Digital Marketing Facts, Statistics, Trends, & What’s New for 2022
Part Two:
How to Take Advantage of New Trends in Digital Marketing
After reading Part One of this post, you’re probably full of helpful knowledge about digital marketing statistics (like the number one marketing goal of most business, the top content deliverer, and the social media channel that produces the most ROI), and eager to use your new insight regarding the top digital marketing trends of 2022. Welcome to Part Two, and recommendations on how to turn those trends into business success!
Make New Trends in Digital Marketing Work for You
TREND: Content rules (still).
RECOMMENDATION: Use persuasive storytelling. To attract visitors (and search engines), content needs to be valuable, relevant, and engaging. But how do you do that? Focus on solving the customer’s problem. “Of course,” you say, but take a quick tour of a few websites and blogs. How many of them start out by talking about the company, or its knowledge, reputation, or expertise? Copywriting, the art of persuasive writing, is not just for Times Square billboards and Superbowl ads, but helps elevate all marketing content.
TREND: Email’s impact will grow.
RECOMMENDATION: Nurture your audience and utilize automation. A series of emails designed to intrigue and/or educate can build your brand, create excitement around events or product launches, and most importantly, create a relationship between your company and the email recipient.
You can use automation to personalize those emails, to create abandoned cart emails, (which had a conversion rate of 33.89% in 2020), and welcome emails (a 51.9% conversion rate).
TREND: Users demand personalized service, ASAP.
RECOMMENDATION: Use up-to-date technology to create personalized immediate solutions. In addition to automating emails (see above), you can use conversational marketing like chatbots to offer 24/7 assistance (more about this solution in Part One), and boost local search with geofencing. Super-specific, location-based marketing, geofencing alerts potential customers to brick-and-mortar shops and services in their location while they’re there. Imagine you’re on a road trip and you get a text or push notification about gas in five miles, a great deal on a nearby hotel room, or the best fried chicken in the state.
TREND: Virtual and hybrid events will become standard.
RECOMMENDATION: Use video to enhance discoverability, engagement, and sales. You’re going to need to film the gathering anyway; why not up your video game by going live and/or offering interaction like virtual Q&A sessions? If you’re especially tech-savvy, try incorporating gamification or virtual or augmented reality.
TREND:First party data collection is on the rise.
RECOMMENDATION: Get onboard now, and step up your game with these strategies:
- Use email to collect customer data, but don’t forget to give sometng in return.
- Consider a loyalty program. You’re more likely to get something if you give something (see above tip).
- Go multichannel. You’ll give customers multiple platforms to purchase from, and your business multiple ways to collect data.
- Update your online presence. A brand or website refresh or overhaul is a great excuse to re-engage with former customers, reach out to new ones, and collect information from both.
By All Means, Embrace the New, But…
Make sure your digital marketing foundation is solid before adding bells and whistles. Is your website user-friendly and search engine optimized? Does your content tell a persuasive story? Are you using reports and analytics to develop your marketing strategy? Targeting your ideal customer with paid media?
It’s lot to think about, and even more to implement. But you don’t have to do it on your own. At Globe Runner, we eat sleep and breath digital marketing. We’d love to partner with you to ensure your marketing strategy and building blocks are strong, and to help you take advantage of new digital marketing trends that can put your business on top. Contact us today!
Digital Marketing Facts FAQs
Is influencer marketing dead?
Not even close. In fact, influencer marketing is growing; from $1.7 billion in 2016 to an expected $15 million in 2022. Even B2B brands like PriceWaterhouseCoopers are getting on board.
How many businesses use digital marketing?
The majority of US companies market their products or services online, but the percentage of such varies depending on business size. As of 2021, 71% of small businesses have a website,and 91.9%of American companies with more than 100 employees planned to use social media for marketing.
How big is digital marketing?
Big—especially if you consider the last two years. Globally, digital marketing grew from $155.53 billion in 2020 to $179.77 billion in 2021, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6%.
What’s the future of digital marketing?
Though the recent growth explosion was likely pandemic-related (as companies pivoted toward more online business), the digital marketing market is expected to continue to grow to an estimated $281.32 billion in 2025, a CAGR of 11.8%.
