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What is Online Marketing and 5 Reasons Why It Is More Important Now Than Ever Before

 

Marketing online was initially just an alternative platform for companies to market their products, opening up for new and innovative ways to engage with their audience. However, as time passes, the need for connectivity and staying online has become an essential part of everybody’s life. Online connectivity has been ingrained into our lives and the statistics tell us just that. As seen in Hootsuite’s 2019 report, users spend 27% of their year online. This increased usage of the internet over the years shows the need for an emphasis on online marketing, not just as an alternative platform, but as a necessity for businesses to stay competitive and thrive.

Gone are the days where it is just sufficient for your company to have a retail store and an online website that isn’t up to date and unoptimized. Online marketing is more important now than ever. Consumers nowadays look to search for products that they are interested in before they purchase them, with an astonishing 87% of purchases beginning with an online search. In order to capture these consumers, your products have to be visible to them in the first place. Without tools like Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO), your company would find itself hard-pressed against competitors in terms of staying visible to the target customers.

Our article today will help you understand what online marketing really is. It isn’t just about creating a website and having a social media page, there is more to online marketing than that. We will also let you in on some of the reasons why certain aspects of online marketing is crucial to your business success. Before we get into the reasons let’s start with what online marketing is about.

What is Online Marketing?

Online marketing is the marketing of your products through an online medium. It could be through social media sites such as Facebook, LINE, Youtube and Instagram or through platforms that allow you to pay for display advertising space such as Google. The main objective of online marketing isn’t much different from traditional marketing, which is to help your business gain awareness, sales, new customers, target new audience and more. There are various methods to sell and market your product or services online, but they are usually categorized into three categories.

They are:

Search Engine Marketing

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Search Engine Marketing is a component of online marketing whose techniques businesses must excel at in order to market online successfully. Recall that we mentioned earlier that 87% of consumer journeys start with an online product search. Search engine marketing refers to using techniques like SEO (helping your site to gain organic traffic in Google’s search engine rankings) or PPC (purchasing paid ad space) to get your product and website more easily visible to the right target audience.

Social Media Marketing

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Social Media Marketing is a form of marketing that is done through the multiple social networking platforms. The main purpose of engaging in this type of online marketing is to connect better and engage your audience, creating loyalty and awareness for your company. This is a very popular form of marketing for businesses as the usage of this medium is high with a projected 2.96 billion users to be on these platforms by the end of 2020.

Email Marketing

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This is the online version of the traditional “snail mail”. Email marketing is marketing through the sending of emails to target customers. It is known to be the lowest cost form of marketing compared to search engine and social media marketing. Not only is it cost effective, email marketing also allows for direct engagement with your customers.

Now that we’ve covered the three different forms of online marketing, here are 5 reasons why online marketing is more important now than ever before.

Reason #1: Personalization

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Image Source: IMPACT Marketing

When it comes to marketing for businesses, every business would specifically try to convey and shape their message according to their target audience’s preference and needs. With traditional marketing, you are able to do that by crafting a message in your advertisement that is based on your target audience’s pain points to resonate with them. Marketers are said to have seen an increase of 20% in sales when they used some form of personalization in their marketing campaigns. Additionally, 71% of consumers in a DynamicYield research expressed that they believe that personalized emails will influence their decision to engage with the email.

MailChimp - G Suite Marketplace
MailChimp’s Email Marketing Software (Source: G Suite)

However, if you were to use online marketing, you can not only just target specific market segments. Your targeting can go down to even the personal level through the use of email marketing. With email marketing tools like MailChimp out there that offers personalization, businesses can look to go down into the specifics in their message when speaking to consumers. MailChimp’s software enables businesses to personalize everything about their email marketing campaign, from addressing customers on a first name basis, to recommending only the products that they’d be interested in. It is this form of personalization that is only available through an online medium, giving you more reasons to engage in Online Marketing.

Using a marketing personalization software may be difficult for some companies that have to focus on their core competencies and don’t have the time to churn out quality content for themselves. It is also essential to learn how to effectively use these software in order to maximize its potential. Therefore, for smaller to medium sized businesses, a use of a digital marketing agency specializing in online marketing could help to alleviate these concerns.

Reason #2: Act as a Contingency Plan and Alternative Platform for Your Business

The current retail situation in the world is dire due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Online marketing will definitely serve as an essential platform to reach out and connect with consumers to help retain your company’s brand recall and even become the main source of sales during this period.

With countries around the world such as China, Italy and Spain going into lockdown and shopping malls being cited as the third most likely to be shunned places, brick and mortar retail stores are going to suffer majorly if they do not have an online sales channel.  Such unforeseen circumstances also highlights the importance of having an online presence in terms of marketing and sales.

Social media marketing serves as one of the best ways to communicate with customers. In this period where people aren’t leaving their house, retail brands without an online marketing strategy may be forgotten by customers. It is no surprise as these lockdowns are going to last for quite some time and as the customers consume more media online about other retail competitor’s brands, it is very likely that those without online marketing would have a diminishing presence in the consumers’ minds. This is the reason why we are seeing many retail stores going on to social media to communicate with their customers. Updates on business delivery means and social responsibility campaigns can be run in order to continually engage with your customers in the case of such unexpected times.

If you haven’t already had your online store set up as a retailer to give your customers an alternate purchasing outlet, there are plenty of great websites out there. Sites like Shopify, Wix and WordPress are user-friendly and not difficult to use at all. They are great for helping retailers without an online store to build one, without having to hire a web developer which usually would cost way more than using these programs.

This COVID-19 emergency does serve as a reminder to retailers that there is a need for an alternative retailing and communications channel to their target audience. Online marketing is needed more than ever to help cushion some of the losses incurred during this period and help businesses push forward.

Reason #3: Increases Your Business’s Legitimacy in the Eyes of Your Customers

Imagine that you’re interested in running and one day decided to search for the best running shoes to purchase on Google. The first page results show the store pages of Nike, Adidas, Under Armor among others. Seeing these results, it is highly likely that you would think that these are definitely the best brands for running shoes since they are ranked so highly on Google.

Using pay per click advertisements and search engine optimization, you will be able to bring your brand to the top of Google’s search engine rankings for keywords pertinent to your industry.

Legitimacy in online marketing is a matter of honing your business’s perception in the eyes of the consumers. This is without a doubt, one of the greatest benefits to online marketing, especially in a time where businesses in general aren’t doing too well. Getting in the front page of Google will give your brand and its products the respect they deserve.

