Month: November 2015

Google Introduces Fast Loading AMP for Advertising

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Google plans to introduce fast loading AMP into mobile search from early next year.

Google’s Vice President David Besbris announced “Google will begin sending traffic to your AMP pages in Google Search early next year, and we plan to share more concrete specifics on timing very soon”.

Google said that several new advertising platforms have joined the AMP project, including its own DoubleClick and AdSense:

Read Also: 348085 “Right to be forgotten” Requests Received by Google

“Today we’re announcing that Outbrain, AOL, OpenX, DoubleClick, and AdSense are working within the framework to improve the advertising experience for users, publishers and advertisers on the mobile web. More to come as we continue to ramp this aspect of the effort.”

AMP would open a new chapter for advertising of Google in 2016 with its fast loading feature.

Source(s)

348085 “Right to be forgotten” Requests Received by Google

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Google has received 3, 48,085 requests for “Right to be forgotten”.

This “Right” allows a user to ask the search engine to remove results that are inaccurate or no longer relevant about them.

There was a ruling from European Court of Justice in May 2014 recognizing the “right to be forgotten”, which opened the door for Google users.

A report released by Google showed that most requests were sent from France.Google set up an online form for users to fill and ask for information to be excluded from search results especially for people in Europe.

Read Also: Yahoo Directory is Now Officially Gone, Forever!

Google said that right-to-be-forgotten requests have targeted slightly more than 1.23 million Internet pages. And Google agreed to remove 42 per cent of them from online search results in Europe.

The report indicated that Google granted about 38 percent of the 43,101 requests submitted in the United Kingdom. 37 percent of the 33,106 requests are from Spain. 30 percent of the 26,186 requests made from Italy.

Source

14 Smart Tips to Get Your Email Subscriber’s Attention

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Email marketing is always an effective strategy to reach out to people. It is also one of the least expensive ways to ensure that you get your word spread out among prospective clients. Every Digital Marketing Agency you approach will surely bring out this one aspect out to you.

Even though email marketing works great, people keep getting promotional emails all through the day. Very few people bother to actually open emails and read their content. It is very likely that your email could get lost in this clutter and remain ignored. As such, it is a marketer’s job to ensure that your email is actually opened and read. You need to increase your chances of being noticed among the crowd. This does take some effort, but is worth it for sure.

Here are a few tips to help you get your emails opened and read:

  1. Make A Targeted List Of Recipients

Make a list of targeted receivers. This is very important if your expertise covers various areas. You need to create content that is specific for a group of people with similar interests. This way, your email would match their interests and increase your chances of getting noted. Your content will be able to speak directly to the audience’s interests and will make the mark. Also, it is necessary to have a list that is clean, and consists of only people who have opted to receive your emails.

  1. Set Up Specific Expectations

Each time a subscriber signs in to receive your e-newsletters or such emails, or subscribes to you, do send them an auto-response email to let them know what to expect from you. Give them a detailed idea about the kind of emails and also the frequency of emails you will be sending out. This lets your subscribers know what to expect from you in due course.

  1. Show That You Are Real

This point should reflect in your content first of all. The content in your email should be real and accurate. No fake promises or messages should be promoted. This is also applicable to your email address. Use a real name instead of generics like info@abc.com and such ids for the address that you use as a “reply to”.

  1. Keep A Catchy Subject Line

Your subject line needs to be a well researched one. Spend enough time to sit and think about what you would put as a subject for your email. This must be something that actually provokes your recipient to open your email and check its contents. It needs to be really enticing.

Read Also: 10 E-mail Marketing Hacks That Every Marketer Should Know

  1. A Good Pre-header

A number of e-newsletters and emails have pre-headers that instruct the reader to open the email in a web browser in case the viewer is not able to see it properly in the mail. This is actually not a good way to proceed. You need to use this option to give the user a really compelling reason to go on and read the email completely.

  1. Call to Action

A Call to Action or CTA is necessary in every email. This lets the user get to know what you actually expect them to do. A common mistake is to let this portion go towards the end of the email. Instead, place this somewhere near the top of the email. This will help the readers notice it soon \enough rather than giving them pains to scroll through the entire email to get it.

