You can make all the substance you need; however, you shouldn’t post it if it’s not offering some incentive. It’s significant that each page on your site has fair substance, that is, something like three hundred words in length. Making content conflictingly can likewise hurt you. At the point when guests arrive at your site, they hope to find applicable data and related pieces that offer some incentive. On the off chance that they don’t track that down, they’ll likely look somewhere else.
It is also critical that you only discuss topics that are relevant to what you do. You could expand on a word that is completely irrelevant to your sector in an attempt to build traffic to your site, but you risk alienating your present audience as well as any additional individuals you wind up attracting in.
Some SEO pioneers examine the significance of creating good material over huge amounts of material. Google needs sufficient subtleties to discover what’s going on with your page and regardless of whether you can give the appropriate response individuals are searching for. If you present an incentive for individuals devouring your posts and exhibit authority, you can gather trust. When you have it, you should keep creating fresh material.
Individuals are probably not going to get back to your site in the event that you don’t routinely produce content. However, they are additionally far-fetched to return, assuming you just post around one theme. Groundbreaking thoughts are continually emerging, so regardless of the industry you’re in, you ought to have various things to expound on. Having new content being introduced through your channels can truly draw individuals into getting back to your website.
Each topic you expand on can assist you with growing your possible reach. In the event that you upgrade your substance for search, expanding on various points permits you to target various arrangements of keywords. With each keyword, you add that word’s search volume to your likely reach.
It is important to keep in mind that new firms should maintain a little more involved content process. Because they haven’t developed a substance library, they must guarantee that they handle their primary topics before moving on to related topics.
Streamlining your substance doesn’t end once you remember an objective keyword for your articles. Title tags and meta descriptions are fundamental components of search engine optimization that ought not to be neglected. Overlooking them implies a colossal missed potential for your content. The page title is as yet a significant positioning element for Google, so you need to ensure it’s advanced accurately for each page. It is recommended to add your keyword to the title if that is conceivable and ensure that your page title isn’t excessively long. If your page title is excessively long, chopping it down is inevitable.
Making content is extraordinary; however, search engines battle to comprehend the setting of your substance. You don’t need potential guests to see only 50% of your page title in the search results. These streamlining factors are considered via search engines when slithering your site; thus, they can further develop your content execution whenever done effectively.
Click-Through Rate gives some knowledge of how potential guests can tap on your site in the SERPs. On the off chance that you enhance your meta portrayals with a reasonable and appealing message on what individuals can find on your site, it becomes simpler so that they can check whether the data they’re searching for is on that page. The more probable individuals are to figure your site will give a solution to their search inquiry, the more traffic a page will acquire.
Once guests land on your site, the following objective is to keep them on your site. You don’t need your guests promptly ricocheting back to Google whenever they have perused something on your page. This is the reason you really want to urge guests to navigate your site. The ideal way of doing this is to make a call to action or CTA, which typically is a button that offers an activity to your guest. This can be, for example, a purchase button on an item page or a signup button for the bulletins. Don’t get carried away and attempt to have one fundamental call to action that stands apart from the remainder of your page.
Over the long haul, in the event that you produce top-caliber, important material, others will probably begin linking to it. At the point when that happens, Google noticed that different areas are remembering you as an expert in your space, which supports your search rankings. That is the reason outer links are fundamental to your SEO methodology. One more way of keeping individuals on your site is by adding significant inward links to different pages on your site.
By working out your content procedure, you will ideally acquire authority, and individuals will remember you are talented and reliable in your subject matter. This offers you the ideal chance to reference your own content through internal linking.
This is quite a significant piece of SEO and ought to be essential for your promoting endeavors. By adding internal links, your site guests and Google will realize what pages are identified with one another and can be intriguing when they’re searching for data on a specific subject. On the off chance that you have a library of related content, not referring to yourself is a mistake. Preferably, when guests go to your site, you will give an all-in-one resource to them. Fundamentally, they ought to have the option to visit your space and realize whatever they need to about your topic. So try to invest energy in your inner linking to make an extraordinary web page structure that keeps individuals on your site!
If your site isn’t dynamic enough with loading speeds or versatile while being searched, it is important for you to change your SEO technique, as you risk losing serious money! It is imperative that websites these days are mobile-friendly.
Around 4 years ago, Google changed to a system of mobile rankings. This implies that Google currently checks out the mobile rendition of your site to conclude how high your ranking should actually be. So if the desktop adaptation of your site is set up splendidly, yet your mobile site isn’t responsive by any means, this will be reflected in your rankings. Adversely, if that is the situation, make a point to deal with mobile search engine optimization. Today, over half of all traffic comes from cell phones. Also, that is the reason Google will, in general, lean toward versatile websites.
To set up your site for natural traffic from cell phones, you’ll need to guarantee that your site is responsive and that it loads in less than a couple of seconds. Versatility and page speed are significant positioning variables.
An extraordinary way of testing if your site is adapting well to mobile devices is to utilize Google’s test. This provides you with a sign of how effectively guests can use your page on cell phones.
In any case, don’t stop in the wake of really taking a look at this. The best exhortation is to visit your site on your own cell phone. Peruse your own site for some time and attempt to tap on each link, tab, and picture to perceive what occurs. Make sure that you do not stop testing the website until you are delighted. The Where, Why, What, When, and How, all should be satisfactorily answered! The bottom line is straightforward. Do not disregard mobile optimization in the event that you really need to expand your natural site traffic.
Conclusion
Generally speaking, it’s simple to foster these unfortunate SEO quirks and not put any time or consideration into further developing them. Notwithstanding, if you are growing positive routines and, as of now, setting a portion of the strategies discussed above in motion, it ought to be simpler and more viable to embrace the SEO flaws.
You don’t need one of the mistakes to cost you your rankings. Accordingly, by following SEO best practices, you can fuel results all the more effectively. On the off chance that you join these components into an undeniable SEO procedure, it can have a fantastic effect.
Indeed, even well-versed individuals can commit numerous normal SEO errors. It’s better to get familiar with the difficulties others have encountered and stay away from them in your promoting endeavors. You need an essential comprehension of SEO and to pose inquiries about specific strategies to guarantee your SEO techniques aren’t about attempting to deceive Google.
FTx 360 offers a full suite of marketing solutions, including affordable SEO services and online reputation management, at competitive prices. Whether you’re interested in our consulting services or would like to hire us to manage all of your SEO marketing needs, our team of experts can help your online presence grow. Contact us to learn more about our content marketing, social media marketing, and SEO marketing services.
Increasing the search engine ranking of your website is probably one of your top priorities if you’ve landed on this blog post.
Did you type “increase organic ranking” into Google’s search bar, discover our blog title, and click its blue-hyperlink title to learn more? If so, then you are a part of our website’s “organic traffic,” and the fact that you’re here will help to naturally increase our website’s “organic ranking” on Google.
So, thanks for that!
Your website’s daily visitor count is impacted by two factors, which are organic web traffic and traffic from paid advertisements and other lead generation strategies. Interestingly, Google values and rewards organic traffic more than any other form of traffic. This means that your website’s Google search engine ranking is actually based solely on organic traffic.
But we don’t need to convince you of the importance of increasing your organic ranking on Google and other search engines. We know why you’re here, so we’ll cut to the chase right after we try to convince you that if you really want to increase your organic ranking, you should contact our digital marketing specialists and we’ll tailor a customized SEO and SERP strategy for you that works. FTx 360 is a transparent digital marketing agency that serves both B2C and B2B businesses of all industries at affordable prices. Don’t believe us? Use this Build Your Own Quote form and see for yourself! Chances are, we’ll get back to you with a personalized quote before you even finish reading this article!
Now, let’s get down to SEO business… Here are 8 tips to increase organic ranking…
Google uses mobile-first website indexing algorithms, which means that if your website is not mobile-friendly, we have some very bad news for you. Your site isn’t getting ranked. Yikes! Drop everything right now and take the time to turn your desktop-configured website into a responsive, mobile-friendly one. Google has published an extremely helpful Mobile-first Indexing Best Practices Guide you can use. The same guide will help you confirm that Google bots will be able to crawl and index your website without issue.
