Showing posts with label online marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online marketing. Show all posts

Tuesday, 21 July 2015

Video Marketing: Why You Need To Start ASAP!

Fundamentally, the goal of advertising has always been to have your business stand out in your marketplace from your competition and be chosen (and remembered) by consumers. 

Most small to medium size businesses that I work with constantly have the struggle of wanting to do everything to stand out, while keeping a mindful eye of staying within a budget for their marketing efforts. 


Advertising your business in such a fragmented market low cost marketing roi, space  today can get costly and without measures in place to determine what the best mediums to market with, it's hard to figure out how you can capture a low-cost marketing ROI?  That answer is simple: Video Marketing.

When it comes to social and online marketing, video marketing has taken its place as a leader in attracting new customers. According to comScore, just over 45% of internet users viewed at least one video per month, and the average user is exposed to 32 videos per month. 

Companies are realizing that video has a dominant role to play in your content marketing-mix strategy. Video marketing captures the users attention and gives you the opportunity to deliver your message in an easy format that everyone can understand. Here are some great statistics on Video marketing:

90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60K times faster in the brain than text according to Zabisco. Invisia reports that viewers also retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.

•52% of consumers say that watching a video makes them more confident in online purchase decisions according to Invodo.
•92% of mobile users share videos with others according to Invodo.
•87% of online marketers use video content according to Outbrain.
•46% of users take ACTION after viewing a video according to Online Publishers Association
•59% of executives would rather watch a video than read text according to Forbes.
•800% increase in conversion on websites that have videos on their landing pages vs. websites without according to Orion 21
•Blogs that incorporate video attract 3-times as many inbound links as blogs without video.

One of the biggest questions I get asked when discussing video marketing is how long a video should be? Statistics show that 20% of users will click away from a video in 10 seconds or less. If your video is over 2-minutes, you can expect a 60% drop of users clicking away from your video. 

It seems like the attention span for desktop and mobile users capacity to watch a single video is about 2 minutes. The "sweet spot" for most custom video marketing pieces should be one minute.

If video marketing is great for local businesses to stand out in the marketplace, what is the best vessel to reach your current and prospects through video? Most individuals host their video's on YouTube. Why? Google owns Youtube. 

Videos hosted on Youtube appear in more than half of all searches on Google. Makes sense to put your video on Youtube right? By creating a video, you can separately upload your video to social media networks like Facebook. 

Once they are uploaded, create or add these videos to your website through an embedding process. This can create a valuable link for your SEO on your website and hopefully increase your position on search engines over time.

How do I take advantage of video marketing? The best thing about video marketing can be the ability to connect consumers with your business without them even contacting you yet! 

They will understand who you are, what you do, what the inside of your shop looks like, and who might be answering the phone when they call. Due to this, there are companies that specialize in creating professional custom videos that take your business to the next level. 

This gives you an opportunity to connect what I call high-tech with a high-touch customer service while also putting your best foot forward for that all important first impression. I recommend AT LEAST ONE professionally crafted video to use when marketing your business.

If your business is on a tight budget, however, there are still great ways to take advantage of video marketing. Businesses can use their own smartphone cameras and create a "grassroots" video marketing campaign in their store or "on-location" for services businesses. 

They also can set-up product launches, special events or tutorials through video marketing and share that those on your website and through social media! What type of story can you tell that can fulfill a need in your local marketplace and position you as a leader in the industry while simultaneously building your brand?

Micro-videos have been a great tool for businesses to create a 10-second commercial, promotion or testimonial from their consumers and using that on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Vimeo and Instagram. 

Customers can quickly view messages on their social media feeds. Get your customers involved! Ask customers that had a great experience with your company for a quick ten second video reference! They almost never write a positive review on Yelp or Google, so capture their review through video! (Make sure you have them sign a waiver for legal purposes).

Video Marketing is here, and it is powerful! By 2017 video marketing will take up 74% of all online traffic according to Syndacast. Video marketing can be a cost-effective way to market your business with professionally created content as well as DIY marketing. 

Take advantage of a medium that reaches customers in an easy to understand format with statistically proven success rate! 

Friday, 17 July 2015

Interested In Online Marketing? Read These Tips And Techniques!

If you create sites with strong content that also incorporate online marketing ads, then the traffic you generate will create substantial profits for your business. This article is full of great tips and advice on how to help your affiliate site grow and thrive.


