Meet us at the IRX & eDX Expo: Learn more here
You may have heard the term “influencer” thrown around online and not really understand what it means or how it can help your business. I’m here to give you the low down, explain the power influencers have, and how they can boost your PR strategy through PR & influencer marketing.
Let’s start by looking at what an influencer is. It’s still a relatively new term and many people haven’t a clue what these people do but it is certainly one of the most popular PR trends in recent years.
If we look at the basic dictionary definition then an influencer is “a person or thing that influences another” – this doesn’t really help.
In terms of marketing, an influencer is someone who promotes products and services on various platforms such as social media to their audience. They form reciprocal relationships with brands known as brand deals or sponsorships and people follow them on social media because they might enjoy the lifestyle they promote or what they do.
We now have a definition, but how can influencers help your PR strategy and marketing? The following are a few of the main benefits:
You have to realize that the most popular influencers have millions of followers on social media. Their audience is immense and their followers are usually fully invested in what they do and really are influenced by the content the influencer shows.
You can tap into that huge audience and loyalty to boost your own brand awareness and image. This then results in improved website traffic, more sales, and less tangible benefits like an improved social media following.
It’s essentially marketing and PR but with a pre-built audience (i.e. the influencer’s followers) which is incredibly cost-effective too compared to traditional marketing methods where you have to work to build an audience.
With the benefits clear, how do you make a PR influencer strategy? It’s actually easier than you think and the hardest part of your PR & influencer marketing campaign is selecting the right person(s) to work with. Below, I have created a simple 5-step guide to create your first PR strategy with influencers.
As I mentioned, you need to pick the RIGHT people to work with. Ideally, you should pick influencers who have some type of relationship with your industry or the types of products/services you sell. This means the audience is more likely to interact with your business.
Start by researching the different influencers and make a list of potential people who you could work with. Make sure you check their socials and look for things like followers, other brands they work with, and their reputation.
Next, you need to create a budget for your PR influencer strategy. This involves deciding how many people you want to work with, and how much you are willing to spend. With influencers, there are generally two “payment” methods:
The second method is preferable as this results in a purer relationship and seems less like you are buying their endorsement. It helps greatly if they actually love your products too and have a genuine interest in using them. Either way, set a budget, and create an outline of potential payment methods that you can show to the influencer when you make contact.
You then have to consider how the relationship will work. Perhaps it’s a one-off endorsement where you give an influencer a free product in return for them using it in their social media content X number of times.
Alternatively, perhaps you want to work with them on a recurring basis (results dependant) and create something like an ambassador program. You can put forward both options to the influencer when you reach out to them.
Now comes the crucial part – reaching out to the influencer. There is obviously no guarantee that they will want to work with you so be prepared to reach out to multiple people and allow for some failure.
When you reach out, make sure that you are as detailed as possible in your expectations and what they will receive in return. Don’t leave any room for misinterpretation.
If you are successful, the work begins and you can start creating a positive relationship with the influencer(s) for mutual benefit.
It’s ideal to monitor the progress of your PR & influencer marketing strategy and make sure it’s having a positive impact. Also, monitor the content they produce to make sure they are representing your brand in the way you intended. If this sounds like a lot to take in, you may find online PR agency services useful as this often includes influencer marketing strategies.
While some remain skeptical, I am an ardent believer in the power of influencers for PR and marketing. This is mainly driven by the popularity of social media and the sheer volume of people influencers can reach.
By forging relationships with influencers you essentially gain access to a ready-made audience and can use that for mutual benefit to promote your products and services, and to bolster your public image.
PR and marketing are two key business processes and oftentimes I find people confusing the two, or misunderstanding their purpose. While these two business processes often overlap, they achieve different things and the approach to each is also different.
It’s important to distinguish between the two business essentials so that you can make effective campaigns in each and this is what we will discuss below. Read on to find out about PR vs marketing, how they differ, and the typical processes involved with each function.
So, what is PR? This is an age-old process that has been utilized as a profession since the early 1900s. While there were originally PR professionals and PR companies, it’s typically taken care of in-house today.
PR is the process of improving your public perception and forging positive relationships with your customers. You want your PR to drive engagement, make people see your business in a favourable light, and build a bond of trust.
Ultimately PR strives to boost sales and profit, but this is usually a by-product of the process and not the central focal point. Instead, you want customers to have a positive experience when dealing with your company.
Example functions involved in PR include media relations, events, brand journalism, and reputation management. This also means dealing with negative press and trying to smooth over difficult situations to prevent reputation damage by things like apologies, or trying to spin events from a different perspective.
Marketing is directly involved in the sales of your products and/or services – basically, you are trying to get people to spend money and buy into your business. It is a more financially driven process and concentrates mainly on the selling aspect as opposed to the aim of building a positive business reputation that PR strives to do.
Marketing includes things like social media campaigns, radio adverts, brochures, new product press releases, email newsletters, and website content. The basic thought process in marketing is that your customers have a problem, and they need your product to overcome that problem, so you are simply bringing A and B together.
Today, marketing is largely done online and traditional marketing methods like leaflets, brochures, TV adverts, and radio are not as popular. These have been overshadowed by social media, influencer marketing, and video content marketing for example.
