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Digital Marketing Mistakes Companies Make and How to Avoid Them

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1 year ago

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Online marketing is essential for every business because we live in the digital age, where many consumers prefer buying online. Interestingly, people who visit physical stores to make purchases often look up businesses online before buying from them. That’s why you must take advantage of digital technology in your marketing efforts.

Although digital marketing offers numerous benefits, many businesses are unaware that there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it. As a result, they spend their time and resources on online marketing without reaping the desired benefits.

photo credit: Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels

Here are common mistakes that could hinder a successful digital marketing campaign and how to avoid them.

1. Running Without a Clear Marketing Strategy

Some businesses run their digital marketing campaigns without a defined plan for connecting and engaging with their target audience; this is one of the worst mistakes to make. Your campaigns will lack focus if you don’t set goals from the onset and articulate what you will do to achieve them within specific time frames. Even if you achieve significant feats in your digital marketing without a strategy, you wouldn’t have documented details of how you obtained such an outcome. Therefore, it will be difficult to replicate that success in your future marketing campaigns or apply it to other aspects of your business. And you’ll be unable to improve upon your previous success to achieve better results in your subsequent digital marketing campaigns.

So, document your digital marketing strategy and define your goals and the expected timeframes for achieving them. Also, define your target audience to avoid marketing your products or services to people who don’t need them and are unlikely to patronize you.

Map out all the activities that will enable you to achieve your marketing goals. This will make it easier for you to identify any strategy or activity that is not working and make the necessary adjustments for your desired outcome.

2. Having a Website Without a Blog

Digital marketing is not just about reaching your target market; you have to position yourself for your ideal customers to find you. One effective way to do this is by creating a blog.

Blogs drive a significant amount of organic traffic to websites. When you publish valuable blog content, you establish a reputation as a trusted industry leader while marketing your brand to your target audience. Furthermore, as you publish more blog posts, Google will index them and show them in search results. So, you should publish blog posts that rank high on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Ensure you follow best SEO practices when developing content, such as using alt texts for your images, internal links, compelling titles, and keywords. Also, your website’s domain name should be SEO-friendly so that it easily tells potential visitors what your site is about and the kinds of products or services you offer. You may want to change your domain name if you’re offering new solutions or if you have a new audience.

A domain appraisal is crucial to getting the most suitable domain for your website. If you’re considering selling your existing domain or buying a new one, you can learn more about domain appraisals here: https://saw.com/appraisals/.

Marketing campaign
photo credit: Pressmaster / Pexels

3. Spending Too Much on Paid Ads

Don’t just dive into pay-per-click (PPC) marketing without careful consideration. PPC marketing can be highly rewarding and can give you your desired reach, website traffic, and conversions. However, compared to other online marketing campaigns, PPC ads are quite expensive. And only a small percentage of website visitors that arrive through PPC traffic eventually follow the conversion to the checkout portal. Besides, some internet users don’t trust paid ads as much as known bloggers or industry leaders.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should abandon the idea of PPC marketing; you shouldn’t rely solely on it. Combine your PPC marketing with alternatives such as email marketing and social media marketing.

Before investing in PPC marketing, research your target audience thoroughly and segment them into groups based on age, geographic location, income, interests, and education level. Also, try out several campaigns with different audience segments and ad formats to determine which one provides the most favorable outcome.

You don’t have to spend too much of your marketing budget at this phase. Your budget should be just enough to give you credible results from which you can draw conclusions for your campaigns. When you launch a PPC marketing campaign, monitor its performance closely and be prepared to adjust the price on the go.

4. Not Leveraging Automation

Digital marketing campaigns require a significant amount of time. You can take advantage of software technologies to help automate several processes, such as email marketing, social media management, market research, and ad campaigns. This will give your team members more time for other tasks that require their expertise.

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Let the Urgency of Your Customers’ Needs Guide Your Sales Strategy

Published

3 months ago

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July 6, 2023

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When companies are creating profiles of possible target customers, there is a dimension they often overlook: the urgency of the need for the offering. This article provides a process for segmenting prospective customers in this fashion and creating a sales strategy.