Questions to Ask a Client When Designing a Marketing Plan
Whether your business is large or small, and whether you’re meeting your current business objectives, exceeding them, or falling behind, every business needs a comprehensive marketing plan to succeed and expand. While some businesses create that plan in-house, many turn to experts like Globe Runner. A professional marketing agency eats, sleeps, and breathes marketing so that you can focus on what you do best—providing second-to-none products and services to your customers. And what should you expect from your marketing consultants? First, you should expect them to have a list of marketing questions to ask their clients. From brand strategy questions to specific business objectives and goals, here are some questions you can expect to be asked by a marketing firm—or, if you’re creating a marketing plan in-house, questions to ask the business owner (or yourself).
Marketing Questions to Ask Customers
- What business objectives does the marketing strategy need to support? Marketing for the sake of marketing doesn’t have a great ROI. A marketing plan to boost sales overall looks different than one to boost sales of a specific product. Having a concrete understanding of what your business objectives are will start you off on the right track. You can’t know what your target audience is if you don’t know what it is you’re trying to accomplish! Which leads to…
- Who is my target audience? Key to every aspect of a marketing plan, one of the very first things you need to know is who you’re trying to reach. Being as specific as possible is integral to this question. Basic demographics are important, but think beyond that. Are you looking to reach previous customers? New customers? Is the purchaser of your product or service the same person who will be using those services/products or different (e.g., women drive over 80% of consumer spending in the United States—making the purchasing decisions for their entire families)?
- What are the best ways to reach my target audience(s)? Once you’ve narrowed down that audience, you have to figure out how to reach them. A professional marketing firm has access to marketing data across the spectrum and can assist with ensuring that you’re taking your message to the right channels for your specific demographic.
- Does my marketing campaign strategy appeal to my target audience? It doesn’t help to get a message out to the right audience if it doesn’t resonate with them. Marketing firms also have a ton of data on what kinds of messages and marketing strategies are effective for different markets.
- What metrics determine success or failure? This relates directly to your business goals and objectives. If your marketing plan doesn’t include metrics, you can’t determine if it was successful. Make sure your marketing plan goals are SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.
- Who are my primary competitors? It’s important to be able to differentiate yourself from your competitors. If your campaign is too similar to others, it may have little effect (or adverse effects). It’s also important to know how crowded the field is—how and where are they marketing? Can they out-market you budget-wise? Can you break through their noise or should you focus on a different demographic or niche?
FAQs
What factors must be considered before writing a marketing plan?
The first factor to consider is the “Why?” What is it that you’re trying to accomplish? Are you expanding into a different market? Boosting sales? Of what and how much? Many people start with tactics and work their way backward. Tactics come last. Your goal should not be to “run Facebook ads for two weeks.” That’s a tactic. Once you’ve set your goals, then you can start looking at what target audiences you need to reach out to in order to meet those goals. After that, you can move on to tactics. And don’t forget the budget! You should know from the beginning what kind of budget you have to implement your marketing strategy—and be prepared to possibly have to shift either your budget or goals if they don’t match up. Check out how Globe Runner helped these businesses reach their goals!
How do you structure a marketing plan?
Your marketing plan should mirror the questions above. It should include your specific goals, a breakdown of your target audience, and the tactics to reach that specific audience along with a budget and timeline for each piece of the puzzle. There are dozens of great marketing templates available on the internet. We at Globe Runner like this template.
Why Your Business Needs Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?
Whether your company is large or small, brick and mortar or eCommerce, or sells B2B or B2C, Conversion Rate Optimization can make a defining difference in your brand loyalty and sales numbers. With so much focus on driving traffic to your website, often the question of “What is that traffic doing once they get there?” is ignored. Enter Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). CRO is an integral part of your SEO strategy, helping to ensure the maximum amount of people going to your website take the actions you want them to—whether that’s joining your email list, making purchases, scheduling consultations, or any actions that boost sales or lift up your brand.
With a general understanding of what CRO is in business, let’s go over some conversion rate optimization tips.
Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies
Conversion rate is a balancing act between attracting traffic and motivating them to take action. Sometimes higher rates actually indicate a failing strategy. After all, a 100 percent conversion rate sounds amazing… but if it’s out of the two people who came to your site, it’s an indication that your problem starts with driving traffic to your site. On the other hand, if your conversion rate is extremely low, that could be a sign you’re not attracting the right people or not motivating them to take action once they’re there. And conversion rates tend to differ based on industry. Effective CRO strategies start with engaging and well-written calls-to-actions (CTAs) that stand out from the rest of your page (and are easy to find location). Now you’re getting people to click! But if the action doesn’t load quickly and isn’t easy to take, you’ll lose customers right there.
Should you hire an expert? A professional CRO expert has deep understanding of conversion rate optimization best practices. They also understand that effective CRO takes time and attention to detail. Hiring experts who excel at consistent monitoring of analytics and competitors, keyword research, A/B testing, and all the other minute CRO details can boost your sales and your reputation. Therefore, hiring an expert might be exactly what you need.
Still have questions? Check out some frequently asked questions and get in touch! We’d love to discuss your CRO strategy with you, and give you the advice needed to help your business take off!
FAQs
Is CRO important for eCommerce websites?
eCommerce websites rely on online purchases. That makes CRO absolutely imperative to your company. While sales conversions are essential, so is getting your current customers to leave reviews and respond to deals. And don’t forget potential customers. Maybe they didn’t purchase something on their first visit, but if they sign up for a coupon or join your email list, there’s a higher chance they’ll be back—and reviews and comments satisfied customers left on your site and products will increase that likelihood even more.
Is CRO part of SEO?
Technically, SEO is primarily concerned with driving traffic to your site and CRO is more concerned with what users do once they get there. However, it doesn’t make sense not to include CRO in your SEO strategy. Why spend money to perfect driving potential customers to your site if you’re not going to follow through by ensuring they do something once they find you? At Globe Runner, we believe CRO, along with content optimization, is key to your overall SEO strategy.
How do you implement conversion rate optimization?
CRO starts with a complete audit of your site. What are your CTAs? Where are they? What’s the current conversion rate for different CTAs on your site? Once thoroughly audited and analyzed, you pinpoint where you could improve and what may be stopping potential conversions. Is it page speed? Are CTAs hard to read or understand? Is your site drawing in the right amount and type of traffic. Professional CRO firms will optimize your page to ensure CTAs all function properly and are easy to do and find, as well as experiment, with A/B testing of language and styles to see what’s drawing customers in and driving them away. As with all of these types of services, CRO is never “set-it-and-forget-it” and requires ongoing maintenance, testing, and analyzing to keep you on top of your conversion game!
How do you calculate conversion rate?
Your conversion rate is really just a simple math equation: The number of users who take the offered call to action on a specific page divided by the total number of people who landed on that page. If 100 people land on a page and 5 of them take the action, that’s a conversion rate of five percent.
SEO vs SEM vs PPC: What’s Best for Your Business?
Why Digital Marketing?
Have you Googled yourself lately? How do you rank when you search for those ever-important keywords that define your business? It doesn’t matter how amazing your company, services, or products are, your business will never be a success if no one knows about it—and the vast majority of people start their search online using a search engine such as Google. While different analyses turn up slightly different results on the importance of digital marketing, one thing is clear, if your company isn’t on page one of search engine ranking pages (SERPs), there’s less than a one percent chance that someone will click on your website. And over 30 percent of clicks will go to whichever site is number one on that first page. With that in mind, your digital marketing plan is critical to your success. There is no one-size-fits-all digital marketing strategy—and your strategy team should be able to help you determine what’s best for your business and goals. Let’s break down a few of the more common terms you’ll hear when it comes to digital marketing and how they may be helpful to you. Based on your specific goals and budget, you may want to incorporate all of them into your overall strategy or pick and choose.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is incredibly complex and ever-changing. Just as you think you’ve got it all figured out, algorithms change, and so does your strategy. Many businesses still think that populating their websites with some important keywords will do the trick—and that absolutely may have been the case in 1998, at the advent of Google search. But ensuring top search rankings is now a multi-faceted, ongoing, and key part of your overall marketing strategy incorporating (among other things):
- Technical SEO—all the technical aspects of your site that make it more visible in searches, including site architecture and speed, sitemaps, and link structure
- Off-Page—elements off your site that build its popularity and ranking, including link building, reviews, and guest posting
- Content Optimization—everything on your page that keeps it at the top of SERPs, including content, keywords, and usability
Using a professional digital marketing agency like Globe Runner ensures that you’re constantly getting the best results without falling into common errors and traps, such as not having a sitemap, lack of internal links, or focusing on the wrong traffic or keywords.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
PPC is exactly what it sounds like and is an important part of directing traffic to your site. In the simplest of terms, PPC is the placement of digital advertisements for which you pay each time the ad is clicked on. There are multiple ways that PPC advertising works including:
- Flat-rate—paying a flat fee for each click
- Bid-based—placing a bid for an advertising space (highest amount they’re willing to pay) and each time a user triggers the ad slot, an automated auction occurs and the winner gets the ad slot.