With a brief introduction to PR and marketing, we can look at business specifics and see how the two processes result in different activities and functions such as their goals, target audience, and measurable metrics.
The goals for marketing and PR are usually different but there can be some vague overlaps. PR goals are concerned with things like improving business mentions, social media following gains, articles written about your company, and share of voice in the industry.
In contrast, typical marketing goals include reach, conversions, sales, profit, and sale value per customer. In short, marketing goals are usually financially driven, whereas PR goals can be less tangible and focused more on boosting reputation and visibility.
For both processes, the target audience is highly important, but marketing and PR usually have some differences in who they are aimed at. PR can involve targeting journalists, other businesses, news outlets, and influencers – not always the end customer.
This differs from marketing as you are primarily concerned with reaching the end customer and trying to convert them into sales.
On a day-to-day basis, what a PR specialist and marketer does will vary hugely too. A PR specialist may try to get in touch with journalists and forge connections in the industry. They may also analyse the presence of the company in the industry and try to assess how popular they are.
Marketers will spend time creating marketing campaigns such as social media posts, blog articles, content, and maybe even video content. They are more concerned with interacting with the end customers from a sales perspective.
Analyzing the success of both marketing and PR is especially important, but the metrics used to assess how effective each process differs.
For PR metrics like SoV (Share of Voice), reach, and brand mentions are commonly used as these help show how much your business is being talked about. Marketing metrics are more financially motivated and often include things like sales, average sales value, new customers, customer acquisition cost, customer value, and ROI.
Something you should understand about PR vs marketing is that you don’t have to keep the two processes strictly apart. Oftentimes they overlap and business campaigns can contribute towards both marketing and PR and a b2b digital PR agency can help you understand this.
For example, you may run a social media campaign on Instagram and Facebook to boost sales of a new product. Depending on the content, tone, and positivity in the social media posts, this campaign could just as easily contribute towards PR too.
I hope you have a clear idea of the differences between PR and marketing and that you can see that the two processes are mutually beneficial and often overlap. Indeed, PR tactics usually contribute towards sales and thus can be seen as a type of marketing, while marketing can also help build a positive business image and relationships.
In the last few decades, we have witnessed an evolution of society and a transition to more digitally-orientated business. Most businesses have some type of digital function whether this is payment processing, an online store, or using email.
This also holds true for marketing. Traditional marketing methods like flyers and brochures are far less used than digital marketing methods like email newsletters, PPC campaigns, and SEO. But is this true in the UK and is there a high demand for digital marketing? We discuss this below.
The short answer is yes. Digital marketing and people with digital marketing skills are in the highest demand in the following countries:
We often rank in the top 10 due to various factors such as the economy, exports, and the evolving nature of business.
The underlying factor is that virtually all industries are investing heavily in digital marketing as they realize the impact and global reach it can have.
Consider this – what would be the cost and potential gain to design, print, and distribute 1000 product brochures as opposed to implementing website SEO to boost search engine rankings? Your brochures have a captive audience and a limited reach of 1000 people.
In contrast, ranking highly on Google potentially gives you hundreds of thousands of views and clicks – there is simply no comparison.
It makes sense that digital marketing is in global high demand, but why specifically is there a great need for it in the UK? This is a complex question with many factors and it’s more than just a case of digital marketing being incredibly effective.
Let’s get the simple factor out of the way – digital marketing yields fantastic results and it has a far greater potential impact and scope than physical marketing methods.
Just think of how many millions of people in the UK use Google, Facebook, email, and YouTube daily. Our society is evolving in how we shop and research things and as people mainly use digital methods, it’s only natural that marketing methods must take advantage of this.
In the UK we have been quick to adopt new technologies and most people are tech-savvy. However, there are still a large number of businesses that need help from an SEO company Essex or tech companies to make a full digital transition.
Many businesses only have a basic website and are just starting to experiment with simple digital marketing. There is a real need and as competition is so high in most sectors, businesses are turning to digital marketing to gain an edge.
This is why we have plenty of SEO agencies and thriving digital businesses who are helping companies push forward.
The UK economy plays an important role in digital marketing too. Our economy is largely service-based with our top industries being professional services, business administration, and finance.
Things like agriculture and utilities only occupy a small percentage of the UK job share. As a result, this means that there are many more companies operating digitally that can benefit greatly from digital marketing.
This contrasts greatly with countries that have economies based on agriculture or raw material exports for example. In countries like these, there isn’t as much demand for digital marketing due to the nature of the predominant businesses and industries.
The scope of digital marketing will only increase in the future and we should see a continued decline of traditional marketing methods. The fact is, is that it’s simply far more cost-effective to use digital marketing due to the reduced cost and massive potential reach.
The UK is a prime hotspot for digital marketing due to its service-based economy and a move away from physical industries. Combine that with an excellent internet infrastructure and a wealth of businesses that need digitalizing and it’s easy to see why the UK is leading the way for all things digital.
So, you have started your carpet cleaning business and the first few clients have been a roaring success. Everything looks fantastic but you realize that you can still take more work on and have plenty of excess capacity!
What to do? You wonder how you can attract more customers and market your carpet cleaning business successfully? One of the most effective ways to do this is to use digital marketing which includes things like a website, email marketing, and social media – basically anything on the internet!
