Are you an owner of a small local business looking to market your business?
Here are two free, widely used, and well-renowned ways to market your business: 1. Facebook Events 2. Google My Business (GMB)
Let’s discuss how you can use these two platforms for your local marketing needs in this blog.
How to use Facebook Events
Facebook isn’t just about going international - it can also help you connect with your local audience.
Currently, Facebook has Events Events Near Me where users can see and search what’s happening within their area based on certain categories like music, fitness, and more. Users can also see online events and events happening on a particular date.
You can promote your events on Facebook by posting to the event page, inviting people to the event, and control who sees your event.
This platform has a lot of flexibility and options, too.
Share promotions locally
Does your business have a sale going on? Promote it on Facebook Events.
Use it to share your event - be it online or face-to-face.
Boost it with ads
Not much audience? Get the help of Event Ads to boost your event’s visibility, increase awareness, and sell more products or services.
Find a partner
You can also find a local business to partner with. Once you have one, create a co-hosted event to make both of your audiences aware of the collaboration.
One tip: Choose a partner that complements your product or service.
How to use Google My Business (GMB)
Show up on Google Search and Google Maps by going to Google my Business. Complete the registration process and voila! You can be in front of customers looking for your brand or similar products or services.
Use enticing photos, videos, and texts to promote your business - just like the store signage of traditional brick-and-mortar businesses - only on an online platform.
Tip: Make sure to optimize your GMB account to be the first on the list.
Display contests, promotions, and sale
Create an “Offer” post on GMB to display contests and promotions your business offers.
This will encourage people to physically visit your shop or your landing page to engage and convert to be your buyer.
Share new and exciting things about your business
Do you have an announcement? Post on “What’s New” and let your audience know. You can also post blog content.
Did your opening hours change? Are you looking for new employees? Are you closing earlier on a weekend? You can announce all of these and more on GMB.
Event announcements
Are you throwing a pajama party over the weekend? Highlight your events on GMB.
Business posts are great for sharing events like community fundraisings or virtual wine nights. People around your area will see your events which will increase attendance.
Your business goes local
Targeting is a tough one. You often have a wide variety of selections.
But you have to be laser-focus on your target.
Simplifying your audience from an international to a local audience may be the first big step for your business to be known globally.
So, the next time you think of marketing your business, think about going local first. And implement the tips above to maximize Facebook and Google My Business for your marketing needs.
And for all things marketing, follow us on all our social media channels.
For your questions, comments, and suggestions, let us know by sending us a message or leave a comment below.
Topic Wheel: A Free Content Marketing Strategy For You
Content is king.
How many times have you heard this? Maybe many times... that you think it already lost its essence, right?
Wrong!
As Google and other social media algorithms evolve, content is - still and indisputably - the king.
Today, I will share a free content marketing strategy that you can use for your business, brand, and clients.
It is called “Topic Wheel”.
Topic Wheel is not new. It’s all over the place - I mean, the internet. But I have never seen a lot of people apply this. It’s also not my original concept. It’s all thanks to Dennis Yu and Mark Lack who first introduced this concept.
So, I’ll be sharing this today so you can (hopefully) find value in it, use it, and share it with others, too.
Let’s get on with it. .
What is Topic Wheel?
The Topic Wheel is a great help in content creation, curation, and content marketing.
It is a graphical representation of the topics you want to talk about - on your site, blog, and/or social media accounts.
Why is the Topic Wheel important?
The Topic Wheel will help you concentrate on topics that matter to you - you just have to look at them. It will also eliminate the need to research topics to create or curate content. Using Topic Wheel, you can easily look at the social media channels of influencers, leaders, and/or brands that matter to you. Then, you can curate or create content based on these. You can use the Topic Wheel as a basis for what you’ll post.
How does Topic Wheel help in content creation?
Topic Wheel gives you a general idea of what should be on your site, blog, and/or social media. It also provides you with thought leaders or influencers whose content appeals to your audience. Thus, curating content is easy.
Now that you know the rationale behind the Topic Wheel, let me show you how it works.
Here’s how to do it on your own:
1. Place your picture (or your brand’s or business’) in the middle.
2. Choose 6 topics you want to talk about. For personal branding, you can choose 3
personal topics and 3 professional topics.
3. For each topic, choose the top 3 thought leaders, influencers, or brands that are close to
you and are appealing to your audience. You must choose leaders that you have high
regard for, you mostly agree with, and are highly credible for you.
4. Collect their pictures, draw the Topic Wheel, print it, and display.
5. That's it!
Easy, no?
Now, you know how to create your own Topic Wheel.
If you’re not yet sold with the idea of Topic Wheel, let me discuss a little bit about the Content
Marketing Funnel - Awareness, Engagement, Conversion - that the Topic Wheel targets, too.
The content marketing funnel has 3 levels - awareness, engagement, conversion.
The Topic Wheel also has 3 levels - you, the topics, the leaders.
Let me explain further.
First, your influencers will target the awareness part. When you follow these influencers or join groups related to them and share their content, their audience will notice you. Hence, the awareness part.
Next, your topics will cover the engagement part. These topics are the things you will talk about and share with your followers in the form of content. Hence, the engagement part.
Lastly, the picture in the middle of the Topic Wheel will take care of the conversion part - YOU. You are your brand. You’re the seller and people buy from people. Hence, the conversion.
Topic Wheel is a great tool to help you.
BUT I am in no way stopping you from doing what you’re currently doing.
All I’m saying is using Topic Wheel will give you direction when it comes to your content.
If you find this helpful, go ahead and create your own. Here’s a template for you to start with (Canva). Should you need any further help, don’t hesitate to let us know by contacting us here.
