lines or collapsing on set. However, the marketing world sees its fair share of fluff – errors in judgment that can have devastating effects on a brand’s reputation. 

The marketing game not only causes reputational setbacks, but  can also seriously drain your advertising budget. Misplaced messages, poor campaign strategies, poorly thought out images and investments in the wrong channels are  the most common marketing mistakes that brands make.From Lunya’s confused HandMaid’s Tale underwear campaign to Pepsi’s creepy Chinese ad copy translation, GAP’s quirky temporary rebranding and more, marketing talk is not uncommon. 

 3 Marketing Bloopers Digital Marketers Can Learn  

 Some bloopers are small, some are big, but they all have one thing in common – they take time, effort and resources to recover from. To help you avoid making  your own mistakes, here’s a look at two of this year’s worst marketing mistakes and older classics, and what we can learn from them. 

 1. Burger King’s Awesome Marketing Fop 

The tweet was an attempt to push back against marketing communications that were quickly removed after causing outrage online. The original marketing hook was “women belong in the kitchen,” but with little context around it, the controversial slogan became a slogan for sexism. The timing was particularly unfortunate because the tweet was posted on International Women’s Day, a day that celebrates women’s empowerment and gender equality. 

This social media marketing hoax caused a hot segment to spread and unfortunately earned 527% more engagement than the brand’s scholarship program ad: 

 Lesson: 

 The culture industry is indeed male domain , and while the campaign was meant to make things better, it  buried itself deeper than a  pickle wedge in a giant hamburger stack. 

 Keys: 

  •  When developing  marketing messages for a specific event or party: 
  •  Share your ideas and content with relevant audiences internally 
  •  Collect feedback before signing up 
  •  Avoid  overly controversial copy 
  •  Choose language, images or concepts very carefully 
  •  Use your message to empower your audience, don’t create a sense of alienation. 
  •  Remember that not all advertising is good advertising. 

 Tip: Consider using a social media style guide so everyone on your team and working with your brand knows the agreed tone  and tailored messages for all relevant platforms. 

2. Snickers ad campaign fails 

Snickers Spain got its reputation in  hot water this year when it released a misleading video ad that used one of the brand’s slogans: “You’re not the one who’s hungry.” 

There is nothing wrong with that. clause itself (actually solid  copywriting), but the context in which it was used caused an unwanted association. 

The ad shows influencer Aless Gibaja transforming into a Snickers “man” after eating a Snickers bar. This misogynistic homophobic narrative is ill-earned high-level negative publicity almost as soon as the campaign launches. 

Even Spain’s Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, publicly slammed the ad with a tweet that read: 

 “Our society is diverse and tolerant. I hope that those who have the power to make decisions about what we see and hear in commercials and television will learn that too.” 

Lesson: 

If political parties and figures are seen criticizing your marketing campaign, you are likely to lose a large portion of your target audience and existing brand advocates, even if you offer a full and honest apology. 

Before working with influencers, make sure they are relevant to your niche or industry and work closely with them to make sure they like your message. It is recommended that you build strong influencer relationships and avoid controversial advertising ideas that have no meaning or substance – as this will almost never end well.

 3. Timothy’s World Coffee Rewards Misfortune 

Last but not least in our selection of marketing mistakes is the infamous example of an earlier failure of Timothy’s World Coffee, an established brand that is  still trying to redeem itself from this folly. 

To expand their social media reach, a brand offered current and prospective fans a coupon or free sample for following them on social media—usually an effective tactic for driving engagement and loyalty. 

Unfortunately, Timothy’s World Coffee offered more than it could deliver and ran out of  free K-cups in just three days. A full two weeks after this embarrassing blow (that’s a pretty big hiccup), Timothy released a public message announcing that they were giving away coupons and samples  on a first-come, first-served basis. While this claim may have resonated with consumers immediately after the incident, the  delay in communication caused outrage and further dug the brand  into a publicity hole. 

