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Importance of organic and paid promotions

Importance of organic and paid promotions

social media marketing Horizon web Technologies akola nagpur

In a very dynamic online world were practically so many stuff can be downloaded or done for free, it would seem rather foolish for some to think that they would even consider paying for advertisements online. Why should they? Many would argue… when there are free marketing channels available out there like Social Media where they can promote their brands, products or services. social media marketing horizon web technologies akola nagpur.

A brand trying to get through this clutter of information and eventually reach their targeted audiences would be doomed to fail if they rely only on free or organic social media marketing. That’s why effective businesses – those who really know how digital marketing and social media marketing works – allot a dedicated budget for paid social media marketing. These businesses and advertisers really know the importance of combining organic and paid social media marketing, and would pull away budget from other advertising channels like the ones below, to invest in this very effective digital marketing channel.

Most if not all of these digital marketers and business owners thinking the same path of riding the FREE bandwagon would at one point, more sooner than they would think, realize that not all that is free can deliver the kind of results they want. All the numbers affecting the bottom line simply would not add up. The average social media user is exposed to more than a thousand types of content every time they log in to their favorite social media network – over 15,000 is you’re really a social media addict.

Combined Organic and Paid SMM Delivers Better Results at all Fronts

First and foremost reason why it really pays to combine organic and paid social media marketing is that doing so would deliver favorable results in all fronts: whether your purpose is to reach more audiences, create a whole new army of loyal brand followers, and generate favorable results and actions from highly targeted audiences. This was proven true in a recent case study involving a very recognizable international brand

The study show that the Castrol Moto motorcycle division of this large international company attempted to boost their reach and engagement to targeted audiences in North America using social media marketing – both paid and organic. The first phase involved solely an organic social media marketing campaign for six months. They did get some level of results that may look favorable upfront, but is really not the kind of results they want. Sure, they generated good reach and new fans, but not the kind of fans they truly want.

Paid Social Media Marketing Channels You Can Use

Business owners who know the importance of digital marketing tools, particularly the prowess of content marketing, know how effective it is to use social media networks to create a buzz for their content. Most would create their own profiles and pages, and many would even maintain groups and other social discussion communities in an attempt to engage with targeted audiences.

However, these business owners limit the kind of reach and the quality of generated audiences if they rely only on social media marketing that is within the confines of the profiles and channels they own and control. They would be missing out a lot of opportunities of reaching out to highly targeted audiences if they will not use paid social media channels to promote their brand and business. Most social networks have some forms of paid social promotions but at this point let’s discuss the three most popular and most effective paid channels:

Facebook Promoted Posts

Anybody can post anything on their social media profiles and pages, but due to limitations set by social networks like Facebook, the maximum audience reach of such posts will be limited to what the network has specified. With paid promotions, you can work your way around these limitations and reach a higher degree and number of targeted audiences that your content is intended for.

At Facebook, you can promote and boost the reach of your posts and content through Facebook Promoted Posts. There will higher than standard chances of targeted audiences reading your posts according the manner and budget that you set for promotion. The procedure for promoting a post is fairly easy but you must also rely of effective techniques to make your campaign more effective. This includes the use of good headlines as well as creative and eye-catching graphics that will entice targeted audiences to read and engage with your post.

 

 

 

 

 

Uses Of Whiteboard Animation in Digital Marketing

Uses Of Whiteboard Animation in Digital Marketing

Whiteboard animation videos are an exciting and innovative way to advertise and market your services and products.  When compared with other types of advertisement, they are very economical. Whiteboard Animation akola In this article you will read about the top 7 reasons why whiteboard videos convert more viewers for you into buyers. Whiteboard videos are able to be created to cater to a very specific message or service with little to none of the extra fluff that you may find in other types of animated videos.  A whiteboard video is written to be focused; your message comes across uncluttered, thus allowing your message to be heard loud and clear.

They are fun!  If done correctly and with an impactful and effective script, they can be very entertaining to the viewer.  By creating an informative video that is still fun, people view your company as one that they want to do business with.
Features of Whiteboard Animation Videos
These are simple yet engaging videos that show someone drawing images on a whiteboard or other surface. If you have ever seen such a video, you know that they have a way of capturing your attention. There is something hypnotic about watching the words or images unfold on the whiteboard. This makes these videos an extremely effective tool for anyone trying to deliver a message in a compelling manner.

These type of videos take advantage of the short attention span of the average viewer. By keeping the viewer’s eyes focused on the constantly changing images, it’s possible to keep people paying attention. The animation can be combined with a voiceover to make the presentation even more informative and interesting.