While there are many strategies for this type of bid-based PPC, two of the most common are:
- Cost Per Click (CPC)—sets a cost per click that you are not willing to go over
- Return On Ad (ROA)—sets a target return on conversion (set as a percentage, e.g., if you are trying to make 2 dollars for every dollar you spend on advertising, your target ROA is 200%)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM and PPC are both paid methods of increasing your SERP placement. The main difference is that SEM focuses specifically on marketing through search engines. PPC can fall under SEM, for instance, if you purchase a PPC ad on Google search, that’s also SEM.
With all aspects of digital marketing, the best results come from bringing in the experts. Globe Runner is a Google Partner, meaning that multiple digital marketing experts are certified in Google AdWords and they continuously meet Google’s performance standards. That technical expertise is a necessity, but while understanding all the technical ins and outs of digital marketing and SERPs is absolutely critical to your digital marketing success, the creative aspects of digital marketing are just as important. That’s why Globe Runner’s team includes experienced copywriters and visual designers to ensure that the creative aspects of your marketing are as extraordinary as your business is.
FAQs
What is the difference between PPC and SEO?
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are both strategies used to drive traffic to your website and boost your online presence and sales. SEO relies on expert optimization of your website (as well as off-page strategies) to drive organic traffic by ensuring your website ranks high up in search engine results. PPC drives traffic to your website through digital ads that you pay a publisher a fee to each time your ad is clicked on. While, technically, SEO is the “free” option, optimizing your website to drive organic traffic to it takes incredible knowledge and expertise, as well as taking time—over months—for the optimization to start showing results.
What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
While Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are often used interchangeably (and SEO is still sometimes considered a part of SEM), they are two different sides of the search engine results coin. At the most basic level, SEO uses organic methods to increase your search engine results ranking and SEM uses paid methods.
Is SEO part of performance marketing?
Performance marketing is an umbrella term that includes any strategy in which advertisers or marketing companies are paid based on performance—such as a click, sale, impression, etc. While, technically, SEO does not fall under that umbrella since it is organic, it is an integral part of your overall digital marketing strategy, and many experts consider it to be a part of a performance marketing strategy.
How do you rank on Google?
The answer to that question is not only complex, but it changes frequently. Search engines base their results on algorithms that are stringently tested and updated on a regular basis. In Google, search engine results incorporate many different factors including relevance, keywords, page quality, E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness), page usability, and context.
Digital Marketing Facts: Statistics, Trends, & What’s New for 2022
Part One
If you’re like us, you have a love-hate relationship with statistics. We love useful information about new digital marketing trends, and statistics tell us what’s happening in the field. They can also make our eyes cross: Those multiple pages of ultra-long lists of numbers often end up blurring together, making it tough to pull out the information that’s useful for our business.
But because we still have that love of useful statistics—and want to share it— we’ve done the hard work of slogging through hundreds of numbers to highlight the digital marketing statistics we think are particularly relevant to businesses in 2022. In Part One of this post, we’ll share those facts along with new trends in digital marketing. In Part Two, we’ll use that knowledge to make recommendations you can use now.
Ready to begin a new love-love relationship with digital marketing statistics and create an actionable to-do list? Read on!
Digital Marketing in 2021: The Statistics
Brand awareness is more important than sales. According to HubSpot’s Annual State of Marketing Report, brand awareness is the number one goal of most marketing campaigns (increasing sales is number two). It makes sense. Customers aren’t always ready to buy, so a smart business helps people remember its name for when they are ready.
