Frankel Interactive

4 Easy Tips to Beat Google’s Mobile-First Index

Adam Frankel — 2016-12-19

Google's Mobile-First index can lead to a paradigm shift in the way indexing works. It necessitates mobile-friendly individual pages besides a mobile-friendly website.

Here’s a brief synopsis of mobile-first indexing:

What is it?

Up until the announcement, the desktop version of webpage’s content was Google’s indexing priority. But now the priority will be mobile-optimized pages. This change has come as a result of the large volume of users that have been migrating to handheld platforms and away from desktops.

Is this new?

Yes and no.

Smart businesses have been making their websites mobile-friendly for several years now. But never before has Google advised bringing such efforts to the granular level i.e. individual pages of a website.

Hence, outwardly there’s nothing‘new’ as Google will continue to have a unique indexing mechanism for both mobile and desktop versions of webpages. However, pages optimized for mobile devices will be the priority and that’s something new.

How should you adjust your webpages to accommodate the change in indexing? Read on to find answers:

Mobile-friendly configuration

Responsive design may be the holy grail of mobile-friendliness, but not the only one. There are other configuration methods such as dynamic serving and different URLs. I don’t suggest the latter because even though Google has an agnostic approach to separate URLs, visitors may get confused.

You can choose dynamic serving instead of responsive design. The URLs will be the same, but the HTML copy will change depending on the device being used. Dynamic serving comes with a few benefits. One of them, perhaps the most crucial one is fast loading time. As separate HTML versions are sent to users with separate devices, handheld users download a smaller version of the original content, which doesn’t take too much time to load.

On the flipside, dynamic serving is a bit hard to implement. Google has enlisted some mistakes that occur with dynamic serving. Besides, dynamic serving is either unidirectional or bidirectional redirecting. Mobile developers are cautioned against redirects. Other tips for mobile-friendly configuration include not using robots.txt file, signaling to Google that individual pages are optimized for mobile, and a rich user-experience.

Getting rid of clutter

Mobile design is often plagued by too muchclutter. Cluttercancome in all forms. At times, it’s difficult to identify whether an onpage element amounts to visual or technical distraction.

Here are some of the elements that mobile designers should get rid of:

#Pop-ups: Mobile users detest pop-ups more than their desktop counterparts. Because desktop screens are larger, it’s easy to click on the “X” and close the virtual pop-up bar. But mobile users tap instead of clicking and often face difficulty locating the close button icon.

#No flash: Why use flash when there’s Javascript and HTML5? The graph below shows the ever increasing popularity of HTML5. Take a look:

Source

Flash is old school and not conducive in terms of ROI. So, no Flash.

#Reduce accidental taps: Users feel very annoyed when they accidentally tap on an icon. Scrolling issues and crowded layouts are the culprits behind accidental taps. Fix scrolling shortcomings and make the layout simplistic.

#Large images: Large images can make the loading time slow. So use images that are not so large. Use compression software to resize the image.

#Codes and pages: The source code is what determines the functionality of a site. Examine it to remove the unnecessary codes. Also, get rid of doorway pages. Other than being redundant, such pages can trigger unnecessary redirects, which Google hates.

Getting rid of the above clutter can help you render a perfectly mobile-friendly website, optimized for Google’s mobile-first index.

Localization matters

When you are building a user-friendly mobile page, localization matters big time.

Why does it matter so much?

Because Google’s report on local search behavior reveals local searchers are more likely to pursue action compared to non-local searchers. The report reads “50 percent of consumers who conducted a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day, and 34 percent who searched on a computer/tablet did the same.”

To make mobile-optimized pages localized, you need to:

? Include the state, city and zip code info in the title tag. Google has started allowing site owners to increase the length of title tags for mobile. They have 78 characters - enough to add location specific details.

? Alt tags and all other meta tags should have city data.

? All pages should have contact details of the business such as physical address, phone, fax and email.

? The content needs to be the same for separate locations while the contact details must change.

None of these steps is difficult to implement. Along with these steps, a business can give users some location-specific incentives such helping them find certain places.

New snippets

Site owners often wonder whether mobile visitors have the patience to go through the entire onpage content. Such apprehensions are justified. Studies have found a mean decrease of 35% in app session length. Mobile visitors have a shorter attention span than desktop users.

Content, not detailed enough may not get a featured snippet. But mobile users prefer content that’s brief, concise and framed like a short answer. Does that mean featured snippet is obtainable only for desktop users?

No.

Jennifer Slegg of the SEM Post explained that Google is updating featured snippets and making them tailor-made for mobile users. Such snippets will be displayed against “Know-Queries” or simple queries. Such queries can be names of individuals or places. As a business, expect people search using names of areas and places. Optimize your site for such places to make it look mobile-friendly.

Featured snippets are more important for desktop users than mobile users, largely because answer to those snippets are detailed whereas answer to “Know-Queries” snippets are short and precise. So make sure that you have pages with long answer as well as pages with brief and quick answers.

Summing up

The mobile-first index creates new concepts for consideration when optimizing your website. Google hates nothing more than those that try to trick the system, so sticking with these tips will keep you safe and set you on your way for a properly mobile optimized site.

Image Courtesy: pixabay.com

Brands Should Follow these 9 Tips to Harness Facebook Live

Adam Frankel — 2016-12-16

Earlier this year, Facebook introduced a new feature called Live. It allows Facebook users to connect to their followers in real-time via video. Click here to know more about this feature.

Live is a powerful marketing tool. Candace Payne’s Chewbacca Mask video, created on May 20th, has garnered 160 million+ views, nearly 3 million reactions and 3.3 million shares. The user currently has 83K Facebook followers. If she can trigger such enormous engagement, imagine what top and mid-level brands can accomplish with Live.

Brand promotion now boils down to user-engagement. Using Live, enterprises can engage with their fans in real-time and make the engagement meaningful and purpose-driven.

Here are some useful tips they can follow to harness Live:

Use a face

Live gives you an excellent opportunity to personify your brand. Personification builds brand identity. Use an employee or an executive or an ambassador who will interact with viewers. Choose someone who’s worthy because your brand’s reputation will depend on him.

High-quality camera

Live is available only on Smartphone. It won’t open on low-bandwidth m.facebook.com. If you don’t have the Facebook app installed on your Android or iOS device, you can’t use Live. Because the Smartphone camera is your default recording instrument, make sure you are using a high-end Smartphone with great camera specs.

