Archives for April 2020

Why go crazy searching for information when the internet places it right at your fingertips? With a quick Google search, you can find any information you need in a matter of seconds. In fact, according to a Google report, there are about 63,000 searched made per second. This number is mind boggling. Each of these people are looking for something particular, and in some of these instances, your website can offer them the solution they search for.

According to an article by Search Engine Land, organic search accounts for 53% of traffic while paid searches account for 15%. Digital marketing guru Neil Patel found that 75% of people will never scroll past the first page on a Google Search. This means that ranking on the second, third, or fourth page just isn’t optional because you won’t bring in enough clicks and traffic to make SEO worth your money and effort.

Marketers must therefore take a good look at SEO strategy and make decisions as they go. Paid and organic ranking reports, keywords, search features, technological use, etc. are all part of the puzzle piece which marketers must plug in to make meaningful and data-driven decisions. In order to make an SEO strategy matter, there are various steps you should take.

 

UNDERSTANDING SEO IN 4 EASY STEPS

Step 1: Create a list of keywords. By typing a keyword into Google’s search field, you can easily find keywords to target customer searches. Search engine optimization revolves around keywords. It’s a good idea to get at least 10 keywords together and there are also keyword tools like SEMrush or Ubersuggest that work well for this purpose. It’s also important to remember that keywords drive searches, but only when they are in context. This is because Google’s algorithm is very hi-tech so everything must be ready to go before PCP’s and campaigns are thrown into the mix.

Step 2: Begin with your landing page. Google must first understand what your website offers by picking up any subjects, metadata or backlinks. It’s also important to take a look at your website and understand what the user experience is like. If it’s relatively easy to use, that’s a good sign.

Step 3: In case you’ve never noticed, when you search for something on Google, there are other buttons under the search leading you to articles, images, shopping, or video. You need to make sure that when hashing out a strategy, all forms of media such as blog posts, videos, and photos are brushed upon. By delivering information exactly the way it is search for, you are well on your way to successfully using SEO.

Step 4: Become dominant in your particular industry. This will eventually drive more direct searches to your site and have audiences specifically conducting SEO searches for your business.

SEO can be a complex process. Luckily, there are many helpful videos out there for marketing gurus, such as this 8-Step SEO Strategy for Higher Rankings in 2020. By truly understanding how it works, you can be an SEO guru too.

Is it possible for people to fall head over heels for a brand? Although having a variety of options when it comes to products makes it very difficult for consumers to build meaningful and emotional connections with brands, when they do it can be a match made in heaven.

Brands that can learn how to tap into a buyer’s emotions are often able to create a strong bond and trusting relationships with them. As a result, a culture of loyalty forms. According to an article about brand love on Visual Capitalist, “intimate brands that have a strong emotional bond with their consumers tend to outperform top companies listed on the S&P 500 and Fortune 500 in both revenue and profit.” One such brand that has managed to form this kind of relationship across various generations is Amazon. Amazon has transcended age and appears in top lists for Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers. Visual Capitalist stated that “Every generation named “enhancement” as Amazon’s defining trait, meaning their lives have improved as a result of the relationship. The “ritual” trait also scores high, with users claiming the brand has become ingrained into their daily behavior.”

But let’s take a step back. What causes us to fall in love with a brand? An article by Ranking the Brands mentions that the connections we make with brands can be as deep and emotional as the relationships we have with other people. Because 75% of buying experiences are based on emotion, brand love can become an exceptionally powerful experience, meaning it is very important for brands to build strategies and campaigns around the idea of “love.”

Many people have learned to define themselves by brands. Most consumers want interactions with brands that are meaningful and act in human and personal ways. They want an emotional engagement with brands, and a relationship made up of loyalty, honesty, reliability, longevity, and commitment. It’s important to note that brand awareness on its own it not what drives sales, but instead brand love is what drives desire, loyalty, and advocacy for a brand. Of course, with love comes loyalty and recommendation. When people feel understood by a brand and that it is meeting their needs, they tend to stay true to the brand and recommend it to others. This is a traditional form of marketing and even boosts the effect of paid media.

The best position a brand can be in is one where they are loved. It is important for marketers to strive to create meaningful relationships with consumers that are based on trust, loyalty, honesty, and commitment. This is the best way to turn customers into fans, and fans into true lovers of the brand.

