Basic Digital Marketing

 Comparing organic search engine optimization (SEO) against pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, there are some marketing experts who might prefer one over the other. At a time when the competition is fierce, it’s important to know where to invest one’s marketing budget.

The development of organic SEO strategies have been shown to be very successful at landing high search engine placement, however growing competition means keywords being increasingly difficult to achieve and maintain. Then, there’s pay-per-click advertising which is expensive in the long-term however has been responsible for building some big brands online.

To us, we do not favor one over the other. There is merit in both. That said, SEO marketing techniques do reach a completely different audience than PPC campaigns. What’s best for a company’s website depends on the target audience. For some, PPC may produce higher conversion rates than organic SEO can. For others, search engine optimization techniques can help build trust and legitimacy through search engine exposure.  To be successful, both may potentially have to be used in conjunction.

 The future of digital marketing campaigns will depend on being able to connect on a human level with consumers. The immense value in human connection cannot be understated. In the same way we consume music, film, and media, the advertisements that resonate with us emotionally are those that we remember. The human connection in marketing is what gets people clicking. Consumers trust human connection more than they trust advertising so over the years, brands have shifted from ‘straight selling’ to building a human connection with its consumer.

Word-of-mouth recommendations and similar human connection-friendly marketing strategies continue to win the day for so many sites. Even as marketing tools advance and the ways to connect with one’s audience has changed, human connection continues to be the most effective way to build conversation. Every day, we are bombarded with hundreds of marketing messages. The last thing a consumer wants is to be sold to. So instead, successful brands have learnt to tell stories and build connection from the humanity of a brand. Traditional advertising is not trustworthy enough, according to numerous studies analyzing consumer behaviour. Thereby, to gain sales in marketing, sites must get creative. That is not necessarily a problem either.

 Multi-language sites presents a number of challenges when it comes to search engine optimization. Thankfully though, with an experienced SEO expert as a guide, one can navigate through with no issue. Instead of attempting to combine multi-lingual SEO and international strategies on your own, consider hiring a search engine optimization marketing company who knows their stuff. By successfully targeting SEO on a global, multi-lingual scale, the rewards can be huge!

There are many content questions one must ask themselves when operating a website with multiple languages at play. For example, countries where multiple languages are spoken, languages spoken around the world, and individual languages per country each presents their own issues. The decision on how to approach multiple languages should be made as the site is being built. A brand needs to decide whether they want to target multiple languages within the same country, multiple languages globally with no country of origin attached, or multiple languages in multiple countries.

 Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies have dominated the internet for over a decade. Be it those who are new to marketing or those with a more developed knowledge, SEO continues to be a prominent marketing practice that all must learn. As SEO standards and strategies have changed over the years, there continues to be some sizeable SEO myths that should be busted. Here are our top 5 SEO myths everyone should know about.

Myth #1 – Videos and Images are not SEO

Videos and images have a huge role to play in search engine optimization. By using the correct metadata on videos and images, this provides yet another gateway to your site. In the same way one would build text content, employ the same strategies to developing videos and images – that is, valuable, share-friendly, and relevant content.

Myth #2 – SEO is a one-time implementation

High quality SEO techniques are designed to last for months and build up in effectiveness over time. This is not the kind of strategy that will deliver amazing results overnight. It takes time to build authority in the eyes of search engines. Also, over time, search engines will implement changes and updates, and the approach to SEO will change accordingly. So a commitment to SEO is long-term in the sense that it will require continual knowledge building.

Myth #3 – Hacking SEO is Easy

Google is usually smarter than anyone thinks it is. Attempting to trick Google will mean severe consequences for where your site ranks in their search engine. Even if you hack SEO in the most creative of ways, inevitably, search engines will find out. When they see that you’re not following the rules, your site will be penalized. We’ve seen it happen far too many times. Don’t try.

 Across Canada and the US, local and federal regulations are challenging the developing marijuana industry. The challenges of digital marketing among cannabis and marijuana companies provides much to learn from for other small businesses.