Many business leaders believe that they fully understand their best target customers. They’ve developed clear profiles (a.k.a. personas) that are richly detailed with well-researched parameters, such as standard characteristics (e.g., age, education level, years at the company, role) or firmographic (e.g., annual revenues, number of employees, industry, geography, years in business). While such characteristics are important, they ignore another crucial characteristic: urgency of need.

A company that offers a software-as-a-service billing solution for small and mid-sized private dental practices may focus on classic demographics, such as the size of the practice (number of employees or number of dentists), the age of the practice (since older practices may more likely have outdated systems), or the amount of insurance billing the practice does each year.

These variables are useful in helping to produce a list of prospects, but they don’t determine which of these dental practices the sales team should call on first. If, however, the company added data that reflects which of these practices’ needs is most urgent — say, those that have advertised for billing and claims administration help more than twice in the past year (suggesting that they are struggling to keep up with billing) — salespeople would be able to prioritize their attention on these prospects.

The Four Segments

This needs-based approach entails segmenting potential customers into four segments:

  1. Urgent. The customer recognizes that it has an immediate need. (We just had another billing person quit!)
  2. Non-urgent. The customer recognizes the need, but it isn’t a high priority at this time. (We realize that our billing needs are changing and our current system will need to be revamped. We plan to start looking into this in the next year.)
  3. Currently met. The customer believes it already has an adequate solution to address the need at this time but recognizes it may not be a long-term solution. (We have an older billing system in place that still does the trick for now.)
  4. None. The customer simply has no need nor expects such need anytime soon. (Our small practice has a limited number of patients who pay out of pocket. Since all payments are made at the time of service, we simply don’t need a complex new billing system.)

This focus on the urgency of target customers’ needs may sound like common sense, but we have found in our work with B2B companies — from mid-sized firms to Fortune 50 giants in an array of industries such as financial services, enterprise information technology, utilities, industrial solutions, and health care technology — that they often fail to consider this dimension. Here is a process a firm can employ to apply this approach.

Identify new customers.

To identify prospects outside of your existing customer base, you can use available information. One is a source we mentioned: help-wanted ads that reflect a particular need.

But there are plenty of others. For instance, if a company sells inventory management solutions, a source of valuable data might be manufacturing industry merger-and-acquisition data, which could reveal companies with an urgent need to change or merge systems such as those for managing inventories. If a company sells quality-management solutions, a source of valuable data could be companies that are getting hammered for poor quality on social media.

Gather the necessary information.

Identifying your customers’ true urgency of needs requires looking beyond your typical demographic and firmographic profiling. This starts with an outreach initiative to talk to customers and prospects. The purpose is to ask questions to identify new target customer parameters that may be impacting the customer’s urgency of needs:

  • Frustrations. How urgent is the need to resolve these frustrations? Which frustration would best accelerate success if resolved?
  • Goals. Are your goals clear, consistent, reasonable, and measurable? Have your goals shifted recently?
  • Roadblocks. What keeps you from reaching your goals? (i.e., What keeps you up at night?) What is the magnitude of the impact of these roadblocks?
  • Environmental and situational factors. Are you experiencing any industry consolidation, organizational or executive management changes or instability, competitive changes, regulatory changes, and so on? What is the magnitude of the impact of these factors?
  • Technology factors. Are there new or changing technologies that will impact your ability to achieve your goals? Are you at risk due to technology end-of-life issues or incompatibility?

Assess your firm’s ability to serve lower-level segments.

Once a company has performed its needs-based segmentation effort, it should seek to answer the following questions about each of the four levels. The findings will dictate the sales and marketing strategy, level of investment and resource allocations.

Level 1. Urgent need

How quickly can we meet their need? How can we best serve them? Is the market opportunity large enough to focus only on these prospective customers? Given the customer’s urgency, how do we price our products to optimize margins without damaging relationships by appearing exploitive?