 

 

 

 

People tend to buy products and brands because of the way it allows them to say something positive about themselves, since they are consumers of that particular brand. One of the factors that affects consumer behavior is buyer self-concept. In other words, depending on the self that we have in mind, our purchases are affected.

A buyer’s self-concept is determined by how the buyers feels as a person and how the buyers want others to see them. Self-concept is a self-image or identity made up of a subjective collection of thoughts, perceptions, and feelings. It includes personality, abilities, occupation, and the personal or professional roles the consumer takes on. Because many users use material objects to shape who they are, products are said to help support a consumer’s self-concept. Consumers tend to feel motivate to act in agreement with their self-concepts and purchase certain products as a way to show their self-concepts to other people.

Self-Concepts

Self-concepts also tend to split into four different parts. The actual self represents how the consumer really is. Marketing a product to the actual self means showing your consumer that you understand the point of life (or purchasing journey) they are at. The other category is the ideal self, which describes the consumer’s perception of what they would ideally want to be like. The space left between the actual and ideal self can really push consumers to buy products in order to try and tie the ideal self with the actual self. The social self-concept is how people actually perceive you, or the version of you most people know, while the ideal social self-concept is how you feel others perceive you.

Self-Congruity

Self-congruity is how a person’s self matches with a brand image. For example, if the self doesn’t match with a brand, it’s considered self-congruity. There are four types of self-congruity. The first is actual-self congruity, which matches with self-concept. Ideal self-congruity pairs with the ideal self-concept when it is threatened. Social self-congruity pairs with social self-concept when things are going downhill, and the ideal social self-concept pairs with the ideal social self.

Motive

Then there are of course motives. When each self-concept is match with self-congruity, a motive is formed. The self-consistency motive connects to the actual self. This means the brand must find a way to tap into a consumer’s values and frustrations in order to try to get them to act. The self-esteem motive increases motivation when brands tap into the person’s self-esteem. The social-consistency motive connects to the social self-concept because it convinces consumers to take action. The social approval motive causes people to desire products in order to fill their void for social approval.

In our digital era, social media is one of the best and proven ways to build a community. This doesn’t just apply to people, but to businesses as well. Rather than using social media platforms to self-promote products or services, there are steps that brand can take in order to make the most of what social media has to offer. By providing the right guidance, tools, and strategies to their customers, brands can not only offer assistance to those in need which in turn allows for a loyal and growing community, but they cast a positive light on themselves as well. Here I have put together a short list on how businesses can use social media to effectively build brand communities to be proud of.

Engagement

Community is about engagement. The first thing brands should be doing is engaging with their customers. Communities should be able to openly and freely communicate and respectfully engage in whatever the purpose is. It’s important for members to dive into the community, whether that be by commenting, asking questions, or simply posting something silly. Other forms of engagement are helping users by answering their questions and offering opinions or valuable solutions. A business or brand may find it useful to take the time to get to know the people they are targeting by sharing information and insights about themselves first.

Touching Base

Reach out to customers! After engaging with them online, select a few to personally message. There are some brands that do this. The new popular hair color brand Overtone, for example, selects a few of the best comments on each post to personally respond to. Whether customers have questions about particular products or the effect the product will have on their hair, Overtone is there to help. It’s important for brands to clarify questions that customers may have or direct them to someone that can. Brands can even ask for customer input. This is a valuable way of bringing customers into the brand community and build lasting relationships with them. After some time, the brand will have built a strong community, which is what will truly drive the brand.

Posting Quality Content

There is sometimes a large difference between the content that customers want to view and the content that brands actually post. Businesses must be in tune with their customers. According to an article by Business 2 Community, “Consumers and brands believe that social is the primary hub for customer service and employee advocacy, yet few are doing this well.” Brands should specifically reach out to customers and honor what they consider valuable to make sure that appropriate content is being posted. Finally, brands can use content in order to embrace authenticity and be the best they can be.

Did you know that we can form a first impression in under a second? It may sound a little “out there” but actual research by Princeton psychologists assures us that this is true. Our reptilian brain takes over and we often make these decisions with a little help from our subconscious. When marketers partake in emotional branding, they market their products in such a way that they cause us to create emotional connections to certain brands or companies that allow us to separate it from the others. Over time, we begin to create brand loyalty.

