Modern Imprint | SEO, Social Media : March 2018

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Artificial Intelligence - Marketing | Brand Strategy

AI in Marketing: How brands can leverage artificial intelligence to improve personalization, enhance ad targeting, and make marketing teams more agile

Artificial intelligence (AI), often used as an umbrella term to describe types of technology that can simulate human intelligence, is one of today's hottest topics across a number of business sectors. AI techniques teach computers to parse data in a contextual manner to provide requested information, supply analysis, or trigger an event based on their findings.

Marketers are already leveraging the power of AI to glean valuable insights about their customers, automate tasks, and improve workflows. Just over half (51%) of marketers currently use AI, and an additional 27% are expected to incorporate the technology by 2019, according to Salesforce. This represents the highest anticipated year-over-year (YoY) growth of any leading technology that marketers expect to adopt in the next year, beating out the Internet of Things and marketing automation. And, as the volume of consumer-generated data grows, AI computing techniques — like machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP) — will become increasingly important to data-driven decision-making.

In a new report, Business Insider Intelligence examines the current and potential applications of AI within marketing. We dive into how AI enhances personalization, and identify the best practices for marketers looking to integrate the nascent tech into their strategies. We also look at how marketers cam implement AI to better target audiences, gain a competitive edge, and analyze data from social platforms. Finally, we evaluate how these applications will transform — and enhance — the way marketers analyze data, conduct burdensome tasks, and create content.

DIgital Marketing | Brand Awareness

6 Digital Marketing Trends That Will Explode Your Brand Awareness in 2018

Online marketing has changed a lot over the last few years. The paradigm has shifted, and what worked for you last year won't work for you this year. What got you to this point won't get you to where you want to be, and your job as an entrepreneur is to keep up with this change.

The leads you bring in and the customers you attract are the lifeblood of your business, and it's no longer enough to create a single marketing funnel and expect a return on your investment.

Today, your ability to create leads comes down to building trust and intimacy with those who need you the most, and to then convince them you're the most relevant choice. You need to become omnipresent and top of mind, and you can do this by paying close attention to these six digital marketing trends.

1. Relevancy wins the war.

It's no longer about collecting the most email addresses or leads. Those with the biggest lists used to dominate their niche, but this will not work in 2018 as people begin to crave greater intimacy and relevance.

In 2018, relevancy will win the war. If you want to increase your profit this year, it isn't about creating more leads, it's about building greater intimacy and relevance with the leads you have -- so you provide the right solution, to the right people, at the right time.

2. Attention is the new currency.

If you're not capturing (the right) attention in 2018, you lose your ability to compete without spending massive amounts of money on advertising and other online marketing.

Attention is getting more and more expensive as more businesses have easier access to it, meaning it's more important than ever to make the most of the attention you capture. People are so overwhelmed with messages that they're starved of significance. This is an opportunity for you, because as soon as you capture their attention, you capture their loyalty and wallet.

It's no longer about spreading your marketing further and further for the sake of it. You have to spread it to the right people at the right time, and make the most of their attention the moment you capture it.

Inbound Marketing - Marketing Strategy

Attract More Customers With Inbound Marketing

The Art of Attracting Customers With Inbound Marketing Tactics

Your goal should be to convert your website visitors into sales and brand ambassadors. Inbound Marketing can help you accomplish just that through a well executed inbound program that gets you found by your target market.

There are many different ways to promote your business online and attract valuable leads and subscribers, which can make the process intimidating to many just starting out on a marketing plan. Added to the mix is the fact that both social media and the state of search are in a state of flux due to the latest technologies and consumer behavior.

To make it simple think of this as relationship marketing and Seth Godin’s idea of permission marketing — defined on Wikipedia as “a non-traditional marketing technique that sells goods and services when advance consent is given.”

Inbound marketing in a nutshell encompasses publishing to blogs, social networking, video, ect. in order to create more online visibility. It has also often been referred to as “Pull Marketing” because you are pulling people into your sphere of influence by being findable and available for communication.

Traditional marketing or outbound marketing is where brands focus on finding customers. Think of this method as intrusion marketing and Godin’s term, interruption marketing. This is also referred to as “Push Marketing” where the advertising or promotion is done through search and on social media.

As marketing trends continue to change there are three in particular that Neil Patel points out will be a dominant factor this year. These include:

Guest blogging to attract organic inbound traffic to your own website.
Publishing quality articles that are at least 2,500 words, and more focus on live chat instead of static signup forms.
Readers are now looking for actionable details that explain to them how to exactly accomplish something. This is enhanced with graphics that provide the right steps for them as well as helpful videos that walk them through the process.

SEO Strategy | Internet Marketing

3 Core Trade-offs Every SEO Strategy Must Consider

Very few strategies are mutually exclusive in the SEO industry, but that doesn’t mean doing both is always the best of both worlds.

Investing more in one strategy usually means investing less in another, at least in the short term, and choosing the path straight down the middle isn’t going to be the best choice for every brand, either.