You and your affiliate partners should never abuse this function. At best, this can be very irritating for the visitor. In the worst-case scenario, playing unethical cookie games can propagate viruses and even make it impossible to track customers and award affiliate commissions.

After you have established yourself, you need to consider asking your affiliate program for more money. If you generate enough sales and use good marketing techniques, the program will do everything it can to keep you working for them and give you a raise.

It is a good idea in affiliate promotion to pick an affiliate company that pays in a variety of ways. You may want you money quickly. The policies vary from company to company. Some will cut you a check after you have earned a certain amount of money while others have direct deposit and PayPal options.

Sign up with an affiliate promotion company which always adds new products to it’s lineup. If you want reliable commissions and new product promotion opportunities from a reputable, solid affiliate company, look for one that continuously produces new products for you to promote. Fad products will only benefit you in the short-term.

You’ll need to find new customers as most people will unsubscribe eventually. To catch the attention of new customers, only send them the emails that have gotten great results. This will ensure you grab their interest right away.

Text services are a great technique for affiliates to use in order to earn commissions. While a new service, many affiliates are already using them to keep customers informed and for further boosting their products.

Good affiliate marketers are honest about their business engagements. Tell your site visitors what your affiliations are, and tell them what you want to accomplish with your site. If your potential customers feel you are withholding information about your affiliate relationships, they may choose to purchase from the sites directly, rather than going through yours.

It is important that your readers trust you. When your readers appreciate the content of your site, they are more likely to click on your referrals.

You can make a nice chunk of change in online marketing, but you need to be on top of your game to get anywhere. You will need to find a way to make your blog/website ranked high by all of the search engines. The higher your rank for your keywords, the higher your profits will be.

Putting a time limit on purchasing an affiliate product is a great internet marketing tool. If your visitors see there is a purchasing deadline, they will feel more compelled to complete the sale. You can get your sales up by following these tips.

You should have a lot of knowledge about your target audience in order for your internet marketing endeavors to be successful. You want your message to resonate with your readers. Determine why they are visiting your website. Ask yourself what it is they are looking at.

Attract the proper audiences for your selected affiliate products. If it’s a cheaper product, then just simply having a high traffic flow will ensure that it sells. If it’s cheap enough, people will be more likely to buy it after a quick click and view. When your products are more expensive, more direct targeting is necessary.

Write a handwritten advertisement, scan it and publish it on your website. This gives the advertisement a personal touch which may result in higher sales. Does your handwriting look like a scribble? Find someone whose writing is clear.

Affiliate promotion can lead the way to a profitable business. Your well-developed sites are an investment that will pay off far into the future. However, you must understand that making money through internet marketing is going to take a serious investment of time to improve your website content. If you follow this rule, you will never be wanting for success.

Friday, 10 July 2015

Three Top Tips for Online Marketing!

With the internet at everyone’s fingertips, online marketing has become a booming endeavor that looks like anyone may succeed at. However, with all who try there are those who fail. There is a secret language in the online marketing world that it seems some can speak and some cannot. 

You will find the way on the road to success with these three top tips for online marketing. Following these tips will not guarantee complete flawless success but can definitely pave the way.

1.Evaluate the product
It is first important to evaluate and ask the question, what are you selling? Is it a product or a business? The most important question is whether or not your product or service is useful to consumers. After asking that question, it is important to ask whether or not it will be profitable.

If the answer is yes to both of these than the business can certainly be on its way. However, bringing a business to the online market does not only take serious thought, it is important to take in the responses of other outside influences. Testing for potential growth can definitely save a lot of lost revenue.

2.Make the site attractive
If a simple picture is worth a thousand words, than a business website is worth billions. It is important to make an excellent first impression to those surfing the web for your products or services. 

For those brought up in the twenty first century it is easy to tell a badly designed website from a good one. Taking some classes in graphic design or even hiring a team to help design a promising web page can help traffic and sales skyrocket. 

Also creating a statement image can help those clicking around remember and connect the pleasant experience with your product to something visual.

3.Stay Relevant
Connecting to clients through social media consistently can help keep the business relevant even in times of a slow market. Investing time or a team into a social media marketing and public relations can help the business maintain an image for the client to trust.