In the accepted national marketplace, marijuana companies are a new category. As one of the fastest growing in Canada, building a marijuana start-up might seem like a very lucrative idea. No doubt, for some, it will be. That said, for companies seeking to use search engine optimization (SEO), general digital marketing strategies, or pay-per-click marketing are in for a rude awakening.

None of the larger advertising platforms sell marketing space to marijuana companies leaving sites like Facebook and methods like AdWords off the docket. This may change after marijuana is legalized federally however for the time being, there’s no movement in these marketing hubs. Thus, that means for any dispensary or cannabis brands to advertise and find consumers, they need to get creative.

eCommerce is a land with huge opportunities and high competition. Small businesses entering into eCommerce often do so with the promise of new sales and being able to expand into new markets.

In a land of thousands of sites though, it can take a lot of investment and resources to get an eCommerce presence up and running. Should your small business have an eCommerce site – we absolutely think so.

To its simplest definition, an eCommerce website is a platform on which products and services can be sold direct to consumer. The subsequent online transaction mimics the sales transaction that would happen in-store, providing businesses with revenue and consumers with their favourite products without having to get up out of their chair. For some small businesses, their eCommerce page begins with only selling one or two products. For others, eCommerce is a far more complex system, sometimes cataloguing thousands of items.

There are five main reasons that we believe every small business should have an eCommerce site. Firstly, see increased sales while reducing costs. By selling direct to consumer, it does not require the involvement of any middle man which saves both parties time and money. Secondly, yes, you have the opportunity to expand nationally and globally into new territories. Reach customers you may not have ever had the chance to reach before, due to physical limitations.

 Digital marketing trends in local and regional marketplaces are just as important today as those affecting the global landscape of small businesses and corporations. Today, setting up a website can get a brand seen by visitors from across the world.

This way, buying, selling, and marketing product and services in a global setting suddenly becomes a lot harder than advertising in the local papers. The more that businesses are aware of the global online world and its influence on buying and selling, the more advantaged that business will be. If you’re selling online, here’s what you need to know.

Those customers who buy locally may come to your business having seen its physical location while walking or driving by, maybe from a friend’s recommendation, and/or from having seen one of your products in action. From an international standpoint, customers are more accustomed to come to your site through search engine rankings, social media posts, online ratings or reviews, and/or influencer-based recommendations. Appealing to such a wide range of people involves knowing what keywords to target with SEO strategies and getting more involved in designing a high-conversion, high-ROI website design.

 Time and time again, we’ve seen performance plateaus happen across digital marketing strategies. No matter how successful they once were, eventually, most strategies will stagnant and require an extra kick to get going again. Instead of hanging your hat on digital marketing that is slowing down, the goal should be to find new ways to improve sales performance. Use real-time data and analytics to pinpoint where things are slowing down, and learn performance improvement strategies to address these areas.

Consider undergoing UX optimization

As conversion rates move even the smallest amounts, this can establish huge rewards for a strategy. Evaluate the user experience (UX). Test the UX by getting a fresh set of eyes on it. For most companies, this involves hiring a digital marketing agency to take a look. If you do not already have the resources in place to accurately manage user experience strategies, consider it. Remember that the UX begins before a visitor has even clicked on your site. They may be coming to you according to ads they’ve seen, social media advertising, or chasing a search engine query. Evaluate all of these entry points. If these points of entry are not in perfect collaboration with what’s on your site, it may create a sort of disconnected environment.

 We are living in the age of video marketing and video SEO, both critical components to consumer-driven marketing strategies. As more brands across the world are jumping into video marketing, the ones who are already deeply embedded into video SEO are seeing major benefits.

By producing high quality videos released regularly throughout a campaign, video content has been shown to be far more effective than text-based search engine optimization at qualifying and converting the consumer. If your business has not already launched some form of video promotional content, now’s the time.

When it comes to video production, quality, quantity, and release schedule are all equally important. To receive the best ROI, video SEO techniques need to be employed. When applied correctly, video SEO marketing can help get more eyes from social media, YouTube, and other platforms.

Even though the video content is what we are talking about here, text-based descriptions are still key. Search engines cannot appropriately interpret video content to classify it in a searchable format. Therefore, search engines depend on text to describe the video for them. By using text to describe and transcribe what is happening in the video, it allows consumers using search engines to find the video. This is a key aspect to the search engine optimization process.