  1. Give them Control

You need to allow the subscribers to opt out easily if they want to. There is no point in marketing to people who have no intention to do business with you. It is better to let them opt out and not disturb them with your emails again.

  1. Personal Message

Make your email personal by greeting your readers using their name. You could also use their first names in the subject line. According to market studies, it has been found that the by using personalized emails you could increase the chances of getting your email opened by around 14%.

  1. Share

It is a good idea to add some sharing features to your emails. You could make use of social sharing options to allow your readers to share the email to their family and friends. This could highly increase your chances of being opened and help you get a much wider audience. According to researches, it has been found that emails that have social sharing buttons have a 115% higher click through rate as compared to other emails that do not implement the feature.

  1. Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is an essential part of every digital marketing strategy these days. With increased use of smartphones and tablets, this is one aspect that you can never overlook. Around 40% of all emails are now opened using these devices. This number just keeps growing all the time. As such, you need to have your email optimised for mobile devices so that your viewers are able to view it properly on any device. You can also use email services to do this for you. Such services also give you detailed statistics about how many of your emails are opened on mobile devices.

  1. Analyze and Monitor

You need to analyze and monitor the behaviour of your email recipients. This will help you understand what content they prefer, when they prefer, and other such minute details. This will help you build better strategies and succeed in your ventures based on these statistics.

  1. Update your Subscriber list Periodically

You need to keep this one point in mind. “Keep only those subscribers who open your emails”. This is an overlooked point that usually no one cares about. One sure thing is that every person is not going to open your email. The smaller the list, the higher will be the open rate you can achieve. Just keep those people in your list who are interested in receiving your emails and reading them. There is no point in keeping others there. You need detailed statistics to know how many of your emails are being opened and by whom. Once you have this ready, you can direct your emails to specific targets.

Based on the emails opened over the course of a few months, you need to edit your lists and update them. If there are subscribers who have had no interaction with you over a few months, there is no logic in emailing them all the time.

Before you cut them down, you could send them a small notification as to you are deleting their subscription or so. Another thing you could do is ask them if they are interested in receiving your emails. If you get a response, keep them in. If there is no response, you could surely delete them from the list. This is a subtle way of letting them know.

Recommended Read: Effective Social Media Marketing Tricks for 2015

  1. Encourage Email Classification

You need to ensure that your recipients receive your emails bypassing any of the possible filters. This is a way to make sure that they open all your emails. You could send them detailed instructions to prevent the emails from going in to the spam folder or promotions tab. They need to follow the instructions to prevent it with the email provider. You could ask them to add you to their contacts, or even better, to their favourites.

  1. Reward them for reading

Give your readers some kind of rewards for reading your emails. You could share a useful tip to make them benefit or try something simple like that. This inspires them and makes them feel better.

These simple and easy techniques will surely help you go a long way in getting your emails noted and opened by your recipients. Every Digital Marketing Agency is sure to suggest you the above. Email marketing is one with great scope. If you use it smartly, you can get lots of benefits out of it.

Snapchat Reimagines Content Discovery with “Story Explorer”

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Snapchat has launched its latest feature, called Story Explorer. Story Explorer is a setting that will let users for more perspectives of the same moment within a Live Story.

Story Explorer lets users get deeper into Stories   and helps to view related images that were taken at the same location.

“Story Explorer relies on technology developed by our research team to provide more depth to every Snap in a Story,” Snapchat wrote in the announcement on its blog.

Read Also: Yahoo Directory is Now Officially Gone, Forever!

Story Explorer is just one of the features introduced by Snapchat recently.

Story Explorer is currently available for only Los Angeles and New York City.  Snapchat‘s new UGC-discovery feature is expected to reach in other cities in the near future.

Source(s)

Yahoo Directory is Now Officially Gone, Forever!

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The Yahoo Directory, core part of Yahoo, is now officially closed.

The core service that launched Yahoo as an internet company, the Yahoo Directory has finally closed 20 years after it began.