Despite the apparently genuine second apology message and its offer to send  a free coupon to all disgruntled customers, the damage had already been done. 

 Lesson: 

 If you’re going to offer an incentive, coupon, freebie — or basically any promise — through any consumer channel or touchpoint, you need to make sure you deliver on your offer. No exceptions. No compromises.

Whether you’re offering free shipping to follow your brand,  running a contest with multiple prizes, or offering unique content to sign up for an email newsletter, you should never offer anything less. Always strive to provide value and demonstrate that  you are trustworthy – if you don’t, almost all marketing efforts will fail. 

Oh, and if you screw up, deal with it publicly in a hurry, instead of letting the problem drag on for hours, days or (worse) weeks. 

Categories
Social Media

“what’s the buzz? Twitter Paid Ads and why it’s for you”

The Advertisement industry witnessed an enormous boom in its growth over these past few years. The reason behind this is quite trivial considering the fact that this industry is very closely related to the e-commerce industry which itself had its uprisal in this past decade. Social media platforms became the new central pillar of media and television commercials evolved into Social media advertisements as the whole community dwells and roams much more often on this platform. Organic ads on social media like Facebook were a great opportunity for several commercial brands as they came free of cost and was having a good reach and conversion rate. However, realising this enormous potential of such ads Facebook itself reduced the reach of organic ads to promote their paid ads services which kind of forced several brands to actually settle for a paid ads setup.

But now the question was since we are already paying which platform would be the best to invest in? A study showed that there was a 0.1% increase in the paid ads services by facebook compared to Organic ads. Even though it’s kind of mim\nimal to an entrepreneur it still is a decent catch. However, the same study pointed out that Twitter paid ads to have double the conversion rates of organic tweets. Now, this is the real buzz of the business. The Twitter ads also provide a good range of services making them an exceptional option to invest in. Being in-stream unlike other platforms where the ads get pushed to the side, Twitter ads can guarantee you a much higher engagement rate and this is exactly what you want while getting in touch with your customer audience. Twitter also provides very simple ad formats including Promoted tweets, Promoted accounts and Promoted trends making it quite user-friendly for a brand.

With less than 140 characters here are the services you could use from Twitter ads to shoot up your conversion rate:

Lead Generation Cards

One of twitter’s most fantastic features and innovation-led generation cards are such a privilege for lead marketers. They assist you in collecting and understanding leads from within the tweet keeping the process hassle-free and neat for you and the consumer. A simple click on your call-to-action does the job and this simply makes the job extremely easy for you. With all the technical aspects of it covered and followed exactly as mentioned in a super simple step-by-step guide by Hubspot making these alluring cards will be a piece of cake for you.

This is one of the sole reasons we consider twitter ads to be such a blessing for a lead marketer. Being comparably cheaper and performing based on Twitter ads are going to aid you in growing a successful business.

Call-to-Actions

A study by Convertro pointed out that around 87% of the responses to social content were made in a split second or that the amount of time a consumer would actually devote is quite lower than what you might expect.

So the idea is to come up with keyword-oriented, SEO content that would be tempting enough for your consumer. It needs to be catchy, appealing and most of all simple. It’s also quite sensible to use it along with your leading cards option because then you will have the liberty to choose whether you should have text or display the CTA button.

Some of the important things to keep in mind while creating your call to action are to make it responsive by asking a question or demanding action. It could be asking for a download, retweet or a reply. The idea is to have more personal interaction with the user so that you can indulge them and their thought process in your ad.

Custom Targeting

Yet another incredible service provided by Twitter is the targeting options they provide. Even if you have the right content in place it doesn’t reach the right audience then all your work and effort will be in vain. By using the option of custom targeting you can make sure to direct your ads to the kind of customer base you want to approach. 

