VIDEO IN DIGITAL MARKETING

The Role of Video Content in Marketing Activities

As the digital marketing industry becomes an important part of business, finding ways to differentiate yourself from the competition will need to be an increasing focus. Interestingly, one of the most powerful and important mediums to accomplish this is the use of video marketing (Ali, 2017).  


  Scroll through any Facebook feed today and you’ll see videos where static posts and images used to be. Video is quickly becoming the preferred medium of communication by businesses and consumers alike – and for good reason. Video is a quick, easy, and effective way to convey information in a way that is multi-dimensional, interactive, and entertaining. According to CBO.me, live action ads are also more likely to be shared through social media outlets versus text based information. It's been recently rumoured that Facebook has updated its algorithm to favor video posts above all other types of content. A business now has the ability to reach a larger viewing audience by creating or sharing memorable or funny videos. Video ads and promotions will entice a person to an emotional response. Most often, a person will share information they identify with the most, allowing your business free exposure to a potential clients friends, family, and followers. If you haven’t gotten on the video bandwagon and are wondering if producing videos are really worth the effort, here are a few benefits that might help you to make your decision.

Video Content Promotes Brand Awareness

The sheer multidimensional nature of video in combining images, text, and audio allows for the quicker and more impactful communication of a message. It is easier for consumers to recall a video they watched (versus just a static image or text) – and when they remember your video, they remember your brand. In addition, people are much more likely to share a video within their social circles, especially if you are able to present information in an entertaining and engaging way. This increases your brand reach and extends the ‘life’ of a video much further than an image or text. It is worth noting, however, that people are much less likely to share an overtly ‘branded’ video – an ideal balance would be to make your video content as memorable and relatable as possible, while adding in nuances of company identity through colours, fonts, logos, and subtle script messaging. Eric Vidal, CMO at BMG, points out how today’s buyer puts the level of connection they feel with a brand over the function of the product when making a purchasing decision. Your product or service might be amazing, but you won’t maximize your reach without giving customers a reason to choose your brand. Storytelling is another one of the latest marketing trends. The art of storytelling is as old as humanity, and online video is the latest medium. Use video to tell the story of how your company got started. Here are some questions to ask yourself to get the creative juices flowing:

• What was my state of mind when I first got the idea for my business?
• What problem was I trying to solve when I first thought of my business?
• Who helped me in turning my idea into an actual business?
• How do I think my business is different than other businesses in my niche?
• What about my company has a direct positive impact on society?

The goal with a brand origin story is to show your roots. It helps build a connection that primes leads for conversion. Wrap it up with a strong call-to-action and put it on a landing page. Also, studies have shown that videos generate more trust in customers than blocks of text or infographics. This makes sense intuitively, since the production costs of a video would discourage a spammer or fly-by-night website from creating them.

Video Can Boost Your Website’s SEO

Simply the act of placing a video on a page in your website can boost its SEO ranking, regardless of content, as Google gives preference to websites that contain videos. This is especially true if you first post your video on Youtube and embed the video onto your website. In a more roundabout (but still effective) way, videos also cause users to spend more time on your page, thus signaling to Google that your site has quality content. This also contributes to boosting your SEO ranking. A word of caution, however – make sure that your embedded videos are not causing your website to lag while loading, as that is a surefire way to increase your bounce rate and negatively affect your SEO!

Video Can Increase Sales

Research has shown that consumers are much more likely to make a purchase after watching a video about the product. It is unclear as to exactly what it is about videos that increase sales, but it is likely a combination of factors. After all, videos are more attention-grabbing and thus more consumers may be aware of your product. Videos are also a great way to show the product in action and provide enough information to convince the consumers of their need for your product. When creating product-focused videos to increase sales, a good tip would be to try to pre-empt (and answer) questions which consumers may have about the product. In other words, use your video to overcome the barrier to purchase that consumers may have – and you’ll find a sale much more likely. Product demonstrations, FAQs, and product reviews are all great ways to use your video to increase your sales.  


  Over 50 percent of consumers look up a product on the Internet before they make a purchase. Consumers want to see how your product works so they can visualize it solving one of their problems. Your personality matters just as much as the functionality of your product. The more passion you convey in your video, the higher your conversion rate.

Dominate the Social Media space

According to TheMarketingScope.com, video dominated the social media landscape in 2017, and it shows no signs of slowing down in 2018 and beyond. Conduct an audit of all the social media profiles for your business. Which platform do you get the most engagement with your community? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat all have video in some capacity. One great way to use video on social media is to give consumers a behind-scenes-look at your brand. Have your employees do account takeovers to showcase their role within your company. Show the production process in action.  


  Improving trust and humanizing your brand can Increasing sales with video marketing isn’t always about generating sales directly from a video. Sometimes the goal is to improve trust and humanize your brand through transparency, which indirectly increases sales.

Conclusion

Videos are also able to make a compelling pitch more quickly than reading would. Instead of allowing the visitor to read or skim whatever part of the page they choose to, a video can be hyper-focused to get the specific points you need to get across as quickly as possible. So if you haven’t already started producing videos, give it a try and see what they can do for you! And if you’ve already dabbled in video-making, try experimenting with different video ideas and formats to make sure the effort you’re putting into making your videos is paying off in the best way possible! Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Digital Marketing and develop a great landing pages for your website? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!