You’re probably aware of the importance of using outbound links, also known as external links, in your web content. But what are you doing to increase the number of backlinks to your website? Backlinks are when other websites use your web page URLs as their own outbound links. When other websites link to your site, it elevates your standing with Google, and if those other websites hold a high Google ranking, then it can benefit your site’s ranking even more. Think of it as popularity by association, which is another form of “social proof.”
Let’s get down to brass tacks. The more backlinks you have to your website, the greater the chance that Google bots will presume you’re an authority in your field and should therefore be elevated in the SERP ranking. In the spirit of popularity, you’ll need to get social if you want to increase your backlinks. Meaning, you might need to send a few emails or—gulp—pick up the phone and ask reputable, non-competing websites, bloggers, and other influencers if they would like to exchange links with you wherein they hyperlink to your URLs on their sites and you do the same for them.
One of the biggest impactors of your Google ranking is the frequency with which you publish new content. New content, whether it be a new product description page, new landing page, or entirely revised website, provides Google with additional SEO keywords that it can use to recommend your website to search engine users. As users discover your website via Google, Google will assess the inbound traffic and reward your website accordingly by elevating its ranking. If you’re only publishing new web content on your site once a year, your organic ranking is probably going to fall lower and lower down in the search results.
The easiest “fix” to frequently generating new SEO might seem easier said than done, but we believe in you and know you can do it! By simply adding a blog to your website and committing to regularly publishing an article, you will naturally add SEO keywords to your website and the long-term accumulation will positively impact your Google ranking. Ideally, if you published two articles per week that each totaled 2,000 words, your SERP ranking would rise faster than a bun in an oven, but no one expects you to set the bar that high. In fact, regularity is more important than article length. If you can only publish one micro-blog every other week, then do it, stick to it, and the results will speak for themselves.
Elevating your search engine ranking is only helpful if you’re generating the right kind of web traffic. What is the right kind of web traffic? Web traffic that contains interested consumers who quickly convert into paying customers. It’s really not going to matter if you’re #1 on Google SERP if 100% of your web traffic contains twelve-year old French girls who are in no position to buy the used cars you’re selling in Boise, ID. Make sure your keywords and longtail keyword phrases will successfully target your ideal customer by using Google’s Keyword Planner.
A meta description is the readable description about your website that Google users see beneath your website title in the search results. Meta descriptions are elements of the HTML of your website, and typically range from 100 – 160 characters in length, or 22 words. Relevant meta descriptions that include a few targeted keywords tend to perform the best. Because the meta description of your web page is the main deciding factor of whether or not a user clicks or scrolls, you’ll want to make sure that the content is compelling, clear, and also attractive. With that in mind, be sure that your web domain page titles, otherwise called <title> HTML tags, are concise yet descriptive; and make sure that your ALT tags, which are additional HTML elements, include essential keywords.
Finally, after all the work you put into increasing your organic ranking on Google and other search engines, it’s important that you’re able to track your web visitors and tally all the leads your website generates on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This is because elevating your SERP ranking is really only half the battle. The other half involves making sure the results really are benefiting your business in the form of expanding your customer base and increasing your revenue. The Google Search Console and Google Analytics can provide SEO insights that you can leverage to adjust and improve your SEO and SERP strategies.
That concludes our tips to increase your website’s organic ranking, which means it’s time to either roll up your sleeves… or give us a call. The marketing specialists at FTx 360 would love to work with you to drive web traffic and boost engagement!
Have you ever walked into a house and fallen in love with the atmosphere? Everything from the home furnishings to the stylized decor to the archways that connect each beautifully laid out room contributed to the wonderful experience you had while there. At the time, you might not have been aware that an architect had to draw up blueprints and contractors had to construct the home, first and foremost, in order for the interior design team who came in next to paint, furnish, and decorate. You see, your experience at the house, which left a lasting impression on you, would not have been possible without the architect and the contractors who built according to the blueprints.
In the same way, the specific experience you have on any given website would not be possible without the architect of the website, otherwise known as the lead web developer, and his or her team of builders who are the web developers that actually construct the website by writing coded language.
Producing a final website is not possible without a web designer, or website design team, just as a house would never go on the market until the walls had been painted, the floors tiled, and the overall decor arranged to give the best impression to prospective buyers. Today, we are going to focus on web developers, but if you would like to learn more about web designers, check out Web Design Trends, which goes into detail on the subject.
In this article, you will learn about website developers, what they’re responsible for, and what they can do for your business. Frontend, backend, and full-stack web development skills are just the beginning of what professional website developers bring to the table. They also create the basic structure and presentation of a website using website scripting languages. All-in-all, their work greatly impacts SEO, inbound marketing, and even revenue increases. Keep reading to discover everything there is to know about web development and what hiring a web developer can do for your company.
A website developer is a skilled programmer who specializes in building “World Wide Web” applications, i.e. websites.
The anchor of a website, which is the bedrock that web developers build upon, is a URL. In today’s competitive market, all websites use “custom domains.” A custom domain, also referred to as a vanity URL, is the branded website name that appears in the address bar of every web browser. Custom domains are not free and must be purchased by a qualifying provider and registered.
There are three primary types of web developers who build out custom domain URL websites. These are frontend developers, backend developers, and full-stack developers. Let’s take a look at what each of these three types of developers do.
The term “frontend” refers to the “visitor-side” of a website. When you visit a website, everything you see from the layout to the color scheme to the CTA opt-in forms appear thanks to the work of the frontend web developer. Because frontend developers are responsible for the UI, or user interface, they tend to work closely with the site’s web designer. Frontend developers use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to craft the best UI possible, which we will take a closer look at further in this article.
As you might have guessed, just as the “frontend” developer is responsible for everything website visitors will see, the backend web developer is responsible for everything that happens behind the scenes in order to make a website function. Their territory is often referred to as the “server-side,” because backend developers work on the “guts” of the website within the server, application, and database. In order to ensure excellent UX, or user experience, backend developers collaborate with frontend developers as they develop code.
Highly experienced web developers generally go beyond offering either frontend or backend development services. Instead, these developers learn both sides of the development equation. Any website developer who offers frontend as well as backend web development is called a “full-stack web developer.” Known in the industry as development geniuses, full-stack web developers do it all because they know it all.
Whether you hire front-end and back-end developers or hire a single full-stack developer, your web developers should be mindful to build MarTech into your site for you. Shorthand for “marketing technology,” the term MarTech refers to any marketing software solution that helps marketers research, strategize, execute, analyze, and optimize their campaigns across all digital platforms. MarTech combines marketing with technology, and oftentimes marketers will consolidate multiple MarTech solutions into a stack, known as a MarTech Stack. The purpose of utilizing MarTech is to improve engagement with customers and drive sales, and yes, really smart web developers will build your website with your future marketing strategies in mind.
Every website presents an interface to the visitors who navigate from one web page to the next. The presentation of a website’s basic structure is the result of web developers using programming language to write code. The most common programming languages in use today are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Let’s take a look at each one so that you become familiar with web development jargon.
“HTML” stands for “hypertext markup language.” This programming language has been considered the standard markup language for websites since the 90s. You can think of HTML as the foundation that must be laid prior to building a beautiful house. Providing the basic structure of a website, HTML is the bedrock that other technologies, such as CSS and JavaScript are fixed upon.
Short for “cascading style sheets,” CSS directly impacts the experiences visitors have when they interact with a website. CSS programming language modifies and enhances HTML to define the website’s layout, formatting, and overall presentation. This programming language is considered a cornerstone technology for the World Wide Web. Like HTML, web developers are experts in CSS due to the fact that reliable, functional, well-performing websites cannot be built without this essential language.