Reason #4: Drives Quality Traffic

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Image Source: GraceThemes

Traditional marketing when done right can help you to reach out to your target audience. You can craft a message that your target audience likes and place the advertisement at a prime location for targeting them, yet not have your marketing campaign succeed.

The problem with traditional advertising is that while you can get the geography and message right, you aren’t necessarily going to be guaranteed quality leads. Your advertisements can also appear in front of uninterested people – a form of low quality traffic for your company.

This is the edge that online marketing has over traditional marketing. A successful online marketing campaign should outperform that of a traditional marketing campaign’s in terms of quality lead. This is so because in online marketing, you are able to be more specific when targeting leads.

For example, when running Pay Per Click campaigns on Facebook or Google, you are guaranteed to be targeting certain interest demographics. You are given the freedom to choose the keywords to target as well as the keywords to not appear on. This allows for more focused and precise targeting. Furthermore, other demographics such as income, age group, and location are also available for you to choose. The increased precision available in online marketing helps you to drive more qualified leads, resulting in higher quality traffic as opposed to traditional marketing.

Reason #5 Scalability Compared to Traditional Advertising

If you think that Online Marketing is going to cost a bomb like how traditional billboard ads or video ads are when placed in prime locations, think again. Online advertising and marketing are the most cost-efficient in terms of helping smaller companies that are trying to scale.

Unlike traditional marketing where companies are expected to pay extravagant amounts of money to get that prime television spot to show their ads to potentially uninterested audiences, online marketing allows for flexibility.

To run online advertisements on platforms such as Youtube, Google or Facebook, all you would require is a daily budget. Paid advertising on the aforementioned 3 platforms allow for businesses to allocate a budget for campaigns. Once that budget is expended the campaign would then end. You can then decide based on that ad’s performance whether or not to extend the campaign, increase your budget for the particular ad or re-design the advertisement if it runs poorly.  This allows for easy scalability, especially for small businesses.

Additionally, the ease of just popping into your ads account to top up the advertising budget or edit the campaign helps give more flexibility to businesses. In a way, online paid advertisements empower businesses to make their own decisions with regards to their advertising. Gone are the days where you have to negotiate a display advertisement campaign’s duration and commit strictly to it based on the signed contract. You are given the flexibility to run your campaigns as you wish!

Are You Ready to Take Your Business Online?

After reading this article, you should know some of the reasons why online marketing is definitely important right now. It is not just a contingency plan for businesses in case of any unexpected circumstances, but it also is a highly effective and efficient marketing method.

We’ve presented you with some tools earlier in the article to help you get started with building your online marketing strategy. You could also pick up some tips from some of our other articles that will help you with the social media and search engine optimization aspect of your online marketing journey. For some businesses, online marketing may not be their core competency, which is why digital marketing agencies are out there to help people with their marketing. Either way, we hope that this article at least helps you to understand the need for an online marketing strategy!

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Why Video Marketing Becomes a Game-Changer?

In a world where digital content is the king, businesses are constantly seeking new approaches to capture and retain their audience’s attention. Video marketing has emerged as a powerful tool in this quest, offering a dynamic and engaging way to connect with endearing audiences. In this article, we will thoroughly explore the impact of video marketing on modern business strategies and how it can help your business stand out from others in such a crowded digital landscape.

Prominent Reasons Why Video Marketing Helps Your Business

- Boost Social Media Interaction

Video marketing has the power to significantly boost engagement on social media platforms. Videos are inherently more shareable and memorable than text-based content, making them ideal for generating likes, comments, and shares. By creating compelling video content, businesses can increase their reach and visibility on social media, ultimately driving more traffic to their website.

For example, a clothing brand takes advantage of short videos to showcase their latest collection, rather than just utilizing a long narrative of solely text-based content. This is because videos are more shareable and memorable, fostering marketing performance with a wider range of engagement on social media platforms. In fact, such a marketing success can be completed when the audience generates likes, comments, and shares across their online communities. 

- Enhance SEO and Encourage Website Traffic

Video marketing can also have a positive impact on a business’s search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Search engines like Google prioritize video content in search results, meaning that well-optimized videos can help improve a website’s ranking. In addition, embedding videos on your website content can increase dwell time and reduce bounce rates, both of which are considered important factors for SEO.

For example, a digital marketing agency strives to create some informative videos regarding tips to achieve satisfying SEO practices. After that, the agency intentionally includes such videos in a blog post on their website. The reason why this particular case matters is due to the fact that search engines generally prioritize video content in search results. Therefore, the application of well-optimized videos can enhance the potential of a better website’s ranking. 

- Establish Trust and Credibility

Video content is one of the most powerful tools for building trust and credibility with your audience. By showcasing your expertise, sharing customer testimonials, and providing behind-the-scenes glimpses of your business, you can establish yourself as a trusted authority in your industry. Thus, the integration of video marketing can lead to increased brand loyalty and customer retention as desired.

For example, a cosmetic company shares a series of videos regarding interviews with some established dermatologists, along with testimonials and reviews from actual customers. Without a doubt, this can help signify how professional the company is when it comes to video marketing approaches. As a consequence, it can help build trust, increase brand loyalty, and potentially drive further customer retention.

- Effectively Communicate Complex Ideas

In general, some concepts are relatively difficult to explain using text alone. And of course, video marketing allows you to visually demonstrate sophisticated ideas, making them easier for your audience to understand and catch the ideas. Whether you’re showcasing a product demo or explaining a new process, video content can help simplify complexity and effectively increase audience comprehension.

For example, an appliance company employs an animated explainer video to help demonstrate how their latest product works in correct manners. As you might imagine, videos can serve as a medium communicator breaking down perplexing concepts into comprehensible explanations. Compared to a solely text-based description, videos are definitely more effective when drawing the audience’s attention and making sophisticated content consumable.

- Cater to Mobile Consumption Habits

With the mounting rise of mobile devices, more and more people are consuming content on their smartphones and tablets. Video content is particularly well-suited to mobile consumption, as it can be easily viewed on small screens and doesn’t require a lot of reading. By incorporating video marketing strategy, you can better reach and engage a wider range of mobile users.

For example, a food delivery service creates short videos representing their recommended menu items with a mobile-friendly view. Then, why is it important to consider the importance of mobile-optimized performance? This is owing to the ever-escalating use of mobile devices in our daily lives. When mobile consumption takes initial place, it is advantageous for businesses if the audience can comfortably watch your videos on their smartphones or tablets at all times. 