Social Media for Your Business

5 main benefits of social media networks for your business

Did you know that 78% of businesses now have dedicated teams for their social media? This is up from 67% in 2012, demonstrating that increasingly, organizations are acknowledging the power of social media network marketing to attract and engage customers. Below we explain 5 key benefits of social media for your business:

Increased Brand Recognition

The use of various social media networks has a positive correlation with the number of users being aware of your business and their products or services. Businesses can utilize different ways of business advertising, including the creation of a business page and launching paid ad campaigns. If your potential customers will see your business on two or more networks, they will remember and recognize your business in the future, when looking for that particular product or service you offer. According to statistics, people spend on average 2 to 5 hours per day using social media networks, indicating that this is a great marketing channel.  By offering them a perfect combination of engaging information and branding content, you can achieve significant growth in your lead generation. One of the interesting examples of how social media has become the main contributor to brand awareness and brand recognition of the company is the Youtube campaign by BlendTec.


  The viral video efforts of manufacturer BlendTec gave the company a huge return-on-investment in terms of its worldwide brand recognition and sales. Blendtec founder, Tom Dickson, debuted on YouTube marketing channel in 2006 to promote his premier blender and prove that it could blend just about anything. Known as one of the most successful internet marketing campaigns in history, Will It Blend? garnered six million views in the first six days. Dickson has since uploaded over 150 videos blending marbles, Apple products, glow sticks, neodymium magnets, Bic lighters and many more. "I started Will It Blend? with just a $50 budget," said Tom Dickson, Founder, Blendtec. "The results have helped propel Blendtec onto an international stage where our blenders have been showcased for their powerfully advanced technology and premier blending ability."

Improved Customer Insights

Social media also gives you an opportunity to gain valuable information about what your customers are interested in and how they behave, via social listening. For instance, you can monitor user comments to see what people think of your business directly. You can segment your content syndication lists based on topic and see which types of content generate the most interest—and then produce more of that type of content. You can measure conversions based on different promotions posted on various social media channels and eventually find a perfect combination to generate revenue. Bora says the unstructured data on social media contains countless insights that can help an organization to understand its customers. However, to engage with this information in a tangible way, it is essential to have the right methodology, technology, and expert assistance to provide the structure and insight.

Improved Customer Loyalty

According to a report published by Texas Tech University, brands who engage on social media channels with their audience enjoy higher loyalty from their customers. The report concludes “Companies should take advantage of the tools social media gives them when it comes to connecting with their audience. A strategic and open social media plan could prove influential in morphing consumers into being brand loyal.” Another study published by Convince & Convert has also found that 53% of American citizens who follow brands in social are more loyal to those brands. TVibes is a unique company that allows customers to create their own TV channels using their own mobile videos (stored in the cloud). They’ve come a long way since their humble beginnings back in 2014 (they launched a successful iOS app in 2015) and are best known for allowing users to choose their own audiences to view the channels.


  The main target is to establish loyal and engaged app users. The goal of the TVibes campaign was to encourage customers to use their app for mobile video storage. Since Facebook is an intuitive platform for lead generation, the founders of the company used the social media giant to try and gain more sign-ups and get more followers. Uri and Gilad - the founders of TVibes - instinctively knew they should integrate a social site like Facebook into their social app. This made it easy for followers to create accounts, log in and explore channels created by their acquaintances, all done conveniently from their Facebook home pages. To help encourage signups based on targeted audience groups, the founders made use of mobile app install ads. By sorting their audiences based on reactions to video ads and with the clever use of lookalike audiences, they had a brilliant strategy of optimizing their campaign. What were the results?

• 50% of new app installs driven by Facebook
• 10% higher loyalty and conversion from those Facebook-driven installs
• 20% higher engagement rates from Facebook user

Improved Search Engine Ranking

SEO is the best way to capture the relevant traffic from search engines, such as Google, but the requirements for success are always changing. It’s no longer enough to regularly update your blog, ensure optimized title tags and meta descriptions, and distribute links pointing back to your site. Google and other search engines may be calculating their rankings using social media presence as a significant factor, because of the fact that strong brands almost always use social media. As such, being active on social media could act as a “brand signal” to search engines that your brand is legitimate, credible, and trustworthy. That means, if you want to rank for a given set of keywords, having a strong social media presence could be almost mandatory.

Richer Customer Experience

Social media, at its core, is a communication channel like email or phone calls. Every customer interaction you have on social media networks is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate your customer service level and enrich your relationship with your customers. For example, if a customer complains about your product on Twitter, you can immediately address the comment, apologize publicly, and take action to make it right. Or, if a customer compliments you, you can thank them and recommend additional products. It’s a personal experience that lets customers know you care about them.


  With more than 4 million followers on Twitter, to say Nike has a huge social following is an understatement. The company recognizes just how important customer service is, especially on social media, which is why Nike created a separate Twitter account just for responding to customer inquiries and issues: @NikeSupport. Nike Support is dedicated to all things customer service, making it easier for customers to reach out when they have a problem or a question they want answered. And Nike Support is very active, and like other companies with great social media customer service, very quick to respond. If you look at the account's Twitter feed, you'll see replies every few minutes. This shows customers that they can trust Nike to provide them with the help they need, when they need it.

Conclusion                   

The importance of social media for business cannot be underestimated. Digital marketers all around the world are exploring new opportunities offered on social media arena on a daily basis. Despite the high competition in the modern business world, companies have a chance to stand out from the crowd by offering the highest possible level of engagement on social media. Do you remember the case of BlendTec? The company uses Youtube channel to promote their new products by showing how their blenders can destroy IPhone and other devices. Millions of views have been gained due to one key reason: this is something users have never seen before. Offer your audience something that they don’t expect, but will definitely fall in love in when see it. Use social media networks marketing as a basis for your creative marketing ideas and anticipate enormous amount of new customers! Do you want Blueninja.io to help you? We are waiting for your call! Our social media marketing (smm), search engine opitimization (seo), and search engine marketing (sem) services will help you to be on the first page of Google Search and social media network newsfeed! We are looking forward to meet you!