Another crucial layer to constructing a website that performs excellently is JavaScript, a complex programming language that is used to control the behavior of different web page elements. What do we mean by that? JavaScript’s logic-based programming language is how web developers include opt-in boxes, newsletter signups, and other CTAs on websites. Without JavaScript, websites would not be “interactive.”
No matter which programming language your web developer uses—HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or a combination of all three—they should be mindful to include coding that offers a “responsive web design.” This term refers to technology that automatically resizes, rearranges, and adjusts website content so that it displays correctly on all mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, iPads, and other handheld devices. Also known as “mobile optimization,” responsive design is a necessary aspect of web design and development.
Website developers have a massive responsibility—to provide the best user experience, or UX, possible. Since web developers construct the layout of a website, which involves working closely with website designers, they are responsible for creating visually interesting and experientially engaging web pages that load fast and perform excellently. This means that web developers take extreme care when developing landing pages and optimizing websites for their inbound marketing potential, which includes coding opt-in forms and other marketing CTAs right into the web pages
themselves. Let’s take a look.
Landing pages have many synonyms, such as a lead capture page, squeeze page, and destination page, to name a few. Whichever term is used, this type of page refers to a single web page that’s
used as part of a digital marketing CTA for lead generation. For example, when an internet user clicks on a SEO search result, marketing email, or online advertisement, they are directed to the landing page that the web developer has set up. Landing pages typically display content that’s relevant to the user’s search or the ad the user clicked. And yes, a savvy web developer will be your best bet for including lead generation capabilities like this on your website.
A savvy web developer is also your best bet for connecting effective inbound marketing channels to your website. Inbound marketing strategies include content marketing, SEO, social media, blogs, and other digital marketing methods that draw consumers into a business’ marketing funnel. Inbound marketing campaign content places an emphasis on personally connecting with consumers and solving consumer pain points, which indirectly promotes the business’ products and solutions. Put simply, inbound marketing is any strategy that helps potential customers discover a business or
brand.
As we mentioned, opt-in forms and other CTAs are coded right into your web pages by your web developer. These forms and CTAs appear on websites and function as data collection tools. When a lead fills out an opt-in form on your website, information about the lead is automatically gathered and stored for you to leverage in the future during your marketing campaigns.
Web developers, as you can see, are truly responsible for the fate of the websites they develop.
SEO, or search engine optimization, refers to the objective of driving online user traffic to a website by elevating the website’s standing with search engines such as Google. Ideally, businesses want their websites to appear on the first page of Google’s search results whenever a user is looking for a company like theirs. Using relevant keywords within web content optimizes search engine ranking. Keywords are words, phrases, or questions that a Google user might type into the search bar in order to generate a list of possible websites relevant to their search topic. The term SEO only applies to non-paid, organic search results. Web developers contribute to the SEO of the websites they develop.
As a business owner, you want to maximize your daily site visitors. A “site visitor” is any internet user who lands on or navigates through your website. Websites collect valuable visitor data, including IP addresses and cookies, to determine how many unique site visitors have visited each web page, where those site visitors came from, and what actions they took while visiting the website. This is data you want, which means optimizing your website for SEO is a must. What can you do with visitor data? A lot. By analyzing the number of visitors that land on your website, you will learn important metrics such as the overall visitor frequency along with crucial demographic information. This information can then be leveraged during the creation and publication of additional website content to improve website traffic and increase sales revenue.
Launching a blog is easily the most worthwhile strategy in terms of integrating new SEO into your business website, so be sure to ask your web developer to include a blog on the site they develop for you. By featuring a blog on your website, you will organically begin to build brand awareness, improve SEO, drive website traffic, and increase revenue. Short for “web-logs,” blogs are actually considered an original social media platform for two reasons. Posts can be published frequently to immediately engage an audience, and discussions are often triggered based on the articles’ content. These discussions unfold in the comments section beneath each post. By including opt-in forms within your blog posts and automating the publication of each article, you can effectively convert website visitors into loyal customers.
Another effective SEO strategy involves using “dynamic content” on your website, and any web developer worth his or her salt will program your site using dynamic content. Also called adaptive content, dynamic content refers to the component on web pages that changes the page’s content based on visitor data, behavior, and preferences. Because these content changes can be automated, dynamic content keeps site visitors engaged while freeing up marketers to focus on other tasks. Changing the content naturally updates the web page’s SEO, which can improve search engine ranking.
Business owners who want to avoid hiring a web developer and who are not prepared to learn how to use HTML editors and in-line coding themselves might opt to use a WYSIWYG website building platform instead.
Instead of writing web page code and building your website from scratch all on your own, you could opt for a What You See Is What You Get, or WYSIWYG, website building platform. These user-friendly platforms come with rich text editors, drag-and-drop editors, and point-and-click editors. In other words, a WYSIWYG platform will enable you to quickly build and edit your website once you have chosen a template from their CMS. Let’s take a look.
CMS, or content management systems, provide users with technologically simplistic templates. These templates can be edited with drag-and-drop features, as we mentioned. The user-friendly nature of website builders with CMS allows the user to construct a fully functional website or eCommerce store without the help of a professional web developer. This is due to the fact that the CMS platform itself handles all of the basic backend infrastructure. Once your WYSIWYG website is established, the CMS software platform will help you create, manage, modify, and schedule all of your content in an organized, easy-to-execute manner.
Let’s take an in-depth look at “point-and-click” editors, “drag-and-drop” editors, and mobile-optimized responsive website design so that you’re fully informed in case you choose to go the WYSIWYG route.
Point-and-click editing is a design feature that empowers the user to add elements of code into web pages without having to formally program that code into the backend. Point-and-click editor allows the user to easily add plugins, source buttons, and code snippets among other widgets to the pages of their website or eCommerce store without having to rely on a web designer. Businesses can also invest in free-standing point-and-click editors to create, write, and revise their Wikipedia pages and other online business encyclopedias.
A drag-and-drop website builder enables users to create a website without having to learn CSS commands or write code. The user simply selects a basic layout theme from a library of professionally designed templates and proceeds to drag-and-drop widgets, fill in text, and make other alterations to personalize the site for their business. Drag-and-drop website builders give business owners the freedom to build their websites exactly as they want and easily update their web content without having to rely on a web designer or agency.
A mobile-optimized responsive website design template is a build-your-own-website template that has been designed to display correctly on all devices for optimal viewing. The templates themselves are coded to automatically adapt to any screen size and orientation so that the website looks great, functions well, and is easy to read on computers, smartphones, and tablets. If you opt to build your own website instead of hiring a professional web developer, then be sure to choose a web building platform that offers mobile-optimized responsive web design templates.
At the end of the day, your business website has the potential to be your most powerful digital marketing tool. When visitors land on your website, they read the home page, navigate through the entire site, and decide whether or not to purchase your products and services based on their experience interacting with your website. For this reason, making sure that your website performs excellently is the most important thing you can do for your business.
Is your website performing as well as it should? Our article, What Do Customers Look For in a Website? can help you determine where your site stands in the eyes of consumers, so be sure to give it a read.
If your website or eCommerce store isn’t performing as well as it should, you could try your hand at constructing a new site using a WYSIWYG web building platform like Squarespace, Wix, or Weebly… Or you could have the website development team at FTx 360 handle your site for you. Our web developers work hand-in-hand with artistic website designers to produce stunning websites that strike a perfect balance between beautiful and functional, and our websites always load properly on mobile devices. Contact us to check out our portfolio or get your project started with our web development services today.
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Is it time to outsource your digital marketing?
When you first opened your business, you probably did just about everything yourself. This is par for the course. In the beginning, the owners of most start-ups and small businesses handle every aspect of their day-to-day workflow either themselves or in-house by assigning tasks to their employees.
But this is only manageable for so long. As a business grows, its needs expand. Continuing to assign new tasks to pre-existing employees runs the risk of overburdening them, which could lead to sloppy work and unhappy workers.