Level 2. Non-urgent need

Can we convince them that their need is more urgent than they currently believe? How do we effectively stay in touch with them so we remain top of mind when they perceive that their need has become urgent?

Level 3. Need currently met

Should we walk away from these prospects? If so, when and how do we touch base with them to see if their needs have changed? Or is there an opportunity to continue to work to convince them that their need is either more significant than they realize or could be much better addressed? If so, what’s the best approach to get them to reconsider their current situation and recognize their true need and its urgency?

Level 4. No need

Should we completely remove these contacts as any potential prospect? Is there some other need we may be able to address for them — perhaps with another product? Should we be in contact on a planned basis to see if their situation has changed? How do we best do that?

The ideal customers are those who clearly understand and recognize they have an urgent need for your offering. However, if that opportunity is not enough to meet the company’s sales volume target, it may be necessary to extend efforts beyond Level 1. Gaining the attention of these additional target customers, challenging their perceptions of their needs, and educating them on how your offering could benefit them will require resources. Consequently, a critical assessment is required to determine whether the opportunity outweighs the investment necessary to address customers in these other levels.

Test your new targets.

Before committing to a complete revamp of how your salespeople are prioritizing opportunities, select one or two experienced salespeople to help you test your new target customer parameters. Identify a few prospects that align to your revamped target profiles, and see how the selected salespeople are able to penetrate them.

Revamp your sales messaging and training.

Include prospective customers’ level of need in your sales messaging — the language that the sales team uses in its interactions with customers. Revamp your sales tools (materials such as brochures, technical papers, and customer testimonials used in the selling process) to include the urgency of need. And teach salespeople how to read and react to the prospective customer’s level of need and adapt their language appropriately.

By adding urgency of need to target customers’ profiles, companies can do more than differentiate their offerings more effectively. They can also identify new growth opportunities and successfully pivot away from slowing or tightening markets. They can accelerate the sales of new products. Last but not least, they can turn underachieving sales teams into strong performers.

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Buy Targeted Website Traffic and Targeted Traffic to Website

Published

3 months ago

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June 25, 2023

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In today’s digital world, where competition is fierce and attention spans are short, driving targeted traffic to your website is crucial for success. One effective way to achieve this is through geo-targeted ads. By harnessing the power of geo-targeting, businesses can reach their desired audience in specific locations, increasing the chances of conversions and maximizing their return on investment.

In this article, we will explore the concept of geo-targeting, its benefits, and how to set up geo-targeted ads in Google Ad Words.

Why Geo-Targeted Ads?

In the vast expanse of the internet, not all website visitors are created equal. While a large volume of traffic may seem appealing, it’s the quality of that traffic that truly matters. Geo-targeted ads enable businesses to narrow down their audience to a specific geographic location, ensuring that the website visitors they attract are more likely to be interested in their products or services. By reaching the right people in the right place, businesses can improve their conversion rates and generate higher revenue.

What Is Geo-Targeting?

Geo-targeting refers to the practice of delivering content, advertisements, or promotions to individuals based on their geographic location. It involves tailoring marketing efforts to specific regions, countries, states, cities, or even neighborhoods, depending on the targeting requirements of the business.

What Is Geo-Targeted Marketing?

Geo-targeted marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on tailoring marketing messages and campaigns to specific geographic areas. It allows businesses to create personalized experiences for customers based on their location, cultural preferences, language, and other factors relevant to the target audience in a particular region.

How Does Geo-Targeting Work?

Geo-targeting leverages various technologies to determine a user’s location. Some common methods include IP address tracking, GPS data, Wi-Fi signals, and user-provided information such as postal codes. Once the user’s location is identified, marketers can serve targeted advertisements or content based on the predefined criteria associated with that location.

Why Does Geo-Targeting Matter?

Geo-targeting matters because it allows businesses to optimize their marketing efforts and resources. By focusing on specific regions or locations, businesses can avoid wasting resources on audiences that are unlikely to convert. Instead, they can direct their marketing budget towards attracting visitors who are more likely to become customers, thereby increasing their chances of success.