And if you want to learn more about Topic Wheel, don’t hesitate to research further or ask away using our chatbox and one of our content marketing geniuses will reach out to you.
5 Facebook Ad Misspends You Might Be Doing
What’s the best way to market? Advertise!
In advertising, you control everything - from the content to placements, from the images to the time to publish, from the animation or lack thereof, and many more.
...because you paid for it.
And what’s the most popular social media platform nowadays? Still unbeatable - Facebook!
With 2.8 billion monthly active users as of January 2021, where else can your audience be hiding, right?
So, what’s the best way to market your products or services?
Facebook advertising!
In November 2007, Facebook Ads was introduced.
It has been 14 whopping years. It has gone through a lot.
Advertisers did, too.
Now that Facebook ads are prevalent and (seems) easy to use, it’s so easy to make mistakes that may seem simple… but may cause your ad campaigns to fall through.
Today, let me list down five Facebook ad mistakes that may cause you to trifle away.
1. Not choosing the right objective
Creating an ad campaign might be confusing. One point of confusion is optimizing your ad campaign for the right objective. Choosing the appropriate objective is a major step towards the success of your campaign. Make sure to choose your objective wisely - whether you need it for brand awareness, reach, traffic, lead generation, or conversions, be clear with it.
2. Failing to set proper budget controls
Budget control is a good way to keep your wallet at bay - especially, those seasoned advertisers. But newbies can be confused.
The daily budget helps in the consistency of daily spending. While lifetime budget helps in optimizing your budget towards your goal.
3. Un-optimized audience
Your audience should also be optimized. Did you know that if you have a small audience, you’ll pay a higher CPM (cost per thousand impressions)? Map your audience logically but be careful not to narrow them down so much. A good ballpark should be anywhere between 2 to 40 million users.
4. Overlapping audience
Just because you already optimized your audience doesn’t mean there are no overlaps.
A user falls into multiple different targeting options. And by creating different audiences, you can reach this user multiple times. This can easily create ad fatigue.
This can be avoided by the new “Audience Overlap” tool.
5. Lack of nurturing the audience funnel from the top to the bottom
Your campaign should nurture the audience at each step of the funnel. You have to create campaigns that are complete with follow-throughs. If you start with brand awareness, you can follow through with ads that have a clear call to action.
Spending your hard-earned bucks should be worth it - even in advertising. A good ROI (return on investment) is what all business owners aim for, right?
Are there any mistakes that I missed? Let us know in the comments. Furthermore, if you need more tips and tricks in all things marketing, seek advice from your marketing experts here at Shizzle Marketing.
Source: Facebook Ads
How Does Categorical Keyword Research Help In Content Marketing?
Content is king.
Gone are the days that you will show up in the results page just because you wrote a thousand-word blog post with a repetitive keyword (Note: Repetitive means half of your content is your keyword - notwithstanding the value, sense, and importance of your content.)
Now, search engines evolved into a sensible and knowledgeable tool. Thanks to algorithms and machine learning.
When you hear the word “keyword” you may quickly associate it with SEO.
True but not entirely.
Half of the “keyword” should be associated with content.
Remember, Google’s algorithm now focuses on the value and importance of your content rather than useless repetition of keywords.
Here, I will teach you how categorizing your keywords can help you build a great content strategy.
What is Keyword Categorization?
It’s the process of categorizing, classifying, or sorting keywords according to their definition in various themes. Keyword categorization will help you create a guide for your content strategy.
In practice, you have to list down all your keywords and place them in certain categories.
How to Categorize Your Keywords?
There are a lot of ways to categorize your keywords. From the simple Excel sheet method where you create a filter or tag for your keywords to using a programming language like Python or BigML, the goal is to have a list of semantically related and categorized keywords.
You can categorize your keywords by:
1. Length - There are keywords that are short tail, mid-tail, and long tail.
2. Volume - Depending on the length, keywords may have different search volumes.
3. Search Intention - Is a user’s motivation behind searching keywords. The most established categories are transactional, informational, and navigational.
Why Categorize Your Keywords?
Keywords categorization offers major benefits like the following:
1. Keeping up with search engine algorithms. Complying with algorithms that you know a little bit about is a hard task. But with the help of keyword categorization, it’ll be easy to comply.
2. Creating more opportunities. When you target keywords with proper categorization, there will be more opportunities for your site or blog post to rank in search engines result pages.
3. Competing will be easy. SEO competition is tough - there are many different competitors for every business and every keyword. Keyword categorization is like one of your ammos in the SEO battlefield.
4. Seeing quick SEO results. (Arguably) One of the ways to see a huge change in time consumption is keyword categorization. SEO takes time but categorizing your keywords can give you positive quick results.
5. Conversion made easy. Conversion or making a sale is the ultimate goal of any business. Why choose a keyword that will only drive traffic and not conversion? So, experts recommend using multiple keywords in certain categories for better conversions.
But you told me that this will be about content strategy. Where is it here?
Here’s the thing, your overall content strategy should be aligned with your business goals.
For generating revenue, you have to use analytics to understand where your visitors are staying, which types of information they want, and if they convert from there. Then, you will identify which categories are most profitable for your business. After this, you can either revisit your content and make sure to tag appropriate categories or make more content based on these categories.
Keyword categorization will also help you in expanding your business by understanding your competitors’ content, keywords, and search volume.
All you have to do is to widen your view.
Now that you have all the information you need, you can start the groundwork of creating the best content strategy for your business.
Being a millennial, I grew up knowing what social media is. I’m aware that there can be online friends and followers. Friendster and Myspace were popular back then.
