How to get better results from your online content marketing strategy

Building a profitable and successful company is no easy task. Even with a great idea/product, incredible staff to bring it to fruition, and all the drive in the world, if you are unable to connect with consumers then the fact is that it just won’t get off the ground. This is exactly why it’s so important that you also consider your content marketing strategy. Your strategy needs to address one very important question, which is "what is the purpose of your content". Why are you creating the content in the first place? In order to have a clear answer for this question, you need to fully understand the wants and needs of your consumers, which means there needs to be a research and discovery process in place. So how exactly do you…

Reaching the first page isn’t enough anymore, you need to place your business in the #1 position

Ranking higher among a congested competition in Google is a mandatory goal for many businesses today. If you are an e-commerce business, are you aware of the SEO tactics and requirements to take you to the top? After all, if you aren’t generating enough clicks, you’re not generating sales. The following data should show you why a powerful SEO strategy for your e-commerce website is necessary. Around 44% of online shoppers initiate their search through a search engine. According to the data provided by the US Department of Commerce, in 2015, the e-commerce sales per year reached $341.7 billion, which is a 14.6% increase from that of 2014s $298.3 billion. Furthermore, the data also stated that online shopping accounted for 7.3% of the total retail sales in 2015, as compared to 6.4% in 2014. Updated data for …

Anything that affects the performance of content should be a content creator’s business (even if not directly)

Content makes the digital world go around. It helps drive greater traffic to businesses, generate lead growth, and improve conversion rates. But content that can achieve all that requires great planning and strategizing. En route content creators run into several roadblocks. By content creator, I mean anyone who creates content. That could be a dedicated team, a freelancer, or a new business owner who does all the digital marketing themselves, of which content creation is a part. [si_guide_block id="5651" title="Download our Premium Resource – Content marketing strategy guide" description="Less than half of businesses have a content marketing strategy, meaning they're missing out on the opportunity to plan, manage, and optimize their content marketing."/] With that in mind, I’m presenting a wide variety of challenges that content creators face. Some are specific to content creation, while others may…

Mobile experiences are now the norm

Smartphones are everywhere, and they’ve grabbed our attention. Maybe even too much! Based on seeing my teenagers’ faces almost constantly buried in their screens, I’m sure mobile website usage will ramp-up much further in the future. So, when we do conversion design we need to be mindful of this reality. We need to realize that the smartphone is not where the conversion happens, but more often where it starts - the first or second touchpoint - especially when it comes to lead-generation usage scenarios, but also for e-commerce. In this post, I first highlight how mobile user experiences differ from their desktop counterparts. Then I share my top four do’s, followed by my top four dont’s of mobile conversion design. Follow this guidance and other mobile best practices and your site will soon see higher…

Examples of how website designs must be optimized to support the way we hold and interact with smartphones

Our compilation of statistics showing the growth in smartphone usage highlights the well-known need to create effective mobile experiences. With mobile minutes accounting for more than two-thirds of online interactions in many countries, there is an obvious need to optimize designs so they are consistent with consumer behaviour as they use their phones. This need is also suggested by statistics showing lower conversion rates on smartphone (they’re typically between one half and one third of those on desktop).

Consumer behaviour of mobile interaction

I was recently running a training course looking at improving mobile customer journeys and experiences where our focus was on Millennial and Gen Z personas. I discovered this great new-to-me research on mobile interaction based on how a phone is held and interactions occur with a mobile handset using fingers…

The way you design and code the emails can either create barriers or remove them

Emails are getting more and more popular with each passing day. However, it still needs work to make email marketing an inclusive place that everyone can use and understand. The way you design and code the emails can either create barriers or remove them. [si_guide_block id="5508" title="Download our Premium Resource – Email marketing strategy guide" description="This comprehensive guide shows you how to take your email marketing strategy to the next level, covering a lot more than tips to improve your creative and copy, although we do cover this too."/] Great email design starts by making it work for everyone. Everyone here includes the ‘specially abled’ individuals who perceive the world differently than the average user. Design does not simply imply how something looks. It surely is visually impressive, but it also meets the real needs of your readers. I…

Campaign of the Week: Spotify use their data analytics in a risky but elegant marketing campaign

When it comes to data analytics and marketing campaigns, you don't often find common ground within the B2C arena. I myself have what could be described as an unhealthy fascination with data analytics. We won't go into that now though, instead let's talk about how Spotify made it cool with not just millennials, but everyone. Their "2018 Goals" campaign was the perfect way to sign off an impressive 2017. [si_guide_block id="84595" title="Download Free resource –Integrated marketing megatrends" description="Learn about the 10 megatrends that have already helped leading companies future-proof their strategies by ensuring all aspects of marketing are integrated."/]

The play

Spotify experienced an impressive 2017 with the brand starting to hit a sharper growth curve than any years prior. This meant that they saw 40% growth in revenues and clawed back…

How to boost traffic to your website in the short term, and keep your SEO high going forward.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a vital and ongoing consideration for any website owner. It doesn’t matter if your website is a personal passion project, is supporting a physical business, or is serving as an e-commerce business, you need to maintain a decent SEO score if you’re to have any hope of making it in the big leagues. The good news is that there are a number of things you can do on your own initiative that will generate organic traffic to your website, while simultaneously bringing your SEO score up. If you are still relatively new to the world of SEO, the following tips are also useful for developing a keener understanding of how SEO works. A lot of newcomers make the mistake of thinking…

Chart of the Day: Why people aren't reading your emails but are still subscribed to them

The inbox of the average customer is a cluttered one. Every online store and brand they make a purchase from wants them to come back, meaning enticing offers, discounts, and sales are constantly being thrown at them. As a result, you may find the number of people receiving your e-newsletter and the number opening it are vastly different. Yes Lifecycle Marketing polled 1,000 people who have made an online purchase in the last 12 months to learn what motivates consumers to engage with retailers. When asked why they may stay subscribed to emails that they don't read, most people (42%) said it was because they scan the subject lines in their inbox to see which emails they want to open. Subject lines should be persuasive and summarise the contents of your…

Search engines are now using data-driven factors to determine how relevant your website is to a particular search query

The practice of search engine optimization (SEO) has experienced monumental changes over the course of the last 15 years. When SEO first broke onto the scene, it was quickly discovered that webmasters could manipulate search results and make their websites rank well merely by packing their target keywords into the website as many times as possible – a practice known as “keyword stuffing”. This majorly skewed and distorted Google’s and Bing’s search rankings, since low-quality, “spammy” websites were quickly able to outrank reputable and relevant websites. In response to this unfavourable outcome, these search engines rolled out several rounds of algorithm updates, permanently changing the way in which websites are ranked. Presently, Google and Bing each use hundreds of different factors – with varying levels of importance – to rank websites, helping to ensure…