Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Digital Marketing

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has become increasingly advanced and innovative, so much so that many modern movies have used AI as supporting or even main characters. Think Iron Man’s JARVIS or the movie Her. However, while AI technology is rapidly developing, we aren’t quite at the level movies portray. This doesn’t mean that artificial technology isn’t useful in other fascinating ways. As the relationship between artificial intelligence and digital marketing becomes more intertwined, marketers will be able to carry out their jobs more efficiently, and perhaps more effectively, than ever before.

Segmentation

With the use of AI technology, digital marketers can spend less time on certain tasks and place more emphasis on others. What tasks AI can cover largely depend on the context of the work. For example, one of the significant uses of artificial intelligence in marketing is to process big data, such as consumer information that can then be used to segment an audience. Known as Natural Language Processing (NLP), this realm of AI enables a computer to understand human language to the point where it can derive feelings and opinions as well as deliver appropriate responses.

This type of technology can be applied towards market segmentation, in which marketers focus on a specific target audience that is divided by a category such as demographic, geographic location, or interests. A narrower segment potentially calls for a more positive response to marketing as the marketing is tailored to the interests of a custom group.

Chat Bots

A basic example of NLP technology is the Swiftkey Keyboard available on smartphones, which predicts which words you will use based on your past conversations and corrects typos. This type of tech can be applied on a broader scale: chat bots. Increasingly today consumers utilize various messaging platforms such as Messenger and Whatsapp.

Consumers also communicate across social media such as Twitter and Facebook and expect to be able to communicate with businesses this way as well. In fact, according to Lithium Technologies, 78% of people who complained to a brand via Twitter expected a response within one hour. Businesses and marketers can ensure that a company is viewed as responsive, friendly, and helpful via chat bots that can help a consumer with common issues or direct them to a live person who can.

Recommendations & Email

Using AI to develop tailored recommendations is not a brand new concept. Powerhouses such as Facebook and Netflix use such technology to provide a personalized experience for a user that does not come across as too obnoxious. Amazon’s “recommended for you” section takes advantage of algorithms generated by AI to directly target a user’s interests and preferences. Knowing what interests a consumer will help marketers understand how to reach their desired audience without turning said desired audience off.

The field of digital marketing can utilize artificial intelligence to maximize email marketing with content that is personal and relevant to the consumer, reducing the risk of the consumer deleting it or marking it as spam. Artificial intelligence can sort through big data to identify key elements of a target audience’s interests or personality. Ultimately, AI will allow for very specific targeting and context-sensitive communication between marketers and consumer. This in turn produces ROI that far exceeds marketing material that lacks any sort of connection to the audience.

Why Blogging is Important for Your Business

Interestingly, blogging started out as a way for individuals to share their experiences or opinions on a topic with their friends online and the greater public. Today, however, businesses have realized the usefulness of blogs to bring in customers and enhance their online presence. Blogs can serve multiple purposes from a marketing perspective, all of which point to its advantages for any business.

Blogging for SEO

The real reason so many businesses, big and small, blog is because they want to enhance their online presence in order to distinguish themselves from competitors that are also vying for customers. When a consumer searches for a business in your industry, naturally you want to be one of the top few results, and more importantly, you want your business to appear above your competitors. Very few consumers are browsing through page after page on a search engine’s results. Appearing on the first page, and preferably at the top of that first page, is crucial. The field of SEO, or search engine optimization, is dedicated to making a certain result appear at the top of a page of search results.

Today’s technology allows search engines to use advanced formulas to calculate how often your site is updated with new content as well as evaluate the quality and the source of the content you post. Constantly updating a site is difficult outside the context of blogging, making blogging a valuable SEO tool. Unique high-quality content via the form of blog posts added to your site on a regular basis will help your site’s SEO.

You’re the Expert

A blog allows you to demonstrate your company’s expertise of your particular industry or line of work. It provides a measure of legitimacy for your site in that a consumer will see your blog and not only gather more information than what could possibly fit onto your site but also gain an understanding of your professionalism and commitment to your field via your writing style and article topics.

Blogs also provide a unique opportunity for you to offer tips and advice to your consumers, depending on your business, that will humanize your company and create a more and helpful personable front. Providing free tidbits of information will generate goodwill towards your company as well as demonstrate your knowledge, which in turn presents a convincing reason for an individual to become a customer.