Now, the world we live in is a full-blown digital age.
If I want to check out restaurants nearby, there’s Yelp. If I need a recipe, there’s Pinterest. If I need a job, there’s LinkedIn. For everything in between, there’s Facebook.
Since different social media platforms serve different purposes, you have no choice but to create and maintain gazillion social media accounts.
And that’s just for personal use.
With that, let me give you 5 tips on how to manage your different social media accounts.
1. Quality over going viral.
Okay. This might be a little controversial. But hear me out first.
It’s good to produce content that is current, relevant, and entertaining. Then, others will re-share and/or repost it - making it viral.
Let us also understand that it’s better to create content with correct and valuable information - also good enough to be re-shared and/or reposted. And what we can call “Mr. Right” rather than “Mr. Right Now”.
2. Find the perfect quality.
Although I previously mentioned choosing quality over going viral, being present right now is also important.
Take Twitter for example. It is known as a news and current events social media site. Twitter users tweet their opinion on current events - be it political, social, or even about the weather.
3. Use tools to schedule your posts.
Let’s face it. You want those likes, hearts, and wows, right? You also want your comment box to explode - not literally, of course.
But there are times that an idea pops and you have to wake up at an ungodly hour. You have no choice but to write it down. Now, are you seriously hoping that your friends will read your post at that instance?
That’s where a scheduling tool will be handy. You can try sociamonials.com (not a paid advertisement).
Create content now. Publish later. Easy.
4. Automate as much as you can.
Social media management is repetitive. There are a lot of mundane tasks at hand. So, what will you do? Automate!
You can use IFTTT - a site that will help you link different apps and automatically perform actions when triggered.
Using IFTTT is easy. You can create a command to automatically tweet when your trusted writer or blog site publishes a new article.
5. Be a real person.
I understand if you have a few social media accounts for your small business and you want to promote them from time to time. But keep in mind that your audience has evolved - they are smarter now.
Remember: people follow people, not businesses.
Engage with your audience. Engage with other people’s posts. Be charming.
What goes around, comes back around. So, don’t hold that “congratulations” or “good job”. Comment it down. Let people know that you are a real person.
Managing different social media accounts is quite a job.
But having a few tricks on your sleeves will do wonders.
Do you have more tips that I missed? Let me know!
Email marketing is probably the oldest of all digital marketing strategies. It’s based on creating and sending emails to build and develop relationships with prospects and customers. An effective email marketing strategy will convert website visitors into first-time customers and then turn them into repeat customers. Email marketing is flexible, cost-effective, measurable, and time-saving.
But the biggest question is…
Is email marketing still worth it in 2021?
There are a lot of technological advancements - chatbots, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, among others. It may seem like email has been buried 10 feet under.
And so it seems...
But you’re wrong.
According to research, email marketing is still the most effective way to deepen customer relationships for B2B businesses. Over half of the research respondents said that brands should contact them through email.
Are you still wondering why email is still alive and kicking?
I bet because email is still perceived as a private platform. People receive emails from someone they know or from brands they opted in. Hence, it’s somewhat private.
Based on 2019 data, a whopping 90.3% of adult internet users in the United States are using emails. This means that you can use email marketing to whatever age group you’re targeting. Statistics also show that the email open rate is 22.86% versus social media’s engagement rate of only 0.6%.
Email marketing can also give you a high return on investment (ROI) at an average of $38 for every dollar spent.
That’s why building a successful marketing strategy is a must for every business owner. But most people don’t know how to start.
Today, you’ll learn the basics of how to create an email marketing campaign.
Step 1: Lure them to opt-in
How can you send your emails if you don’t have any email addresses?
Ask their permission first so you can send them an email.
As our first step, let’s talk about building your email list.
There are a lot of ways to build your email list. You can give or offer a free something. Whatever it is, be sure that it’s as valuable as your audience’s email address.
For example, web and app developer company MPH International gives simple newsletters in exchange for an email address.
You should think of an incentive for your audience since they are giving you one important piece of information about them - their email address.
Now, here’s where good strong copywriting skills should take place. (I won’t dive into copywriting since I’m not an expert on that.)
Keep in mind that your incentive should lure them to opt-in.
Step 2: Make good on your promise
Email marketing is about staying true to your words.
They gave you their email address, then what?
Promise them something. Lay your cards on the table. Tell them the truth.
For example, in your welcome email, you said you will send newsletters every week. Instead, you bombard them with daily emails. Your audience will be upset.
Moreover, if you said you'd give daily updates but ended up sending updates monthly, then, your audience will also be upset.
So, just deliver. Okay?
The welcome email is the key. It might be long and boring but make sure you set your audience’s expectations straight. Say - ehm, write - everything your audience needs to know. Be as detailed as you can. Don’t leave a question unanswered.
From here, just make sure you live up to what you said and make good on your promise.
But…
When do I pitch for a sale?
We all know that you’re not sending emails just because, right? In “we” I mean you, I, and your audience. Yes, your audience included.
When they are first opt-in, they get something they need from you for free (the incentive). So, they also know that somewhere along the way you will ask them to buy or pay for something.
But transitioning from a friendly update with a lot of free stuff into a sales-y email can be tricky.
To help you out, plan.
Think about how you will pitch for the sale even before building your email list. Then, put this on your welcome email. So, your audience knows.
You can put a CTA button on every email you send. You can send sales emails in a planned frequency - like once a month. All up to you.
Just make sure you pitch your sale.
Don’t go around sending shady or blind offers. Be direct.
Now that you understand the basics of building a successful email marketing campaign, you can level up by learning segmentation and analytics (which I won’t discuss here due to lack of time. charot!).