Content is still king…
- 87% of businesses believe that content marketing helps them meet brand awareness goals.
- The most successful marketers set aside 40% of their total marketing budget for content marketing.
- 70% of internet users prefer learning about products and services through content instead of traditional advertising.
…Even more so when it’s presented via video.
- Video is the #1 content type two years in a row.
- 94% of video marketers believe video helps increase understanding of their product or service.
- Almost 90% of video marketers say video is a good return on investment (ROI).
- 93% of brands gained a new customer after posting a video on social media channels.
Blogs are big, too. More than half of marketing teams used blogs in 2021 and for good reason: Besides helping visitors learn about products and services through content, businesses with blogs reap 67% more leads every month than those without.
Data determines direction. 91% of businesses make decisions based on customer feedback, 88% use market research to garner that feedback, and 67% of marketers plan to increase their market research budget in the next year.
Automation doesn’t just save time. Even though it seems like an oxymoron, automation can help personalize sales. That may be the reason it’s the fourth most prioritized investment area for businesses—or may be because it pays for itself: 76% of businesses that embrace automation see a positive ROI within a year.
Email is effective and engaging. A recent survey found that 50% of B2B marketing professionals believe email is most effective for producing a high ROI. In another report, 77% of marketers said they saw increased engagement with email in 2021. And 91% of respondent in yet another survey said that email marketing is vital to the overall success of their business.
Social media was the top marketing channel in 2021. Instagram was most popular, but Facebook produced the best ROI.
…But SEO may be more important. Why? Because most people jump online to find something—68% of online experiences begin with a search. Businesses use SEO to be found during those searches and it works: 75% of those employing SEO believe those tactics are extremely or very effective in terms of meeting marketing goals.
New Digital Marketing Trends for 2022
Several of the hottest trends in digital marketing dovetail nicely with the statistics above:
Video will be vital. Not just important, but key. Social media channels and streaming platforms are already working on new ways for marketers to use video, which will become the marketing asset campaigns are built on.
Email’s impact will grow. In a recent survey, over 40% of businesses plan to increase their investment in email in 2022. Why? Email marketing is not just effective and engaging as mentioned earlier, but also easy to automate and personalize.
Some trends reflect users’ current desires:
Users demand personalized service, ASAP. It’s a bit of a Catch-22: Consumers want custom assistance without feeling targeted, and they want it now. One study found that 82% of users want an immediate response no matter the time. Conversational marketing can solve this time-based customer service conundrum by using chatbots and virtual assistants that answer customers’ questions in real-time. Dialogue-focused conversational marketing can give customers the personalization they want, too, in email exchanges and even personalized video. It’s a trend that’s already shown solid success. Best Western, for example, saw a 48.6% increase in visits after offering travelers personalized trip recommendations.
Online visitors want interactive content, too. Users like to engage with content, and marketers want users to engage with their businesses. Interactive marketing content is the obvious answer. That can mean anything from Instagram polls to virtual tours to online tools like calculators. And interactive content is another trend with teeth: It receives twice the engagement of static content.
Other new digital marketing trends have evolved from recent events and experiences:
Virtual and hybrid events will become standard. Though it may seem more difficult to ensure virtual access to events, doing so has two outstanding benefits for businesses: a wider audience reach using the number one marketing tool right now—video!
First party data collection is on the rise. As we say goodbye to third party cookies, forward-looking companies are already investing in first party data collection. The transition away from third-party cookies may seem challenging to digital marketers, but first party data can be more accurate—and it’s proprietary.
Two More Important Digital Marketing Statistics
Before we move on to Part Two and our recommendations for your marketing to-do list, there are two more stats we’d like to share with you:
- 45% of businesses lack a well-defined digital marketing strategy.
- 70% of marketers don’t have an integrated or consistent content strategy.
If you’re one of those 45 or 70%, Globe Runner can help. We can create an overall digital marketing plan that leads to success and take care of the moving parts. We provide foundational services like SEO, web design and content marketing, and can also help you take advantage of trends like video, conversational marketing, and data collection.