If the broadcast is hazy because of being shot from a low-resolution camera, it’d result in an off-putting user-experience. So the camera quality is a high-priority.

The duration

The duration of the broadcast is crucial. Candace Payne’s recording was 4 minutes long, however Live broadcasts can last up to 8 hours. Depending on the event or topic if the Live broadcast, anything over an hour is going to lose its effectiveness. Even then, an hour of video content had better be really engaging or you’ll be wasting your time, as your audience will move on very quickly. Keep it as short and as meaningful as you can.

The setup

A broadcast should not simply be a broadcast. A brand can add informative and entertaining elements to its Live broadcast, so that fans find it appealing. To add such elements, brands need to create a setup first.

They can hire seasoned advertising professionals who make ad films. If that puts too much pressure on their budget, then they can at least have brainstorming sessions with creative team members and come up with ideas.

A perfect setup requires an appropriate background and a compelling script.

Tinker with perspective

There’s no point recording from a static perspective. Most record their broadcast from the front. If the broadcast is a long-duration one, then try to tinker with the perspective. Record not only from the front but also from the back and from sideways. This will not only make the broadcast interesting, but also give the viewers a 360° view of the background surroundings.

Is the mic okay?

If it’s not, the quality of the broadcast would suffer. Background noise negatively impact your broadcast. Once again, the Tablet or Smartphone being used to record the broadcast must be a higher quality devive, because low-end devices have below quality microphones.

Live broadcasters may want to consider using an external mic to help compensate for a devices lack of microphone quality. If the audience can’t easily hear the broadcast… it’s over before it started.

Edit for improvement

Studies show that when users view branded posts, they become extra alert. Even the smallest mistakes fail to escape their eyes. That’s why brands are strongly advised by digital media professionals to carefully edit their pre-recorded content prior to uploading to Live.

Bearing this in mind, the ultimate recommendation is that if there isn’t a true necessity to be “live” in real-time, it is best to take the time to edit where you need to, including audio issues, and upload after the fact.

The purpose of editing is to improve the overall video quality. So take care of all the following:

? Suitable category: When someone uploads a Live video, a drop-down menu appears, asking them to pick a category. The category must represent the brand as well as the nature of the videocast content.

? CTA elements: CTA icons at the end of Live broadcast are highly likely to be clicked, especially if the broadcast is concise and interesting. So, don’t forget to add them.

? Suitable thumbnail: They are provided with 10 image options by Facebook, from which they can select one. Or, they can choose their own thumbnail image.

The above-mentioned edit hacks can improve the video quality and experience, generating better engagement.

Pages and profiles

Live videos can be uploaded from individual accounts, as well as from Facebook pages. A brand should use both. Individuals endorsing a brand can increase the campaign’s organic reach, provided the individual in question is an influencer (someone like Candice Payne) and the endorsement isn’t overt.

Pages have some advantages. One of them is the control and customization settings, which are available only to pages, not to individual profiles.

Subscribe to Live

To expand its reach, a brand needs to entice people to discover and watch its Live videos. An easy way to do so is to encourage them to tap on the “Live Subscribe” button that shows up on the top of a Live broadcast.

Just like with YouTube videos, the talent featured on the Live Broadcast can remind viewers to tap on the “Live Subscribe” option.

Another way to get more viewers is to increase interaction with the audience by sending notifications about upcoming broadcasts..

Conclusion

None of the tips shared here is difficult to implement. No expensive tools are required. Brands can easily follow these tips to increase Live viewership and get more trusted followers on Facebook, who may become their customers in the future.

Image Courtesy: twitter.com

5 Ways Small Businesses Can Benefit from Automation

Adam Frankel — 2016-12-14

When it comes to handling the workload, small businesses are always hard-pressed. Automation is the solution to their problems. Automation enables them to reduce workload pressures and deliver the output on time without compromising with quality.

Business Process Management(BPM) and Business Intelligence (BI) are two key aspects of automation. The first is inbound while the second can be both inbound and outbound. Automation is not limited to these two aspects. It’s well beyond.

We have discussed some of the aspects of automation. We’re already through with best marketing tools for SMBs, automation trends for digital marketers and selection parameters for BI software. Let’s find out some more on and offbeat strands of automation:

Avoiding repetition

Repeating the same work again and again is tiresome. It consumes timeand keeps the employees from delving into more productive initiatives. Automating repetitive tasks is the most sought-after aspect of automation. The following are some of the tasks that benefit from automation:

? Sending invoice to customers

? Accounting and payroll management

? Managing inventory and tracking details

Interestingly, eliminating human follies is not the biggest benefit of automating repetitive tasks. The biggest benefit is giving employees a break from such tasks. None of the tasks mentioned above require specialized knowledge. These tasks could be handled by anyone. Automating these tasks allow employers to assign more serious tasks to employees with specialized skills.

Programmatic ad buying

Organic campaigns may be the most favored mode of promotion, but advertising has its own set of benefits. Small and medium size businesses are apprehensive about advertising, and that’s largely because they are cash-strapped.

Programmatic advertising incorporates advertising and automation. It lowers cost and guarantees increased ROI for publishers. Here’s how it benefits small businesses:

A report published on Adage shows in 2013, ad company Index Exchange sold 11% ads to the enterprise in-house teams. A year later, it jumped to 15%. Automation eliminated the need to outsource advertising work to a professional agency, thereby lowering the marketing cost.

Success in advertising depends on understanding audience demographic. That’s quite a hectic task. Understanding targeted audience segments, time of day, browser search history, rotation, etc might take days or months. With automation, it’s sorted almost in no time.

Leading social networks have recognized the importance of programmatic. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn allow publishers to run programmatic ads on their own platforms. These networks ease ad campaigns via user analytics details collected from within the networks.

Managing virtual teams

It’s impossible to manage virtual teams globally without automation. Small businesses often work with freelancers. It saves them from hiring in-house employees, which can be cost-prohibitive. Freelancers, who work from developing countries often charge less because of low-value currencies. Hence, small businesses prefer to work with them.