 What so many small business entrepreneurs experience every time Facebook implements an update to its timeline are slow reductions in the organic reach a page has. Compared to years ago when a small business page could reach well above 50 percent of their followers, today that number has sunk to under 7 percent. That makes it nearly impossible to get the word out!

More than ever before, it’s extremely difficult for a brand to keep up with their fans and to find new followers in a market that is increasingly dominated by paid advertising. For small businesses, the only thing to do in response to these changes in Facebook Timeline is to get better at branding and promotions, and be smarter with where they put their advertising dollar.

First things first, most small business pages on Facebook are not fully filled out or optimized. This means a lack of contact information, confusing or non-existent CTAs, and unclear marketing all contributes to a lack of users wanting to click on and subscribe to the page.

So in order to compete, one must first evaluate their Facebook small business page. Identify its weak points and fix them. Be sure to fill in all the information you can, supplying your page with the appropriate apps to ensure that any information a potential follower may come to your page seeking is easily found.

To this point, optimizing your page with regular updates will show that you are plugged in to what’s going on, active, and still in business. Be sure to set up regular postings at least once a week to reach the customers you can reach organically and to keep followers updated on what’s on the mind of your business.

 eCommerce has re-developed the markets in countries as far and wide as Canada, the United States, the UK, Japan, China, Australia, and more. Corporate business models, such as Wal-Mart, have had to adapt in order to keep up with the growing small businesses online.

With so much competition, it’s not easy attracting eyes and maximizing sales in eCommerce circles. As sales volumes increase by double-digit percentages every year, every eCommerce company has the potential to make millions. If you’ve been stuck and are looking to sell more in eCommerce, here are five quick tips on how to leverage the local and international marketplace in your favor.

Multiple sources

 eCommerce companies who use every relevant avenue to market to consumers will find the most success. Just because you have an eCommerce site does not mean it is going to get qualified leads. Tap into regional and global markets, growing brand reputation across a growing number of consumers locally and worldwide.

Capitalizing on holiday boom periods

 If you want to sell more, you need to know when to take advantage and launch appropriate campaigns. Throughout the year, there are numerous holiday boom periods including Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, summer vacation, back to school, Thanksgiving, and Halloween. Many eCommerce businesses work wonders are creating appealing content around these days and others. As another example, Black Friday is a huge boom period of the year for many eCommerce companies. It’s all about knowing when to pull the trigger on holiday-appropriate eCommerce marketing campaigns.

 As we spend more time online than ever before and are more comfortable spending money online, the future of eCommerce and online websites in Canada looks strong. After all, it’s so easy today for the general consumer to just log on and buy. Thanks to content management systems and templates, it’s also real easy for companies to create their own websites. As the numbers continue to climb, you may think there’s no limit to what you can accomplish on your own.

The truth of the matter is that every small business and eCommerce site eventually hits a point where they require more knowledge than its owner may have to reach the next level. Why it might be time to get rid of your personal website and to hire a web design company ultimately comes down to what you are aiming to achieve. Though you may consider yourself an amateur web designer, you’re likely a small business owner first and thereby, you put your company’s operations before everything else. At some point, time is going to be stretched pretty significantly. Also, on top of that, eventually every website runs into some snags and issues. A web design company will not only know how to handle these issues but put in the code to prevent similar problems from happening again down the line. For a small business owner to accomplish the same thing, it might take hours to do the research and to try different things.

When it comes to winning customers online in eCommerce, you want to tap into all available avenues, including search engine optimization (SEO), digital marketing, social media, and more. Just by having a website, it does entitle anyone to success and by not having these channels open, it cuts down on the amount of revenue you could be generating. For small businesses who have never had a website before and who don’t have a dime to give to a web designer, we absolutely understand why building a personal website has its advantages. A thriving eCommerce business though requires some sort of experienced web designer on its side to get it to the next level and to open up new customer acquisition channels.

