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Why Is Reputation Management Important?

It won’t be wrong to say that the reputation of a business is very important. As long as a business is having a good reputation among existing and potential customers, it would be able to do business peacefully. In today’s age of digital media, it is important for a business to know what their clients are saying about the business. Depending on what customers say a business should take steps or measures to protect their reputation with Reputation Management Systems.

Reputation Management

Reputation management should form an important part of any business. After all, it would allow them to perceive the way clients see them or think about the business. It can be stated that reputation management is important for businesses that obtain and manage their online reviews. In another sense, reputation management is important for everyone who is in the public eye.

Customer-oriented business with an online presence should bother about what customers say about their business. Whoever might be the target audience of the business, reputation management forms an important part. The reputation can help a business to acquire new customers.

Why Is Reputation Management Important?

Importance of Reputation Management

Every day, people review businesses from 1 to 5 ratings, comments, blogs, or social media posts. Hence, whatever person says about a business becomes valuable for a business as well as for potential clients.  After all, bad ratings and reviews can break a business. Similarly, a potential customer might avoid the current business and head to competitor business.

The importance of reputation management is irrefutable. Here are some reasons that would clearly tell why a business should take the reputation seriously. They are:

Better Search Engine Ranking

Online reviews can create a huge impact on SEO. It’s because search engine algorithms know it very well that customers place a lot of stress on the online reviews of the company when making a decision. Hence, a business that takes the best effort to deal with its online reputation gets rewarded with an increasing SEO visibility.

Increasing Customer Trust & Credibility

Online reviews are not all about pleasing the algorithm. It’s also about the way people identifies a brand. With customers trusting online reviews, gaining the trust of customers is essential. Everyone knows that the reputation of a business is crucial for its survival. Once the trust of the customers is gained, the existing customer would speak about the business to others.

Lot of emphases is placed on online reviews, in order to decide whether to trust a brand or not. A good reputation management can easily help a business to gain trust. Hence, positive reviews can lead potential customers to trust the business even more. A good reputation means that the business is more credible than their competitors.

Higher Revenues

When customers make use of trust in order to differentiate a business from the competitors, it can effectively convey that the brand is reliable. When a brand is considered to be reliable, it can help to translate sales.

Online reputation management is very important for a business. According to a study conducted by the Harvard Business School showed that businesses that enjoyed higher ranks enjoyed better revenues around 5-9%.

Professional Image

Having a successful corporate image is very important marketing tool for a company. a business house might need a lot of time, in order to convince the potential customers for using the products or services.

Existing and potential customers would try to learn about a business separation by searching the name in Google. Since potential customers don’t have a better idea about a business they will look out for the available online information and then make a decision. Hence, if potential customers find negative reputation, they won’t do business. Hence, it would be better for the business house to get rid of their negative reputation if any.

Many people might not be aware of the fact that proper management of the reputation can help a business to get improved sales. Improved sales can greatly improve the brand image of the business.

It doesn’t matter whatever type of business, one might be running, reputation management is very important. By giving great attention to the reputation management, it can help a business to drastically improve its SEO ranks. At the same time, it can help a business to gain the trust of consumers.

from EDKENT® MEDIA https://ift.tt/2vZGlX0 via Edkent Media - Toronto SEO

[edkentmedia]

Why Is Reputation Management Important?

It won’t be wrong to say that the reputation of a business is very important. As long as a business is having a good reputation among existing and potential customers, it would be able to do business peacefully. In today’s age of digital media, it is important for a business to know what their clients are saying about the business. Depending on what customers say a business should take steps or measures to protect their reputation with Reputation Management Systems.

Reputation Management

Reputation management should form an important part of any business. After all, it would allow them to perceive the way clients see them or think about the business. It can be stated that reputation management is important for businesses that obtain and manage their online reviews. In another sense, reputation management is important for everyone who is in the public eye.

Customer-oriented business with an online presence should bother about what customers say about their business. Whoever might be the target audience of the business, reputation management forms an important part. The reputation can help a business to acquire new customers.

Why Is Reputation Management Important?

Importance of Reputation Management

Every day, people review businesses from 1 to 5 ratings, comments, blogs, or social media posts. Hence, whatever person says about a business becomes valuable for a business as well as for potential clients.  After all, bad ratings and reviews can break a business. Similarly, a potential customer might avoid the current business and head to competitor business.

The importance of reputation management is irrefutable. Here are some reasons that would clearly tell why a business should take the reputation seriously. They are:

Better Search Engine Ranking

Online reviews can create a huge impact on SEO. It’s because search engine algorithms know it very well that customers place a lot of stress on the online reviews of the company when making a decision. Hence, a business that takes the best effort to deal with its online reputation gets rewarded with an increasing SEO visibility.

Increasing Customer Trust & Credibility

Online reviews are not all about pleasing the algorithm. It’s also about the way people identifies a brand. With customers trusting online reviews, gaining the trust of customers is essential. Everyone knows that the reputation of a business is crucial for its survival. Once the trust of the customers is gained, the existing customer would speak about the business to others.

Lot of emphases is placed on online reviews, in order to decide whether to trust a brand or not. A good reputation management can easily help a business to gain trust. Hence, positive reviews can lead potential customers to trust the business even more. A good reputation means that the business is more credible than their competitors.

Higher Revenues

When customers make use of trust in order to differentiate a business from the competitors, it can effectively convey that the brand is reliable. When a brand is considered to be reliable, it can help to translate sales.

Online reputation management is very important for a business. According to a study conducted by the Harvard Business School showed that businesses that enjoyed higher ranks enjoyed better revenues around 5-9%.

Professional Image

Having a successful corporate image is very important marketing tool for a company. a business house might need a lot of time, in order to convince the potential customers for using the products or services.

Existing and potential customers would try to learn about a business separation by searching the name in Google. Since potential customers don’t have a better idea about a business they will look out for the available online information and then make a decision. Hence, if potential customers find negative reputation, they won’t do business. Hence, it would be better for the business house to get rid of their negative reputation if any.

Many people might not be aware of the fact that proper management of the reputation can help a business to get improved sales. Improved sales can greatly improve the brand image of the business.

It doesn’t matter whatever type of business, one might be running, reputation management is very important. By giving great attention to the reputation management, it can help a business to drastically improve its SEO ranks. At the same time, it can help a business to gain the trust of consumers.

[edkentmedia]

What is the Importance of Branding in Marketing?

No firm has an unlimited marketing budget, no matter how big it is. Your branding plans depend on your long-term growth in combination with the short-term results. Every business needs to be aware of the importance of branding in marketing.

Branding requires vast sums of money, but once invested your business can yield tremendous benefits. This article is targeted towards individuals, such as business owners and people in management positions, who are not sure of whether they should invest in branding or not.

The Importance Of Branding

1. Creates Consumer Preference For The Product Or Service Behind The Brand

A wide variety of products leads to confusion. One way purchasers manage these issues is by leaning towards brands they know and trust. Genuine and widely known brands are viewed as less risky to buy from. Hence, customers believe that the products from brands that are intensively marketed would always perform better. And it is true as the results reflect that. The more you give importance to Branding, it helps in the longer run.

2. Generates Increased Revenues And Market Share

When a firm does extensive marketing or branding, its revenues and market share increases. This means that the firm can become stronger than it was before. It can use its power to enter new geographical markets, do co-branding and gain new distribution opportunities. Branded firms are well looked up to. Branding gives you wings to experiment with different sectors of the market.

3. Helps The Company Survive Temporary Crises

Toyota, a brand with the best quality, has had some genuine product quality issues in 2009, which created a PR nightmare. However, the company has spent numerous years conveying its “quality” image, which has helped the organization oversee the crisis and re-establish trust in their products. Brand recall is a big part of marketing investments. people realizing that the brand stands for a particular thing is very important.

4. Expands The Organization’s Estimated Worth

An organization’s physical resources and the number of workers do not contribute much to its market value. What actually matters is the brand’s equity. John Stewart, the previous CEO of Quaker says “If the business splits up and I give you the land, bricks, and cement, and take the goodwill and trademarks, I’d still stand better than you.” The company’s worth shows the importance of branding.

5. Keeps New Competition Away

A market segment that is targeted by popular brands is a huge hurdle for most new competitors. If you are the first one to create and target a segment, you will gain tremendous benefits. Gaining a first movers advantage is a big deal. This helps in making a place in the consumer’s minds and staying that way.

6. Increases Employee Productivity

When your brand is well-known, people will want to work for you. This opens your company up to the top talent and provides you with the most qualified and skilful employees for your company. Once you have the best people for the job, your company’s productivity level will increase as well.