Geo-Targeting vs. Geofencing

While geo-targeting and geofencing are related concepts, they differ in their approach. Geo-targeting aims to reach specific individuals based on their location, while geofencing involves creating a virtual boundary around a physical location and delivering content or ads to users within that boundary. Geo-targeting is broader in scope and can cover larger areas, whereas geofencing is more precise and focused on a specific physical area.

Google AdWords

What Are The Three Major Types of Geo-Targeting?

1. Location Targeting

This type of geo-targeting focuses on reaching users in specific geographic locations, such as countries, states, cities, or zip codes. It allows businesses to target regions where their products or services are available or to tailor their marketing messages to local customs and preferences.

2. Audience Targeting

Audience targeting involves reaching users based on demographic factors such as age, gender, language, or interests. By combining demographic information with geographic data, businesses can create highly targeted campaigns that resonate with specific audience segments in different locations.

3. Weather Targeting

Weather targeting takes into account the local weather conditions of a particular location to deliver relevant ads or promotions. This type of targeting is especially useful for businesses that offer weather-dependent products or services, such as outdoor equipment, travel agencies, or seasonal clothing retailers.

Analyzing marketing analytics
photo credit: Carlos Muza / Unsplash.

How to Set Up Geo-Targeting Ads in Google Ad Words

Google Ad Words, now known as Google Ads, offers powerful tools and features to implement geo-targeted ads effectively. Here’s a step-by-step guide to setting up geo-targeting ads in Google Ads:

1. Define your target locations

Determine the specific regions or areas you want to target with your ads. This could be a country, state, city, or even a radius around a specific location.

2. Set up location targeting in Google Ads

Sign in to your Google Ads account and navigate to the campaign you want to edit. Under the campaign settings, go to the “Locations” tab and click on the “+ Location” button. Enter the desired locations and select the targeting options that best suit your campaign objectives.

3. Refine your targeting

Google Ads offers additional options to further refine your geo-targeting. You can exclude certain locations, target specific languages spoken in a region, or adjust your targeting based on factors like income level or user interest.

4. Create ad copy and extensions

Craft compelling ad copy that resonates with your target audience in each specific location. Consider tailoring the messaging to address local preferences, cultural nuances, or regional events. Additionally, utilize ad extensions like location extensions to provide more information and encourage visits to your physical store.

5. Monitor and optimize

Regularly review the performance of your geo-targeted campaigns. Analyze key metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI) for different locations. Use this data to make informed decisions and optimize your ads for better results.

Geo-Targeting Tips and Best Practices

Here are some tips and best practices to maximize the effectiveness of your geo-targeting efforts:

1. Prioritize Certain Locations

Identify regions that align with your business objectives and allocate a higher portion of your budget to those areas. By focusing your resources on high-potential regions, you can generate more targeted traffic and improve conversion rates.

2. Target Local Keywords

Incorporate location-specific keywords into your ad copy and website content. This helps search engines understand the relevance of your offerings to users in a particular location and increases the chances of your ads appearing in local search results.

3. Avoid Creating Competing Campaigns

If you target overlapping locations with multiple campaigns, there is a risk of competing against yourself and wasting resources. Instead, consolidate your efforts into a single campaign with well-defined targeting parameters to ensure efficiency and avoid unnecessary competition.

Google AdWords

Conclusion

In conclusion, the decision to buy targeted website traffic and implement targeted traffic strategies is a strategic move that can significantly impact the success of your online business. By harnessing the power of geo-targeted ads, businesses can precisely reach their desired audience in specific locations, leveraging the benefits of location targeting, audience targeting, and even weather targeting. This focused approach allows businesses to optimize their marketing efforts, prioritize certain locations, and tailor their messaging to resonate with local preferences.

Through platforms like Google Ads, setting up geo-targeted ads has become more accessible and effective, enabling businesses to reach the right people in the right place at the right time. By following best practices and continuously refining their campaigns based on data-driven insights, businesses can maximize their return on investment, drive targeted traffic to websites, and increase the chances of conversions and revenue generation.