Don’t let lack of planning get in the way of your company’s success. Plan to succeed. Contact us today.
Marketing Your Retail To Go Services
With Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s most recent executive order (April 17, 2020), our state’s non-essential Texas retailers can begin offering “retail to-go” services this Friday. This is a fantastic opportunity for retailers to recoup some of the revenue that was lost over the past month when stores were shuttered. So what is your plan for marketing your retail to-go program?
What is Retail to-Go?
Retail to-go means selling your retail merchandise without customers coming into stores. Stores are still closed to the public, but orders can be accepted online or by phone and retailers can ship merchandise, deliver it or offer curbside pickup.
What Does Retail to-Go Marketing Include?
Depending on your situation, retail to-go marketing may include a wide range of communication vehicles and marketing tactics. It will most definitely include a component of online marketing – a website with photos of your products, business pages on social media channels, and email marketing to your client base. You may have some of these in place already, but what updates are needed to get back in business quickly? Some changes you may consider might include:
- Add e-commerce capabilities to your existing website
- Make website changes or additions to let customers know about retail to-go
- Market and sell your products on your social media pages
- Deploying an email marketing campaign to promote your retail to-go services
- Search engine optimization to ensure your products are discovered by interested customers
- Paid search ads to be sure your products are prominently displayed in searches
Rocket Fuel for Retail
Hopefully, you have been keeping your customers informed during the COVID-19, so you’re on their radar and they’re anticipating your return to the marketplace. The start of retail to-go means it’s time to go full blast. If you need the help of an online marketing agency with more than a decade of experience, Globe Runner is your partner. We are here to help inject your retail operation with rocket fuel, propelling it to success. If you’re ready to blast off, call us at (972) 472-8528 for a free digital marketing consultation.
8 ADVANTAGES OF OUTSOURCING DIGITAL CONTENT MARKETING TO THE PROS
In business, some departments are mission critical. At a minimum, you need a leader to make the decisions and an accounts payable principle to send out checks each week. (Because let’s face it, no matter how nicely you ask them, no one’s going to work for free.) A sales team is great for making sure money continues to come in, but without the right collateral, they could fall short.
This brings us to the age-old question: is marketing considered essential? We say emphatically, yes! But just because you need it, doesn’t mean you need it in-house. In fact, marketing is one of the easiest tasks to outsource.
Here’s what business savvy brands have to gain by doing so.
1. A new vantage point can widen your reach.
Though it makes sense to do business with a digital marketing agency that knows your industry, getting a fresh perspective could be a big boon for your business. As an outsider, the view from where they’re sitting could look drastically different from yours. This allows them to zero in on untapped markets and design compelling content that targets new potential customers. While your core consumers may not change, they can help pivot your messaging to appeal to wider audiences.
2. Work won’t halt because of the holidays.
What happens when a flu bug threatens to take down your small staff? How do you handle a holiday mass exodus? When you outsource your digital marketing to an agency, you don’t have to worry about any of the above. They work year-round to keep your content continuous. This means staying top of the charts, never letting your SERP suffer due to sickness or season. Your blog posts will keep your keyword strategy strong, and your social content will elicit eyeballs to your brand.
3. You don’t have to keep up with every SEO update.
500-600. That’s the number of algorithm updates Google implements each year! Do you have the fungible funds to pay someone to watch for, learn, and teach everyone about the roughly two changes a day? No?! A digital agency is a good alternative. It’s their job to stay on top of – and master – updates, both major and minor.
4. Save money while increasing your output.
Salary aside, employees are expensive. Insurance premiums alone can increase into double-digit percentages year over year. Not to mention the obligatory cost of living raises instated by most companies. To stay competitive, many business are also finding that on site amenities up to and including snacks or standing desks are the best, if only, way to hire competitively. By contrast, working with a digital marketing agency can save you big compared to the cost of bringing on an in-house entry-level marketing pro. You usually pay a monthly retainer, but only for the services you request, not the benefits.
5. You won’t have to manage your marketers.
With an outside agency, you’ll be in constant contact, but it won’t be because you’re micro managing. Focus on building a strong internal team without having to expend energy onboarding, even as you expand.