As you will see below, digital marketing opens up a whole new world of potential for your carpet cleaning business and allows you to reach customers that might otherwise have been inaccessible with traditional marketing methods. To explain further, we have listed six reasons why your carpet cleaning business can benefit from digital marketing.
One of the most important things a carpet cleaning company can benefit from is trust and positive reviews. If you can show potential clients that you do a fantastic job and can deliver on your promises then you will be able to gain new customers easily.
Digital marketing helps build that customer/business trust in various ways. You can communicate directly with people on social media for example, and ask customers to leave reviews on sites like Trust Pilot, Yelp, and Google Business Profile.
In your local area, there are probably a handful of other cleaning companies all striving for the same business. You know exactly who they are and what they do and it can be a competitive industry so anything you can do to gain an advantage is essential.
Digital marketing helps you gain this. Think of this scenario. On the one hand, we have one of your competitors who markets their business using traditional methods. They don’t have a website and they gain a steady influx of business through word of mouth and leaflets.
On the other hand, we have your business. You have just developed a professional website with great SEO that gets you ranked on the first page of Google for various carpet cleaning terms. This is on top of the word of mouth and positive reviews that you already utilize to your advantage. Who do you think is likely to get more new customers in this scenario?
It can be difficult to find new customers and potential avenues of business using offline research. With digital marketing, you have a wealth of information and analytical tools like Google Analytics at your fingertips which can be used to find new areas of business.
You could, for example, find new keywords using Google Keyword Planner and then incorporate local SEO into your web content to attract customers from towns and cities that you would not have thought of previously.
Traditional marketing methods like leaflets, word of mouth, and printed advertising has a limited scope and reach. You can only print and hand deliver so many leaflets about your cleaning business for example before the time and effort involved becomes too much.
Digital marketing methods generally do not have these drawbacks and the ratio of effort and time involved compared to potential returns and customer reach are far superior.
Just imagine how many thousands of people you could potentially reach simply by utilizing carpet cleaning SEO for your business website. Or think about how many millions of people login to their Facebook and Instagram accounts each day that could maybe see an advert for your business. The scope and ability to appeal to a wider audience is simply greater using digital marketing.
The world of business and marketing is continually changing and any company whether it is carpet cleaning or manufacturing must adapt.
Over the last decade or so we have seen a steady shift in the habits of consumers and a large percentage of people do their shopping and research online. This means that digital marketing is increasingly relevant and if you ignore it your carpet cleaning business risks being left behind or becoming outdated. This could again change in the future if some other revolutionary technology comes along, but for now, digital marketing is essential in the online world we live in.
Anything you can do to increase the visibility of your carpet cleaning business and attract new customers is a huge benefit and digital marketing is an effective way to do this.
You are appealing to a far larger potential audience due to the sheer volume of people who use Google and social media daily and making sure that your company stays relevant and adapts to changes in consumer habits.
Marketing is one broad industry that has seen a massive increase with the advancement of technology. As marketing becomes wider and grows more complex, the need for simplicity and ease increases— this is where automation comes in.
As the name implies, marketing automation uses technology to make marketing campaigns easier to run and track their progress. It has become important for marketing to be automated, seeing as there are many things to keep up with concerning marketing.
Having your marketing automated helps you stay on top of your marketing campaigns, giving your customers the best value and helping you know what to change/correct in your existing business model/marketing campaigns, using accurate data tracking and recording to make informed and accurate decisions.
Alternatively, you can check out SEO courses on Clickslice to have a better understanding of how this works.
Marketing automation won’t be complete without certain tools (software) that make it possible. These tools help marketers navigate the best on how to market to their audience, give them insight, track/store data, manage their marketing campaigns automatically and respond to certain queries automatically. This gives business owners/marketers the time to implement more and grow their businesses.
Knowing the right marketing automation tools to use is important to get the best results. These tools make marketing easier and double as CRM tools that give you the best value, improve customer service, and do more for your business to help it scale.
We have created a list of marketing automation tools reviewed highly by successful marketers to help you drive the best results for your business.
Hubspot takes the top spot here because it has been praised by highly successful digital marketers to be a very effective tool both in marketing automation and CRM.
They have a fully-equipped suite for marketers that includes sales software, support software and marketing software— all of which are integrated with their CRM software. This combination makes it possible for companies to have insane marketing productivity and a data catalogue that would not be possible if the marketing operations were done separately.
Once you get the hang of it, the possibilities are endless, which means that using it to automate many tasks helps you save time.
Omnisend is a marketing automation platform created for e-commerce businesses.
This software tool offers automation workflows that integrate email, SMS, Facebook Messenger, etc. Omnisend also offers an easy UX that makes it possible to create workflows and do different tasks. Businesses also get to enjoy great channel management features, depending on the size of the business.
Having a beautiful UI gives a pleasant experience when using Autopilot. Their marketing platform is mainly for messaging, and they pride themselves on being the easiest marketing automation platform to use.
They do email, messaging and other automation, but you can also create/send autoresponders.
Moosend caters to majorly e-commerce and SaaS companies.
They offer a high tech software automation tool that enables you to track your website, get customers’ preferences, and create and send the right emails to the customers based on their preferences.
