The Basics Of SEO Copywriting: How to write for search engines and get more traffic
Once upon a time, people were the only possible intended audience for a piece of writing. Sure, you could run it by your dog for a bit of creative input, but his opinion was rarely useful, and invariably involved the addition of ‘woofs’ at inappropriate points.
Now we write for machines as well as humans. Not as all-powerful overlords (well, maybe a little), but as gatekeepers determining what content is worthy to be seen by their fleshy counterparts.
Before you can get your content where it can do some good – in front of your customers' eyes - it must first be judged and assigned a ranking. This ranking shows how relevant the search engine thinks your web page is for the search term that has been entered. And it determines when your web page will be shown,…
Helpful tips for jobseekers looking to break into tech
The future of the tech industry is as promising as ever—and it bodes well for today's job seekers. In 2015, the United States created roughly 6.5 million jobs in the tech industry. Recruiters predict that IT jobs will continue to grow by up to 22% through the year 2020.
While Silicon Valley in California is considered as the home of the main tech startups, other cities like NYC also have a consistently growing tech industry. In fact, New York outpaced Silicon Valley regarding growth with a 33% increase in tech jobs since 2009.
Source: Business Insider
Despite the ongoing rise of tech jobs, millennials and members of the “Gen Z” are faced with one dilemma—competition.
Tech startups know that, if they want to keep up with today’s level of competition, they…
Cadbury smashed its campaign targets and enhanced engagement by betting half its digital budget on Snapchat
With pressure on ad budgets, deciding where to spend your marketing dollars is as tricky as ever. When it comes to FMCG brands, TV is still often seen as the safe bet, the 'no one gets fired for buying IBM' option. But primetime TV slots are expensive and harder to quantify in terms of value when there are only ratings measures without direct measures of response via engagement or clickthrough rate or conversions as available for online marketing. For this reason and to reach audiences who are online, many businesses who convert their customers online (eCommerce, SaaS, news sites, gaming etc.) have moved the majority of their ad budgets to digital formats in recent years. It's easy to see why. You can track links, measure traffic, work out the conversion rate and thus establish what…
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01 Aug 2016
A structured guide to improving leads and sales from your website
You'd think Conversion Rate Optimisation would a “no-brainer”. You can get more leads/sales from your website without spending extra money on marketing for new visitors. Sold. But it seems as if the jargon and complexities of analytics can get in the way of understanding approaches how to improve conversion rates.
To help demystify what’s involved with a structured approach to improving conversion, we’ve created a 6-step process, which is the foundation of all our client projects, dubbed Conversion Architecture. To help explain to non-specialists what’s involved in a typical conversion project, I’ll be sharing how we approach each step in a series of articles on Smart Insights.
In the first in this series, we'll cover Step 1 - Analyse
Step 1 Analyse
This is probably where most people start to get a glazed look…
How to deliver successful email campaigns with little or no HTML knowledge
Email campaigns tend to be the bread and butter of what marketers do. They typically have high conversion rates compared to other marketing channels and are a quick and easy way to stay in touch with your contact lists. However, marketing staff are spending way too much time developing emails and not enough time focusing on activities that will give them a better ROI, such as future planning and developing successful data practices (according to the 2016 Email Industry Census).
How long does it typically take for your staff, or you, to build an email?
In Litmus’ ‘State of Email Production’ report the answers ranged from a few days to between one and two weeks, with 64% of participants being more likely to spend weeks rather than days. That’s a lot of time invested in something that will take…
An example of separating the Wheat from the Chaff and Why BANT isn't dead
Lead qualification criteria are characteristics that help to classify a lead by the degree of its willingness and readiness to buy. As a result of this qualification, one can distinguish, in terms of making a purchase, the leads with the most and least potential: hot, warm, and cold.
In lead generation there are usually two stages of qualification: marketing and sales qualification. The first one is done by a team responsible for a marketing activity. The sales qualification is done to confirm the information from a sales perspective.
Ideally, a number of marketing and sales qualified leads must coincide. If a sales department rejects lots of leads, you most likely need to correct your marketing qualification criteria or to add a new criterion. Of course, sometimes it happens that the criteria are correct, but a sales department determines, through reasons…
Selling to your existing customers is much easier than attracting new ones. So keep them coming back.
Do you want more returning customers? The kind of customers who spend more and visit more often?
Then a loyalty program could be the perfect tool to add to your customer retention arsenal.
Why? You may ask. Let’s start with the most reasonable fact: because it makes you more money. That is, of course, if you do it the right way.
Here’s a quick stat that’s worth remembering: Keeping a current customer costs you 3-10 times less than acquiring a new one, depending on the industry you are in. According to WordStream, small businesses spend between $9,000 and $10,000 trying to attract new customers on Google paid search campaigns in just each month on average. Just image how much more efficient you could be if you could switch that re-activating existing customers and getting repeat…
How to avoid letting these PPC Myths Corrupt Your Marketing
Have you heard about some of these PPC (Pay Per Click) myths before? As so many businesses use PPC, it’s not surprising there are lots of myths about them. Over the years, PPC has changed and been updated. Some of the old strategies that were successful ‘back in the day’ are now outdated.
Common misconceptions have allowed many myths to spread and have negatively influenced how people understand PPC advertising.
There are many PPC myths out there so we’ve picked some of the most dangerous. The myths we’ve chosen are so believable, they have the potential to corrupt marketing strategies or stump success.
1. PPC guarantees instant and fast results
Some marketers quickly jump on the PPC train because they believe it will win instant results. In truth, sometimes you can see a rapid rise in traffic but it definitely does not guarantee positive results.
…
There are major obstacles to using brand awareness as a marketing objective
Over the past decade marketers have relied on quantity based measurements as a proxy for campaign performance. The volume of impressions, clicks and likes indicates that people see the ads and find them relevant and compelling.
But with the increase of ad blocking and bot frauds, as well as demand for more data transparency, evidence suggest that traditional metrics do a poor job is measuring sales, engagement and, ultimately, ROI. A study from the IAB and Ernst & Young confirmed this trend, estimating that $8.2 Billion are lost as a result of traffic frauds, bots frauds, ad block and other threats.
Specifically, the IAB found the following major reasons (the full report is in PDF form here):
$4.2 billion is lost due to “non-human traffic”
$1.1 billion is lost due to “malvertising-related activities”
$2.4 billion is lost due to…
An honest and frank look at the often flawed digital procurement process from the [supplier] dark side
The software procurement process is fundamentally flawed. It's a waste of time and I'd go as far to say that neither the buyer nor the supplier ever really get the result they are looking for.
I hold this view as a digital director who has dealt with a fair number of tender processes over the years and, while I appreciate where this process comes from and why it is used, I just feel it's time to urge businesses to start shaking off this hugely out of date way of buying when it comes to digital. After all, it's a legacy of the advertising industry that operates in a totally different way than it does now.
So what's the problem?
Overall I think it's that…