Embracing geo-targeting and leveraging targeted traffic strategies is an essential component of a successful digital marketing strategy in today’s competitive landscape.

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Maximising the Impact of Blogger Outreach Campaigns for Increased Brand Visibility

Published

4 months ago

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June 11, 2023

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In today’s digital landscape, blogger outreach has emerged as a powerful strategy for businesses to enhance brand visibility and connect with their target audience. By collaborating with influential bloggers, brands can tap into their established online presence and engage with a wider audience.

Partnering with a reputable blogger outreach agency like Ocere can further amplify the impact of these campaigns. An experienced agency brings expertise, established relationships with bloggers, and a deep understanding of the industry, allowing businesses to navigate the complex world of blogger outreach more effectively.

photo credit: Yan Krukau / Pexels

Identifying The Right Bloggers

The success of a blogger outreach campaign starts with identifying the right bloggers to collaborate with. First, look for bloggers who align with your brand’s values, target audience, and industry. Then, conduct thorough research to assess the blogger’s reach, engagement, and credibility to ensure they have an active and engaged following.

Building Genuine Relationships

Building genuine relationships with bloggers is crucial for long-term success. Instead of approaching bloggers with a purely transactional mindset, invest time understanding their content, engaging with their posts, and establishing a personal connection. Engage in meaningful conversations, provide feedback, and share their content to foster a mutually beneficial relationship.

Tailoring Personalised Outreach Messages

Personalisation is key to capturing the attention of bloggers. Avoid generic outreach messages, craft tailored pitches that demonstrate your familiarity with their content, and highlight how your collaboration can benefit their audience. Address them by name, reference their recent work, and explain why you believe their platform is an ideal fit for your brand.

Collaborating on Valuable Content

When collaborating with bloggers, focus on creating valuable, engaging content that resonates with their audience. Discuss ideas and explore content formats, such as sponsored posts, product reviews, guest blogging, or creative collaborations. Encourage bloggers to inject their unique voice and perspective into the content while aligning it with your brand messaging.

Providing Exclusive Offers and Benefits

Consider providing exclusive offers and benefits to incentivise bloggers and encourage their active participation. This could include providing them early access to new products, exclusive discounts for their audience, or inviting them to industry events and brand experiences. By offering unique perks, you strengthen the relationship and create a win-win situation for both parties.

Encouraging Authentic Storytelling

Authenticity is paramount in blogger outreach. Allow bloggers the creative freedom to share their genuine experiences with your brand or product. Encourage them to tell their unique stories and provide honest feedback. Authenticity resonates with audiences and helps build trust in your brand.

Business blogger blogging

Leveraging Social Media Amplification

Amplify the reach of your blogger outreach campaigns by leveraging social media. Encourage bloggers to share their collaborations on social media platforms and create a buzz around the content. Additionally, utilise your social media channels to promote the collaboration, tag the bloggers, and encourage your audience to engage with the content.

Tracking and Measuring Success

To evaluate the impact of your blogger outreach campaigns, establish clear metrics and track key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, monitor metrics such as website traffic, engagement levels, social media reach, and conversions resulting from the collaboration. Use this data to refine your strategies and identify areas for improvement.

Building Long-term Partnerships

Blogger outreach should not be a one-off endeavour. Building long-term partnerships with bloggers allows for sustained brand visibility and continued engagement with their audience. Nurture these relationships by staying in touch, offering ongoing collaboration opportunities, and supporting their growth.

Staying Abreast of Industry Trends

Finally, staying informed about evolving industry trends and changes in the blogging landscape is essential. Keep an eye on emerging bloggers, new platforms, and shifts in consumer behaviour. Then, adapt your outreach strategies to stay relevant and maintain a competitive edge.

By following these tactics and strategies, businesses can maximise the impact of their blogger outreach campaigns and achieve increased brand visibility. Authenticity, genuine relationships, valuable content, and ongoing engagement are the cornerstones of successful blogger collaborations. Embrace the power of blogger outreach to strengthen your brand’s online presence and connect with your target audience meaningfully.

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