- Stay Ahead of Other Competitors

In today’s competitive landscape, businesses need to constantly innovate to stay ahead of the competition. Video marketing is a relatively new and rapidly evolving field, meaning that there is still plenty of opportunities to differentiate yourself from other competitors. By embracing the power of video early on, you can position your business as a leader in your industry.

For example, a real estate agency embarks on the use of drone footage to make high-quality videos of their properties. What happens next is that the integration of such videos can uniquely differentiate the agency from other rivals, and help leverage the agency’s position as a leader among that particular industry. 

- Analyze and Evaluate Performance

One of the key benefits of video marketing is the ability to measure and analyze performance. Most video hosting platforms usually offer insightful analytics that allow you to track metrics such as views, engagement, and conversion rates. By analyzing this data, you can gain valuable insights into what’s working and what’s not, allowing you to refine your video marketing strategy in the long run.

For example, a fitness app launches a series of workout tutorials videos and closely tracks insightful metrics like the number of views, engagement, and sign-ups. Significantly, those insights can be utilized to figure out how video marketing strategies work and how to leverage them to the next level in the future.

- Drive Actions and Conversions

Ultimately, the goal of any marketing effort is to encourage actions and conversions. Video marketing specifically excels in this area, for videos are inherently more persuasive than text-based content. Whether you’re looking to drive sales, increase sign-ups, or boost brand awareness, videos can be a highly effective tool for encouraging your audience to take an immediate action.

For example, an e-commerce company shares an intriguing video showcasing their products with special deals. Plus, they clearly include an intended call-to-action to “Shop Now.” This is a sort of persuasive attempt that can effectively encourage the audience to take immediate action, making a purchase in this case, at that particular moment.

Final Words

In summary, video marketing is a powerful tool that can boost your business to the next level with awaiting surprising outcomes. By using visuals, sound, and storytelling, you can create a unique experience for your audience. Video marketing offers many benefits, from increasing brand awareness to improving SEO and increasing relentless conversions. As such, we can definitely say that video marketing is literally worth a shot. If you are looking for a professional to help boost your digital marketing efforts, MarketingGuru is the key! Partner with us and see how much your business can grow from now on!

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How Landing Pages Play a Role in Marketing?

As long as you join and thrive in the endless world of digital marketing, you may probably see that there are tons of unique jargons and concepts that a true marketer ought to understand for prospective marketing achievements. Importantly, the term ‘landing pages’ is also one example of it. Whether you have any idea about it or not, you should get to know that landing pages are an integral part of any successful digital marketing strategy. In order to stay updated with the latest marketing trends, let’s dig deeper into what is called landing pages.

What does It Mean by the Term ‘Landing Pages’?

วิธีเขียน Content ในส่วน Digital Marketing

Landing pages are standalone web pages exclusively designed for advertising or promoting a business’s particular product or service. To make it clear, this is an area where visitors will immediately “land” after clicking on the attached link via ads, emails, or other digital marketing channels.

However, the most distinctive characteristic of landing pages is that they mostly focus on converting visitors into real customers. Plus, your business can take advantage of landing pages to insightfully understand your target customers and optimize your overall marketing campaigns.

As such, landing pages are perceived as one of the most effective conversion-boosting tools—widely used by digital marketers in today’s online landscape.

Differences between Home Pages and Landing Pages

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In fact, home pages and landing pages serve different purposes when it comes to digital marketing. Here are some aspects comparing the differences between them:

1. Purpose

Home Page: Serves as the entry point to a website and provides a typical overview of the website’s content and offerings.

Landing Page: Designed for a specific marketing campaign, aiming to convert general visitors into leads or long-standing customers.

 

2. Content

Home Page: Consists of general information and may include navigation links to other different pages.

Landing Page: Emphasizes merely a single message related to a particular marketing campaign, with clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons.

3. Design

Home Page: Often has a more sophisticated design with multiple sections, navigation menus, and links to different parts of the website.

Landing Page: Commonly has a simpler design focused on the specific campaign goal with a concise copy, relevant images, and an outstanding CTA.

4. Conversion Goal

Home Page: Intends to share information and guides visitors to explore more areas of the website.

Landing Page: Intends to convert general visitors into leads or real customers by motivating them to take a specific action.

5. Traffic Source

Home Page: Receives traffic from a variety of different sources, including direct visits, search engines, and referral links.

Landing Page: Often gained from online ads, social media posts, or email campaigns from target users.

Types of Landing Pages

There are various kinds of landing pages serving a different and specific purpose in this digital marketing world. Thus, you need to choose the right landing pages if you crave the success of your marketing campaign. Here are some common examples:

  • Lead Generation Landing Page: Designed to capture visitor’s information, such as name, email address, or phone number.
Lead Generation Landing Page
  • Click-Through Landing Page: Designed to persuade visitors to click through to another page, such as a product page or a registration form.
Click-through Landing Page
  • Sales Landing Page: Designed to sell a product or service in a direct manner, augmented with a strong call-to-action (CTA) to make a purchase.
Sales Landing Page
  • Splash Page: Designed to act as an introductory page before entering the main website, used for promotions, announcements, or age verification.
Splash Page
  • Product Detail Landing Page: Designed to provide detailed information about a specific product or service, highlighting its features, benefits, and pricing.
Product Detail Landing Page
  • Event Registration Landing Page: Designed to encourage visitors to sign up for an event, webinar, or conference.
Event Registration Landing Page
  • Thank You Landing Page: Designed to appear after a visitor completes a desired action, including a thank you message and next following steps.
Thank You Landing Page

How Landing Pages Benefit Digital Marketing?

      Meet User Expectations

      Increase Conversions

      Generate Leads

      Promote Specific Products or Services

      Tract Results Easily

      Boost Site Performance

Wrapping Up

As you can see, a landing page is a powerful element driving businesses to increase desirable growth and conversion rates. By implementing landing pages to your digital marketing strategies, you can effectively soar your business to new heights with positive outcomes. Ready to become a professional marketer in this competitive era? Let MarketingGuru pave the way for your business! Contact us right now and see how we can help you boost your marketing strategies to the next level!

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How CRM Drives Online Marketing Efforts?

When running a business, whether it focuses on offline or online marketing, recognizing and understanding your customers’ behaviors are foundational tasks that every business should prioritize. To stay ahead of others in competitive markets, implementing an effective customer-centric approach such as CRM is substantially essential. In this article, we will delve into the clear definitions of CRM and explore how it intertwines with online marketing prospects.

What is CRM?