Staying Up To Date

A blog demonstrates to your audience that you are committed to staying up to date on the latest developments in your industry and implies that your business is using the most current technology or methods. It portrays your business as thriving as it has the resources to update a blog on the regular. It shows that your business is active and implies responsiveness if a consumer were to reach out and contact you.

Make Social Media Work For You

Too many times businesses undervalue social media. The truth is 91% of online adults use social media regularly (Hubspot). If your consumers are on social media, than you need to be too. But social media isn’t just a chore for businesses to update constantly, it’s a source of marketing that can enhance your business presence, improve your reputation, and generate interest which in turn can lead to sales.

Going Viral

Today the goal of any marketing campaign is to go viral. This is, of course, much easier said than done as breaking through the clutter to reach consumers requires just the right combination of great content, suitable channel, and timing. While you should craft your social media content with the goal of going viral in mind (hey, it could happen!) you should also have realistic expectations and goals. Most businesses do not become Internet sensations, at least overnight, and patience is the key steadily building an online following. Making sure your content is of the upmost quality is the crucial in this process.

Go To Your Fan Base

While every businessperson would love for new consumers to willingly come to you, the fact of the matter is they probably won’t unless they have a reason or you present a compelling pull. In either case, it is more prudent of a business to get to know and tap their existing loyal consumer base. Bring your online presence to where your fans are congregating whether it be relevant blogs or forums. Find out what your consumers and target audience are saying and try to join in on their conversation naturally. You don’t need to constantly push your products online. Sometimes marketing involves becoming a part of your fan base’s culture. Conduct environmental listening, or online scanning for mentions of your business or something relevant to your business, so you can be at the start of the discussion.

Organic Growth

The phenomena of word of mouth is magnified tremendously online where a user can share a post with their hundreds of followers with the click of a button. Influencers are trendsetters and leaders, those online who have an impact on their peers’ decisions, even if it is only subconsciously. An influencer’s opinion will have more credibility to a consumer than your own brand, so always try to create content with the influencer in mind. If a consumer willingly shares your content with others who then pass it on to their friends, it is considered organic growth that is more authentic and meaningful than if you pay for reach. Consumers simply see your content as something cool their friend shared with them, rather than a direct advertising effort.

Responsiveness

What is the point of a social media account if you aren’t being social? Users on social media expect to be able to interact with brands whether they are providing a positive review, writing a question, or filing a complaint. Your business must actively use its social media accounts not just to post, but to respond as well. Social media is a two-way street that provides the opportunity for your business to engage with your customers and target audience. Without this personable aspect, consumers will perceive your business as cold and uncaring to their wants and needs.

Get Your Message in the Mailbox: Direct Marketing

Direct mail marketing enables you as a business to communicate directly with a consumer. You can use mail to introduce a new aspect of your business such as a product or a service or remind customers that you are still around. You can also use mailings to send consumers physical coupons that they can bring to the store. The cost of stamps in addition to the materials for all your mailings can drive up costs quickly, meaning that as a business you have to make extra sure that your mailing pieces will help generate a return on investment. Be sure to follow these basic tips before proceeding with a direct mail marketing campaign.

Audience

Before you even start designing your mail pieces, you need to consider who will be on the receiving side. You can get an idea by determining where your business is and where your consumers typically come from. From there it is a matter of identifying the addresses of your target audience in the area where your consumers tend to live and creating a mailing list. You should make sure your mailing list is up to date periodically so none of your mailing pieces are going to waste. The size of your mailing list will also have a dramatic impact on the price, so be sure to keep quantity and cost at the top of mind.

Design

A professional design on your mailing piece will lend your business credibility as well as more eyeballs. Consumers will have no problem with tossing a piece of mail that doesn’t capture their attention or that isn’t aesthetically appealing. You must also decide whether you want your pieces to have a matte or glossy finish. Keep in mind that the piece’s colors and theme must fit in with your business and your company name should be featured prominently on the piece.

Medium

Consider what format you want your mailing piece to be: a postcard, brochure, sales letter? Picking an appropriate medium helps deliver a cohesive message. In any case, always use professional-grade paper as consumers will be able to feel the difference in quality and distinguish your piece immediately from other mail. What medium you choose will also depend on what kind of information you are convening in your piece. A piece that is primarily dedicated to promotion a deal may work best as a postcard while a piece explaining your business may be better suited to a brochure.

Value

Try to add value to your piece so that the receiver doesn’t toss it as junk mail. Value can include a promo code or some other type of discount that is only available via direct mail adds a sense of exclusivity to your strategy. Be sure to develop a way to measure response whether it is tracking promo code usage or monitoring hits on a landing page.

