Haley S Blogs

I’m sure you already know positive online presence = more brand awareness. But the real question is, how do you do that? I’m here to walk you through what the most effective ways are to better your online brand!

First off, your online brand is a lot more important than you think. Your online brand is what people think of you when you are not available. So many customers today are so technological savvy that they heavily rely on a company’s online presence to decide if they like the brand. In order for your brand to set itself apart from its competitors, it needs to be highly recognizable, relatable, and authentic. Capturing the attention of the targeted audience is crucial to do, but your probably wondering how do you do it?

Be consistent with branding: As a company, you should always stick to display the same brand across all online channels. This ensures that the customers become aware and build recognition. Focus on what you want your brand to be known for, and help reinforce that throughout the website, social networks, blogs, document sharing sites, and more.

Maintain the website: I cannot stress enough on how important it is to maintain and build an effective website that conveys the brand message. Improving all aspects of your website that contribute to traffic and conversions. Make sure the website is targeted for your specific audience otherwise the website will not be effective.

Social Media: Nowadays, social media has taken over and is one of the most effective and cost effective ways to promote both small businesses and corporations. having a strong social media platform will promote sales, recognition and brand loyalty without having to spend too much money. Without having social media to spread awareness and help establish the online brand, companies have a hard time maximizing their business.

Make your visuals useful and appealing: In order to stick out and have your brand be appealing to the eye, all the graphics need to be high definition and well-thought out. Not just your logo is important in building an online brand, but your brand color swatches, fonts, and even the types of images you share all play a role in how potential clients identify you.

Allow customer reviews: Although you may be scared to allow customers to leave reviews, I think it is important to be able to build trust in your brand and be able to criticism and opinions into bettering your brand. This can make your brand stand out from others because a lot of companies hide bad comments to make them look “perfect.” Being able to respond to the negative online reviews shows how dedicated and loyal you are to the customers so that you can ensure a level of excellence most brands do not spend time on. Taking into consideration the reviews, apologizing, fixing the problem, and following up with the customer builds up your brand image and integrity in which most companies do not spend their time on. If you put in the time, it will pay off and set you apart from your competitors.

Citations:

Green, R. Kay. “7 Highly-Effective Ways to Maximize Your Online Brand Presence.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 25 June 2013, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/online-brand-presence_b_3140951.Meyer-Delius,

Harald. “33 Actionable Tips to Build a Memorable Online Brand.” Jeffbullas’s Blog, 20 June 2017, https://www.jeffbullas.com/33-tips-build-memorable-online-brand/.

Creating a persona for your core audience may take time, but in the end it is well worth it. It is recommended that you make three to five personas to represent your audience so you can cover the majority of them with still be specific to their needs. Creating a marketing persona template is useful when understanding the job title, demographics, goals and challenges, values/fears, and the marketing message you are trying to pitch. Digging deeper into more specific information can be useful depending on the business and if their hobbies, blogs they read, and where they get their news from could provide that additional information you needed.

Now I will provide the steps you need to take to create a marketing persona that will set you up for success!

Where do your visitors come from?

Figuring out where your visitors came from, what keywords they searched for, and how long they spent once they reached the site plays an important role in forming data that is key for personas as it reveals what desires and interests your audience are looking for. You can then use this tool to decide how to market and include information that stands out.

Become friends with Social Media

Do your research and find your potential customers asking questions or incorporating products or likings through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or even Snapchat and Instagram. People of all ages use social media to communicate and boast about products they like and dislike. So why not use them in your favor?

Use your entire team to collaborate

Not only should the marketing team be in charge of strategizing the best ways to price, promote and place the product within its competition but involving customer growth, development, and more should be involved when creating the persona that will entice your customers. Having multiple perspectives brings more ideas to the table which will better serve the audience.

Know your audience

Use surveys and interviews to get to know your customers better. They build a useful marketing persona, so you can fully understand them. Interviews is the most important because they are able to reveal deep insights into your customers goals, values and pain points that will resonate with each and every one of them.