7. Increases Profitability By Commanding A Higher Price

This is one of the most important reasons for the significance of marketing. Clients tend to be more willing to pay a premium for a well-established brand’s product compared to a similar item from a brand that isn’t as well-known.

When you are a huge firm and the biggest customer of your suppliers, they will never want to lose you. You can use this power to insist that quality products are on time and to bargain over prices as well. Often they will take a pay cut just to keep working with your company.

9. Helps The Company Attract New Distribution For Its Products

A popular brand with known customer loyalty has little issues discovering distribution partners, on a local and global scale. Everyone wants to work with a brand where the client demand and return on investment are high.

When employees work for a well-known brand, they showcase a sense of loyalty and purpose. This means that the employee turnover rate would drop dramatically because employees believe in what their company is doing and are proud of it.

11. Makes A Remarkable And Unique Brand Image

A brand goes well past the offering of a tangible product. If your business is unique from the rest, you will attract a market in which your competitors are not able to compete.

Investors always go after brands that are strong enough to inspire their target audience and genuine enough to gain their trust. An investor would never want to invest in a weak brand that only showed potential risk.

When you invest in your company’s branding efforts, the opportunity for growth is limitless. The most important aspect to keep in mind is how you will execute your branding strategy so it can have the most impact.

At Edkent Media, our team of branding specialists are brimming with new ideas to help your business prosper. Contact us today to book a free consultation and see how a custom branding strategy increases your company’s growth.

from EDKENT® MEDIA https://ift.tt/31CsyWj via Edkent Media - Toronto SEO

[edkentmedia]

15 Questions to Help You Define Your Target Audience

Before you can be successful with any business endeavour, you need to do a complete target market analysis to determine your ideal customer.

Creating a target market profile is often the most overlooked and difficult aspect of online marketing. But if you don’t take this step then your response rates will be low and you will likely waste a significant amount of money.

To help you determine your target market profile, we have compiled a list of 15 key questions to ask yourself to help with the process.

1. What is your target demographic?

These are characteristics of your target market profile that consider areas such as age group, gender, and marital status. They are important in understanding your audience.

2. Where do they live?

Determining where your target audience lives will help you with location-based marketing campaigns as well as where to target traditional marketing methods.

3. What industry do they work in?

The industry your target market works in may be more relevant to some business models than others. A simple example of the target market industry would be targeting human resources if your company is selling an employee evaluation tool. This helps you to really dig in the sources and understand what they need.

4. How much do they earn?

This question will help you determine the price range of your product down the line. If your target market analysis shows that your ideal customer is in the low- to mid-range salary, you need to ensure that your prices reflect that and not that of a high-range salary. Their spending capacity helps you with your pricing as well.

5. What are their hobbies?

Your answers should include both their hobbies and how they spend their free time such as playing baseball, running marathons or spending time at home with their families. Well, this would be going the extra mile.

6. How do they get their information?

This used to be an easier target market question to answer. But with the introduction of the internet, it has made it more difficult. A target market example for this would be online (social media, online articles, Google etc.), traditional (newspapers, magazines, word of mouth) and advertising methods (billboards, transit advertising, and media advertising).

7. How do they communicate?

Again with the introduction of technology, these methods have changed. It can vary from face-to-face conversations and email to telephone calls. Determining this factor can help with your customer service department in knowing what the appropriate method to contact the customer would be and how quickly they are likely to respond.

8. How do they think?

This is a target market question that isn’t always evaluated as much as it should be. When answering this question consider personality type, attitude, values, lifestyle, and behaviour.

9. Who is important to them?

Since referrals and peer support are crucial factors in business growth, it’s important to know who your target market is close to. From learning that information, you are now able to strategize ways to reach them as well.

10. How can you best reach your target market?

This factors into how your target market profile likes to communicate. Once you determine that, you can take those findings and tailor them to your proposed marketing strategy.

11. What challenges do they face?

By understanding the challenges and frustrations that your target market has, it will help shift the conversation from how they can help you to how your business can help them.

12. Can your service or product help them with these challenges?

First off, the answer should be yes or you need to reconsider your target audience. If you take the time to answer this question effectively, it can help shape upcoming marketing strategies.

13. What pushes them to make purchasing decisions?

To better answer this question, you may also need to consider what influences them to make the final step, and what obstacles might be in their way.

14. Who had these customers before you?

By determining who had these customers before you, your company can learn from their mistakes in order to retain these customers in the long run.

15. What are their biggest objections to using your service or product?

This may be the most crucial question you need to answer. Without answering this question, you will never get the conversions for your business that you want and expect.

Once you have defined your target audience, your company will be able to create highly-marketed marketing campaigns. These will help increase brand awareness and encourage brand loyalty.

If you need assistance to define your target audience or creating effective PPC and social media marketing campaigns, contact Edkent Media today!

from EDKENT® MEDIA https://ift.tt/2nMPRuV via Edkent Media - Toronto SEO

[edkentmedia]

5 Benefits of Advertising on Social Media

The internet is no doubt the next marketing frontier. But, now more than ever, businesses recognize the immense opportunities that come with having a reliable online presence.

Social media marketing is the fastest growing marketing trend with a reported 9 out of 10 businesses employing some form of a marketing campaign on social media. Social media advertising campaigns bring numerous advantages to showcasing products and services. What is social media advertising? Simply put, it is a form of online marketing that mainly focuses on social networking sites.

The merits of social media advertising include the following:

1. Improved Brand Recognition

Advertising through social media has been shown to increase brand recognition. Regular posting on social media platforms allows companies to interact with the clientele on familiar grounds. This constant interaction creates a picture of credibility and an eagerness to listen to what the clients have to say. Once customers are familiar with your brand, they are more likely to recommend your brand to friends and family, therefore increasing your brand reach. The brand should not constantly hammer the presence, whereas it should be subtle enough to make an impact. Sticking to a particular theme of colours and fonts will help big time.

2. Improved Brand Loyalty

For any company to stay afloat, it needs a loyal clientele base. New customers are a happy addition, but without loyalists, the conversion rates would be somewhere between sad and non-existent. Advertising on social media creates an open service platform where customers can express their views and feelings about services and products offered. By listening to consumer opinions, customer satisfaction levels rise exponentially, and along with the loyalty to your brand is increased. The consumers will be more impressed with your turn around time and appreciate the company more.

3. Improved Conversion Rates

The majority of the population is on social media. Social media and advertising are two components used together to target potential clients on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. With the increased brand visibility that comes with advertising in social media, more leads will visit your website, and the chance of conversion also increases. With a well-articulated media advertising plan, a company can improve its sales and profits.

4. Reduced Marketing Costs

Compared to conventional marketing, social media marketing does not require a lot of monetary resources. With an internet connection and computers, a company can minimize its marketing costs by a significant margin.  But as the business landscape continues to evolve, traditional marketing methods begin to fade out in favour of less resource-intensive methods. Therefore, using social media to market products and services is an efficient way of reducing companies’ operational costs. Social Media platforms do most of the work in terms of an investment. The business needs a consistent theme, tonality and an effective marketing strategy to make use of the platforms. The costs are greatly reduced as more number of people can be reached with the same amount of monthly budget.

5. Better Search Engine Ranking

While a social media page does not exactly improve search rankings, the page will certainly get you more traffic. More people use Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing or other search engines to find products or services online. If your business has a social media listing, chances are, it will appear among the top search results of a related product or service, leading to wider visibility. Search engine optimization tools are another attractive option due to their ability to drive more traffic to company websites and achieving higher search rankings on the same.

Social media advertising has grown to be a favourite marketing option for many business start-ups and organizations globally. This is due to the ease of using social networking sites to sell products and services. The results are almost always immediate, which allows companies to gauge the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. Social media marketing has become an integral part of any marketing program regardless of size or nature. It is a great opportunity to increase sales while minimizing costs; one that no company or organization should pass on.

Are you ready to make your company on the map with social media marketing? Contact Edkent Media to book a free consultation and create an online presence in which your customers can connect.

[edkentmedia]

What is the Importance of Branding in Marketing?

No firm has an unlimited marketing budget, no matter how big it is. Your branding plans depend on your long-term growth in combination with the short-term results. Every business needs to be aware of the importance of branding in marketing.

Branding requires vast sums of money, but once invested your business can yield tremendous benefits. This article is targeted towards individuals, such as business owners and people in management positions, who are not sure of whether they should invest in branding or not.

