When you’re gearing up to release a new product or service, you want consumers in your market to be as excited as you are. This might seem easier said than done, but getting the word out and reaching your audience isn’t as difficult as you would think.
It does, however, take time to plan and effort to properly manage. In fact, according to our marketing experts, properly announcing a new product or service involves at least eight tactics. For one person, this could quickly turn into a full-time job!
Are you ready to announce the upcoming release of your new product or service? FTx 360 can help you get all of your ducks in a row and manage the launch in such a way that shoppers are ready to buy the moment your new product or service hits the market. From product packaging design and brand design to social media management and email marketing, our agency does it all.
For all of you DIY adventurous types, read on to learn about how you can get the word out about your new product or service and generate buzz on social media.
You can create brand hype with a teaser campaign for your new product or service. Teaser campaigns help to build anticipation around products, services, and even new brands. This type of campaign works best when it’s executed weeks or perhaps months before the actual product or service is available for purchase. The trick with teaser campaigns is to keep the content message a little bit mysterious. You can think of teaser campaigns as a marketing tool that “warms up” your audience prior to the new release hitting the market.
Hashtags increase social media engagement and brand awareness. Social media users like following hashtags to stay informed about specific conversations that surround everything from celebrity news to current events to cultural slang. Recently, big brands have started to catch on, and you can, too. By creating a unique hashtag as part of your announcement strategy, you’ll help to establish credibility about the product or service itself, because you become the leader of the conversation.
In the world of marketing, scarcity + urgency = successful. When consumers believe that a product isn’t readily available or won’t be around very long, they often jump to buy it. Even if there’s no shortage of the product or service you’re about to release, you can create a sense of urgency in the minds of potential customers by including a countdown as part of your launch strategy. Try using a countdown timer in tandem with a presale discount offer. For example, run a social media campaign that allows customers to pre-order the product at a discounted price. The campaign should feature an actual clock counting down the days, hours, and minutes left in the presale.
A great way to generate buzz about a product or service that’s heading to market is to share with your social followers everything that occurred during the development process. This type of sneak peek can help build anticipation while at the same time educating potential customers about how to get the most out of the product or service once it’s on the market. If you’re launching SaaS or any type of service that isn’t easily explained in a sentence, including demonstration videos as part of your launch campaign can help convince consumers that your service will make their lives easier.
People love to feel like winners. They also love getting their hands on exclusive products before those products become readily available to the general public. This is where running a giveaway comes in handy. Whether you have a new product or a new service, you can actually trigger positive word of mouth marketing that takes on a life of its own by running a giveaway that ensures the winner or winners will receive the product (or service) and have a chance to use it, review it, and tell everyone about it before the actual launch date hits. Giveaways are also a great option for brands who simply can’t afford to offer a free sample to every potential customer once the product has been launched.
This is where all the time and effort truly comes into action, if you really think about it. We’re talking about creating a marketing schedule and sticking to it. A well-devised marketing schedule has three phases. The longest phase is called the “anticipation phase,” which covers the period of time prior to your product or service hitting the market. The second phase, called “launch day,” is lightning-fast and occurs on the release date or the release date plus the days that follow. You’re probably not going to have time to eat lunch or use the bathroom on launch day, it’s that demanding. Then the third and final phase never really ends, the “selling phase.” The best advice we can give you is to use a marketing calendar like this one and start promoting your product months before the release date.
The importance of using CTAs, or calls to action, in all of your social media marketing cannot be overstated. Every post you share must include a CTA so that potential customers can further explore your product or service. Even if you design a mysterious teaser campaign, you can include an email newsletter signup CTA so that the customer will be alerted the moment the product is available. Most importantly, be creative in terms of how you present your CTA by using your unique brand voice.
As you continue to promote your product or service on social media, users will naturally like, comment, and share. They might even ask detailed questions about the features of the product or service in response to a video teaser or product demonstration. This is when you’re really going to have to roll up your sleeves and jump into conversations. The more you engage with your audience, the more your audience will engage with the launch itself, all of which will help broaden the reach of the announcement. Engaging with users on social media in this manner will also contribute to elevating your brand image and give potential customers the impression that you care about them.
Have you hesitated to look for a digital marketing agency to handle all of your social media and market your brand online? Have you assumed your company wouldn’t be able to afford management services or a marketing specialist to develop your next social media marketing campaign? What if we told you that FTx 360 can work within any budget to create an exciting new product announcement campaign that influences people to love your brand? For more information about the social media marketing services at FTx 360 and how our team can benefit your bottom line without breaking the bank, contact us today.
For businesses with physical locations, your digital marketing strategy will not be complete without a Google My Business listing.
Google is by far the most used search engine in the world. Microsoft Bing comes in a distant second place, and lagging far behind Bing are Yahoo Search, DuckDuckGo, and the strangely named Qwant. In terms of daily direct queries, only Google and Qwant are quantified and openly published.
The results are stunning. Google receives over 9-billion daily queries, whereas Qwant receives a measly 10-million. Apparently, you Qwant always get what you want… when you list your business on Qwant.
All joking aside, we probably don’t have to convince you that Google is a superior search engine. But you might need some additional information before you agree that listing your company on Google My Business is important.
By the time you reach the end of this blog post, you’ll not only agree that creating and managing a GMB page is important, but you’ll understand why.
These days, businesses pour their time, effort, and money into SEO strategies that will ensure their websites land on the first page of Google’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page). First and foremost, Google My Business provides brick-and-mortar companies with superior SEO capabilities. A GMB listing ensures that Google users will find your company on both Google Search and Google Maps, and have access to your address, phone number, and website.
GMB is all about local SEO and broadening your customer base locally. When your business appears on Google’s map during relevant user searches, those users can quickly determine if your location is close enough for them to make the trip. This initial determining factor helps convert users into customers, but there are a few more steps in-between, such as reading customer reviews, calling your business, and investigating your products or services. The bottom line is that your GMB listing will inform customers of all the pertinent information they will need.
One of the greatest determining factors that will help persuade consumers to visit your business is the average star rating that appears on your GMB page. We’re talking about customer ratings and reviews. Whether a prior customer leaves a review or a star rating, both feed into the overall star rating average that Google users will see when they discover your GMB listing. Consumers like to compare businesses by reading these reviews and judging the difference in ratings, which means that your five-star and high-star reviews will ultimately boost consumer confidence in your brand.
Even if a Google user decides not to visit your business, the fact that they found you in Google’s search results thanks to your GMB listing will help to increase their awareness about your brand. This could influence them to choose your business next time. Remember, Google My Business is all about increasing your company’s presence locally to attract local customers that will shop with your brand time and again. In terms of achieving this goal, there is no better free marketing tool on the internet than GMB.
Your business’s reputation matters, especially when you rely on local customers. An aspect of managing your Google My Business page is that you can read and respond to customer reviews, and future customers can see those interactions. Even if you receive a poor review, it’s possible to use the opportunity to improve your brand reputation. The key is to respond to the poor review in such a way that rectifies the complaint, or at least takes an honest step in that direction. Consumers don’t expect perfection, but they do expect professionalism, which you can demonstrate in moments like this. GMB makes reputation management easy.
Even though maintaining a GMB page might seem relatively passive, it’s actually extremely proactive when it comes to building trust with consumers. The trick here is to fully fill out your company’s information within your profile and provide as much detailed information as possible about your business’s policies, hours of operation, and other critical details that consumers are going to want to know. You can even go above and beyond by linking your business blog to your GMB page so that Google users can discover and read your articles, which we’ll examine in the next section of this blog post.
As we mentioned in the previous section, you can link your business blog to your GMB page in such a way that your blog posts will automatically publish to your Google My Business listing. But that’s not all you can do to help win over potential customers. GMB also allows you to add photos of your products, services, storefront, employees, and anything else you can think of. By including this kind of additional content to your GMB listing, you can further legitimize your brand and have a decent shot at beating out your corporate competition.
If you’re ready to get started with Google My Business, here are some links to assist you:
For an in-depth, step-by-step guide to help you set up your Google My Business page and start collecting valuable customer reviews, check out Making the Most Out of Google My Business.
Creating and managing a Google My Business page greatly increases the chances of your business appearing on the first SERP, which means that potential customers will discover and consider your company before they see your competitors.
Also, having a GMB page will guarantee that your business stands out from the countless eCommerce companies that appear online. Only businesses that have a physical location can use GMB. ECommerce businesses are not eligible, which is great news for all brick-and-mortar companies!
There’s no reason not to have a Google My Business listing. The only question is, are you going to create and manage your GMB page yourself, or would you like the digital marketing SEO strategists at FTx 360 to handle it for you?
FTx 360 offers a full suite of marketing solutions at affordable prices. Whether you’re interested in our consulting services or hiring us to manage all of your digital marketing needs, our team of experts can help grow your business, boost sales, and increase your revenue. Contact us to discover what our marketing agency can do for your brand.
Cyber Monday may be a fairly new retail tradition, but this shopping event has quickly gained popularity since 2005 when the head of the National Retail Federation originally coined the term.
What is Cyber Monday? Put simply, it’s eCommerce’s answer to Black Friday.
As soon as the sun sets on the beloved American holiday, Thanksgiving, brick-and-mortar retail stores across the nation open their doors to consumers, inviting them into the biggest sale of the year known as Black Friday.
Shoppers spill through entryways, tripping over one another to snatch deeply discounted items off retail shelves. The frenzy is due in large part to the Christmas season that’s right around the corner. If a consumer plays their cards right, they can accomplish all of their Christmas shopping in a single evening thanks to Black Friday deals.