There are certain signs that indicate it might be time for you, as a business owner, to consider outsourcing your digital marketing, which include:
● Your current staff doesn’t have the skills. Effective digital marketing includes a lot of moving parts. Trends change constantly. New technologies and platforms emerge regularly. Is it reasonable to expect your account managers to post on social media during their “down time”? Will the quality of their digital marketing efforts be very good when it’s outside of their chosen career path?
● Your digital marketing initiatives are focused on tasks and not strategy. In order for any marketing campaign to succeed, you must have a plan in place. When your team is overworked, they’ll only have time to address day-to-day tasks and their mindset will be to “get stuff done.” Digital marketing isn’t about getting stuff done. It’s about getting the right stuff done and parceling out strong campaign tactics that result in increased revenue and overall business growth.
● You’re anticipating company growth and planning for business expansion. Have you recently signed a bunch of new clients? Have you opened a second retail location? Are you about to launch an eCommerce site? If you’re in the process of expanding your business, then you might be assuming you’ll have to hire additional staff to keep up with the demand, and you’re absolutely correct. But hiring an in-house marketing team shouldn’t be your first move.
If you’re considering outsourcing your digital marketing, but are still on the fence, this article is for you. Here are the 5 benefits of outsourcing your digital marketing.
PROVIDES A FRESH PERSPECTIVE TO YOUR BRAND
As a business owner, of course you love your company. But as they say, love is blind. Way-back-when you first saw your brand-new company logo, you thought it looked amazing, and it probably did. But as time passed, your love for your brand might have kept you blind to the possibility that your logo, and other marketing elements you’ve been using over the years, haven’t exactly updated to stay on trend.
That’s a problem. An outside marketing agency will add a fresh perspective to your brand. Their professional experts will be able to see the big picture of how your brand should fit into your industry’s market and make the necessary upgrades for you.
AFFORDS YOU FLEXIBILITY
Unlike the high commitment that comes with hiring an in-house employee or a team of in-house marketing associates, working with a digital marketing agency will afford you flexibility, and is therefore considered low or no commitment by comparison. This is a huge benefit. If you don’t like the finished work that a digital marketing agency provides, you can release them because you hired them on a project basis and entered into a short-term contract. Simply move on to the next agency for your next project and test them out in the same manner.
When an agency delivers results as promised after the completion of their first project for you, then you can engage them for the next project. But if they haven’t delivered or if the ROI is dismal, then you’re free to move on. This kind of flexibility will save you from getting locked into an agreement with an agency that isn’t serving you properly.
Digital marketing takes time. It can be challenging, tedious, and demanding. Creating marketing campaigns, generating awesome content, and scheduling all of your digital marketing is a full-time job. While it might seem like hiring one in-house employee to handle all of your digital marketing is a smart idea, the fact of the matter is that digital marketing is extremely dynamic.
You will be hard-pressed to find one individual who possesses all of the skills required to write flawless content, create stunning graphics using graphic design software, research trending SEO keywords, and accomplish everything in-between. Hiring an entire team of marketers in-house to address all aspects of your digital marketing could cost a fortune when you factor in salaries, employer taxes, health insurance matches, and other associated expenses. To minimize your overhead and save yourself time and money, outsourcing your digital marketing is the way to go.
In the long run, partnering with a digital marketing agency will give you firsthand access to expert knowledge. The marketing professionals at full-service marketing agencies like FTx 360 include web and mobile app developers, SEO experts, graphic designers, copywriters, social media experts, and most importantly, campaign strategists, all of whom will comprise your dedicated team.
As you interface with your account manager, you’ll have the full breadth of support from the entire team. This includes access to advanced marketing and analytics tools, such as SEMrush, which might otherwise be unaffordable if you, as a business owner, opted to purchase a subscription. The benefits of having access to expert-level knowledge are never ending.
● The agency will accomplish your marketing tasks on their schedule, and when the unexpected arises, you will have to exercise patience until their marketers have time to help you.
Tip: Before hiring an agency, ask them about their timelines for specific projects and how they will accommodate last-minute marketing requests. The best digital marketing agencies will assign an account manager to your business who will be available to help you immediately, no matter what.● While an outsourced digital marketing agency is far cheaper than paying the salaries of in-house marketing associates, the costs can still add up depending on the agency you go with, how many experts they assign to your account, and how dynamic your projects or tasks are.
Tip: When working with a new agency, really pace yourself. Don’t ask them to handle 100% of every aspect of your digital marketing. Carefully review their price points per service. Go with one or two services for a short period of time. And be sure to analyze the ROI before asking them to handle more of your marketing needs.● Marketing professionals, especially creative experts, are known for their ability to decisively execute their creative vision. But their strong ideas for your company may not completely align with your own vision for your brand’s future. You hired them for a reason, however, and you will have to accept their directive and allow them to do what they do best.
Tip: Prior to working with any digital marketing agency, sit down with their professionals and probe them to find out their creative vision for your brand, especially if you’re considering full-blown rebranding. See if they’re willing to create mock-ups of the image graphics they have in mind for your company. Vet them as deeply as possible. And understand that once you hire them, their expertise will trump your inclinations for your business. The major takeaway is that outsourcing your digital marketing will absolutely benefit your company, but it doesn’t come without risks. That being said, you can easily mitigate the disadvantages of working with a digital marketing agency by thoroughly vetting each agency you’re considering. Ask them hard questions and don’t accept sugarcoated answers. Be realistic as you assess your options, and once you decide to go with an agency, start slowly, engage them on a project-per-project basis, and carefully analyze whether or not they’re delivering the results they promised. Are you interested in outsourcing your digital marketing? FTx 360 offers a wide array of digital marketing services at affordable costs, and we never pressure our clients to turn over all of their marketing to us straightaway. Our professional marketing experts take pride in their skills and enjoy the process of proving themselves to new clients. Whether you need web design & development, eCommerce marketing services, social media marketing, content marketing, blog articles and blog management, organic and local SEO, email marketing, marketing automation, PPC marketing, or reputation management—we do it all and love every minute of it! Contact us today to speak with a marketing expert about everything FTx 360 can do for your brand! Want to read more articles like this? Enter your email below to subscribe to our mailing list and be the first to know about the latest marketing trends!
On a global scale, approximately 547,200 new websites are created every single day. As of the publication of this article, 24 million eCommerce sites across the world are actively selling products. According to data compiled from IBISWorld, U.S. eCommerce sales reached $211.5 billion in the second quarter of 2020, which represents a 44.5% increase compared to the second quarter of 2019.
The eCommerce sector, regardless of industry, is extremely competitive. The market is growing exponentially. But don’t worry. Your eCommerce business isn’t automatically doomed to get lost in the fray. There are plenty of marketing strategies you can implement today that will increase sales tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year.
In this article, we’ll show you how to promote your eCommerce website using 5 marketing ideas that work.
Search engine optimization is a marketing method that uses targeted keywords and longtail keyword phrases to elevate a website’s ranking on search engines such as Google. SEO typically refers to organic, non-paid keyword strategies. The desired result of any SEO effort is to increase a website’s online visibility and traffic. Check out What Is SEO? to learn specific SEO strategies, including how to generate relevant keywords.
49% of marketers report that organic search engine optimization has the best ROI of any marketing channel, according to Search Engine Journal.
Devising an SEO strategy for your eCommerce site includes three areas, each with its own steps:
● First, you’ll have to do a little research to figure out the frequently searched words, terms, and phrases that search engine users typically type into the search bar. You can identify these SEO keywords by using Ahrefs, Amazon, Google, or any SEM tool.
● Next, you’ll need to create new content with the keywords you’ve selected. You could revise your eCommerce Home Page using keywords, or spruce up your product descriptions with them. This second step of plugging fresh keywords into your site should become a periodic practice.
● Finally, you’ll need to analyze the impact of those SEO keywords, using Google Analytics or another tool that measures the success of your SEO strategy.