Having this data handy makes it possible to carry out decisions backed by data, thus making better decisions and giving customers better product recommendations. Another commendable thing about Moosend is that they offer free subscription packages for up to 1000 subscribers.
EngageBay offers a marketing automation tool that integrates email marketing, social media marketing, website chat, etc., for a comprehensive marketing campaign.
They also offer autoresponder services, SMS, abandoned cart reminders, etc., which gives SMEs more value and helps them serve their customers better.
Pardot is one of the software in the Salesforce suite that offers you a wide range of automation services, ranging from automated communication, CRM, email marketing, lead nurturing, etc. One of their unique features is that they offer ROI reporting to make sure that your campaign is on track and enable you to make changes if it is not. They also offer website tracking to get more data for you, which improves your marketing results and reduces time and effort.
GetResponse offers you automation services for email marketing, landing pages, CRM, and other features. It is typically easy to use, though unlocking some features like complicated conditional logic and marketing automation might make it more complex.
ActiveCampaign offers email marketing, marketing automation and CRM services.
While the software might be a bit technical to use, especially for those with low technical capabilities, it offers massive results when you get the hang of it. They have a very dynamic marketing automation technology, and their deliverability is top-notch.
This is one of the oldest marketing automation software with top-notch services. Their tools give marketers the best results and help them keep track of important customer data to help them make better decisions and create better campaigns.
Drip offers a flexible marketing automation software that, according to them, “helps you put pretty much any marketing strategy in motion”. They target mainly e-commerce companies, and while their forte is email marketing, they also offer multi-channel marketing and other automation workflows.
Drip helps you keep track of customer data and personalisation, making it an ideal marketing automation tool for most e-commerce businesses.
The marketing industry has grown massively, and as such, marketing automation has become essential.
There is an increasing demand for tools for marketing automation to help marketers and business owners drive the highly coveted results they need for their marketing.
These marketing automation tools listed not only execute flawlessly but have also been praised by top marketers and used by many companies globally.
It is essential to learn the technicalities of using them to make your marketing campaigns easier and provide you with more data to help improve your campaigns too.
While some may be initially difficult to use, they provide high value and results for the money and effort put into them. So, if you want your business to scale, you might be better off employing the services of a marketing automation tool to help you drive the results you need.
The initial phase of starting your blog should be one of the most fun and exciting parts of your journey. These days, there’s plenty of amazing content to be shared online.
Ultimately, it takes more than an online presence and compelling content to be successful with blogging. You have surely come a long way, pouring all that time and effort into the process of ideation, researching your target market, and narrowing in on your niche, but this is where your efforts finally begin to pay off.
However, for your blog to be successful from the get-go, there are several things that you must do. First, you have to lay the groundwork for success by promoting your blog. That’s right, and there’s research involved in this stage, too.
If you don’t have the traffic coming in, all of your efforts would be a waste of time. You don’t want things to fall apart during execution just because you don’t have a good promoting action plan. It is something worth investing time and resources in. In a Survey conducted by Orbitmedia, all bloggers surveyed spend an average of 2 hours promoting their articles.
Let’s walk you through a simple but thorough blog promotion checklist.
Got a really great new post you want to spread as far as possible? Sharing your content on social media is an excellent way to get more visibility, and ultimately increase traffic and shares. According to Oberlo, 97% of bloggers use social media to promote their blog posts.
However, promoting your marketing blog on social media is not just a case of posting once on Facebook and then moving on to something else. You need to have a powerful social media marketing strategy in place. A good strategy should include:
To cultivate a strong social media presence, ensure that you aren’t posting swipe-up links to your content daily. Instead, try creating a diverse social media content calendar with a variety of engaging posts, and post 3-4 a month to drive traffic to a new or relevant blog post.
No matter how good your marketing blog content is, you don’t want the people that you connect with on a professional, or personal, level to feel like you’re just using them as a tool to spread your content.
Every step you take in promoting your blog posts will be far more effective if you take the time to build better relationships through direct engagement and contributing relevantly to conversations.
However, don’t try to game your network for links and shares. Real two-way relationships with other brand marketers are far more effective, require less work, and will provide better results as your blog grows.
Remember, you never have to force it. An easy way to leverage real relationships for blog promotion is to build off-site relationships with other bloggers and businesses. Remember to share other people’s content on social media, in your emails, and through links in your blog content. By building these relationships, you never know who will share your content in exchange.
Guest Blogging is still one of the most effective paths to follow when trying to promote your blog.
The key to making guest blogs work is writing the best content that you have on relevant blogs in your niche. Usually, guest blogs are more effective when written on relevant blogs in your niche that have a high volume of followers and subscribers.
This is an excellent way to promote your blog. In a Blogging research, Optinmonster discovered that 79% of editors find guest content too promotional.
Guest blogging gets you and your brand content exposed to the other bloggers’ loyal audiences. Do you want to establish yourself as an authority figure and connect with other thought leaders in a niche? If yes, then Guest blogging is the way to go.
When you guest blog, always include a link in your author bio to a landing page on your site where visitors can get an exclusive download or find more about your services.
It might be ageing, but email is far from obsolete. Think about it: every account you sign up for typically requires an email address.
It takes a simple process. Placing email opt-ins on your blog and on social media will help you gather email addresses. Consider providing a great freebie or regular tips exclusively for subscribers to increase conversion.