In the early 2000s, however, the burgeoning eCommerce market knew it was missing out, but instead of launching Black Friday deals of its own, the entire industry claimed the Monday following Thanksgiving for itself, known as Cyber Monday. For 24 hours, consumers could receive even better discounts while shopping online from the comfort of their own homes.
As of last year, Cyber Monday pulled in a whopping $10.8-billion in online retail sales, which represents an increase of 15.1% growth from the prior year of 2019.
Today, the upcoming Cyber Monday sales are expected to generate a seismic $11.5-billion in sales.
If you want a piece of the revenue pie, use the following tips to drive your Cyber Monday sales:
● Offer Product Bundles
● Advertise on Facebook
● Create an Amazon Seller Site
When it comes to holiday shopping and purchasing gifts, consumers love product bundles. Product bundling is a sales technique that groups several complimentary items together to be sold as a single unit for one price. Packaging the bundled products so that they appear artfully arranged is important.
By offering your online shoppers product bundles, you will naturally increase the average order value, move more products, and decrease your marketing and distribution costs. Just be sure to clearly state the exact savings per bundle so that shoppers know it’s more cost-effective to buy bundled products than those products individually.
Feeling overwhelmed and unsure of where to start in terms of packaging and branding your Cyber Monday product bundles? FTx 360 offers creative services that can handle everything from designing branded packaging to marketing your Cyber Monday product bundles online.
Running a Facebook ad campaign can help you crush your sales goals this Cyber Monday. ECommerce retailers who pour their hearts, souls, and budgets into well-designed Facebook ads that run for a full month before Cyber Monday are sure to see big financial returns, but the competition will be fierce.
Your ad should feature one strong visual image with clear branding and one CTA button, also referred to as a call to action button. This is not the time to use a lead generation CTA. You want your audience to click directly to your eCommerce site so that they can start shopping ASAP. If you have a Facebook Shop, all the better. Link your CTA to your Facebook Shop. This way, consumers can begin checking out your products and adding items to their Wish Lists that they can officially buy on the big day, i.e. Cyber Monday.
Setting up a targeted Facebook ad campaign that not only garners impressions but also maximizes click through rates and conversions is easier said than done. Get the greatest bang for your advertising buck with FTx 360’s social media marketing services. Our marketing specialists can target your audience and launch your Cyber Monday campaign today.
You might be thinking that the last thing you want to do is invest in Amazon when, for the most part, you’re certain that Amazon is your biggest competition. Well, you’re right and you’re also hurting your business. The fact of the matter is that Amazon is the #1 platform that consumers turn to for their online shopping, which means that if you don’t have an Amazon seller site, you’re running a very high risk that consumers will choose to shop with your competition simply because they’re on Amazon and you aren’t.
Creating a Seller Account on Amazon doesn’t have to be a major production. If you’re skeptical, you can actually begin selling from your customer account. However, we recommend making a formal Seller Account. The process is equally, if not less, complicated as creating a Facebook and Instagram Shop, which is to say you can be up-and-selling on Amazon within hours. The best part about using Amazon for your Cyber Monday sales is that Amazon’s platform handles payment processing and shipping parameters. All you have to do is import and organize your product images with descriptions, market your Amazon Cyber Monday deals, and fulfill orders once they start pouring in.
Want expert help navigating the ins and outs of launching an Amazon seller site that seamlessly integrates with your Point-of-Sale system and eCommerce website? Thanks to the nature of our interdepartmental teams, FTx 360 does it all and can amalgamate our eCommerce services and marketing automation services to meet your business needs.
There are so many more lucrative digital marketing tools you can and should include in your Cyber Monday marketing strategy… like:
● Launching Personalized Email Marketing Campaigns
● Minimizing the Number of Clicks to Purchase on Your Website
…but we’re going to wrap this article up for the time being.
Check out 5 Marketing Tips and Ideas for Your eCommerce Site as well as How to Set Up an Instagram and Facebook Shop if you’d like to explore additional marketing tactics you can use right now to boost Cyber Monday sales and your overall revenue throughout the upcoming holiday season, and beyond.
To learn more about FTx 360 or to speak with a digital marketing specialist, feel free to contact us anytime.
The COVID-19 pandemic is no match for Halloween, according to the National Retail Federation, which projects that 65% of Americans plan to celebrate the spooky holiday this October 31st. That’s compared to an annual average of 70% in prior years. Not bad!
Translated into dollars-and-cents, the retail industry will see a total of $10.1-billion in revenue across the board thanks to Halloween this year. We’re talking $102.74 spent per person on costumes, candy, decorations, and greeting cards, among other Halloween-themed favorites.
For retailers, Halloween is a lucrative holiday to take advantage of, but you’ll need to go beyond stocking your shelves with Halloween products if you want to cash in on the potential sales boost.
Do you have a marketing strategy in place to get the word out about your Halloween promotions?
In this blog post, we’ll look at the biggest industries and how they can apply these 5 fun marketing tactics this October:
● In-Store Halloween Events
● Social Media Halloween Videos
● Halloween-Themed Landing Pages
● Spooky Email Marketing Campaigns
● Halloween Product Photos for Social
Would you rather have our team handle your Halloween promotions? Contact FTx 360 to get started with digitally marketing your retail business. Otherwise, let’s dive in!
Pet parents never fail to include their dogs, cats, and other furry friends in their holiday celebrations, and Halloween is no different.
Pet costume contests are sure to draw in a crowd, especially if you award bonus prizes to pet parents who also dress up.
Facebook Live and Instagram Stories have the power to engage audiences far more deeply than a single photo post alone. Throw on a spooky costume and use social media videos to tell people about your Halloween pet supply sales.
You don’t have to revamp your entire website to show consumers you’re in the Halloween spirit. Simply design and add a Halloween-themed landing page to your website. Keep the content short and sweet by only promoting your best Halloween products and the dates of your sale.
Create Halloween-themed email marketing headers, footers, and graphics using FTx AdPro, our sister company’s free graphic design software. Then, launch a Halloween email campaign to promote your in-store Halloween events and special Halloween sales.
Videos might be rising in popularity, but pictures still speak a thousand words, which is why posting photos on social media of your employees dressed up for Halloween with their pets will undoubtedly trigger a lot of social engagement. Use a creative, branded hashtag that users can follow throughout the month!
Working in the hospitality industry, you understand the importance of providing your customers with the best “home away from home” possible, which is why you don’t want to miss out on transforming your establishment into a Halloween haven that doesn’t resemble a haunted house.
Costume contests for the kids and cocktail parties for the adults are the two best Halloween ideas you can offer your guests this October 31st, just be sure to advertise each one using the following digital marketing ideas.
Your guests want peace and quiet no matter what holiday is happening, so reassure them of your policies using short social media videos, and don’t forget to mention special discounts or any Halloween events you’re planning on hosting in the lobby or restaurant of your hotel.
Delight your potential customers who are investigating your hotel, motel, or B&B online by sprucing up your Home Page with Halloween colors, like orange and black, and adding some festive pumpkin and ghost graphics.
Thanks to your CRM software, you probably have access to hundreds if not thousands of email addresses, many recipients of which might not have visited your hotel in a while. Even if it might not immediately boost reservations this month, send out a Halloween-themed email marketing campaign telling former guests about your upcoming events. Ask them to follow you on social media and to consider booking their next visit now.
Have you gotten into the Halloween spirit and decorated your establishment? Does your restaurant menu now offer Halloween cocktails and special menu items for the month of October? Take photos and post them on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms.
People want to look their best when they attend holiday parties, and salons and barbershops can play a big role in that this Halloween.
Run a contest for your employees where the best Halloween manicure, pedicure, or makeover will win. Customers will love being the focal point of the contests, which will boost sales. Then award the winner with a special holiday bonus.
Use time lapse video footage of your nail technicians giving customers Halloween manicures, and use the videos to promote your seasonal discounts on social media. The same type of time lapse can be posted of barbers giving haircuts to customers, just be sure your Halloween decorations are in frame to give the video a festive feel.
If you’re running a special Halloween promotion on social media or through Google AdWords, consider connecting it to a new, Halloween-themed landing page to help you track and measure lead generation.
Holidays are a great excuse to use deep discounts to boost sales, but if your customers don’t know about the promotions, they aren’t going to book appointments. Segment your email recipients and design an email marketing campaign for each group that features photos of your Halloween-themed services and a strong CTA.
As your Halloween promotions are running, take photos of your customers’ Halloween manicures, pedicures, and other services, and post them on social media with urgent, exciting-sounding captions that invite followers to book appointments.
Pet supply retailers, hospitality businesses, and salons aren’t the only retailers who can benefit from using our 5 marketing tactics this Halloween. Try using similar digital marketing ideas if your retail business falls within the following categories:
● Liquor Stores—Like all seasonal sales, Halloween-themed promotions help to move stock, and there’s no reason liquor and wine stores shouldn’t participate in the festive holiday this October 31st.
● Gyms & Fitness Centers—Fitness enthusiasts definitely show up to your gym to get their sweat on, but an enjoyable, added bonus is that your gym is also a place where members socially interact and relax, which makes it the perfect location for a little Halloween fun.
● Grocery & Convenience Stores—As the owner of a grocery store or convenience store, your shelves are probably already stocked with Halloween products, including costumes, candy, greeting cards, and decorations. All that’s left to do is transform your decor, advertise your goods, and market, market, market!
● ECommerce Retailers—This year, consumers will heavily rely on eCommerce retailers for their Halloween celebration products. Though brick-and-mortar retailers are bouncing back after long lockdowns, many consumers now prefer to shop exclusively online, which means that your promotional marketing and shipping options must be outstanding.