Multichannel marketing for an eCommerce company refers to diversifying your sales platform. Yes, your eCommerce site is obviously your primary sales platform. But in today’s competitive market, businesses succeed online when they meet their customers’ wants and needs, including their preferences for where they want to shop. Facebook has made buying online extremely convenient, and the same can be said about Amazon. By opening a Facebook Store, you can cater to consumers who want to shop there, and others that prefer to visit your website can access it through Facebook via the URL you provide.
By the year 2040, an estimated 95% of all purchases will occur online through eCommerce, according to Nasdaq.
Spread your brand across multiple channels to diversify your sales and income streams. Follow these steps to get started:
● Research where your potential customers are congregating online. Are they on Instagram the most, or do they fill up the comments sections of YouTube? Find out so you’ll know where to focus your efforts.
● Focus on the top 3 channels where your potential customers spend their online time, then develop posting strategies on those platforms. By engaging users, they will begin to view and interact with your brand, which will lead to sales through those platforms if not your eCommerce site.
● Since multichannel marketing is all about creating different paths for consumers to travel in order to get to the purchasing stage of their shopping experience, it’s okay to start small, as long as the customer journey is easy and rewarding.
If you have an advertising expense budget, the best way to allocate your funds in 2021 is into podcast advertisements. Yes, it’s true. Regardless of the overall popularity of a podcast, the fact of the matter is that podcasts garner very loyal audiences, and those audiences tend to be comprised of specific demographics. This means that the podcast itself has already corralled your ideal customers, and by buying ad space, you can speak to all of them at once.
54% of podcast listeners will lean towards buying products that were recommended on podcasts, according to Edison Research.
Narrowing down the best podcast to invest in requires a little research. Start with these initial steps:
● Contact podcasts that are relevant to your industry to find out the size of their listenership and the costs for different ad spots. The ad sales department should be able to send you a demographic report that organizes their audience by categories such as age, gender, location, and interests, among other variables.
● Choose the most affordable ad spot. This could be a shorter pre-roll or post-roll spot, which will play at the beginning or end of the podcast episode. Pricier spots typically play in the middle of the podcast when listenership is the highest.
● Lastly, you’ll need to record a high-quality audio ad that meets the technical requirements and standards of the podcast.
In terms of regularly generating fresh, targeted, relevant keywords that harness the power of SEO and directly impact your eCommerce site’s Google ranking, nothing beats a blog. Launching and maintaining a blog is a highly effective promotional strategy. Blogs expand brand reach and online presence, as well as help to validate the business as a credible authority. All of which will lead to consumer trust. For detailed tips on blogging, be sure to read Creating a Remarkable Business Blog.
63% of online consumers in the U.S. have made a purchase based on recommendations from a blog, according to the Content Marketing Institute.
Summarizing the article on blogging referenced above, here’s how you can promote your eCommerce site by adding a Blog tab and posting on a regular schedule:
● When creating the content of each blog post, aim to follow the “information, inspiration, call-to-action” format. This means that the content should inform the reader by first addressing a “pain point” they’re experiencing and then suggesting solutions to fix that particular pain point problem. The suggestions should “inspire” the reader. And finally, the article should wrap up with a call-to-action that encourages the reader to purchase the product that will “solve” their problem from your eCommerce site.
● Be sure to work your keywords into the written content. Keep the paragraphs short so that the article is easy to read. Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to list information, all of which ensures easy reading.
● Break up the text even more with images, photos, and graphics. Include a “subscribe” button at the bottom of each post, and as you collect email addresses, be sure to use them wisely when you promote your recently published blog posts.
Over the course of 2020 and into 2021, the use of “chatbots” has risen as a prefered method of customer relationship management and customer service. Meaning, your eCommerce site visitors would probably appreciate being able to ask straightforward questions and get fast answers via a chatbot box. There are two kinds of chatbots—purely robotic or a live person. Depending on the size of your eCommerce business, you may opt to use one or both types of chatbots. A live person might not be able to accommodate a great volume of inquiries. Remember, consumers expect fast responses, so if there’s any chance your employee will take longer than 5 minutes to reply, then the safer route would be to integrate a machine-learning A.I. “robotic” chatbot.
Roughly 50% of consumers have ended up making an eCommerce purchase after interacting with the site’s chatbot, according to Drift.com.
The success or failure of an A.I. chatbot completely depends on whether or not your eCommerce site visitor can tell they’re talking to a machine-learning robot. The point being, even if you use an A.I. chatbot, you want your website visitors to believe it’s a real, live person. Here are some tips to keep you—or your hired chatbot developer—on track:
● The chatbot should exhibit a discernable degree of empathy when appropriate. Firstly, the bot must be programmed to use language properly so that it can smoothly speak with the customer typing on the other end of the box.
● In order for the chatbot to function properly, i.e. provide appropriate, relevant, and accurate answers to customer questions, the chatbot first must be programmed with all the necessary information. Also, it should be “trained” to ask the customer to provide more details when required. Remember, better answers equal better service.
● Train the chatbot to answer frequently asked questions. Depending on the nature of your business and the products you sell on your eCommerce site, you’ve probably noticed that customers tend to have a range of specific questions. Chatbots can, in fact, be trained to answer those specific questions.
Additional marketing methods that can greatly enhance your efforts to promote your eCommerce website include:
Are you ready to get your eCommerce marketing strategy started? FTx 360 offers SEO marketing and optimization plans for eCommerce businesses. Contact us to speak with a professional marketing strategist today.
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The value of implementing content marketing campaigns as part of your overall digital marketing strategy cannot be overstated.
Traditional advertising is costly, impersonal, and frankly, going out of style.
Digital content marketing is economical, highly personal, and wonderfully conversational in a way consumers love.
But in order to quantify the real value of content marketing, business owners must first understand what it is.
As the name suggests, content marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses content—both written and visual—to attract internet users to a business’ website for the purposes of converting visitors into customers.
Generating successful content involves pairing excellently written content with stunning visuals, such as intriguing photos, engaging graphics, entertaining videos, and impactful multimedia.
Examples of content used for digital marketing include:
web pages, product & service descriptions,
blog posts & email newsletter content,
in-app notification content & SMS text message content,
podcasts & webinars,
e-books & educational articles,
and even social media promotions!
Once the finalized content is published online, the content’s built-in SEO keywords will prompt Google and other search engines to recommend the published content web pages to consumers who type those very keywords into the search bar.
There is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between publishing quality content online and gaining loyal customers, which is why content marketing has quickly become one of the most popular digital marketing strategies around.
But popularity spawns competition. As more and more companies discover the value of using dynamic content marketing strategies, the higher the “bar” rises in terms of quality. What does this mean for business owners who want to stand out from the competition and win loyal customers using content marketing specifically?
Shape up or ship out.
If that sounds severe, it should. The competition is cut-throat and consumers have short attention spans. The next website, eCommerce store, hashtag thread, YouTube channel, or podcast is only a click away, and if you do not hook your visitor the moment they land on your page, they aren’t going to stick around.
But there’s good news for all you ambitious entrepreneurs who want to roll your sleeves up, throw your hats into the ring, and fight to gain loyal customers before your opponents do!
In this article, we’ll lay out exactly what you can do to up your content marketing game so that you can take advantage of all the benefits that content marketing has to offer!
By implementing content marketing strategies, a business can differentiate their brand from their competitors and stand out within their industry marketplace. Content marketing, as a method of communication, develops customer trust and improves brand credibility within online communities, social media circles, and even major search engines like Google.
Talk about value! If you can convince Google you’re the leading expert within your industry, the sky will be the limit in terms of how much web traffic will funnel to your site!
You might be tempted to err on the side of caution and only dip your toe into the content marketing waters, but if you want to make a big splash, engage your audience, and earn big bucks, we recommend you dive headfirst and implement these four content marketing initiatives:
● Website Content
● Product & Service Descriptions
● Blog Posts
● Email Newsletters
Let’s take a look at each…
For businesses of all sizes, increasing web traffic is an integral aspect of growing a solid customer base. This is especially true for eCommerce stores and other companies that rely on web-based platforms. A company’s web content, whether intentional or blissfully accidental, contains SEO keywords, which essentially magnetize Google users to the company’s website, which is great!