You can use the subscriber list that you obtain to let your fans know immediately you upload new content, revisit old content in relation to trending topics, and encourage them to share the content with their networks.
With a strong call to action and undivided attention, you’ll be amazed at how willing your subscribers are to promote you. In fact, email generates an astounding 4,200% ROI, according to Litmus. It remains among the most powerful and cost-effective promotion strategies despite all the latest marketing fads.
You must have heard this a lot of times already, but if you really want to rank on Google, then link-building is something you want to invest in. Once you know the ins and outs of your content, you can start to build organic links to your website.
Building links to your site is one of the best ways to ensure you’re cultivating a good, long-term SEO and promoting strategy for your blog. If you have no idea how to build backlinks, Clickslice has you covered. We offer bespoke link building services that will go a long way in promoting your blog content and creating awareness for your brand across the digital space.
Additionally, Search Engines look at how many links lead back to your site when deciding how to rank your website. Of course, there are different ways to build backlinks to your sites. Neil Patel recognizes that infographics still work today and can play a vital role in your link building strategy. In Fact, according to Hubspot, blog articles that include infographics generate an average of 178% more inbound links and 72% more views than all other posts.
These statistics make creating infographics a link building tactic that you can’t afford to ignore if you want to promote your brand’s marketing blog content.
When you launch a marketing campaign, you want to ensure it’s as successful as possible. Whether your goal is to increase sales, attract new customers or build brand awareness, you need the right strategies to maximise your return on investment (ROI).
Marketing campaigns are often expensive, but they are necessary. You can’t unleash the full potential of your campaigns without a powerful marketing strategy.
Regardless of the mode of marketing, you need to determine your marketing campaigns’ Return On Investment (ROI). Measuring return on investment is essential for every well-thought-out marketing strategy, although calculating it may initially seem unclear. However, there are a variety of metrics that you can track when it comes to measuring the ROI of your digital marketing campaigns. Thus, knowing which ones to measure and avoid is also necessary.
Here are the most innovative ways to improve the return on the resources you invest in your marketing activities.
Every business has goals, and so does every marketing campaign. When you create business goals, you must consider multiple factors that could impact your journey to achieving your goal.
Most organisations have recently begun to embrace “SMART” goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound). According to Managers.UK, SMART is a strategy that helps you plan your approach to reach the goals and measure your progress easily.
For starters, you need to determine what a strong ROI would be from your campaigns. Remember that your marketing ROI depends on many factors, such as cost structure, industry, and market demand.
Additionally, your campaign determines your ROI too. For instance, the ROI from a digital campaign will be different from that of an email marketing campaign. It’s also essential to clearly define your marketing strategies’ purpose when establishing campaign goals.
Always try to set only realistic goals. Setting unrealistic expectations from your marketing team or campaigns can drastically impact your overall strategy.
Sometimes you might spend a lot of time running your marketing campaigns on LinkedIn in vain, only to find out that the same strategy brings positive ROI on Facebook.
A common mistake marketers make is judging a campaign’s potency based on its performance on one platform. This is very ineffective and short-sighted. Always consider running marketing campaigns on multiple platforms simultaneously. Allocating more or less the same budget and testing similar ads can tell you where your audience will most likely respond to your proposition.
After trying, you can use the capabilities of each channel and experiment with your marketing angles. You can advertise one product using multiple content formats depending on the platform you choose to exploit. Most likely, your potential customer tends to use multiple channels daily, so you also need to exploit every channel available.
Find out your brand’s area of influence by utilising multiple channels, which will increase your chances of success.
Your brand needs to stand out if you can become successful in a digital space where consumers are constantly bombarded with hundreds, if not thousands, of ads daily. Content is the linchpin of your marketing strategies, and you need to ace it to ensure that you stand out from the ever-growing crowd of marketers.
It is necessary to ensure that your content is personalised for your target audience. Once you figure out your target market, you can create content accordingly. It can be defined based on their interests, demographics, location, and gender.
From sharing content about your product or services to engaging with your audience regularly via emails, be sure to connect with your audience on a personal level. Also, the best way to determine what your audience wants and expects from your brand is to ask them directly. Schedule and conduct regular surveys, polls, Q&A sessions, and webinars to communicate with your customers.
Once you gather information, analyse it, and identify common points that will help you understand the audience’s needs better. This will enable you to create better-personalised content for them, and increase your ROI.
Split testing, commonly referred to as A/B Testing, is a method of conducting controlled, randomised experiments to research user experience. This method implies that you experiment with new angles by introducing one or two changes in a variable at a time. In A/B testing, “A” refers to the control or original variable, whereas “B” refers to the new version of the testing variable.
Marketers should use this approach as it allows them to eliminate guesswork and make decisions based on raw data. To identify your best-performing platforms you need to test them! However, it is essential to spread yourself evenly across all platforms. Test a couple at a time and see what works.
Another important caveat is that with low traffic, A/B tests can take a long time to generate results. Many marketers underestimate the time required for a split test to generate results; in some cases, this could take years! Of course, we don’t have time to wait years for results, so to speed things up make sure that the A/B tests are very different from the original. This will help the testing software see noticeable traffic changes and give actionable insights over a much shorter timeline.
