How Can Content Marketing Make Your Presence Felt in the Internet?

Any smart entrepreneur would have long understood that the traditional means of marketing is a thing of the past. What is required in this age and technology is online marketing backed with the most reliable and up-to-date techniques. Though there are different modes of making your presence felt in the online world, one marketing strategy most marketers bet on is content marketing.

A colourful, well designed website and a couple of social media accounts is just not sufficient to make your presence felt in the Internet. Content is one of the most powerful tools to make a dominating presence online. As a marketer, if you have still not forayed into content marketing and set across a strong team for that, then just read on to know why you should do it right away.

What is Content Marketing?

As a marketer if you plan to promote your business online, you would have certainly heard about content marketing. And if you are wondering how content marketing can make a difference to my business, then here’s a simple explanation to it. Content marketing is nothing but a means to create and share valuable details about your business in such a way that it will not only attract customers, but will convert potential customers into customers and customers into repeat customers. The right content will be your key to get customers to buy your products and change their views regarding your company. So, if you interested in doing your business online, content marketing is a reliable strategy to make customers to know, like and trust your brand.

Power of Content Marketing

Content has proven to be a successful strategy no matter what the business or vertical. Marketers are beginning to realize the value of a planned and well-executed marketing strategy. In fact, in a recent study conducted, content marketing well surpassed several marketing activities like social media marketing, SEO and paid advertising.The reason why content marketing is considered a valuable tool is due its versatility and its ability to reach. By delivering custom-made content to your customers, you not only make the customer feel better about the company and build stronger relationships, but also increase the inbound traffic to your site. It is also a great way to increase brand awareness and pull in unexpected customers. And best of all, it is the most cost-effective form of marketing, when compared to other alternative forms of marketing.

The Future

It is hard to deny the fact that content marketing is the next big thing in digital marketing. It is expected to overtake different marketing avenues like social media marketing. Content that is tailored to meet the marketing needs and is designed to lure the target customers is slated to rule the roost in future. In this generation of smartphones and unlimited Internet, where we are bombarded with information, the challenge lies in making you stand out. And this task can be trusted to content marketing. Companies with a proper content marketing strategy in place are expected to generate more leads in comparison to others.

Tips & Tricks

Long blog posts with high-quality and detailed content will be the future. With the Internet world overloaded with poor quality content, such kind of quality blogs and articles will certainly work wonders. Don’t limit your blog posts with just content. Pep them up with videos. Yes! Videos in blog posts will improve the learning experience and will create a dedicated group that will come back for more. Content marketing with the use of infographics and instructographics is a sure shot way to hit the bull’s eye. Publishing inforgraphics that stand out on a regular basis will be a successful content marketing strategy. The basic idea should be to focus on making an impact rather than just making noise.

To sum it up, content marketing is a powerful approach to promote your business online. Quality content can be in any form. Be it in blogs, videos, infographics or articles, it is an efficient and cost-effective way to make your presence felt on the Internet.

9 Authentic Email Campaigns to Boost Your Sales

“So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs”-Dorothea Brande

E-mail marketing is the foremost effective e-commerce marketing channel. There are only a few without an e-mail id of their own. Conquer success with the most effective methods.

Here are the 9 successful e-mail marketing campaigns you cannot ignore, if you want to boost your product sales;

1. Keep talking about the product you already sold to receive useful feedback or motivate them to buy related products through email

How to do it?

1. Set up Automated Personalized E-mail
2. Schedule it to 2 days of product delivery
3. Ask for reviews and rewards with discounts

Effects

• 12.5% in conversion in products with review than those without
• 83.85% increase in conversion on products with 20+ reviews

2. Use A/B testings to optimize open and click through rates

How to do it?

Preform A/B test in one of these

1. Subject Line
2. “FROM” field
3. E-mail content
4. Delivery time

Effects

Obama’s team found out that one subject line outperformed the other by generating more than 84% of donation

3. Soften those deals that were Just Abandoned

The number of abandoned carts is huge in the e-commerce industry. There might be various reasons for this. Identifying them is vital in improving customer experience, which in turn can improve the conversion rate.

How to do it?