FTx 360 is a full-service digital marketing agency. We provide a wide range of services to clients of all industries. Our digital marketing services include consultation and management options that cover all of your business marketing needs–content writing, social media marketing, email marketing, inbound marketing, industry-specific market research, and customized marketing strategies. When you partner with FTx 360, you’re working with a branding agency you can trust.
The restaurant industry is chock-full of competition. In order to stand out and succeed, restaurateurs must provide diners with delicious meals and impeccable service, and that’s not all.
Restaurants must also provide diners with convenience, community, and conversation.
In other words, today’s diners expect to have an excellent experience, from the moment they decide to dine at your restaurant to the moment they sign the bill, and beyond.
They want ordering and dining options that are convenient. They want to feel welcome when they dine-in, and when they post photos of their meals on social media, they want to feel like they’re part of a community. Whether ordering delivery from home, picking their orders up from the curb, or meeting their friends at your restaurant, your customers are going to want to talk about their experiences online, in either a positive or negative light.
If you’re only offering food and beverages at your restaurant, you’re missing out. But the good news is that providing your diners with so much more than just a menu isn’t beyond your reach.
Give your diners an excellent all around customer experience by implementing these 5 powerful restaurant marketing strategies that are designed to help you retain loyal customers and increase revenue.
Mobile apps spell convenience, plain and simple. Does your restaurant offer customers a mobile app with ordering and payment options? This is not to be confused with a responsive web design that functions smoothly on smartphones, though it wouldn’t hurt to make sure your site is responsive. If you haven’t launched a mobile app for your restaurant, consider investing in a white-label app.
Here are some reasons to provide your customers with a mobile app:
● Consumers prefer in-app ordering above any other online ordering method
● Restaurant mobile apps help to increase customer loyalty
● A mobile app is a digital marketing tool that will give you direct access to your customers
Successfully marketing your restaurant can be tricky due to the fact that you’re not aiming to target a nationwide or worldwide audience. Quite the opposite, in fact, your goal as a restaurateur is to draw a local crowd of customers to your business. Using the hashtag #foodie on Instagram and maintaining a recipe blog are actually not going to cut it. Instead, focus your marketing locally by enhancing your Google My Business page. Add the Bookings feature to your GMB page, and enable the Check In feature on your social media pages.
Increase local SEO by incorporating the following ideas:
● NAP optimization is as simple as adding your Name, Address, and Phone Number to your business website
● Plug local SEO into your website content and GMB description to rank as high as possible on SERP
● Use geo-targeting in any social media advertisements you plan on running
Customer loyalty rewards programs have long since been proven to be one of the most effective marketing strategies for increasing customer retention and boosting sales. For restaurants, loyalty programs can be especially beneficial because they incentivize diners to try new menu items, increase order sizes, and return more frequently. You’ll want to choose a loyalty platform that comes with a mobile app and integrates with your online ordering system. We recommend the Loyal~n~Save platform.
Loyalty programs benefit both diners and restaurants in the following ways:
● Restaurant loyalty members dine 20% more often and spend 20% more per visit
● A loyalty program is a powerful marketing tools that enables you to launch email marketing campaigns, SMS text campaigns, and in-app push notification campaigns
● Loyalty programs include built-in CRM that will help you maximize the personalization of your marketing campaigns
It’s almost as though certain social media platforms were made for restaurant marketing. They say that experiencing a tasty meal begins with drinking in the sight of the food. You can give your diners a virtual taste of all that your restaurant has to offer by posting high quality photos of your dishes on Instagram and Facebook. An even better marketing idea is to include videos on Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, and YouTube that feature your chefs and cooks preparing your most popular meal items.
Consider the following your high-quality action plan:
● Encourage your customers to post photos of their meals on social media to increase word-of-mouth marketing
● Add your best photos and videos to your Google My Business page, and thank your online reviewers who do the same
● Include high-quality photos in your email marketing campaigns
Consumers rely on customer reviews to help them make purchasing decisions. Unlike other types of businesses, restaurants face extreme challenges because they must provide excellent food and outstanding service. A perky waitress is not going to make up for a bland dish, for example, which means that one subpar aspect of a customer’s dining experience can lead to a low-star review. Restaurants are held to such a high standard, in fact, that you would be remiss to overlook the importance of online reputation management and marketing. Even if you receive a poor customer review, there’s a lot you can do to correct it both publicly and privately.
Guard your online reputation in these ways:
● Respond to all reviews, both positive and negative, but avoid using autoresponders
● Strategically use loss leaders, such as a free dish or drink, to reward positive reviewers with surprise-and-delight and to assuage unhappy diners who left negative reviews
● Hire an online reputation management and marketing agency to leverage positive reviews and mitigate negative ones
FTx 360 offers unique, sure-shot marketing techniques for restaurants that are designed to attract and retain customers while spreading brand awareness locally across social media platforms and Google.
Our digital marketing services include website design & development, eCommerce solutions, content writing & marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, and other creative services that will transform your restaurant business into a growing enterprise.
Contact our marketing team to get started.
Automation is the process of replacing manual, human tasks with technologies. Setting up an online auto-debit to pay for a monthly bill is an example of automation. Instead of having to remember to pay that particular bill every month and going through the online process of electronically submitting a payment, you instead set up an auto-debit, and the online banking platform will handle the work of paying the bill on time every month.
Saving time and effort, and reducing human errors, are just some of the benefits of using automation.
Your marketing tasks can also be automated to save you time and effort, and reduce human errors. Marketing automation is defined as any technology that manages the digital marketing processes you ordinarily handle by hand. Marketing automation utilizes artificial intelligence to a degree, as well as machine-learning strategies, and can streamline multifunctional, omni-channel campaigns for you.
Implementing marketing automation at your business enables you to interact with potential customers as well as loyal customers across email, web, social media, SMS text message, and any other method you would like.
Nowadays, automating your digital marketing is typically done via a marketing automation platform.
Any online platform that offers marketing automation in the form of Software as a Service, or SaaS, is considered a marketing automation platform. These platforms provide marketers with the tools to upload, organize, and schedule all of their digital marketing content and campaigns, including automating social media posts, blog article posts, and email marketing campaigns. Marketing automation platforms also integrate with content management systems (CMS) and customer relationship management (CRM) software to centralize all marketing into one software solution.
In this article, we are going to focus on the two most popular forms of marketing automation that business owners like you can benefit from using, which are social media marketing automation and email marketing automation.
If you’ve already done your research and know all about marketing automation, and would like to discover the marketing automation solutions offered by FTx 360, we invite you to sign up for a free 30 day trial with our agency. You will only be asked to supply your business name, email address, business location, and telephone number. No payment information is required and there are absolutely no strings attached to this incredible offer.
Social media automation refers to automating various aspects of your social media marketing, which can include automating the publication of your posts, automating your responding comments, and automating the lead generation aspects of your social media advertisements, if applicable.
By automating certain aspects of your social media marketing, you can grow your business and optimize ROI while saving time. Social media marketing automation can also effectively support your efforts to spread brand awareness, engage potential customers, and gain social followers, all of which help promote your business.
Though there are indisputable benefits of using social media automation, many marketers believe that automating your social media marketing defeats the purpose and beauty of social media in the first place. Simply put, these marketers feel that social media marketing automation is actually anti-social, because it involves replacing human interactions with machine-programmed actions.
The social media marketing specialists at FTx 360 both agree and disagree. Yes, the beauty of social media is that social platforms enable users to socially interact with each other. But the fact of the matter is that if you want to post multiple times a day and every post generates a ton of engagement, you will not be able to keep up with interacting with every single follower. That’s just the way it goes.
You can greatly alleviate the amount of manual attention you give your social media accounts by automating your posts. This way, your social media posts will automatically publish. If you schedule your automatic posts days, weeks, and months in advance, it can free you up to spend your “social” time manually replying to comments and quickly tending to any customer service messages that come into your DMs.
To provide deeper insight regarding your social media content, we would like to introduce you to the 5-3-2 Rule. Any of the content categories we propose below can be automated. Then, as your social followers comment, reply, and interact with your posts, you can engage them further by responding.
This social media posting rule can be used as a content guideline. The types of posts you make should be diverse and surprising so that your followers remain engaged. For every 10 social posts you publish, here is the content ratio breakdown you can schedule:
● 5 out of 10 social posts should consist of relevant, shared content from third parties
● 3 out of 10 social posts should consist of original content with the exclusion of hard sales pitches
● 2 out of 10 social posts should consist of personal, opinionated, or ruminative content that humanizes your brand to help followers relate to you
As you can see, there is virtually no emphasis on using social media to make hard sales pitches to your audience. And equally important, about half of your social media posts should be shared links from other websites. That being said, you can schedule just about all of these social posts ahead of time using a social media scheduling calendar like the one that can be found on our resources web page.
Our resources web page also includes a free download of our Marketing Automation Playbook, a how-to ebook that will help you discover all the ways in which marketing automation can help you capture more leads, convert leads into customers, and increase revenue.
Whoops, we didn’t mean to digress. We just really love our social media scheduling calendar…
Another aspect of your social media posting schedule that you can automate is sharing your latest blog articles.
We all know that maintaining a blog is an excellent way to generate new SEO and attract new web visitors to your website or eCommerce site. You can maximize your business blog’s engagement factor and digital virality by posting the article links to Facebook, Twitter, and other relevant social media platforms.
Best of all, you don’t have to do this manually. Rather than copying and pasting the URL links of each blog article to your social media accounts as articles are published online, instead you can automate this process by linking your RSS blog feed to the social media accounts that you want those articles to appear on.