Advantages Over Other Types of Videos

There are quite a few ways to make videos. The most common formats are:

  • Webcam videos, where someone simply speaks into the camera.
  • Videos shot with cameras or phones.
  • Slideshow videos made with a program such as PowerPoint.
  • Slideshow videos made using a service such as Animoto.

All of these types of videos have their uses. However, they also have their limitations. PowerPoint and Animoto videos can be boring, as there are so many of them online and they tend to look similar to one another.

Webcam videos can be good for explaining something, but not everyone is comfortable in front of the camera. Furthermore, shooting such a video at home may not provide you with the most professional looking setting. If you are shooting videos using a camera, you need certain skills, the right locations and possibly even actors. This can be time consuming and expensive.

White board videos can be placed anywhere, allowing for great flexibility for your marketing.  They can be placed directly on your homepage, or on any page in your website, and can be created to specifically relate to the page they are placed on.

They are memorable!  When potential customers remember your video, they remember you and your product or service.  When they remember you, they tell other people about you.

When used creatively, whiteboard videos can actually make it easy for your fans and customers to help evangelize your product or service.  Placing your video on social marketing sites allows them to be shared and commented on.  This spreads the word about you and builds up your following.

With the talent of a professional writer the powerful message of your whiteboard video will tell the viewer how it fits in their life, how it will benefit them, and how they will use it.  The video informs your viewer how and why they cannot live without it, rather than simply giving them step by step instructions.  For this you need to have a very strong script for your video.

Benefits of Whiteboard Animation

Whiteboard animation videos allow you to create professional looking videos that have several distinct advantages:

  • No need to appear in front of the camera or hire actors.
  • Whiteboard animation is entertaining and eye-catching.
  • More distinctive and professional looking than slideshow type videos.
  • They provide a good way to explain concepts in a simple, engaging way.

In addition to these advantages, you also gain the benefits that are associated with videos in general. This includes the ability to rank your video in the search engines. This can be done by optimizing it using a relevant and keyword rich title and description.

Whiteboard animation videos can also be used on your own blog or website to explain something about your product, service or business. This is a more entertaining way to convey information than to make people read long blocks of text or even watch a more ordinary type of video that contains nothing but slides or a person talking.

Although whiteboard animation videos are getting more popular, they are still relatively uncommon. This means it’s still possible to use them to brand yourself and give yourself an edge over the competition.

10 Causes that can hamper your SEO

10 Causes that can hamper your SEO

1.Poor Navigation

If visitors come to your site, and they can’t get around easily because navigation is set up poorly, they won’t engage with your site.

“Poor engagement statistics paired with ‘crawlability’ issues and other technical issues are all indications of low authority” according to Google, says Ashley M. Orndorff, director of marketing, ParadoxLabs. “If your site is considered irrelevant and is not deemed useful to visitors, it’s not going to rank in the search engines. Search engines are businesses too and their business is showing the most relevant resources to their users.” SEO Akola

2.Images That Are Not Search Friendly

Many website designs today emphasize stunning visuals without taking into account how those visuals can adversely impact search rankings, according to Salman Aslam, CMO, Omnicore.

“A lot of people are using images with beautiful fonts and strong colors to make the page appealing, but to Google it’s just an image,” Aslam says. By using a combination of Web fonts, HTML and CSS, it’s possible “to retain the beauty and achieve good SEO by creating all of the text elements within a banner as ‘live text.’”

3.Duplicate Content

Almost all of the SEO professionals we queried cited duplicate content as a top technical concern. Simply put, duplicate content is any content that is “appreciably similar” or exactly the same as content that resides on your site, according to Google Webmaster Tools.

“Google’s crawlers must cover a lot of ground,” says Michael Stricker, U.S. marketing director for SEMrush. “Google can’t consume all of the data, especially when one considers that Google must revisit each page again and again to find changes or new material. Anything that slows Google’s discovery or crawling of the Web is unwelcome. Dynamically created websites that create Web pages on the fly from databases are frequently misconfigured from an SEO point of view. These sites may create lots of pages, or URLs, that contain basically the same content, over and over.”

Other sources of duplicate content include the use of both “plain” and secure protocol URLs (HTTP and HTTPS); no expressed preference for a www.domain.com versus domain.com (without the www); blog tags; and syndicated RSS feeds.

Duplicate content can also result from common content management system (CMS) functionalities, including sorting parameters, according to Johnny Ewton, Web analyst for Delegator.com.