Once you have built and understood your marketing persona, it’s time to focus on incorporating those in email marketing…

Never strive to email to a whole bunch of people who are subscribed, instead write as if you’re emailing to one person because it makes them a whole lot more personal. While doing so it is also important to only send the email out if it conveys an important message because no one likes junk mail. We first can start off with creating an outstanding subject line that will attract attention from the beginning. Using power words, numbers, cleverness, and being unique when creating the email will give you a better chance at getting the email opened by all customers. Next, we will have to cultivate the readers by creating engaging emails. Keep emails short and to the point so that readers don’t get overwhelmed and stop reading. Key tips in doing this includes using the word you, adding personality, stay away from boring writing, and don’t be cold-hearted when creating an email that should care about the readers.

Now let’s put the two together to incorporate a buyer persona within an email campaign:

Create an effective emailing strategy: Now that we will have a clear buyer-persona we can create an email strategy that builds trust and increases brand awareness. It is important to talk about the core values the buyer-persona can relate to the most and shape them to the buyer persona’s goals.

Understand the buyer’s journey: Align the email campaign to notice the problem and look for solutions to overcome their needs. From here, the buyer goes into consideration and looks for other options. Lastly, the purchasing part is the most important part because you want the buyer to take action. Knowing your buyer persona will help you frame emails to keep the buyer within the journey and follow your call to action.

Personalize the email to stand out: Standing out among good and bad email campaigns falls within personalizing and sending out a great email copy that they can relate to and will have a high open rate. If the email can achieve these things, then most customers will follow through and purchase what you have convinced them to buy.

I hope these pointers help build personas within your email marketing and result in a better experience for both the customer and the business.

Citations:

Duistermaat, HennekeHenneke. “37 Tips for Writing Emails That Get Opened, Read, and Clicked.” Copyblogger, 11 Oct. 2018, https://www.copyblogger.com/37-email-marketing-tips/.

Lee, Kevan. “The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Marketing Personas: Buffer.” Buffer Marketing Library, Buffer Social Blog, 30 Nov. 2018, https://buffer.com/library/marketing-personas-beginners-guide.

Marrs, Megan. “The 9 Best Email Subject Line Styles to Increase Your Open Rates.” WordStream, https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/31/email-subject-lines.

Petterson, Mathew. “All about Email Open Rates.” Campaign Monitor, https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2018/06/all-about-email-open-rates/.

Team, SalesHandy. “The Significance of Buyer Persona in Email Marketing.” SalesHandy, 3 Sept. 2019, https://www.saleshandy.com/blog/buyer-persona-in-email-marketing/#Frameand.

Have you ever been worried that someone can see and know what you’re doing while using technology?

Not only should we be afraid of the government hacking into our phones and computer to steal data and information, but now marketers are hacking into our search history to online advertise. This is their way of grabbing our attention and hoping that we buy the product or service they are pitching. Soon our entire environment including our schools, workplace, car, places where you shop, eat and play, will play an effect in the amounts of data and information that gather to predict where and what we are doing. Erosions of privacy has been a long time coming and has many different sources. Social media platforms, websites, governments and corporations all play a role in the erosion of privacy. These are all potential hazards for the society, but most apparent problem online advertisers are doing is invading the privacy of all consumers. Online advertising has been able to follow interests of the consumer and persuade the user by product placement, ads, and remarketing. How they track consumers behavior and how they deliver more-relevant ad messages to consumers has been an ongoing secret.

I think it is rather important to give consumers control because it could lead to more open and personalized advertising, rather than installing a bunch of wasted ad blockers, remarketing, and pop ups that annoy the consumer. Being more aware of digital privacy and security is something I recommend for everyone. The common myth that someone is watching you through the camera of your laptop and being able to hear what you are saying through the mic is nothing to deny. Not trusting the security of your computer is indeed important if you want to protect your online privacy and security. Protect yourself and protect yourself from being spied on. I would rate the current model a 3 because I feel like it is definitely dangerous for the society, but also nothing too serious to have to act on right away. Yes, I think it is important for both the young and old age groups to be aware of data tracking, government hacking systems, and the technological advancements online advertising is gaining throughout the years. But being highly dangerous is something I don’t see as critical for the society to have to worry about.