Depending on the blogging platform you’re using, connecting your blog feed to social media should be fast and easy. Just be sure to run a few tests to check the formatting and make certain that the article web links auto-generate the blog information that you want to appear in the social media post. Ideally, you want the article’s headline and primary image with a few lead-in sentences from the article to appear in the post itself. That way, your social followers will be intrigued, click on the link, and read the full article on your business blog. If the headline and image are thought provoking, you may discover that your social followers begin commenting right away, even before they read the article!
Automating your email marketing campaigns is by far the most popular form of automation. All digital marketers use email automation. There are many different types of email automation that you can implement, which we will cover in a moment.
First, we want to make the point that manually and personally sending out emails is ideal, but impractical. If your business is brand-new, you might be able to get away with manually sending every email and you might even love it, but composing a personal email every time simply isn’t scalable. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to implement email automation for certain workflows, and that’s okay. You can still retain as much personalization in your emails if you follow our advice.
The most helpful email automation campaigns to set up include:
● Abandoned Shopping Cart Emails
● Welcome Emails to New Subscribers
● Subscription Email Newsletters
● Promotional Emails
● Lead Magnet Onboarding Emails
● Re-Engagement Emails (After a Recipient Hasn’t Engaged for 3 – 6 Months)
By automating some or all of the above mentioned email campaigns, you can save a ton of time and effort, and that’s not all. You will also provide your visitors, customers, and subscribers with the professionalism they expect. You see, most people really enjoy receiving automated emails because these emails provide them with valuable content without the added pressure that usually comes with receiving a personalized email from a business owner.
Just remember to always include a CTA in your automated emails, no matter the reason for the email.
Then, the further along the sales funnel or customer journey someone gets, the more personalization you can give them. In fact, at a certain point in the customer journey, automation is no longer appropriate, so you should take customers out of the automation channel and email them directly to authentically engage them.
Are you convinced that using marketing automation to support your social media and email marketing campaigns will benefit your business? Good!
But how will you know which marketing automation platform to sign up for? That’s a great question. Not all marketing automation platforms are created equal or priced the same, which is why our digital marketing specialists put together a helpful research check-list you can reference while you shop around.
If, for some reason, you cannot find answers to these questions on a marketing automation provider’s website, then we strongly encourage you to call the provider and speak to a sales representative. Do not assume that the platform will meet your business needs and sign a contract before you know what features and services will and will not be included.
● What is the minimum licensing fee?
● What services are included for the minimum fee?
● How many contacts can you have for the base rate?
● What are the tiered rates and the number of contacts you can have for each tier?
● What is the minimum license period?
● Can you auto pay in monthly installments or do you have to pay for a full year up front?
● Have other businesses like yours used and loved the platform?
● Does the platform offer user training? Is training free, or does it come at an additional cost?
FTx 360 can automate your marketing activities across multiple channels. Our marketing automation services include platform selection & setup, and automation strategy & integration with your website or eCommerce store.
Our developers can assess and select the best APT platform for your unique digital marketing needs, and implement appropriate sales software such as HubSpot, SharpSpring, Salesforce, or Marketo on your business website for you. For custom efficiency, we use focused targeting, lead generation & management, and customer segmentation to keep your sales funnel organized and your leads converting. The right email marketing campaigns will be segmented, personalized, and automated when you partner with our marketing specialists.
Automation is the future of digital marketing, and with FTx 360’s automated campaign handlings your business will always be a step ahead of the competition. Contact us today to learn more.
Customer experiences culminate in either satisfaction or disappointment. The result that ultimately follows is either increased business revenue or dismal eCommerce sales. Customer experience, or CX, is that critical.
You want your customers to have positive experiences when engaging with your brand online, but you might not necessarily understand what eCommerce elements will contribute to providing your website visitors with such an excellent customer experience that they successfully complete the online checkout process.
You can improve the customer experience you provide eCommerce website visitors by following these five tips:
● Offer Personalized Website Navigation
● Provide Customized Browsing Experiences
● Feature Customer Reviews & Testimonials
● Enhance the Checkout Process
● Build Brand Affinity with Valuable Content
In this article, we’ll walk you through all five, supplying you with in-depth steps you can take to implement each improvement into your eCommerce site.
Personalization has become the central goal of marketing and sales strategies in recent years, though the concept of personalization is nothing new. In fact, the retail industry has been committed to increasing personalization as much as possible, and Facebook along with most social media sites also offer personalized posts, page recommendations, and advertisements. By personalizing a consumer’s experience, no matter what the platform, you can increase engagement as well as sales. Realizing the importance of personalization, especially how it impacts revenue, is an important first step. The next step that naturally follows, of course, is implementing as much personalization as possible, and this includes personalizing the navigation experience of your eCommerce website.
Offering an eCommerce visitor a website experience that’s custom-made just for them is the best way to describe website personalization. When a visitor discovers that your site features products, information, and content that’s relevant to their interests, they will be more likely to explore your site, spend longer on each web page, and end up purchasing your products. The more often they visit your eCommerce site, the better the personalized experience they will have thanks to the site’s ability to leverage their prior visitor data such as their past purchases and item categories that they browsed.
How can you enhance your eCommerce site with personalization and personalized navigation? The right web development and web design team can accomplish the following:
● Optimize the Landing Page—Since your eCommerce landing page will be an online visitor’s first encounter with your brand, you can improve the first impression you give by adding a personalized touch. For example, greeting the visitor using his or her first name can add just enough personalization to increase their interest in your specific brand within the market.
● Integrate Unique CTAs—One of the most effective ways to guide your website visitors from one web page to the next is by integrating unique calls-to-action on the eCommerce web pages that need it most. Carefully crafted CTAs have the power to encourage website visitors to sign up for discount alerts, subscribe to your newsletters and blog, take a survey, and experience a free trial offer.
● Automate Relevant Content Recommendations—Suggesting relevant product recommendations to your website visitors takes time. Your eCommerce store won’t have enough stored data to make relevant recommendations to first-time visitors. However, with the right machine-learning A.I. in place, the site itself can collect valuable visitor data as consumers return to your eCommerce store time and again. This data can then be used automatically to suggest products that visitors will be more inclined to buy.
Elaborating on the concept of personalized website navigation and content, you can improve eCommerce customer experience by providing your site visitors with customized browsing experiences. Your eCommerce store isn’t the only website that your target audience visits when they want to find specific products. The fact of the matter is that nowadays it’s so easy for consumers to find the products they want online that the products themselves don’t impact customer experience as much as the actual website’s functionality, features, and customized browsing capabilities do. By offering your eCommerce site visitors tailored content that features relevant products, you will help your visitors to bond with your brand.
A way to quickly integrate customized browsing into your eCommerce site is to display “recently viewed items” along the margin of each web page or across the bottom of each web page just shy of the footer. This tactic doesn’t rely on your visitors creating login accounts, which is why it’s so beneficial. As a site visitor checks out your products, the site’s A.I. can store browsing history data and automatically display the top 3 or 5 items under the header “Recently Viewed.” Depending on the technological capabilities of your eCommerce site, you can also integrate a site visitor’s recently viewed items under the header “Pick up where you left off” when they return to your eCommerce store in the future.
You can even customize the browsing experience further by implementing these features on your eCommerce site:
● Personalized Product Pages—Personalized product-detail page recommendations show eCommerce visitors items that are similar to those they’ve viewed as well as complementary products to those they’ve already added to their prior orders. This personalization feature gets even better when recommended items are tailored to the current or upcoming season, an upcoming holiday, and even the visitors’ birthdays.
● Customized Upselling & Cross-Selling During Checkout—Once a website visitor has made it to the checkout page, you have succeeded at collecting valuable data about them that you can use immediately. By understanding the items they’ve added to their shopping cart, you can automatically suggest helpful add-on products or opportunities to increase the quantities of their products in order to receive bulk-order discounts.
● Quick Glance Wish List Items—Including a Wish List on your eCommerce site is a great way to motivate website visitors to create a login account. Once they do, they can start adding items of interest to their Wish List and easily change Wish List items whenever they want. Try displaying your shoppers’ Wish List items on the margin of every web page they explore. When their Wish List items “follow them around,” they will be reminded to add them to their shopping cart.
Online shoppers take customer reviews as seriously, if not more so than real-life recommendations from their friends and family. In fact, online customer reviews are one of the best digital forms of word-of-mouth marketing there is. Reviews can either translate into sales or a damaged business reputation, depending on what’s said, since most online shoppers are in the habit of reading reviews as part of their purchase decision process. Small businesses and local companies that understand the importance of high-star and five-star customer reviews know to leverage them on their Google My Business pages, Facebook pages, and their website, all of which you should definitely do, too.
Featuring positive customer reviews and testimonials on your eCommerce site specifically cannot be overstated, and yet a lot of eCommerce businesses fail to do this, assuming that their Google My Business and Facebook reviews are enough. It’s always a good idea to include customer reviews and testimonials on your website, but there are a number of ways you can accomplish this. For some businesses, it’s appropriate to create a Customer Reviews tab on their navigation panels. These customer review web pages consolidate all of the positive reviews that the business has collected over the years. But this isn’t the only option.
If you want to feature your online customer reviews in creative ways, try one of the following ideas:
● Add Relevant, Scrolling Customer Reviews to Your Website Footers—There’s no way to predict or guarantee that website visitors will navigate to a Customer Review web page, which is why it’s a great idea to incorporate your best, shortest customer reviews on all of your eCommerce web pages. Try featuring the top three reviews, for example, within the footer of your site in such a way that they automatically scroll.