The remedy is to crawl your site looking for duplications and apply “crawl directives” to inform Google of the relative value of multiple URLs, Stricker says. You can use “robots.txt” (a file that allows you to control how Google’s bots crawl and index your public Web pages) to tell Google the specific folders and directories that are not worth crawling.

It’s also a good idea to tell Google which of several URLs to prefer for its index by applying the rel=”canonical” link element to point to the preferred URL. Canonical tags can help with duplicate content issues because they tell search engines that one page is a duplicate of another, as well as which of the duplicate pages to consider the primary one for indexing by Google’s bots, says Scott Benson, founder and president, Benson SEO.

International sites that target multiple countries with content in a variety of languages can also end up with a lot of duplicate content, according to Matt Naeger, executive vice president, digital strategy for Merkle. In this scenario, Naeger recommends using the rel=”alternate” hreflang code within the <head> of every page to identify the geolocation of the content in a similar, but more targeted language. Using IP detection to generate the correct language and default currency for a page is another solution.

A common duplicate content issue occurs when one site has either a URL beginning with “www” or a URL that doesn’t contain “www,” according to Ramon Khan, online marketing director, National Air Warehouse. Thankfully, there’s an easy fix.

“Try to type in your URL with the non-www URL and see if goes to the www version, then try the opposite,” Khan says. “If both work without any one of them redirecting, you are not properly set up. If so, go to your Google Webmaster Tools. Go to Settings and then Site Settings. See if you have specified a version you prefer. If you’re not sure, get a professional to assist you in determining which version to set up and keep using that going forward.”

 Similarly, by default most websites end up with multiple versions of the homepage, reached through various URLs. Having multiple versions of the homepage can cause a lot of duplicate content issues, and it means any link equity the site receives is spread across the different URLs, says Colin Cheng, marketing manager of MintTwist.

You can fix this issue “by choosing one URL that you want as your main URL,” according to Steven Weldler, VP, online marketing for CardCash. “This is entirely a matter of preference but once you choose one, stick with it. All the other URLs should automatically point to the main URL using a 301redirect.”

4.Shady Link Building.

Google’s Penguin updates put sites that engage in questionable link building practices in its crosshairs.  Link building can help a business “see significant gains in Web traffic, but it also introduces a level of risk,” according to Justin Anderson, CEO of HKSEO.us.

Unnatural, spam-like, irrelevant, and “black-hat,” or “just plain bad,” backlinks can cause your site to take a hit in the rankings, adds Mike Waller, owner of SEO Zones, Inc. Backlinks today “should be done at a natural pace, should be diverse and varied and look and appear natural,” he says. “The links you place on your site that link out to authority sites is important, and cross-linking between pages is also important to help the Google crawlers get deep into your site.”

If the Penguin updates hurt your site, it may be necessary to disavow questionable backlinks to it, and if necessary, ask webmasters to remove those links to your site.

5.Poor Mobile Experience

If your website offers a poor user experience on smartphones and tablets and is slow to load on mobile devices, visitors will likely click away, upping your site’s bounce rate. “It’s important to make sure your site is lean and loads fast, as that’s important on mobile,” noted Matt Cutts, Google’ head of Web spam, at a search conference in 2013.

Some companies divert users to separate mobile sites, but doing so can cause problems, according to SEMrush’s Stricker. For example, using a mobile subdomain (such as http://m.domain.com) can split your link equity, raise concerns about diverting traffic from the original URL without informing the user and offering options, and increase resource consumption and maintenance, he notes.

“Google can become suspicious of sites that present different content to different devices, depending on how it is accomplished,” Stricker says.

Responsive design (when a website displays automatically and appropriately for both mobile and desktop devices) “provides an experience customized to the device, yet the content is the same for all users,” Stricker says. Thus, it can improve secondary signals that Google takes into account for search rankings, including page visits, time spent on a page, visit duration and bounce rates.

6.Improper Redirects

Sometimes a Web page, or an entire site, needs to be moved to a different URL. A 301 redirect is “the best way to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page,” according to Google.

“If you’ve ever rebuilt your website without enlisting a reputable SEO, then there is a good chance that links and URLs from your old site aren’t properly set up to connect to your new website,” says Ricky Shockley, search marketing specialist for Web Success Agency. “Your Webmaster should set up 301 redirects from old pages to the new ones,” to help users find the old site pages and ensure those pages pass “link juice” to your current site.