With that in mind, let’s talk about three primary strategic tradeoffs that you’ll need to consider when making important decisions for your brand optimization.

1. Traffic vs. Relevance

I know what a lot of you are thinking. “It’s relevance, obviously.”

Yes, an SEO strategy that doesn’t factor relevance into the game plan is obviously flawed.

Traffic from users who would never have an interest in your product is inherently wasteful.

Except when it isn’t.

Here’s the thing:

There’s actually a lot more to consider than might be immediately apparent.

Consider the following:

Pros of a High Traffic, Low Relevancy Approach

Higher the traffic earned, better are your chances of earning natural links from visitors.
High traffic means that people who would be interested in your products may hear of you secondhand from visitors who never would be interested in your products, whether that is through social sharing or in person.
More traffic volume means it is easier to achieve statistically significant results from SEO experiments, A/B tests, and similar data approaches.
More traffic can ultimately mean increase in the total number of relevant visits, even if the proportion of relevant visits is lower.
High traffic strategies can reach people who are further up the sales funnel but may still ultimately take an interest in your product, often in wildly unpredictable ways.

The Disadvantages of a High Traffic Approach

High traffic keywords are often very competitive, even when they are low in relevancy. The easiest keywords to rank for are those with limited traffic potential and audiences with very specific needs.
Poor conversion rates limit the immediate financial value of high traffic strategies.
Chasing too many high traffic topics can look cynical or dilute your brand’s message.

Pros of a High Relevancy, Low Traffic Approach

Much higher conversion rates for lead generation and sales.
Less competitive keywords to target.
A more targeted psychological impact on the visitors who are most likely to ultimately buy your products, leading to a stronger brand affinity.
More enthusiastic brand advocates.
More relevant natural anchor text in your earned links.

The Disadvantages of a High Relevancy Approach

High relevancy keywords can be just as competitive as high traffic keywords if they have high conversion rates. High audience relevance often doesn’t translate to high product relevance.
High relevancy strategies can be difficult to scale, especially without alienating your existing audience.
Becoming too focused on a limited set of topics can limit your brand’s perceived personality.

Email Marketing | SEO 2018 | Business Strategy

Why you should start using email marketing and SEO in 2018

SEO and business are like two different things with the same goal: success. You can never separate SEO from business in order to succeed. Now that people in the business world know how important the use of SEO services for their business, more and more strategies are formed to build good content marketing and SEO campaigns.

Just like SEO and business, the main key of having a successful business lies in content marketing and SEO campaigns; moreover, in order to make a business grow or stay successful, you should always have the future in mind; in this case, 2018.

Reasons why you should start using email marketing for your content marketing and SEO campaigns in 2018

With high quality content marketing and SEO campaigns, you can optimise more keywords, create better web pages that can rank high in search results, generate more backlinks, as well as attract more visitors to your website. However, there is another way to help you with content marketing strategies and SEO campaigns that is considered as easy and effective if used properly; the email marketing. Yes, you might subscribe to your favourite online shop for a 50% discount, right? Well, at least some of us do.

Maybe some of us are annoyed by the way they attract us by their emails and that makes us wonder if it is alright to use email marketing for our business. The answer is, yes, it is alright to do so, especially now with the constantly changing future trends! Why? This article will help you get a better understanding of how email marketing can support your content marketing and SEO campaigns in 2018.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is basically a method of sending direct messages to customers or potential customers that include promotions of products or services, or a way to maintain relationship with them electronically. If you ever got your email listed on a website you might be interested in, you might find their emails in your inbox.

Depending on how they deliver the message, it can be annoying sometimes when it has become spammy, right? Take a note of this, and use that as a reference, so that you will avoid the same mistakes in the future. However, if you use the right ways of email marketing, you will find that very useful for your business. So, what are the advantages of using email marketing?

Cost efficiency

With email marketing, you can promote or advertise your brand for inexpensive cost, or even for free! You can reach to a wider target audience with higher chance of ROI than any expensive marketing strategy with nothing much to lose in case something goes wrong.

Easy content promotion

Sending emails to your subscribers can help you promote and highlight some of your best as well as your most recent products easily, so that they will be notified shortly after your products are released. Aside from that, if you write a new article, but haven’t gotten any traffic yet, you can use email marketing to notify your subscribers about your newest article and encourage them to read it. This will generate more traffic to your blog/website.

More backlinks

With attention-grabbing email marketing, people will get excited to see what is in store for them to see. That’s why if your email, article, or website content can provide unique and informative explanations at the same time, this can boost people’s attention to click and share, meaning, more and more backlinks in the future!

Reliable brand increases customers’ loyalty

Your steady emails can help improve your brand’s reputation and increase customers’ loyalty that will make them stay connected to your emails. Of course, that also depends on how you deliver your email marketing strategy. The right email marketing strategy will help you encourage your customers or your potential customers to invest more in your content and your future publications. Remember: your emails say a lot about your brand.