● Use Relevant Customer Reviews on Your Product Pages—You might not have customer reviews for every product you sell on your eCommerce site, but for those product reviews that you have collected, why not feature each on its correlating product page? Doing so can help convert an on-the-fence visitor into a buying customer.
● Include Customer Reviews About Specific Upsell Products at Checkout—Similar to the last idea, when you include a positive customer review along with a product you’re recommending during the checkout process, it’s kind of like having a little, digital salesman in your corner. The customer review can help convince your shopper to add the upsell product into their shopping cart.
ECommerce shopping cart abandonment is real. In fact, roughly 88% of lost eCommerce sales are due to visitors abandoning the checkout process for one reason or another. Factors such as having to provide too much information or seemingly unsecure payment gateway processes can give shoppers cold feet at the last minute. This is all to say that while enhancing the checkout process can impact overall customer experience for the better, you have to be really careful about what you enhance and how you enhance it. The last thing you want to do is further complicate the online checkout process, which will only increase the chances of your shoppers abandoning their shopping cart before they complete the purchasing process.
Now that we got that disclaimer out of the way, how can you enhance the checkout process on your eCommerce site without jeopardizing your sales? It might seem counterintuitive, but speeding up the checkout process is the kind of enhancement your shoppers will appreciate. Don’t force visitors to create a login account just to complete the checkout process. One-click checkout systems are far more popular than elaborate ones. That being said, by offering a Live Chat support box, providing different payment method options including PayPal, and keeping any associated shipping fees transparent, you will naturally improve customer experience.
In addition to the suggestions we just mentioned, you can also experiment with the following eCommerce checkout enhancements:
● Use Urgency and FOMO—There’s a reason why eCommerce brands launch flash sales. By offering products for a limited time, shoppers become triggered by a fear of missing out, or FOMO. You can implement this same concept for the checkout process of your eCommerce site to reduce shopping cart abandonment. Simply include Deals of the Day item recommendations with countdown clocks that show when the sale will end.
● Highlight Security and Trust Seals—Guest checkout should be an option for your eCommerce store visitors, but in order to push the sale through, it helps to establish trust first and foremost on the checkout page. Prominently display the trust seals of your payment gateway providers and highlight the security of your site.
● Offer Discount Codes for Upsell Products—A great way to incentivize shoppers to follow through with completing the checkout process is to offer discount codes they can use immediately. Instead of providing one discount code to all shoppers, try rewarding shoppers for following through with specific calls-to-action, such as when they acted on an upsell product that was recommended during the checkout process. By assigning a unique discount code to each upsell product, you can also track which promotional products are moving the fastest.
What improves customer experience more than when a brand goes out of its way to build meaningful relationships with its customers? Building a relationship with your eCommerce customers can increase customer loyalty and ensure long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. By identifying with your customers’ emotional reasoning and addressing the causes they care about, you will create opportunities for them to organically bond with your brand and feel a sense of affinity towards your business. It’s all about sharing common values with your customer base.
The average customer’s process for making decisions about which products to buy is influenced by their emotional reasoning, their pragmatic reasoning, and their behaviors. In other words, a shopper needs to feel good about buying a product and also know that the product will meet their needs. When, how, and why they follow through with buying the product has to do with their unique behaviors. That being said, you can persuade your shoppers to buy into your brand by speaking to their emotional side, and the best way to do this is to offer the kind of content they’ll care about and value.
The following are specific content ideas that you can weave into your eCommerce web pages to improve the overall customer experience of your site:
● Touch Upon Causes that Reflect Your Brand Identity—Social intelligence is regarded more highly than IQ in 2021. People have become extremely conscientious of social issues and everyone seems to have a fully formed opinion on the matters they care about most. While you wouldn’t want to alienate one audience in favor of another, you can use your website content to touch upon the social causes that reflect your brand’s identity. Doing so will help like-minded customers to view your brand as more than a business. They will view your brand as an ally and trusted voice.
● Stay on Message—Once you know your audience and have established your brand’s voice, you can then feature clear branding messages in your eCommerce content that help your shoppers connect with the purposes behind the products you sell. This type of content strategy helps to build brand affinity because shoppers will feel like they’re joining a community just by purchasing your products.
● Use Videos, Social Media Feeds, and Blogs—The more engaging and interactive your eCommerce site is, the better the customer experience will be. While you don’t want to overwhelm your web pages with too much flashy content, embedding relevant videos here and there, as well as featuring a social media feed where appropriate, can provide visitors with content they find valuable.
Does your eCommerce website offer visitors an excellent customer experience? If your site is lacking a responsive web design, engaging content, personalization features, impressive customer reviews, and an enhanced checkout process, then you should give the eCommerce marketing experts at FTx 360 a call.
FTx 360 offers scalable, easy-to-use eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce that are designed to accommodate rapid business growth. Our eCommerce Marketing Services provide:
● Customer Website Design—We create innovative and user-friendly eCommerce websites that deliver positive shopping experiences.
● Responsive Website Development—Our designers and developers build eCommerce sites that work seamlessly on all devices and across platforms.
● Product Copy Creation—Our creative content writers produce accurate, SEO-friendly descriptions for products and services that engage customers and boost sales.
● Product Management—Our technological capabilities encompass the full spectrum of product management, integrating flawlessly into your eCommerce website.
● Payment Gateway Integration—Integrating the leading payment gateways into eCommerce, FTx 360 provides secure transactions with multiple payment options.
● Performance and UX Reporting—We provide continuing optimization services and work to identify areas of your eCommerce website that could be improved so that you never stop broadening your reach.
If you’re ready to upgrade your eCommerce site, our developers and designers can create a unique, reliable, and fully customized eCommerce store for you that offers an excellent customer experience and delivers a consumer checkout follow-through success rate that far surpasses your current rate. Contact us to get started.
If you run a pet company, you understand that the love pet parents have for their furry friends is boundless. Pet parents delight in doting on their dogs and cats, taking photos of their pets, and connecting with other pet lovers online.
You can also connect with pet lovers online, boost your brand, and build your customer base. We’ve put together the best marketing strategies for pet companies that you can start using today.
As a pet supply store owner, your day-to-day operations revolve around assisting customers, stocking inventory, and making sure your prices are competitive. You might not be thinking about your brand’s online presence because it might not be immediately obvious how online consumer awareness about your brand could impact your business sales. Or perhaps you’ve ruled out social media marketing, having assumed you don’t have the time, money, or patience to deal with an additional hassle.
Lucky for you, getting into the swing of maintaining a Facebook business page doesn’t have to be a hassle and it doesn’t have to cost you a dime unless you use paid advertisements, which isn’t even necessary when you’re first starting out. By simply creating a Facebook business page that includes your store location and contact information, you can increase sales at your pet supply store. But how? The fact of the matter is that Facebook is a local search engine in its own right; one that’s on par with Google, in fact, and you should treat it like one.
Thanks to Facebook Graph Search and the fact that Facebook added a keyword search function as well as hashtags, having a Facebook business page is as valuable as having a Google My Business page. If you only have time to maintain one social media account, it has to be Facebook.
If you’re exceedingly busy, how can you get the most out of your Facebook business page while dedicating as little time as possible to posting? Here are three tips to focus on to get your page up and running on all cylinders.
Share your pet industry knowledge by posting expert tips that both educate and inform Facebook users about your experience-based insights, recommendations, and anecdotes. By creating educational posts about your products, you will subtly and effectively imply that your pet supply store is the best place to find the products you’re featuring on Facebook.
We really can’t stress this enough—sounding salesy will backfire. Your Facebook posts shouldn’t look or sound like advertisements. Frankly, Facebook advertisements that actually work don’t look or sound like advertisements. Instead, aim to present personal-sounding posts that focus on pet-parent lifestyles, the joys of having dogs and cats, and other pet-loving messages that only gently suggest your products belong in the overall picture.
Creating Facebook posts where you remind customers to leave reviews on your Facebook page is a good habit to get into. Depending on the privacy levels of your Facebook followers, you can actually tag their handles as you respond to their comments and thank them individually for their business. If it’s clear that a follower has recently shopped at your location, make a Facebook post just for them that asks them to post a customer review on your page.
Instagram offers its users a magnitude of personal entertainment, but personal socializing is no longer the primary reason people scroll through Instagram. Today, there are more than 25 million business profiles on Instagram. Instagram paid advertisements have the power to pull in more revenue, on average, than most traditional advertising campaigns. For pet retailers, Instagram can be an excellent tool to introduce your brand to users, engage with customers, and showcase your products, services, and pets for sale.
That being said, maintaining a personal Instagram account is not going to cut it in terms of marketing your pet retail business on social. So, make sure to switch your account to a “Professional Account,” which will make posting, commenting, DMing, and advertising far easier.
The trick to making Instagram work for you is to focus on the quality of your content first and foremost. Yes, posting regularly plays an important role, too, but Instagram values—and rewards—quality over quantity any day. And you’ll want to post a variety of content media, such as photos, videos, and graphics, on both your business profile and in your Instagram stories to increase interaction with your followers. Once you get the hang of this rudimentary, immediate form of interaction, you can try stepping up your Insta-game by using “Live,” a feature that broadcasts video content to your followers to watch and comment on in real-time.
If this sounds complicated, don’t get discouraged. You don’t have to use the most advanced Instagram features straight out of the gate. Instead, try the following content ideas.