But Managing global virtual teams is a challenge. Automation helps them face this challenge. There are plenty of tools to facilitate remote delivery of work. Affordable business cloud platforms are just a click away and enable virtual team members to access all sorts of development and troubleshooting solutions.

For team management, there are several tools like Basecamp, Sprintly, Clickmeeting, Workflowmax etc. These tools ease communication and smoothen up the completion and delivery of work. A crucial aspect of virtual team management is giving team members secured access to customer data. Plenty of cutting-edge tools are there that seamlessly integrate with business servers to secure virtual access.

WiFi access automation

Giving free access to WiFi hotspot comes with a laundry-list of benefits. The major benefits include:

? Speed up event registration

? Tracking customer behavior

? Personalized brand experience

Some people feel skeptical about free WiFi. But many would give away their contact details to access a WiFi hotspot for free. By placing a registration page, a small business can collect user data. Then they can target those users for sales. Many retail outlets are already doing it. Automation makes it fairly easy for them to set up a registration page.

People use WiFi to log into social networks or browse the web. Either way, WiFi hotspot providers can gather user data. By analyzing the data clusters, they can understand behavior patterns of users. Again automation comes to their rescue. Automated tools can predict the likelihood of users becoming customers.

The transition from a neutral web user to loyal customer requires personalized experience of the brand. Automation is again the buzzword. Marketing automation renders personalization and enhanced targeting.

It’s hard to believe, but so much can be achieved with WiFi automation.

Employee satisfaction and retention

Small businesses heavily depend on their employees. If competent employees leave the organization, finding their replacements may take time and the delivery of the work may get delayed. Automation retains employees and increases their level of workplace satisfaction.

Along with that, automation also boosts employee morale. As automation reduces human errors, identifying employee productivity becomes easier. Automated tracking tools increase the transparency. Employees can tally how many hours they have worked and how much they have been paid.

Summing up

Automation is agnostic to business scale and size. But small businesses need it more than large businesses. The biggest worry of a small business is to keep its operating expenses under the margin of affordability. Automation assists small businesses in that pursuit and provides them with ample opportunities to grow.

Image Courtesy: pixabay.com

5 Simple Yet Effective Tips to Use Twitter for Customer Service Purpose

Adam Frankel — 2016-12-12

Twitter has a 200 million active monthly user-base; it has great potential for brands to bring promotional activities closer to the customer service experience.

Nonetheless, it hasn’t taken off as one might expect, however we do see epic brand fails on Twitter.

Only 30% of brands used Twitter for customer service back in 2014. The percentage hasn’t increased much since then.
Among the brands that use Twitter, less than 10% address more than 70% of customer queries.

Today’s customers, especially those who stay active on social media, are millennials. If they get pissed off, the present and future sales prospect will be hurt.

Here are some tips for brands that are looking toward the use of Twitter for customer service:

Dedicated customer support handle

Brand after brand make the same mistakes - they handle customer queries from their original Twitter handle. This approach is problematic for two reasons:

Original Twitter handle is often an engagement doorway. Customers may hesitate to report their complaints there.
A dedicated customer service handle can give brands a granular view of customer complaint rate and customer satisfaction rate.

Some brands have adopted this approach. Comcast is one of those brands. They have two Twitter handles. One is @comcast, which they use for brand promotion and the other is @comcast cares, used for customer service.

When a brand divides its marketing efforts into individual segments, it creates a workforce with varied skill sets. There’s a secondary advantage of having two separate customer handles on Twitter. Since two people handle two different networks, the work gets done in less time, and customers experience a very short turnaround time between their complaints/queries and replies.

Repeat clauses and ToI

One way to improve the communication strategy is to minimize miscommunication in the sales cycle. Customers being misinformed or confused when they are purchasing will lead to unsatisfied and disappointed clients.

It’s wise to keep reminding customers about the purchasing clauses and the terms and conditions. Brands don’t do that often enough, chiefly because there aren’t many platforms where they can connect to customers and prospects, with the intention of educating them about company guidelines.

Twitter is one such platform. A dedicated customer support handle can inform people about policy guidelines. Whenever there’s a change in them, brands can update their handles. This way, they can overhaul existing regulations and streamline relevant information to customers, without having to worry about possible miscommunication.

Better interaction

Customers want to connect to brands on many levels, and in different ways. Separate Twitter handles add depth to the interaction and make it more meaningful. If dividing the social media team is not possible due to budgetary restrictions, then companies can at least divide a team member’s time.

A healthy interaction has two sides to it - it engages with consumers through comments, tweets and retweets, and it aggressively handles customer’s concerns and queries. When one person or one team handles both, things get jumbled up, resulting in a non user-friendly customer service experience.

Humanize responses

Recent surveys are pointing out the buyer’s proclivity for personalized interactions. Online retail is as much about product experience as it is about product quality. Customer service reps fail to trigger personalized interaction because they give scripted replies to customers when interacting with them.

This is a clear, no no.. Brands must humanize customer responses. Customers and non customers alike love personalized treatment. It even affects their buying decisions. See the interaction between a brand and a customer below:

Notice the tone in Southwest Airlines’ tweet. It’s overtly personalized. The prospect customer, John, seemed to appreciate it.

Live chat responses collected from around the world show there’s a correlation between the average chat duration and response time, and customer satisfaction level.

Take a look at the chart below:

Source

Twitter doesn’t allow live chat. But brands and customers/prospect can still connect to each other through a series of tweets. If the responses are personalized, then customers feel taken to the brand. That’d increase the duration of the communication, boost the consumer satisfaction and the increase sales prospect’s viability.

Use Keyword Monitoring tools

There are several tools to help customer service representatives on Twitter. My favorites are Hootsuite, Tweet reach, Warble, Twitter Counter, etc.

The good thing about these tools is they let enterprises observe isolated segments related to branding and customer experience. Here are some of those segments that every marketer should keep track of:

People relevant to the company
Topics and hashtags relevant to the brand
Real-time tracking of search terms
Tracking Twitter engagement metrics

The insights retrieved from these tools can be immensely helpful to the customer service teams as they can identify people who are likely to respond positively, anticipate the concerns that customers may come up with and even track the search terms customers are using.

Informed replies are better than non-informed replies. The tools mentioned above empower customer service reps by making them more informed about customer behavior and search and feedback pattern.