1. Set up Cart Abandoned emails
2. Ask customers why they didn’t complete their transaction

Effects

The average order value of purchase from carts abandoned emails is 19% higher than typical purchases.

4. Reward your Most Loyal Customers

Segment your customers by loyalty and campaigns that are relevant to their level of activeness. Reward emails must be dedicated to those who spend 25% above average order value.
Categorizing the customers into five categories based on the engagement and loyalty, and targeting certain categories with gift card incentives increased their short-term revenue by $ 250,000.

5. Care for customers even when they don’t buy

It’s better to gift a life time experience to the customer even if they don’t shop. Remind them about the numerous offers that you have put forward.

How to do it?

Design an automated reactivation sequence with incentives for those who haven’t purchased within 12 months

Effects

400% success rate in reactivating lapsed customers when done after careful segmenting and powerful customizing.

“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches – at scale”. – David Newman

6. Skip arbitrary, start being specific with free credits

Announcing discounts is not always enough. There should be some extra attractions for better sales.

How to do?

Instead of offering percentage based, give customers point based discounts or free shipping gifts

Effects

An email sent to customers with $4.25 in score credit to use within 24 hours boosted their conversions by more than 50%.

Limited period offer can boost up more customers.

7. Use your Transactional Emails for Marketing

A better customer experience can be created with transactional email marketing. These operational messages results in enormous marketing opportunity to increase loyalty and boost revenue.

How to do it?

Send personalized and branded transactional email including seasonally relevant items for cross-sell.

Effects

Adding cross-sell recommendations in shipping confirmation emails increased transaction rates by 20%

8. Getting Personal with customer

At first it might seem impossible. But it isn’t. Wishing them on their special occasions helps gain the trust of customers. Always remember, caring your customer does matter.

How to do it?

Setup milestone campaigns for Birthdays and Anniversaries and send them before and on the D-day

Effects

Personalised birthday and anniversary mails had almost 6X the transaction rate of standard bulk mailings.

9. Take your Email Marketing Beyond the Inbox

It’s not only the e-mail inboxes you can depend on. There are lot more possibilities round the corner. As we know that social media has become a part of human life, boosting your company through social media can make the magic possible.

How to do it?

Up sell and cross sell products through social media and through peer pressure, ads and recommendations.

Effects

A study by e-marketer found out that 53% of people are more likely to purchase a brand after following and engaging with that brand on Facebook than just email subscription.

Now here are some awesome reasons to switch to Email-marketing;

• People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than people that do not     receive email offers.
• 37% said that more than 20% of their inbox comes from marketers, and 53% said they’re                happy with the number of marketing emails they get.
• 91% of people check their email daily
• 33% of email recipients open email based on subject line alone.

5 SEO Best Practices Trending in 2015

“Content is king. But marketing is queen and runs the household”– Gary Vaynerchuk

Jay has just started learning about the scopes of digital marketing and following the advice of one of his friends, had spend money on creating a business website and writing blog posts, making videos and images and all content of the sort for the website. He waited for few weeks after creating a beautiful website to boost his business but, nothing happened! He was worried and of course, frustrated thinking what could have gone wrong?

What really happened?

May be due to his lack of knowledge or in the hurry to achieve a result, Jay forgot to add a main ingredient to his digital marketing strategy-SEO!

No matter how good the content of your website is, your marketing skills are of no use until your business grabs attention among customers. You need to have all elements to pull customers towards your brand and therefore, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a significant role.

“The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google search results”

Google is the most used search engine in the Internet. Internet users are always impatient and while searching online, they tend to check only the websites in the first page of the search results. Therefore, it is important for your business website to be there in the first page of search results for customers to find out about it.

SEO helps in improving your page ranking and in increasing web traffic through various techniques. Therefore, for every business, it is necessary to have a SEO specialist. If you don’t have one, you can go for a SEO specialist or hire a digital marketing agency like Jointviews that can satisfy all your marketing needs.

The SEO techniques applied vary over years and they are still in the path of evolution. If you are into marketing your business online, it is necessary for you to be up to date with the latest trends in SEO.