It is important to address criticisms and complaints with grace and apologies. Surfing the web for honest testimonials about your own brand can bring to light some issues occurring in your business that need to be addressed and better the brand as a whole.

Following these three top tips for online marketing can pave the way for success in the digital world. These tips regard evaluating the business from top to bottom, making a great first impression, and connecting to the consumer of your goods or services. 

All of these tips are easy to act out and understand but weigh so heavily on either the success or failure of a business. Businesses such as Guru Neighbors are sites dedicated to giving advice and leading those just starting out to success. 

They can help with social media advertising, blog startups, and press releases. Connecting with businesses such as this one can help give a running start to those beginning in online marketing.

Monday, 8 June 2015

Tips To Help You Excel With Your Online Marketing Strategy

In comparison to other marketing ventures in the rapidly changing online world, web marketing is the time-honored grandfather of them all. The track record of affiliate program use has proven its potential for profits over a number of years. 
 
There is a ton of information on internet marketing that can be had. No matter what stage of online marketing you are in, this article provides helpful information to help with your success.
 

It’s a good idea to research how a business keeps track of orders not created through their web site when you’re looking through online marketing programs. 
 
If you send sales orders to a company that ultimately take place over the phone or through the mail, and your affiliate ID is not on them, you will not get your commission, which could really add up over time.

When taking a chance on affiliate promotion, it will be beneficial to seek out and sign up with affiliates that will provide you with the products and service you will be selling. 
 
Joining several different affiliate network will provide you a collective source of income. Don’t accept affiliates just because you feel you have to. Read up on what they do so that you will be comfortable working for them.

To maximize the profitability of your affiliate network, drop affiliates that are not performing up to standard. One thing that you will want to consider is to give your affiliates a review. 
 
Removing low-performing affiliates will allow you to create room for advertisers who will earn you more money.

A lot of affiliate communication happens through emails, but the inbox makes an inefficient place to store important information. Instead of going back to your mail box, write down the task you are supposed to accomplish. 
 
You are streamlining and organizing your work by pulling pertinent information out of the email and pasting it into a document.

It is better to affiliate with companies that product many different products if possible. Do business with a reputable company that releases multiple products. 
 
When you find a company like that, you have a reliable flow of commissions. Companies that offer fad products or one hit wonders will absolutely do you no good.

When a visitor comes to your site, they are prepared for information relevant to the topic that brought them there in the first place. 
 
To maximize your benefits, affiliate site links should be related to sports. Visitors are much more likely to click on links that have something to do with your site’s content and theme.

In order to succeed with affiliate promotion, you should consider taking advantage of paid advertising, such as Google Ads. You’ll increase traffic to your website by buying ads targeting important keywords that potential buyers are looking for.

Affiliate marketers need to be completely honest and upfront about the nature of their business. Explain your site and let people know what your affiliations are. 
 
If your potential customers feel you are withholding information about your affiliate relationships, they may choose to purchase from the sites directly, rather than going through yours.

Strive to earn your readers’ trust. If you have people that like you and the content of your website, they will help you out. They will click on your referral links more often, and chances are they will buy some of the products that you are promoting.

Try using internet marketing to make yourself more visible on the Internet. These programs generally bring in more traffic compared to other types of marketing programs. Each prospective affiliate program should be carefully assessed based upon its popularity, ease of use, and compensation plan.

These types of statistics can be invaluable to you. This lets you know how many users have been to your site and how many of them have made a purchase.

Explain to your readers why your affiliates are a good fit for you and for them. They will appreciate you being honest and will feel better about using your affiliate ads to help you earn money.

Don’t expect a lifetime commission from online marketing. Even though they are so rare, the potential profits are so fantastic that you should still seek them out. When a webmasters sells a products, they will receive a commission from the affiliate vendors that sent it to them. 
 
Most of the time, the commission will only be paid out if the customers makes their purchase withing a certain time window. This is what makes them worth hunting up.

You should consider using videos, pictures, or any other visual aids to make your product more visible. By giving people as much information as possible, you increase the chances of them buying the products that you are promoting. 
 
This will also enable you to provide as much accurate information as you can and education your customers on your product.

Getting a lot of content published on the web with links back to your site is great, but make sure the page your reader lands on is consistent with what you promised in the original content — visitors do not appreciate deceptive sales tactics. 
 