Twitter allows you to do this targeting through keywords, interests, gender, location, language and specific mobile or desktop devices. However, none of these is the most appealing feature. Twitter also helps you to target users who are similar to your pre-existing customers hence increasing the chance of lead conversion, This tool can play a pivotal role in boosting your conversion rate and make your whole content strategy get applied more efficiently. 

There is also the option of Tailored audiences. It significantly aids you to direct your content to the right group of people by letting you create groups of existing and potential customers from email addresses from your customer relationship management database. Existing customers who probably already like and trust you are the best group to be targeted as you can expect a fruitful response from them.

With the rapid decline in the reach of organic ads as time passes and the slow increase in the pricing of competitive platforms like Facebook and Adwords Twitter is indeed the right option for futurist entrepreneurs. Even though Twitter has fewer users compared to the other competitors it was found by a study that around 34%  of twitter’s users are more active and log in more than once a day. Hence logically speaking the consumer crowd on Twitter is more to approach. By leveraging your Twitter lists you could really organize your followers and maximise your engagement. Twitter provides you with a beautiful opportunity to grow your business. The services provided are clearly oriented in a way so that the ad creator would reap the most benefits out of it.

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Industry Insiders

Rigging your marketing budget

While consistent uploads, relevant content, user intent fulfillment are undoubtedly the most crucial aspects of successful marketing, but that alone won’t give you the magical results you’re seeking. 

While organic rankings are achieved through best-in-class SEO, there’s much more that goes into bringing your business to the top of the charts if you’re planning to run ads. Budding businesses must use ads strategically to get the best out of their marketing budget.

Search marketing keywords can be expensive with some terms costing hundreds of dollars. Planning and execution of a good marketing strategy are crucial. Here are 6 strategies to get the highest returns from your ad campaigns.

  1. Using keywords smartly
  2. Out-of-the-box search content
  3. Optimize your landing page
  4. Landing page alternative
  5. Search engine alternative
  6. Keep evolving

Using keywords smartly

Short keywords are expensive and broad, they can bring in unwanted visitors and thus more unnecessary clicks to pay for. Long tail keywords are generally way less expensive, also you bring in visitors that are likely searching the same thing and have a much higher conversion probability.

Keep in mind, half of the search queries are 4+ words, and the user you bring in is way more valuable. If you’re a brick-and-mortar store at a particular location, then your search keyword term can end with your location. Having a more specified and common description of your business is the key takeaway here.

Out-of-the-box search content 

The present-day user doesn’t remain on the “all” search result channel, the user will find content that’s useful to them on images, news, and video channels of search engine results. Apart from optimizing your search engine ranking on the homepage, focus on optimizing in these channels too.

As we said earlier, tagging your location as a brick-and-mortar store will boost your visits a lot. Studies say more than 72% of people who search for a local store, visit a store within 5 miles of their reach. 

Optimize your Landing Page

If you’ve read our article on SEO 101, you might know that the landing page has a world of relevance when it comes to user retention. A site taking more than e seconds will be left by 72% of users. Another study shows that landing pages that are not satisfactory will lose 97% of leads instantly.

Analyze that number and now think of how many wasted clicks were paid for? The landing page should be fast, easy to navigate, and should have satisfactory information or lead to the user. Call-to-action buttons will play a major role in conversion at the end of the landing page.

Landing Page alternative

While it’s important to build a very strong landing page, at times it can simply be replaced by something of value to the user. If you have a blog post or other relevant content that can add value to the user’s intent, then link that instead of your landing page.

Adding a call to action button that earns the loyalty of the user will prove useful in the long run. This user will add to your site visits and indirectly increase your organic ranking. Also, this loyal user has a higher tendency to convert to a lead if they come across your site again.

Search Engine alternative

While the first thing that comes to mind after hearing search engine is Google, though desktop users are well used to search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. These search engines with others count for the rest 66% of search engine clicks.

One advantage is the cost of competitive keywords, which is way less on these less competitive search engines. Depending upon the type of product and service your business is offering, you can opt for different search engines for better engagement and higher ROI.