Another tip is to throw a wild card into your A/B testing. Something a little off the hook or an idea that you had that you initially dismissed. This could be a radically different perspective, an unusual approach to advertising or a completely different landing page design. You never know – these wild cards might be the ticket to a completely different set of traffic! Don’t be afraid to experiment. That’s what marketing and testing are all about, after all!
Making sure your A/B tests give informed insights will greatly impact your ROI, allowing you to capitalise on your data and get more bang for your buck.
With the evolution of marketing, marketers are increasingly looking for efficient marketing automation tools to perform simple and regular tasks to reduce expenses. This is probably one of the reasons why the market for marketing automation tools is expected to grow to $6.4 billion by 2024, according to Marketsandmarkets.
Time is just as valuable of a resource as money. Producing effective marketing content routinely, conducting a proper review, and implementing changes are labour-intensive processes. Applying marketing automation tools in your marketing strategy takes away the burden of manual and highly repetitive tasks.
Choosing the right automation tool enables you and your team to identify your target audience and automatically generate necessary actions based on acquired information. A marketing strategy that relies heavily on automation lets you save significant time and resources while contributing to ROI. The better your marketing ROI becomes, the more confident you’ll feel in investing further in the right kind of marketing.
With all this in place, you’re well on your way to maximising your ROI on marketing spend. Yet all these ideas have one thing in common: the need for high organic traffic levels. If your site isn’t getting views and clicks, you’ll find it difficult to see the results you want from marketing.
The key to increasing organic traffic? It’s SEO. A solid SEO strategy helps businesses like yours increase the number of people who land on their sites every day. ClickSlice is an award-winning SEO agency in London that helps businesses do just that. In fact, our clients experience a huge average ROI of 15 TIMES their original spend, and we can help your business do the same.
Contact the expert SEO team at ClickSlice today to discover how ClickSlice can help you improve your marketing ROI and drive real conversions.
Fewer than 20 years ago, extroverts had a way better chance of becoming rich and successful. Why? It involved a ton of networking. For you to be successful, you had to hire employees and build a huge company. Even for a career in arts, music, or movies, you had to get every person in your industry to know you.
While connections are still a great deal to date, you don’t have to go looking. You can get them right from your couch, at the comfort of your home. That is online marketing. In a world where 93% of all marketing interactions start with a search engine, according to Inforza, you need to be on top of your game.
Online marketing is evolving at the speed of light. This is one huge reason why getting started in online marketing might seem like a daunting process if you are completely new. To keep up with the evolution, you need a strong foundation with the judgment to think critically, act independently, and be ferociously creative.
Not to mention the fact that it’s a huge industry with a lot of competition. But don’t worry. To get yourself started on this all-important marketing journey, there is so much that you need to know to begin online marketing, and we have you covered.
This guide starts at the beginning, to provide already-intelligent professionals with a healthy balance of a strategic and tactical online marketing process.
Having a primary goal to measure your digital marketing efforts’ success might be the most critical and beneficial digital marketing step of all.
Before starting a business marketing plan, companies must determine their main achievable digital marketing objectives and have a predetermined marketing budget to go along with it. Great marketers think in terms of growth frameworks. And they take time to learn how to position their marketing strategy into a sustainable, ROI-positive revenue engine for the brand.
According to Nibusinessinfo, your customers, prospects, and partners are the lifeblood of your business when setting objectives for online marketing. You have to build your marketing strategy around them. The most important thing in marketing is understanding what your customers want, and working towards quenching their thirst, which can be challenging when you’re dealing with such a diverse audience.
Marketing is strategic. To succeed, you need highly focused goals. It is better to start a journey knowing where you are heading, that way it is easier to arrive at your destination faster.
Even if you have the most amazing web storefront, blog, or product in the world, if you’re not getting traffic, your business’s growth strategy will fall flat.
Many brands are focusing all their efforts on getting higher conversion rates. Of course, that’s extremely important for the success of your brand. However, before people can convert, they need to find your website first. Growing a website takes time. It takes consistent sharing of great content for months and months on end.
Your growth is slow and steady just as the traffic coming to your site is slow and steady. While that strategy will work, it’s always nice to employ more effective strategies to get a huge jump in traffic every once in a while.
In addition to bringing visitors to your website, you need to keep them there. Not only that, you need to transform them from interested prospects into customers. Conversion optimization is the practice of converting first-time visitors into customers and converting first-time customers into repeat buyers.
Interestingly, the outward look of your page is the first towards achieving high conversion rates. According to an analysis by Portent, the first 5 seconds of page load time have the highest impact on traffic conversion rates. So now you know that your website has to be deemed world class even at first glance.
After that, your website needs to move the relationship forward and seal the deal. Conversion rate optimization provides a significant opportunity for businesses of any size. It takes a scientific approach to optimize websites and to enable businesses to convert more visitors into subscribers or customers.
Conversion optimization isn’t rocket science. In many ways, it’s common sense. But you need to actively think about what you’re doing and know the best practices.
Are you blogging regularly? If yes, great job! Don’t have a blog yet? It’s time to share your industry knowledge with the rest of the world. Nothing makes search engines happier than websites that continuously update their content. But don’t get me wrong, it’s not just about search engines. The more you blog, the better for you.
