|
Digital marketing is simply everywhere. Matt Cutts, a Google insider, is quoted as saying: “If you think you need to be everywhere at once, you’re headed in the right direction!” If you want to be visible anywhere, anytime and on any platform – yes, indeed, you need to be everywhere. But professional digital marketers are more realistic with their advice. Marketing has always been about the right message to the right target audience at the right time. Digital marketing – and importantly social media marketing – is about being in the right place, supported by the right content. And no, you do not need to be everywhere. There are a multitude of digital social media tools and platforms ranging from responsive, mobile-friendly websites and search engine optimisation (SEO) to pay-per-click and display advertising and digital PR. Add these to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Snapchat, YouTube, and more and the key to social media success is being visible where your audience is. That means focus. Be selective, be great on the platforms that will engage your audience, create brand authority and generate awareness. Social media is not a jump-in-and-sell option. To succeed you need to research which platform is best for you and your audience, when is your audience active and with what type of content (words, images, videos). Only then can you develop a listening strategy to truly understand the audience and the conversations taking place. Step 1 is designing your marketing platforms and content to deliver the ideal content for customer engagement – and continuity across different platforms.  Step 2 is to become part of the conversation – not selling but adding value, educating, informing, answering questions; engaging with the audience and promoting the authority of you, your brand and your services without once selling your services. It’s called building trust.
Listen, engage, interact and convert. Sounds easy. For the timeshare industry, Facebook and Twitter are ideal, but what about YouTube for ‘explainer’ videos and resort profiles? Google loves FAQ’s! So why not combine activity? After all, Google owns YouTube. Research the most common questions you receive. Then provide the answers on your website, tweet new answers and create a short video or SlideShare to explain the answers. You can even post them on Facebook and blog about the most common questions – all of which is informative and shareable content to build your brand authority and it’s also great for SEO, social sharing and brand mentions! What about user generated content (USG)? It’s ideal for posting those holiday pictures, videos and comments: there’s nothing better than great user-generated testimonials. And the most shared and beneficial content today is visual: video, images and ‘infographics’. Your research should allow you to personalise your content to your particular audience – perhaps a different tone of message on Facebook than on LinkedIn, more formal brand website content and more personal on image-based platforms. The need for regular and consistent content posts, including links, images, stories, press and news, ensures that an integrated digital marketing campaign must be developed within a schedule strategy. Adhoc = fail! Better yet, Google Analytics, social monitoring and the multitude of tools and software systems available allows you to manage, monitor, measure and adapt. No other marketing allows such detailed analysis capabilities. Step 3 Plan, create, post, respond and react. Answer comments, respond to reviews, say thank you and be positive. And keep posting. The right content at the right time to the right audience on the right device. Need to be everywhere? No. Need to do the right things better? Absolutely. For further information on building a digital marketing strategy, visit EVCMarketing.com and ask about our 20-point review of your website and social media activity.