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, refers to the combination of strategies, technologies, and practices that help businesses analyze and manage their customer interactions—maintaining current customers’ satisfaction and gaining a relentless influx of new ones. Simply put, utilizing CRM approaches can enhance the feasibility of long-term business growth through an expanding base of happy customers. Apart from that, you can also ensure that your marketing will meet your customers’ needs and expectations with more tailored, relevant, and impactful performance.

Correlation Between CRM Strategies and Online Marketing

When it comes to online marketing, CRM jointly plays a critical role in enabling businesses to create more personalized marketing campaigns, foster customer retention, and ultimately win customer satisfaction.

Here are key benefits highlighting the importance of how CRM strategies correlate with online marketing:

· Data-Driven Marketing

CRM strategies provide businesses with a window into customer data, which is beneficial for the creation of targeted online marketing campaigns. In essence, by analyzing and tailoring marketing messages to specific customer segments, your business can potentially achieve higher conversion rates as desired.

· Improved Customer Engagement

CRM strategies emphasize the importance of establishing and maintaining strong customer relationships. By integrating them with online marketing, you can boost the mounting level of conversion rates with customer engagement. This can be done through personalized content, social media interactions, and email campaigns.

· Enhanced Customer Experience

CRM strategies help businesses track a wide range of customer interactions across different areas, especially for online marketing. This supportively makes your business serve the seamlessly best-fit experiences to your customers, resulting in ever-escalating customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.

· Better ROI

CRM strategies significantly bring about a better return on investment (ROI) in online marketing efforts. In this case, your business can enhance the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, as well as increase sales by tailoring the right customers with the right message at the right time.

· Streamlined Marketing Processes

CRM strategies critically play a role in streamlining overall marketing processes by automating tasks, such as lead nurturing, email marketing, and customer segmentation. As such, CRM is considered one of the most time-and-resource-saving approaches. It consequently drives your business to a clear portrayal of effective marketing efforts.

Examples of CRM Integration with Online Marketing Efforts

As we have mentioned earlier, CRM and online marketing always work collaboratively in their powerful roles to drive customer satisfaction and overall business success.

Here are some notable examples of how CRM helps complement the effectiveness of online marketing efforts:

Personalized Email Campaigns

Relying on CRM systems to track customers’ preferences, behaviors, and purchase history can enable your business to create and segment personalized emails. As a consequence, this ultimately drives more satisfying conversions through higher levels of open and click-through rates.

Personalized Email Campaigns

Targeted Advertising

Utilizing CRM data is advantageous for creating targeted advertising campaigns on particular platforms like Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram. This means your business can target specific customer segments, fostering the effectiveness of your ads while also reducing ad spend at the same time.

Targeted Advertising

Dynamic Website Content

Using CRM data allows you to personalize the content on your website to match visitor interests and preferences. For instance, you may show different products or offers to customers based on their past interactions with your site.

Dynamic Website Content

Social Media Engagement

Counting on CRM data helps your business cordially engage with social media comments and messages in a prompt and personalized manner, according to the customer’s purchase history or preferences.

Social Media Engagement

Customer Loyalty Programs

Identifying CRM data can clearly reveal groups of your loyal customers, which is your prominent job to create further personalized loyalty programs. For example, you may provide exclusive discounts, rewards, or special deals to encourage repeat purchases and customer loyalty.

Customer Loyalty Program

Predictive Analytics

Considering CRM data, augmented with predictive analytics, will be beneficial for the forecast of future customer behaviors, trends, and outcomes. This helps your business identify patterns and make informed predictions about the tendency of customer actions. Importantly, all gathered information can be applied to personalize online marketing strategies, leverage customer service, and optimize better sales efforts.

Predictive Analytics

Conclusion

To sum up, Customer Relationship Management is the integration of strategies, technologies, and practices that eventually drive successful online marketing efforts. In other words, the use of CRM provides you with a holistic view of your customers, which enables you to target and personalize your marketing efforts in a more effective manner.

Winning customer satisfaction means winning a healthy outlook on your business achievements. In the same vein, having a digital marketing expert like MarketingGuru means having a vibrant potential for your online marketing success! Contact us today and find out how we can leverage your business to the next level with the endless mainstream of customer satisfaction!

Best Digital Marketing Tools and Resources List (Both Free and Paid)

Marketing tools are essential to all digital marketing operations. Using great tools will help boost your entire marketing process, making your workflow much more effective and smooth. This is why we will be discussing some of the best tools you can use in different aspects of your digital marketing that will work for you.

 

Marketing Tools for Content Ideas

 

Google Trends (Free)

This is one of the best marketing tools that is great for spotting trends and verifying what topics are popular at the moment. Use this tool to help guide you on the kinds of content to write that can gather more engagement and attract new customers.

 

BuzzSumo (Free and Paid)

BuzzSumo is a very powerful tool that can help you find content that receives a high engagement, influencers that posted those high-engagement content, and the different channels they are receiving the most engagement on.

 

Ubersuggest (Free and Paid)

Ubersuggest is another one of the most popular marketing tools. It is similar to the Google Keyword Planner tool. However, this tool helps to come up with hundreds of ideas for any topic you type into the system as well as keyword researches.

 

Social Media Marketing Tools

 

Hootsuite (Paid with a 30-day free trial)

Hootsuite is one of the best platforms for social media management. It helps with managing and scheduling all your content on many different social media accounts and platforms. You can answer your customer DMs through their platform as well as assigning your team members certain responsibilities. This tool is one that Marketing Guru is also currently using! 

 

Buffer (Paid with a 14-day free trial)

Buffer helps with scheduling your social media content. It handles your social media marketing from the planning process, all the way to collaboration, scheduling and publishing. They also have a separate offer for your social media analytics that can create a beautiful custom in-depth report of all your social media.

 

Sprout Social (Paid with a 30-day free trial)

Sprout Social is a premium social media management tool that has everything you need to manage your social media well.

 

SEO Tools

 

SEMrush (Paid)

This tool is great for overall SEO support features. It is also the easiest to start with compared to other SEO tools as ones like Ahrefs has a learning curve that can take time to get used to. SEMrush has a great website rank tracking report to give you complete control over your SEO strategies. It also provides keyword research, link analysis, as well as competitive analysis. This tool starts at $99.95 and ranges to higher prices depending on your company size and your desired features.

 

Ahrefs (Paid)

This tool is the best for people who are much more advanced on SEO. Since Ahrefs is packed with tons of features, beginners can get overwhelmed when they see all that Ahrefs has to offer. Marketing Guru recommends this tool, especially if you are planning to create a lot of backlinks because the link analysis feature of this is quite detailed.