So, just to give you an overview let me define segmentation and analytics.
Segmentation is dividing your email list into targeted groups. For example, you can group your email list by who opened and who did not. Then, you can send a different email for each group. There can be different ways of communicating with your audience. For example, you give daily updates and weekly newsletters with discounts. Some of your audience would love the daily and weekly communication but some will favor one over the other. You can also group them by segmentation.
Analytics, on the other hand, will help you measure your email marketing campaign’s success. For me, the two most important are open rate and click-through rate. Open rate will tell you if you built a good relationship or not. Click-through rate or CTR will tell you how many clicks your CTA (or other links) got.
To wrap up…
Is your email marketing always pushed aside? Maybe it’s time to reevaluate.
More so today, email marketing promises good results and high returns.
Start now. Start today.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s not rocket science.
It is work - yes.
Remember, doing it right will separate you from the rest who just do it for the sake of.
Well built websites and mobile apps are highly inclusive. They are not only functional and pleasing to the eyes but also accessible to any group of individuals, so that even the accessible community will have equal access to your services or contents.
Rod from the founding team will enlighten you about the significance of Accessibility for your business.
If you need more details about accessible website design, check out our page in this topic.
In this video:
00:02:28 // Accessibility Myths and Realities
00:07:40 // Defining Disability
00:10:21 // The POUR Principle
00:13:23 // Key Benefits of Accessibility
00:15:31 // Accessibility Testing
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Introduction
0:12
Hello and welcome to the second edition of Shizzle Marketing's Marketing Mixology video blog series. My name is Rod Paulino, your host today, and the topic that we'll be discussing is the importance of web and mobile accessibility. So let's get started.
0:29
According to the W3C, or otherwise known as the World Wide Web Consortium, they state, "When websites and mobile apps and web tools are properly designed and coded, people with disabilities can use them. However, many sites and tools are developed with accessibility barriers that make them difficult or impossible for some people to use, making the web and mobile apps accessible benefits individuals, businesses, and society."
1:00
In this video presentation. I want to take the time to highlight these considerations to help make websites and mobile apps fully inclusive, so that members of the accessible community have truly equal access to these various communication mediums. But ultimately, self advocacy remains the best way to ensure that both web and mobile apps will meet all of your customers needs.
1:26
So let's take a little bit of a deeper dive in understanding accessibility.
1:33
According to the Americans with Disabilities Act ADA individuals with accessible needs and disabilities are entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities privileges advantages or accommodations that a public accommodation provides to its customers. Simply put, everything that we take for granted as normal individuals. We want to ensure that individuals who have accessible needs and or disabilities have the right to, and are included in all of these public accommodations. Moreover, the ADA asked that public accommodations to take steps that are readily achievable, or are reasonable, or that do not constitute an undue burden to enable people with disabilities to be their customers.
2:23
Now let's go and take a look at some accessibility myths and realities.
Accessibility Myths and Realities
2:28
First, people with disabilities don't use computers or mobile phones. Well, although this is still common thought out there in the world but it's simply not true. And as web and mobile development, as well as assistive technology continued to improve, even groups that were unable to access information historically, can now enjoy and really participate more vividly and fully in accessing this digital content and functionality, especially on their mobile phones, there is accessible technology that lives in the operating systems today on iPhones and Androids as an example.
3:06
Second, we don't sell to people with disabilities couldn't be further from the truth. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they reported that about 35% of United States adults, that's about 68 to 72 million people, and about 40% of the age of 65 or older, have a disability. And if you think about it, those are big age ranges and big numbers. And as this population continues to age, you can really be sure that, if you were me, I would want to sell it to this audience and these people with disabilities. It's a captive audience that is probably untapped, and really not being leveraged to its fullest advantage.
3:48
Third, accessibility only benefits blind people. Well, we know that there are rules and regulations out there especially by the web content access, Accessibility Guidelines group, or WCAG, that really they do provide principles and guidelines to make sure that websites and mobile apps are accessible to as many individuals as possible. Especially with people with other deficiencies, like with vision, hearing, mobility and even cognitive. So, to think that it's only meant for blind people is a big myth.
4:26
Fourth, only developers need to worry about accessibility. When you think about an engineering team or a product team, developers are not the only one who needs to worry about fixing bugs when it comes to accessibility. It's really the whole feature. So product managers program managers engineers certainly and developers QA testers UX UI designers user, researchers, and even down to the support teams. Every one of these different disciplines, really need to be in the mix and be part of the accessibility story.
5:02
Fifth, accessibility is a cost with no benefit. Well, when you think about it from a financial perspective, you want your products and services available to everyone. From a social perspective, you have the choice of positioning yourself as an organization that fails to meet accessibility expectations, or you can be seen as one that supports equal opportunity through digital accessibility.
5:28
Technically, when it comes to websites and mobile apps that are developed with accessibility in mind, the code and for information tend to be really cleaner. So the idea is that you get a lot of bang for your buck when you're embracing accessibility from a financial, a social and technical perspective.
05:50
Sixth, an accessible website is boring or ugly. Well, sometimes people are cynical and they really believe that having an accessible web or mobile presence means that you're doing away with the fun, compelling design language or content in favor only text only or kind of like very high contrast designs. And if you've ever been really told this, it's really not true. Websites and mobile apps that are built to be accessible tend to actually function wonderfully, and really have sleek vivid designs. And if you embrace the thought of going for, hey let's design it first and really get visual and creative, we just need to be taking into account a plan to assure that we're doing testing and being mindful and respectful of what we're building so that as many people as possible can get access to this great content that you have on your website or mobile app.