Here are 5 SEO best practices that are trending in 2015 that you can utilize to improve your page ranking and to help your business reach the right audience in the coming months:

1. Content is king

Content has great value in digital marketing. A good quality and informative content has the power to influence people and convert them into permanent customers.  Any content that you add to your website must be related to your business and should contain relevant keywords. This trend seems to continue even in 2015.

2. Conversations given more priority than keywords

Before, a matching keyword would have brought your website to the first page of search results. But now, things have changed. Search engine looks specifically for the meaning, context and intent of the word typed in the search query.  Therefore, you should focus on putting efforts towards a key word phrase in order to engage in a conversation with your customers.

3. Visual-based SEO

2014 was the year of visual content when websites that topped search engine results had high quality videos and images as content. The trend remains the same in 2015. The Search Engine Results Pages are choosing websites with text and visual elements in them over those websites with just text as content.  Also, video marketing in YouTube can help you build website traffic by sharing the video in social media sites.

4. Mobile-friendly SEO

No one bothers to carry a laptop around these days. Internet is easily available in mobile phones and that is what the people prefer. According to the statistics, mobile Internet usage has surpassed desktop Internet. According to the estimates, there will be at least 50 billion local searches via mobile Internet and therefore, mobile-friendly SEO is the need of the hour.

5. Online security is a priority in rankings

If your website deals with online transactions and contains sensitive information, make sure that you are using proper security measures to guard the information.  Online security certificates and use of https instead of http is going to decide your website rankings in 2015.

8 Trending Digital Marketing Tactics in 2015

Digital marketing has undergone a substantial change over the years. What worked a couple of years ago might be a total flop now. With evolving customer behaviours and changing business models, a marketer has to constantly keep evolving and think of ways to reinvent his business tactics. If you thought you had used all the tricks up your sleeve in 2014, then you’ll be surprised by the major digital marketing trends and predictions of 2015. Any smart marketer would want to get ahead of things and anticipate the next big trends to get an upper hand in the market. So, here’s a compilation of some major trends in digital marketing that are expected to dominate in 2015.

  1. Content Marketing

Content marketing had played a very important role in digital marketing over the past few years and will continue to be on the rise in the coming year too. This will be the year where content will finally get its due, and will become more about quality than about quantity. So, make sure you have a dedicated team of content writers, who will create successful content writing strategies and produce first-rate content. Reach out to your customers in writing. High-quality and relevant content will not only attract followers, but will also increase your search engine ranking as well.

  1. “Mobile-First” Approach

In 2014, if you have tried to make your website responsive, then the year 2015 will be the year for the Mobile-First approach. With a majority of consumers relying on their mobile phone for everything,you’ll have to make a shift from a mobile-friendly website to a mobile-first website. Design keeping a small screen and a slow connection in mind. Long load times can drive viewers away. So, prioritize on speed and make accessing your content on mobile easy.

  1. Video Marketing

Usage of videos for marketing purposes has worked in the past and will continue to do so in the year 2015. Given the response of consumers to original video content, it is not a surprise to expect this trend to continue in the coming year too. Brand video content will be a serious contender, so it is but wise to set aside a fund to invest in making some fabulous brand promotional videos.

  1. Personalized Marketing

A personalized approach to marketing is expected to be the next big thing in the year 2015. Companies who adopted this method in 2014 were able to notice a steady increase in the sales. The fact being that such content encourages consumers to stay longer on the website and also fosters customer satisfaction. So, focus on creating personalized content in the year 2015.

  1. Real-time Marketing

Real-time marketing is a marketers’ tool to close the gap between online and offline experience. According to a recent study, marketers not only noticed increased customer engagement, but also increased conversion rates and improved brand perception by using this technique. For this tactic to work, you have to have an “always on” social team in place that will understand your target audience and implement real-time marketing efforts.

  1. Minimalistic Approach

Yes! Less will more in the year 2015. There will be a shift in how content will be presented visually on websites, and simple, user-friendly designs will top the list. Endless scrolls, countless emails, too much text, complicated designs will be a definite no-no. Keep the design minimalistic with clean open space, bright colours and crisp edges. This will capture the limited attention span of consumers. Keep the content short and simple.

  1. Personalized Emails

Savvy marketers will swear by personalized emails. With most customers relying on permission-based e-mailers to get to know the latest promotions and offers, this is the right way to reach people effectively. It has been noticed that the click through rates and conversion rates are relatively high for personalized emails. So, if you have not personalized your emails still, then this is the right time to do.