Does social media marketing require IT knowledge

Does social media marketing require IT knowledge?

I have to answer with a resounding YES! But not for the reasons you might expect. As others have pointed out, the average daily duties of a social media marketing manager don't require you to have even remotely the same skills as anyone working in IT. You can totally get by in social media marketing without having any IT skills. However, I did say, you can "get by." Having these skills can be a HUGE asset! The IT skills are super useful in many ways: Buying Social analytics & management tools. When we are researching which tool a client should use for social media data analytics or as a dashboard for responding to posts on Facebook, Twitter, G+, etc, we know when the vendor is lying about limitations imposed by Facebook's API, and can infer what is really going on, how likely they are to fix (or be able to fix) problems with the tool, etc. This helps us (and our clients) avoid potential problems with these tools that someone without the same knowledge might miss. Building social analytics reports and platforms. We have a lot of knowledge in-house on how to build custom social media reports using API calls and even built our own in-house SMM analytics tool that automates a ton of weekly and monthly reporting that we used to have to do manually in Excel. Even back then we utilized Excel "personal" spreadsheets to easily store and run macros we created in-house to automatically create graphs from the KPI's we wanted to measure and copy them into Powerpoint decks. The sheer amount of work we were able to automate has allowed us to remain a small team without relying on freelancers, and to spend our social media reporting time focused on what happened, why and what our clients should do as a result, rather than on manually building graphs.  
  Understanding our clients better. Many of our clients are technology companies. Having a deeper level of understanding as to how their products work makes us more effective at working with them. As Reem already mentioned, people's assumptions about consumers are often incorrect. To really understand your online social communities, you need to analyze the social behaviour data to learn more about them, so having the knowledge to easily build social media reports for whatever information you want or need without having to spend hours every week in Excel just building the graphs before you can even begin working on actually analyzing them is a valuable skill to have. Again, you don't necessarily have to have these skills to work as a social media marketer, nor will most positions expect you to have them, but they most certainly are a great value add for anyone who might employ you, giving you a leg up that most of your competition just won't have. Also, just because no one expects you to have these skills doesn't mean your agency/client-side employer doesn't still need them. Your lacking these skills just means they also have to hire someone else who does have these skills to support you, or pay a third-party for the social media analytics tools that can save you time, but cost your employer money. Or, even worse (for you), it means you have to go without them entirely, and lose out on the time saving benefits that those skills could have brought you. This means you end up spending more time grinding away on busy work, rather than providing value for your employer/clients. That's another great reason to learn these skills. Not only does it make you more valuable to brands and agencies, but it can also help you learn to automate tasks and save yourself time. If you're spending less time on building graphs on social media behavior and more time on analyzing them and understanding the what, how, why, when, and who of what happened, and what needs to happen next as a result, then you're going to be more effective at your job because you're spending more of the portion of your time devoted to social media analytics on providing value, rather than spending more of that time on busy work that gets you to the point where you can finally start providing value.

Other important skills to have

According to SproutSocial, there is a number of other important and useful skills that social media executive and / or manager must possess: Community Management. One of the core foundations of what social media was built on is being inherently “social.” This means that establishing and building a digital relationship is still a treasured attribute. Community management refers to being able to navigate the online sphere of promoting your brand while engaging with your customers. It can mean slowly converting an observer into a customer by patiently answering questions. It can also be demonstrating what your customers are talking about when they post on social media.  
  Sales and Customer Service. If your sales and marketing funnel involves social media like it should, you’ll find that sales leads inevitably fall into your inbox. Make the sales lead transfer as seamless as possible by asking for the information upfront instead of making them email you. When 34.5% of customers prefer social media as their customer care option, you need to be able to navigate the ‘flow’ of the customers. Being able to provide empathetic care in a short, digital format is different from face-to-face customer service. The social media manager should be able to clearly articulate solutions for the customer while making the customer feel heard. Besides, Hootsuite states, understanding the link between search engine optimization (SEO) and social media reach can be confusing. Google suggests that social signals do not overtly affect your SEO rankings, but the full picture is more complicated. Content that has a high social reach and gets lots of shares, likes, and comments is likely going to get similar engagement metrics that will be read by Google’s algorithm and positively impact your rankings. This is a correlation rather than a causation, so while you do not want to build your social media plan around SEO, it is a great idea to know the common mistakes that social media managers often make. Luckily, there are some great SEO tools out there. LSI Graph will identify relevant keywords and phrases according to what has been searched on Google along with your main keyword.  
  Apart from that, some video content creation skills are important. Video content is unquestionably an important way to reach your audience. Over 500 million people are watching video on Facebook every day, according to Cisco’s research into global IP video traffic. And few years from now, video content is poised to account for 80 percent of all consumer internet traffic. Social media managers need the abilities to create compelling content for platforms like Instagram Stories, Facebook Live broadcasts, and Snapchat Stories. And with all these options, you will also need to know how to optimize your video for all of your different social media marketing channels.

Conclusion

One of the main advantages of social media for businesses is that it enables you to interact with your potential and existing customers. Social networks provide the opportunity to start a conversation with your consumers and deliver the right marketing message to the right individual. Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Social Media Marketing ? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR MILLENNIALS

MILLENNIALS | HOW TO REACH YOUR AUDIENCE THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

  One of the main advantages of social media for businesses is that it enables you to interact with your potential and existing customers. Going through the tweets and Facebook status updates that are posted by your customers gives you insights into what they need. This is important for helping your company formulate marketing strategies that address their needs. Social media makes the process of providing and receiving feedback easier. If your customers have concerns with what your company offers, they can let you know in a timely manner. Social media gives clients a convenient and accessible way to express what they feel and gives businesses a chance to respond. With such platforms, businesses are able to monitor complaints and ensure their customers that their problems will be coped with. Social networks provide the opportunity to start a conversation with your consumers and deliver the right message to the right individual. To market towards multiple demographics takes great powers of empathy – and a deep knowledge of how different types of people interact with the digital world. You need to know how different demographics use digital, and how they experience it. Today, we will have a look at millenials: who are they? What do they like? What can we do?