06:56
Automated testing is enough to be compliant. Well, it's definitely a great start, but really the best value it also comes with also human testing and intervention so that this testing can also be interpreted and also embellished upon when it comes to the understanding the accessible methodology and approach.
07:14
And then lastly, we've already fixed our site for accessibility so we're finished. And, yeah, we'd like to think that way but truly accessibility compliance is a journey. And it really takes a lot of maintenance. If you ever change content, imagery or even structurally the pages on your site, you can imagine that requires a lot of upkeep and responsibility to ensure that the site, and the contents within it always remain compliant.
Defining Disability
7:40
So when we're thinking about defining this disability. It's truly a common misconception that accessibility is all about those with limited vision or the blind. But there's really a broad range of other disabilities and situations where they apply, and making a website or mobile app accessible, means that we want to make sure that it can be used by as many people as possible.
8:05
According to WCAG, that is again the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1.
It lays out how digital services and tools should be made accessible to all, including users with impairments, to their vision, their hearing mobility and cognitive in vision you can see it's typically the blind, partially sighted or sight impaired or colorblind with hearing deaf or hard of hearing. In the realm of mobility, it's the difficulty in ambulatory movement or use of an input device or access to it, like a keyboard or a mouse. And then in cognitive, being impaired in the thinking and understanding of issues, especially those related to dyslexia or autism or learning difficulties.
8:57
Also with that, there's also these disabilities are can be subdivided into Modes, and they can be broken down into permanent disability such as an example when you are blind or deaf in mobility, if you have fallen or got into a car accident where you are paralyzed, that's considered a permanent disability. In temporary disability where a physical or mental disability hinders you while discharging your responsibilities for a short period of time. Well, temporary disability again in the mobility space or impairment where physically you might have broken your arm, and now you can't appropriately type or use your mouse. And while your arm is broken, that's still considered temporary because you are not able to work or conduct your responsibilities for that short period of time but eventually you will heal. And then, thus again, considered temporary.
9:52
Then lastly there are situational disabilities. And this term really applies when a user is not able to carry out tasks, due to a situation, they find themselves in, and some examples of this are when an internet connection is too slow and how many of us have ever encountered that certainly it's situational, or when a website is not usable on the smartphone or be in the app, because some apps may have restriction capabilities associated with them.
The POUR Principles
10:21
When understanding accessibility. We also want to understand in the simple acronym. The poor principles and following these poor principles, with perceivable operable understandable, and robust principles. It will help users really have access to your website and mobile content, and while making your interface really robust through a spectrum of different technologies. And in the day and age of highly competitive B2B and small business markets, really leveraging excellent and striving for excellent web and mobile accessibility gives you the edge over those competitors that you may have been looking for or seeking.
11:05
So when you think about perceivable a question that you might want to ask yourself is, can your website users and mobile users identify content and interface elements by the means of the senses, certainly through sight but can they also perceive by also through sound or touch, and are these leads being respected and adhere to.
11:28
Next with operable, the question you might want to ask yourself is, can your user successfully use buttons controls and other interactive elements on your website or mobile app in order to interact with it. And you might think of other manifestations like clicking on a certain area, or some swiping actions on the phone, and really the idea here is that maybe they might even rely on voice commands to navigate the interface so thinking about the whole experience from an operable perspective.
12:02
And then understandable. The question here is, how steep is the learning curve for your customers in navigating your website or app. What you want to do is here is maintain on the really the consistency in your presentation and format. And really, that tonality and I always like to say the design language. That's matched to your audience. So, when you make it comprehensible and clear, that also helps for better learning and remembrance and then certainly helps delight your customers for future visits.
12:40
And then lastly, in the realm of robustness, is your website truly something where you can leverage something as an example like responsive design, and so that your interface and your content is easily switchable and interactable in different technologies and design mediums like on a laptop, on a smartphone, on a desktop and also on a tablet. So, with these port principles and adhering to them, you could really say that, as long as you're adhering to them in the accessible sense, I think you're well underway.
Key Benefits of Accessibility
13:23
In the realm of the key benefits to accessibility, when you can design and adhere to the rules to make your website or mobile apps more accessible, you'll really be following truly the best practices associated with good web and mobile design outright. Like for example, with the advantage of speed. When you think about making your site cleaner and more accessible. Certainly, through the use of usability and ensuring that the interfaces that you have is easy to use especially when you leverage a screen reader that tabbing through the different areas. And then lastly through SEO or search engine optimization where alt tag can certainly be leveraged and use in order to optimize as a really added benefit your website, and your mobile app experience.
14:14
But ultimately, three of the benefits that we see from a business perspective are really bolstering your reach, and again, it was mentioned before, but perhaps you've never really thought about this audience, this new accessible audience and catering to them because your mobile app or website wasn't accessible before. And you really don't want to overlook this especially if the world out there, from a business perspective, is fierce and competition is fierce, and maybe this is might give you the edge in making sure that you reach out to this new audience and persona of customers.
14:44
Next, in the realm of complaints. We've certainly heard about all the news about different enterprises and small and medium sized businesses who have faced legal action or being prosecuted based on accessibility non compliance. And this is very easy if you just take the time to actually do it. It's just good business sense. And then, related to that good marketing, and with good business sense and adhering to accessibility. It truly can enhance your brand by bolstering even proclaiming out there in social media that your website and your app is truly accessible to all.
Accessibility Testing
15:31
Just a little bit I wanted to touch upon here, and this could be a topic in and of itself but when it comes to accessibility testing, these are some just areas of focus when you think about using some of the automated tests. Some of the things that you'll start seeing here where there's areas of interest are title tags for the language and keyboard navigation, the focus, forms, headings, images certainly, tables, JavaScript and even Aria acronym really, but it's really interfacing with these assistive technologies in order to make sure that whatever it is that you have as content, imagery, videos, and such, that you're hearing and really embracing all these areas of focus.