For example, if a visitor is led to a web page promoting Apple iPads when he or she clicked on a link for HP tablet PCs, that visitor is going to be somewhat irate. 
 
Even though you may think you have a good strategy going, mismatching your links and their destination pages will irritate and turn away potential customers, because they will no longer trust you.

You can make a lot of money with affiliate marketing. The more you know about this business, the more money you will make off of it.
 

Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Learn Internet Marketing Four Easy Steps!

There exists no difference of opinion among marketers in the fact that Internet marketing is the lifeblood of a business at present. This truth remains the same even if you are someone who does not sell anything online.


Whatever is your situation, you are required to explain the kinds of services you offer or products you sell. And, you cannot afford to expect customers to come to you requesting information on your business. For this reason, you have to develop a marketing strategy and promote your business online.

If you are someone trying to master the art of online marketing, the following overview would definitely be of assistance to you.

1. Surf the Internet:
If you are someone who does not have the time to attend online classes offered for those wanting to learn Internet marketing, the best option is surfing the Internet. Doing this would help you get an idea of the Internet marketing strategy being used by experts in the field. Exploring the websites like amazon.com or Craigslist.com would help you a lot in the matter.

2. Create profiles on social networking platforms:
The importance of social media is something no marketer can afford to miss at present. And, the best way to get acquainted with this mode of promoting a business is creating profiles in popular social networking platforms like Facebook.

3. Acquire a degree in Internet marketing:
If you are a high school student, the ideal choice is getting a degree in online marketing. Explore the Internet and go for a course you feel would work best for you. A few minutes online would come up with hundreds of courses designed to help those who wish to learn Internet marketing.

4. Learn from Google:
If you feel that all this would be a strain on your time and money, the best way to do the same is take help from Google. The webmaster resources offered by the company are a rich source of information in this regard. 

The attempt to learn online marketing may take time. But, all your efforts would pay you off in the form of a well-organized Internet marketing strategy capable of offering you maximum return on investment.

All of these tips will help you succeed online. Now, whether you are a beginner or experienced online marketer, all the steps explained above will help anyone prevail the Internet. 

It takes determination and a lot of patience sometimes before you see desired results while marketing. It is helpful along the way if you have something to reference every once and awhile such as a guide or ebook.

Friday, 1 May 2015

Merging Your Business Processes with Online Marketing!

If you want to survive and thrive as a company in the modern business landscape, you must incorporate yourself into the online world. Everything from marketing to sales conversions is happening online. 

The generation of people who have grown up on computer technology are becoming employed and having expendable income.

If you have yet to truly merge your business with the Internet, here are some of the most important ways in which you must do so.


Online Marketing
85% of all new business is done through the major search engines Google, Yahoo, and Bing. If you do not have a presence on these platforms, then you are missing out on tens of thousands of dollars that you do not even know that you are missing.

It is actually much easier than ever to get started on the major search engines, direct marketing, and in other online marketing forms. As a matter fact, there is a good chance that Google already has your business marked if you are registered with the state with a storefront. 

In many cases, all that business owners have to do is claim their listing. Take a look at Google Places in order to find out if your name and address have already been registered with the search engine.

The mobile environment is also doing more business than ever before. You must have a responsive website that gives Apple and Android users the ability to find you easily. 

The new Millennial generation that everyone is aiming their marketing at does not sit and watch TV. They find new companies over their mobile phones.

Online PR
If you have service customers in your area, odds are that you probably already have a review of your business up on a website like Yelp or Foursquare. Even if you do not plan to engage with these websites regularly, this is still a great way to find out exactly what people think of your business. 

Review sites are the new word-of-mouth. People are actually becoming quite well-known for dropping reviews of businesses in real time as they patronize them.

Social media is also a great way to get the word out about your business. If you have any social media profile such as Facebook or Twitter, then you can start a conversation with your customers that can give you inside information about how you are perceived. In the past, this kind of service had to be outsourced to a focus group company and could cost thousands of dollars. 

Today, the information is given freely by people online. It is simply good business to go and find this information in order to use it for the benefit of your business.

Online Competition
If your storefront has experienced a drop in foot traffic lately, you may be receiving competition from companies that you did not even know were in existence. Many businesses today have online only existences that create a much more convenient solution for customers. 

However, you will not know this unless you look online to see where your customers are and what they are looking for.