The Importance Of Branding

1. Creates Consumer Preference For The Product Or Service Behind The Brand

A wide variety of products leads to confusion. One way purchasers manage these issues is by leaning towards brands they know and trust. Genuine and widely known brands are viewed as less risky to buy from. Hence, customers believe that the products from brands that are intensively marketed would always perform better. And it is true as the results reflect that. The more you give importance to Branding, it helps in the longer run.

2. Generates Increased Revenues And Market Share

When a firm does extensive marketing or branding, its revenues and market share increases. This means that the firm can become stronger than it was before. It can use its power to enter new geographical markets, do co-branding and gain new distribution opportunities. Branded firms are well looked up to. Branding gives you wings to experiment with different sectors of the market.

3. Helps The Company Survive Temporary Crises

Toyota, a brand with the best quality, has had some genuine product quality issues in 2009, which created a PR nightmare. However, the company has spent numerous years conveying its “quality” image, which has helped the organization oversee the crisis and re-establish trust in their products. Brand recall is a big part of marketing investments. people realizing that the brand stands for a particular thing is very important.

4. Expands The Organization’s Estimated Worth

An organization’s physical resources and the number of workers do not contribute much to its market value. What actually matters is the brand’s equity. John Stewart, the previous CEO of Quaker says “If the business splits up and I give you the land, bricks, and cement, and take the goodwill and trademarks, I’d still stand better than you.” The company’s worth shows the importance of branding.

5. Keeps New Competition Away

A market segment that is targeted by popular brands is a huge hurdle for most new competitors. If you are the first one to create and target a segment, you will gain tremendous benefits. Gaining a first movers advantage is a big deal. This helps in making a place in the consumer’s minds and staying that way.

6. Increases Employee Productivity

When your brand is well-known, people will want to work for you. This opens your company up to the top talent and provides you with the most qualified and skilful employees for your company. Once you have the best people for the job, your company’s productivity level will increase as well.

7. Increases Profitability By Commanding A Higher Price

This is one of the most important reasons for the significance of marketing. Clients tend to be more willing to pay a premium for a well-established brand’s product compared to a similar item from a brand that isn’t as well-known.

When you are a huge firm and the biggest customer of your suppliers, they will never want to lose you. You can use this power to insist that quality products are on time and to bargain over prices as well. Often they will take a pay cut just to keep working with your company.

9. Helps The Company Attract New Distribution For Its Products

A popular brand with known customer loyalty has little issues discovering distribution partners, on a local and global scale. Everyone wants to work with a brand where the client demand and return on investment are high.

When employees work for a well-known brand, they showcase a sense of loyalty and purpose. This means that the employee turnover rate would drop dramatically because employees believe in what their company is doing and are proud of it.

11. Makes A Remarkable And Unique Brand Image

A brand goes well past the offering of a tangible product. If your business is unique from the rest, you will attract a market in which your competitors are not able to compete.

Investors always go after brands that are strong enough to inspire their target audience and genuine enough to gain their trust. An investor would never want to invest in a weak brand that only showed potential risk.

When you invest in your company’s branding efforts, the opportunity for growth is limitless. The most important aspect to keep in mind is how you will execute your branding strategy so it can have the most impact.

At Edkent Media, our team of branding specialists are brimming with new ideas to help your business prosper. Contact us today to book a free consultation and see how a custom branding strategy increases your company’s growth.

[edkentmedia]

15 Questions to Help You Define Your Target Audience

Before you can be successful with any business endeavour, you need to do a complete target market analysis to determine your ideal customer.

Creating a target market profile is often the most overlooked and difficult aspect of online marketing. But if you don’t take this step then your response rates will be low and you will likely waste a significant amount of money.

To help you determine your target market profile, we have compiled a list of 15 key questions to ask yourself to help with the process.

1. What is your target demographic?

These are characteristics of your target market profile that consider areas such as age group, gender, and marital status. They are important in understanding your audience.

2. Where do they live?

Determining where your target audience lives will help you with location-based marketing campaigns as well as where to target traditional marketing methods.

3. What industry do they work in?

The industry your target market works in may be more relevant to some business models than others. A simple example of the target market industry would be targeting human resources if your company is selling an employee evaluation tool. This helps you to really dig in the sources and understand what they need.

4. How much do they earn?

This question will help you determine the price range of your product down the line. If your target market analysis shows that your ideal customer is in the low- to mid-range salary, you need to ensure that your prices reflect that and not that of a high-range salary. Their spending capacity helps you with your pricing as well.

5. What are their hobbies?

Your answers should include both their hobbies and how they spend their free time such as playing baseball, running marathons or spending time at home with their families. Well, this would be going the extra mile.

6. How do they get their information?

This used to be an easier target market question to answer. But with the introduction of the internet, it has made it more difficult. A target market example for this would be online (social media, online articles, Google etc.), traditional (newspapers, magazines, word of mouth) and advertising methods (billboards, transit advertising, and media advertising).

7. How do they communicate?

Again with the introduction of technology, these methods have changed. It can vary from face-to-face conversations and email to telephone calls. Determining this factor can help with your customer service department in knowing what the appropriate method to contact the customer would be and how quickly they are likely to respond.

8. How do they think?

This is a target market question that isn’t always evaluated as much as it should be. When answering this question consider personality type, attitude, values, lifestyle, and behaviour.

9. Who is important to them?

Since referrals and peer support are crucial factors in business growth, it’s important to know who your target market is close to. From learning that information, you are now able to strategize ways to reach them as well.

10. How can you best reach your target market?

This factors into how your target market profile likes to communicate. Once you determine that, you can take those findings and tailor them to your proposed marketing strategy.

11. What challenges do they face?

By understanding the challenges and frustrations that your target market has, it will help shift the conversation from how they can help you to how your business can help them.

12. Can your service or product help them with these challenges?

First off, the answer should be yes or you need to reconsider your target audience. If you take the time to answer this question effectively, it can help shape upcoming marketing strategies.

13. What pushes them to make purchasing decisions?

To better answer this question, you may also need to consider what influences them to make the final step, and what obstacles might be in their way.

14. Who had these customers before you?

By determining who had these customers before you, your company can learn from their mistakes in order to retain these customers in the long run.

15. What are their biggest objections to using your service or product?

This may be the most crucial question you need to answer. Without answering this question, you will never get the conversions for your business that you want and expect.

Once you have defined your target audience, your company will be able to create highly-marketed marketing campaigns. These will help increase brand awareness and encourage brand loyalty.

If you need assistance to define your target audience or creating effective PPC and social media marketing campaigns, contact Edkent Media today!

[edkentmedia]

Top 15 Advantages of Internet Marketing for Your Business

Internet marketing has become more and more popular nowadays among businesses around the world. After discovering the wide range benefits of internet marketing in promoting products and services online, it has soon become the leading medium for marketing all over the world.

Unlike mass marketing, which effectively piques the interest of the local audience by means of radio spots, newspapers and print media, internet marketing allows companies to nurture a more personal relationship with their consumers from all over the world. With internet marketing, businesses can deliver content to their customers through personalized and cost-effective communication.

 With all the benefits that internet marketing can offer your business, developing a professional internet marketing campaign can attract more customers to your product or brand to grow your business more.

Here our top 15 advantages of internet marketing for your business.

1. Convenience and Quick Service

The incredible convenience of marketing online is one of the biggest advantages of internet marketing. The internet has extremely easy accessibility with consumers using the internet and reaching markets anywhere in the world. Because of this, purchasing goods from across borders now reduces the cost of transportation.

For importers, this is a huge advantage as it means they can order online right from the comforts of their home. In addition, you can easily track sales items online as they make their way into delivery. You can download digital products from the internet with just a click of a mouse. Internet marketing is great for business as it gives consumers a better and more comfortable shopping experience. The convenience plays a very big role in making the buying decision.

2. Low Cost for Operations

One of the main advantages of online marketing for businesses is its low operating cost. You can advertise cheaper with internet marketing than with traditional methods of advertisement such as ads in newspapers, on television and on the radio. In online marketing, you can easily get a free listing in a wide range of business directories.

In addition, the internet allows you to contact your customers more in comparison to how you would contact them traditionally. Online communication is more affordable than traditional communication methods such as sending mail and printing brochures. For example, you can send the same information in an email rather than a mail-out, saving you on printing, paper, and postage.

3. Measure and Track Results

An aspect of internet marketing that is rarely available with traditional marketing is the ability to measure and track results. With online marketing, your business can utilize varying tools for tracking the results of your advertising campaigns. Using these tools, not only can you measure and track but also illustrate the progress of your marketing campaign in detailed graphics. The ability to quantify your marketing efforts is the best possible thing that can be there.