You should locate any 404 “not found errors” on your site and use 301s to direct users to the correct pages, adds Greenlane Search Marketing’s Sebald. “Google Webmaster Tools make it easy to find your 404s, so you can 301-redirect them to more relevant pages. On big sites this is a daunting task but a very useful one.”

7.Local Search and Structured Data Markup

If you aren’t taking advantage of local search data or Structured Data Markup, you’re missing big opportunities, Ewton says.

“Google recognizes local search intent better than ever, and sites that ensure they have a presence on all the local search data providers, such as Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, Bing and Yellow Pages, can see boosts in local searches within their immediate city scope.”

“For local SEO, the most common issue I find with clients is with their location-specific Web pages,” says Jason Squardo, executive vice president of optimization and founding member of ZOG Digital. “Many times, businesses don’t have them at all. By creating a separate Web page for each location, businesses can more effectively leverage local SEO, which is geared toward providing local results to consumers looking for information about local businesses specifically. This is also becoming more important as the number of mobile-device searches continues to increase.”

Taking advantage of Structured Data Markup can help your site’s search results through “rich snippets.” An example of Structured Data Markup at work could be a list of upcoming events at a nightclub, positioned directly underneath the main search result listing for that nightclub. Though rich snippets and Structured Data Markup may not affect search result rankings, they can help improve clickthrough rates, according to Korneitchouk.

8.Messy URLs

CMS and blog platforms sometimes create awkward URLs for new content. For example, you may end up with a page that has “index.php?p=283581” at the end of the URL. Such “messy URLs can hurt your trust and credibility with search engines and users, leading to decreased clickthrough rates,” says Shockley. “Clean up those messy URLs to include a keyword that explains what the page is about, such as ‘dentist.com/dentures.’ Make sure to set up proper 301 redirects on the old URLs.”

“SEO-friendly URLs contain keywords and are easy to read and understand for both search engines and users,” says Mike Mothner, founder and CEO of search marketing agency Wpromote. “Since it’s important to make your site as easy to index and rank as possible, it’s crucial to have SEO friendly URLs.”

Depending on your site’s CMS, you may be able to make “link templates” that can be applied across your entire site, he adds.

9.Too Much Flash

Though Flash is less common on today’s websites, it’s still around — and it can still hinder search engine robots that are trying to index your site’s content.

“If the search engine bots can’t read or understand your website, they’ll have a hard time trying to figure out what to rank it for,” says Sameep Shah, founder of SimpleWebDesign. “The best advice for solving this is to not use Flash or to use it sparingly. There are technologies such as HTML 5, CSS 3 and JavaScript that can be used instead, and if you really need animation, consider using a video.”

10.Slow Page Loads

 

Page speed is important not only for a good user experience but also for achieving good search rankings. “If your website has many elements on it, such as images, videos, CSS style sheets, JavaScript code and the like, be sure it’s as optimized for speed as possible,” says Oleg Korneitchouk, director of digital marketing and development for SmartSites.

“I recommend running several of your pages through a page-speed test such as GTmetrix and implementing the suggestions they provide,” Korneitchouk says. “Applying even just a couple of their suggestions can shave seconds off your site load time.”

Google also offers Google PageSpeed Tools to help you test and increase your site’s overall speed, according to Delegator.com’s Ewton.

Your Web hosting service could be part of your speed problem. “I’m a firm believer in paying for reliable, secure and fast hosting services,” says SEO Zones Inc.’s Waller. “If you’re doing the shared hosting thing, that is OK starting out. But if you grow or are a large organization, make the transition to a dedicated server. It gives you more control over all aspects of your website, which is what you want anyway.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why digital marketing and why learn digital marketing

Why digital marketing and why learn digital marketing

Every year there are lakhs of graduates passing out of Indian universities. Very few manage to find jobs or businesses to start their carrier to earn their bread and butter.

Every small & medium size businesses and professionals need digital marketing services as Digital Marketing is a need of hour.  Simple reason being one can reach out to one’s targeted audience sitting at any corner of the world – 24 x 7 x 365 in reasonable budget. Therefore people who are in need of these services are huge numbers both in urban and rural areas.

Keeping in view above requirement, We at Web Master Key have designed various courses that equipped our students with the required knowledge and experience that guarantees bright future.

Today, websites are looked as technical platform and they lack the components required from a business and marketing perspective. More than anything else we at Web Master Key believe that website  is a selling platform. Most of the websites are greatly designed but they fail selling. Good design is must however product and services should always be above the design and design should not dominate the product and services. Easy navigation is the first thing expected in the website.  In order to make the website “attractive” many flashy and moving objects are placed because of which visitors get confused when navigating website and choose to get out.