Keep Evolving 

With trials and errors will come feedback, you can analyze your own data and pinpoint which actions are yielding leads and which actions are fruitless investments. Reworking your ad campaigns from time to time will lead you to perfection. This will ultimately improve your ROI. 

With previous ad campaigns, you’ll also be able to analyze which keyword terms are performing well and should be used more often. These Investments are initially cheap and you can cap them off weekly for data analysis. Once you’re familiar with the results and techniques, you can invest more.

If you have any questions about these techniques, feel free to comment them down below and if you liked this article, consider subscribing to our newsletter for the latest updates. Also, you can catch us on social media.

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Pay-Per-Click Advertising SEO

Balancing Your Paid vs Organic Search

Balancing Your Paid vs Organic Search

Search engine optimization, once an afterthought when compared to other marketing strategies, is now at the forefront of inbound marketing success. There are two ways to land yourself on the front page which often confuses people- paid search and organic search 

Paid search results are essentially ads. With these, your placement is usually based on the amount you are willing to bid for the ad’s placement and other factors like the quality and impact of the ad. Paid search results are at the top of the page they will contain a small note saying add. So you can easily identify what is an ad. Even though we don’t sometimes consider digital marketing as advertising, it is an ad. Your paid search results will have little ad icons. There are a lot of similarities between paid search and organic search. 

Difference between paid search and organic search

Paid search is where advertisers pay to serve for different user searches using keywords, landing pages and ads. It is a faster and more straightforward means to serve clickable links on the SERP. The paid results will be shown at the top or very bottom of the SERP with a small ‘ad’ note in the copy. These searches have shorter and more control over the ad copy. Organic search results are results that come up organically. These results are optimized based on website content, HTML coding and link building. Here, the results take time to serve. Organic results are always shown below paid results. They are dynamically created by the search engine organic algorithm. Unlike paid searches, organic search results will have a longer headline and a longer body copy.

Which is best- Paid search or Organic search?

Instead of asking which one is best, it may be wise to ask which is best for you. Both have unique advantages and disadvantages. So it is a matter of knowing which will work best to get you the most of your marketing benefits. 

Pros and cons – Organic Search

Pros

  • Trust

When you are searching for something on Google, you will certainly select the results at the top. And that’s because that’s the search we have grown to trust. This perception of credibility works well for your company if you are at the top of the results. Because most people are guaranteed to click through to your site.

  • Long-lasting

As long as your content remains relevant, your page is likely to remain at the top, which simply means more beneficial exposure over a long period. Once you put in the effort and the resources upfront you never have to do it again, but you will reap the benefits long term.

  • Click-Throughs

If you are comparing the click-through rate of organic versus paid searching, organic make up nearly 68%, especially for buyers who have an interest, but not necessarily an immediate purchase intent.

  • Compounded Ranking

Each time you go on to the search engine results, you increase your chances of ranking high again. By ranking high, you not only build trust with users, but you also build a good reputation with search engines. The more authority status the engine gives you, the higher your rank over time. 

Cons

  • The initial investment at the heart of great organic search results is great content. It can be anything from articles and white papers to videos and infographics. But the best content utilizes SEO tactics or Search Engine Optimization tactics that can take some time to research and create the content which means inevitably be a lofty investment.
  • Time

On top of that, ranking for highly competitive keywords can take months or even years. So there is a good chance your marketing team will be out of the wild. If you can stick it out and see your efforts to achieve a high ranking, your return on investment is almost guaranteed.

Paid search – pros and cons 

In essence, paid search results are advertising for your company. You associate ads with certain keywords, and when users search for those keywords, your ad displays at the top of the search results, and in the section marked as ads. If your users click on the listing, you pay a small amount which is called PPC or pay-per-click advertising. The placement of your ad compared with your competitor’s ad depends on the amount that each of you bid for a certain keyword as well as a few other certain factors. The pros and cons of PPC advertising have some similarities and some differences from those of organic search.