Measuring and tracking results gives your business a better idea of how your marketing campaign is faring. It gives you an idea of how you can better grow your traffic, leads, sales, and conversions. Without the ability to measure and track your results, you cannot alter or modify your marketing campaign so that it can better deliver the results you desire.

4. Demographic Targeting

Marketing your products and services online gives you the ability to target audiences based on demography. This allows you to concentrate your efforts on the audience that you truly want to offer your products or services. With demographic targeting, you can better target your marketing efforts on specific demographic regions. Never has it been easier for you to target an area miles away from your office. With internet marketing, it is possible now to target different demographics.

Demographic targeting gives you the ability to target specific customers you think are likely to purchase your product or hire your services. Every time someone visits your website and fills in a form, it gives you an idea of who your customers really are and lets you discover important details about them such as age and interests, which better shapes your services to match their needs.

5. Global Marketing

The ability to market your products and services globally is one of the biggest advantages of global marketing for business. Within several months of aggressive SEO, you can secure millions of viewers and reach huge audiences from across the world. You can now reach every corner of the world, where there is internet.

With internet marketing, you can easily reach beyond your geography to offer your products or services to customers worldwide. Wherever your target audiences are, you can easily reach them 24/7 and from any country all over the world. If your audience consists of more than your local market, utilizing global marketing offers you a great advantage.

6. Ability to Multitask

One of the core benefits of online marketing is its ability to handling millions of customers at the same time. As long as a website’s infrastructure is efficient, numerous transactions can easily take place simultaneously.

However, even with a large number of transactions taking place, your website is capable of providing satisfactory service to every customer who makes a purchase online, without the risk of diminished satisfaction. This high adaptability of internet marketing is an important benefit that businesses can take advantage of to provide their consumers with the best shopping experience.

7. 24/7 Marketing

Internet marketing reduces cost and runs around the clock. That means that your marketing campaigns run for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Compared to traditional marketing, internet marketing does not constrain you with opening hours. At the same time, you would not be worrying about overtime pay for your staff.

In addition to this, there is no regional or international time difference for you to worry about that will affect the reachability or availability of your offers or online campaigns. Whenever someone opens their computer and connects to the internet, there is a higher chance of them seeing your marketing campaign. Furthermore, customers can look for your product at their most convenient time.

8. Automated, Tech-Savvy Marketing

Another advantage of internet marketing is that marketing this way is easy with one-mouse-click automation. Compared to traditional offline marketing where marketers delegate various tasks to the best hands and talents, internet marketing takes advantage of a more tech-savvy method. With internet marketing, everything can go automated.

Internet marketing gives you the chance to turn every aspect of your business’s operations into a fully automated system. All you need to do is find the right tool and technology suited to your marketing campaign and you are done. By automating your marketing campaign, you can choose to do something more valuable with your time.

9. Data Collection for Personalization

Transactions through the internet allow you to collect data. Whenever a customer purchases a product through a company’s website, the data is captured. Your business can use this data in varying ways. Most businesses analyze the data to find out what products and/or services sell frequently.

Furthermore, the data collected can help segment customers, so your business can send them ads and other promotional materials based on their buying habits and interests. There are various ways that you can collect customer data including customer profiles or through their behaviour while on your website. The information collected through this method typically includes age, gender, location, how they came to your site, what sites they visited after they left, viewed products and the pages visited on your site.

Another way of collecting customer data is through the use of internet tools or with a tracking software. Compared to traditional marketing, online marketing allows for better data collection as well as personalization.

Through this advantage of internet marketing, businesses can serve millions of customers with various items and products based on their personal interests. Thus, shoppers can easily get their desired products without having to comb through the internet all day.

10. Diversified Marketing and Advertising

When targeting your audience, diversification plays an important role in your marketing and advertising campaigns. Diversification means that you can use a variety of tactics and strategies in order to reach your prospects. With online marketing, diversification becomes a lot easier. In addition to that, it is possible for you to run varying marketing techniques simultaneously to better implement your marketing campaign.

11. Easy Tweaking to Your Marketing and Advertising Campaigns

It is inevitable in marketing and advertising that something needs to be tweaked in order to optimize your campaigns. Compared to traditional marketing, online advertising is much easier to tweak. Whenever the campaign needs to be modified, online marketing allows the modification to happen without having to worry about downtime, service interruption or even halting the entire system.

This means that you can easily change the appearance of your online shopping mall – your website – by changing a few lines in the CSS that link to the web page.

12. Instant Transaction Service

Executing transactions is easy and nearly instant online. You can do this through a digital payment service so that there is no need for cash to go between the marketer and the customer to buy and sell merchandise. This is all possible due to payment processing solutions executed by third party payment processing companies such as PayPal.

13. Better Sales Relationships

In traditional marketing, merchants often give their business cards or pamphlets to their customers after a sale. However, what happens is often on such occasions, the customers lose the cards or misplace it. The only time the seller would remember about the card as if they had the intention of visiting the seller again.

In the end, most customers do not remember the seller much less the card, so this marketing method does not work to convince buyers to return. This is different from internet marketing where the marketers can easily collect email addresses of their prospects and buyers, which they can use in reaching out and forming a relationship with the customer.

The marketer can use this email address to provide customers with valuable information such as information about the purchased product, available coupons on their products and services, special discounts and introducing new products. Aside from email addresses, they can also use social media for consistent interaction with customers.

14. Time-Effective Marketing

Unlike traditional marketing, internet marketing is easy to start and quick to implement. You can easily set up a marketing campaign at any time that is convenient for you. In fact, you can set up email marketing for your business within only a matter of hours. Within the next few minutes, you can set up an autoresponder and create a marketing list for your business.

15. Continued Marketing Campaign

The marketing campaign’s later effects are one of the greatest advantages of internet marketing for business. For example, content marketing efforts, such as blogs, and websites have the capacity to remain functional and promote your products and services years after you started your marketing campaign. Almost every online marketing technique has viral and long-term effects that can continually improve your site’s traffic.

Online marketing offers you a variety of benefits. If you’re looking for better ways to reach out to your audience, Edkent Media is here to help. There are many services to choose from including email marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization and pay per click marketing. Get in touch today.

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5 Benefits of Advertising on Social Media

The internet is no doubt the next marketing frontier. But, now more than ever, businesses recognize the immense opportunities that come with having a reliable online presence.

Social media marketing is the fastest growing marketing trend with a reported 9 out of 10 businesses employing some form of a marketing campaign on social media. Social media advertising campaigns bring numerous advantages to showcasing products and services. What is social media advertising? Simply put, it is a form of online marketing that mainly focuses on social networking sites.

The merits of social media advertising include the following:

1. Improved Brand Recognition

Advertising through social media has been shown to increase brand recognition. Regular posting on social media platforms allows companies to interact with the clientele on familiar grounds. This constant interaction creates a picture of credibility and an eagerness to listen to what the clients have to say. Once customers are familiar with your brand, they are more likely to recommend your brand to friends and family, therefore increasing your brand reach. The brand should not constantly hammer the presence, whereas it should be subtle enough to make an impact. Sticking to a particular theme of colours and fonts will help big time.

2. Improved Brand Loyalty

For any company to stay afloat, it needs a loyal clientele base. New customers are a happy addition, but without loyalists, the conversion rates would be somewhere between sad and non-existent. Advertising on social media creates an open service platform where customers can express their views and feelings about services and products offered. By listening to consumer opinions, customer satisfaction levels rise exponentially, and along with the loyalty to your brand is increased. The consumers will be more impressed with your turn around time and appreciate the company more.

3. Improved Conversion Rates

The majority of the population is on social media. Social media and advertising are two components used together to target potential clients on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. With the increased brand visibility that comes with advertising in social media, more leads will visit your website, and the chance of conversion also increases. With a well-articulated media advertising plan, a company can improve its sales and profits.

4. Reduced Marketing Costs

Compared to conventional marketing, social media marketing does not require a lot of monetary resources. With an internet connection and computers, a company can minimize its marketing costs by a significant margin.  But as the business landscape continues to evolve, traditional marketing methods begin to fade out in favour of less resource-intensive methods. Therefore, using social media to market products and services is an efficient way of reducing companies’ operational costs. Social Media platforms do most of the work in terms of an investment. The business needs a consistent theme, tonality and an effective marketing strategy to make use of the platforms. The costs are greatly reduced as more number of people can be reached with the same amount of monthly budget.

5. Better Search Engine Ranking

While a social media page does not exactly improve search rankings, the page will certainly get you more traffic. More people use Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing or other search engines to find products or services online. If your business has a social media listing, chances are, it will appear among the top search results of a related product or service, leading to wider visibility. Search engine optimization tools are another attractive option due to their ability to drive more traffic to company websites and achieving higher search rankings on the same.