  1. Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation will be the buzzword of the year 2015. If you think it’s just about automating tasks, then you are wrong. There is more to it than that. It’s about optimization. It’s about connecting with your customers in an authentic way by bringing together your data, relationships or channels. This technique will be your tool to streamline resources and manage data effectively and efficiently.

Content Marketing: What is it all about?

People ignore all sorts of traditional marketing techniques these days. Interest in television advertising and print ads are on the decline. The moment people realized that traditional marketing has started to lose its awesomeness and Internet is where you can find your audience, they have turned to digital marketing.

“Good communication means good business”

If you are planning to market your business online, you cannot do it without content marketing since that’s the way you get to communicate with your clients and convey the idea about your business to them. It is popularly said that “Content is King” and good content, can undoubtedly boost your business.

Content marketing: the definition

The standard definition of content marketing goes like this:

Content marketing is the creation and sharing of valuable content in order to gain customers and to turn the existing customers to repeated buyers. The content will always be related to what exactly you are planning to sell.

What makes Content Marketing unique?

One might think all the buzz about content marketing is nothing but a fad. But, the fact is that content has always been the soul of marketing. Just give it a thought. Unless you know something is valuable, you are not going to buy it. How do you know something is valuable? Through informational content! But the importance of content has come to the forefront only in the past few years.

Despite content being the soul of marketing, there is a one major difference between traditional marketing and content marketing. All other forms of marketing techniques advocate the hard sell. i.e. They try to sell you the product while, content marketing tries to empower the customer by making him more knowledgeable about products and their benefits.

The now intelligent customer stays loyal to his source of knowledge more often than not.

Why do you need content marketing?

Because content is all you get to hear right from the moment you take your first step towards digital marketing. Rest of the marketing techniques just follow it.

  • An advertisement alone doesn’t compel customers to buy a product, valuable information regarding the product does
  • A Social media network is a great medium to make your business reach majority audience, but only with great content
  • It’s always the content based on which Google ranks your website so that people get to access your business
  • A great content leaves a great impact on people, letting them to know , like and trust your products

Different forms of content marketing

You create good content, but how do you make sure that it reaches out to the potential customers? That’s why there are different forms of content marketing, which include:

Blogs

When you hear the word content, the first thing that comes to your mind is obviously a blog. Blog contents contain relevant information about a particular business or product. Blog posts instil a sense of trust in the customers by giving them all necessary information about your product and helping you strengthen your brand.

Newsletters

You send newsletters to potential customers, each of the publication speaking about a particular topic of interest each day. It is considered as a great marketing strategy to attract customers and encourage them to visit your business websites.

E-mails

E-mail marketing tops the list of the most successful techniques used in content marketing. In e-mail marketing, you collect e-mail Ids of potential customers and mail them some informative content or offers. It is a means of indirect marketing where you don’t try to sell the product to the customers but you give them information that may be of great help to them, thus making them eager to learn further about you and your business.

Social media

Social media networks are very much popular amongst Internet users and that is where you have majority of your potential customers. Through social media, you can post, tweet, share and dialogue anything and therefore, it is a great medium to share your content, links to your blogs and website posts etc.

White papers

White papers are documents that contain long content, meant to promote a particular product. They introduce a problem and with the help of case studies, research findings and content of the sort to argue that your product or business is superior to other businesses in solving the issue.  It is somewhat like boasting about your product, but if you are sure about your business, what’s wrong in showing it off?

Videos

Video marketing is gaining popularity these days. Videos are effective marketing tools since they help you convey to the customers an insight about your business, how they can help you solve an issue etc. through effective content. Be it interviews, testimonials or guides, you get to show off all information about your business through videos. But make sure that the videos are short enough since people have a very short attention span and they tend to get easily bored.

E-books

E-books are of great advantage for your customers who are keen to learn more about your business and products. You can convert your best content into digital format and sell them or give away to your customers so that they can attain deep knowledge about your business.