You can easily find local competition using a localized search on any of the major search engines. Google is the most often used service. It is also generally the most expansive, regularly pinging government roles in order to find out who is creating a new business.

Maximizing Your Online Footprint
You may not be the best at navigating the online world at first – it can be quite technically in-depth. You have customers that you need to tend to today – learning a new skill may not be in your time frame. 

However, there are plenty of solutions that can help you to create an online presence without spending a great deal of time on it. Workflow software such as BPM Software will help you to organize your online marketing, PR and logistical efforts without having to waste the working day on it.

Monday, 27 April 2015

5 Online Marketing Shortcuts That Will Fast Track Your Success Online!

If you’ve just started learning the nuts and bolts of online marketing, you can’t expect to get the same results that seasoned marketers in the industry are enjoying.

Just like all the marketers who have succeeded, you’ll have to go through a season of dry spell where people will barely respond to your marketing efforts. These are the times when no matter what kind of marketing strategy you’ll use, and no matter how huge the amount you’ll spend, the number of visits, clicks, or sales you’ll get will still be miserably minute to what you were expecting.


It really is frustrating, isn’t it? But often times, due to your lack of experience and know how, you can’t help but fall for the “not so obvious” pitfalls that other newbie or budding marketers are falling for.

Unless, of course… someone will share with you some online marketing shortcuts that are proven and tested to work!

If that’s exactly what you’re hoping to learn by reading this guide, then you’re definitely in the right place. Today, I’ll share with you the online marketing strategies that I’ve used in the past (and am still currently using right now) that’s helped me garner better results from my marketing efforts.

Let’s get started.

1) Add “share triggers” in your content

As you can probably imagine, share triggers are elements that you add in your content that will make people want to share it.

I’m talking about…
1.Content lockers
2.Tweetable lines
3.Quoting other personalities
4.Memes
5.Adding other people’s articles on your “Related articles” section

The list I shared above is far from being complete. But integrating a couple of these on your post alone can prove to be quite powerful as far as helping you garner organic links, traffic, and even leads (among many others).

Important tip – In terms of getting social shares, I’ve been getting really great results with using content lockers. If you aren’t familiar with it, you can check out my post on How Spending 1 Hour Per Day In Linkedin Got me 3 Clients in Less Than a Month, to see how I’ve locked one of my most powerful Linkedin outreach templates that has helped me get more clients from the platform.

2) Send your traffic to your testimonial / success stories page

Instead of using your homepage as your landing page, use your testimonial or success stories page as your landing page instead.

The fact is, no matter how amazing your website’s graphics are, and how neatly laid out your home page may be, your customers aren’t really interested in any of those.

All they’re interested in is whether you can solve their problems, and whether or not you (or your business) are a credible entity to work with. Of course, your testimonial or success stories page can address both of these issues.

If your visitors can see how successful you are at what you’re doing, you’d have already won half of the battle. You’ll be on a very strategic position to pitch them your services and ultimately close the deal.

A good example is how malmanlaw.com crafted their legal case results page. You’ll notice how they’ve been quite generous at the successful case results they’ve shared on their page. The fact that their free case evaluation form is also quite prominent in the upper right corner of the page makes it easier for their prospect customers to inquire about their services.

3) Leverage on your existing customers. Capitalize on repeat business.

In most cases, the cost of acquiring new customers is about 6 – 8 times more than it would for you to sell to an existing one.

That’s quite expensive, isn’t it?

It’s exactly because of this that you need to get as much mileage as you can from your existing customers. Of course, you do that by capitalizing on repeat business.

Here are some of the methods you can use to invoke your existing customers to order from you again.
1.Give them a free trial.
2.Run contests.
3.Include them in your email newsletters.
4.Include them in webinars on how your new product can help them.

Here are additional resources where you can learn about repeat business.
1.Getting the Most from a Client – PRmediaonline.com
2.Plan for Repeat Business – Entrepreneur.com
3.How to Get Customers to Come Back – Foxbusiness.com

4) Focus on creating epic content versus publishing a mediocre 500 word article

If you really truly want to provide massive value to your readers, then you’ll want your blog post to be as comprehensive as it can be.

However, you need to remember that your content’s length won’t do you any good if you’re just blabbering. That said, don’t just increase your article’s length for the sake of making it lengthy. Your goal should be to solve as much problems as you can, and be as clear as you can be in giving instructions.