Pros

  • Time

Paid such rigging shows the top of the results as soon as you pay for the ad placement. You simply decide the keywords you want to rank for, the message you want your searches to see, and find the budget of the search engine to work with, it is fast and it can be very effective.

  •  Success after click through

Paid search is geared towards more serious and eager buyers. Through it accounts for much less search engine traffic than organic results, the actual revenue amount is quite considerable.

  • Targeting

Paid search is tailored to reach certain audiences. So if your target is done correctly, you have a high chance of getting your message in front of the people that you want to see it. Not only can you target by keywords, but you can also further filter into segments by location, marital status, education level and much more.

Cons

  • Cost

In general PPC advertising can be quite costly for a few reasons. The first bid price is based on keywords. So the more competitive the keyword is, the higher price you are going to pay on each click for your display ad. Paid search advertising requires a high level of expertise and understanding to be successful. You either have to have a knowledgeable person on your team or outsource it.

  •  Short-lived

As soon as you stop paying for your PPC ads, they go away. They don’t have a long-term effect that organic searches will over time.

  • Lack of trust

Drawing on the example of organic search results, users tend to select organic results before they will click on the ads at the top of the page because there isn’t the same level of trust. There may be a certain suspicion over how relevant the information might be.

When it comes to best practices, generally a combination of organic and paid nets the greatest results. Making use of the features of both increases credibility, and also ensures visibility, secures everlasting search results and targets, buyers, at different parts of the buying cycle. Mix and match how you utilize it to search for your marketing strategy. Make sure to track the results. You can prove things as you go and try new tactics if the current ones aren’t working. Search Engine Optimization takes time and effort, regardless of which method you use. But the results are always worth it. 

Categories
Social Media

Advertising on Instagram: Become a Pro

In 2022, when social media is as diverse as it has ever been, the contender that’s the world’s 4th most used social media platform is Instagram, with over 1.5 billion daily users and over 2 billion total active users.

It’s no secret that mobile technologies have evolved exponentially over the decade, with over 77% of the world’s population having a phone now. These numbers are never facing down and they indeed prove a point that m-Commerce is becoming a bigger chunk of e-Commerce.

Now that you know the number of people roaming the social world of Instagram and taking a huge part in the business world, let’s explore the opportunities that will help you’re your business break its personal records!

Who’s the target audience?

Before knowing how to get started, let’s first introduce you to the audience that you’re expecting to reach. Over 60% of users on Instagram are from the age group 18–34, while you might question the significance of that, this is the same age group that accounts for over 60% of total online shoppers. 

While that raises a lot of eyebrows, another fact that might astonish you is that India accounts for the highest number of users on the platform. And if that isn’t enough to flabbergast you then the fact that the number of Indian users is increasing by 64% annually might as well do the job.

Apart from the incredible base of potential customers, Instagram is already on its way to becoming an indirect e-Commerce platform soon. Moving forward, let’s see how you can start with your own ad campaigns on Instagram and start to redirect the traffic to your online store.

How do Instagram ads work?

Instagram is primarily a platform to connect users to their friends, family, and influencers, but it also serves as a platform for creative artists and businesses. It uses the post and stories format, these posts are visible to people who follow you and to others as per your privacy settings.

If you’re a creator on Instagram, your content is more visible & discoverable to people who follow your niche. To advertise your post means to push your post into the more popular section and give it more reach. When you advertise or ‘promote’ as they call it, your post has higher visibility in the explore section of users.

Studies show that posts on Instagram have over 23% more engagement than on Facebook. Brands reportedly have over 4% of their followers engaging with their content, while these numbers are flat at zero on Facebook.

Moreover, you can link your page or catalog to your sponsored post for instant traffic or even conversion. You can also select what age group of audience located in what region views your posts more, giving you more control over your reach.