6. Drastically cut your turnaround time.
No matter how strong her work ethic, a one-woman department simply can’t keep pace with an entire agency. She might be lucky if she can turn out a well-written blog post and a few social media snippets between meetings. Hire an external marketing team and complete complex campaigns in a fraction of the time.
7. Expand your content marketing creations.
You know that complex campaign you just launched? If you contracted with a digital ad agency it’s likely to have all the bells and whistles. We mean everything – from clickable PPC ads and viral social media posts to HD video ops and strategically placed PR articles. Agencies are more likely to have experts in every communications channel and can send your marketing collateral skipping across every single one of them.
8. Focus on nurturing leads, not generating them.
Finally, digital marketing agencies help you build your brand so you can concentrate on building your business. They’ll free you up to take your leads down the sales funnel and all the way to the bank.
So what do you say – are you in to outsource? We’re all hands on deck.
CHATTING ABOUT CHATBOTS: MECHANIZE YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING IN 2019
Worried a robot is going to eventually take your job? This blog post may or may not allay your fears. However, if you’re ready to improve your digital marketing strategy in 2019, better build a bot.
If chatbots still sound too 2049, simply think of them as a form of marketing automation.
You probably already use automation in your email drip campaigns to help reach your target audience and generate leads. Bots work similarly.
Chatbots are inexpensive, programmable software that can be designed to automatically carry out any number of tasks quickly and accurately. Their conversational nature can save you tons of time, and early adopters have seen benefits from increased conversion rates to streamlined operations. (More on these in a bit!)
Not sure if automation is right for your business? Let’s talk about just six of the ways chatbots can help take your brand into the future.
1. Never miss an inquiry.
No need to have your employees work the graveyard shift or pay them time and a half for a holiday. Chatbots work 24/7 365 days a year and you’ll never hear them asking off in the middle of your busy season. They’re also helpful in fielding floods of inquiries, so whether you’re getting more web traffic from that cute and clever copy you wrote or from a potent new product, you’ll be ready for the deluge.
2. Do more without hiring more employees.
Hiring new staff means taking a chance on potentially ill-suited personalities. It also comes with more time-off requests (see above) and increased expenses. Whereas chatbots are like a team of employees who always do exactly as they’re told (programmed) for a fraction of the cost. In most cases, a bot can be bought for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on functionality.
3. Market to Millennials.
The overwhelming majority of millennials would rather converse via text than over the phone. Live chat satisfies their instant gratification expectations and allows them to conduct their comparison shopping without commitment. From your end, it’s simply another touch point in which to promote your brand and squelch any concerns that might impede the sale.
4. Increase conversions.
Having a hard time getting traction with your email marketing campaigns? According to Chatbotslife, “Chatbots are seeing open rates of 80%+ and CTR’s of 25%+.” Now, imagine several hundred repeat customers seeing your latest promotional offering. You could be staring down some serious sales.
5. Make internal communications simpler.
With all this talk of digital marketing, it can be easy to overlook the real machine that makes your operation run: your team. Having a system in place to streamline and enhance your internal communications can mean the difference between duplicated tasks and redundancies, and everyone being on the same page working toward the same goal. Bots can be particularly helpful if some or all of your team work remotely.
6. Personalize your online ads.
Who prefers personalized ads? 71% of consumers. You can happily and easily oblige with chatbots on your site. Not providing a customized user experience? You can be sure your competitors are, so time to chat up or bot out. Chatbots can even help you with the preliminary task of information gathering about your core demographic. Their simple if/then formula makes it easy to base responses on the answers users provide in your initial questioning.
Still think bots are bits of dark magic designed to put you out of a job? Try shifting your perspective a little and seeing them for the engagement and traffic tools they are. Use them wisely and let the results speak for themselves.
Not sure which bots are best for your biz? Let’s have a chat.
COZY UP TO THESE WINTER EMAIL MARKETING BEST PRACTICES
This year, email marketing drove roughly 25% of Cyber Monday sales. By some estimates, effective email campaigns are responsible for about the same in overall holiday sales, too.
Let’s put that into perspective. The National Retail Federation reported $691.9 billion in holiday sales from November to December 2017 alone.
Could your business use a quarter of $700 billion? Of course it could. Use these winter email marketing best practices to get your cut.