However, it’s understandable that finding the time can be challenging. Research from Zazzle Media supports this. It reveals that 60% of marketers find it hard to produce content consistently. And even when they do produce content, they may not be happy with it. No pressure, just consider your schedule and try to remain consistent, whether that’s every day, every week, or several times a month.
Note that while creating this new content, it’s crucial to ensure it’s written for humans, not robots. Search engines have come a long way and, over the years, have gotten sophisticated enough to discern quality and spam-worthy content. To build your website’s credibility, your content should always answer the audience’s questions. Write for humans, then tweak necessarily to satisfy search engines. After all, your customers are humans, not robots.
Search engines are a powerful channel for connecting with new audiences. Step one of a strong SEO strategy is to make sure that your website content and products are the best that they can be. The second step is to communicate that user experience information to search engines so that you rank in the right place.
Want your business to succeed in the world of SEO? It can be done, as long as you’re strategic. If you know nothing about SEO, taking up Clickslice SEO training and courses is just the best way to go about it. Investing in a long-term SEO plan for continuous organic search success is important. It can eat up a lot of your valuable time but in the long run, it is worth it.
The opportunity for direct face-to-face communication is currently limited, the more reason for growing brands to embrace social media to reach their customers.
Today, brands are riding the wave of social media marketing. According to Buffer, 73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been effective for their business.
Social media has become such a functional and essential aspect of many marketing strategies and across all generations. It is the simplest and least expensive way to reach a huge audience.
Last but not least, you should understand that mobile marketing has become more relevant than ever.
More and more consumers browsing and making purchases with their smartphones or tablets, a mobile-friendly website is vital. According to a report from Hitwise, nearly 60% of all Online Searches are now carried out on a mobile device, with some sectors, like Food and Beverage, reaching 72%.
Although investing in mobile-specific marketing can require a substantial investment, especially if you’re just starting, you can take the first step by ensuring that your business’s website is optimized for mobile.
A landing page is an essential part of any digital marketing campaign.
It is the place your customers are driven to allow them to purchase your product or service. Therefore, an eye-catching design, creative content, and a clear call to action are imperative to ensure this page converts viewers to customers.
A landing page is a stand-alone webpage that is created specifically to advertise a product or service.
As the name suggests, it is the page that the customer ‘lands’ on when they follow a link from your social media or email marketing campaign. Landing pages will have a clear call to action, encouraging visitors to purchase a product.
As mentioned, landing pages are generally developed as part of a marketing campaign. Therefore, providing that it aligns with your branding and social media marketing, an effective landing page will help improve your overall brand recognition.
Webpages do not always contain a compelling call to action. They allow readers to make their own choices, whether they would like to browse your products, explore your content, or read about the company history.
Whereas, a landing page tells visitors exactly what to do.
Your customers know precisely why they are here. You are not giving away tips, information, or guidance as you might be in your blog articles and category pages. Here, you are instead promoting a product on the back of your hard-earned brand integrity.
A crucial element of an SEO strategy is cohesive auditing. You need to learn what is working for your business, and what isn’t.
The metrics for landing pages are very clear, and analytics will quickly show whether your landing page is a success. Where it isn’t, you can implement changes to turn this around.
Technically, your home page is a landing page.
Many of your customers will arrive here through social media and web searches. However, a landing page is used to promote a specific offer, product, or service.
Your home page will struggle to convey this precise information.
The home page already has the job of highlighting your brand, the product or service you offer, and showing readers how to navigate the website. Adding the promotion of a specific deal to this list would be more than one page could handle. It would become cluttered and unclear, and the particular call to action required would become lost in the noise.
It needs to be abundantly clear to the reader exactly what this page is advertising, and therefore a minimalistic design is imperative.
Many business owners are nervous about using white space, unsure if the complete design will look somewhat ‘unfinished’. However, effectively using white space is the key to a bold and eye-catching landing page. Blank space draws attention towards your graphics and text, forcing readers to focus on what is genuinely important.
Concise headlines will also help simplify your design, allowing you to pack the most punch with the least words. Of course, your brand identity should be visible from this landing page, so ensure your company colours and typography flow naturally from your other marketing materials.
Your landing page will look very different to the other pages on your website, but this doesn’t mean SEO isn’t necessary.
The best way to develop an authoritative page is to have traffic from every source possible. So, if your social media and email marketing have control of those angles, allow on-page and off-page SEO to drive organic search engine traffic to your page.
Once on your landing page, the options for your readers should be limited. With too much choice, it is unlikely they will complete the desired action.
Your website should contain a detailed and well-structured navigation system, allowing customers to effortlessly access every corner of your site. However, your landing page should be the opposite of this.
Remove any navigation bars and distractions, forcing your user to focus on the sole purpose of this dedicated landing page.
A call to action is the most crucial element of your landing page. Put simply, this is a phrase or word that encourages the reader to take the desired action. A killer call to action will be the difference between a bounce and a customer conversion.
A call to action on a landing page may be used for a multitude of reasons. First and most obviously, to secure a sale. The push button will direct the reader to a sales page to input their details to complete the transaction.
However, calls to action can be used for other things, such as to add an email to a mailing list, to access free downloadable content, to enter giveaways or contests, or to receive a free trial of your service.