This Directory used to offer free, standard listings and a paid submission process before moving to a model of $299 for a non-refundable “review fee”. Each year it would cost the same amount for the sites.

For some of them there has always been Google and it is the main way people have found things on the web. It was the Yahoo Directory that came first and its hand-compiled list of websites which is organized into topics.

The closure of the most notable directory indicated major shift in the history of modern web.

Recap: Social Media Sites and Applications to Be Exempted From the Encryption’s Domain Policy

‘Yahoo gave AltaVista’, was another effort by Yahoo which also met the same tragic end.

The Yahoo Directory now redirects to Aabaco.

Source(s)

How to Choose the Right SEO Expert for Your Company

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Getting top rankings on Google search engine results pages (SERPs) were quite easy in the past. But now, the terms and policies are changing. You have to be aware of a number of criteria to show up in results. The Google Page Rank system determines the most applicable websites for every keyword. An SEO expert or a professional digital marketing agency can help your page show up higher in SERPs.

An online marketing agency will guide you on the right path. The trick here is to find the one that is worth investing in. You can find hundreds of SEO agencies who claim to be experts. But only the best can help you achieve the results you expect. Trusting someone with your whole website and online image is a risky task. As such, it must be done with utmost care.

Read Also: Ways Digital Marketing Will Change In 2016

Choose the Right SEO Expert

Here are a few points you need to keep in mind while choosing an SEO expert for your firm:

  • Search Intelligently

On checking out Google, you will find a large number of SEO companies. The top ranked companies may be the best, but they even charge too high. Here, the question you need to ask yourself is”Will it be worth it?” A small business will not require a huge and mighty firm for business.

The best way to search will be to ask your vendors and peers. People in the same field will be able to give you honest and reliable suggestions. Stay away from spammers and hire only trustworthy employers for your job.

Finding an SEO firm in your own locality is a good idea as it helps develop interpersonal relations as well. Find out the history of the company and their market record also before you commit to a deal.

  • Budget

You need to have a basic idea about how much is your budget and how much you can afford to spend on online marketing. This should be the basis of your interactions with any Digital Marketing Agency. Fees will keep varying, so you must keep a clear cut idea.

There are some freelancers that charge really low, making it a viable method rather than approaching large firms. But, you must never go for cheap labour, as it may affect the quality of the output as well.

The payment may be hourly, project-wise, or by the web page. Different companies have different policies. One more thing you need to keep in mind is that SEO will be required even after the changes are done. Maintenance is also an important task. You must confirm the rates for maintenance as well.

  • Effective Communication and Reporting

Once the rates are decided, you need to make clear about the Return on Investment, and how you could expect to track it. Regular updates and reports must be provided for you to understand the progress. If not, then you may be in for great trouble!

You need to discuss the techniques the online marketing agency plans to implement. Stay clear of all black hat techniques, or else your website could even be banned. Have a clear communication plan in mind before moving forward.

  • Background Check

It is important to have an idea about the past background of the company. First-hand information from previous customers would be really helpful. You could ask them for at least three names from whom you could get an honest opinion.

These clients will be able to tell you how long it took for them to see positive changes, how it impacted their business, how the firm was able to keep up to their commitments, their satisfaction level, and so on.

On Googling the name of the firm, you may even hit on reviews and experiences by customers. Not all companies have their own website, so you may not have much luck in that route.

Recommended Read: Website Localization – The Future of Digital Marketing?

  • Strategy

A good SEO company must be able to put forward an intelligent strategy in front of you. Page rank, keyword optimization, and linking strategy are most important. Give them a chance to demonstrate their capabilities and give you a basic idea about their style of work to understand them better. Moreover, they must also be able to cater to your website irrespective of the size.

For your business to succeed and reach the top ranks, it is essential to make full use of the online marketing opportunities in front of you. An apt online marketing agency will be able to offer you all the results you expect and even more. So, stay alert, be on your guard, and choose wisely. The future of your firm depends on your decision. You cannot afford to make mistakes.