Carousel posts are single Instagram posts that include up to 10 photos that users can swipe through. Instagram carousel posts are one of the most versatile marketing tools you can use on Instagram, which is why we’re mentioning them first. The longer a user is engaged with a post, the higher Instagram will rank the post. When posts rank high, Instagram will recommend them to users. By virtue of the fact that swiping through ten photos takes more time than scrolling past one, Instagram carousel can help your posts rank higher so that Instagram starts recommending them.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, a “caption this” challenge is when you post a photo that depicts a curious, humorous, or downright puzzling scene and ask your followers to caption the photo to help bring clarity to what’s being depicted. Posts featuring dogs and cats interacting in funny ways are excellent “caption this” subjects. As your followers caption the post photo in the comments section, you can respond to increase social engagement.
Post presentation is everything on Instagram. When users visit your Instagram business profile, they will either click the follow button or bounce away from your profile based on the initial impression your profile delivers. Using an Instagram layout template such as Insta Grid’s “Puzzle” can help you make an excellent first impression. With this particular layout, Instagram will “chop” a single photo into six posts so that once all six posts are published, all of the posts’ “puzzle pieces” form a larger, complete picture.
Animal shelters are busy organizations. Often staffed by volunteers, animal shelters and rescue organizations are pressed for time, have limited resources, and tend to be solely focused on the important objective of placing rescued pets into loving households. If you own and operate an animal shelter, you may not believe that marketing on social media can benefit your business in terms of assisting the pet adoption process. But this isn’t the case when it comes to the social site, Twitter.
Twitter has evolved a great deal since it first came on the scene over a decade ago. Today, Twitter users can post photos, share articles, and even include calls-to-action, or CTAs, in the footers of their posts. Though Twitter will always have a character limit—which means you’ll have to be short, sweet, and to the point in every post—the fact that you can include hashtags makes Twitter the ideal platform to connect rescue animals with prospective pet parents.
Twitter can even help your business to go one step further than marketing the adoption options at your animal shelter. Using relevant hashtags and location check-ins, you can recruit volunteers, build your list of foster homes, promote fundraisers, and connect with other animal rescue groups in your area, such as non-profit veterinarians that will neuter and spay your incoming feral animals from off the street.
Experiment with the following Twitter tips as part of your outreach strategy and before long, you’ll consider Twitter an invaluable tool in your adoption toolkit.
It takes a bit of research and a lot of creativity but using hashtags in your Twitter posts to get the word out about your upcoming animal adoption events is a must. Aim to include about 5 hashtags in each post, and use a combination of trending hashtags, location-based hashtags, and one of your branded hashtags. For example, #petadoption, #adoptdontshop, #petsofinstagram, #yourcityandstate, #youranimalsheltername will be more than enough hashtags to get the word out on social and get potential pet parents to your event.
Another excellent habit to get into—from time to time, try quoting one of your previous Tweets with the caption “ReTweet if you agree!” This Twitter strategy can increase engagement, build awareness about an animal rescue issue, and encourage conversations. You can also reward followers for retweeting your Tweets by offering a discount on your pet adoption fee with proof of a retweet.
Without a doubt, the most advantageous reason to use Twitter to market your animal shelter is that Tweeting photos of your adorable, adoptable dogs and cats will help you place them in homes. Unlike featuring rescue dogs and cats on your website, which can be cumbersome for web visitors to share, a Tweet is fast and easy to share on Twitter. A single post about a recently rescued dog, for example, can get retweeted exponentially in a matter of seconds.
People love watching pet videos on the internet. On Facebook and Instagram, short videos of adorable animals result in higher engagement rates than videos featuring other content. But YouTube has changed the game for pet and animal video content. As a video streaming social site that offers a multitude of video lengths, YouTube has become the home of a wide variety of pet video categories, from short DIY videos featuring pet care tips to reality TV shows about dog trainers, cat psychics, and horse whisperers.
For any pet care company that’s considering launching a YouTube channel, the undertaking will have its challenges, and once you get into the swing of things, you will notice obvious pros and cons. Firstly, understand that this is a crowded space. There’s a lot of pet content on YouTube. But if your business objective is to establish your brand as an authority within the pet care industry for the purposes of gaining local customers, marketing your pet care business on YouTube should bring you more benefits than drawbacks.
Offering viewers quality videos is hands-down the most important aspect of using YouTube to market your pet care company. This means using a professional-grade camera and the best lighting and sound equipment you can afford. You don’t need to aim to produce Oscar-award-winning content, but you should be prepared to meet YouTube’s standards of visual and audio quality if you want to convert viewers into customers. Posting regularly is equally important, and of course, being sure to put out content that pet parents want and need will be tantamount to your channel’s success.
Let’s say you have a camera, enough natural light, a decent lavalier microphone, and a brave employee who’s willing to be on camera… What are you actually going to shoot? Here are some content ideas to get you started.
If you’re just starting out on YouTube, producing 3 to 5-minute videos rather than long-form content is a reasonable goal that you’ll be able to manage. How-to videos will never go out of style on YouTube, which is why we recommend you aim to produce a series of short videos on how to groom dogs, cats, and even exotics. The viral potential of a chinchilla grooming how-to, for example, is immeasurable.
Another excellent short-form video content idea is to use “before & after” transformations of dogs, cats, and exotics. By using the time-lapse feature of your camera, you can show a complete makeover from a muddy puppy to a cleaned-up pup in a matter of 60 seconds. Include real-time footage of basic pet care, too, and present certain grooming steps in a tutorial format so that your video is both entertaining and helpful.
People greatly appreciate getting step-by-step assistance when they’re trying to accomplish a task that they know is over their heads. If you have any expertise concerning the paperwork and protocol of registering a pet as a service dog or emotional support animal, then offering viewers a detailed how-to on the subject is a must. Nowadays, more and more people have a real need for emotional support animals, but registering an appropriate animal through the proper channels can be intimidating. You will definitely boost your brand if you post videos on this subject.
Veterinarians are as important to pet parents as pet supply stores. Though pet parents may not take their dogs and cats to the vet as frequently as they pick up pet food, pet care products, and pet toys from their preferred retailer, the relationships they have with their pets’ veterinarians are no less valuable.
As a local business that provides in-person services, veterinarians must carefully geo-target their digital marketing efforts. Creating and maintaining a Google My Business page is a must. When you create a GMB listing, your veterinarian business and its location will appear on Google Maps, which means that anyone who is using Google to find a vet for their pet will see your business’s page, along with your website and other contact information, and get in touch.
You can enhance your online visibility by launching a blog on your veterinarian website and regularly posting each blog article’s URL to your Google My Business page. For example, if you publish one blog article per week, simply use the published article’s URL to create a Google My Business post. The content will automatically populate on your GMB page, and best of all, Google will assess the article’s SEO and elevate your GMB page accordingly.
Sounds easy enough, but what if you’ve never written a blog before? Where should you start? What should you write about? How can you get the most out of launching and maintaining a blog? Here are some pointers to start you off in the right direction.
When a pet parent realizes their furry friend isn’t feeling well, the internet is the first expert they consult. In other words, people use Google to diagnose potential pet problems even before they pick up the phone to make an appointment with their vet. By covering relevant health topics and common pet health issues on your veterinarian business blog, you can drive website traffic and influence local pet parents to choose your business the next time their pet is sick or injured.
Of course, you’ll need to get permission from your customers first, but featuring the dogs and cats of your real-life customers in your blog articles can do wonders for increasing online engagement and marketing your pet company. This community-building strategy will help other customers feel connected to your clinic, especially if you include a comments section beneath your blog articles where pet parents can discuss the topics at hand.
Including CTAs at the bottom of your blog articles is a must, and one of the most important CTAs to include is a newsletter subscription sign-up button. By collecting your readers’ email addresses in this fashion, you can let them know every time a new blog article is published, which can spark immediate web traffic and online engagement.
We barely scratched the surface in terms of the marketing strategies that can build your pet company’s brand online, but hopefully, this article has given you some ideas to market your business. If you’d prefer the social media experts at FTx 360 to handle marketing your pet business, feel free to contact us anytime. We offer pet shop website design and development, social media campaign handling, and content creation that’s based on pet industry market research. Grow your social audience and provide your customers with the pet information they want most.
Yes, it’s August, but it isn’t too late to strategize and market your back-to-school promotional campaigns.
If the very thought of spearheading your own back-to-school marketing campaign overwhelms you, give us a call at FTx 360. Our marketing strategists can work with just about any budget and no campaign timeline is too short.
For those of you who are ready to tackle your own back-to-school marketing, this article is packed with the best advertising strategy tips to help you market your back-to-school sales, drive website and in-store traffic, and gain appreciative customers who will keep shopping with you into winter and next year.
This back-to-school season, you want to deliver a marketing campaign that actually resonates with consumers. Your current customers, as well as potential ones, aren’t interested in hearing about your products and services unless your campaign messages speak to them personally and address their wants, needs, interests, and pain points.
Though it may seem counterintuitive to place your products and services in the background of your ads, this adjustment will help you convert consumers into paying customers. Your promotional content and messages should focus on personalization with the aim of conveying relevant offers that speak to the unique needs of each shopper.
Rather than use salesy ads that feature products with discounted prices in a straightforward manner, instead, highlight the relevancy of your products and convey how your products will make your customers’ lives easier.
If it’s not immediately clear to you why some of your products would be relevant to certain segments of your shoppers but not others, then it’s time to dig into your CRM software data. Your CRM data—or Customer Relationship Management data which is associated with your online or in-store POS—contains the purchase histories of all of your customers along with other insightful data. By grouping your customers into segments, you will be able to identify the products, services, preferences, spending thresholds, and interests of each segment. Once you understand your customers’ pain points and know what they like, want, and need, you can speak to them in a manner that will seem personal to them, using “the three Ts of relevancy.”