TL;DR – Don’t make it fluffy. Focus on solving your readers problems.

According to Neil Patel of Quicksprout.com, the average number of web pages ranking number 1 in Google’s search results have at least 2,000 words of text. That in itself should be a powerful enough incentive for you to go for the lengthy epic posts that we’re talking about.

5) Build relationships with other influencers online

A common misconception that newbie or budding marketers have about building relationships with influencers is that it’s an impossible task to accomplish. While there is certainly some truth to that, it isn’t 100% correct either.

There is a way for influencers to notice you and actually participate in whatever activity you want to have them to be involved with.

How do you do that, you might ask? Simple. Just reach out to them. You’ll be amazed at how some of them will reply to you like you’re one of their close friends. I have found a lot of these influencers to be quite friendly when they replied to my outreach message. I once reached out to Pat Flynn and Neil Patel and they were very personable.

To increase the chances of them replying to you, I need you to consider these 3 things.
1.These people are very busy. So make your outreach email short and crisp. Keep it at 100 words or less and state clearly what it is that you need.
2.You need to look for the place or platform that they frequent on. If you see them constantly posting on Twitter, then you ought to reach out to them using that platform. Remember. Sometimes, their website’s “Contact us” page isn’t the best place to connect with them.
3.Be sure to include in your outreach message the benefits that they can get from helping you. Answering the question, “What’s in it for me?” should always be addressed one way or the other when you reach out to them.

An article published by Ann Smarty at SeachEngineJournal.com on How to Build Relationships With Influencers Through Content is also a good resource to learn more about the strategy.

Conclusion
I myself am a firm believer that experience is in fact the best teacher. But that doesn’t mean you have to go through unnecessary failures just to achieve success on your online marketing endeavors.

If you’ll take the time to learn from other people’s experience and apply your learning to your own circumstances, then you’ll be able to avoid the unnecessary pitfalls that you would have gone through if you didn’t take the time to learn from others. Learning from others will serve as your shortcut to achieving the success you’ve been looking for online

Monday, 16 March 2015

Online Marketing Tips That Are Easy To Understand!

TIP! To help convince your audience that they should purchase your product, link them to a page that offers relevant information in an engaging way; perhaps through a video. They will feel they know more about what they are buying.


The key to successful Online marketing is recognizing a need or want and filling it. Try to anticipate what questions you can provide answers to or problems you can solve. By helping others with problems, they will ultimately become great customers that return year after year.

TIP! You should invest time to learn how to design websites. There are plenty of guides online that will teach you almost everything you need to know about HTML and CSS to get your web design training off on the right foot.

Get frequent feedback. It is important because your personal perception of pricing or site design may not be that of the customers. Accept feedback from your family, clients or peers. Take all feedback under advisement and make any changes that you see fit.

TIP! Having a squeeze page is a good way to grow a contact list. A squeeze page is a smart way to encourage visitors to provide their email address.

Your website marketing can be in places other than the internet. You can contact other bloggers or anyone else in your field and then hold a conference some place in person. This will have them become more familiar with your brand; this will make them more excited about writing about your products.

TIP! Making sure to include captions in your images is a great tip to employ. As the search engine spiders crawl around looking for things to grab to pull to the surface, your text captions might just help your site rankings out in a big way.

You should make sure your website offers a unique experience to your visitors. With such a large number of websites on the Internet, it is important that your site stand out. Highlight a special service you provide to bring in traffic.

TIP! One good tip for Internet marketing is to have an awareness of your competition. It isn’t hard to view your competitors and evaluate their features.

In the end, internet promotion is one of the very best ways to get your site noticed. For your internet marketing efforts to succeed, you need to have a good understanding of how it works. Take the advice given in this article and use it to cement your understanding on how to become a successful Internet marketer.

Friday, 20 February 2015

The Importance Of Social Validation In Online Marketing!

Online marketing comprises many factors, strategies, and tactics, but all of them share a common end goal: to get more people to buy your products or services. To get there, you have to step past the competition, increase the traffic to your site, and build better relationships with your customers.


The onset of social media has given brands a new means of achieving all three at the same time, at once improving the reputation of their brand and gaining more visibility and traction.

Online marketing is about more than raw visibility, however. Since the dawn of social media and the overabundance of traditional, sales-driven advertising, consumers have become more discerning, more skeptical, and less easily swayed.

