Displaying items by tag: Marketing

An effective marketing strategy always starts with the audience; you have to know who your audience is, understand their pain points, and be able to present your brand as a smart solution. As such, chasing a wide audience isn’t always recommended; in fact, it’s usually best to define your audience as specifically as possible.

Google’s search algorithms are constantly evolving—yet the main function of the search algorithms remains the same. Google wants to provide its users with the best experience possible; it wants to facilitate the fast and easy retrieval of helpful and relevant information, period. All of its algorithmic updates are in service of this goal—and, for marketing professionals to ensure that their SEO efforts remain Google compliant, maintaining an ultimate focus on user experience is crucial.

Opportunities for people to engage with their favorite brands are virtually unlimited. You may search for a particular product from the Google search bar, “like” a brand on Facebook, sift through your inbox for the latest branded newsletter, consult sites like Yelp to hear another consumer’s opinion, and ultimately use your mobile device to make a purchase from an ecommerce store. All of these represent unique touch points, and chances for marketers to understand what consumers are ultimately looking for.

When it comes to successful search engine optimization, there are many considerations to weigh—including those that involve such external factors as backlinking/citations, social media cues, online reputation, and more. Before addressing any of those issues, however, it’s wise to do everything within your power to optimize your actual website content—attending to on-page SEO opportunities and capitalizing on every chance you have to win the favor of the search engine algorithms.

When it comes to big audiences, football pretty well has the market cornered. It remains the most-watched sport in America, and it represents a golden opportunity for marketers looking to spread their message. Of course, the sheer popularity of football also poses some marketing challenges: As much as you might love to show an ad during the next big game, doing so can be quite competitive—and thus, quite expensive.

But that doesn’t mean marketers lack viable options for tapping into the football crowd. Here are just a few strategies to consider.

Small businesses can accomplish so much through posting original content to Facebook—developing an audience, building brand visibility, and engendering social shares of their best content. However, to really get the best results from Facebook, organic reach is insufficient; it must be paired with an investment in paid ads. Fortunately for small business owners, Facebook’s built-in ad platform is a robust tool that offers many opportunities for targeted advertising. When used strategically, it’s an investment that can pay off handsomely.

Ecommerce is big business—especially around the holiday season. Some analysts predict that online shopping will yield revenues of $107 billion this Christmas—an unprecedented amount. But the Web isn’t only a money-maker for those who have ecommerce shops. Even for brick and mortar businesses that do not directly sell from their websites, an online presence can improve brand visibility and consumer trust—helping to increase in-store foot traffic during the most significant shopping season of the year.

As you are no doubt aware, the world of search has changed dramatically over the last few years—and one of the most seismic shifts has been with the medium itself. Where search engine queries were once largely confined to desktop computers, the increased prevalence of mobile devices means that more and more searches are conducted on the go. In fact, mobile searches are more common than desktop ones, something that has key implications for marketers. One such implication is that mobile users—increasingly reluctant to type out a full search query with their thumbs—are using voice search more than ever before.

In a perfect world, the consumer journey would be simple and straightforward. It might look something like this: An interested customer conducts an online search, and comes across your company website. After visiting the site and reading up on your products and services, the customer decides to make a purchase. That customer either buys the item directly from your ecommerce store, picks up the phone to call you, or drives to your brick-and-mortar location to complete the transaction.

Consumers are generally aware of the latest tech product roll-outs—for example, recently announced devices from Apple or Android—but may not be as familiar with such finer points as location data policy. As a result, many mobile users may not realize that both Apple and Google have recently made subtle tweaks to their own stated policies. This has implications for the consumer, but also for the advertiser; in today’s post, we’ll be focusing on this latter point.