MILLENIALS: HOW ARE THEY?

 
  In October 2004, researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss called Millennials "the next great generation," which is funny. They define the group as "as those born in 1982 and approximately the 20 years thereafter." In 2012, they affixed the end point as 2004.

Curiosity

Millennials are a curious generation. They are excited to learn new skills, and are willing to invest the time in becoming better employees. Just take a look at the trillion-plus dollars in student loan debt millennials are willing to take on in order to expand their minds.

Tech-savvy

We are all surrounded by technology and millennials spend 5-10 hours a day consuming copious amount of online content. So creating a brand experience within this digital world with relevant content is the first step in captivating this generation.

Advice-Seekers

Millennials unfortunately don’t trust a brand’s message. When deciding what to purchase, this demographic seeks opinions of friends, family members, or even strangers before making purchasing decisions. It’s important to rebuild trust with relevant content and user-generated content.

MILLENNIALS: MARKETING PREFERENCES

According to Geneca, millennials are all about experiences. Everything we do, buy, or eat, all stems from the experience we get from it (FYI this is why we post everything we do on social media-we like to share our experiences with others). So, if you want to be noticed by the millennial group, interact with us by creating an experience for us! A great way to gain brand recognition with millennials is to have live events that we can be a part of. 78% of millennials are more likely to follow or take part in a brand when the company puts effort into implementing face-to-face interactions. For example, Dove engaged their audience by putting on experiential marketing for their ‘Choose Beautiful Campaign’, and Coca-Cola connected with millennials through their ‘Coke Hug Me’ campaign, which advertised a free coke to anyone that hugged a vending machine.  
  Millennials need to see your company as a professional industry with stability and growth potential, but if we have learned anything about this generation, it is that they want to love and have fun with what they do. Think about it this way, give your company the mullet haircut! Just like the mullet, business in the front and party in the back, you want your company to also have a fun/party side! By having a presence on Snapchat and Instagram, you can connect and show millions of millennials what your company can truly offer them. Almost half of the Snapchat audience are millennials. They consume about 30 minutes of content every day on Snapchat. This will give you a chance to interact with millennials by capturing events, sharing different promotions, or giving your followers an exclusive sneak peek behind the scenes of your culture.

FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM OR MAYBE YOUTUBE?

Useful Insights by MarketingProfs.com 

Consumers see social media as creating more accountability for brands in a number of ways, including by uncovering unfair treatment (80%), giving consumers power (75%), encouraging transparency (70%), amplifying issues (65%) and helping employees share experiences (55%). Although Facebook is the most popular social network across generations, it is not as dominant with younger people as it is with older ones, according to recent research from Sprout Social. The report was based on data from a survey conducted in January 2017 of 1,000 Millennials (age 18-34), Gen Xers (age 34-54), and Baby Boomers (age 55+) in the United States. Some of 65% of Gen Xers as well as Baby Boomers say Facebook is their favorite social network. Facebook also ranks as the most popular social network with Millennials (33% of them cite it as their favorite). However, Instagram (22% of Millennials rank it as their favorite) and Snapchat (16%) have much more Millennial fans than they do older ones.  
  The youngest set of Millennials surveyed (age 18-24) rank Instagram as their top network (25% cite it as their favorite), just ahead of Facebook (24%) and Snapchat (23%). Respondents across all three generations are more likely to pick YouTube as their favorite social network over Twitter or Pinterest.

MILLENNIALS: WHAT CAN WE DO?

If your small business isn’t on a social media platform, you will need to be on one to market millennials. In fact, we’d recommend you get on more than one platform. Your social media presence is where your business can easily connect with your target audience. It’s where they spend a large portion of the day and where they go for information. Millennials grew up always being connected and building relationships with people through social networks. So, when they look for a brand or business to buy a product from they are also looking to build a relationship with that business. Insightful posts, product recommendations, useful information about your business and your product will help your brand build that important relationship. When reviewing your social media accounts in order to attract millennials to your business make sure you have a clear and developed brand personality. Express your personality by posting interesting and engaging information on your social accounts multiple times a week. Post videos of your product in use or testimonials on how people (particularly other millennials) have benefited your business. Also, engage with your customers, to show millennials coming to your pages that you can form a relationship. Engagement consists of answering your followers’ comments, sharing their posts, and asking questions to welcome feedback.  
 

CONCLUSION

Besides knowing what social networks your audience uses, it is also helpful to discover their interests outside of the industry that you are serving. This used to be a very difficult thing to do, but now that everybody’s interests are plastered all over social media, as well as the sites that they frequent, the data is there if someone is aggregating it. Fortunately, Google Analytics makes the data pretty easily available by enabling their demographics feature. Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Social Media Marketing? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!  

With creativity in heart, with an idea in mind!

SEO: Best Examples

Search Engine Optimization: Best Practices & Examples

“On a broad scale I see SEO becoming a normalized marketing tactic, the same way TV, radio, and print are traditionally thought of as marketing tactics.” © Duane Forrester The importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices are vital in order to survive in the modern competitive business world. To stand out of the crowd, businesses all over the world need to put enormous efforts by developing a comprehensive thought-out strategy, taking into account the company’s major goals, preferences of targeted audience, and ‘rules’ of search engines. Today we will introduce to the key benefits of SEO for business, best examples of optimized websites and present few very interesting statistics. Let’s get started!
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Key Benefits of SEO practices

SEO Helps You Stand Out from Your Competitors

On the first page of a SERP (search engine results page), there are up to six paid positions, three map listings, and 10 organic listings. If you can align your keyword strategy to appear in a paid listing, a map listing, and an organic listing, you’re increasing your likelihood of a site visit and decreasing the likelihood of a searcher clicking to visit your competitors.