In order to win their business, you have to win their trust, and there’s one key strategy that can help you do it: social validation.

What Is Social Validation?

In its traditional definition, social validation is a psychological phenomenon where one or more passive individuals follow or conform to the actions of others within a group.

In a psychological context, one or more people set an example of behavior, and their experience leads a second group of one or more people to follow suit.

Social validation in marketing is slightly different, but it still represents a kind of social “chain reaction” that leads others to similar behaviors.

In a marketing context, if a user leaves a positive review for a product or a positive rating for a business, other, even non-affiliated users will be more likely to buy that product or work with that business. Because one person went on a limb and confirms that the experience is positive, others are likely to take a similar action.

Why Is Social Validation Important to Marketers?
The idea of social validation is important because self-propagating strategies are no longer as effective as they once were.

People have grown to distrust brands, especially large corporations, and instead look to peer reviews and peer actions above any other means of justification.

Cultivating social validation in a broad group can sharply increase the trust people have in your brand, and can make them far more comfortable doing business with you.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/02/19/the-importance-of-social-validation-in-online-marketing/

Friday, 19 December 2014

3 Online Marketing Trends To Take Advantage Of!

Each year we see new online marketing trends come and go, some will remain relevant but most of these trends are constantly shifting and evolving to fit the ever fast moving industry. 

If you’re not aware of these new marketing trends, you could put yourself in serious danger of falling behind in the face of your competition.


1. Data Insights in Online Marketing - Spending on marketing analytics is expected to increase 60% by 2015 according to Gartner. 

With the increase in action on all social media platforms a huge bonus becomes apparent to online marketing specialists, data. Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon provide so much more information about human behavior and psychology then we ever had access to before. 

Where do your consumers live? What other brands are they interacting online? How much time do they spend online?

Analyzing user behavior allows us to uncover a whole new fascinating and relevant piece of the online marketing puzzle. 

Learning about how your users are interacting with your page and understanding new information is extremely valuable for your online marketing efforts. 

If you’re not aware of these essential analytics you’re likely missing a huge portion of your target audience hence losing a huge customer base.

2. The continual Rise of the "Prosumer" - Prosumers are an essential part of your online business. Today consumers want to take a more active part in engaging with your brand online. These "prosumers" can be extremely influential online. 

Let’s not forget the case of Dell Hell, when a Dell customer was so angered by the customer service he received from Dell that he created a parody of the original Dell logo with the words ‘Dell Hell’ which instantly went viral.

Often these Prosumers are the most engaged and active online as well, these are the types of people we want to be marketing toward. The people are always going to have a big influence on your brand, after all it’s them you’re trying to attract. 

Give the people what they want when it comes to customer service it’s essential to be personable and form real human connections. Let them get a real interactive experience in your online campaign, too. 
Revlon came out with an awesome campaign this year that lead the user through an interactive ‘choose your own adventure’ experience. 

Allowing their customers to interact with their advertisement makes the prosumer feel they took part and can take part in the outcome of the ad itself.

3. Combined Campaigns - Allowing your consumers to interact with your campaigning efforts on multiple media facets is an exceedingly growing trend in online marketing. This practice yields increased engagement and network traffic across the marketing spectrum. 

If you can find a way to link a common thread through all of your media channels including both traditional advertising techniques and new media you’ll definitely begin to see the powerful benefits in your campaigns. 

Brand names that integrate their campaigns into a multi-channel digital marketplace have shown results of achieving increased ROI sale values up to 300%.

Once you’ve connected with your consumers on one platform, multiple media facets only motivate your consumers to connect with your brand in multiple different ways. 

It also encourages more engagement through multiple forms of media. Bing’s collaboration with Jay-Z is a brilliant example of combined campaigns. 

The online aspect of the campaign involved people using the Bing search engine to discover new clues which lead to different pages of Jay-Z’s new book Decoded. Areas of New York City were then covered with pages of the book related to the specific area. The campaign made a huge splash on social media, online, and offline.

These online marketing trends are just a few of the recent trending tactics that you should be aware of, and definitely taking advantage of. 

There’s ways to incorporate these broad ideas into your local campaigns for small businesses, the big takeaway here is the trend itself and you can play with them and work them into your campaign however fits.