 It’s easy to dismiss Pinterest as a social media channel that you don’t need to tap into as a small business. After all, it’s not Facebook, it’s not Instagram, and it’s not Snapchat. Pinterest is a collection of photos and photo albums created by users, sharing things ranging from recipes to DIY projects, rock stars from yesteryear, and wedding décor and wedding gowns. At least from a basic understanding, that’s what most people probably see Pinterest as.

The reality of Pinterest is that though it might not be one of the hotter social media platforms, it still boasts millions of monthly active users and is a unique way to target specific categories of the marketplace. There are opportunities here to acquire high-volume traffic and qualified sales leads. There’s even some research that shows Pinterest to be better at attracting traffic to small business websites than any other social media channel, including Facebook. That said, a brand needs to know how to use Pinterest in less sales-y ways to increase revenues. In most cases, this involves some creativity, and non-sales related marketing that focus less on the products and more on the lifestyle.

Where any small business should begin with Pinterest is in realizing that this is a visual platform. Therefore, it requires visual content that is beautiful, fun, and real. Show how your brand makes people feel and incorporate products or services into that however do so in a way that is not overly sales-esque. Small businesses such as wedding décor companies, clothing eCommerce retailers, or design firms have the advantage in a visual medium because it’s easy to express what they’re about. Also, users are accustomed to seeing these types of businesses promote through photos. If your small business is in a less visual medium, Pinterest photos can still work however you need to find what works for you and your audience.

 Design, site implementation, and search engine optimization-specific strategies each play a significant role in determining where a given eCommerce site ranks. Search engines are major sources of traffic and revenue, and should be factored into the marketing plans of every eCommerce site. In this article, we share some tips, tricks, and techniques on how to rank your eCommerce website at the top of search engines everywhere.

To begin with, ensuring a site’s eCommerce catalogue is easily readable is key. Remember, specific products and services pages will fight for their own search engine ranking. Thus, every page must be optimized in order to drive their own ranking success in addition to strengthening the quality and opportunity of the eCommerce site to rank. Taxonomies should include landing pages for each keyword you are intending to rank for. Thereby, divide up your category of product into specific areas of navigation. For example, if you wish to rank according to gender, design a landing page for women’s items and men’s items separately. This way, you can successfully target keywords as appropriate.

In filling out an eCommerce site with keywords and relevant SEO strategies, keep in mind to ensure subcategories of pages do not result in duplicate content. Ideally, what an eCommerce site should be built to do is to drive organic search revenues down through each of these product channels. To this point, ensure that there are more than images included. Search engine crawlers cannot process images in the same way they can text. Therefore, text-based product descriptions and text fields need to be embedded in product pages to assist with search engine ranking.

With literally hundreds of self-proclaimed SEO experts across Canada, how to know you’ve hired the right digital marketing and search engine optimization expert is challenging. Research is time-consuming and knowing that marketing results will only come in months later, if you’ve hired the wrong person, it will take weeks to figure it out.

 In the midst of all the hype that was virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) took over online marketing and the way that consumers interact with brands. Augmented reality goes beyond the limitations of VR – which requires a headset to get in and out. Instead, augmented reality applies virtual elements through the lens of a smartphone to real world living. For the first time ever, virtual objects are able to be applied to real-life physical environments. There exists amazing potential for augmented reality to progress and to continue changing consumer behaviour.

Consumers have always shown a love towards fun, interactive marketing. Since the 1990s, augmented reality has been a key focal point of development in marketing circles. At that time, it was so underdeveloped however that not much came of it.

Today, augmented reality has progressed to the point where Google Glass, Snapchat Lenses, and Pokemon Go all serve as examples of application. Though these trends permeate for a time and then tend to fade, this is just the beginning. As augmented reality tech continues to get better at keeping objects in place and based realistic to scale, developers are continuing to create more immersive AR experiences.

 Product descriptions are an opportunity to qualify interest from a consumer and close a sale. A self-identifiable CTA, product descriptions should not merely describe – they need to sell!

 This is a premiere opportunity to persuade a reader into buying your product and if you’ve been able to get a website visitor to the point of reading a product description, that means they’re asking to be sold to. In this article, these are just a few of the techniques we’ve used to write effective product descriptions for eCommerce marketplaces across Canada.