A simple ‘submit’ will not be enough to entice customers to click through. The text should be bold, bright, imperative language, tempting your reader to continue.
Unsurprisingly, over 50% of online shoppers read reviews before purchasing a product online. Whilst we wouldn’t encourage filling your seamless and minimalistic design with customer reviews, your landing page can be a great place to display any excellent press coverage.
This highlights why it is crucial to ask for feedback from any long-term clients, in turn, helping you reach a whole new pool of customers.
ClickSlice are SEO experts who specialise in getting your brand noticed online. We work with a vast spectrum of clients in various industries and are passionate about the power of an excellent online presence.
For a no-obligation chat about boosting your online visibility, contact our team today on 020 3287 3638 or hello@clickslice.co.uk.
Building a solid online presence is imperative in the digital age.
It’s where your customers are finding you. Even if your core service requires a brick-and-mortar establishment, individuals will turn to the internet to discover your company.
Here’s precisely why and how you should approach solidifying your brand’s online identity.
Put simply, if a business can be found anywhere on the internet, it has an online presence.
A robust online presence generally consists of an excellent website and fascinating social media accounts. Investing in your online branding in the early stages of your business can skyrocket your success.
More often than not, a business will have an online presence regardless of whether they are actively creating one.
Can your customers find you on Google Maps? Can they geotag on Instagram? Or leave a review on TripAdvisor? If any of these apply, then you already have the foundations of an online reputation.
Most businesses will struggle to achieve great success without an excellent online brand.
Because viewers convert to customers.
So, the most profitable businesses spend a great deal of time and money, developing an excellent website and engaging social media accounts. Providing customers with valuable information helps to build trust and shows readers that your product or service is the best around.
A strong online presence makes your business more credible, accessible, and helps to support the overall branding.
A flawless website is the fastest way to show the integrity of your brand.
First and most obviously, the website needs to look incredible and accurately represent your business. A website is a crucial building block in your overall branding, so the aesthetic must encompass your company identity.
Next, the website should function without fault. It should be fast to load and free of broken links. Customers will quickly leave a website that is full of glitches or slow to load.
Finally, your website must be discoverable. Unfortunately, most people never venture further than the first page of Google, with the majority clicking on one of the top three links. Therefore, you must implement a robust SEO strategy to enable potential customers to find your website.
Building a social media presence is the next building block for your online company.
However, especially in the early stages of your business, mastering all of the platforms is near impossible. The options include Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok, requiring written, image, and video content combinations. Attempting to provide your audience will value on each of these will undoubtedly be unsuccessful.
Spend time considering the content that fits your brand and focus on one or two platforms. For fun, snappy video content, opt for Instagram and Tik Tok. On the other hand, if words are more your vibe, Twitter or even LinkedIn may be preferable. Pinterest is perfect for infographics and beautiful imagery, and the platform is well known for excellent click-through rates.
One of the best, organic ways to reach whole new customer bases is to create shareable content. Essentially, your readers will then do the marketing for you, sharing your blogs or social media posts to their followings.
However, you should be aware that there is a very fine line between enticing content and clickbait. Whilst headlines may draw people in (especially on social media), only valuable, interesting content will lead to shares.
Infographics work exceptionally well and can be created easily as an addition to your long form work.
When building your brand online, it’s easy to get bogged down with the numbers.
Reaching 100 website page views per day, or 10,000 Twitter followers, can feel like the key to success. But this is not necessarily the case.
The trick is to engage genuine customers, who are likely to convert to sales. This can, however, be especially difficult for service-based businesses, where location is crucial. For example, a viewer in Edinburgh will not utilise a hairdresser offering their services in Manchester.
This is where local SEO becomes even more critical. When search engines precisely understand where you are based, they can show you to your ideal customer base.
Building a relationship with other businesses and social media influencers can be a great way to get yourself noticed online.
Social media users are wise to constant paid for advertisements, which can look try-hard at best, and tacky at worst. Also, affiliating your company with another brand that doesn’t align with your beliefs can have serious repercussions later down the line.
However, authentic relationships will hugely help with your online presence. You will undoubtedly notice a flurry of additional viewers if another company mentions and links to your website.
Ensure you are reciprocating and keeping open communication channels to allow these relationships to organically blossom.
You can build a mailing list by taking the email address of your customers (with their consent) and storing them in a database. This helps create a personable relationship between yourself and the customer, allowing them exclusive insights into new products and sales.
Every email sent to these customers increases the chance of them heading directly to your website and making a sale. Ensure there is a call to action on every email issued, and monitor the response from your customers to help figure out which tactics work best for your audience.
Here at ClickSlice, our expertise is getting brands noticed online. We are SEO fanatics, aiming to boost your search engine rankings, drive new readers to your site, and convert them into customers.
We pride ourselves on being consistent, using data-driven and reliable techniques that have proved successful time and time again.
For a no-obligation chat about building your online presence, contact our friendly team today on 020 3287 3638 or hello@clickslice.co.uk.
Studio 10 Shoreditch Stables 138 Kingsland Rd Hoxton, London E2 8DY
© 2024 — ClickSlice All Rights Reserved.
Company No. 10876199 | VAT No. 278157959