Snapdeal on Its Way to Create Digital Commerce Ecosystem

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Snapdeal is planning to build a discovery platform and associated tools for brands as well as for its sellers on the marketplace.

This platform would leverage artificial intelligence, real-time data and other tools, delivering high return on investment for advertising campaigns.

It is being built by an engineering team led by technology entrepreneur Ali, which has customers across UK, US and India.

Read Also:Brick and Mortar Stores Still Important to Digital Buyers

Speaking about this acquisition, Rohit Bansal, Co-founder, Snapdeal, said, “At Snapdeal, we are always on the lookout for talented people, who come with specialized skills that augment our capabilities. Ali comes with 17 years of rich experience in building web scale technologies, Product Management and building highly specialized teams focused on a data platform and ad tech products. We are confident that Ali and his team will further strengthen our technological capabilities.”

Snapdeal has the widest assortment of 15 million products in more than 500 categories.

Ali joins a growing battalion of successful entrepreneurs and technology leaders who are joining Snapdeal to build most impactful digital commerce platform in India.

 As a part of this vision, Snapdeal has partnered with several global marquee investors and individuals such as SoftBank, BlackRock, Temasek, eBay Inc., Premji Invest, Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Ratan Tata amongst others

Brick and Mortar Stores Still Important to Digital Buyers

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Recent survey by e-tailing group for B2C Partners established how important brick and mortar stores are to digital buyers. According to digital buyers, “stores have a lot to offer”.

In the survey, 84% responded that they liked combining the efficiency of digital with the tangibility of retail stores.

In terms of digital buying, digital buyers always needed a knowledgeable associate to make their final decisions.

Complication in purchase and how they work makes the digital buyers think twice.

Read Also: Amazing! Facebook Testing New Features for Users

Digital buyers support Brick and Mortar as they offer more speed and efficiency.

Stores with more technology can be an added advantage to digital buyers in the future.

So, entrepreneurs would be rewarded better by empowering brick and mortar stores with additional technology.

Source(s)

Website Localization – The Future of Digital Marketing?

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You may have a well optimized website with good search engine rankings and increased user visits. But the increasing competition makes it vital to ensure your digital marketing efforts are also focused locally. Consider website localization. Reports state that web users are more likely to purchase from a company that communicates in their own language.

Localizing a website will provide fruitful results such as-

  • Add value to your brand
  • Increase in site visitors
  • Increase the number of customers
  • increase the number of visitors returning to your website

Localization process of a website involves numerous technical and linguistic stages: preparation, cultural adaptation, translation, multilingual adaptation, integration of multilingual content, functional and linguistic validation, quality control, final validation and the final process of going online.

Read Also: Ways Digital Marketing Will Change In 2016

Is it enough to translate your original website content?

A common mistake with localized websites is considering the translated content to be just another version of the pages in the original language. Translation isn’t everything. Of course, for the user it’s all about the content. The user will check whether the content is relevant and understandable and in line with the user’s cultural context. Therefore, winning consumers in these new highly competitive business markets will require companies to scale their global marketing initiatives and manage cultural diversity at a whole new level.

Localizing a website is an important business decision that will have a great impact on how well you achieve your business goals in certain markets. Before localizing any content, make sure to partner up with a digital marketing agency. This helps to better understand the target audience, and check whether your product meets local standards and is in line with the core cultural values of the audience. Understanding the basic differences in customs and practices between nations is important.

Translating a website (especially a complex one) can be a challenge. You need to decide on your core markets first and then choose the language version accordingly. Decision should be made earlier whether to display a language version based on the user’s IP address or on the browser’s settings. To be more effective in emerging markets, global brands must ensure that their content not only speaks to the culture of the audience but also reflects the intended brand message consistently from one region to the next.