Code of ethics for digital marketers:

• Know your audience: You should be able to know the target audience in which you are marketing to, their preferences, interests, and choices. It is also good to know the complete demographic and psychographic overview, so you can better market to the consumers. For example, if the audience is for the age group of 15-25 years old, then you are most likely going to market through social media, websites, and social platforms that are used frequently by that age group.
• Build awareness: Raise brand awareness so that more and more people can become aware of your brand and why it is useful for them. The first impressions you gain from your consumers, are the most important for building the reputation and outlook of the brand. Awareness also encompasses more than just your services or products, you build awareness around your logo, culture, name, or values. This becomes super important in growing your business or company because you can form persistent customers that you can always count on.
• Banner Ad Design that Catches the Eye: Create an effective display ad that invites the website visitor and grabs their attention right away. The ad should communicate to the customer why the product or service is worth being purchased and typically feature a call to action.
• Remarketing: This is an important step for digital marketers to give the visitor a second chance to become familiar of their produce/service. This is the practice of displaying ads to web users who have already visited that site. Simply targeting previous visitors is a very profitable advertising technique.
• Never Compromise On Privacy: Privacy is a very serious topic as it created more and more awareness in the internet generation. Make sure that when marketing through social media, you are not violating any privacy rules. This is also important through emailing while making sure you offer an unsubscribe option available to the users.
• Stay Consistent: Make sure that no matter how you are advertising to your audience that you stay consistent. Stick to the same value propositions, use similar calls to action, and use the same design elements such as color scheme, characters, fonts, imagery etc.
• Relate to the Product: Being able to clearly deliver and show your visitors why some product, idea, or personality is important to have is key. Mentioning your own relationship with the particular product or brand can boost your campaign and business as a whole.
• Think Before Action: Always make sure you think before making decisions, interacting with others, using social media, responding to customers or employees, and posting ads. Once you flood the internet with information, it is very complicated to edit or delete without someone seeing it. Always verify what you share before sending it out for prospects because it can lead to embarrassment and negative perception of the brand.

Citations:

Akbar, Tahir AkbarTahir, and Israyelle. “7 Fundamental Ethics of Social Media Marketing.” Business 2 Community. Accessed November 8, 2019. https://www.business2community.com/social-media/7-fundamental-ethics-social-media-marketing-01571504.

Fisher, Lauren. “Digital Marketing in Today’s Privacy-Conscious World.” eMarketer. eMarketer, July 9, 2019. https://www.emarketer.com/content/digital-marketing-in-todays-privacy-conscious-world.

Jumpsix. “Ethical Issues in Digital Marketing.” JumpSIX Marketing, July 29, 2019. https://jumpsixmarketing.com/ethical-digital-marketing-part-1-issues/.

Potter, Will, and Christopher Soghoian. “How to Protect Your Online Privacy.” TED, July 2, 2019. https://blog.ed.ted.com/2017/01/24/how-to-protect-your-online-privacy/.

Steimer, Sarah. “The Murky Ethics of Data Gathering in a Post-Cambridge Analytica World.” American Marketing Association, January 5, 2018. https://www.ama.org/marketing-news/the-murky-ethics-of-data-gathering-in-a-post-cambridge-analytica-world/.

Taylor, Kenneth. “The End of Privacy.” Philosophy Talk. Accessed November 8, 2019. https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/end-privacy.

Having troubles getting people to click on your website? Take a look at these pointers and watch your websites rise to the top!

Publish Quality Content: Everyone wants to click on the first website and be able to receive the content they want. Quality content that is targeted specific to your intended user increases site traffic, which improves its overall authority and relevance. Along with creating quality content, your website also needs to be unique so that it is able to stand out from the competition and get found. Once you gain your visitors authority, they will most likely come back since you gained their credibility.

Focus on Your Keywords: Identify and target specific keywords for each page on your website. Think about what the visitor came to your website for, and which words they are looking for. Those are the keywords you should incorporate throughout your website but be specific to the same keyword for each website page. For example, do not include multiple keyword phrases in the same page, instead separate the keyword phrases to each web page you are targeting so that it is easy for the visitor to navigate throughout.

Create Links Within Your Website: Backlinks, which are links to other webpages add equity to your site, and is the most important factor in determining your site’s search ranking. When deciding which websites to include links to, make sure you aim for quality over quantity because a well-known authoritative site goes much further in increasing your websites SEO than having multiple smaller unknown links. Keep in mind, Google can detect if you are adding too many backlinks that are unrelated to your topic.