Social media advertising has grown to be a favourite marketing option for many business start-ups and organizations globally. This is due to the ease of using social networking sites to sell products and services. The results are almost always immediate, which allows companies to gauge the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. Social media marketing has become an integral part of any marketing program regardless of size or nature. It is a great opportunity to increase sales while minimizing costs; one that no company or organization should pass on.

Are you ready to make your company on the map with social media marketing? Contact Edkent Media to book a free consultation and create an online presence in which your customers can connect.

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Top 15 Advantages of Internet Marketing for Your Business

Internet marketing has become more and more popular nowadays among businesses around the world. After discovering the wide range benefits of internet marketing in promoting products and services online, it has soon become the leading medium for marketing all over the world.

Unlike mass marketing, which effectively piques the interest of the local audience by means of radio spots, newspapers and print media, internet marketing allows companies to nurture a more personal relationship with their consumers from all over the world. With internet marketing, businesses can deliver content to their customers through personalized and cost-effective communication.

 With all the benefits that internet marketing can offer your business, developing a professional internet marketing campaign can attract more customers to your product or brand to grow your business more.

Here our top 15 advantages of internet marketing for your business.

1. Convenience and Quick Service

The incredible convenience of marketing online is one of the biggest advantages of internet marketing. The internet has extremely easy accessibility with consumers using the internet and reaching markets anywhere in the world. Because of this, purchasing goods from across borders now reduces the cost of transportation.

For importers, this is a huge advantage as it means they can order online right from the comforts of their home. In addition, you can easily track sales items online as they make their way into delivery. You can download digital products from the internet with just a click of a mouse. Internet marketing is great for business as it gives consumers a better and more comfortable shopping experience. The convenience plays a very big role in making the buying decision.

2. Low Cost for Operations

One of the main advantages of online marketing for businesses is its low operating cost. You can advertise cheaper with internet marketing than with traditional methods of advertisement such as ads in newspapers, on television and on the radio. In online marketing, you can easily get a free listing in a wide range of business directories.

In addition, the internet allows you to contact your customers more in comparison to how you would contact them traditionally. Online communication is more affordable than traditional communication methods such as sending mail and printing brochures. For example, you can send the same information in an email rather than a mail-out, saving you on printing, paper, and postage.

3. Measure and Track Results

An aspect of internet marketing that is rarely available with traditional marketing is the ability to measure and track results. With online marketing, your business can utilize varying tools for tracking the results of your advertising campaigns. Using these tools, not only can you measure and track but also illustrate the progress of your marketing campaign in detailed graphics. The ability to quantify your marketing efforts is the best possible thing that can be there.

Measuring and tracking results gives your business a better idea of how your marketing campaign is faring. It gives you an idea of how you can better grow your traffic, leads, sales, and conversions. Without the ability to measure and track your results, you cannot alter or modify your marketing campaign so that it can better deliver the results you desire.

4. Demographic Targeting

Marketing your products and services online gives you the ability to target audiences based on demography. This allows you to concentrate your efforts on the audience that you truly want to offer your products or services. With demographic targeting, you can better target your marketing efforts on specific demographic regions. Never has it been easier for you to target an area miles away from your office. With internet marketing, it is possible now to target different demographics.

Demographic targeting gives you the ability to target specific customers you think are likely to purchase your product or hire your services. Every time someone visits your website and fills in a form, it gives you an idea of who your customers really are and lets you discover important details about them such as age and interests, which better shapes your services to match their needs.

5. Global Marketing

The ability to market your products and services globally is one of the biggest advantages of global marketing for business. Within several months of aggressive SEO, you can secure millions of viewers and reach huge audiences from across the world. You can now reach every corner of the world, where there is internet.

With internet marketing, you can easily reach beyond your geography to offer your products or services to customers worldwide. Wherever your target audiences are, you can easily reach them 24/7 and from any country all over the world. If your audience consists of more than your local market, utilizing global marketing offers you a great advantage.

6. Ability to Multitask

One of the core benefits of online marketing is its ability to handling millions of customers at the same time. As long as a website’s infrastructure is efficient, numerous transactions can easily take place simultaneously.

However, even with a large number of transactions taking place, your website is capable of providing satisfactory service to every customer who makes a purchase online, without the risk of diminished satisfaction. This high adaptability of internet marketing is an important benefit that businesses can take advantage of to provide their consumers with the best shopping experience.

7. 24/7 Marketing

Internet marketing reduces cost and runs around the clock. That means that your marketing campaigns run for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Compared to traditional marketing, internet marketing does not constrain you with opening hours. At the same time, you would not be worrying about overtime pay for your staff.

In addition to this, there is no regional or international time difference for you to worry about that will affect the reachability or availability of your offers or online campaigns. Whenever someone opens their computer and connects to the internet, there is a higher chance of them seeing your marketing campaign. Furthermore, customers can look for your product at their most convenient time.

8. Automated, Tech-Savvy Marketing

Another advantage of internet marketing is that marketing this way is easy with one-mouse-click automation. Compared to traditional offline marketing where marketers delegate various tasks to the best hands and talents, internet marketing takes advantage of a more tech-savvy method. With internet marketing, everything can go automated.

Internet marketing gives you the chance to turn every aspect of your business’s operations into a fully automated system. All you need to do is find the right tool and technology suited to your marketing campaign and you are done. By automating your marketing campaign, you can choose to do something more valuable with your time.

9. Data Collection for Personalization

Transactions through the internet allow you to collect data. Whenever a customer purchases a product through a company’s website, the data is captured. Your business can use this data in varying ways. Most businesses analyze the data to find out what products and/or services sell frequently.

Furthermore, the data collected can help segment customers, so your business can send them ads and other promotional materials based on their buying habits and interests. There are various ways that you can collect customer data including customer profiles or through their behaviour while on your website. The information collected through this method typically includes age, gender, location, how they came to your site, what sites they visited after they left, viewed products and the pages visited on your site.

Another way of collecting customer data is through the use of internet tools or with a tracking software. Compared to traditional marketing, online marketing allows for better data collection as well as personalization.

Through this advantage of internet marketing, businesses can serve millions of customers with various items and products based on their personal interests. Thus, shoppers can easily get their desired products without having to comb through the internet all day.

10. Diversified Marketing and Advertising

When targeting your audience, diversification plays an important role in your marketing and advertising campaigns. Diversification means that you can use a variety of tactics and strategies in order to reach your prospects. With online marketing, diversification becomes a lot easier. In addition to that, it is possible for you to run varying marketing techniques simultaneously to better implement your marketing campaign.

11. Easy Tweaking to Your Marketing and Advertising Campaigns

It is inevitable in marketing and advertising that something needs to be tweaked in order to optimize your campaigns. Compared to traditional marketing, online advertising is much easier to tweak. Whenever the campaign needs to be modified, online marketing allows the modification to happen without having to worry about downtime, service interruption or even halting the entire system.

This means that you can easily change the appearance of your online shopping mall – your website – by changing a few lines in the CSS that link to the web page.

12. Instant Transaction Service

Executing transactions is easy and nearly instant online. You can do this through a digital payment service so that there is no need for cash to go between the marketer and the customer to buy and sell merchandise. This is all possible due to payment processing solutions executed by third party payment processing companies such as PayPal.

13. Better Sales Relationships

In traditional marketing, merchants often give their business cards or pamphlets to their customers after a sale. However, what happens is often on such occasions, the customers lose the cards or misplace it. The only time the seller would remember about the card as if they had the intention of visiting the seller again.

In the end, most customers do not remember the seller much less the card, so this marketing method does not work to convince buyers to return. This is different from internet marketing where the marketers can easily collect email addresses of their prospects and buyers, which they can use in reaching out and forming a relationship with the customer.

The marketer can use this email address to provide customers with valuable information such as information about the purchased product, available coupons on their products and services, special discounts and introducing new products. Aside from email addresses, they can also use social media for consistent interaction with customers.

14. Time-Effective Marketing

Unlike traditional marketing, internet marketing is easy to start and quick to implement. You can easily set up a marketing campaign at any time that is convenient for you. In fact, you can set up email marketing for your business within only a matter of hours. Within the next few minutes, you can set up an autoresponder and create a marketing list for your business.

15. Continued Marketing Campaign

The marketing campaign’s later effects are one of the greatest advantages of internet marketing for business. For example, content marketing efforts, such as blogs, and websites have the capacity to remain functional and promote your products and services years after you started your marketing campaign. Almost every online marketing technique has viral and long-term effects that can continually improve your site’s traffic.