Does Email Marketing Really Work?

The short answer is, yes, but only if you are doing it right. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa, 91% of adults in the U.S. like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with. In order to effectively conduct an email marketing campaign, you must be mindful of the consumer’s wants. The last thing you want is for your consumer to consider themselves being spammed by your business and click the unsubscribe button. In that situation, not only have you lost an email subscriber, but you’ve also tainted your image a little in the consumer’s eyes: you became an annoyance rather than a source of great products/services and great deals.

Content & Style of the Email

Are your emails bland and boring or are they over-the-top and obnoxious? Neither is a good look. Your subject line is the first thing subscribers see so it needs to be attention-grabbing and convince the user to open it. A subject line that uses humor or provides something consumers want (like a great deal) is enticing and more likely to be opened than a dull subject line.

Technology has progressed so far today that marketers can personalize emails to the point of fine segmentation and retargeting. Give your emails a personalized tone by using the consumer’s name and suggesting products similar to products they had purchased or informing them of a deal that relates to categories of their previous purchases.

To Who & How Often

Make sure your email campaign at least has the potential for a return on investment by carefully keeping track of who is in the recipient list. Making sure your emails land in the inbox of people who are still viable customers of your company is especially important. Today’s lead generation software is capable of checking your email lists for you for outdated information and can even recommend updates. Dig online and determine which software is best for you and your company.

Who you are emailing is almost as important as how often you are emailing. True, subscribers provide their email for the sole purpose of receiving emails from your business, but that doesn’t mean they want those emails all day every day. The rule of quality is better than quantity reigns supreme in the world of emails. Be sure to send your subscribers relevant information to them as well as something enticing such as info about promotions or exclusive coupons. Do not bombard them with upfront messages tooting your own business’s horn; that is simply not what consumers are interested in and you will be marked as spam sooner rather than later.

Test & Results

Do you know your customers? What are the click rates and unsubscribe rates? What emails aren’t pulling their fair share and why are they less effective than others? These questions can be answered with diligent monitoring. Understanding what types of emails resonate best with consumers will go a long way towards perfecting each and every marketing campaign and generating a healthy ROI.

Generate Sales Leads From Your Website With These Tips

Your website is one of your most powerful marketing tools, but it can only be maximized when you understand how to use it properly. Here is a page of tips you can use to turn your website into a qualified lead-generating machine.

Remember Your Phone Number

Not only is it hard for prospective customers to contact you when you do not put your phone number on your website, it also makes your company look suspicious. By simply including your contact phone number in a prominent spot on your website (usually in the header of each page) you can add legitimacy to your company and get your phones ringing.

Include Plenty of Contact Forms

Each page of your website should have some kind of contact form that your customers and prospects can use to get on your marketing email list. Whether you are asking people to sign up for a newsletter or requiring their email to get online support, be sure to include a form on every page and include a check box to allow people to opt-in to your marketing emails as well.

Publish Testimonials

When a customer tells you that they are extremely happy with your product or service, ask that customer for a one-sentence testimonial you can publish on your website. You should also ask if you can publish the contact’s photo, email address, and website address to let prospective customers know that your testimonials come from real people.

Make Product Videos

While you want the videos on your website to look presentable, you do not need to spend thousands of dollars making videos to entice people to buy your products. You can make your own videos with a high-definition video camera and the experience gathered from seeing how your competition makes effective videos for their website.

Get Industry and Website Seals of Confidence

Be sure to post on your website that your connection is secured using a security certificate. If your industry has seals of approval for quality or if you can get seals of approval by joining a standards organization within your industry, then do so and display those seals of quality with pride.

Be Creative with Your Layout

When you choose a digital marketing company to build your website, make sure you check that company’s work to confirm that each site is different. If your website is made using a template that looks like hundreds of other websites, then it will be difficult to get people excited about doing business with you.

Have a Plan

Everything in business and marketing goes better when you have a plan. What kind of leads do you want to collect? Are you looking for people interested in a certain product, or are you interested in people who want to utilize your online support? Pop-up forms and the forms on your website can be calibrated to appeal to the specific type of prospect you are trying to attract to get you leads you can really use.

You work hard to generate traffic for your website, but you need to remember to take advantage of that traffic when it shows up. You can gather a steady stream of sales leads through your website when you use the right tactics, and develop strong marketing plans to reach out to any target audience that you choose.