How to get started?

Now that you have a strong base of understanding of how ads work, let’s see how to get started with your own ads on Instagram. The platform is based on images and videos and almost all the content on the app is just another format of these two things. Talking about formats let’s take a look at them:

  1. Photos: Photographs conveying an expression, emotion, message, art, or information are the things that would trend here. Be your photos complex or simplistic, there’s a set audience for everything.
  1. Videos: Videos can be shared as posts, stories, or reels on Instagram and have a huge potential to reach users as video is the most popular form of content in the present generation. With the arrival of October 2021, Instagram ditched its original long video format app, IGTV, and merged it into Instagram videos. A while later, Instagram launched Reels in the late July of 2022, entailing the era of short video content which seems to be the most popular form of content right now.
  1. Carrousel: This is the format where you can chain multiple photographs, videos, or even links to your own website or catalog. More CTA (Call To Action) buttons or comments can be added as per your choice.
  1. Stories: Stories are one way of sneakily advertising your brand easier on Instagram. These are images or videos that have a short lifespan of 24 hours, after which they disappear. Instagram provided marketers with the option to place direct ads on stories, again having the liberty to insert a CTA button.

What’s trending?

Instagram has a lot of examples of advertisers using ads in genius ways to make them trend. Take, for example, the footwear-focused brand Nike, knowing that their primary audience is sport-loving, their posts are mostly of players caught in the moment, wearing their products, obviously.

Reels became the new trend as soon as it was launched. Carrying forward the lineage of short video apps like TikTok, reels featured short and long videos, which quickly took over the predecessor. 

Using visual information at its best is the key to success on Instagram. Optimization of posts to integrate your products, catalogs and website is the first step toward driving traffic to your page.

With new features rolling out every few months, stay updated with the new ways to connect with your target audience. Let’s now see the budget you’ll need to start advertising on Instagram.

What’s the cost of advertising?

Costing on Instagram isn’t fixed for a particular deal, you can carefully tweak your reach and call to action by the user and pay for the same. Simply put, it’s similar to pay per click, you pay for the type of response you demand from the user. 

Taking an average from the year 2021, Instagram’s cost per click clocks up to about $0.40 – $0.70 which includes every type of click, be it a like, comment, or share. Posts with URLs have a CPC of about $0.50 – $0.95 as of 2021. 

Any tips?

While social media translates to Influencers these days, it’s not limited to that. If you know that your target audience is the young or adult age group, then Instagram is a world of possibilities for you. 

You are the one who started your business and so if there’s anyone who knows your business the best, then it’s you. Take decisions on your own but seek advice from the experts or elites in the niche.

With that, we wrap up this short informative blog, subscribe to our newsletter to never miss premium content like this, and hush! You can find us on Instagram too 😉

Categories
Pay-Per-Click Advertising

amazon ads basics

With a global worth of a whopping $88 billion, the advertisement industry has been an arena of enormous prosperity ever since the advent of modern media. Mass media in itself was such a success and the reach of this beautiful industry across the globe was phenomenal. It becomes very trivial to a businessman that this platform could indeed play a pivotal role in growing their business. The spectacular reach of the media that was mentioned above went beyond imagination upon the advent of the internet. This is the moment entrepreneurs decided to exploit the wonderful opportunity of closely communicating with the consumer community and hence expanding their customer base.

The facts and figures regarding the growth of the advertising industry never fail to amaze critics. However, 90% of this growth is attributed to the two main giants of this industry: Google and Facebook. This sector is clearly under a duopoly. Both of these companies very strategically made it a point to establish their paid advertising domain dominant in the industry by consistently innovating themselves according to the needs of the users.

The competition is about to get really thrilling as the most popular eCommerce brand Amazon is making its mark by introducing its own paid advertisement domain: Amazon Ads. This will surely put enormous pressure on the current leaders: Facebook and Google as their new competitor is no mere rookie but powerful, global brands with a consumer community that is at par with these giants.