Online marketing offers you a variety of benefits. If you’re looking for better ways to reach out to your audience, Edkent Media is here to help. There are many services to choose from including email marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization and pay per click marketing. Get in touch today.

[edkentmedia]

Local SEO Tips for Google Maps

Local search engine optimization (SEO) is about optimizing a website so that it can be found in local search engine results. With local SEO, you need to have a deliberate and targeted approach that differs from general SEO. Users often use search terms like “malls in [city name]” or “malls near me,” so you need to make sure your business is visible to users looking for a business like yours in your area. In August 2015, Google made big changes in local search history which greatly changed the experience of users and SEO experts. The first thing that users and SEO experts noticed was when they searched for a local business or establishment, they would see 3 main search results instead of 7 – which was shown previously. The Google map that was paired with the search results remained the same.

Business owners that ranked 4 to 7 were obviously disappointed that they lost visibility. Due to the changes, businesses learned that they must quickly adapt so that they can make Google search work for them. Here are some tips you can use so that your business becomes featured on Google’s main search results.

Use Google My Business (GMB) properly

Google has raised the importance of GMB for local SEO. Any business information that you include on it shows on Google Maps, Google Search and Google+. This makes it convenient for customers to find you regardless of the device they choose to use. 

You need to be sure that your GMB is completely filled in with accurate, relevant and trustworthy information. You also have to make sure that your GMB location is owner-verified and the specific town or city you are targeting is mentioned in the GMB landing page title. Lastly, you have to make sure that the main GMB categories are consistent with your product and they can apply to a broader search group.  

Include a map to your location on your website

It is crucial for you to have a map on your website to show your exact location. There is a code you can use to add a map to your premises which you can put on your website’s contacts page. It is also important for you to include the following information on your contacts web page: opening and closing store hours, driving and public transit directions from landmarks, phone call links for direct mobile phone calls, and social media links and sharing options.   

Be sure your NAP matches the NAP on GMB

The NAP (name, address and phone number) should be the same wherever they appear online. The template should not change across GMB, Google+, or any other websites or directory listings. 

Provide distinct web pages for different locations, products and services

Should your business have multiple branches or locations, it is best for you to make distinct web pages that you can optimize for each location. Similarly, if you have a variety of products or services, make sure that each one has its own web page with relevant information. You can also link the pages to a single page that provides a summary of all the products and services in your portfolio.  

Use citations properly

It is essential for you to use citations in prominent regional, global and local directories for local SEO. Citations allow you to build credibility and authority for your website and drive user traffic to your website. If you do not have a website, local listings can improve visibility. 

You need to make sure your citations are consistent and that they are from high-quality websites. It would also be favourable for you if you can get your business mentioned positively in local newspaper articles, online articles and blog posts.

Take advantage of your business and website reviews

Google takes business reviews into much consideration for search results because individuals who search for personalized information look at reviews to figure out what the business offers and if it is useful. Encourage your customers to write reviews for your business but avoid writing fake reviews for yourself because it could negatively impact your reputation if you are caught.  

Optimize and use your inbound links

To increase your business’ influence and build your business’ reputation, your business should be acknowledged by other businesses in your local area. Having inbound links from local websites to your website can be exceedingly useful. 

There are a number of ways that local businesses can get links. You can make donations, host a community event, sponsor a meetup or webinar, promote something that you care about locally and network with prestigious individuals. 

Additionally, you should make sure you have: many different inbound links to your domain (including authority links and links from locally relevant domains), high-quality inbound links to your GMB landing page URL and location-based keywords in the anchor text of inbound links to your domain.   

from EDKENT® MEDIA https://ift.tt/39jc0EW via Edkent Media - Toronto SEO

[edkentmedia]

Local SEO Tips for Google Maps

Local search engine optimization (SEO) is about optimizing a website so that it can be found in local search engine results. With local SEO, you need to have a deliberate and targeted approach that differs from general SEO. Users often use search terms like “malls in [city name]” or “malls near me,” so you need to make sure your business is visible to users looking for a business like yours in your area. In August 2015, Google made big changes in local search history which greatly changed the experience of users and SEO experts. The first thing that users and SEO experts noticed was when they searched for a local business or establishment, they would see 3 main search results instead of 7 – which was shown previously. The Google map that was paired with the search results remained the same.

Business owners that ranked 4 to 7 were obviously disappointed that they lost visibility. Due to the changes, businesses learned that they must quickly adapt so that they can make Google search work for them. Here are some tips you can use so that your business becomes featured on Google’s main search results.

Use Google My Business (GMB) properly

Google has raised the importance of GMB for local SEO. Any business information that you include on it shows on Google Maps, Google Search and Google+. This makes it convenient for customers to find you regardless of the device they choose to use. 

You need to be sure that your GMB is completely filled in with accurate, relevant and trustworthy information. You also have to make sure that your GMB location is owner-verified and the specific town or city you are targeting is mentioned in the GMB landing page title. Lastly, you have to make sure that the main GMB categories are consistent with your product and they can apply to a broader search group.  

Include a map to your location on your website

It is crucial for you to have a map on your website to show your exact location. There is a code you can use to add a map to your premises which you can put on your website’s contacts page. It is also important for you to include the following information on your contacts web page: opening and closing store hours, driving and public transit directions from landmarks, phone call links for direct mobile phone calls, and social media links and sharing options.   

Be sure your NAP matches the NAP on GMB

The NAP (name, address and phone number) should be the same wherever they appear online. The template should not change across GMB, Google+, or any other websites or directory listings. 

Provide distinct web pages for different locations, products and services

Should your business have multiple branches or locations, it is best for you to make distinct web pages that you can optimize for each location. Similarly, if you have a variety of products or services, make sure that each one has its own web page with relevant information. You can also link the pages to a single page that provides a summary of all the products and services in your portfolio.  

Use citations properly

It is essential for you to use citations in prominent regional, global and local directories for local SEO. Citations allow you to build credibility and authority for your website and drive user traffic to your website. If you do not have a website, local listings can improve visibility. 

You need to make sure your citations are consistent and that they are from high-quality websites. It would also be favourable for you if you can get your business mentioned positively in local newspaper articles, online articles and blog posts.

Take advantage of your business and website reviews

Google takes business reviews into much consideration for search results because individuals who search for personalized information look at reviews to figure out what the business offers and if it is useful. Encourage your customers to write reviews for your business but avoid writing fake reviews for yourself because it could negatively impact your reputation if you are caught.  

Optimize and use your inbound links

To increase your business’ influence and build your business’ reputation, your business should be acknowledged by other businesses in your local area. Having inbound links from local websites to your website can be exceedingly useful. 

There are a number of ways that local businesses can get links. You can make donations, host a community event, sponsor a meetup or webinar, promote something that you care about locally and network with prestigious individuals. 

Additionally, you should make sure you have: many different inbound links to your domain (including authority links and links from locally relevant domains), high-quality inbound links to your GMB landing page URL and location-based keywords in the anchor text of inbound links to your domain.   

[edkentmedia]

How A/B Testing Can Help You Grow

The only way you can truly know what is going to work best with your audience when it comes marketing strategies is through A/B testing. If implemented well, A/B testing can make a big difference in the efficacy of your marketing efforts. When you discover the most effective elements of a website or marketing campaign, you can use the information to your advantage and gain more profit.

A/B testing

A/B testing, also referred to as split testing, is the process of running an experiment between two different versions of a web page, email, ad or app with a single varying element. Once you have run the experiment, you can analyze which version is more successful. For example, if you were testing an email subject line, you would create two versions of the same email with just the subject line changed. Once you have your variations, you send each version to half of your subscribers. 

By emailing one version of your subject line to half of your subscribers and another version to the other half of your subscribers, you can gather evidence before you commit to changing the style of your subject lines. Statistical analysis is used to figure out which variation works better for your specific conversion goal. 

A/B testing process

When you decide that you want to do A/B testing, the first thing you should do is collect data. You can work start working with pages you find have high bounce rates or low conversion rates. Then, you must figure out your goals. Your goals can be anything from having users subscribe to your email list to having users purchase a product. 

Once you have set your goals, you can come up with hypotheses – guesses as to why your testing idea would be better than the current version. Afterwards, you can create the variations, run the A/B experiment and examine the results. If your variation works better, see if you can apply what you learned from the experiment to other pages, emails or ads.