‘Tis the Season for Sending
The power of email marketing is best captured by its ability to increase conversions, generate new leads, and improve customer lifetime value. But at a time of year when you’ll be competing with some 41 billion other holiday promotional emails, you can’t afford to not be on your A game.
Good email marketers also know that if they do their job right, they’re likely to make up to 20% more sales during November and January than any other time of the year. These increases are largely fueled by the relative success of their Fall and Winter marketing campaigns. The more they can capture and hold a customer’s interest now, the better they’ll be able to plan future campaigns when the calendar rolls over.
Below are some tips to give your holiday email campaigns their highest revenue-boosting chance during this peak sales period.
1. Keep it personal.
Personalize your email messages and you’re likely to increase your open rates to about 19%. This is roughly 5% higher than those non-personalized promos.
Try sending customers curated offers and promotions that complement purchases or services of Christmases in the past. You’ll also want to make sure you’re using email segmenting to target folks who’ve shown interest in a particular product but have yet to make a purchase. (More on this in a bit.)
2. Give Tuesday tidings.
Over and over again, email automation studies show that Tuesdays are the best day of the week to send promotional emails. More specifically, 10 am seems to be the sweet spot for firing off holiday, or year-round, email campaigns.
If you’re feeling skeptical, you can always test and track your open rates and CTRs. This will give you an idea of when your audience is likely to be the most receptive.
3. Refresh your mailing list.
No matter how clever your copy, regardless of how great your graphics, you’re still likely to have some inactive recipients. Whether they’ve changed email addresses or simply can’t be persuaded to hear you out, you need to get them off your mailing list. (And maybe on to your naughty list.) If you don’t, you run the risk of it severely dragging down your deliverability rates. Plus, the only real value is marketing to the right people.
Here’s where we continue to sing the praises of email segmentation. It’s an evergreen way to improve your email marketing, and that goes double during the holiday rush. When you segment your email list, you’re able to target your messages to recipients who are primed to receive it – and act on it!
If you’re not sure where to start, use your buyer personas to help you figure out the most strategic way to segment your products or services.
4. Make sure it’s mobile-friendly.
There’s just no getting around this one. If you want your email campaigns to land, they need to be optimized for mobile.
Not only do some 75% of Gmail users access their accounts through their phones, Google’s “How People Use Their Devices: What Marketers Need to Know” study revealed that users are fixated on their phones for about 3 hours every day. About 2/3rds more time than they’re spending on their computers.
Mailchart’s Holiday Email Marketing Report also showed an impressive 63% of emails are read on mobile devices. There’s even been a 65% increase in smartphone sales since 2015. But herein lies the problem: of those targeted, strategically sent emails, less than half were optimized.
A few things you can do to optimize your holiday email marketing campaigns for mobile include:
- Using alt text. This way graphics that load slowly will still convey a message. You can also optimize the images themselves to cut back on load time and come through more crisp.
- Sending responsive templates. Otherwise, your content can get distorted to an illegible degree.
- Shortening your subject lines. They’re the biggest determining factor as to whether your email gets read or recycled. It’ll also help break up content in a digestible way.
Finally, don’t forget to check out your holiday marketing emails on your own phone. Bonus points if you look on an android and apple model!
5. Don’t forget less common holidays.
Sure, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are heavy-hitters, but they’re certainly not the only seasons to send. In fact, there are lesser known events during the holiday whirlwind that are less competitive, in terms of email influx, but no less potentially lucrative.
Think about creating some winter solstice promos. Or make a special full moon related coupon. You can also celebrate the starts of the seasons. Keep an eye on the weather, too. Unusual or intense weather events may be the perfect excuse to offer something extra cozy.
6. Create time-sensitive offers.
Few folks get away from feeling rushed during the holidays. Email marketers can put the pressure on by promoting early bird prices or installing an interactive countdown clock to their email template. At the very least, make sure your subscribers are aware of your holiday shipping cut off dates, lest they wake up Christmas morning to an empty stocking.
Before you hit send on your next holiday email marketing campaign, remember that executing it effectively can mean the difference between high engagement and more momentum for the new year, and a lump of coal in your inbox.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- …
- 6
- Next Page »