 

Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress (Free and Paid)

This tool is created for WordPress websites and is basically required for any sites created on the WordPress platform. Yoast helps to automate a lot of SEO tasks as well as making meta titles and descriptions very easy to update. The free version also offers a lot of great features and updating it to a paid version is unnecessary.

 

Marketing Tools for Analytics

 

Google Analytics (Free)

Google Analytics is a classic must-have tool for any business with a website. It shows the clickstream, or the user behavior of a website, tracking various metrics such as total website visits, conversion rates and more. While there are other alternatives, Google Analytics is one that Marketing Guru recommends as it was created by Google itself.

 

Crazy Egg (Paid)

Crazy Egg is a great tool for tracking your website metrics, specifically, for the purpose of optimizing your website. It allows you to build heatmaps and track user behaviors based on where they click as well as conduct A/B split tests. From here, you can brainstorm the different ways to drive traffic and reduce any friction in your customer journey. The price for this tool starts at $9 and ranges to $99.

 

Marketing Automation Tools

 

HubSpot (Paid)

HubSpot is undoubtedly one of the best marketing automation software. From creating an email drip campaign to creating a visual of your workflows, HubSpot has it all. However, good software also comes with a high price tag. The price starts at $50 a month, but for the full automation features, it costs $800 and is billed annually. They do offer 90% for startups, however.

 

OptinMonster (Paid)

As the name suggests, OptinMonster is great for lead generation. To elaborate, this tool helps with building automated landing page campaigns starting at $9 per month. It is still lacking in some marketing automation features, however. Therefore, you will have to integrate OptinMonster with your CRM software.

 

ConvertKit (Paid)

ConvertKit is a great marketing automation tool for beginners. This tool will be able to help get you started on familiarizing yourself with some basic marketing automation features. They offer easy-to-use visual editors and done-for-you automation templates which is why you can get started much quicker compared to other tools.

 

Conclusion

Picking a specific digital marketing tool for your business may require some research. We hope we have helped you simplify the process! Whichever tool you decide to go with on this list, you will be able to benefit from them so there is no need to stress out too much when picking a tool as the options out there are endless.

If you are interested in including or developing your marketing strategy, let our experts at Marketing Guru help you! Get your free consultation today.

24 Essential Digital Marketing Terms To Know in 2020

Every industry comes with its own jargons and digital marketing is the same. Knowing at least some of the marketing terms will help you work and collaborate with others much more efficiently.

We’ve separated the marketing terms into categories:

  • Broad Digital Marketing Terms
  • Metric-related Marketing Terms
  • Operational Marketing Terms
  • Sales funnel Terms
  • Website Strategy Terms

Broad Digital Marketing Terms

1. Brand awareness

Brand awareness is the degree to which people will be able to recall and recognize your brand. Therefore, brand awareness largely depends on brand recall and recognition of your consumers.

Brand recall is the extent of how closely connected your brand is to a product. 

Brand recognition is the extent of whether consumers will be able to recognize a brand through its attributes.

Generally speaking, brand awareness involves a situation where your customers will be able to see your brand and know of the solution that you can provide for them.

2. Buyer persona

Buyer persona is one of the most common marketing terms. They are basically a representation of your ideal customers. The information usually included in a buyer persona are demographics, psychographics, lifestyle and, sometimes, their role in a company. The more in-depth of a description you can provide of your buyer persona, the better because your buyer persona will help brands understand the motivations of their customers.

3. Digital marketing

This refers to any form of online communication aimed towards persuading people to buy a product or service.

4. Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a marketing approach that focuses on the customer. Usually, this focuses on the most ideal customer to a business instead of simply showing marketing messages to simply anyone. This can be done through various strategies, from social media marketing to blogging. As a result, you will be able to attract the right customers to your company which also helps with long-term scaling with better ROI.

5. Lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is a process that educates and builds trust between your business and your prospects to help guide them down the sales funnel. This involves providing personalized experiences to your prospects and converting them into customers.

6. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Often confused with SEO, SEM is the process that is aimed towards increasing your website traffic through paid ads on search engines. One example of this is by using Google Ads.

7. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a free digital marketing channel that takes a lot of time and effort that is all about pushing your website to the first page of search engine results where more people will be able to see and enter your website.

Metric-related Marketing Terms

8. Churn rate

Churn rate is one of the many marketing terms used to measure customer retention and contributes to the recurring revenue of the company. It also identifies the number of customers that a company loses within a given time period.

9. Cost per lead

Cost per lead is how much you spend on acquiring leads and it is also quite related to Customer Acquisition Cost which can be easily found in paid advertising channels.

10. Customer acquisition

Customer acquisition is related to the resources and processes involved in attracting new customers. This is related to brand awareness, lead generation and nurturing.

11. Customer acquisition cost

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost related to turning leads into a customer. In order to calculate CAC, you have to divide the money spent on attracting customers with the number of customers acquired in the time period that the money was spent.

12. Customer Lifetime Value

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a predicted amount of net profit that can be acquired from one customer over the course of your business. Therefore, if you can increase your CLV, you will be able to increase the value of each customer. CLV is calculated by subtracting customer revenue with gross margin and dividing that number with your churn rate.

13. Growth marketing

Growth marketing is a marketing process that involves designing and experimenting. The purpose of this is to optimize and improve the results of a target area. As a result, growth marketing can help you achieve growth in your business.

14. Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used as part of tracking the progress of a character towards a marketing goal. By setting your KPIs, you will be able to evaluate your business’ performance and optimize your marketing strategies.

Operational Marketing Terms

15. Content Management System (CMS)

A Content Management System (CMS) is a software tool that helps marketers and content creators organize and manage, as well as track their performance on the website content.

Some popular CMS examples are HootSuite, SproutSocial and Buffer.

16. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a software used as a contact database mainly used in sales. It helps to identify insights and provide analytics to the business. However, its main feature is the ability to store contact information to help salespeople track their interactions with stakeholders.

Some popular softwares are HubSpot, Salesforce and Zoho.

17. Marketing automation

Marketing automation is a software designed to automate marketing tasks. It is all about nurturing leads along their customer journey by leveraging content to address your customer’s needs depending on which stage they are in. In short, you are catering content to your prospects based on their behavior which is more powerful than simply sending out emails to everyone. As a result, marketing automation will elevate the efficiency of your marketing efforts.

Sales Funnel Terms

18. Top of the funnel (ToFu)

The funnel shows how you turn prospects into customers.