Common mistakes with A/B testing

Some common mistakes when it comes to A/B testing: testing for a duration that is too short or too long before making changes, examining too many metrics, testing unbalanced traffic, testing too many elements at the same time, not doing enough retesting, not considering external factors like holidays, using faulty measuring tools and ignoring statistically significant data. 

Why A/B testing is important

A/B testing lets individuals, teams and businesses make prudent changes while gathering data on the results. The results can help them form hypotheses and better understand why certain elements impact user behaviour. On the other hand, their assumptions could be proven wrong by an A/B test. A/B testing can be used frequently to better a given experience, which would improve the conversion rate over time. 

A/B testing can help you solve the pain points (specific problems) of website visitors, reduce your bounce rate, make small and low-risk changes, favourably redesign your website and get a higher return on investment (ROI). With A/B testing, you can also achieve notable improvements on your click-through rate (CTR) and on the time visitors spend on your website. 

from EDKENT® MEDIA https://ift.tt/2OlTBzp via Edkent Media - Toronto SEO

[edkentmedia]

How A/B Testing Can Help You Grow

The only way you can truly know what is going to work best with your audience when it comes marketing strategies is through A/B testing. If implemented well, A/B testing can make a big difference in the efficacy of your marketing efforts. When you discover the most effective elements of a website or marketing campaign, you can use the information to your advantage and gain more profit.

A/B testing

A/B testing, also referred to as split testing, is the process of running an experiment between two different versions of a web page, email, ad or app with a single varying element. Once you have run the experiment, you can analyze which version is more successful. For example, if you were testing an email subject line, you would create two versions of the same email with just the subject line changed. Once you have your variations, you send each version to half of your subscribers. 

By emailing one version of your subject line to half of your subscribers and another version to the other half of your subscribers, you can gather evidence before you commit to changing the style of your subject lines. Statistical analysis is used to figure out which variation works better for your specific conversion goal. 

A/B testing process

When you decide that you want to do A/B testing, the first thing you should do is collect data. You can work start working with pages you find have high bounce rates or low conversion rates. Then, you must figure out your goals. Your goals can be anything from having users subscribe to your email list to having users purchase a product. 

Once you have set your goals, you can come up with hypotheses – guesses as to why your testing idea would be better than the current version. Afterwards, you can create the variations, run the A/B experiment and examine the results. If your variation works better, see if you can apply what you learned from the experiment to other pages, emails or ads.

Common mistakes with A/B testing

Some common mistakes when it comes to A/B testing: testing for a duration that is too short or too long before making changes, examining too many metrics, testing unbalanced traffic, testing too many elements at the same time, not doing enough retesting, not considering external factors like holidays, using faulty measuring tools and ignoring statistically significant data. 

Why A/B testing is important

A/B testing lets individuals, teams and businesses make prudent changes while gathering data on the results. The results can help them form hypotheses and better understand why certain elements impact user behaviour. On the other hand, their assumptions could be proven wrong by an A/B test. A/B testing can be used frequently to better a given experience, which would improve the conversion rate over time. 

A/B testing can help you solve the pain points (specific problems) of website visitors, reduce your bounce rate, make small and low-risk changes, favourably redesign your website and get a higher return on investment (ROI). With A/B testing, you can also achieve notable improvements on your click-through rate (CTR) and on the time visitors spend on your website. 

[edkentmedia]

Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2020

Over the years, technology has made advancements that have enabled people from all over the world to connect with each other. Brand promotion has shifted and changed according to the times. Digital marketing has become foundational for market expansion and revenue growth. It has offered business owners numerous channels to communicate with their audience. It’s time to take a further look into 2020 at the foreseeable trends in digital marketing.

Chatbots

A chatbot is a computer program that self-operates certain tasks by chatting with a user through a conversational interface (an interface that imitates human conversation). Highly advanced chatbots are powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to figure out complex queries, make responses more personal and gradually make interactions better. Chatbots interact naturally with users checking out a site and answer questions instantly. The bots use chat windows or verbal chats to assist users in finding what they need. 

Chatbots can save you a lot of time and money. They can also help you finish tasks more effectively and efficiently. If you are able to program the bot properly, you will not have to worry about errors. Paying a person to observe the actions of website visitors and interact with those visitors can be pricey. Using chatbots can help you cut costs since they can respond to questions for you. Chatbots can enhance customer service along with other business aspects. Website visitors would likely appreciate having their questions answered by chatbots. Keep in mind though that chatbots should supplement human interaction, not replace it. They might require programming trial and error, but once you find out what works, you will be glad that you decided to use chatbots.

Interactive content

Interactive content is content that asks users to engage in an action (or actions), more than simply reading or watching something. In exchange for that engagement, users get to find out practical answers or results. Examples of interactive content are online polls, quizzes and calculators. People’s attention spans are limited. Time magazine states that the average time span for people is eight seconds. That means that marketers have to grab the attention of readers in less than eight seconds. Interactive content implies user action, so it has a higher rate of engagement than conventional content.  

Successful interactive content encourages users to put aside any reservations, interact with the content, enjoy the interaction and learn something new without feeling marketed to. It can effectively stand out from the bevy of advertisements shown on websites and social media platforms every day. It can also be used to help deepen connections with current customers. You could create an interactive poll just for current customers or send them a special online surprise on a holiday. You have to be careful because interactive content should never be too complicated or use aggressive calls to action (CTAs), underhanded pitches or pop-up solicitations.

Messaging apps

Research shows that time spent on messaging apps is increasing for individuals. Many businesses have started looking at how to better utilize private messaging apps like WhatsApp, WeChat and Viber. Messaging apps allow you to send tailored messages to your audience. Users look for meaningful interactions with businesses. Some brands have used WhatsApp to build their communities by giving their members access to events, news and brand ambassadors. Other luxury brands have used WeChat for promotional initiatives, including fun games. 

In an arena where brands are competing to capture the attention of potential customers, messaging apps offer a crucial opportunity to communicate with a young and superconnected audience. Big brands are doing experiments in monetizing messaging apps. Chinese businesses have taken full advantage of using group chats on messaging apps to offer consultations, sales and concierge services. You can leverage messaging apps to create a connection with your audience, engage with them and promote brand recognition.   

Personalization

Personalized marketing is about delivering distinct content to recipients through automation technology after data collection and analysis. Personalized marketing is more than just including the customer’s first name in an email. With personalization, you create marketing experiences for specific customers through your content. You can include personalization in emails, blogs and social media. The success of your campaigns rely on your ability to measure and collect data. Through surveys or email lists you can gather different data to learn about your users. Once you have collected enough data, you can start to get a better idea of a typical customer, which will help you start personalizing your marketing campaigns.

Personalization is essential for a successful digital marketing campaign. It is a great tool for generating more conversions. Personalized email campaigns have higher email open rates and click-through rates than emails with no personalization whatsoever. The benefits of personalization include developing better customer relationships, improving the experience of your customers, raising brand loyalty and generating more revenue.   

Transparency

Transparency has become a requirement for companies. Customers search for transparent, authentic and ethical companies. A recent study stated that 94% of consumers said that transparency was important for them in their purchasing decisions. When companies and advertisers are vulnerable and transparent in their marketing, it boosts customer engagement. Overall, transparency produces positive results for brands. It fosters trust and loyalty for brands and products. Transparency in marketing includes handling the private information of customers with discretion and security.   

Transparency in marketing is the outcome of the shift of power from corporations to consumers. It entails admitting company weaknesses and writing specific achievements instead of general superlatives. To meet the transparency expectations of customers, companies have showcased positive corporate values and disclosed comprehensive product information. Some companies have even openly shared the salaries of their employees. Other ways you can improve your company’s transparency are by being open and honest with your customers, making sure that selling is not your sole goal, responding to the questions and concerns of customers, accepting constructive feedback, and encouraging suggestions for product or service improvements.

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Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2020

Over the years, technology has made advancements that have enabled people from all over the world to connect with each other. Brand promotion has shifted and changed according to the times. Digital marketing has become foundational for market expansion and revenue growth. It has offered business owners numerous channels to communicate with their audience. It’s time to take a further look into 2020 at the foreseeable trends in digital marketing.

Chatbots

A chatbot is a computer program that self-operates certain tasks by chatting with a user through a conversational interface (an interface that imitates human conversation). Highly advanced chatbots are powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to figure out complex queries, make responses more personal and gradually make interactions better. Chatbots interact naturally with users checking out a site and answer questions instantly. The bots use chat windows or verbal chats to assist users in finding what they need. 