16:16
And then lastly, certain accessibility tools and even things to consider on your journey to help improve your web and mobility experience online and in your technology is first through screen readers. There are certainly ones that are out there and one that really comes to mind most notably is jaws. Second, their speech recognition software like dragon speech. As an example, to help out with an NCAA meeting with this speech recognition for spoken word. There's also certain special equipment like keyboard and Braille reader physical keyboards as well that could help out.
16:55
There's also control mechanisms like touchscreens mouse and keyboards, and even stylists and also design paths. There's also user input in making sure that when you're thinking about your contact forms and signup forms that you tried to keep the fields to a minimum, so that it adds to that simplicity and ease of use when you're thinking about accessible forms. And then lastly, something that only been out here, and really embraced for the last couple of years, is embracing responsive design, so that when you design and build it through the design team and development teams in your respective organizations if you have them or if you hire out responsive design is really something where you can actually have your websites and the content of them also really appear to move and flow dynamically between web based version versus also on mobile. And it also certainly helps to conserve image download sizes when you're also thinking about responsive.
18:01
Anyway. With that, I hope that all of you have enjoyed this time with this web series and this blog series. And I certainly hope that you have a great rest of your day. Looking forward to the next time when we can talk in the next episode. Thank you.
Marketing success doesn’t come from a single strategy or channel. It requires the harmony of different channels and investments in key areas such as analytics, thus come integrated marketing.
Rod from the founding team will enlighten you about what integrated marketing is, its benefits and how you can measure your results for continuous improvement.
If you need more details about marketing strategy, check out our page in this topic.
In this video:
00:00:14 // Series Introduction and Objectives
00:01:30 // Integrated Marketing
00:04:41 // Key Investments
00:09:07 // Key Benefits
00:10:50 // Conclusion
Subscribe to our YouTube channel for new videos! Follow this link to subscribe!
Ready to invest in strategic and high-ROI marketing strategies? Talk with our marketing experts.
Get the latest digital and traditional marketing trends, advice and more from our blog!
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Series Introduction and Objectives
0:14
Hello everyone, and welcome to the first video, in a multi-video blog series called Marketing Mixology. My name is Rod Paulino, and I'm both thrilled and honored to be your marketing Ambassador throughout this series on behalf of our one stop full-service agency -- Shizzle Marketing.
0:34
In this series, we will cover a number of topics, highlighting the key marketing insights and top questions marketers should really be asking themselves when considering their market focus and business strategy. In this video, I'll be providing you a high-level overview on our topic -- integrated marketing. What it is, how you can benefit from it, and even provide you ways in which you can measure for continuous improvement.
1:04
Lastly, I'll discuss the key investment areas that really every organization, regardless of their size or industry, truly needs to consider when they are developing their plans and priorities for interacting with and selling to their customers or businesses online. So, are you all ready to start? Alright, Let's jump right in.
The Integrated Marketing
1:30
So, integrated marketing is a strategy really aimed at unifying different marketing channels throughout. You might think of your search engine optimization, the different social media channels that are out there, the direct marketing like your snail mail postcards and then, of course, web search engine and such.
1:55
The objective of integrated marketing is to take all of those and complement one another and reinforce the impact of each and every one of those methods. And then when you think about each and every one of those different channels that you have in integrated marketing, you want to take the key metrics and marketing data that you get from all of those. And once you are able to examine and hone in on those, it will help really allow you to be able to optimize on your service or product development, help really champion and right size your pricing, help with your sales distribution and of your services or goods and products, and then really also help with your customer service efforts.
02:44
Integrated Marketing really is designed to ensure that all of those communication strategies and marketing strategies that I mentioned are really unified and consistent across all of those channels, but really the number one thing there is that they're centered on that customer.
03:02
So, let me give you a little bit of glimpses, if you will, of what I'm talking about here. So, think about when your customer clicks on an email, per se, through a campaign that you might have. Think of them landing on your homepage through either your website or a mobile device. They might even receive an offer through snail mail in their mailboxes. And they might even also call your customer service to inquire further or if they're having a problem. With each of those glimpses that I gave to you, you would expect that the customer is expecting a seamless experience. And in this day and age, organizations that are very fortunate to be able to really employ them is Customer Success managers and really they are the middle ground individuals who are critical to ensuring the success of that marketing campaign, and hopefully work in tandem with sales in order to go and acquire that customer.
04:07
So integrated marketing really requires a unified approach with that marketing and sales teams. And where truly marketing really needs sales and sales needs marketing. Integrated marketing can truly help identify the company's most valuable customers that they have through their demographics, through their likes and dislikes, through surveys and the like. And once that's done, they can develop really targeted marketing campaigns tailored to them, which then ultimately will enable close of sales and then also improve on retention.
Key Investments
04:41
So, here I have listed some key investment areas, six of them, and I'm not going to go through each and every one of them in detail. But let's start with planning and governance here where you might think in your organization that you'll think about how to plan for your digital transformation, how to leverage key marketing budgets and also your return on investment. And then also, what types of technology are going to use for your marketing both online and offline.
05:12
When it comes to goals and measurement, you want to be really thinking about the marketing forecasts that you want to envision, key performance indicators that you'll be wanting to go and measure yourself against, and then also have a convenient marketing dashboard so you can see all of this in real time. With media, you might want to use paid or owned media as well as offline or online integrations. With content, there is certainly content marketing strategies that we can go over, and as well as different marketing and drip marketing funnel. And in a future series, I will be talking more about what these funnels really mean.