An article on Instapage about emotional marketing uses the Apple brand as an example, stating that “Apple may be the perfect example of a company that utilizes emotions to create a connection with consumers and brand loyalty over time. Apple’s branding strategy uses simplicity, a clean design and most importantly, a desire to become part of a lifestyle movement. This well-crafted desire appeals to our most basic emotional need: to be part of something bigger than ourselves.” In other words, Apple understands how to tug on consumers’ heartstrings in order to tap into their emotions and help them realize why they need the product. By recognizing that we are social animals and want to be a part of something, Apple has crafted marketing strategies like “product unveiling events to help consumers feel a part of something large and important. When consumers feel emotionally tied to an ad, they have more of an intention to buy the product or service being advertised.

Think of the Superbowl ads. One that comes to mind is the Budweiser Superbowl ad of 2015 featuring the Clydesdale horses who become best friends with a Golden Retriever pup. The advertisement was memorable, heartwarming, and emotional. In fact, the advertisement was so successful that Budweiser decided to bring the Clydesdale horses back for their 2020 advertisement. Forming close bonds and understanding the love that an animal can bring are pretty universal themes, so the ad really tugged on some heart strings. Storytelling is also another emotional form of advertising, which plays on dopamine. Therefore, many brands find success in using storytelling in order to make emotional and psychological impacts so that consumers will remember stories and the brand as a result. This is a strong example of emotional branding.

We know that consumers judge brands depending on their emotions and how they feel about particular experiences, rather than on the information provided about a product. This means that marketers must understand exactly how to emotionally connect to consumers and use emotional intelligence to hook customers. By using a mix of technology, colors, and other factors that are known to stir up emotions, brands can come up with the advertisement of a lifetime. On the website Marketoonist, author Tom Fishburne mentions that “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” This statement couldn’t be any truer. A finely tuned advertisement should connect with an audience emotionally and in such a way that they don’t feel that something is being sold to them. Emotions will always be a vital part of being human so when marketers choose to appeal to people in a way that they are honestly appealing to people’s emotions, they begin to create a name for themselves—a practice that defines emotional marketing.

Facebook is perhaps one of the most effective social media advertising platforms. According to Statista, there are almost 2.5 billion monthly active users on Facebook, meaning there is huge potential to reach people. Still, there are other reasons that it tends to be a preference amongst marketers, advertisers, and businesses alike. Facebook ads are a very important part of Facebook and can be a useful part of people’s everyday life. However, some practices make Facebook ads either really good or really bad.

One of the best things about Facebook ads is that there are so many different ways to target the best customers. Facebook ads gives you the opportunity to target people by factors such as age, interest, location and more. This means that if you want to target rock climbers in the 20-30 age range or males that live a certain distance from your store, you can do it with Facebook ads. Facebook can select these people depending on their interests, the algorithm they used, and the data that Facebook collects from people. It’s really a genius way of targeting clients.

According to DigitalInfluence, business owners must first choose how they want to advertise their product or service. If they are selling products, they can use product placement ads. If they are more focused on brand awareness or generating leads, Facebook ads will provide the options necessary to deliver these ads to people. Advertisers can also find value in Facebook ads by identifying their target audience, creating audiences, and then creating the appropriate advertisements to place in front of these people in order to garner traffic.

Facebook decides what advertisements to display through what some may describe as an auctioning system. The system depends on who the advertiser is targeting, whether it be based on age, location, gender, or apps subscribed to. Another way the system targets their audience is by pulling information from user profiles, and what those users look at or engage with on Facebook. The advertiser can then display their ad before you. Impact BND mentions that “Your business can target based on behaviors. Medspas can target people who are not only a certain age, but who like name brands of dermal fillers or medical aesthetics before and afters. Boutique hotels can target people traveling to their area, who have used travel apps within the last 30 days. And e-commerce businesses can absolutely target based on historical shopping behaviors, tapping into consumers that are likely buyers of skin care products based on their actual past purchasing behavior.” You can create a custom audience to show your ads to, no matter what you are promoting.