Images

Images speak better than words at times. Therefore, a powerful image with great design can be the best marketing strategy to help you spread the word and gain more customers

Infographics

Inforgraphics is the trend these days. It is a design led graphic that speaks to customers with powerful images and relevant words that can explain even complex things in a simple manner.

How can content marketing help your business?

Content serves two different entities – customers and search engines. It builds customers’ trust and helps you rank better in search engine result pages (SERP). Adopting content marketing can benefit your business in the following ways:

  • Generate in-bound traffic to your website
  • Increase engagement with potential audience
  • Generate more leads
  • Increase sales
  • Helps in brand-building
  • Cheaper than traditional marketing

Here are some interesting stats about content marketing:

  1. Content marketing is employed by 93% of B2B marketers (Content Marketing Institute)
  2. About 60% people are inspired to look for a product after reading about it online!(com)
  3. Out of all the marketers who blog, a massive 82% report positive ROI for their inbound marketing (hubspot)

How can Social Media Marketing Help You Retain Customers?

Posts, likes, shares, comments, tweets, +1s! If you thought that’s all social media platforms are about, you were wrong. Apart from showing off your location and status to the world, social media platforms are also among the best means to enhance your business.

“A brand is no longer what we tell the customer it is. It is what customers tell each other it is”- Scott Cook

Social media platforms are viewed as the “next big thing” by entrepreneurs mainly because it is where most of the potential customers will be since majority of the world are Internet users. But, some people disagree with that. They feel that social media marketing doesn’t really bring any huge difference to their business.

However, the statistics say something different… (source)

In 2014,

92% marketers felt that social media marketing was important for their business and out of the 92%, 80% of the marketers felt that social media marketing has increased traffic to their website.

97% marketers have already set their foot in the world of social media marketing. But 85% of them are still not sure of which social media tools to use to yield best results.

The statistics themselves reveal the potential of social media marketing and its positive effect on business.

Social media marketing can help you retain customers in the following ways:

Brand recognition

You should never spare an opportunity to show off your content and earn a place for yourselves amongst the crowd. Social media networks are the best platforms you can opt for to earn recognition for your brand. Not only does it help you to grab the attention of new customers, but also familiarizes  existing customers with your business.

Brand loyalty

Social media networks can be used to build a sense of trust and likeness among your customers since it enables you to connect directly to your audience. Therefore, utilizing the social media tools to the fullest and a finely planned and executed marketing strategy can influence your customers to stay loyal to your brand.

More chances to convert leads to business

The content you post in your social media platform is an opportunity for you to convert your site visitors to paying customers.  Through social media marketing, you get to interact with your customers. You get to know their reaction to your products and for almost every positive interaction, conversion is possible.

Higher conversion rates

Social media marketing can result in higher conversion rates. Also, it helps in improvising your brand according to the taste of the customer. Since you get to interact with the customers through social media networks, you can know about what they like and dislike about your product. Also interaction with your customers can help you in building trust and faith in the customer’s minds. Thus you can build a greater audience and improve your conversion rates.

Higher brand authority

You might have seen how people appreciate or criticize a brand in social media platforms. Keeping the negative feed backs apart, every time they mention the name of your brand, it is marketing and it compels others to keep themselves updated about what is happening to your brand. You can use this opportunity to interact with people on a regular manner and earn their faith.

Increased inbound traffic

Without social media marketing, inbound traffic to your site may be restricted to your already existing customers. Every profile you create on social media platforms link back to your website and the content that you post there will help you earn new customers.  Inbound traffic also depends on the quality of content you post. With better quality content, you will be able to enjoy better inbound traffic leading to higher conversion rates.

Lesser marketing costs

According to 84% of the marketers around the world, taking an effort of 6 hours per week itself can result in an increase in traffic. Spend a couple of hours to plan and another couple of hours to create quality content. That’s all you may need to start seeing desired results and it is not much of an effort. Once your brand is popular, you need not spend more on marketing it.

Improved Search Engine Rankings

Search engine rankings play an important role in earning you permanent customers and enhancing your business. People tend to notice your business only if the website appears in the first two pages of the search engine. Criteria such as regular updating of blogs, optimization of tags, sites pointing to your website, content that is not plagiarized etc. are not the only things that are considered by Google while ranking your website these days. Since almost every brand uses social media to promote, the presence of your business on social media might have an influence on your website’s Google page rank too. Being active in social media gives search engines a signal that your brand can be trusted and is loyal.