Conclusion

So we can conclude that Twitter is a great platform where brands can run promotions and customer service on parallel planes. They need to give themselves proper time and frame innovative strategies, so that they can harness this unique aspect of Twitter and reap the benefits.

Image Courtesy: pixabay.com

Importance of Keyword Optimization and How to do It

Adam Frankel — 2016-11-30

Every digital marketing strategy that you create ultimately revolves around keywords. From content optimization, social media sharing, link building to directly emailing newsletters to the target audience right in their mail box…keywords are an essential tool that help you reach out to your audience. That’s why keyword optimization is a very important strategy that you just can’t ignore.

Keyword Optimization: An Important Piece of the Digital Marketing Puzzle

The world of digital marketing is constantly evolving and so do keywords. With the changes in trends, old keywords are soon replaced with new ones. Uncovering new keyword opportunities will help your business explore various verticals that are yet to be covered. Keyword optimization helps you constantly update your database with new keywords that will lead to increases in traffic, leads and sales.

What is Keyword Optimization?

Keyword optimization is a three stage process that can help a business target qualified leads and drive them from search engine results to its website. It’s a very important component for both paid and organic search strategies.

The three stages of Keyword Optimization are:

Research
Analysis
Selection of the best keywords

Incorporating the right keywords does not only helps to improve your website traffic and conversion rate. Other benefits include helping you to –

Measure the potential traffic flow – Popular keyword analysis can help you to measure the actual size of your potential target market.
Understand the User Behavior – Keywords are like breadcrumbs. If you follow the trail, you will get an idea of what the needs of your target audience are.
Write Effective Content – Incorporating optimized keywords can improve your SERP visibility, ranking and drive more traffic to your website. The right keywords can help you directly address your customer’s needs and pain points.

Despite all these benefits, it may surprise you to learn that keyword optimization has been listed as one of the most annoying tasks of digital marketing.

The following chart breaks down what are considered to be the most annoying, challenging and time-consuming aspects of search marketing according to an opinion poll of typical search marketers –

Source

Keyword research is one of the top annoying tasks that account for about 32 percent. Another survey results chart below highlights the list of annoying things about keyword research as surveyed –

Source

Almost every aspect of keyword research seems to be something digital marketers wish they could avoid. The tasks that top the charts appear to be editing/updating keyword lists, keyword brainstorming and discovery, and organizing keyword lists.

The above survey based facts, however, ironically contrasts with the hundreds of articles that you’re going to find on the importance of keyword research in the search engine results page.

Having said that, you can’t ignore that keywords are one of, if not the most valuable and high returning tool that is required for any digital marketing strategy. Below are some valuable tips that you’ll find helpful in your keyword research, as well as optimization efforts going forward.

Keyword Optimization Tactics: The Best Ways to Identify and Use Keywords in Your Digital Marketing Campaign

#1 – Choosing the Right Keywords

Keyword optimization begins with using the right keywords. However, as already mentioned, figuring out which keywords to use, is pretty much the most dreaded task. It’s safe to say that when people don’t enjoy a task, they don’t put their best efforts into it. As it relates to your marketing efforts, that means your there’s a good chance the quality of your keyword selected could be affected..

The good news is that keyword-targeting tools exist to make the task less of a burden., such as:

Google AdKeyword Planner
Keyword Tool
SEMrush
Long Tail Pro
SpyFu
KeywordSpy
Bing Webmaster Tools and more

You can learn about these tools from Neil Patel’s blog on the 7 tools that new businesses can use to target the best keywords. Identifying the right keywords can help boost your chances of reaching your SEO-related goals and traffic.

Keyword research is, however, more than these tools. It involves in-depth market analysis and understanding keyword success – things that need to be done manually. You’ll probably find this article on the topic keyword research helpful.

#2 – Optimizing Your Business Website

Apart from the various technical tasks that your website has to cover when SEO optimizing your website (which you can learn about from Moz’s beginner's guide to SEO), how do you optimize your website using the right keyword or keyword phrase?

Where to Use Keyword-phrases on your Website and How to do it

Place the keyword only once in the title tag. Try putting the keyword close to the beginning of the title tag.
Use the keyword prominently on the top of the page.
Place the keyword (at least twice or three times) in the body copy. Try out variations of the same keyword to avoid stuffing your web page with excessive referrences .
Use your keyword at least once in the image alt attribute. This will help to make your web page visible not only in the web search but also in the image search
Do not forget to insert your keywords at least once in the meta description tag.

It must be noted that the meta description tag is used as the text snippet that is displayed on the results page by the search engine. So even if the meta description is not used by the search engine crawlers for ranking, this is the thing that helps to attract readers and generate clicks into your website.

#3 – Content Creation and Optimization

Whether you have content to write or a video to produce, you’ll want to do it based on the keywords that people are searching for.

You can optimize your content one of two ways –

You can first, compose your content and then optimize it using keywords that are popular in your industry.

Or,

You can research the keywords and then decide which ones would make great content that you can share online. If you are using Google Adwords Keyword Planner, you might get a total of 801 suggested keywords to start your research along with their estimated search volume.

You might want to take download the data and use in a source to generate future topics.

With this approach, you can create strong content strategies that will help you drive potential traffic to your website.

#4 - Social Media Optimization

Trying out new social media marketing tactics for your Facebook advertisements and Twitter campaigns can be great, but keyword optimization can help you from missing out on opportunities that may arise within the social network.

Key Elements to Optimize on Your Social Media Pages and Profiles with Targeted Keywords and Phrases

Make sure that you have a keyword phrase in the bio of your Twitter profile page
Check whether you have keywords in the Category, Long Description and Short Description pages of your Facebook profile. All of these pages can be edited from the ‘About You’ page tab.
For your Instagram profile, include the keyword phrase in the bio section.
For your Pinterest profile, make sure that there is a keyword phrase in the ‘About You’ box of your profile.
If you have a Google+ profile, then mention the keyword phrase in the tagline, introduction, occupation and skill section of your page. As for your Google+ pages, ensure that the keyword phrase has been placed in the introduction and the category section at least once.

When Optimizing Your Social Profiles with Keywords

Don’t overstuff your social profiles and pages with keywords. This can come across as ‘spammy’.

Add your keywords to your social media profiles and campaign pages in a natural way. If you are new to this, then try following the already existing social media profiles of your competittion. Analyze what they are doing to see how frequently used keyword phrases in their profiles and how they benefit from it.