Do Some Website Cleaning: First thing to look at is your website speed. The last thing you want visitors to do is get so frustrated because your website isn’t loading that they turn around and go to another website instead. According to Google, simply increasing the load time of a page from 1 second to 3 seconds increases the bounce rate by 32%. Having a high bounce rate means poor user experience which is true for both SEO and SEM. Once the website is running efficient, it usually stays that way as long as you are staying up to date with any technical issues that may arise.

Titles and Meta Descriptions That Stand Out: Having a title and meta description that stands out is important. Visitors will look at a page of meta descriptions and it is your job to make yours stand out amongst the others. How Google displays your result determines whether people want to click on your listing or someone else’s. Optimizing your chances of people clicking on your website needs to include keywords and phrases that people want, as well as from a relevancy and pure perspective. This will make people choose you over your competitors.

I hope these pointers help your website rank higher, but always remember there is room for improvement. If your newly designed website isn’t ranking too high in the search results, it could be that you need to give it more time, or hopefully these pointers will be the boost you needed! Please comment below with any suggestions and I look forward to your guy’s feedback!

Citations:

Abrim, Mark, and Mark Abrim. “17 Best Free (or Freemium) SEO Tools to Improve Your Google Ranking.” Single Grain, August 9, 2019. https://www.singlegrain.com/seo/15-free-seo-tools-to-improve-your-google-ranking/.

Edgecomb, Carolyn. “What Is Quality Content?” IMPACT. IMPACT, April 23, 2019. https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/what-is-quality-content.

Fishkin, Rand. “How to Rank: The SEO Checklist.” Moz. Moz, July 31, 2019. https://moz.com/blog/rank-in-2018-seo-checklist.

“Five Ways to Improve Your Site’s Ranking (SEO).” Michigan Technological University. Accessed October 26, 2019. https://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/digital/seo/.

Gotter, Ana. “How to Get On Top of the Google SERP: A Practical Guide.” Disruptive Advertising, September 24, 2019. https://www.disruptiveadvertising.com/marketing/improve-google-ranking/.

Wertz, Jia. “4 Things You Can Do Today To Boost Your Website’s Google Ranking.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, February 18, 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2017/01/19/4-things-you-can-do-today-to-boost-your-websites-google-ranking/#762de2163fe3.

Let’s first start off with, what is a Landing Page?

A Landing Page is a page on a website designed to convert visitors into leads. Therefore, our goal is to capture visitors and gather their information, so we can later contact and market to what we know about them. These 5 steps will help increase your landing page conversion to convince visitors into becoming a lead.

Write killer headlines

Make sure the main headline is clear and concise for the visitor to know exactly what they are being directed towards. It should grab the reader’s attention and sum up the main pitch. Remember that readers are likely to read the header and make up their mind within seconds so make sure you capture them fast!

Include images and videos

As always, people are always more amused to look further if there is a picture relaying the context when they first take a look at something. You should always include an image or a video above the fold so the reader will be more enticed to scroll down and look further into the content. The image should always relate to the product or image you are trying to sell. This will eventually help the reader visualize the product.

Minimize Distractions

Make sure when creating landing pages, that the amount of links and distractions is minimal. On the landing page make sure you include your logo to build your brand’s recognition and link that redirects to your homepage. The ultimate goal of your landing page is to minimize the options for the viewer. Having too many options can bring the attention away from the call to action button. Heatmaps are also extremely useful to see how your visitors navigate throughout your site and can show where they click and spend the majority of their time.

Source: https://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/high-converting-landing-pages/

Keep the important information above the fold

Most people spend 80% of their time above the fold. And when I say above the fold I mean the content on the page before you scroll down. So, in other words you want as much content as you can above the fold as well as some imaginary screen border. It can be hard to find the happy medium between content and images, but you want to make the page non-cluttered and appealing to the eye.

Optimize forms to boost lead generation

Keep the forms to the absolute bare minimum number of fields. The more information the lead has to provide right at the moment, the more annoying and less likely the visitor will take the time to do so. Make sure you get the general information first, then later you can always ask for more once you have them as a lead and on your side.

Source: https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/landing-page-conversion-rate/