Take Your Business to the Next Level

SEO can bring it thousands upon thousands of visitors to your website a day. This may put your company in a position of needing to expand to a larger web server to accommodate the traffic and sales to your website. Your customers may recommend you a product or service that they were looking for when they visited your website. SEO is a really great investment for your company and could be what you need to take it to the next level.

A Good SEO Strategy Enhances PPC Quality Score

We all know how important Quality Score is for PPC campaigns. But, did you know that Quality Score and the content on your website go hand-in-hand? A good SEO strategy includes creating pages on your website for your products and services and using relevant keywords through your site. By aligning your text ad messages to the content on your website or driving PPC traffic to relevant landing pages (like a page for a specific product or service), you can improve your Quality Score, which can, in turn, reduce your cost per click and improve the performance of your pay-per-click advertising.

SEO Boosts the Effectiveness of Your Other Marketing Efforts

Because of an increased market share in SERPs (search engine results pages) with SEO, you can boost the effectiveness of your marketing efforts like PPC and retargeting. For example, coupling SEO and search advertising can improve traffic by 50%. Coupling SEO and retargeting can increase brand awareness. You can also use the insights from your SEO strategy to fine-tune your PPC campaigns – if you have keywords that are performing well for your organic search, you can add those to your PPC campaigns and test whether or not performance improves.

The Results are Low Cost

Organic listings are essentially free. When you are listed at the top, you don’t need to pay per click or allocate a budget for business advertising, one of the main benefits of SEO is that it is the gift that keeps on giving. With a little bit of effort you can watch your website get consistent traffic. You don’t have to pay $10 for every person who clicks on your ad. Unlike pay-per-click advertising, your traffic will not drop to nothing when it stops. SEO gets rid of the need to have thousands of ads across the web. _________

3 Great Examples of Best SEO Practices

Have a look and get inspired by new ideas!

Cloudbakers

 
  Cloudbakers, optimizes SEO through a strong homepage. The page contains a strong call to action (CTA) as well as keyword links that link to content on their other pages. This design gives the company more opportunities for their site to be found by providing specific keywords that are easy to locate because of their page placement and will increase page ranking in results. Why it's exceptional:

• Direct call to action: "Talk to someone who does"
• Secondary call to action: The three thought bubbles below the main CTA link directly to their products page, allowing the user to learn more information if they're not ready to talk to someone, as suggested by the primary CTA.

MULESOFT

 
  Marketing campaigns often create a big bang, but they all too often lose momentum and fizzle away. MuleSoft, an integration software company, recognizes that sustainable and impressive results come not only from campaign activity, but from the continual application of technology and continued iteration of marketing best practices. Still, easier said than done. To keep campaign momentum going, MuleSoft’s digital marketing team invested in a smart integration strategy, achieving great results when all of their digital channels where working together. For starters, their SEO team altered their metadata structure and audience segments, resulting in a hefty increase in organic traffic to their website. Their marketing leads instituted real-time personalization, and their social team increased revenue a whopping 115% through expanding Account Based Marketing (ABM) efforts. They also prioritized creating a top lead-converting asset by recycling old assets into a long-form book. The results? You guessed it: stellar sales and revenue performance. In addition to killing their integrated marketing game, they also aren’t afraid to go behind-the-scenes and write about their culture, too. Don’t miss one of our favorite blog posts: Putting our culture of innovation into practice. Why it's exceptional:

• Good H1 tag: "Transform your business with API-led connectivity"
• Very prominent call to action: "Get Anypoint Platform"

Mouseflow

 
  Another strong example of SEO success would be Mouseflow, a tech company that uses an online customer tracking heatmap software that facilitates a clear analyzation of a user’s online experience. The Mouseflow home page has strong on-page optimization, with a clear and relevant H1 tag along with an effective call to action. The page is full of relevant keywords which equate to higher SERP ratings. This provides an insightful framework that many other websites can follow in order to construct a SEO -friendly website. Why it's exceptional:

• Good H1 tag: "Do You Understand Your Visitors?"
• Good H2 (including bolded words) that also serves as a concise description of the product
• Eye-catching call to action (the video and also within the main navigation bar)

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Mind-Blowing SEO Statistics You Have Not Heard About!

•  Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day
•  50% of search queries are four words or longer
•  93% of online experiences begin with a search engine
•  The first organic search result will get nearly 33% of clicks
•  75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results
•  High-quality content and link building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search
•  Long-form content of over 1,000 words consistently receives more shares and links than shorter form content
•  Marketers see SEO as becoming more effective, with 82% reporting effectiveness is on the rise and 42% of this group stating effectiveness is increasing significantly
•  In 2018, the average firm is expected to allocate 41% of their marketing budget to online, and this rate is expected to grow to 45% by 2020

Conclusion

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial aspect of the company’s success in the online business world. Despite of the fact that SEO does not brings fast results, consider it as a long-term investment giving unbelievable ROI in the future. Highly-qualified SEO specialists are of a great demand nowadays, and our team members are those you are looking for! Do you want Blueninja.io to help you? We are waiting for your call! Our search engine opitimization (seo), social media marketing (smm), and search engine marketing (sem) services will help you to be on the first page of Google Search and social media network newsfeed! We are looking forward to meet you!

KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER

How Understanding Your Consumer Influences Your Business Success

Most companies start out with a general idea of their target consumer group in mind. Maybe your product is targeted at middle-aged working professionals, or busy mothers, or young male gym-goers. But how well do you actually know your consumer. According to GrowBusiness.org., knowing your customer is key for any company endeavor. Successful business owners understand what their customers want and the most efficient way of making their products available, both online and offline. The depth of the knowledge is vital as well – it requires knowing more than just their names, ages and incomes. As a business owner, knowing your customer’s preferences, tastes and interests along with what they watch, listen to and read can be a profitable advantage too.  
  There isn't a single "best way" to better understand your customer base. Instead of emphasizing on just one or two methods, find the right tools that provide you with information about your customers and lead to broader conversations about marketing and business choices. Understanding their buying behavior is also very crucial for developing successful digital marketing plan. As a business owner, you need to comprehend what type of person is most likely to need the product or service you offer. These are a number of questions that successful business owners need to ask themselves on a daily basis:

• What is their reason for purchasing your product or service?
• How often are they going to need to buy that product or utilize the service?
• Who are they buying for?
• Where are they most likely to purchase?
• Do they prefer digital (online e-commerce) purchasing options or traditional ones?

This is an area many businesses overlook, although it can have a huge impact on your business (digital) success, especially in the following areas:

Creating a Brand Identity

  Deciding who you are as a brand is greatly influenced by your target consumer group – and not just such Google Adwords demographics options, such as age and gender. You need to identify what your consumers’ lifestyles are like – what their hobbies are, the kind of food they eat, a typical day in their lives. You identify what they care about, the issues they face, and the solutions they seek. Then, you can use that information to shape your brand into an ideal that appeals to your target consumers, and create an image of a community that they want to be a part of. This brand identity will drive all communications with your consumers, in the ‘voice’ of your copy, or the style of your visuals. This will make your brand relatable to your target consumers in a much deeper way than a generic communication would be to a broad audience.

Developing New Products

  Every business needs a reason for their customers to buy from them and not their competitors. This is called a Unique Sales Proposition (USP). Your USP can be identified by completing the phrase "Customers will buy from me because my business is the only one offering... "Your USP can change as your business or your market changes, and you can have different USPs for different types of customer. Once you have identified the issues your target consumers face and the solutions they seek, you can then put this information into the development of new products, as well as the improvement of current products. By going into detail and understanding what your consumers care about, you can streamline your efforts to make sure that you are putting effort into something that will actually matter.  
  According to McKinsey.com, what Unilever, Philips, Amazon have in common, though, is that they drive growth by meeting consumer needs better than their competitors do. Core to this consumer focus is a strong belief in customer insights, and in the active use of a diverse mix of insight tools—new and old, qualitative and quantitative, digital and analog—to get better answers. Unilever, for example, has successfully engaged in consumer cocreation to launch TRESemmé, a fast-growing dry-shampoo brand that is now one of the best-selling mass hair-care products in the US. Philips has achieved major market-share gains in highly contested home-appliance categories through city-level growth analysis. Thanks to its data-driven recommendation engine, Amazon attributes more than one third of its revenue to cross-selling, and Netflix saw its subscribers triple between 2011 and 2015, largely because of its ability to develop hit shows such as House of Cards, based on advanced analysis of subscribers’ past viewing behavior. Developing a better understanding of customers is increasingly a strategic necessity, because fast-moving markets, new digital technologies, and new business models are changing what customers want and how they shop. Remember, you can’t be everything to everyone – so aim your resources towards meeting the needs of your target market, and let the other things go. For example, if you own a shoe company and find out that your target market consists of women who are on their feet all day, then it may be more important to prioritize the comfort factor of your shoe line, than to spend resources produce a wide variety of colour options for each design.

Creating the Best Customer Experience

  Understanding your target audience and their behaviors also allows you to meet their needs for a good customer and user experience, whether online or offline. If you are catering to an older population who may not be as tech savvy, making sure your website is clean, easy to navigate, and presents key information in an easy-to-understand manner is key. Conversely, a younger target audience may respond better to multimedia elements such as GIFs, videos, or an interactive 360-degree display of your product. You can also expand this to include perks or services that come with your products. For example, you could offer an extended return period if you’re targeting people who are not used to shopping online to reduce their feeling of risk. Or perhaps, you could include a free demonstration video for a product that is complex to use.  
  Whatever your business is, there is always a benefit to understanding your consumer and showing that you care for their needs as a brand. At the end of the day, your business can’t lose by having happy, loyal customers!

Conclusion

  The better you know your customers, the easier it becomes to predict their behavior, to communicate effectively with them, and to anticipate their needs. Understanding your customers allows you to create accurate customer personas, which helps you target your customers based on specific categories. Know your customers better because only they can help you get more lead and more business. Understanding customers is the key to giving them good service which in turn results into strong customer relationships both online and offline and new sales through positive word-of-mouth recommendation. However, understanding the customers’ psyche is not easy and most often requires a thoughtful analysis to identify their preferences or purchase patterns so that you can anticipate their needs, exceed their expectations and develop a thought-out marketing and digital marketing strategy. Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Digital Marketing? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!