Following is the important area in any of the website :

  1. A nice header with great tag line that tells what the business or profession is all about.
  2. Appealing and selling banners (graphic slides) with nice conceptualization
  3. The call to action (CTA) button (e.g. Call us with arrow to click etc.)
  4. Appropriate color combination on landing page especially appropriate use of red and yellow colors that impacts the eye ball movement of visitors.
  5. Email opting-in form to capture free email subscribers to be in touch with them and up-sell and cross-sell the products or services.
  6. Facility to reach out to reach out to the email subscribers each time there is new post published on the website
  7. Facility to publish social network auto posting of posts published in the website
  8. Responsiveness, website should adjust the contents as per the device they are being accessed into e.g. desktop, laptop, tab, mobile, i-phone or an i-pad. There should not be a horizontal scroll bar underneath when the website is being accessed in mobile or a tab.
  9.  Social sharing buttons on each page and post. Follow-us buttons of various social networking platform viz. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube and LinkedIn.
  10. Content Management System (CMS platform) that entitles website owner to add, update and delete the page contents (text, images and videos) on his own
  11. A blogging platform that allows visitors to comment
  12. Photo-gallery with social sharing buttons and facility to play a slide-show
  13. Contact us form that not only sends an email to website owner on capturing contact information of visitor but also stores record in database for future communication.
  14. Finally the most important feature, search engine friendly structure
  15. Needless to say, great contents and images is the impost important factor for any business website

Now that world is referring web when buying any product or services, even in the job market having online identity has become imperative.  Its not only for businesses but also for individuals or job seekers its imperative to have an on identity that help them selling themselves, something that they do in an interview. While some of the social media platforms are meant for having identify, there is less than one third area of the screen allotted for your identity and rest is used for advertisements. Here is where website plays important role that talks only about yourself and nothing else.

Looking at the possibilities that can be incorporated into a website, its a separate world full of benefits. People are looking out for the facilitators (webmasters) who are masters in enabling businesses and individuals to reach out to targeted audience. Learning digital marketing is therefore has gained huge important.

Integration of long tail keywords in contents

Integration of long tail keywords in contents

Mastering Long Tail Search

When marketers and SEOs decide to target a highly competitive keyword, it could take months or even years to see meaningful movement in the SERPs. But the search landscape is shifting, and more searchers are typing in long tail search terms to find what they’re looking for in search engines. Not surprisingly, marketers and SEOs are responding by shifting their attention to long tail search optimization. If you haven’t started integrating long tail keywords into your keyword research strategy or you’re not sure it’s the right move for your site, here’s the what, why, and how of long tail search.

What Are Long Tail Keywords?

A long tail keyword is a very targeted search phrase that contains 3 or more words. It often contains a head term, which is a more generic search term 1 or 2 words in length. For example:

Head term: unicorn

Long tail keywords: unicorn games online, unicorn costumes for kids, unicorn videos on youtube

Why Target Long Tail Keywords?

  • Better quality traffic and higher conversion rates. Long tail keywords are more specific, which means visitors that land on your website from a long tail search term are more qualified. Content targeting unicorn costumes for kids, for example, will receive more relevant traffic than content targeting unicorn costumes. And since the content on that page is more relevant to the searcher, a greater percentage of that traffic is likely to purchase the costume for their kid.
  • Because long tail keywords are less competitive. Everyone looking for unicorn costumes for kids is looking for unicorn costumes; not everyong looking for unicorn costumes is looking for unicorn costume for kids. In other words, the more niche you get, the less competitive it is.

 

Long Tail keywords

Simply put, long-tail keywords are more targeted search phrases with 3 or more words. A long-tail keyword contains the more generic “head” keyword, but it also contains a few extra words that make it more targeted to a specific group of audience.

For example, “shoes” is a very generic head keyword. It may have a lot of searches, but it isn’t targeted.

On the other hand, “best running shoes for men” is a long-tail keyword that is catering to a very specific group of audience, i.e. men looking for best running shoes.

The Benefits of Long-Tail Keywords

There are plenty of benefits of targeting long-tail keywords. Here are two of the biggest benefits:

  • Long-tail keywords have less competition and, therefore, such keywords are significantly easier to be ranked for.