What surveys indicate:

A survey conducted by Lionbridge earlier in 2015 revealed that

  • Many companies don’t have a localization strategy. Nearly 40 percent of respondents say they do not currently have a web content localization strategy and 13 percent of respondents handle localization requests on an ad hoc basis
  • When asked about the most important aspects of website localization, a majority (56 percent) of respondents identified quality and accuracy as the top answer, followed by customer experience (34 percent)

You may also like: 6 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

Businesses will need to radically change their mindset about localization, as well as their translation processes and allocation of resources. It is very important for companies to focus on building a localization strategy to ensure the process is streamlined, consistent, and, most importantly, effective. By addressing the regular cadence of localization needs in a centralized manner, companies can ensure that translation quality and brand consistency are maintained across a number of channels, languages, and projects.

Few elements that you should keep in mind while localizing a website are – branding, culture-specific design and simple forms, lines, text and composition. An experienced digital marketing agency can provide comprehensive website localization services that can ensure that all content is addressed in an efficient and effective manner. It helps brands to stay engaged with customers and offer the best customer experience possible across all markets.

Ways Digital Marketing Will Change In 2016

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Marketing and sales have come a long way from how they used to work in earlier days. The buyers have changed and their behaviour has seen drastic changes. Following the traditional marketing methods do not work anymore. As such, many businesses are failing these days. There was a time when a little amount of advertising and cold calling was able to get you a whole lot of appointments. But, this is not the case anymore.

A major change is that the buyers have control over the sales process these days. Every piece of information is available on the internet. If you need it, you get it! Earlier, sellers were able to control the sales process. The buyers had to interact with the sales people for all requirements. But now, they have every bit of information readily available. All you need is your phone or laptop. In such a situation, the buyers engage with the salespeople only when they are ready.

Adapt to the Changes

Every company now needs the help of a digital marketing agency to take up the job of marketing and promotions. With drastic changes in the buying process, businesses have been forced to change and adapt to these changes. You need to make strategic buying decisions and use marketing to match the all new buying techniques. The changes in marketing have also brought  some new opportunities.

Buyers have now started to become more knowledgeable. As such, marketing has turned out to be lesser of a single sided endeavour. The customers now place a whole lot of emphasis on building good relations with companies. This has led to the two most important concepts in marketing – Responsiveness and Personalization. Marketing now has to be become more of a dynamic creature that could incorporate all kinds of technologies to help efficient communication between the business and the buyer.

Read Also: 6 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

Content Marketing

It has been found that about 25% of all the marketing dollars in the US are now spent on custom and branded content. This is a great step with the fact that content marketing had just started baby steps one decade ago. With the advancements in this field, the demand for a good and efficient digital marketing agency has increased considerably.

These days, organizations are investing heavily on digital content and marketing. From white papers to custom videos, there are numerous options in front of you. This is a field that is changing rapidly. Every company is now used to send visually stimulating emails about the various deals and offer, and also has its own blog. If you do not put in much effort into your organization’s online content management, you are sure to be in for a loss.

Expectations for 2016

Based on the latest trends and changes in the market, here are a few ways in which the market could be expected to change in the year 2016. A look at these points would help your organization go a long way ahead:

  1. SEO will move way ahead from being just Search Engines 

It is not always possible to find everything you search for on the usual search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. There are over 30 trillion pages on the web, and no matter how much the algorithms improve, accommodating all of them to show you the best results is not always accurately possible. You do not always get what you want.

The consumers these days have become more social as far as purchases are concerned. It is seen that about 88% of the consumers decide on a purchase based on comments and reviews. They rely on others’ experiences before buying. As such, you can see an increased search for products on YouTube and Pinterest.

The brands that are sharp and smart enough will start the move from pure search engine based efforts to social media networks. They will invest both time and money into making their mark in social media. Building strategies for more social and interactive ways to get your customers is advised.

  1. Competition will become even more Fierce

At the current stage, content marketing is the second largest component of digital marketing budgets. It falls just behind mobile marketing, which includes optimizing websites for the mobile version. The amount spent on content creation and management is tremendous for SMBs and enterprises. For extremely talented content makers who have a good track record, the competition is really high.

This is some unfortunate news for beginners and amateurs. For individuals who have niche specialities and can drive really good results, things will get worse. In the coming year, the following competencies could turn out to be the most sought after by the content departments in organizations:

  • Visual email marketing specialists
  • Workflow content specialists
  • Data-driven content creators
  • Sales/case study experts

The shortage of entry-level creators would never turn out to be a problem now. Individuals who have high creativity and knowledge of technology would be in greater demand.