 When it comes to eCommerce product descriptions, the last thing you want to do is to keep it general and boring. Focus in on the buyer and the information they expect to receive from a product description. Imagine having a conversation with them and the questions they would ask. Speak in the same language as the buyer and ensure the most basic information they would want to know is provided.

 Next, highlight the benefits of the product, as it applies to the customer’s lifestyle. For example, make mention of spending time with family, keeping the household or apartment clean, or the ways a product would improve a consumer’s life. Any product should make a consumer feel either happier, healthier, and/or more productive. Thus, identify the value of the product from the eyes of the customer. 

 Inevitably every website owner eventually comes to the question, “how can I get more traffic to my website?” After devoting countless hours into setting up a site and tweaking everything to your preferences, sometimes the answer is not so clear on how to actually get visitors. Much like setting up a physical storefront, just because you have a website does not necessarily mean it will find its clientele. For other websites, maybe they’ve been able to see steady growth for months and then see numbers begin to fall or growth begin to stagnant. Generating traffic is key to online success and to ensure that those numbers continue to increase, here are four amazing things to try.

1 – Using Facebook, Instagram, and other social media to run ad campaigns

 Advertising on social media used to be a lot less expensive however due to changes in algorithms, the most effective way to engage with consumers on social media is to use paid ad campaigns. Creating targeted campaigns to reach specific subsets of the population on social media has shown promising results. Via the 1.65 billion monthly users currently on Facebook, there is plenty of opportunity to reach new and past customers with an ad campaign. If you’re targeting a younger audience, know that among the 500 million monthly active users that Instagram has, approximately 73 percent of these are under the age of 35. There may be other social media sites you wish to advertise on, including Pinterest or Twitter. Do research into where the most likely place is to find your audience.

 Cutting down on costs for the customer is a huge concern among so many eCommerce businesses. After all, customers seeking to order product online are required to pay shipping premiums, which is evidently not something they would have to do if they bought the same items in-person.

The question of how to lower shipping costs is a common query among eCommerce companies. There are some who might consider increasing prices to cover shipping however if that is not manageable, there are other things to look to that may help in cutting down costs.

Packaging is a big factor that many eCommerce companies look at when seeking to lower shipping costs. By reducing the weight and size of packaging, you may be able to lower shipping costs considerably over time. Think of the packaging that your eCommerce company uses. Is it bigger than needed for some items – it might be. Could you get away with a padded envelope instead of a box – maybe. Remember, shipping costs will always be dependent on size and weight. Cardboard boxes can get heavy, especially in terms of packaging. If there is any way to trim down weight, it could help save big.

 HD-quality photography is a key component to any website, ranging from news and headlines to vet techs, retail, restaurants, technology, science, and more. The right images matched to the right aesthetic can help convey messages and meanings that no body of text can.

That said, rarely do we have the budget to hire a professional photographer to capture all of the photos we need to properly show off the high class of our brands.

Sources of free photos become important to filling in sites that require more photography than they can afford. Finding free stock photos that are high-resolution though can be tricky. Thankfully, there are numerous sites – small, large, and specific – that provide free stock photos at high resolutions. To know where to begin searching, here’s the sites we recommend checking out.

 Customer offboarding comes with some big benefits, yes, and it’s important to know how to make the most from them.

‘Customer onboarding’ is a term used to refer to the initial meeting and beginning to the relationship between company and user. ‘Customer offboarding’ is used similarly, describing the end of the relationship between company and user. Customer offboarding is, simply put, the last time that a user interacts with your brand.

Why offboarding is so important is because a negative offboarding experience is one that could have significant consequences on your company. Customers are willing to forgive getting off on the wrong foot with your company, if they end up satisfied in the end. If a customer’s last interaction with your brand is negative however, that is more likely to result in a negative online review, bad press for your business, and word-of-mouth that could turn the user’s friends and family from ever using your company.

Customer offboarding is all about high standards of customer service in addition to key elements of online marketing and web design, such as truthful marketing, creative copywriting, and user-friendly design components. There’s a reason some potential customers are going to turn away from your business. By knowing why customers are leaving your business and/or what their last interaction with your site is like, it can give insight into how to improve.