By placing their ad right in front of users and showing the ads to the people most likely to become customers, Facebook ads is in a position to successfully reach intended audiences. This is one of the best reasons to advertise on Facebook. The social media platforms allows the ability to target highly specific audiences, which increases the probability of delivering an effective advertisement. Facebook is truly a great platform that helps drive growth to businesses. The Facebook ads platform even allows for tracking of the results of each ad so that businesses can measure ROI and decide how to make bigger and better ads and make their business boom!

One of the most useful and insightful quotes is attributed to Maya Angelou. She famously said, “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” This statement even holds true when it comes to marketing! Semantics aren’t just important when it comes to everyday conversation, but especially matter when it comes to branding and setting a tone of voice for a brand. A message should be picked apart to the very bones and the context should be carefully interpreted to see how consumers are likely to react.

According to a blog post by Sean Ketchem, “What makes a successful brand is the combination of the visual and verbal: a visual presentation that captures the spirit of what the brand is about, combined with the right messages, crafted in the right tone. Without key messages, a piece of brand communication is a beautiful box with nothing inside.” Companies best connect to their customers through verbal branding, which is made up of a combination of positioning, messaging, corporate language, and brand voice. Once a company has effectively positioned themselves, they can engage in brand messaging to separate their positioning into various ideas. Once a successful message has been established, companies will often find themselves in a better position in the marketplace, attracting valuable customers.

Enter brand language. Brand language consists of words and images that a brand uses to define its purpose, brand tone, or reference its products. Brand language really stands for how a company presents their brand. It is a practice that takes trial and error and is often developed over time. An article on Learn G2 uses the BMW brand as an example of successful usage of brand language, stating that “BMW visual brand language is one of the most recognizable in the automotive world. Regardless of social status, professional training, or whether one is a fan of the brand or not, people recognize BMW cars not only by the logos, but by specific design elements that made history. A small glimpse of one of the brand’s cars is often all it takes for someone to recognize one of its creations, and it has much to do with its visual brand language.” BMW clearly has established a unique brand language over the years, using various components of brand language that have helped build up the iconic brand.

The most important factor in effectively using brand language is not only weaving a strong and unique voice but making sure that it’s heard loud and clear. As marketers, it’s important that the message that’s being sent out into the world is carefully crafted to represent the brand in question. Brand language plays a crucial role in how an audience perceives a brand. In fact, one main reason to use memorable brand language is to create a brand personality well suited to the products that consumers can relate to.

The brand language used should not only make a message for convincing to those receiving it, but should assist in building a trustworthy brand personality, and a solid customer-brand relationship as well.

Being a digital marketer is by no means easy. The constant presence of the internet in our lives means there is a ton of content out there in cyberspace. So how is a marketer supposed to stand out in a mountain of information? The answer is by understanding your audience and what most interests them. This is where social media listening really becomes useful. Listening is an important life skill, and for marketers social media listening proves to be no different.

Social media listening is made up of marketing tools that help monitor social media keywords being used throughout the web. This allows marketers to collect mentions and conversations that audiences are having about a brand. However, social media listening goes far beyond just measuring metrics. Social media listening doesn’t just mean being aware of what people are saying about a brand on social media, but also understanding how to best respond to these comments. A marketer who understands how to engage in social media listening, understands how to communicate. By listening, marketers can understand how consumers perceive a brand or product and respond by devising a strategy to improve it. By listening astutely, a brand can build a customer base and loyalty. By responding to any comments or mentions, a brand also stands a chance to develop their voice.

An article by Social Media Examiner mentions that there are various ways to listen and show an audience that a brand is taking their concerns seriously. One way is to take someone’s feedback suggestion and mention it on your personal blog. By listening to a suggestion made on social media, a brand can show the audience that they were paying attention and also provide solutions that might benefit other readers as well. Not only does this tactic build loyalty, but it keeps audiences engaged. Another suggestion Social Media Examiner makes is to specifically ask for feedback from customers. Marketers should be asking them what they think and feel, and then make an effort to respond back. This is a valuable way of communicating and can provide a brand with useful information they may not have otherwise had access to.

Social media marketing is a very useful tool but is largely underutilized. In fact, so much more goes into it than just following and publishing posts. Collecting crucial feedback, understanding what it all means, and responding in a way that boosts the brand is essential to success. When brands choose to engage in social listening, their social media channels really begin to become influential—every marketer’s dream. If your business isn’t already engaging in social media listening, start today!