Interaction with customers

Social media is a communication platform just like telephones and e-mails.  You can interact directly with your customers and know their opinions on your product and their expectations. You tend to provide customer care at a personal level in social media networks and thereby prove that your brand is trustworthy. If a person complains about your product via social media, you can address the issue in a very short time and try to solve it. Or if a customer appreciates you, you can thank them and offer information about additional products from your brand.

Customer Insights

When you market your product through print ads or TV ads, you have to wait for a long period to know about the customer reaction. You need not wait that long when it comes to social media. You can read customer opinion in the form of comments. You can analyse what they want and improvise your products accordingly. You’ll get to know the contents that interest the customers and thus improve the content you post. At the end, all these interactions help you create a strategy that can help you enhance your business.

If you are still not sure about using social media for business, you need to know the following things

The competition is on

While you stay away from social media, there already exists an intense competition between different brands selling the same products as yours. When all your competitors enjoy the benefits of social media, such as increased conversion rates and web traffic, why should you stay idle?

Sooner you start, larger will be the audience

Social media is all about earning new acquaintances and getting social. In a similar way, you can earn as many potential customers once you enter the world of social media

Nothing to lose

You don’t endure any significant loses if your social media marketing isn’t successful.  Also, the money and time you spend on social media is nothing much compared to what you spend for other marketing techniques.

The earlier you go for it, the better your benefits will be.

Building long-term relationships with customers using digital media

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the Chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else” – Sam Walton

When someone wants you to hear a story of their recent customer experience, it usually turns out to be a story with sad ending. But it doesn’t mean that good service is less likely to be seen. After all, providing customer satisfaction is the key part in enhancing the overall outlook of a company. Am I making sense? Yes. And that is what compelled me to appreciate and value the importance of satisfying customers and building a long-term relationship with them. Before I provide some insights on this 21 st century hot topic, I want you to really appreciate the value of gratifying customers through the following example.

Enriching people’s lives

We’re very simple people at Apple. We focus on making the world’s best products and enriching people’s lives” Tim Cook

Yes, the example is about Apple! The following story went viral after Apple launched iPad 2. A man bought iPad 2 online but was forced to return the product immediately. He attached a note in front of the device saying, “Wife said no”. The incident ultimately reached some Apple VPs. Guess what? Apple refunded it and returned the product to the customer attaching a Post-It that simply read, “Apple said yes.”!

Amazing!! Isn’t it? It would have been a nice surprise for the customer. And that too for free! So, this is what I am trying to communicate.

The emotional value of a product out shadows the monetary value of a company when it is achieved by creating a long-term relationship with the customer. In order to build that relationship, you need to adopt new ways of marketing. The power of digital media to enhance your relationship with customers is not to be neglected in this highly competitive world. So there you are…Thinking of the possibilities of strengthening your customer base through the power of digital media!

Needs, Perceptions

You have marketed your product quiet well and people bought it. They are satisfied with your product and are happy. You thank them and reward them in some cases. So, is your job done? No. Understanding the needs and perceptions of your customers is as important as delivering quality products. For that, you need to collect data regarding customer requirements. But how? Let me share some ideas.

  • E-mail surveys

You can choose appropriate questions and create an e-mail survey using websites or software which offers e-mail survey programs. Gathering data from customers about your product or service is an effective way of analyzing your customers’ preferences. Being a part of social media marketing, e-mail surveys help you to conduct market research in a cost-effective manner.

  • Building relevant data

You can learn more about your customers at key buyer stages by building relevant data regarding the buyer behavior. This not only helps you to understand the behavior of customers at the purchasing stage but also helps in analyzing the post-purchase behavior of customers. You can collect data from customers using tools which support you in customer-sourcing.

  • Feedback gathering

Knowing how happy or sad your customer is after buying your product helps you make necessary changes based on their needs. So, it’s very important to gather customer feedback to achieve customer satisfaction. Tools that help in gathering feedback from customers are becoming popular nowadays and it helps you to improve your business in an effective manner.