Digital Tech Trends 2018

Technological Advances and Digital Marketing in 2018

Introduction The constant flow of technological progress means that digital marketing is always evolving to keep up. Today’s digital marketing tactics look completely different than they did five years ago – and it is likely they will look completely outdated by the time another 5 years go by. But for now, here’s how technology is currently impacting digital marketing – and what you have to do to keep up with the times. Forbes  has suggested a new term, known as Digital Marketing 4.0. The prior framework includes website traffic, email campaigns, digital advertisements, basic social media management and basic blog publishing. It only focuses on increasing visits to websites but has no focus on lead conversion and proper online lead qualification.  
  This most recent trends, though, include: Integrated Global Marketing: Inbound and outbound marketing should now be combined. In comparison to cold-calling, consider this "warm-calling." For instance, after someone reads a blog article on your website, follow it up with an email sharing more meaningful content. Omnichannel Marketing Strategy: This includes deep analytics and data mining, such as AI and machine learning. Omnichannel marketing brings a diversity in mediums when it comes to communicating your brand and value-add. Focusing only on one medium can be limiting, especially if your buyers don't exist on that channel. A Comprehensive Marketing Technology Integration: No one software tool can save the day. Marketing is not about the creative aspect alone anymore. Marketing technology infrastructure needs to be designed and integrated correctly. One social media tool alone will not save the day, nor will one CRM tool be the solution to a challenge anymore. Consider your full stack and how it can work together. Instant is the New Speed Gone are the days when web pages took 5 seconds or more to load. Technology and connection speeds have progressed to a point where everything is expected to be instantly available on-demand. To the younger generations especially, to be constantly connected to instant information is the norm. And, as they move up to fill more of the buying market, businesses will need to cater to diminishing attention spans to ensure they don’t miss out. Engage IT personnel to work on streamlining your website load speed and run frequent tests to ensure it falls within an acceptable range to avoid a high bounce rate. If you put out any content or communications, ensure they get to the point quickly to keep users engaged. Lastly, you can make use of the numerous “Live” channel features on social media to interact with your consumer base in an on-demand fashion.

Mobile Devices Take Over

According to BonsaiMediaGroup.com, with the mobile-first index due out on in early 2018, it’s no longer just competitive advantage to have a mobile-friendly, responsive site. Without the proper precautions and set up, your rankings and your business are sure to suffer. Over 60% of search is now mobile, and nearly 20% of mobile queries are voice searches, which means that your site needs to be mobile-friendly from both a search engines and a user’s perspective. Nowadays, the prevailing use of mobile devices is becoming a common trend. Search engines, social media  networks, online shopping websites, books, movies, and any sort of information are accessed with the use of smartphones, rather than desktops. Think about yourself: how often do you use your phone compared to PC? Yes, you get my point. Google is observing the rising number of mobile search enquiries since 2015, and now it is time to make changes. 2018 is announced to be a year, when Google will officially start to rank and index web pages based on mobile experience and its content, while desktop version will be a less influencing factor. You can find more information about Google Mobile Index in our article.  
    Smart phone evolution, ubiquitous Wi-Fi, and ever-increasing data allowances mean that people are constantly ‘plugged in’ and ready to receive information. 65% of all digital media time is spent on mobile devices – and yet, all too often mobile optimization is overlooked as a priority. Ensure your IT personnel are well-versed with mobile optimization in terms of design, as well as functionality and always test your website on various mobile devices (of different resolutions, screen sizes, display settings, and so on) to make sure that it looks good and is easy to use. Besides your website, don’t forget to mobile optimize the other communications you put out – whether it be ads, emails, articles, and so on. Who knows – as time goes on and mobile dependency gets higher, it is possible that the new norm will be to design for mobile, then optimize for desktop. From mobile-optimized pages to tailored mobile advertising, creating dedicated mobile marketing may seem time and resource-intensive, but it is an extremely worthwhile investment in 2018.

More Reliance on Artificial Intelligence

According to Mobilebusinessinsights.com, driving digital transformation is much more than managing the creation of a minimum viable product. The solution must also have the agility to support innovation going forward.\ The MarketingScope.com states that AI was in the headlines across business disciplines in 2018, from supply chain planning and finance to production and, of course, marketing. Average daily searches for the term doubled from January to December 2017, according to Google Trends. It’s not a tool itself, but AI technology is being applied to marketing tools like ad serving to help target ads more effectively; marketing automation software to personalize content; and analytics tools to find patterns at a speed and scale humans can’t match.  
  Artificial intelligence (AI) is developing every day to better understand human behaviors, interests, and thought processes. This is a benefit to both users and marketers, as AI is able to segment large audiences based on their characteristics and show them content that is relevant. On the user side, AI acts as a filter towards the huge amount of information out there, selecting and curating an experience for each individual according to their interest and behaviors. On the side of the digital marketers, AI is used to save costs by ensuring that marketing materials are shown only to the people most likely to be interested. Thus, in all your online marketing channels, make sure you are making full use of the AI available to segment your audiences and show them the most relevant content – whether it be based on their interests or by where they are in their journey through the buying cycle. This will enable you to meet their needs in a much more relevant and engaging way – a win-win outcome!

Conclusion

The evolution of technology is changing the way we form a digital marketing strategy. This creates a growing challenge for industry professionals to keep up with evolving trends, as well as find the best way to incorporate them into their marketing plan. Inspireinfosol.com states marketing is no more people-only driven, it is equally driven by technology. Having mentioned that, we support marketing function teams with technology that will ease analytics, provides insights, implements automation, lead generation, conversion optimization and branding. With marketing you would need help in either creating a digital collateral, system integration, implementation or analytics. The recent development in the marketing technology space is to be able to find the right resources for your business, network with and execute task-driven projects. Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Digital Marketing? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!