But did you know that your website is in danger of aging? Websites containing stale content that have not been updated in a year or more actually slide down Google’s ranking system. Just because your website is on the first page of Google’s search results today, doesn’t mean you’ll stay there. If you don’t revamp your website and publish brand-new, SEO-rich content periodically, it will only be a matter of time before your site slides down to the 5th, or 50th, page of Google’s results!
Keep the high ranking you’ve earned and stay on the first page of Google’s results by updating your entire website with fresh content at least every six months.
A great way to publish updated website and eCommerce store content without investing in a major site design overhaul is to frequently update the descriptions of your current products and services, and also publish new products and services descriptions on your site as soon as they’re ready for purchase. Even short, well-written descriptions of only three sentences can provide enough trending SEO keywords to keep your website relevant.
The trick is to first research and select the best keywords for your products, audience, and industry. If your descriptions are going to be a strict 30 words, don’t attempt to plug too many keywords into the verbiage or you’ll run the risk of sounding awkward. Try using only three keywords, or one longtail keyword phrase plus one keyword. Once you have those, be sure to compose the content using an expressive “voice” that captures the tone of your brand.
Customers naturally connect with content that is written in a personable, expressive manner, because the conversational tone helps them relate to your brand. As opposed to customers that don’t connect with your content, you will always forge deeper, longer lasting relationships with customers that relate to your brand.
One smart way to regularly publish SEO-rich content that will drive traffic to your website or eCommerce store is to launch a blog on your site. Blogs are a cost-effective way to promote your company and build your online presence. Best of all, blogging can validate your business and establish your brand as a leading authority within your industry.
The one caveat that you must respect if you want your blog to succeed at keeping your website ranking high on Google and other search engines is that you must commit to a publishing schedule and stick to it. Be realistic. Know your capabilities and limitations. Can you commit to drafting, editing, and proofreading one blog per week? Will that leave you enough time to also create stunning visuals such as graphics, photos, and multimedia images to go along with each weekly article?
When it comes to blogging, it’s better to post once a month without fail—or once every two weeks without fail—than it is to post once a day for two weeks and then not post again for two months. Consistency is everything. If you can maintain a consistent publishing schedule, offer an e-newsletter opt-in, and begin collecting subscriber contact information, the value of your blog will soon become immeasurable.
Consumers love content marketing, as we mentioned at the beginning of this blog post. When a brand puts out content for customers to read and engage with, those customers feel a sense of personal connection with the brand. And nothing gets more personalized than email marketing. With email marketing, you can analyze CRM data—Customer Relationship Management Data—to segment your customers into highly specified groups, and customize the campaigns you send out to each group.
Create individualized content for your segmented customer groups that’s based on their unique interests, product favorites, and the informative subjects they’ve “liked” on your blog, social media, and other platforms. Email marketing can be used for many different campaign types. Retailers can use email marketing campaigns to alert customers to personalized sales they might be interested in. Law and accountant firms can use email marketing to educate and empower their recipients about important laws, rules, filing dates, and regulations, ending every email newsletter with a CTA. Educational institutions can use email marketing to promote their classes, courses, and special events. Email marketing can also be used to conduct surveys and collect valuable feedback from customers!
In short, the greatest value of email marketing is that this marketing strategy builds relationships with customers. Every email is an invitation to that recipient to engage in a one-on-one conversation with you!
Smoke shops, cigar retailers, vape stores, hookah lounges, and even hemp wellness retailers within the CBD industry have one major challenge in common—severe advertising restrictions.
The US Food & Drug Administration has controlled tobacco and nicotine product advertising for decades, but it wasn’t until June of 2009 that the FDA clamped down hard on tobacco industry advertising, including advertising that fell within the scope of digital marketing.
These new FDA rules and regulations were imposed on secondary industries that carried nicotine, tobacco-related, and tobacco-simulated products, namely the vape and CBD markets. Can vape stores run TV ads? Nope. Are cigar retailers allowed to place paid ads on Instagram? Not at all. What about CBD stores, can this type of hemp wellness retailer buy a half-page magazine ad? Not even for a million dollars.
With extreme advertising limitations, how can smoke shops, vape stores, and similar retailers actually promote their tobacco, nicotine, CBD, and smoke-simulation products?
How will these businesses reach customers, sell products, and grow?
Though challenging, marketing tobacco, vape, and alternative nicotine products is not impossible. In this article, we’ll show you how to maximize lawful strategies while staying in compliance with the FDA.
Here are the dos and don’ts of marketing your store.
There is a critical distinction to be made between “advertising” and “marketing”. Just because you, as a tobacco retailer, are prohibited from freely advertising your nicotine products does not mean you’re prohibited from marketing your nicotine products. You can think of “advertising” as directly promoting a product to a consumer audience. By contrast, “marketing” raises brand awareness using indirect methods of promotion. Understanding the difference and sticking strictly to marketing is imperative.
Do: Focus on Marketing
Don’t: Invest in Advertising
First, you must educate yourself about the specific search engine and social media platform policies, and obey those policies. Familiarize yourself with Google’s products promotion rules. Pay particular attention to their prohibited content, restricted content & features, and dangerous products & services. Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook each have their own policies and restrictions on nicotine product promotion that you should take a look at.
You might be wondering, if marketing isn’t advertising, then what is it? For smoke and vape retailers, examples of effective marketing include maintaining a Google My Business account, using social media to passively and indirectly attract consumers, and launching a blog, all of which we will cover in this article, so keep reading!
Ready to get started with implementing focused marketing campaigns? Take these next steps:
● Identify your marketing audience
● Research the best marketing strategies for your industry
● Consider marketing automation solutions
FACT: In 2019, the global e-cigarette and vape market size was valued at USD $12.41 billion, and this figure is projected to rise 23.8% between now and 2027! This means that consumers want to find your smoke shop, so make it easy on them by focusing on strategic digital marketing! This according to Statista.com.
As we mentioned in the previous section, it’s essentially impossible to advertise your tobacco, nicotine, and vape products via traditional search engine and social media ads, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on the internet. Never discount the importance of your internet presence! Even if you own a brick-and-mortar retail store without a corresponding eCommerce site, you still must promote your brand online using digital marketing strategies that include SEO.
Do: Implement an SEO Strategy
Don’t: Discount the Importance of Your Internet Presence
For the purposes of expediency, we’re going to assume you know what SEO is, but if not, check out our blog What Is SEO? Go ahead, we’ll wait… it’s only a 5-minute read. Keywords are the backbone of effective search engine optimization. Choosing current, “hot” keywords as you build your digital content will cause search engines like Google to recommend your site to consumers who are looking for retailers like you.
Yes, as we touched on earlier, even physical retail stores need to invest in expanding their online presence. You don’t have to go so far as launching an eCommerce site, but if you have a website, we strongly recommend you launch an associated blog. Even if you start a simple WordPress blog, you can then create “posts” on your Google My Business account, sharing the article links. This is a great way to get your blogging feet wet while utilizing effective SEO that will communicate directly with Google.
Ready to get started integrating powerful SEO into your marketing strategies? Take these next steps:
● Launch a scalable, mobile-friendly blog
● Focus on Google My Business & building customer reviews
● Invest in professional SEO solutions
FACT: Popular SEO keywords for tobacco, vape, and CBD industry content are constantly shifting and changing as new products are introduced to the market. Regularly publishing blog articles is the best way to keep up, use current keywords, and ensure search engines recommend your store’s website to consumers. This according to Forbes.com.