Rather than present your product in a straightforward manner within your back-to-school marketing campaigns, instead, present your shoppers with a topic that’s relevant to one of their pain points. By addressing a specific topic, providing information on that topic that’s relevant to your shoppers, and presenting your product as the solution to the topic at hand, your marketing campaigns will resonate with shoppers.
For example, rather than post a photo of a notebook with a “60% off” sticker on social media, which is as uncreative as it gets, instead, feature this shocking fact in your social post:
“Students that use a pen and paper to take notes in class are 62% more likely to remember lessons in the long term than students who use laptops.” —Princeton University Study
That’s a conversation starter right there! As the social media conversation takes off in the comments section under your post, a byproduct will be that parents, students, and teachers rush off to purchase notebooks before they’re sold out… at your store.
In terms of marketing products and services that consumers need right now, promoting back-to-school offers during the back-to-school season is ideal timing, obviously. But we recommend that retailers go the extra mile by researching the return date for your local public schools, private schools, colleges, and universities.
Public schools tend to open earlier than private ones, for example, which means the back-to-school season in your region could begin in late July and extend through September.
To amplify personalization, you could launch different digital back-to-school promotional campaigns for each educational institution using school-specific social media hashtags, for instance. A little research will go a long way in this regard.
The third and final “T” of the 3 Ts of Relevancy has to do with the type of promotional marketing campaign you deliver to your customers. Our quote above states, “This is the format I prefer!” What we’re referring to here are the campaign delivery methods. Not all of your shoppers are going to want to hear about your back-to-school sale via email newsletter, but a lot of them will.
The next sections of this article will focus on the various campaign formats you can use to reach your current customers as well as new ones. This is where personalization is key, however. If you want shoppers to act on your back-to-school sale, you have to deliver your campaigns in the formats they want. You might discover that certain segments of your customers want one format while others want a different format. As a result, you might need to launch back-to-school campaigns in multiple formats, and that’s okay.
These are the most common promotional campaign delivery format methods:
● Email Marketing Campaigns
● Google PPC Ad Campaigns
● Facebook & Instagram Ad Campaigns
● SMS Text Message Campaigns
● Responsive Web Design Landing Page Campaigns
● Referral Code Campaigns
Let’s take a look at how you can use each one.
EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGN
Never overlook the promotional power of an email marketing campaign. Why are email campaigns so effective? Because the recipients have already agreed to receive emails from you. In fact, you can bet that emails are their preferred format in terms of hearing from you. Anyone who signed up for your email newsletter or supplied you with their email address to enroll in your loyalty program wants to hear from you via email!
Using personalization to promote the most relevant back-to-school items to your segmented email recipients, consider launching a campaign similar to this one we composed for a pet supply store:
Subject Line: A Back-to-School Bundle Just for You, [FIRST NAME]
Email: Get Fluffy ready for back-to-school season with these hand-picked items bundled just for your furry friend and you!
Relevant Product Bundle: Cat calming treats, an assemble-yourself cat tree, and a cat-themed adult coloring book
When it comes to finding the best back-to-school deals in town, a lot of consumers rely on Google to find stores near them. If you have yet to set up a Google My Business account, or don’t understand why you should, we’ve written an entire article on the subject, Making the Most Out of Google My Business, which will guide you through the process. Once you’ve set up your Google My Business account, Google’s geographically specific algorithms will start recommending your business in location-based search results. Then, link your Google AdWords ad to your GMB Page.
The best Google AdWords campaigns are attention-grabbing and hook the viewer right away. Bear in mind the 3 Ts of Relevancy when composing your PPC AdWords content, like we’ve done for this fitness center:
Web Page Title: Sara Dance Center | Last Chance to Join for $1
Web Page Description: Professional ballroom dance competitor-turned-instructor, Maria, is looking for 10 dedicated students to whip into shape this back-to-school season at the low cost of $1. Click to find out how you can participate in Maria’s 30-day Salsa program hosted by Sara Dance Center!
Taking photos of the kids on the first day of school and sharing them on Facebook and Instagram has become an annual ritual for most parents, and the back-to-school fun doesn’t stop there. In fact, parents and students alike use Facebook and Instagram to find deals on school supplies as well as search for apparel, accessories, and fashion styling inspiration. Running an ad campaign on Facebook and Instagram is a good idea for both brick-and-mortar retailers and eCommerce shops. Just remember that when you create your back-to-school ad campaign in Facebook Business Manager, use detailed targeting so that your paid ad isn’t wasted on the wrong users.
The most important aspect of any social media ad campaign is the Call-to-Action button you include. Don’t even think about running an ad without a CTA. It won’t be worth your time, money, or effort. In our humble opinion, the most valuable CTA you can include is a lead generator. Check out this example we put together for one of our restaurant clients who wanted to enroll customers into their loyalty rewards program:
Headline: Students’ Specials for Back-to-School
Description: This August and September, [RESTAURANT] is offering swag and sandwiches to students who sign up for our customer loyalty rewards program. Power through the long academic year with meals from [RESTAURANT]. Click the Sign-Up button below to claim your loyalty swag and sandwich, and start saving!
Call-to-Action Button: “Sign Up”
Lead Generator Fields: “First Name” & “Email Address”
Everyone loves text messages. In fact, most Americans prefer texting rather than calling when it comes to relaying quick messages. The average text message open rate is 99%, and 96% of all text messages are opened within 15 minutes. In terms of marketing, those are dream statistics. While you would never want to text your customers too frequently, choosing to contact them via SMS text message during one or two special times of the year is appropriate. One of those special times of the year should be back-to-school season since it’s second only to Christmas.
Launching an SMS text message campaign to market your back-to-school sale will only work if you’ve collected your customers’ cell phone numbers, and to be honest, this marketing campaign method works best for professional services businesses like salons, spas, and barbershops. If you run a professional service business, try an SMS back-to-school campaign idea like this one we launched for our beauty salon client:
Text Message: Want to be featured in our back-to-school lookbook? Revamp your look for a fraction of the price this August & September at [SALON NAME]! We’re offering 90% off to anyone who wants to model in our future social media marketing! Reply with ‘BOOK ME’ to reserve your appointment now!
Landing pages can be used for a variety of marketing reasons to pull in customers, but they all serve one major purpose—to convert website visitors into customers who complete the entire buyer’s journey. More often than not, a landing page will offer visitors a special gift, such as a free download, ebook, webinar signup, free trial, or exclusive access to products and services. Landing pages are unique in this sense because they don’t directly market products to visitors. Instead, they trigger instant engagement by featuring a form, survey, quiz, virtual tour, or some other personalized interaction. In terms of marketing your back-to-school sale, you can think of a landing page as an interactive step that motivates website visitors to buy your products. The trick with using landing pages as part of your back-to-school marketing campaigns is to make sure you have a responsive web design in place that displays properly on all devices.
As we mentioned, landing pages can be used in a variety of ways to promote your back-to-school sale, and a whole host of different kinds of businesses use them. Here’s an example of a back-to-school landing page we put together for one of our clients that runs an academic tutoring business:
Web Page Header: There’s only one thing you need to know… you’ll never stop learning.
Content: Take control of your learning by working on the skills you choose at your own pace with our online courses for students of all levels. Sharpen your skills with over 1,000 interactive exercises. Math, science, algebra, biology, computer programming, history, art, grammar & spelling, economics…
Start learning now.
Students receive free online classes and one-on-one online tutoring throughout September 31st. Interested in tutoring? There’s a form for that as well!
(Include two forms, one for parents & students to sign up and another for tutors.)
A referral campaign, or a “refer-a-friend” campaign, is a marketing strategy that retailers use to incentivize their existing customers to recommend their store and products to friends, family, and acquaintances. Typically, referral programs of this nature will reward their customers for making successful referrals and also reward the people they successfully refer. Often a discount code is used, i.e. a referral code. Launching a referral code campaign is a great strategy for brick-and-mortar retailers who want to boost back-to-school sales, and this campaign idea is also effective for eCommerce retailers.
The fun thing about this back-to-school campaign idea is that you can deliver your referral code offer to your customers any way you—and they—would like. You can send out an email marketing campaign or SMS text message marketing campaign that promotes your back-to-school referral code, place a Facebook & Instagram ad, reword your Google My Business Page to promote your referral code, and link to a new landing page that also has the referral code. The sky is really the limit when it comes to using referral codes as part of your back-to-school marketing. Check out what we did for our health & wellness client recently:
Hook: Give $5, Get $5
Headline: Help your friends feel their best while back at school
Body: Loving your health supplements and wellness products from [RETAILER]? Share the love with your friends, family, and fellow students! We’ll give them $5 off to support their wellbeing if they use your unique referral code! And we’ll give you $5 off your next order, too! Enter your email address to receive a unique referral code and start spreading the love!
Now that we’ve laid out six back-to-school marketing campaign ideas all you need to do is come up with personalized content and launch your campaigns! But what if you need help with the graphic design and layout of your campaigns?
Attention-grabbing advertisements are an integral aspect of any solid retail marketing strategy. Whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or an eCommerce shop—or perhaps both—your offline and online presence must be strong if you want to expand your reach, drive traffic, and convert first-time visitors into returning customers.
In order to help retailers do just that, our sister company, FTx, has developed user-friendly graphic design software. This software, AdPro, can be used anytime at no charge. That’s right, it’s free! This software was engineered to deliver professional results. Regardless of your skill level, the advertisements you can build will look amazing and can be used for all of your marketing, promotional, and social media campaigns.