 Valued today at approximately $2 trillion in annual sales internationally and expected to grow to $4.5 trillion by the end of 2021, ecommerce and online shopping continues to make big business for small and large retailers.

That said, just because the potential is there to make big money does not mean that setting up an ecommerce site guarantees anyone success. It still requires key marketing strategies to generate buzz, direct consumers to your online store, and to entice users to the point of closing a sale. Here’s the top eCommerce web design tips, tricks, and trends leading into the remainder of 2018.

Mobile-friendliness

 Almost as much as 70 percent of the US population own smartphones and by 2022, that number is expected to each 80 percent. No ecommerce site is complete without a mobile-responsive web design, easy to navigate on any mobile device, including smartphones and tablets.

 Imagine what web design would resemble if it did not have to adhere to the limitations of pages. In theory, that would leave consumers with more creative, intuitive browsing experiences and designers with much more freedom to build satisfying content.

Page-less design is not that far off and if web designers continue to nudge the industry in its direction, it just might make for the future of how websites are built. For one, a big advantage to web design with no limitation of pages is that it lets the story of the page develop naturally. Traditional web design has always fitted content to a square or rectangle. By doing away with pages, the story that is built on the page and the lead into a CTA can be more immersive, interactive, and natural.

From a company perspective, when this is done correctly, it means a higher conversion rate. For consumers, it means a more intuitive browsing experience. Today’s websites are filled with image sliders, top navigation, main bodies, sidebars, and that’s it. In many cases, there are pop-ups asking for your email even before you’ve had a chance to consume the page. No pages mean a web designer can effectively build under any style of visual infrastructure they want and in turn, consumers may be more successfully inclined to click.

 Instead of selecting a broad SEO marketing plan, choosing to pursue local SEO may be even more satisfying. If a business is one that depends on local customers and reaching local customers online, pursuing local SEO is one of the more effective tools one may employ to accomplish these goals.

For companies struggling to rank effectively in their localized marketplace, local search engine optimization can help rank one higher in Google Maps listings, location-related keyword searches, and more.

Local SEO is search engine optimization specifically targeting location-based searching. In building short- and long-tail keywords, including a location can help take an SEO plan further in reaching customers.

To learn how to do search engine optimization successfully, local SEO results ultimately come down to three factors. The first is relevance. Search engines like to build results based off the most qualified, high quality web pages possible. Therefore, you need to provide them with relevant, high quality content. Then, there’s proximity. Though not every search result will contain a location, Google attempts to determine location based on the user. The third and final factor is the reputation that a website carries online, such as in reviews and ratings. The higher that your business ranks locally is dependent on these three things, among many other aspects of search engine optimization that play into it.

 Building a smart, effective small business website begins with investing the time to know what to do and what not to do. There are a multitude of different areas where companies make common mistakes, including inserting too much text, a bad visual design, poor or no CTAs included, and a lack of keyword targeting. Every site is going to go through growing pains, yes, however you can save yourself time and money by getting to know the basics.

#1 – To Hire a Web Designer or to Do it Yourself

 The first step to building a small business website is to decide whether this is something you want to attempt on your own or if you choose to hire someone else. Cost is a big consideration, as web design expenses can add up quickly if one does not where to spend. The unfortunate reality is that most of the business owners who try to do it themselves end up not producing the results they have the potential of having. Be it a simple site or something more complex, hiring someone ensures you get experience and knowledge on your side. Also – and this is a biggie for many business owners – it saves time. Keep your focus on running the business and oversee the larger decisions when it comes to your website, letting someone else do the heavy lifting for you.

#2 – It’s Way more Work than you probably think

 Even with the most experienced of web designers, there’s always something unexpected that will eventually rear its head resulting in more time and effort having to be dedicated to a website. By having outside help on hand, you can literally save hours of your time trying to work some of these issues out. Even better, by hiring a web design company or a single web designer, they should be able to point you towards analytical tools that help in seeing where your site is succeeding and where improvements are required. The nature of having a website is one where continued improvement is a necessity.