Along with optimizing your social profiles and pages with targeted keywords, you can also optimize your social media updates so that they can appear on the search engine results page as well. In addition to improving the visibility of your social media page within the network, social media update optimization with proper keywords can give you wider exposure on the search engine results page.

You can start doing this by using them in your main status update. Here is an example of posts from Moz’s Facebook page had been indexed in the Google Search –

Source

#5 – Email Optimization of Subject Line

Stats show a good email subject line can lead to increased open rates. However, good keyword optimization can also improve your newsletter’s visibility.

There’s a good chance many recipients of your newsletter won’t be paying attention to the subject line when it enters their inboxes. However, emails are often searched for after the fact. In that case, wouldn’t you want your email newsletter to be quickly accessible? Of course!

An Important Tip for Optimizing Your Email Newsletter Subject Line

Never leave the important keyword(s) out of the email subject line.

There are countless emails that a person receives in his/her mailbox. Your email might get opened and read. If it's good, it might convert and if it's not that good, it might be forgotten about but left in the inbox if not deleted altogether. So suddenly, one day, the recipient remembers seeing something of interest in your newsletter and later searches for it. The keywords you Included in your subject line makes it easily accessible to the reader. Do you optimize your email subject line?

Keywords – The Fundamental Key to Every Optimization Strategy

Whatever your digital marketing strategy may be, keywords form the fundamental basis that can’t be ignored. While it may be ‘annoying’, do your keyword research. This will help you work out the rest of your strategies.

Images Courtesy: searchengineland.com

Mobile Apps and How They Make Your Digital Marketing Different

Adam Frankel — 2016-11-29

What makes mobile apps a smart choice for business? Well, it’s all about the pocket end-to-end user experience that makes it easier for businesses to engage and retain their customer interest.

While your competitors might try improving the website experience, strengthen technology infrastructure and try complimenting their service with cutting edge technologies, you can do many of these with just one mobile application.

And Mobile App Marketing Goes Beyond

Some interesting facts to consider about mobile apps include:

50 percent of all ecommerce transactions happen through mobile devices
85 percent of customers prefer using a mobile application instead of a mobile website
Mobile apps will be a key enabler in driving brand recognition
More and more business investors are including hybrid mobile app in their marketing campaign. One such example is that of the RFID or the beacon integrated app.
Wearable devices have become an important part of peoples’ lives and so are the apps integrated in them.

Digital Marketing is No Longer About Being Just Responsive

In other words, your mobile app marketing should be anything but conventional. All these above facts help us to determine one thing about the future of digital market. Everything is going to be mobile and it’s time for businesses to gear up for this. You might be wondering whether or not this would be a good option going for. I would say, very soon you will find yourself eventually going down this path and here’s why.

Reasons Why Mobile Apps Are Important For Your Business

#1 - All Time Visibility

According to market statistics, Americans spend more than two hours a day on their mobile devices.

While it’s true that there are few apps out there that enjoy full-time visibility. If your app is relevant and provides a useful function to engage with your company, it will probably be used beyond the initial download.

#2 – Direct Marketing Channel

There are two things that make having a mobile app a worthwhile marketing asset. First, it gives you the chance to be with your target audience at all times

Second, providing business marketers a direct means of interaction with the customers.

With the push notification feature, marketers can now be one-step closer to ringing the door bell of a customer. Not only can they inform customers about any new arrivals, but also send them reminders about any product or service whenever it’s appropriate.

#3 – Innovative Approaches

Whether you are running a spa service or selling flowers, your existing customers will reach out to you at some point. By including a mobile app in your marketing and communication mix can make it that much easier for them.

By accessing your app, customers can find out product or service time availability without having to call.making things more convenient for them and less troublesome for you.

#4 - Customer Loyalty Value

The power of a mobile app can be a great means of building customer value, and there are many ways you can do it. For example – providing customers an opportunity to review their rewards/points via mobile app or helping customers locate a nearby retail store where they are likely to find a product they are looking for.

There are many ways to buildup a long-term customer loyalty value. And building that loyalty value will help you to find more return customers.

#5 – Respond Better

Mobile apps have made it easier for businesses to respond to their customer problems faster and more effectively.

They can keep track of rising customer demand and also access customer information.

Standing out in the crowd is one of the biggest challenges faced by marketers today. Investing in a mobile marketing tool like an app can help you overcome this problem in many ways. While this may be true there are many out there who might be confused about what features to include in their mobile app development.

Here are some tips that you would like to go through therefore –

Customize Your App Design

Some of the things that a user looks for when they download an app are – personalization, seamless navigation and hassle-free experience.

Make sure that your mobile app includes all the key customization features in order to align with the customer needs and preferences. Design your mobile app to make it engaging, interactive and to build a strong brand relationship with customers.

Simple Navigational System

A couple of vital things that you need to keep in mind are – the content and the screen size.

Make sure that the content and the design do not end up cramming up the entire mobile space. When you are designing a mobile app, make sure that you design it to ensure seamless navigation and impressive product display.

You can implement a responsive design – a solution that’s tailored to fit any screen size and resolution and helps to render an immersive experience.

Simple Registration Process

Lengthy registration processes are a big turn off when it comes to mobile apps. The rule of thumb is to make registration as simple as possible, for example – allow your customers can sign up using an email id and a mobile number.

During the time of checkout, many apps provide users with the option to save their information for future use. This is a very important feature to get people through the entire conversion funnel.

Smart Analytics

Smart analytics is an important feature that your mobile app should include, and that’s because your core objective is to generate revenue. With analytics, you can evaluate and understand your users’ behavior and their buying pattern.

There are many things that smart analytics can help you with when it comes to evaluating success. Some of these are –

The cost of conversion
The session time
The custom field access
Click-through rate
Leading customer behavior
Higher revenue streams

Conclusion

Mobile apps need to be both immersive and unique and contain features that will make shopping seamless and simpler. Make sure that you build your mobile app with features that will drive sales and give more revenue boost. Of course, an important thing to keep in mind, as with all business decisions, will the benefit of having the app out weigh the cost of building and maintaining the app. That all depends on your specific situation.