Best of all, free AdPro comes with a full library of industry-specific templates and holiday themes, including back-to-school templates and themes!
Interested in working with a digital marketing agency to handle your promotional campaigns this back-to-school season and beyond? FTx 360 can work within any budget. Our experienced social media and email marketers can handle your campaigns, target your audience, and help take your business to the next level. Contact us today to get started.
FTx 360 is a full-service digital marketing agency that offers the most advanced digital marketing solutions for businesses of all industries, and that’s not all. Our digital marketing specialists are also committed to serving the greater marketing community by publishing informative articles every week.
Our July articles covered the importance of choosing the best social media platforms to market your brand, the how-tos of writing content that attracts Google bots, and the measures business owners must go to ensure their websites are both ADA compliant and mobile friendly.
In case you missed them, we’ve put together brief summaries of each article that you can reference as you market your business online. Just remember, nothing beats reading the originals, so we encourage you to check out the full-length articles if you want to get the most out of our digital marketing strategies, tips, and techniques.
Ensuring that social media marketing works for your business will depend on choosing the right platforms. Each social media platform offers users a different experience. Each platform provides brands with advantages and disadvantages. And each social platform must be carefully analyzed for its business marketing potential.
The first article we published this July compared the benefits of five major social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube—to help readers determine which ones will best serve their marketing goals.
A veteran social media platform that has been around longer than any other social platform, Facebook is by no means passé. Yes, there are newer, more trendy platforms out there, but in terms of ideal user demographics and the ability to connect businesses with new customers, Facebook remains an excellent choice for social media marketing. Bottom line, Facebook is an excellent platform for B2C companies that want to post micro-content to increase brand awareness, gain followers, stimulate social engagement, and convert followers into customers.
More so than any other social media platform, Instagram is all about the visual. As an ideal platform to post photos, images, graphics, and viral memes, Instagram has taken over and dominated the social media marketing space for businesses that are capable of portraying their products and services using images and little else. Instagram really isn’t a listening and learning platform. In terms of fostering conversations, it pales in comparison to Facebook, but that doesn’t mean this platform is any less valuable. Bottom line, Instagram is best for B2C retail companies, especially when those companies primarily sell on an eCommerce platform.
Twitter is an information-spreading platform that serves news outlets and organizations that either cover or contribute to current events. Twitter tends to be politically charged and entire debates can unfold within a single thread of Tweets. That being said, certain business owners can get a lot out of using Twitter for their social media marketing. Since Twitter is a real-time social media platform, every Tweet you post is equivalent to sending a group text message to the entire world. Thanks to hashtags and the immediacy of the platform itself, Twitter offers businesses a way to engage with their audiences in real time, having complete conversations. Bottom line, Twitter will serve B2B and B2C businesses that want to spread information, comment on current events, and elevate their professional authority within their industry.
LinkedIn has had a slow evolution in terms of joining the ranks of well-known social media sites. Considered the world’s largest professional network on the internet, only in recent years has LinkedIn been regarded as an authentic “social media” platform. It wasn’t until LinkedIn provided newsfeeds and the ability for users to post blogs and other content that it joined the ranks of social media. Initially, LinkedIn was used strictly as an employment-oriented online platform that connected professionals and aided job seekers in obtaining the best positions on the open job market. Bottom line, LinkedIn is best for B2B companies that can commit to regularly publishing informative blog articles. If one of your social media marketing goals is to elevate your brand’s expert standing within your industry, then using LinkedIn is for you.
YouTube exclusively offers video content, though some channels publish audio-only files with a static image that fills the video field. When an internet user wants to watch video content, YouTube is the social media platform they go to, hands down. In this sense, YouTube has virtually no competition, not even from Vimeo. If you’re prepared to create professional-looking video content, then using YouTube for your social media marketing could prove more effective than all other platforms combined. Bottom line, when it comes to which social media platform businesses should use to publish video content, no platform compares to YouTube. Whether you own a B2B or B2C business, if you want to reach a massive audience using video content, then you must publish on YouTube, period.
This article also went into great depth, helping readers ascertain their social media marketing goals, so be sure to read the full article if you want to learn more.
The next July article we published on our blog informed readers about how to write web content that will engage customers while pleasing Google’s algorithms. All digital content that’s published on your website has the potential to help elevate your website’s search engine ranking on Google. In our article, we defined the characteristics of “well written” content and described how to write content that will satisfy both consumers and Google bots.
Your business is unique, which means your customers are unique individuals with unique needs. This means that the content you write should speak to your audience, so bear the following in mind to get the most out of the content you write:
Write your content as though you are speaking to your ideal customer, one-on-one, in their language with their vocabulary, remaining mindful of their interests and pain points. Use the following checklist as you write:
In order to compose effective content that Google bots will love just as much as consumers, keep the following pointers in mind as you write:
Finally, we examined how robots.txt files can help Google crawl your web pages, and we also went over black hat SEO, cloaking, and how to avoid these major Google violations. We strongly encourage you to read the full article to stay informed.
In our third July article, we tackled the ins and outs of transforming your business website so that it meets the accessibility standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Currently, there are over 60 million Americans who are living with a disability. Physical disabilities that affect a person’s ability to use a website include:
You can take action today and work towards meeting the ADA’s compliance standards by making the following simple changes to your website:
For a comprehensive assessment of where your website stands in terms of ADA compliance, use the following tools to check the accessibility level of your website:
Put very simply, in order to meet ADA compliance standards, your website must be:
A perceivable website is a site that offers both visual and auditory options for every element that appears throughout the website. For example, a blog article will also offer an MP3 playbox so that blind visitors can listen to, instead of read, the article. Embedded videos that appear on a web page will include closed captioning that displays text, enabling deaf visitors to understand what the video is talking about. In short, a perceivable website is one that provides alternative ways to consume content.
An operable website is a site that enables visitors to easily navigate through web pages via any method they choose—keyboard, mouse, automatic or manual scrolling, or touchscreen. Operable websites do not place time limits or restrictions on web pages, which would otherwise cause web page sessions to “time out.” Another aspect to consider when it comes to operable websites, is that the web pages should avoid use of physical “triggers” such as automatically running a strobe light that could cause migraines or seizures.
The basic rule for ensuring your website is understandable is this: a visitor should spend almost no time trying to figure out how to use your website, but rather spend their time on your site gaining information. Using simplistic, logical web page layouts can greatly reduce the amount of time visitors spend familiarizing themselves with your site. For example, keeping the search bar, newsletter opt-in, and chatbox in the same spot on every web page of your site can aid in presenting an understandable website.
You’ve probably heard this term before—robust web design is critical for countless reasons. A robust website will work well on all browsers and perform properly on all devices, including mobile smartphones, tablets, and other handheld devices. But did you know that you can also design your website to perform robustly for disabled visitors? By including assistive technologies on your site, you can enhance website engagement with the vision and hearing impaired. The key is to continue making upgrades as technologies evolve.
Be sure to check out the full article if you want to learn the specifics of ADA compliance and website accessibility.
Our final article of the month discussed not only the importance of website mobile-friendliness, but also what you can do right now to ensure that your website is mobile friendly. Today, mobile friendliness is the one and only ranking factor that Google uses to either promote or demote websites in their search results. What this means is that if your website isn’t configured to display excellently on mobile devices, then Google is not going to rank it.
However, a mobile-friendly website will not only get crawled, indexed, and ranked by Google, but it will also ensure that consumers can visit your site from their mobile devices, encounter an excellent user interface, and have a wonderful experience while navigating from one web page to the next. When visitors have a positive experience on your website using their mobile devices, they will be far more likely to become repeat visitors, first-time customers, social media followers, and even lifelong loyal customers.
In the article, we introduced the following three configuration techniques you can use to ensure your website will be mobile friendly:
The term “responsive web design” refers to websites built with HTML code that are able to render the original HTML code differently depending on the screen size of the device. Meaning, the webmaster only needs to build one website, because the code itself will dictate how content is displayed from one device to the next. Responsive web design is the most cost-effective, time-effective configuration technique because it has the easiest design pattern to implement and maintain. For this reason, Google recommends responsive web design over the other available configuration techniques.
Dynamic serving is slightly different from responsive web design. Though dynamic serving uses the same URLs on the mobile version that appear on the original website, it generates a different version of HTML code depending on the device the site is being displayed on, as well as specific users’ browser data. Dynamic serving enables a website to be fully accessible. However, Google bots tend to crawl this configuration differently than how they crawl responsive web designs, which means you would have to invest in server-side rendering as a temporary workaround for these crawlers.
“Separate URLs” is a configuration technique that provides different code to each device category, each using separate URLs. First, the user’s device type is detected. Then, the configuration uses HTTP and Vary HTTP Headers to redirect users to the appropriate page. In the case of separate URLs, the mobile site will utilize a mobile-specific URL, such as an “m-dot,” “dot-mobi,” or even a separate folder altogether. A common myth is that this configuration method causes duplicate content that Google will penalize, but this rumor is completely untrue.
Here is a checklist you can use to evaluate the mobile-friendliness of your website:
For additional information about website mobile-friendliness, including links to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool, Google’s Mobile Usability Tool, and Google’s Speed Test, be sure to read the full article.
The FTx 360 blog is our online newsroom where we discuss the latest digital marketing trends to help readers like you promote their businesses, websites, eCommerce sites, and social media profiles for the purposes of converting web visitors into customers.
Each week, one of our digital marketing experts publishes an informative article relevant to their specialty. Article topics range from website design & development, marketing strategies & SEO campaigns, social media marketing, eCommerce site inbound marketing, and so much more!
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