Even though paid advertising was available as an option to the vendors on amazon since 2012, the new API of Amazon has attracted several firms due to its self-advertising feature. This will surely throttle the growth and establishment of Amazon Ads in the advertising sector. A feature that could almost guarantee an incredible boost in the functionality, scope, and reach of the platform. The real question is “Can Amazon Ads really overtake Facebook and Google in the advertisement space with these features?”. To answer that question let’s first dwell on the various features of Amazon Ads.

Key Features:

Even though they are new to this space they did make a thunderous entry by putting a lot of focus into making this project innovative and appealing to the consumer community. Something that drew the attraction of several critics is the expansion of Amazon Ads beyond the evaluation and purchase stage of the buyer journey. With a wider Pay-Per-Click(PPC) based advertising setup the brands are given the comfort of creating and displaying targeted ads. This will break down the steps into almost 2 or 3 for the customer to place an order from an ad. This self-service feature added a very beautiful charm to this platform as it was something unique and something they never saw before in the advertisement space. They have also gained the attention of a  lot of people with the variety of promotion opportunities they provide.

Even though they have made these unique enhancements in a general aspect they have followed the same tactics as the previously established giants.  

Functionality

One of the basic requirements to utilize the full potential of amazon ads is to be a qualified member of the Buy Box. It is a white box that you can find at the right-hand end of the product page and it aids the customer to add suggested items directly into the cart hence preventing the hassle of redirecting to different product pages. It is also essential to own a Professional Seller Account or a Pro Merchant Account for a brand to use the various features provided by Amazon ads.

Sponsored Ad Reporting

Amazon ads crafted such an elegant feature to make sponsored ads more efficient and appealing. This was accomplished by adding the option of having a comprehensive reporting and analytical functionality which would allow brands to understand and study the success of their campaigns and hence optimize and find the best possible method to present their products and content.

The report was enhanced by adding the following elements:

  • Detailed information on the performance of keywords and search terms
  • Performance data and Campaign targeting data will be provided based on the results obtained from your active ads.
  • Click Through Rate(CTR) performance of the advertised products
  • Placement analytics will assist you with studying where the ads were placed or positioned 

Product Category Targeting

Product category Targeting is a marvelous option provided by Amazon Ads that has made the platform very favorable for various brands in the commercial industry. It facilitates the brands or marketers with the option of selecting the specific categories relevant to the product they wish to advertise. However, these categories will be pre-determined by Amazon. This function will aid in making your product stand out and will draw more focus and attention to your advertisement. Hence making it much more relevant and attractive for the target audience.

Can Amazon Ads really take over?

Amazon Ads has surely entered tough competition. However, their fresh and innovative ideas have surely given them the early push to slowly catch up and maybe even get ahead. The only obstacle in its path is the customer’s perception. Being an e-shopping platform customers often visit Amazon with a product in mind and hence their focus will mostly be on that category of products. It is rare to see someone just browsing through Amazon to see what’s new or what’s up! So they will surely have to put a lot of effort into adding more and more features to boost themselves to new heights. They will have to find new ways to be more appealing to the customer and draw their attention to the variety of products they provide.

Being a pre-established brand in the eCommerce industry and being one of the most popular ones amongst them, Amazon’s new advertisement platform has already captured the attention of many big brands like L’Oreal. It was reported by the gift experience business Buyagift, that there was a wonderful increase of 79% in exposure and reach through Amazon ads optimization.

Even though the platform has only just been introduced, the immense potential and bright future of Amazon Ads are indeed captivating. Hungry for success, they are surely trying to raise the bar of the competition. With such healthy competition the already dominant competitors Facebook and Google shall also improve and innovate themselves. Hence without any doubt, we could guarantee that the growth of the advertisement industry will surely leave the world bedazzled in the coming years as well.

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