  1. Touch screen/Interactive Content will see a Rise

Mobile optimization is of utmost importance in this era of smartphones and other gadgets. Every digital marketer could understand how important it is to keep up with the rising demand for mobile optimization of all websites and content. Using the tablet or smartphone to perform the various actions online will only increase your prospects for the better. Here are a few actions that you need to focus on:

  • Listen to music and watch videos
  • Read and write text messages and emails
  • Research and navigate local business listings
  • Use the various social media networks
  • Consume news, entertainment, or other types of content that are relevant professionally
  • Use the different apps or media to send messages to friends, family, and colleagues
  • Research products and make purchases online
  • Consume or complete product reviews

Making your website mobile responsive is very important. It must be designed such that it appears well on any kind of screen size. Creating content that is optimized specifically for touch screens is the main aim of the sharpest digital marketers.

Most people are likely to prefer to shop on a mobile app rather than taking pains to surf on the mobile website in the Smartphone. In every aspect, the mobile app is well optimised and comfortable. Creating mobile apps is now much easier for organizations, even if they have on-staff mobile developers for the different smartphone platforms.

In case you need time to optimise your concept of a branded app and create the related content, you could delay the release of your app. As such, you could think of the following ideas for creating mobile-only content:

  • Discounts codes, deals, or coupons specifically for smartphones
  • Emails or landing pages that are mobile-only
  • Social media content designed for smaller screens
  1. Budgetary Control will Change

Till now, budgetary control has always rested in the hands of CFOs and sometimes the CIOs. As per predictions, this practice will slightly change and the control of budget will shift to the CMOs.

Extreme flexibility is required for good and proper content. “Agile SEO” and “Agile Inbound Marketing” have started to become buzzwords. The brands that are able to pivot, respond, and also create proper and relevant work in real time will turn out to the best content brands in the world.

For content marketing teams, the traditional budgetary approval processes could never work out. Navigating through the usual processes like filling out forms and waiting for signatures from the management are difficult and time consuming, especially in an agile environment. As such, the average CMO will need to have much more control over the budget and monetary autonomy than before. Companies that have a strong leadership and strategic marketers will surely get benefits by following this step.

  1. Bigger Digital Content

Recently, the CMO Council’s Annual Survey has revealed that digital marketing will soon overtake television ads. Though expected by the year 2018, the world has slowly started to move in that direction. This is exciting news for all digital marketing companies given the fact that creating television ads is actually so expensive and time consuming. You need to have a good budget set up if you want a great commercial.

Enterprise organizations would soon shift from expensive TV commercials to strategies involving web marketing. The quality of the content created exclusively for mobile devices, tablets, and computers will increase considerably. This will offer high-quality games and apps, amazing web interfaces, and an exciting experience online. With fewer television commercials and better content for the web, the consumers are sure to be happy.

Recommended Read: What Is Content Curation? How Is It Relevant To Digital Marketing

  1. Virtual Reality

A number of virtual reality devices are set to release in the coming years. This will increase the emphasis on virtual reality especially for applications like video games and others used on a general basis. The Oculus Rift is the most hyped device based on Virtual Reality which is slated for release by the first quarter of 2016. An entirely new medium of online advertising will open up with these devices storming the market. Integration to the popular social media platforms, the video channels, and even messaging services will be an additional feature.

  1. Wearable Technology and the Internet of Things

Wearable Smart Devices will start getting more focus by the year 2016. The Apple Watch was unveiled in 2015 as the first generation smart watch. Come next year, we could expect a lot more smart watches and other wearable technology in the market to change the face of marketing completely. This will immensely blur the line between online marketing and real marketing.

The above trends are the most significant ones among the many that would make an impact in the year 2016. The way these trends will manifest and how they will impact the customer-client relation is something that you will have to wait and watch. Since most of them are driven by customer adoption, you could place a safe bet on trying them out to see positive results.