05:59
My personal favorite is in the customer and partner experiences where imagine the mediums of website or mobile and thinking about the end to end customer journeys of those experiences, and really optimizing for them. You might also want to think about multi-channel ways in which a customer can pay and purchase throughout, so that your conversion rate is optimized even further. And then lastly, most really heavily used now, our email marketing, the mobile messaging and also chatbots, to name a few.
06:38
Now, when you think about integrated marketing, we, again, talk about traditional media, so, direct mail, print advertising, even outdoor signage. We think about online, when we talk about websites and social media, and also search engines ads.
6:58
Well, you think about all of that, and then you think about the center of gravity here that we're talking about, which is integrated marketing. And when you think about all those channels, both online and offline, we want to go and leverage those so that they’re purposefully unified. And you want to do that with keeping some of these things in mind, which we will call the four C's -- the cohesiveness of those channels and your campaigns, the consistency, the continuity and also how they complement one another. And let me go into detail of each of those.
7:36
So, when you think about the four C's, you want to have a logical connection across all those channels so you might have some video marketing in YouTube, you might have some physical fliers, and then you also, of course, will have social media. You also want to make sure that among all of those channels that they're consistent and the messaging that you have there is complimentary and not contradictory. You also want to have a cadence, so that you're, you have a continuous stream of marketing throughout the course of your marketing campaign.
8:12
And then lastly, you want to have a harmonious complimentary relationship among all of these channels so that your strategy seems seamless to your customers. Moreover, you want to have strong messaging across these channels and, in my opinion, the secret sauce here is how you approach it. So, when you think about an integrated marketing campaign, you might think about how will I story-tell, and what kind of brand identity do I want to have but ultimately, my point I'm trying to make here is that you really want to create one strong singular message instead of fragmented messages and points because you might waste your resources and time on all of those others when you really wanted to just concentrate on just one great message to your customers.
Key Benefits
09:07
So, some benefits of integrated marketing. Here I post a question. What are savvy small business owners and marketers doing to save time, money, and generate leads. And so really simply put, they are using integrated marketing to help boost consumer trust, and then also optimize on their return on investment. So, they really want to concentrate on having clear consistent messaging, so that they don't have to spend excessively on, you know, stock images, press releases, and buying up media like radio for example, or, as I mentioned that outdoor signage than you really need.
09:48
All you really want to do is, if you can concentrate on that one message, you can really produce the materials that are purposely needed in order to have them unified across all those channels. So, you won't have to think about racking your brain and spend less time strategizing and agonizing over communications that are really focused on one message. And then lastly, I want to leave with you the evaluation and measurement piece to integrated marketing, and you might really want to make use of various metrics such as the website traffic that you get, the various changes in your sales numbers, and the fluctuation within of itself, and then also the social media metrics that you get through the engagement, or even your increase or decrease in follower count. So, you really want to evaluate the performance of these campaigns to really help you hone and understand the effectiveness of your strategy.
Conclusion
10:50
And in closing, your key really to success is to embrace and really listen to all of those marketing channels, and then strive for continuous improvement by evaluating and taking the time to analyze your key metrics.
11:06
Integrated marketing is a great tool as long as you know how to purposefully unify, and then also make sure that you are truly listening to the voice of your customer.
11:20
Thank you everyone. And I'll talk to you soon.
You’re feeling ecstatic. You just started your dream business.
You have done setting up your physical store, distributed the flyers, and installed posters within your vicinity. You did your homework. Your product or service has high quality, your price is on par with the competition, and there’s a demand for it. You know that this business would work. Yes, finally, your business is now ready for primetime.
However, after a couple of months of operation, you’re disappointed with your sales.
How is that possible you may ask?
There’s a ton of potential reasons but one of the biggest culprits is marketing. In today’s internet age, it’s Digital Marketing to be exact.
Business owners, you may just be missing the known secret of modern business’ virality and success.
DIGITAL MARKETING
The fundamentals of marketing haven’t changed – it’s still giving potential clients the emotional and rationale reasons to purchase your product or service. What changed is how businesses MUST do it.
Digital marketing is one the result of those changes due to widespread use of internet and digital devices. As our behavior in doing business becomes more internet-propelled, so does marketing.
Basically, any marketing or activities done to reach customers over the internet is considered as digital marketing. It leverages familiar channels like social media, email, website, and search engine to connect to your target audience.
HOW DIGITAL MARKETING HELPS SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESS?
Doesn’t matter if you just started your business or an established medium-sized business, there is a huge and untapped potential in digital marketing.
Do you want to connect to customers outside your city? How about providing convenient support for your customers? Do you want to grow your sales quickly? Then go for digital marketing.
Marketing through the internet provides you the ability to tap thousands of customers over the internet instantly. Though flyers and posters still work, in some ways, it can’t keep up with the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of its digital version.
Flexibility. Traditional marketing requires you to work with physical resources like printed collaterals, brochures, bill boards and the like. If you have the budget, ads for radio and tv commercials could be an option. All of them require significant investment in terms of planning, time, and budget since you have to do it right the first time. Because when they’re out for display, you can’t change them anymore.
In digital marketing, you only need an internet connection, an account in Facebook, and a business page, then you can start reaching your customers. And with the increasing number of internet users each year, the more people you can connect and market your business.
Furthermore, unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing enables you to update your marketing collaterals – digital flyers, social media posts, website headlines -- easily and quickly based on real-time customer behavior. Yes, you can do instantaneous analysis of your online marketing efforts with the right tools which is non-existence in traditional marketing.