Want to hear something excruciatingly unfair? Years ago, Big Tobacco tried to game the social media marketing system using paid influencers and basically ruined the concept for the rest of us. What really happened? In May of 2019, roughly 125 public health organizations issued a “cease and desist” order to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat to immediately end the promotion of cigarettes and e-cigarettes from Big Tobacco companies. The resulting ban included prohibiting promotions from social media influencers. Then, in epic Big Tobacco fashion, the biggest names in the nicotine business straight-up ignored the order.
Do: Partner with Social Media Influencers
Don’t: Rely Solely on Influencers
So, why in the world do our digital marketing strategists include “partner with social media influencers” as a “do” on this list rather than a “don’t”? Because of our tenacity! We would never advocate trying to game the system. Our clients are small businesses that don’t possess the kind of legal teams that can defend Big-Tobacco-caliber violations.
When it comes to partnering with social media influencers, you have to think waaaaay outside the box, like we do, and like one of our clients has been since they started working with us. We’re referring to CBD Source, the leading cannabidiol retail chain across Pennsylvania and New York State. In April of 2019, CBD Source launched the CBD Podcast, which expanded their customer reach so much that they had to create an eCommerce store just to keep up with the demand. Naturally, their podcast developed into a YouTube channel, and that’s where the real social media influencer strategies took off like a heat seeking missile!
Ready to get started with social media influencers? Take these next steps:
● Contact influencers to plug and review your products
● Launch a podcast, vlog, or YouTube channel
● Test out a professional SSM strategist and analyze the ROI
Email marketing is a powerful tool for businesses of all kinds. When implemented strategically, email marketing campaigns incentivize customers to visit a retail location or eCommerce site, which directly impacts revenue increases. Why is email marketing a definite “do” on this list? Because you can say and promote whatever you want within this private method of communication. That’s right, you can directly advertise your tobacco, nicotine, CBD, and vape products to your recipient list!
Do: Include Email Marketing
Don’t: Spam Using Generic Offers
No two of your customers are exactly alike, however. Don’t spam generic emails to every email address on your list. Effective email marketing campaigns are all about “personalization”. The trick is to only recommend the most relevant products to each of your email recipients. Succeeding at personalizing your email campaigns will depend on the CRM software you’re using. You can’t achieve personalization without having collected data about your customers personal browsing and buying histories.
Whether you collect customer data at the POS system within your retail location or have integrated CRM solutions on the backend of your eCommerce site, you can build a quality sales pipeline as a result of personalized email marketing campaigns. First, analyze your customer data and group your customers into segments according to their likes and interests. Then, tailor personalized email campaigns to each customer segment, informing them of sales, deals, and discounts on items they have a history of loving and buying.
Ready to get started launching an email marketing campaign? Take these next steps:
● Provide shoppers with opt-in subscription methods to join your email list
● Develop concise written content that takes recipient personalization into account
● Use email marketing software solutions with CRM capabilities
FTx 360 can help. Our digital marketing strategists have extensive experience working within the tobacco, vape, and CBD industries. If you have concerns about FDA restrictions, we know the law. We know how to stay in compliance. And we know how to grow businesses using marketing automation, SEO solutions, SSM strategies, and email marketing solutions to build awareness for your brand and expand your loyal customer base.
Ready to get started with our tobacco industry marketing strategies? Contact us today!
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The entire marketing industry was forced to make a huge shift when the coronavirus pandemic changed how consumers shop. Companies, both B2C and B2B, needed to quickly implement innovative marketing initiatives in order to retain their customers while accommodating sudden governmental mandates.
Consumers had new habits, and businesses that didn’t develop new marketing strategies took a big financial hit throughout 2020.
The timeless adage holds true–necessity is the mother of all invention–and the digital marketing sector certainly birthed a wealth of inventions that companies could use to survive. These innovations evolved swiftly and not all of them worked. But those that did, thanks to advances in marketing technologies, were tested and thoroughly vetted during 2020.
Marketers now have a fresh arsenal of digital marketing tools to use in 2021. Here is a list of all of the tried-and-true marketing strategies that resulted from the most tumultuous year in modern history. These marketing trends are here to stay, which is why you should implement them at your company as part of your digital marketing strategy.
Considered the best location-based marketing strategy for online marketers, Google My Business, or GMB, has been around for a few years now, but it has dramatically evolved over the course of 2020. If you’re unfamiliar, GMB is an online directory that provides Google users with a map of relevant businesses whenever they search locally. Since 46% of all Google searches are for the purposes of finding local businesses there is no downside to creating a GMB profile, especially because having one is completely free. For more on GMB, check out Making The Most Out Of Google My Business.
The number one reason that consumers abandoned certain brands, retailers, and businesses throughout 2020 was because of product availability, or rather, the lack of available products at a particular store. In other words, retaining customers boiled down to keeping shelves stocked, and more importantly, keeping customers informed about product availability, online order turn-around times, and how long it would take a retailer to replenish popular items. Communication goes a long way with today’s consumers, and retailers will have a better shot maintaining customer loyalty if they inform their customers of fluctuations in product availability.
Google Ad’s automatic bidding feature has been around since 2016. However, this automated advertising method gained real traction in 2020 when businesses had to downsize and modify their operations due to COVID-19 shutdowns in certain industries, especially the retail and service industries. Google’s auto bidding allows Google, rather than the marketer, to assess your ad campaigns for you and adjust your bids accordingly in real-time. By permitting Google’s A.I. to handle these adjustments, the marketer is freed up to optimize other aspects of their PPC campaigns’ performances. The ultimate outcome is that companies will end up spending less for their targeted advertising campaigns.
Shocking as it may seem, Google’s algorithms cannot yet pick up voice search SEO. But that doesn’t mean that marketers and business owners should hold off on implementing voice search as part of their overall digital marketing strategy. There has been a steady rise in Google users opting to speak, rather than type, their searches into Google. A whopping 45% of consumers have used a voice assistant on a smart speaker, whether using Alexa at home or their smartphone while out-and-about. Simply put, if there is an increasing number of consumers using this feature, then marketers should cater to that demographic.
When interactive content is offered on business websites and ECommerce stores, visitor engagement dramatically increases, which leads to rises in brand awareness and sales. Interactive website content includes dynamic product images, short videos, active blogs with an open comments section below each article, and the list goes on. What 2020 showed marketers was that static, text-heavy online content no longer holds web visitors’ attention. But when that same text content is broken up with graphics, GIFs, memes, info-tisements, and graphs, visitor engagement shoots through the roof. One of the heaviest hitters among all interactive content is the blog. By adding a blog to your website or ECommerce store, you will easily drive traffic to your website. For specific pointers, take a moment to read Creating A Remarkable Business Blog.
In recent years, “chatbots” have become a buzzword in the digital marketing community. Despite the fact that chatbots have technically been around longer than P.C.s, their current level of artificial intelligence far outshines what it used to be, and their modern-day capabilities put their former ones to shame. If your website or ECommerce store does not have a chatbot, you should seriously consider adding one. The A.I. that the average chatbot possesses in 2021 has been optimized for functionality, and can handle evolved levels of responsibility, from engaging in simple conversations to recommending products to completing complex transactions.
Does that conclude all of the marketing trends you can expect in 2021? Not at all! We’ve only scratched the surface, which is why we invite you to subscribe to our blog. We publish weekly articles on helpful topics such as Marketing Tricks That Can Help You Go Viral and Social Media Marketing Strategies.
All business brands, whether B2C or B2B, must implement a solid digital marketing strategy in 2021, and you can’t go wrong if your company’s strategy includes the forward-thinking trends we laid out in this article. But that doesn’t mean you should stop researching newly emerging trends.
Businesses that remain on the lookout for the next big marketing tools keep themselves ahead of the technology curve and a cut above their competition. Digital marketing is a constantly developing industry, which means that business owners should stay in the know, research new technologies, watch trends, and launch marketing initiatives that have been proven to work.
But don’t get intimidated if you aren’t tech savvy. You can always hire FTx 360 to manage your digital marketing. Our full suite of marketing solutions includes all of the creative services you will need to launch effective digital marketing campaigns that drive website traffic, increase revenue, and expand your brand’s digital footprint online.