Don’t worry about the low search volume. The “head” keywords are more generic and, therefore, shows a lot of search volume. But it is almost impossible to rank for a “head” keyword now.

On the other hand, it is far easier to rank for a long-tail keyword. And despite the lower search volume, you will still be getting a lot of organic traffic once you acquire a top search-engine position for that keyword. Neil Patel, the famous internet marketer, is generating 173,336 traffic visitors every month from long-tail keywords.

  • Furthermore, unlike “head” keywords, long-tail keywords have the best conversion rate.

 

The idea is that long-tail keywords target potential customers who are further in the buying cycle. For instance, if someone is looking for “shoes”, it indicates that the searcher is still in the beginning stages of decision making. On the other hand, if someone is specifically searching for “red reebok shoes for men”, it shows that the buyer has already made up his mind.

This is one of the main reasons why long-tail keywords have the best conversion rates.

How to Integrate Long-Tail Keywords in Your Content?

Once we have established the benefits of using long-tail keywords, it is time to learn how you can leverage them.

But before you start integrating long-tail keywords in your website’s content, it is more important to first research the right keywords. So let’s get started with that.

  • Finding the Right Long-Tail Keywords for Your Audience

As I mentioned earlier, long-tail keywords will have lesser search-engine volume, but this shouldn’t stop you from targeting those keywords. Don’t be tempted to target a “head” keyword with thousands and thousands of monthly searches. This is one of the most common mistakes website owners make when they are searching for keywords.

Why focus on long tail keywords?

Long tail keywords are keywords or key phrases that are more specific (and usually longer) than more common “head” keywords. Long tail keywords get less search traffic, but will usually have a higher conversion value, as they focus on a more specific product. This post explains why you should focus on long tail keywords when optimizing your site.

7 steps to measure your website performance

7 steps to measure your website performance
The experience your customers have while interacting with your company’s online presence says so much about your business, its priorities, and your brand. Whether your company conducts online transactions or not, performance optimization have become more of a “need” than a “want”. A slow performing web site is bound to have less engagement among critical audiences, lower transaction volume, degraded brand fidelity, and higher bounce rates. In this post, we will talk about some of the key considerations when evaluating web performance technologies and vendors.
In discussing performance measurement, many of the methodologies described in this post will focus on so-called “synthetic measurements”. Although Real User Monitoring (RUM) data is becoming the industry standard to measure actual user experience, it is not a practical means of gathering data for all use cases. In those cases where real user data cannot be collected, we can fall back to synthetic testing which have their own testing methodology.

Many businesses now are trying their hand in using digital marketing tools for promoting, creating awareness for their brands. Many have studied how these digital marketing tools work or how to conduct an effective digital marketing campaign – and yet many fall short of their expectations and fail to reap a successful outcome from all their efforts.

In many cases, the reason for failure is not that the campaigns lack creativity, quality materials and qualified personnel – but because of their failure and monitor the success and performance of their digital marketing campaigns. This reflects the sentiments of respondents surveyed by Adobe Systems and Research Now where only 29% believed they are doing the process of measuring marketing performance well.

These doesn’t have to be that way as digital marketers can effectively measure the performance and success of their digital marketing campaigns. The following delves into this to help readers understand the measurement analytics process and apply these effectively into their own digital marketing campaigns.

1. Identify and Set Targets for Each of Your Business Objectives

Once you’ve identified your business objectives, you can now set specific goals for each of these objectives. Top management should still be part of this process of identifying the goals of your digital marketing campaign as this will involve a critical thinking process that involves leaders, analysts and the marketers who will execute the campaigns to reach these goals.

Target setting for your business objectives should take into consideration all the activities, products or services presented in your website or online presence. This can range from simply creating awareness and brand identity, or it can be results oriented like generating leads and highlighting promos and events.

For example, if your goal is Email Marketing Success, you can break it down into key targets that you can easily track and measure. The 2015 State of Marketing survey from SalesForce provided this chart of how marketers prioritize their Email Marketing targets, and this can again serve as a good guide for your own campaigns.

At this point, it is important to emphasize that goals and targets differ from one organization to the next. A goal set by one business may not necessarily be the same need or goal of another. One may be going for brand awareness while the other is actively looking for leads or sales. Identify targets that are important to your business and organization and are in line with the business objectives you have set in Step.

2. Identify and Set Your Business Objectives

One of the keys to success in Digital Marketing is to get everyone in your organization or business directly involved with your campaign efforts, from top management down to every employee or member of your organization. Senior executives and top management may not take an active part in the actual marketing activities, but they are key to identifying and setting up your organization or companies business and digital marketing objectives.