Designing the Perfect Website Homepage: What to Keep in Mind

Adam Frankel — 2016-10-18

The website homepage is like the front cover of your company portfolio and when it comes to e-commerce, everyone will judge your book by its cover.

Let’s face it, almost any visitor entering your website would visit the homepage at least once. You have got to make the page elaborately interactive but also add the necessary elements that will help to enhance the business value of your website.

There are three things that a homepage design is responsible for. These are –

Attracting and captivating the visitors’ attention
Educating visitors about your brand identity
Encouraging visitors to visit the other pages of the website

Elements that Make a Website’s Homepage

A website’s homepage design should have the following elements –

#1 – A Clear Value Proposition

In other words the ‘who’ and ‘what’. Most of the visitors entering a website would like to check this out first. If they are unable to understand what your website is all about, then they are not likely to stick around.

So what should the value proposition of your website include?

A company introduction can include a tagline as well as a brief run down on what offer and can do for the customer.
A clear path to the service pages that your brand is going to offer

#2 – Optimized for Multiple Devices

In the world of technology where everything has become mobile, not having a mobile optimized homepage will cause your business to lag behind. Mobile Optimization helps to ensure that a website can be properly accessed no matter from which device one may enter.

A website is mobile optimized when it enables easy navigation and is free from design clusters like the flash banners, pop-ups, animations and other kinds of unnecessary elements. Of course, one needs to implement the best practices in order to maintain a mobile-optimized website.

#3 – Intuitive Navigations

So you want your visitor to land on your homepage and look around your website without being confused? Make sure that you are following an intuitive navigation system. A website’s homepage should have easy navigations that can be easily understood by even the first-time visitor.

If a certain page on your website receives the highest number of traffic, then make the web page easily accessible by bringing it to the forefront.

#4 – The Right Color

Colors can influence visitor attention psychologically. When you are choosing a color for your website, try to choose a shade that matches the brand identity. Often, the wrong color choice can send visitors scurrying away and again, it depends on a lot on how a color can make a website communicate effectively with its clients.

Avoid incorporating too many colors on your website’s homepage. Here is a small guide that might come handy when you are deciding to choose a color for your website -

Try keeping bold colors at bay
Welcome white space element (the color white helps to maintain a color balance)
Do not try to overcomplicate the color scheme

#5 - The Right Font

Fonts can create the same psychological impact as colors do. So, when you are choosing a font type for your website, make sure that it fits the nature of your business.

Understand the product and the service that you are going to deal with online and build a brand identity around it. Also, you will have to understand when it will be more appropriate to use elaborate fonts and when it would be wise to just stick to simplicity.

It’s nice to consult with a professional web designer expert first before you head on to choosing a font type. Do avoid using too many different fonts on your homepage in order to keep the uniformity flowing. Do some proper research first if you are new to web design and do not know which one would best suit your business taste.

#6 – Bold Images

Words are not just enough when you are talking about online website design. People feel more engaged when there are interesting and bold images to browse about. This is all the truer when we take e-commerce in our discussion.

However, there are many websites that tend to use stock images in their web design. Stock image can get your work done but it is one of the five components that should be removed from the website. Nevertheless, a genuine image of your brand will help to keep visitors more engaged.

It is advisable that you hire a professional photographer to get your brand products and services shot. Use these high-quality images in your web design.

The above-mentioned points can be useful and will help you in designing a great homepage. Before you begin designing the homepage of your website, try visiting other websites to learn how they have used the different elements on their web page. Here are a few website references mentioned below that you would like to take a look at -

Some of the Best Website Homepages to Get Inspired By and Why They are Brilliant

Airbnb

Scroll from top to bottom and appealing pictures are the first things that you will get to notice when you visit the Airbnb website.

Speaking of the use of text, less is more seems to be appropriate here to speak of. When you take into consideration the kind of service that the company offers, the decision to use fewer texts and more images seems to be just apt.

Another point that is worth mentioning is the smart placement of different elements. Notice that the search box has been placed right at the center and not in the top right corner like other websites.

Next, is an explanation of how the service works and what kind of benefits can people earn by joining the Airbnb team.

Freshbooks

Freshbooks homepage is easy to consume. The website homepage is a good example of how to make a lengthy web page look more engaging. From the compelling introduction urging visitors to join to the content breakdown explaining how the service works, reading the content feels like reading some story.

The great way the CTA buttons have been positioned. This indicates that the company is confident and clear when it wants visitors to convert when they arrive on the homepage.

The style of copy used like for example the ‘Try it Free for 30 Days’ beside the Call to Action makes the overall message very compelling.

Mint

Mint has a homepage with a simple design and a strong straightforward headline.

The homepage design gives off an easy going vibe thus making a visitor feel confident about the product that is known for handling financial information.

It is also known for using a simple, direct and compelling Call-to-Action buttons.

You can look up on the internet to see how other websites have designed their homepages. There are plenty of examples that you are sure to get.

Conclusion

In addition to the points discussed above, the basic things that need to be kept in mind is how useful the homepage stands out in the eyes of the users. It should have a clear-cut approach in conveying the message of your business. Does your website homepage have all the elements that we have just discussed here? If is one another element that you would like to add, what would that be?

Image Courtesy: pixabay.com

Online Marketing Consulting: Why do you need this?

Adam Frankel — 2016-09-30

When was the last time you got constructive feedbacks about your marketing plans and actions? How often do people around you suggest new marketing ideas that are worth implementing? Are your marketing inputs and actions limited to short boardroom meetings?

What if your customer or partner asks you about your marketing roadmap – both for short-term and long-term business goals? Do you have specialists that constantly evaluate your marketing actions against that of your competitors?

These questions are self-explanatory and could be eye-openers for you.

Unless you implement continuous feedback generating mechanisms, competitive benchmarking of your brand building activities is not possible. Internal strategies and decisions, if not properly researched and validated by experts, may lead to marketing failure.

Do marketing automation tools work?

Unfortunately, there are no automated marketing tools or copybook techniques to help you with predictive marketing metrics. A tool can certainly help you collect data for making decisions but it cannot tell you what to do, when, how, and why?

Ideas, executions, and decisions are human elements

Online marketing is a dynamic and specialized field. It demands human intelligence, analytical power and decision-making ability, which a tool cannot provide. There are practitioners who understand the subject well and can execute based on essential marketing metrics.