3 Ways to Grow Your Brand with Social Media

Voice Search - SEO | Siri, Alexa

5 ways voice is changing the SEO game

SEO is a moving target. The standards change constantly so, despite years of experience, many web designers struggle to meet all the optimization guidelines. How, then, can any business confidently approach the web design process? It starts with recognizing those evolving norms, the newest of which is voice search.

Why Voice Search Matters

For years, the dominant SEO rule has been mobile first. The introduction of voice recognition systems, like Siri and Alexa, to smartphones has dramatically changed how we interact with devices. In fact, 20% of Google searches are voice searches with that number expected to grow rapidly over the next few months. Businesses and web designers, then, need to make sure their sites are voice ready if they want to stay relevant. Though the sites may stay the same visually, they need to gain a new edge functionally.

From The Ground Up

Modifying your website to support voice search isn’t as simple as many other SEO transitions, but if you take a ground up approach to the process, you’ll be able to reshape your website around those changes. Still, you’ll need help to do this correctly. When adapting your website for voice, SEO consultant Aaron Rains recommends hiring an expert for a full site audit and analysis to maintain your page ranking. You don’t want your page to take a rankings hit because you’re trying to keep up with the trends.

Expanding Your Device Options

In addition to its advantages from a mobile perspective, making the move to voice search also means expanding your site’s horizons by making it more accessible to new devices, particularly the smart home speakers that are gaining in popularity. Users are particularly comfortable with these devices because they rely on natural speech patterns rather than half-formed search terms. Children growing up with these smart speakers in their homes seem to view them as part of the family and will be native voice search users as they grow.

Snippets For Search

Part of updating your website for speech is optimizing the content to match changing search patterns. One of the key ways to do this is through the use of featured snippets.

Featured snippets are designed to help put your website in the #0 spot – the top ranking. To do that, you’ll want to put the answers to your most popular queries in the first few sentences on your page. This is especially for purchasing and local search since people frequently use voice search to find local businesses. If you can optimize for the most important snippets early on, you’ll be way ahead on the competition and have a greater ROI.

Social Media Marketing | SEO | Marketing Strategy

Four Ways To Use Social Media To Your SEO Advantage

Think SEO and social aren’t related? Think again.

Good social media marketing leads consumers to a website; good SEO practices help consumers to find that website and to stay engaged with it.

Want your own results? Here are four ways to leverage social media for SEO:

1. Get the right followers.

Followers on social media are a lot like links in the SEO world. It’s not so much about the number as it is the quality. To get these followers, don't buy them. Consistently building your social media presence, encouraging users to follow your page for special discounts or VIP offers, and generally offering good content will result in an increased following.

We’ve seen firsthand how a large, good-quality social following can lead to increased website traffic and higher quality traffic with a greater ROI.

2. Use social media for external link-building.

To piggyback off the last point, the greater number of followers you have, the greater the potential for shares you have online as well. And the more shares on social media you have, the more opportunities people have to see your content and link to it.

SEO: Search Engine Marketing Tips

SEO: How to Rank against the Heavyweights

Merchants want to rank number one in Google for search terms that are seemingly important to their business, such as “dog food.” Or “office supplies.” Or whatever popular term describes their products.

The problem, however, is that not every company can rank for high-demand keywords. The workaround is to be realistic about ranking potential and develop search engine optimization strategies accordingly.

Relevance and Authority

Ranking well in any search engine takes a strong combination of relevance and authority. Relevance is determined by the pairing of the search phrase with the context and authority of your site. Authority is based on the quality and quantity of links from other sites to yours, as well as mentions within relevant content communities.

Say you want to rank for “auto parts.” Is your brand known for auto parts, or does it only sell replacement wheels and hubcaps? If you don’t all types of auto parts and focus instead on a few subtypes, your site will almost certainly not be considered relevant for a broader search for “auto parts.” Don’t fight it. Work with your strength.

Conversely, assume you sell all manner of auto parts. Your site could, therefore, be considered relevant for a broader search. Evaluate the content on your site. Do you have critical text content anywhere besides the navigational structure of your header and footer?

Descriptive, plain text content is essential to relevance. And it must be unique, high-quality content that shoppers want to read. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary.

Which brings us to authority. You can’t buy authority without risking penalties. You can’t manufacture it, either. You have to earn it. That’s why authority is so valuable. It’s difficult to accumulate and requires the agreement of others in the topical community.

Links and mentions from any (reputable) source will have some value, such as from the chamber of commerce in your hometown, or a random blog with a single car restoration post linking to your wheels and hubcaps. The most valuable links, however, will come from sites with a large amount of authority in a topically relevant area.

How much relevance and authority you need is based on your competitors. If their sites are highly relevant to high-demand keyword phrases, you’ll need more than they have. And if their backlink portfolios number in the five- or six-figure range, yours will need more, as well.