Engaging customers

You need to be connected with your customers and should keep them connected with each other as long as emphasizing the value of your brand is essential for the survival of your business. So what can you do? You can let your customers connect and share ideas about your product or service. Platforms can also be created for like-minded customers to share insights and views regarding the product or service of your company. Maintaining a social media presence would help advance the brand building efforts of your business drastically in the long run. After all, social media marketing is one of the powerful tools of digital marketing in this century.

Channels + Content + Marketing

Be it social networks, search engines or e-mail marketing , your efforts to reach your customers need to be clear and powerful. Integrating proper channels, valuable content and unique marketing strategies will help enhance your customer relationship management activities in exceptional ways. Integrated digital marketing has gained wide acclaim where diverse channels are used to strengthen the brand communication efforts. So in order to attract and retain your customers, you need to produce relevant and quality content.

Unfortunately, creating high quality content alone won’t make you successful. The selection of right marketing channels should be done after carefully considering your business’ long term perspectives. Just because your competitor achieved success through a particular strategy doesn’t mean that your business is expected to follow that. Every business is unique and so are their digital marketing strategies.

After all, what you really need is a mass of customers who rely on your product and value your business. You need to be careful while implementing your promotional plans. It is not necessary for all your plans to hit the market. Choose the right digital marketing channel, produce relevant content and strategize your marketing activity if you really want to build a long-term relationship with your customers!

Role of Digital Marketing in e-commerce

Driving or walking all the way to the shop, spending hours to purchase a thing or two and then waiting in the long queue to pay for it..

This was what shopping meant to everyone until e-commerce happened and then, the shopping routine changed to –

Going through different websites, purchasing products with a click and then paying online and waiting for the product to be delivered..

E-commerce makes it convenient for customers to shop at home and hence, it is trending. Due to its popularity, almost all businesses have gone online. But to list the businesses that made it big in the field of e-commerce, there may be very few of them; the reason? Most of them forgot a major element to their success- DIGITAL MARKETING!

Are you wondering what difference digital marketing can make to your e-commerce site? Let’s check out these aspects of digital marketing for e-commerce:

It takes months to find a customer and only seconds to lose one”

You create an e-commerce website and then you wait for customers to flock in and shop things from your site just like a physical shop! This dream of yours could have come true only if your website is the only E-commerce website existing online. But, unfortunately, it is not.

Marketing through online ads and various other methods may attract some web traffic. But, even that very small number of users may not stay in your website for long if they don’t find it easy to use. Greater the user experience, more will be the number of visitors to your website and for that, you need to have enough functionalities. Confused, are you? Well, don’t be. Improving the functionalities of your website is also definitely a part of digital marketing.

If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy in the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends”

That is the power of social media. Social media platforms are where you can find your customers belonging to the younger generation. Through proper marketing techniques, you can easily spread the word about your e-commerce venture in social media and win customers, causing your business to flourish. Therefore, social media marketing is always a great choice for brand building and word of mouth publicity.

Building a website without SEO is like building a road without direction”

Yes, it is true because you are not famous! Not everybody online knows you or your business. For people, to reach a website, it all starts from the search engine and it is common for them to click only those websites in the first page of the search results and just because you own a website doesn’t mean that you are there in the first page. That’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and PPC (pay per click) come to our aid.

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out”-R Collier

Success can’t come to you in a day and being a newcomer in the e-commerce field, you may be very well aware of it. It is not at all a loss if you really spend a very small amount of your money in the process. Yes! We are talking about affiliate marketing here, where an affiliate places your ad on their website and when a customer clicks the ad and converts the sale, it is tracked. The affiliate then gets a commission while you get a sale!

A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all”-Michael LeBouef

When it comes to business online or offline, customer is the king. If you happen to satisfy your customer’s need, you win. Digital marketing gives you the opportunity to connect directly to your potential customers. This in turn helps you in knowing what the customers think about your business and what they expect from you. Thus you can improve your online business and reach greater heights.

Creating an online presence for your e-commerce business isn’t that easy as you think, especially when you don’t know the ABCs of digital marketing. You can’t act “I-know-it-all” when it comes to business and you will have to depend on a team of experienced people well versed with digital marketing such as JointViews.