 

The Importance of Visuals

 The Importance of Visuals

When digital marketing experts talk about visuals, they do so with a strong sense of urgency. From the moment visuals were first able to be used on the Internet, there has been a serious movement to get more out of what we can see on a website. Today, movies that used to take hours to load can now automatically start within seconds of you clicking on a website that is filled with images. But how important are those visuals that are being put on your website?

What Are Visuals?

In digital marketing, visuals are what a user sees when they first come into contact with a landing page, website front page, or a digital ad. Everything from the layout to your website to the color scheme that is used is part of your website visuals, and they have to be able to attract an audience on their own.

Making That First Impression

It takes .05 seconds for an Internet user to decide whether or not they are going to give your website a look. The slower your website loads, the more traffic you lose. But the more visuals you use, the more apt you are to retain that traffic. Once digital marketing experts figured out how quickly people made their website decisions, it became imperative to get visuals down to file sizes that could load in less than a second.

The combination of your website layout and any images or videos must load as fast as possible, because it is your visuals that make that first impression. Before a consumer even has a chance to determine whether or not your content has value, they are making decisions on whether or not to utilize your website based on your visuals.

Why Are Visuals So Important?

Aside from determining whether or not an Internet user will check out your site, visuals reach into the very core of human behavior. It is estimated that 93 percent of all human communication is done using visuals. Everything from using the right combination of colors to creating a layout that is pleasing to the eye makes a difference.

An image or video can help a customer to get a more comprehensive understanding of your product than the written word ever could. A picture or video of a product can help elicit emotional responses that are critical in the buying process, and they can give a potential consumer a feeling of familiarity that determines whether or not a product will be purchased. Visuals are also essential in helping people who have never seen your product before to understand how it works, and what its value may be to them personally. Visuals can deliver all of the buying cues a consumer needs without ever using a single word.

The Profession Of Visuals

A digital marketing professional not only understands how to use visuals, they also understand how to monitor the effectiveness of visuals and make changes as needed. Something as simple as changing the background color of a website page could increase traffic three or four fold. These are the types of observations a trained professional can make to help your website succeed. With the right digital marketing team on your side, your website will be able to utilize visuals to get results that words could never achieve.

 

The Importance Of Mobile Optimization

When mobile websites were first launched, they were considered a novelty. The most effort anyone ever put into their mobile website was to create a piece of software that converted their desktop website to a text-only mobile website without any other conversions. But as mobile technology has developed, so has mobile websites. These types of websites are no longer novelties, they are essential marketing tools, and they are getting the same kind of attention that desktop websites have been getting for years.

How Do You Optimize Your Mobile Website?

Creating a program that converts your desktop website to a text-only site for mobile devices no longer cuts it when it comes to mobile website optimization. Today, companies must focus on developing a completely different mobile website that optimizes the experience for users. The content must fit perfectly on the mobile screen, and the navigation must be smooth and seamless.

Most website developers have created completely different ways to design and implement mobile websites. These differ from desktop layouts in terms of utilizing the front page, how ecommerce is laid out, a less intrusive navigation system, and smaller file sizes for images. These methods have been developed rapidly over the years, and have become the standard for mobile website development.

Google’s Mobile Movement

In 2015, Google unleashed what industry insiders called “Mobile Armageddon.” Any mobile website that did not meet the basic design criteria that Google laid out previously would not show up on mobile search results. Companies scrambled to get their mobile websites up to date, and a new age in mobile web development was born.

Google demanded that all mobile websites be optimized to improve user experience, and this move helped to solidify the new mobile web development guidelines as the gold standard in the industry. If you want your mobile website to be seen on Google’s mobile search results, then your site has to be brought up to the new standards.

The Move Towards Mobile

For the past several years, there has been a move away from desktop and laptop computers and towards mobile computing devices. In 2016, it was estimated that the number of mobile users on the Internet finally outnumbered the number of desktop and laptop users. At that point, the idea of having a mobile website was not only a good idea, it became mandatory for any business that wanted to grow.

Millions of potential customers every day are on their smartphones or tablets looking up products and making purchases. Business professionals are taking out their smartphones to look up businesses they can partner with, and investors are scanning mobile websites for their next investment projects. The best frame of reference to use to get business owners to understand the importance of mobile optimization is to say that it is even more important to have a mobile website now than it was to have a desktop website in the 1990s.