The top of the funnel (ToFu) refers to the first stage of the buyer’s process. At this stage, the buyer is aware of a problem and, as a result, they are actively looking for a solution. They will likely consume informational or educational content such as reading a blog or watching a video. You want to have your visitors take the desired step to move down the funnel.

19. Middle of the funnel (MoFu)

The middle of the funnel is the middle stage of a prospect’s buying process. They will have identified their problem, are still actively looking for a solution and consuming content that can present your business as the solution. This is also where responsibilities move from marketing to sales.

20. Bottom of the funnel (BoFu)

The bottom of the funnel is the last stage of a buyer’s process. It is also when the buyer has identified a problem, done their research and is ready to buy. Here, buyers will usually request a free demo or a free consultation and are beginning to talk with a salesperson.

Website Strategy Terms

21. A/B split testing

A/B split test is an experiment comparing 2 variables. Specifically, it does this by presenting it to a randomly split audience and comparing the results over time.

22. Conversion rate optimization

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a method used to increase the number of conversions on a webpage without having to bring in more web traffic. In any case, CRO is a method you should go with if you’d like to make the most of your marketing efforts.

23. Landing page

A landing page is a web page used for lead generation. In addition to this, the more optimized a landing page is, the more likely that your website visitors will turn into leads.

24. Thank you page

Once customers submit information on a landing page, they are usually redirected to a thank you page. Its purpose is to thank them for the submission as well as providing more steps that they can take with your business. These help to immediately nurture your leads and provide better customer experience.

Conclusion

Digital marketing is filled with jargons, therefore, learning these terminologies will help you understand more about this topic and optimize your marketing efforts. Ultimately, we hope you have gained some great knowledge from this article!

If you are interested in including or developing your marketing strategy, let our experts at Marketing Guru help you! Get your free consultation today.

Why You Are Losing Money By Not Doing Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion rate optimization or CRO is the best way to provide you with a more effective sales funnel to increase your sales. To elaborate, it is optimizing your website and turn more of your existing website traffic into paying customers.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

The conversion rate optimization process involves using various tools and techniques to figure out how to tweak the elements on your website. Ultimately, the aim is to grow the highest possible conversion rate for your business.

For example, if you have a 10% conversion rate on your website, this would mean that 10% of your website traffic actually performs the main goal that you wanted them to do such as purchasing a product or signing up for your email list.

Conversion rate optimization is really focused on 2 factors:

  • Enhancing your product/service offer
  • Reduce friction in your sales

Your conversion rate can be calculated with this equation:

Total transactions / Total site visits x 100

So, let’s assume that your website received 10,000 website visits in the past month and 1000 people bought a product. Your conversion rate would be 10% (1000/10,000*100).

Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization

The absolute best part about conversion rate optimization is that you can increase your conversion rate even though your website traffic remains the same. This is important because bringing in website traffic costs quite a bit.

In short, you can get more customers with the same amount of investment.

Your customer acquisition cost will decrease and you will gain more profit that you can then spend on growing other aspects of your business. Therefore, investing a few weeks or months into conversion rate optimization can bring your business up to the next level.

Different Components of Conversion Rate Optimization

  • Call-To-Action (CTA): A sentence or phrase that tells visitors exactly what to do.
  • Conversion funnel: Your buyer’s journey
  • A/B testing: A practice of testing different aspects of a site where two or more versions of your site are shown to your website visitors. The conversion rates of these can be measured and its effectiveness can be compared.
  • User experience: Best practices to making your website more user-friendly and removing friction to increase conversions.
  • Customer development: Using tools that can help you better understand your customers
  • Analytics: Any tools that measure your website’s visitors to help you track your conversion rates.
  • Heatmap analysis: A report that shows the areas your visitors click on most by showing “cold” or “hot” colors which can help you come up with ideas on how to improve conversions.
  • User recordings: Records where users visit when they are on your website. This gives feedback on where your traffic is stuck on and where they actually want to go.

How To Build a Conversion Rate Optimization Strategy

1. Identify potential customers

Know who your target market is. Once again, you will need to create a buyer persona to know who your ideal customers are. You will be able to then craft a marketing message towards your ideal customers.

2. Survey users

By asking users to answer surveys, you will be able to learn about insights on your target customers’ wants and needs. Above all, keep in mind that your questions should be brief and easy to answer.

3. Data collection and analysis

Important metrics should be collected and measured to help you achieve your KPI goals. Some great tools for this are Google Analytics and Crazy Egg, for example.

4. A/B split tests

Test every aspect of your offers. This can be done through paid advertisements where you can link one version of your website on one ad and another version to a different ad. By doing A/B split tests, you can ensure that you are not leaving any money on the table. 

5. Map out your buyer’s journey

Mapping out your customer journey will help you learn of the different touchpoints in your business. Some of which can give you ideas on where and how to improve your conversion rates.

6. Focus on important web pages with heatmap analysis

Some webpages you should really focus on is your landing page and product pages. Running a heatmap analysis on those pages will help you earn where visitors click and how they use the page which will help you maximize conversions.

7. Create the most optimized page with A/B testing

Every little detail of your website can be tested. From your website headline to your CTA’s button color. 

8. Guide customers by being strategic

You can direct where your customers will go on the website with CTAs and other indicators. However, the placements of these should be strategic.

9. Reduce friction in the buyer’s journey

Reducing friction involves removing all elements that may lead to buyer’s objections or cause users to pause. For example, a paragraph of copy may be unnecessary for your sales page, or if it is necessary, the information can be easier to read with bullet points.

Tools for Conversion Rate Optimization

Here are some great tools to help with your conversion rate optimization:

  • HubSpot: gain insights to user behaviors and supports overall marketing efforts
  • Unbounce: Build landing pages without coding knowledge and test them
  • CrazyEgg: heatmap analysis and other tools or tracking user behavior. The tool also supports A/B testing and segmenting your audiences.
  • (Free) Google Analytics: A classic. Learn user behavior, demographic, traffic sources and more.
  • (Free) Google PageSpeed: Tests your website speed and gives suggestions on how to improve.

Conclusion

With conversion rate optimization, your business can move up to the next level. Not only will you be able to increase conversion rates, but you will also learn more about your customers. The data you will have acquired over the course of your conversion rate optimization period can be applied to future marketing efforts as well.

If you are looking to take your business to the next level, let Marketing Guru help you! We have professional experts who can handle all your digital marketing needs. Contact us today to receive a free consultation on your digital marketing strategy!