SNAPCHAT VS INSTAGRAM

THE Battle of Social Media Giants | SNAPCHAT VS INSTAGRAM STORIES

Snapchat is a one-to-one and group messaging application that lets users send photo, video, and text messages that disappear after few seconds. Roughly more than 150 million people use Snapchat daily, and consumption is around 800 hours of video per second. In addition to its messaging features, Snapchat features Stories (photo or video messages that can be replayed within 24 hours), as well as Memories, which refer to saved photos, and stickers to ‘design’ messages. The app has been widely adopted, especially among teenagers and millennials, where 26% of people surveyed between the ages of 12 and 24 said they used Snapchat the most.  
  Snapchat was created in 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown. The app was created when they were studying at Stanford University, with Spiegel presented the app as a part of a project for his product design class. It was initially launched as Picaboo, but it was rebranded as Snapchat just a few months later. However, recently Facebook announced that Instagram Stories surpassed its competition by acquiring 250 million daily active users within a year since its launch. That's roughly 50% of Instagram's total number of daily active users accessing the application. The Stories feature, which allows users to share photos with their followers, is up to 500 million daily users. Snapchat pioneered the photo stories model and reported 191 million daily active users for the first quarter of 2018, according to Snap's most recent quarterly report.  
  In addition, 11 out of 12 top social media influencers posted more Instagram stories than on Snapchat. Here’s are infographic by Mediakix that shows the number of average stories they produce per day:  
  According to Hubspot.com, Instagram wins big-time when it comes to numbers alone. With 500 million daily active users, Instagram has an audience almost three times larger than Snapchat’s. But quantity isn’t the only thing that matters here: 45% of Snapchat users are between the ages of 18-24, and that group spends an average of 40 minutes per day on Snapchat -- which is more time than they spend on Instagram. Almost half of Snapchat users aren’t even on Instagram. If you intend to target a young demographic, Snapchat might have a more ideal audience for your business. Instagram, on the other hand, generally caters to an older demographic: 59% of all internet users between the ages of 18-29 use Instagram, and 33% of internet users between the ages of 30-49 use it. If your ideal audience is an older demographic, or if you haven’t fully established your brand and want to reach as many people as possible, Instagram might be a better long-term fit. However… In terms of filters, Snapchat is undoubtedly a leader. Although Instagram has tried to create nearly identical filters to Snapchat on Instagram Stories, Snapchat’s filters are still unbeatable and undoubtedly, more popular. Snapchat is especially unique when it comes to filter animations: if you use the dog filter on Snapchat, you don’t just look like a dog, you also move like one. Mic.com supports the perspective that Snapchat’s filters are better: “Snapchat has a lot more filter choices but Instagram offers a few of the same. For instance, the photo-sharing app has its own variation of the "flower crown" filter but it pales in comparison to Snapchat's.” Snapchat also offers augmented reality effects, something currently unmatched by Instagram. For instance, you can put dancing hot dogs in your pictures and videos of the real world.

Advertising for Businesses | Comparison

According to a new report, brands are uploading to Instagram Stories more than twice as often as they are on Snapchat. “As Instagram becomes the mainstream choice for brand Stories, Snapchat risks being niche-ified,” wrote L2 in the report. Snapchat has repeatedly stated that it's focus is on helping users maintain relationships with friends over marketing or influencer content, while Instagram, too, is adding new features that cater to greater privacy. Snapchat has been under fire from Instagram for more than a year, as the Facebook-owned app has steadily ripped off Snapchat’s features while increasing its users thanks to support and targeting tools from Facebook’s ecosystem. As regards to cost, according to Digiday.com, buyers say Instagram Stories is about $3 to $4 CPMs, and completion rates are between two and three times higher on Instagram than Snapchat. “Instagram is a more compelling story to online advertisers, because it is connected to the larger Facebook ecosystem,” said Jill Sherman, SVP of social media at DigitasLBi. “It provides a more seamless opportunity for brands”, as was mentioned in Business Insider. Snapchat has widely rolled out the Snapchat Ad Manager, with a unified dashboard for metrics, choosing objectives, targeting and mobile monitoring.  
  On the targeting front, Snapchat offers over 500 audience segments to help unlock the most value for advertisers, and also has several partnerships. It has one with Oracle Data Cloud for ad relevance based on offline purchases, for instance. At the same time, the Instagram Stories feature offers a fantastic opportunity to engage with your audience more flexibly and outsmart the ongoing changes to their algorithm. There are so many benefits to giving it a go – why not try it out for your business? Those features include the tools for drawing, placing stickers, adding augmented reality filters, etc.  
  Besides, nowadays businesses are widely taking advantage of Instagram Live feature. Awario states that If you're brave and prepared enough to go Live, you can use that to support your Stories. It is comparatively more interactive and more spontaneous. There is a big advantage to go live as your followers get notifications when that happens (unless they have turned the notifications off). You can also upload your Live Stream as an Instagram Story as soon as it's finished. You have to be prepared to go live, and if your audience is large, you have to also be prepared for almost anything. Here're some ideas for you in case you want to try one of the following ideas: (1) run a contest or invite your audience to bet on an outcome; (2) host a Q&A or AMA (Ask Me Anything); (3) cover an event or share an interesting moment; (4) host a talk show. The point of both Instagram Stories and Instagram Live is to produce raw content that feels more authentic and more personal. If your goal is to build an image of your brand that is down-to-earth, interactive, human - that's the space for you to try out. Besides, DMN also reports that Snapchat works with several measurement solution providers, like Nielsen and Millward Brown, to track metrics like viewability, reach, resonance, and reaction (i.e. sales lift). However, Velasco says it is still “very difficult” for other vendors to provide clients with Snapchat performance analytics. Instagram, however, can leverage Facebook's reporting capabilities and offer deeper insights on its followers' demographics and post/Stories engagement.

Conclusion

Social media is becoming one of the most important aspects of digital marketing, which provides incredible benefits that help reach millions of customers worldwide. One of the main advantages of social media for businesses is that it enables you to interact with your potential and existing customers. Social networks provide the opportunity to start a conversation with your consumers and deliver the right marketing message to the right individual. Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Social Media Marketing ? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!  

With creativity in heart, with an idea in mind!