Times are changing and your business needs to change with them. If you do not have a properly developed mobile website, then you are missing out on millions of potential web hits and millions of potential customers. As more and more people shift to accessing the Internet through mobile devices, optimizing your mobile website becomes more important than ever.

The Basics Of Good Web Design

In order to become good at something, you first must master the basics. Most business owners hire a digital agency to handle their website design needs, but a good website owner should still understand the basics of good web design to be sure they are getting a quality service. There are many different ways to achieve these basic design ideas, but the core concepts that make up a good website design will always remain the same.

A Clean Layout

A clean layout means that each page is easy to navigate, the background does not look too busy, and the coding is streamlined. When a new visitor lands on your website, they need to be able to figure out how to use your site in three seconds or they will bounce to another site. A clean layout uses tables to keep the navigation links in one spot, and a color scheme that makes the font easy to read and the website easy to look at.

Strong Navigation

If a user has to click more than three times to get to the page they want, they will leave your website. Make your navigation menus as simple as possible and include any extraneous content as links within the text of a page. You can also help navigation by including a site map that is accessible from the front page, and a search box at the top of every page.

Functional Graphics

Graphics, images, and videos make your website more appealing to your users, but only if they are used properly. Avoid animated graphics and also avoid putting self-starting videos on your pages. Give the user the option to start a video, and make sure that all of your graphics and images serve a purpose. It is also important to make sure that your graphic, image, and video files are as small as possible to help your page load faster.

A Title On Every Page

You can enhance the SEO quality of your website when you put a short title on every page that makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site. It is important to keep your page titles short, and make sure that they accurately describe the page they are on. Search engines will penalize your page if it is filled with titles designed to hit on certain keywords instead of describing the page.

Security Certificates

These days, every user on the Internet is concerned about the security of the websites that they visit. If you require your users to input information of any kind on your website, then you need to have a security certificate in place to protect your user’s data, and your website.

Consistency

The temptation to make each page on your website look different can be strong, but it is a big mistake. Your website is an important tool in building and enhancing your brand, and the best way to get the most from that branding is to make sure that the colors and design throughout your website are consistent.

Good website design allows a site that is easy to navigate to load quickly and serve the user’s needs. If your website is not performing the basics very well, then you are losing a lot of traffic and a lot of potential revenue.

Social Media Tips for Beginners

Every day thousands of people join social media platforms, and many are doing so for the first time in their lives. Social media can be addicting in that it allows you to have discussions with people all over the world. But if your intentions with social media are purely business, then here are some tips you can use to get off to a good start.

Choose a Business Profile

Some social media platforms offer different profile types for businesses, groups, and individuals. In some cases, you have to start with a personal profile and then create your own business page. If you are using social media for your business, then go ahead and start a business profile to take advantage of all of the business-friendly features these types of profiles offer.

Create a Comprehensive Account

The simple way to say this is to tell you to fill in every blank in your social media business profile, and put pictures where the platform tells you to. There is nothing more frustrating to social media users than an incomplete business profile, and you do not want your first impression on social media to be negative.

Reach Out to Groups

One of the most effective ways to start building your social media audience is to join groups on each platform that share your interests. If you sell sporting goods, then join sports discussion groups and become involved in only positive conversations. Avoid promoting your business while getting into group discussions because that will turn people off. All you need to do is make some insightful and positive comments on the posts in the groups, and you will get plenty of people to follow your social media account.

Interact with Social Media Every Day

Some people set aside an hour each day to be on social media, while others are on constantly as they sit at their computers and work. Whatever your preference, it is important to interact with social media seven days a week. If you can do it, you should also try to spend just a couple of minutes on social media during holidays as well.

Carefully Monitor Your Content

Within your social media settings, you should make it so that the posts submitted by your audience have to be approved by you before they can be seen. Each day you should monitor your social media posts to address any complaints, and to ban trouble makers. You should allow negative feedback from customers to be seen on your social media pages, but you should also address that negative feedback and show everyone who sees your social media page that you take care of customer concerns.

Post Pictures

Many companies use their social media accounts to post pictures of their employees, corporate parties, and pictures from satisfied customers. Pictures and videos are extremely powerful forms of communication on social media, and you should be using them to your advantage.

If you want to maximize your company’s social media presence, then you should hire a professional social media manager through a digital marketing company. But if you are just interested in getting your feet wet, then remember that social media can be as damaging as it can be helpful. Always be positive on social media, and never give detractors a chance to ruin your company’s reputation.