Best Practices to Finding an Influencer for Your Brand

Finding an influencer to collaborate with your brand can be hard at times. There are a few things to keep in mind. Collaborating with the wrong influencers can make or break your brand. It can also waste your already-high marketing budget which is why we are here to help guide you. Keep on reading to find out the exact steps to finding the right influencers for your brand!

So, let’s start with the basics.

What are Influencers?

It is a mixture of both old and new marketing tools. It is similar to a celebrity endorsement but has a modern-day twist. This twist is the content-driven aspect of influencer marketing. Influencer marketing, however, does not just involve celebrities. There are many people today with a good amount of following who may not consider themselves ‘famous’ offline but are still influencers nonetheless. 

So, what are influencers and what qualities define them?

  • the power to influence people’s purchasing decisions due to their authority, knowledge, or relationship between them and their audience
  • someone with a certain amount of following in a niche market and actively engages in it

Traditional media usually misunderstand the difference between celebrities and online influencers.

Influencers have built a following of loyal and enthusiastic audiences. They have done so usually through creating quality content online. This audience does not care much about your brand, rather they care about the opinions of the influencers they follow.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing involves the collaboration between a brand and online influencers. This allows a brand to market one of its products or services. It can be executed in a variety of ways, unlike celebrity endorsements.

Influencers are unlike celebrities in that they can be anyone and they can be located anywhere as long as they have a substantial amount of following on the website or on social media. They can be a talented nature photographer on Instagram or an experienced baker who blogs. An influencer can grow a following in any industry and on any online platform.

6 Best Practices to Finding an Influencer

Below is a step-by-step guide on how you can start finding an influencer to promote your brand. Following this best practice will help you execute on your influencer campaign effectively. 

  1. Know your marketing goals
  2. Know your desired influencer campaign
  3. Find influencers in your industry
  4. Find influencers who have promoted your competitors
  5. Understand the influencers’ authority
  6. Track your influencer campaign results

1. Know your marketing goals

Finding an influencer requires you to know your marketing objectives. This will help you find the right influencers that can help you achieve your goals effectively.

Start by outlining what you want to have happen as a result of your influencer marketing efforts. These objectives can be any of the following:

  • Building brand awareness
  • Building brand identity
  • Growing your brand’s audience
  • Increasing engagement with your brand
  • Generating leads
  • Increasing sales
  • Building customer loyalty

2. Know your desired influencer campaign

Map out how you want your influencer marketing to go down. During this process, consider what type of campaign will help you connect with the type of influencers you want to work with and the audiences that you want to reach.

Here are a few common types of campaigns you can try for your brand:

  • Sponsored Content: You can pay influencers to share your content or promote your product. They can also create content related to your brand.
  • Hosting contests and giveaways: Contests can be leveraged for influencers to mention your brand or share your content.
  • Brand ambassadors: This involves partnering with an influencer and having them regularly promote your brand while you provide them with discounts and perks.
  • Gifting: You can gift influencers with your product in exchange for them mentioning or posting about your brand.

3. Find influencers in your industry

 Ideally, kicking off your influencer marketing campaign with a more well-known figure will help guarantee that your brand will achieve its goals. However, some factors to consider when selecting influencers for your brand will involve determining your budget. Influencers with a large following and high engagements know what they are worth and, therefore, should be compensated as such.

4. Find influencers who have promoted your competitors

Finding an influencer who has previously worked with your competitor can significantly help increase your chances of succeeding. These influencers are much more likely to work with your brand as they have already shared similar content in the same niche.

Tips: Search for influencers by browsing hashtags that are related to your industry on social media. The influencers with highly engaging content within those hashtags are a great group for brands to reach out to.

5. Understand the influencers’ authority

Conducting an influencer analysis is very important to finding an influencer that suits your marketing goals. The influencer should have an authority that is relevant to your industry and their following should be large enough for your goals.

Consider the following factors when conducting your influencer analysis:

  • Number of followers
  • Engagement rate
  • Website rankings
  • Content quality
  • Niche coverage

6. Track your influencer campaign results

Be sure to track your KPIs when launching your campaign to help you determine the effectiveness of your influencer marketing. Review the results once it is completed. Whether your campaign was a success or if it needs work, you can analyze your metrics and learn from them. Apply what you learned and adjust future campaigns accordingly.

Conclusion

Finding the best influencers for your brand will take time and effort to find and analyze. Reaching out to them and negotiating a solution that will be mutually beneficial for you should be a top priority as well. In the end, it is all about executing on what you have already planned out.

If you are looking to find a partner who can run your entire influencer marketing campaign, let Marketing Guru help you! We have professional experts who can handle all your digital marketing needs. Contact us today to receive a free consultation on your digital marketing strategy!

How Are Native Advertisements Good For Your Brand?

Native advertisements are part of digital marketing. The increased sophistication in how audiences interact with content has led to the birth of native advertisements. It provides brands a new way to get their messages out to their target audiences.

Today, we will be showing you the different ways you can get started with native advertisements, why it is important and how you can use it to reach your business or marketing goals.

What are Native Advertisements?

Native advertisements are a form of paid marketing channel that is created specifically for the sake of fitting the form and function of the user experience on the site they are placed in. In short, they are advertisements that fit in with the platform it is advertised in.

Native advertisements can be found in many different websites, from a well-known publisher site to various social channels. Because they fit seamlessly into the user experience, they appear much more subtle to the user compared to the usual online advertisement that forces itself onto the audience. This helps to not break the trust of an audience.

This form of advertisement is also growing in popularity. According to eMarketer, native advertisements made up almost 60% of display spending in 2018.

Why Use Native Advertisements?

Consumers today are used to consuming content on a daily basis. It makes up the majority of people’s online experience.

The first thing most people do in the morning is to check their mobile phones and catch up on the world through social media or online news. From television shows to social media posts, content can be found everywhere. 

eMarketer has reported that an average US adult spends over 12 hours a day on media consumption in 2019.

Today’s consumers have essentially trained themselves to ignore the overwhelming amount of advertisements they see every day. In addition to this, there are also ad-blocking software that completely removes advertisements from any site its users browse into.

These reasons are exactly why native advertisements are an amazing choice to market with. Native ads are designed to look just like any other content on a page. This results in native advertisements receiving up to 18% higher purchase intent from consumers.

3 Types of Native Advertisements

1. In-Feed Units

An example of in-feed units are the sponsored posts in your social media feeds or a publisher’s website. They look like regular posts on a platform. However, different platforms will show different styles of in-feed ads depending on their user interface. It will usually appear alongside the word “Promoted” or “Sponsored Content”.