We keep track of the latest trends in digital marketing and hence our approach is always result oriented to make your presence felt online. Our team of content writers, SEOs, animators, graphic designers and word press developers make it possible through our efforts. If you are still doubtful of what we are capable of or if you think you need our service, feel free to Contact Us.

Role of Visual Content in Digital World

People are connected as never before in the digital era. Internet has revolutionized marketing with digital methods. The rise of social media has further strengthened the prospects of digital marketing.

Gone are the days of limited dreams, digital marketing gives you wings to fly high, sky is not the limit. Digital marketing is a process of building and maintaining customer relationship. A major factor in this form of market is visual content.

What do you mean by visual content?

When you visit a website, it is the first impression created by the visuals that makes to stay or leave the website. Visuals would include a website’s design, videos, images, Infographics, illustrations, etc.

Why is it important?

Visual content helps to grab targeted audience without fail. Visual content has gone forth as one of the hottest digital marketing trends these days. Visual content attracts people and makes the complex messages clearer, consuming less time and effort. They leave a lasting impression on the customer compared to long pages of text.

Due to the busy life schedule, people find it difficult and monotonous to read massive content. On the other hand, visual content requires minimum time and would be exciting if done right. It can increase brand awareness and your SERP results gets benefited as well.

Types of Visual Content

Photos

A picture is worth thousand words. But visual marketing content is not simply about communicating a message, but it should be retained within the reader as well. Mere text based content cannot stay attractive. With a good and compelling visual, website viewers tend to stay longer and understand the accurate message the content is trying to deliver. It’s not about the image but the story the image carries that matters.

Videos

Video sites are full of viewers, ready to devour new ideas. Entertain the audience with a video; the chances of getting noticed are really very high. Human mind requires emotional input to make decisions. Emotional bonds, without doubt influences a person’s choice as well as actions. Videos can create this emotional bond by building trust and credibility effectively. And moreover, they are loved by search engines.

Presentations

Presentations make things clear and to the point. Various aspects of a topic are presented simply and effectively after deep research about the topic. This helps audience to easily to understand complex ideas. Presentations can help sell both the idea and the product.

Infographics

Information graphics or infographics is a graphic presentation of information which is intended to present complex information quickly and effectively in a very precise manner. A well designed infographics can turn boring and complicated topics into interesting and captive discussions. Like a capsule that functions multiple use, infographics serves multiple purpose very efficiently. High quality infographics are 30 times more likely to be read than text articles.

GIF

GIF, Graphic interchange format is a recent development that has created far reaching effects on digital marketing. They possess comparatively small file sizes; this implies that they can be used easily online as they can load quicker and still maintain quality. GIF helps to display a professional touch. GIF can express emotions and movement which a still image may not be able to. GIF is more than an image but less than a video. It’s really short but is still effective.

Beneficial Facts about Visual Content

  • Visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text , and 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual
  • 40% people respond better to visual information than text .
  • Compared to plain text posts, posts with videos attract inbound links 3 times more.
  • 93%of all human communication is practically non-verbal.
  • 70% of all sensory receptors humans have are all concentrated inside a person’s eye out of which 50% of this visual information is processed by brain.
  • 94% views a topic if something compelling visual elements and graphics are available
  • According to studies, certain colors and color combinations can arouse certain emotions in humans; it can also influence how a particular viewer will take action, such as influencing their decision of purchase.
  • Use of visual content in Facebook campaigns generated 65% more engagement just after only a month’s practice.
  • 95% people are of the opinion that visual content is really very important for capturing attention.
  • 89% is already using or planning to use visual content in social media
  • 2 million blog posts are written every day, think how many of these contains visual content.

Even press releases published with photos generate more audience than normal articles.

Future of Visual Content

Since the introduction of Visual Content, it has entertained as well as educated people, making complex things simple and effective. All social networking sites have made use of visual content and have promoted its use because of the impact created in people.

Know your audience and deliver more than what they expect and future is secure. More companies are switching their focus from boring content to visually engaging content presentation. The lovers of visual content will only increase by time. The future of digital marketing itself is tangled with visual content which serves both purposes – development of the company as well as the entertainment based education of the audience. Future of visual content is immense and promising.