The marketing strategists at FTx 360 have experience working with businesses of every industry. To discover all that our agency can do for you, check out our digital portfolio or contact us today.
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You know something’s wrong, but you can’t put your finger on what. Your Ecommerce site has been getting less and less traffic. Your business website takes longer and longer to load. Even the engagement on your blog has slowed down, but you have no idea why any of this is happening. It seemed like only moments ago your business was booming…
If your online brand is experiencing any of these symptoms, it’s quite possible your business has become a victim of negative SEO.
Negative SEO is serious and can be detrimental to a company, but we’ll show you how to spot the effects and what you can do to recover.
With each passing year, it’s harder and harder to establish and maintain a high ranking on Google and other search engines. Google regularly changes its algorithm rules in an effort to identify websites that try to “game the system” with cheap tricks in order to elevate their ranking. One cheap trick is cramming so many SEO keywords and longtail keyword phrases onto a web page that it overwhelms the content. Another cheap trick is creating a website with dozens upon dozens of web pages. When Google’s A.I. “spiders” recognize this kind of spammy behavior, it penalizes the guilty websites.
What this means is that unethical businesses have developed yet another cheap trick in their quest to dominate Google–attack the higher-ranking websites of their competitors. That’s right. If your business website has been rising in SEO ranking, you could have a target on your back.
Devious competitors could attack your website with negative SEO in order to take you down a notch… as if doing such a thing will automatically elevate their own SEO ranking.
Negative SEO can take on a number of different forms, which makes spotting this kind of attack difficult to pinpoint. Read on to learn about the telltale signs a competitor is trying to sabotage your success with negative SEO and what you can do about it.
If you don’t know what negative SEO looks like when it strikes, you won’t be able to reverse it. Here are the biggest indications your website is under a negative SEO attack.
Have you noticed that when you pull up the homepage of your website, it takes an unusually long time to load? Initially, you might optimistically assume this is good news–maybe a ton of visitors have discovered your site all at once? When you check your website hits, you discover that you’ve actually been getting less traffic than usual… hmm.
Your website could be the victim of forceful crawling, which results in a heavy server load, causing your site to slow down and potentially crash. Forceful crawling makes a website inaccessible. When Google can’t access the website as usual, its A.I. determines something is wrong and will automatically push that website down in ranking. If this problem persists, Google could conclude that the site is defunct and completely de-rank it altogether.
You completely understand and respect that “content is king”, which is why you’ve taken particular care to build a well-written website. You might even have an active blog on your site and publish popular content regularly to drive website traffic, validate your company, and establish your brand within your industry.
If you’ve invested in hiring content writers, the last thing you want is for your competitors to plagiarize your website. Having your content stolen not only makes your company look bad–the average visitor will not be able to tell if you were the plagiarist or the other guy–but it also triggers Google to penalize both sites containing the copied content, which will massively impact your ranking. In order to keep an eye on your content, use Copyscape, a free website that will locate duplications of your content for you.
Have you heard of “spammy link farms”? It’s a dirty trick some unethical companies implement to sabotage high-ranking, successful online businesses. A link farm is a website that contains an overwhelming number of hyperlinks to other sites. Link farm websites don’t contain original, traffic driving content–these people aren’t even pretending to be ethical! Instead, link farms use repeated “anchor text” for these hyperlinks… and you do not want these people hyperlinking to your legitimate business website, because it will negatively affect your Google ranking…
Even though Google uses a webspam net to catch these spam farms, their mechanisms don’t catch everything. If you regularly monitor your backlinks, you’ll be able to spot if your website has become the victim of a spammy link farm. Bring a list of any suspicious links to the attention of your website’s webmaster and formally request a removal. Tools like Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMRush are useful for monitoring your backlinks.
Oh no, you’ve spotted negative SEO associated with your website. You want to get rid of it as quickly as possible to mitigate damages and recover ASAP. Here’s what you can do immediately:
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If you have a website, e-commerce site, or blog, chances are you understand the importance of SEO.
Inbound internet traffic that results from effective SEO efforts remains the #1 content marketing strategy for lead generation. If you want to increase inbound traffic to your website, e-commerce site, or blog, you’ll need to integrate strong, relevant, and accurate SEO into your content marketing materials.
We’re talking about keywords.
Keywords are the foundation of SEO, but what are they really? You can think of keywords as the words, phrases, or questions that a Google user would type into a search field in order to generate a list of possible websites relevant to that search topic.
Because search engines like Google are the matchmakers that suggest relevant websites to searching users, in order to get these search engines to work for you, you’ll need to use keywords smartly. Hence, keywords are the foundation of SEO.
Keywords won’t help you optimize your website’s ranking within search engine results unless you’re using the right words and phrases. There’s no getting around doing your research in order to determine what particular keywords will yield the best results in raising your search engine ranking and increasing your website traffic.
If you haven’t done so already, it’s imperative for the success of your business that you identify who your ideal customer is and what their primary “pain points” are, in other words, what problems can your business solve for them? Once you identify and really “know” your audience, you can optimize your website using keywords that will attract them. Ask yourself, what does my audience care most about? What topics would they be interested in? How can I convince them my products, services, and informative content will check all of the boxes that these ideal customers have in mind?
Google users are more likely to type a phrase or question into Google’s search bar than they are a single keyword. These phrases are called “longtail keyword phrases”. When developing your online content, it’s important to plug in popular longtail keyword phrases in addition to singular keywords if you want to effectively market your business to consumers. In other words, using longtail keyword phrases will reduce your competition and help you stand out from the crowd. In order to understand this concept, you’ll need to reverse-engineer the idea. For example, if you own a pet supply store and want to promote your customer loyalty rewards program, try using the longtail keyword phrases that your ideal customers would likely type into Google’s search bar, such as “best pet store with loyalty program near me” or “where can I find discount organic dog food in my city?”.
This tip elaborates on our suggestion above to target longtail keywords. Put simply, using one keyword or one longtail keyword phrase won’t be enough. Try brainstorming at least three variations on the most likely longtail keyword phrase that a consumer could type into Google. This way, you’ll cover your bases and make sure that no matter what a potential customer types in, they will see your website listed. Don’t go too crazy, though. The written content will run the risk of sounding awkward if you plug in back-to-back keyword phrases.
We can’t emphasize this SEO tip enough. Keywords should inform content and not the other way around. This means that before you start writing your content, you should already know the keywords and longtail keyword phrases you’re going to integrate into the webpage, product description, blog article, or whatever online content you’re about to write.
This might sound repetitive, but it’s worth emphasizing twice. As we detailed above, using different variations in your keywords and longtail keyword phrasing is critical when you’re selecting the keywords you plan to integrate into your content. Try striking a healthy balance between weaving your keywords into a particular webpage and then using variations of those keywords on additional pages and within the backend of the site’s meta data. For example, if you’ve worked the longtail keyword phrase “all-natural puppy flea control” into your latest blog article, you can use different keywords that mean the same thing, such as “organic flea control for puppies” and “non-toxic fur treatment for pets” on other webpages.
Once you’ve integrated a variety of keywords into your online content, it’s vital to track and monitor how each keyword is doing. Trending keywords can change on a week-to-week basis, even when the subject itself remains the same. For example, last week the keyword “all-natural” might have been ranking high in search results in reference to vitamin-rich kitten food, but this week the buzzword happens to be “organic, non-GMO”. We wouldn’t recommend that you go into your already-published content and swap the keyword out. But it is important to stay informed of trends so that you can use them to your advantage.
The entire marketing team here at FTx 360 is passionate about SEO strategies, as well as all facets of digital marketing. We love sharing the best marketing tool for the job with our readership no matter what the “job” happens to be, so be sure to hit the subscribe button.
Need SEO advice? Contact us anytime! Prefer to have our experienced agency handle your SEO strategy and implementation? We can do that, too! FTx 360 offers affordable SEO services and can work within any budget.
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