For example, LinkedIn has its own in-feed ad unit called “LinkedIn Sponsored Content”. Their ads look and feel just like any other LinkedIn posts.

2. Paid Search Units

Native ads can also be seen on search engines. An example of this is Google’s search results. If you have ever advertised on the search results page with Google, those are technically native advertisements. This is due to the fact that they look exactly like organic search results.

3. Promoted Listings

For any online shoppers out there, these promoted listings are what you see very regularly. They are also extremely effective for selling products. The reason for this is because promoted listings usually appear when consumers are actively searching for a related product to buy. This places the customers much further down the sales funnel.

4. Display Ad With Native Elements

These types of native ads look like a regular ad you can see online. These are usually in the form of a website banner. The reason these can be considered as native advertising is due to the fact that the ads are contextually relevant to the website they are on.

5. Recommendation Widgets

These are where you can find native advertisements on publisher sites or social media appear as a “recommended” content. These can often be seen positioned on the side of a webpage, at the end of an article, or as part of a list of articles.

By appearing as a recommended content, viewers are much more likely to see your advertisement rather than ignoring them because they are actively searching for a content to consume.

Viewers are less likely to ignore your advertisement because native ads will appear as a recommended content. Additionally, they are also actively searching for a content to consume.

6. Custom Native Advertisements

These are still a newer form of native advertising. The rapid growth in technology and publishers have allowed the boundaries of native advertising to be pushed further.

For example, Instagram and Snapchat allow brands to place native advertisements in the form of a camera filter. This form of media fits well within its platforms. It also allows the audience to interact with brands in a more engaging manner compared to other forms of advertising.

The Future of Native Advertisements

There is no doubt that social media have transformed digital marketing completely. Social media makes up about three-quarters of the US native display ad spend. This number will also likely keep growing as more brands turn towards digital marketing.

Native mobile advertisements will likely become more of a key investment area for most businesses. This is considering mobile devices account for over half of all website traffic.

Another growing opportunity is videos. According to IAB Video Ad Spend Study in 2018, half of advertisers will be increasing their ad spend. They claimed that they will be specifically spending more on video ads.

As a result, the future of native advertisements will see a lot of growth on social media platforms, mobile devices, and video ads. 

But if you are considering having an expert help you out, let MarketingGuru help you! Contact us for a free digital marketing strategy consultation today!

Grow Your Business with Content Marketing Strategy

According to Marketing Charts, 64% of marketers want to know how to build a scalable content marketing strategy.

You may be wondering the same thing right now.

“Content is King”. This is one of the most well-known internet phrases. As cliche as it sounds, it is undeniably true.

There are a few ways to use content marketing strategy in your business. One is to create ‘clustered content’ that will help you dominate a topic. Another is to have an editorial balance between a search-focused and thought leadership content. The third is to align your content with the problems that your business solves.

In creating your content marketing strategy, here are a few questions you should answer first.

  • Who will read your content?
  • What problems will you solve for your readers?
  • What makes you unique?
  • Which content channels are the best for your business?
  • How will your content be created?

Here is how to create your very own content marketing strategy.

1. Set your goals

Before anything else, you must learn the aim of your business for why you want to develop a content marketing strategy. You can use the SMART goal model to help with this step. The SMART goal must be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound

  • Specific – Define exactly what you are trying to improve with your content marketing strategy. This should a few sentences long and easy to share with others.
  • Measurable – Making your goal trackable is key to tracking your progress. This should be numeric. For example, if you want to increase your social media following, without giving a number to this goal, it is unlikely for you to know how far you’ve come.
  • Attainable – Know where your business is in relation to your measurable goal. Your goal must be 
  • Relevant – You have to know why exactly you are pursing your content marketing strategy. How will it contribute to your company? Ultimately, it should be tied to creating a business impact.
  • Time-Bound – Set your timeline to have a meeting about your goal. Determine what changes you can adjust to help you get back on track.

2. Create buyer personas

Creating a buyer persona will help with identifying who your target audiences are. It is especially important for people to start out with having an idea of what your readers want to read and what you can realistically provide.

3. Run content audits

Although most people start their content marketing strategy by writing blog posts, there are a whole variety of content types you can create. For example, if you have been running a blog for a while, consider writing an ebook that put together all your previous blogs and forming them into a guide. This is one of the many ways you can repurpose your content into several different formats. 

Running a content audit will help you review your previous content marketing efforts. This will make it easier for you to come up with newer types of content you can try out to develop a variety in your content marketing strategy.

4. Choose a content management system

There are various Content Management Systems (CMS) you can try out. Some of the most popular CMS are HubSpot and WordPress. These are systems that will allow you to plan and publish your content, handle email marketing, track analytics, and more.

5. Brainstorm content ideas

After setting up everything, it is time for you to come up with content ideas. There are a few tools that can help you with this. A great place to start is by browsing for topics on BuzzSumo. This platform will help you discover popular content and ideas that you can build off of when planning your own content.

6. What types of content will you create

There are a variety of content types you can explore and experiment with. Consider what you or your team are capable of creating and the time limit you have.

Here are all the content types you can try creating:

  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Social media
  • Blog posts
  • Ebooks
  • Case studies
  • Templates

After having worked on the same few formats for a while, try adding a new type of content into the mix. 

7. Publishing and managing content

Apart from just deciding on what types of content you will create, you will also have to manage and schedule your content appropriately. 

This is where a content calendar comes in. Putting all the content you plan on publishing in one calendar will allow you to see what needs to get done first and manage your time working on those content accordingly.

Great content are usually evergreen. Evergreen content are content that will stay relevant after months from when it is written. While evergreen content is important, seasonal content, or content that is based on news or events, is just as important to have. 

Those timely content will help create a spike in your traffic. They bring in more visitors compared to the consistent but lower traffic evergreen content. 

Therefore, make sure you incorporate different kinds and different types of content into your content marketing strategy.

For seasonal content, it is good to make a list of important holidays in your content calendar to help remind you of when to create and publish them.

Conclusion

Implementing a content marketing strategy will undoubtedly help you grow your business. With this, you are providing value to your audience and providing solutions to them consistently. Whether your business is a B2B or a B2C, there is always something you can create content from. It is just a matter of execution!

If you are interested in learning more about how to use digital marketing in your business, take a look at our digital marketing guides here. But if you are considering having an expert help you out, let MarketingGuru help you! Contact us for a free digital marketing strategy consultation today!