Consultations with experts are of great help

Bringing marketing thoughts into reality is all about how well you source, execute, and monitor them in a timely manner. Doing all these require marketing expertise and confidence. For a business owner, having relevant domain knowledge and on-job marketing experience, are certainly not the priorities.

It is wise to seek help from reliable online marketing practitioners. Proper guidance from a team of experts can not only improve your competitive positions but also secure your marketing goals for future benefits.

Below are the top 10 ways marketing geeks can help you get started with your online marketing initiatives.

1. First, the consultants will review your existing marketing plans, goals and the list of on-going promotional activities through personalized discussions and team meetings. This may involve QA sessions and quick demonstrations.

2. Next, they will conduct group meetings to understand your short-term and long-term business goals. This includes your marketing expectations in terms of annual sales revenue from marketing effort, the number of new customer acquisitions, repeat sales, brand equity, and social acceptance over the internet.

3. Competitor studies and industry benchmarking are the next steps for defining realistic marketing goals. Marketing consultants do SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat) analysis of your company against top competitors. They define what could be achieved, what not, and what does not require any marketing effort.

4. Once the annual marketing goals are set and aligned with your business objectives, the consultants will break them into quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily targets. Those targets are optimistic and challenging but achievable.

5. Upon target setting, the consultants will explore and analyze every possible marketing avenue and action that would drive successful campaigns. The list could be exhaustive, and may include experimental decisions. In most cases, the actions items are geared towards holistic as well as result-oriented goals.

6. Next, it comes to the job of creating scope of work (SOW) documentation. Here marketing strategists enlist the Do’s and Don’ts for every executable marketing activity. The list contains high-level as well as micro-level tasks on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. They set specific timelines for task completions and ensure they are accomplished as planned.

7. Once the execution starts, marketing analysts capture, review, monitor and record performance metrics using varied marketing tools. These tools are of different types and for different purposes. Online marketing consists of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click ad campaign, video marketing, blog writing, social media promotion, etc. There are specialized tools for data mining, data filtering, analytical observations, trend chart preparation and custom reporting.

8. In the next step, marketing analysts scrutinize tool derived data at both micro and macro level. This is a continuous monitoring process that requires careful observations and real-time reporting. The objective is to learn what caused positive and negative results for a particular time span. This is a critical stage as experts analyze every bit of available data to formulate next course of actions.

9. Once the list of filtered marketing action items is ready, the next step is to follow the execution cycle. Marketing firms do employ people with specialized skill sets who know how to achieve quality output in due time. They are the experts in defining workarounds and can deliver even at difficult times.

10. The final step is to re-validate all approved marketing actions on a monthly and quarterly basis. Your account manager will periodically weigh the balance between your expectations and the final outcomes. He or she may suggest you some new strategies based on how existing plans perform.

It is important that you have both protective and aggressive marketing plans handy. If plan A does not work, you should have plan B or plan C ready to be implemented. Consultants provide detailed guidelines about executing every plan with estimated effort and expected outcomes.

If you want to learn the subject of online marketing and know what specialty a consultant can bring to your table, it is worth asking for a personalized demonstration. You will also know if today’s investment can really ensure higher returns in the future. For additional help, we are just a call away!

Image Courtesy: pixabay.com

5 Useful Strategies to Upgrade Your Identity as a Brand

Adam Frankel — 2016-09-28

Do you think it’s time to upgrade your branding strategy? If you do, then keep reading as I am going to enlighten you about some new branding techniques that work.

Branding is everything

Replace the question “What is a brand” with “What’s not a brand.” Branding is ubiquitous. A brand can be anything and everything. Brand identity cannot be reduced to any particular aspect.

A half eaten apple reminds you of Apple.Inc because the Cupertino-based company has a similar logo. It’s not that we consciously think of Apple, our subconscious mind just signals us. Successful brands have crept into our subconscious and made a permanent place there. As a result, we see them everywhere.

Do not pigeonhole branding into any rigid aspect; doing that amounts to restricting branding. The lesson to learn from the examples above is whatever reminds someone of your brand is a part of branding. Try putting brand’s essence in everything to increase your reach among the customers.

Communication matters

The quality of communication is critical to branding. Communication can kill your brand. At the same time, it can grow your brand and increase your sale.

A cold approach to communication is a strict No. A lukewarm approach won’t do any good either. Today’s coveted customers are mostly Millennials as boomers are transitioning into saving for retirement. And millennials value the experience alongside the product. Poor communication can turn them off.

Mistakes brands make at the time of communicating with audiences include:

Using wrong channels: Select a channel that suits your audience best. Millennials are on social media 24/7. Communicate with them through social channels. Among the social channels, some like Pinterest are skewed to women. Use those channels to connect to female audiences. Older generation still prefers communication over phone. So dial their numbers and be very polite.

Remove clutters: Communication clutters include connection downtime, obscure information, turnaround time delay, etc. Make sure you have a steady Internet connection at office. Lack of proper communication between customers and customer service reps qualify as clutters. Proper communication removes them.

Sell the brand

But don’t sell the product. A brand is bigger than a product. Brands that follow archaic strategies only pitch their products. While one product may be stellar in quality, another product may very well be terrible.

Selling the brand is always a safer bet. It encourages brand loyalty. The top brands have a dedicated consumer-base. Unless they embark on a poor-quality-product-release spree, their consumers will remain loyal to them. Microsoft killed the “start” menu in Windows 8 and went for a Smartphone-esque slate style.

They have gotten a lot of flak for this, mostly from loyal consumers. But despite criticizing, the customers didn’t dump Windows in favor of Linux or OS X. This proves brand loyalty can offset negative product experience, provided it’s an aberration, not the norm.

You cannot command loyalty from customers unless you leverage content marketing. Red Bull has built and sold a culture by doing so. Top brands develop content strategies based on customer survey findings; the survey findings allow them to identify those aspects of branding that customers will love to buy.

C stands for

Call-to-action. It also stands for customer service. By adding them up, you can grow your brand. Let me explain how you can link them together:

The onsite elements that typically lead to call-to-action include

Services page
Customer testimonials
Product image/video
Flat discount offers

You can personalize these elements, but they can never be as effective as customer service. Customer service is an untapped resource when it comes to sending traffic to CTA. The reps can monitor the quality of engagement and take visitors to pages with call-to-action buttons.