54 Comments
Maptive
These days, plenty of marketers talk a big game about big data, but few of them actually use the information they have to make meaningful decisions about their businesses. Maptive gives you an easy way to mine your data by allowing you to upload a spreadsheet of addresses and see them laid out on a custom map. Use this free tool to determine where your products are selling best, uncover the best spots for an upcoming marketing tour or answer any other question you have about the geography of your data. Nimble Keeping your relationships strong is an important part of business growth, and Nimble makes this process easy. This relationship management programme stores all of your records – including social contacts, email addresses, follow-up tasks and scheduled activities – allowing you to interact with all of your contacts from a single platform. You also be notified about any changes that occur in your network, including job updates, birthdays, and other important events. Use these alerts as catalysts to spark new conversations with your key contacts. CrazyEgg Want to know how visitors are behaving on your site? CrazyEgg shows you where they click, how far they scroll, what they watch, and more. In addition, CrazyEgg’s heat-mapping tools allow you to segment your traffic and determine whether certain design or content elements are resonating more with one group than another. This can give you plenty of meaningful feedback on your site, without having to run dozens of A/B tests. It’s an easy to use, affordable tool that will make a big difference in your messaging and growth. Unbounce Landing pages are extremely important when it comes to converting visitors into customers, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it can be difficult to build and test them thoroughly. Unbounce makes this process much easier. With a drag-and-drop interface, the programme makes it easy to setup pages and create forms – even if you don’t know a line of HTML code. With the programme’s wide variety of templates and seamlessly-integrated A/B testing, Unbounce is one of the best tools out there for turning shoppers into buyers. Kit CRM Small business owners will quickly tell you that they are crunched for time and struggle with marketing. Kit frees small business owners from the burden of marketing and allows them to focus on what they do best. Kit is the first automated marketing assistant that store owners text message with to run targeted ads, post updates to their Facebook page and makes recommendations based on their stores activity. LeadPages LeadPages is another great resource for creating landing pages and the calls-to-action needed to grow your email list and sell products. With LeadPages’s collection of templates, landing page creation is quick and easy, and as an added bonus, the tool integrates fully with Aweber and Mailchimp. Optimizely Want to increase engagement, interactions, and conversions on your website? If so, you need Optimizely! We all know that engagement is a vital part of growth, as these interactions encourage repeat business (which is much cheaper than acquiring new customers). Optimizely helps you to optimise your site for engagement and track key metrics over time to determine how well your updates are performing. Using the tool, you can conduct both A/B and multivariate tests and implement your ideas in just minutes. There simply isn’t an easier tool for site optimisation available today. Typeform Online surveys can be dull and robotic – and these dry forms certainly don’t encourage interaction. Instead, Typeform helps you create surveys that are fun, interactive, and enjoyable to look at. The user experience looks and feels great, allowing you to acquire more data through your forms, as well as make the data more useful. With Typeform, you can adjust survey questions fit your brand, as well as use the integrated analysis feature to reveal patterns and trends. Over time, this will help you adapt your message and your product lines so that you continue to grow. ListBuilder Anyone who says that having an email list isn’t important to a company’s growth is lying. Listbuilder will help you collect email addresses of your site visitors, while also integrating with other email services like Aweber and Mailchimp. The “smart popup” appears strategically after you have your visitor’s full attention, and the application works equally well for both desktop and mobile users. Considering that all these features are available for free, there’s no reason not to add Listbuilder to your growth arsenal. Colibri.io Everyone knows how important social listening is, but who has the time to monitor Twitter Quora, Google and the dozens of blogs in your industry? Colibri makes it easy to find and participate in relevant conversations online by producing a simple, actionable report letting you know where to go to participate in the larger online conversation about your business. As a result, you’ll gain leads and prospects, improve brand visibility, and improve your SEO by being at the right place at the right time – all of which are benefits that will fuel your growth. No one can manage growth alone, which is why it’s so important that you have the right tools in your arsenal. These programmess will give you a great start when it comes to growing your customer base, managing your social media presence, and improving your conversion rate – virtually guaranteeing your company’s growth and success. Call E.V.C. Marketing today on 01572 756824 or contact us here. If you know where to look, there is a wealth of free marketing opportunities for your business available online. I have listed below some of my particular favourites which don't require any particular skill - just some time.
Don't let a small marketing budget prevent you from marketing your business. Free PR Whatever the size of your business, distributing a press release is always a good idea. There are several sites that offer a press release service free of charge. My favourites include: Search Engine Services Google and Yahoo both offer a service where you can register your business name, address and contact details. In a few weeks you will get a map listing for your company name or industry and town in the search results.
Yell.com and Yellow Pages offer free basic listings while local listing are available for your area. In Rutland, for example, we have RutNet and Oakham People. If this is still a little too daunting for you, then contact E.V.C. Marketing and we will be able to help you out. |
 Tel: +44 (0) 208 123 9273
|
RSS Feed
Services
|
Company
|
Contact
T: +44 (0) 208 123 9273
T: +1 239 444 8176 M: +44 (0) 7725 673437 M: +1 246 263 8247 S: EVMCollins © COPYRIGHT 2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
|