At this point, the business objectives you set may still be at the broadest of parameters, but it may require deeper thinking and brainstorming than one might expect. It may answer questions like why you are performing digital marketing, why you have a website or why you have a social media page and presence. These are real world objectives that are achievable and can bring great benefits to your organization in both the short term and the long haul.

SalesForce recently released its 2015 State of Marketing survey results and among the many information presented there include the Top 5 Digital Marketing Metrics for Success which gives readers an idea of what marketers from around the globe are setting up as their primary business objectives. This can serve as guide for you in setting up your own business objectives that really matter.

3. Identify Target Segments to Focus On

Once you have a firm target or targets for your digital marketing campaign, it would be necessary at this point to identify the target segments that your campaign will be focusing on. Segments can be people or groups of people from a certain demographic or you can focus on certain businesses or organizations involve in a particular undertaking or niche.

One of the sources of failures many digital marketers encounter is their lack of focus in their targeting. Many go for a broad, shotgun approach in an attempt to reach as much mileage as possible, only to end up with a stream of traffic that doesn’t generate leads, or low-quality leads that do not convert. You need focus in your targeting if you want to achieve positive results.

KissMetrics gave some good tips on how you can use Facebook Insights for your segment targeting. Facebook Insights gives valuable information on your social media presence traffic, such as identifying where majority of your “likes” come from. It would be to your advantage to know that most of the likers in your page are middle-aged men or women. This will allow you to streamline your marketing campaigns to cater to these numbers.

4. Identify Targets for Your Success Indicators

Once you’ve identified the KPIs you will track and monitor, you need to set specific targets for each of your KPI. Targets are numerical values and measuring performance against these values can help you measure success in quantifiable terms. The key is to set a starting point which you can determine by following industry benchmarks as well as averages from your existing analytics data (3 months will do).

Do not put targets that you do not know is good or bad from your business perspective. You might be putting targets that are too farfetched and is impossible to achieve with your existing resources. You might also be setting up targets that are too easy, making you waste valuable resources when you can get more results from what you already have. Set, measure, monitor and make adjustments as you gain more experience in your digital marketing campaigns.

5. Establish Your Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

While specific objectives provide you with pinpoint accuracy to guide your campaign, you will also need to establish Key Performance Indicators or KPI as your overall digital marketing performance gauge. These metrics can help you monitor and identify your performance against the goals and targets you set in your objectives. Key Performance Indicators that you can establish for your digital marketing campaign includes:

  • Search Engine Rankings – good ranking can deliver tons of traffic to your website, and traffic is where you can generate leads and sales. Measure your rank and position before and after your digital marketing campaigns
  • Traffic – as mentioned earlier, traffic is your source for leads and sales. There are however different types of traffic that you can monitor, and these include:
  • Overall Site Traffic – This is the baseline information of all visits to your website or landing page
  • New/Returning Traffic – New and returning traffic are good information to track and will give your business importance depending on your specific goals, particularly in what kind of traffic you want to increase in your campaigns
  • Mobile Traffic – The recent Cisco VNI Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast, 2014 – 2019 highlighted that there will be 5.2 billion global mobile users in 2015. It has already reached what comScore refer to as the Tipping Point, or where mobile users overtake desktop users in terms on numbers. This infographic from SmartInsights gives an overview of how mobile traffic will be very substantial in the very near future – and this should be taken well into consideration in your digital marketing plan
  • Traffic Sources – This will provide you insight as to where your website visitors are coming from, so you can shift your campaigns to exploit this opportunity
  • Average Stay per Visit – How long visitors stay in your sight and in particular pages matters as this can give you insight as to whether your content is generating engagement or not
  • Conversion Rates – Turning website traffic into leads or sales is an important aspect in digital marketing that should be at the core of all your efforts. Monitoring conversion rates of your campaigns will give you a good overview of your marketing performance, more so if you break down this information further into pages, particular content and products/services
  • Return on Investment – ROI is an important KPI every business should track as this spells the survival of the business if all your efforts do not contribute to the realization of your ROI

6. Choose and Use a Good Analytics Platform

Monitoring and measuring these metrics would be too tedious (or nearly impossible) to do manually. You need good programs and applications, both free to use or paid, that will help you facilitate measurement. Some of the more popular applications are listed below and are categorized according to their intended measurement index:

Website Analytics

  • Google Analytics – This is a free application provided by Google itself that allows you to track various information about traffic and other information about your website
  • GoSquared – This is another platform for real-time performance monitoring which also features a good eCommerce reporting channel to help you track revenues and ROI
  • HubSpot – This is a good analytics platform that can help you measure traffic and inbound marketing that is ideal for use by small businesses
  • Adobe Marketing Cloud – This integrated platform can provide you with good real-time and predictive analysis of your website performance
  • Webtrends – This platform can provide you with multi-channel measurement that includes web, mobile and social analyticss
  • Moz – Moz is a comprehensive analytics platform that combine search, social, social listening and inbound marketing analytics

SEO Analytics

  • Google Analytics – You can get great SEO reports when you link Google Webmaster Tools into your account at Google Analytics
  • RavenTools – It can give you an interactive list of where you can improve with your ranking, with data coming from both Google and Bing
  • Moz – Moz provides good insights on how social presence and its impact on SEO is correlating or behaving
  • HubSpot – The SEO tool from HubSpot can be integrated into your content for easy monitoring and optimization

Social Media

  • Socialbakers Analytics – Provides social analytics and other comparative analysis data with your competitors
  • Simply Measured – Get in-depth measurement data from various social networks which you can also integrate with Google Analytics
  • Falcon Social – Provides various applications that includes social listening and social media management of various social networks
  • Hootsuite – One of the more popular social media management suite available, Hootsuite can provide you with good real-time social media performance
  • Adobe Social – This is a good and comprehensive tool for publishing, social listening, and social media measurement

7. Execute Real Time Improvements Based on Measurement Results

Once you have good and substantial analytics and measurement data available, you can now make adjustments and changes to your digital marketing campaign to cater to the insights presented by these gather information. These insights should trigger immediate action and should be executed promptly should the situation calls for such kind of actions. But do not get too excited with every data you receive. Track only what you can take action on and get sufficient data before you jump in and make changes.

At this point, business owners should realize that Digital Marketing is not just a trend that will go away. It is here and it is now and those not practicing digital marketing campaigns will get left behind by their competitors who do. But jumping into the Digital Marketing bandwagon also calls for proper measurement and analytics work that will help you track the performance of your campaigns. With these tools available, all the guesswork is removed and you can streamline and execute your campaigns with precision – and success.

Importance of social media marketing

Importance of social media marketing

Here are some quick facts showing the tremendous role of social media in today’s business world, as per the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report:

  1. A significant 86% of marketers said that social media was important to their businesses.
  2. By spending as little as 6 hours per week, 64%+ of marketers see lead generation benefits with social media.
  3. 75% of marketers reporting positive results in terms of traffic increase as one of the major benefits of social media.
  4. A significant 89% of all businesses that have a dedicated social media platform as part of their marketing strategy reported an increase in their market exposure.
  5. More than half of marketers who have used social media marketing for over 3 years reported an increase in sales over that period.

Now that we have understood the influence of social media on your target market, let’s discover the applied benefits it offers to your business.

  1. Showcase Your Brand

Handling a strong social media presence is an efficient way to build your company’s reputation and showcase your business. By regularly updating your prospects on all the brand and social happenings, they subconsciously start to view your company as an authority. Once you define your business objective–whether creating brand awareness, relationship building or driving new sales–you can work in parallel on all of them.  It is just a question of how well you will manage to position your business on the major social media networks.

  1. Develop a loyal community of prospects

In reality people simply enjoy being part of a business that is proactively building a lively community. Studies have discovered  that customers would purchase from businesses with an active Facebook fan page rather than without. An emotional connection with your prospects will vouch for your positive business reputation. Community strength is a very powerful branding force, and social media offers exactly this kind of relationship-building opportunity that is virtually limitless. From a marketing perspective, it delivers the best chances for brands to create a massive community of loyal and active customers.

  1. Increase digital exposure

If you are eager to be found among the millions of sites on the web, you sure need to work hard on enhancing your social presence. Social media leads to massive exposure due to its worldwide access, sharing capabilities, and huge amount of daily users. It delivers instant information in the digital marketplace, thus giving businesses the ability to advertise their products, going beyond distance. Statistics have proven that interacting in social media networks even 2-3 times per week can significantly increase your online presence in both the traditional and digital market space, while you are building new relationships outside the four walls of your office.

Responsive website

Responsive website

Responsive website – One of the most important features required in the website today.
Almost 35-40% of traffic comes from mobile and tablet devices. A responsive website
provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of
resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from smart mobile
phones to desktop computer monitors).

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