Chatbots can save you a lot of time and money. They can also help you finish tasks more effectively and efficiently. If you are able to program the bot properly, you will not have to worry about errors. Paying a person to observe the actions of website visitors and interact with those visitors can be pricey. Using chatbots can help you cut costs since they can respond to questions for you. Chatbots can enhance customer service along with other business aspects. Website visitors would likely appreciate having their questions answered by chatbots. Keep in mind though that chatbots should supplement human interaction, not replace it. They might require programming trial and error, but once you find out what works, you will be glad that you decided to use chatbots.

Interactive content

Interactive content is content that asks users to engage in an action (or actions), more than simply reading or watching something. In exchange for that engagement, users get to find out practical answers or results. Examples of interactive content are online polls, quizzes and calculators. People’s attention spans are limited. Time magazine states that the average time span for people is eight seconds. That means that marketers have to grab the attention of readers in less than eight seconds. Interactive content implies user action, so it has a higher rate of engagement than conventional content.  

Successful interactive content encourages users to put aside any reservations, interact with the content, enjoy the interaction and learn something new without feeling marketed to. It can effectively stand out from the bevy of advertisements shown on websites and social media platforms every day. It can also be used to help deepen connections with current customers. You could create an interactive poll just for current customers or send them a special online surprise on a holiday. You have to be careful because interactive content should never be too complicated or use aggressive calls to action (CTAs), underhanded pitches or pop-up solicitations.

Messaging apps

Research shows that time spent on messaging apps is increasing for individuals. Many businesses have started looking at how to better utilize private messaging apps like WhatsApp, WeChat and Viber. Messaging apps allow you to send tailored messages to your audience. Users look for meaningful interactions with businesses. Some brands have used WhatsApp to build their communities by giving their members access to events, news and brand ambassadors. Other luxury brands have used WeChat for promotional initiatives, including fun games. 

In an arena where brands are competing to capture the attention of potential customers, messaging apps offer a crucial opportunity to communicate with a young and superconnected audience. Big brands are doing experiments in monetizing messaging apps. Chinese businesses have taken full advantage of using group chats on messaging apps to offer consultations, sales and concierge services. You can leverage messaging apps to create a connection with your audience, engage with them and promote brand recognition.   

Personalization

Personalized marketing is about delivering distinct content to recipients through automation technology after data collection and analysis. Personalized marketing is more than just including the customer’s first name in an email. With personalization, you create marketing experiences for specific customers through your content. You can include personalization in emails, blogs and social media. The success of your campaigns rely on your ability to measure and collect data. Through surveys or email lists you can gather different data to learn about your users. Once you have collected enough data, you can start to get a better idea of a typical customer, which will help you start personalizing your marketing campaigns.

Personalization is essential for a successful digital marketing campaign. It is a great tool for generating more conversions. Personalized email campaigns have higher email open rates and click-through rates than emails with no personalization whatsoever. The benefits of personalization include developing better customer relationships, improving the experience of your customers, raising brand loyalty and generating more revenue.   

Transparency

Transparency has become a requirement for companies. Customers search for transparent, authentic and ethical companies. A recent study stated that 94% of consumers said that transparency was important for them in their purchasing decisions. When companies and advertisers are vulnerable and transparent in their marketing, it boosts customer engagement. Overall, transparency produces positive results for brands. It fosters trust and loyalty for brands and products. Transparency in marketing includes handling the private information of customers with discretion and security.   

Transparency in marketing is the outcome of the shift of power from corporations to consumers. It entails admitting company weaknesses and writing specific achievements instead of general superlatives. To meet the transparency expectations of customers, companies have showcased positive corporate values and disclosed comprehensive product information. Some companies have even openly shared the salaries of their employees. Other ways you can improve your company’s transparency are by being open and honest with your customers, making sure that selling is not your sole goal, responding to the questions and concerns of customers, accepting constructive feedback, and encouraging suggestions for product or service improvements.

from EDKENT® MEDIA https://ift.tt/2uqqbJ3 via Edkent Media - Toronto SEO

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Top PPC Trends for 2020

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an advertising model where an advertiser pays a publisher each time a user clicks one of their online ads. It is commonly used in digital marketing because it is affordable and delivers excellent results. Since it is able to drive leads, many companies integrate PPC advertising into their marketing strategy. In the coming future, online ads will change drastically. Here are the top six PPC trends to look out for in 2020.

PPC automation

Pay-per-click automation is the use of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and technology to optimize your search engine marketing (SEM). Over the years, automation has transformed into an effective way to better the performance of your PPC ad campaigns. PPC automation is the number one PPC trend of 2020. Nearly every PPC marketer thinks about PPC automation. 

Google believes that PPC automation makes it feasible for more companies to be successful search marketers. To get the most from automation, your campaigns have to be arranged to assist algorithms on Google and other platforms so that they work in your favour. You can do this by writing excellent ad copy, starting accurate and effective conversion tracking and figuring out your ideal audience and keywords. When you use PPC automation properly, you can distribute most of the grunt work to the machine and save a lot of time and money. 

Audience segmentation

Audience segmentation is about successfully grouping users in accordance to their needs so that each user sees ads about certain products or services at certain times. Specifically, you are working with a group of people who have already interacted with you online, whether on your website, YouTube videos or other social media channels. 

You can divide them based on what URLs they visited on your website, what YouTube videos they have watched and how they have interacted on your website. You can also divide them based on psychographics (the study of consumers based on their opinions, activities and interests), demographics, geographic location, and behavioural attributes. In PPC ad campaigns, audience segmentation lets you choose which group of people sees your ads. In turn, this raises the chance of a user seeing an ad that is relevant to them and convinces them to act. Throughout 2020, segmentation options will increase and marketers will be able to create campaigns that are more personalized. 

Remarketing

Remarketing happens when a user visits a web page but decides not to make a purchase. They might be browsing an item but decide not to purchase it, and then later see an ad on another website about the product that they were viewing. Seeing that product again is a marketing ploy. Marketers know that the more that a person sees a product, the more likely they will buy it. This strategy produces good results because it reinforces a person’s desire to purchase a product without them noticing.

  Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) is the total cost of acquiring a new customer through a specific channel or campaign. Research has shown that remarketing campaigns have a four times lower CPA than regular targeting options for display ads. Remarketing helps you attain potential customers who have expressed interest in your company’s products or services. You could be remarketing to someone who reached your product page through an ad or left behind a product on their online shopping cart. The people you are targeting are more likely to make a purchase than someone who is just browsing.   

Virtual reality

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has been growing with the coming of HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and other virtual reality technologies. So far, advertising in virtual reality has not been widely considered. However, as virtual reality technology continues to improve and users of virtual reality increase, advertising platforms will soon emerge. 

In virtual reality, the eyes of a user have a lot of control. To activate an ad, you might only need to look at it for a few seconds. The VR marketing term for the percentage of users who view your VR marketing materials and convert by gazing at your call to action (CTA) is the gaze-through rate (GTR). With virtual reality, users can easily evaluate products. Users will be able to check out the size of a product, see what it looks like from different angles and even try it out virtually. Since they can try out a product virtually, they don’t need to drive to the store to examine it. Advertising virtually helps marketers speed up the buyer’s journey.  

Alternative advertising platforms

In marketing, the more people that you reach, the more clients you’ll capture by the end of the day. While Facebook and Google tend to dominate the world of advertising, other companies like Amazon, Pinterest and LinkedIn are rising up as major contenders. For you to reach out to more people, you need to use a variety of platforms including Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Amazon Ads and Google Ads. Being on a variety of platforms allows you to reach more people and have more opportunities to turn prospects into customers in a shorter amount of time. 

Online users have become more smart, demanding and impatient when it comes to looking for products and services online. They want fast and relevant results that are useful and easy to digest. Alternative platforms give you an opportunity to convince your target audience that you have the best products and services. When you have ads shown on multiple platforms at the same time you are making sure that your target customers are seeing and interacting with your content. 

Visual search

Visual search is using an image instead of using text to search for something. The search image will show you a library of hyperlinked images. Pinterest takes center stage in this area, although Google is gaining ground. Since 2014, you could search for images similar visually to groups of pins on Pinterest. Pinterest has updated their technology so that you could take a picture with the mobile app and they would offer you suggestions that are similar to what you are looking for based on the pins that they have.  

While visual search has made a lot of progress over the years, it is still relatively new technology. Both Google and Bing are making advancements with that feature. The biggest issue with the technology is accuracy. Since a user is not typing a phrase but is using an image, the AI system has to first figure out what the image is before it can give the results. This leaves a lot of room for error. That being said, visual search will increase in accuracy and become more popular over time. It won’t replace text searches, but it would open up plenty of opportunities. Visual search will allow users to locate an item that they want to have and you could serve them ads for it.