Customer service can have a presence beyond a website, make a foothold on the platforms which are the major sources of traffic, such as social media. The best thing about customer service is it is interactive, unlike the said onsite elements.

Southwest Airlines used Twitter to engage with customers. See the screenshot below:

On social media or over phone, a customer service rep can initiate a conversation with a customer or a prospect and encourage them to visit the Call to Action page. That said, the lead must be a warm one. If it’s a customer, he must be a satisfied customer. Leading an unhappy customer to a Call to Action page is awkward and off-putting.

Emotional connection

Connecting with people on an emotional level has its perks. Far-sighted brands push consumer emotion to the extent that customers fail to separate brands from living and breathing individuals.

There are several driving factors behind brand personification. But none can be as strong as an emotion-driven connection. Nielsen’s Global Loyalty Sentiment Report points out the attributes that cause a shift in customer loyalty. See the infographic below:

Brands that succeed in establishing emotional ties with audiences are perceived differently. Customers and noncustomers alike perceive them in terms of humane attributes. Below is the visual depiction of human emotions associated with brands across the world:

Source

Brands that embody the qualities depicted in the infographic don’t have to overdo anything. Customers feel a subconscious inclination to buy from them. Content marketing, especially visual content is instrumental in helping brands incorporating the qualities and creating and nurturing a warm connection with their audiences.

Summing up

The five strategies discussed here can help you mark a new era in branding. Don’t follow these strategies blindly, rather have an experimental approach while following them so that something new comes from them - something that’s hard for us to anticipate and will be a surprise..

Image Courtesy: pixabay.com

5 Infographic Design Tips that Marketers Need to Follow

Adam Frankel — 2016-09-26

There are many marketing techniques that become all the rage for a while only to slip away into oblivion after a while. Then there are the few that stick, and become a mainstay in every professional’s marketing tool kit.

The Infographic is one technique that has definitely has stood out.

Now some may say that infographic are a content format and not a ‘technique’.

While it’s indeed a content format on its own, it is also the backdrop of the visual web and its gradual emergence. Text-visual combo formats like infographics are nothing short of a technique that can change many equations.

Below we’ll briefly discuss infographics and their benefits, and discuss the best practices to create them.

Why infographics?

Because more than 90% information transmitted to and processed by the human brain is visual. In the era of auto-play videos, push notification, and all things social media, our attention spans are becoming shroter and shorter. This means when sending information it needs to be attention grabbing, and that means visuals. Chances are, a visual message is going to be noticed whereas your non-visual messaging has a good chance of not being received at all.

We know social media is has become the lifeline of digital marketing. On social media, infographics are three times more likely to be shared than non-visual content. The CMO council’s research which predicted the use of infographic will increase in 2016. In short, infographic is an attention-grabber and adds value to information.

Infographic best practices

By following best practices, you add value to the infographic. The infographic scores high in the virality chart, receives more attention and gets more likes and shares on social media. The best practices include:

Avoid the temptation

You might feel tempted to add flashy design elements to the infographic. Don’t. Not only will it result in visual clutter, but also go against the tenets of minimalism, a principle that designers revere these days.

A survey done on 3000 people by Siegel + Gale revealed they prefer simple design than complex design. Keep the infographic simplistic to garner a high rate of user-engagement.

Remember, the graphic elements you are adding are supposed to serve a purpose. The purpose is to accompany the texts in the infographic. Hence, only add relevant graphics. A simple graphic is a clean graphic, and cleanliness is next to godliness.

Dig into big data

There’s a huge difference between ordinary data and big data. Big data boils down to detecting pattern. The marketing world is fond of big data because it can unearth valuable insights for them.

An enterprise can use big data analytics tools and pull its internal workflow management data, client communication data, previous sales data, data related to customer satisfaction level, etc, discover pattern in them and use the pattern in an infographic.

Such an infographic can inform industry insiders as well as the outsiders about how the business/the industry is going. The infographic needs to present the data in an entertaining manner. It’s easy to separate a data-rich infographic from a data-scarce infographic. A data-rich infographic has numbers, stat figures, embedded graphs whereas an infographic lacking data only has texts. See the infographic below:

You can only see numbers, and quickly grab useful information. Now see the infographic below:

There’s information, but no numbers. There’s no pattern, only some behavior related details. The difference between the two infographics is evident. Hence, harness big data so that your infographics command more authority.

Color selection

Color selection is important for infographic design. Let’s say you go for monochromatic color scheme where one color is dominant and other colors are its shades. If the subject of the infographic is such that information is more important than graphics, or if you are designing the infographic for an audience who you know would be indifferent to colors, such as C-suite executives of a business firm, go for this color scheme.

There should be a consistency between the level of content and the color you select. Alongside consistency, contrast is also important. Some colors create a nice contrast with each other while some colors don’t. Choose the contrasting colors to bring a contrast, but don’t overdo it. The background color should never be deep, it should always be pale. Another important thing to keep in mind is the color you select should match the typeface.

Attention-grabbing words

Content is king. The texts in the infographic should be catchy enough to validate this aphorism and grab the attention of the onlookers. An infographic doesn’t need too much texts. The volume of texts is 15-200 max.

Make sure not a single word is unnecessary. Give special attention to the headline. A good and powerful headline doesn’t stop after capturing one’s attention. It describes the whole infographic with brevity. The ideal length of the headline is 80 characters or less.

The flow is pivotal. If some phrases are punchy type while other phrases are mundane, then that would hurt the flow. So make sure there’s a perfect harmony of each line and most importantly, the message is not simply thrown at them but delivered in a smooth manner, and only after they make progress in the thought process, prompted by the infographic.

Brand message

Even though information is at the core of an infographic, you can’t wrap things up after putting too much information into it. The infographic needs to touch on the crucial aspects pertaining to your brand and drive home that they should purchase from you, though in a subtle manner.

Charts, data sheet, etc should be insightful alongside being visually compelling. The key takeaways should be highlighted to guarantee a comprehensive understanding. And all these should be done for only one purpose - making it easy for users to digest your brand’s message.

The message is important, and so is how you plant it in the infographic. If you add the message using quality content and rich graphics and images, then users will have an easy time getting it and decrypting it.

Images Courtesy: pixabay.com