Cost-Effective. Any type of business would prefer low cost investment with high returns. That’s even true for small and medium businesses. This makes digital marketing even attractive.
Let me try to share with you some sense of optimism.
For example, in social media, spend only $5 and reach 1,000 people. That’s 3X less costly than traditional media. When you advertise in Search Engine, commonly known as Pay-Per-Click, business average revenue per dollar spent is $2 which is a 200% ROI. Now, you see?
Those were just two out of many digital marketing channels. Based on your business goals and strategy, you have a number of channels to choose from.
WHICH DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY IS BEST?
Here are some common strategies:
- Business Website
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
They all have the same objective – connect your product and services to your audience – but different in approach and use.
Here are a few examples.
For starters, especially for new business owners, creating social media is a quick way of sharing your business to the world. That’s because it’s accessible and a cheap way to advertise your product or service. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest provides an easy way to create a business page and advertise your posts.
To formally bring your business in the digital space and boost your credibility, a business website is your best friend.
There are online services that can help you DIY a website but for quality results I would honestly recommend to ask professionals to do it for you. Why? It brings me to my next point – SEO. No DIY tool can do it right and in a sustainable manner for you.
SEO is crucial to make sure that people can find your website. It assures that your website has the technical requirements and the right content so search engines like Google can serve your website to the right audience.
As you can see. Your digital marketing can contain different strategies and channels to maximize its effectiveness. It’s important that you plan ahead and make sure that your strategy is aligned with your business goals.
Basically, each digital marketing strategy is best in their own right.
WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US?
Those are just a few but real reasons why digital marketing is the norm these days.
Having a solid digital marketing plan for your business is a must to spur growth for your business. So, take your time to choose which strategy is best for your current goals. It should be accessible and should bring the most bacon to your business.
Go ahead and get your feet wet. You MUST adapt to the trend or risk to lose hundreds of thousands of potential customers just sitting in the subway.
If you need marketing assistance or you just want to focus on what you do best – building your product or service – give us a ping. Me and my team would be glad to help you.
Wondering how you can maximize the potential of your SEO strategy? Wonder no more! Sharie from the customer success management team will help you understand SEO and how it can position your business to success.
If you need more details about SEO, check out our page in this topic.
In this video:
00:00:30 // Series Introduction and Objectives
00:01:13 // What is SEO?
00:04:07 // Why is SEO important?
00:05:12 // Conclusion
Subscribe to our YouTube channel for new videos! Follow this link to subscribe!
Ready to invest in strategic and high-ROI marketing strategies? Talk with our marketing experts.
Get the latest digital and traditional marketing trends, advice and more from our blog!
We'll see you soon!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Introduction
0:00
Are you sure you know everything about the search engine optimization? How does it work, and how can you leverage it for your business? If you answered NO to any of those questions, please stay tuned and get ready to learn.
0:30
Series Introduction and Objectives
Welcome to Shizzle Marketing, and on this channel, we will share this series called, "A Modern Take to SEO". It will help you better understand the latest and greatest about the search engine optimization and maximize its potential for your business. But before we dive in. Please don't forget to subscribe and please hit that bell icon, so you can be notified when our next or this episode we're going to focus on what is SEO and why is this important. But for those who know the basics of SEO, you may want to skip on the next video.
SEO Definition
1:13
What does it mean by SEO?
1:17
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the process of optimizing the quality of your content and quantity of traffic driven to your website. Optimizing your website's content would get you on the first page of Google search results. So you can think about SEO this way. SEO is working with Google, and SEO shows Google that you provide valuable content for your audience. But remember, SEO is not only for Google. Though Google dominates the search engine market with a whopping 90% market share, it also works with other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, AOL, among others. If SEO is a coin, one side is knowing your target audience, what they're looking for, what words are they using, and what type of content they want to consume. Basically, you need to understand your customer's interests and proper websites to their needs. So, when I say content, it's everything you put on your website like news articles, vlog, blog, images, marketing collaterals, and the like. On the other side of the coin, it's understanding how search engines work. They will focus on Google search engine for an obvious reason. It's dominating the market!
2:53
Just a little bit of history guys. Back then, Google's algorithm was very simple. Simple to a point where a person can manipulate it easily, and Google would be totally okay with that. During this time in history, Google only looks at two key factors, and that is keyword density and profile links. Keyword density is writing long content and stuffing their words wherever and whenever possible. While on the other hand, profile links are also known as backlinks. These are the links coming from the other website pointing to your site. Backlinks are some sort of testimonials. That's how simple it is... Before!
3:38
Today's SEO is way different and challenging. Google's complex algorithm is now focused on validating the quality of your content, and how the internet perceives you in terms of popularity and relevance. Modern SEO requires more work but it truly elevates everyone's search experience. We will talk more about the modern search engine rules and guidelines in a separate video.
Importance of SEO
4:07
Why SEO is important?
4:10
Now that we know what SEO is, you might want to ask, why is this important to you?
4:18
Number one. For your business growth. SEO, done right, will drive huge traffic to your website. Advertising and social media whether paid or not can drive traffic to your website. But the majority of online traffic comes from search engines like Google and Bing. With online traffic comes popularity, and popularity means more opportunities that your business can take advantage of.
4:48
Next is the customer's experience. With SEO's focus on quality content, customers who are searching for their needs can now enjoy relevant search results. Not only that, SEO also favors those websites that are accessible to everyone. Even for differently-abled individuals.
Conclusion
5:12
That's it. Stay tuned for our next episode to learn about the two main categories of SEO strategies -- on page and off page. Right now, if you watched this far, for sure you like this video, so please like us and subscribe on this channel. Thank you for watching. See you soon!