by Francois Muscat | Dec 5, 2017 | E-mail Marketing
For most businesses, there is no busier time than the December festive season! The question is, how do you go about making the most of this time when it comes to your email marketing efforts? We investigate below.
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Sort Your Email Marketing List
Email marketing success is achieved when you can approach your customers with a more personalised tone. Knowing this, it helps to sort your list of contacts so that you can approach them with news and specials most relevant to their needs, thus increasing the chances of a conversion these December holidays. Think ‘big spenders’, ‘wish listers’ and ‘those who have recently made a purchase’, for example.
Who doesn’t love the holidays? Don’t be afraid to reinvent your email structure and design to reflect the season even if it feels as though you’re being corny. Most shoppers will love it! Bonus points if you can work in a bit of nostalgia marketing, too.
Look at the numbers from last year’s holiday email marketing campaign. Which products received the most attention? Which subject lines got the most response? Which contacts seemed to engage the most? All this info will help you to make this year’s campaign an even greater success.
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Don’t Bombard Your Subscribers
Instead of sending a number of emails throughout the festive season, send one or two impressive ones. Spamming your contacts is never going to elicit a good response!
Feeling slightly overwhelmed? Don’t stress. There’s still time to perfect your email marketing campaign this December with the help of the team at WSI OMS! Get in touch with us today for digital marketing advice and know-how that you can trust.
by Francois Muscat | Dec 4, 2017 | Digital Media Marketing
According to Eshopworld.com, there are currently 18.43 million eCommerce users in South Africa, with an additional 6.36 million users expected to be shopping online by 2021. Four years from now, these 24.79 million eCommerce users will spend an average of $189.47 online.
While these are all great future forecasts, what does it mean for your online shop this festive season? As online sales continue to grow, you need to make sure that you are taking advantage of the shopping frenzy that Christmas brings each year. To do this, consider the advice by Efi Dahan, the general manager of PayPal in Israel and Africa.
Efi told Money web that E-commerce in South Africa is growing by leaps and bounds. In February 2017 Efi said: “The main trends that the online payment company is seeing include growth in mobile spend due to increased mobile penetration in the country, and an increase in cross-border shopping as consumers are looking for a larger variety of products at a better price.”
“In terms of barriers, people are hoping to decrease the impact of shipping costs, which can be helped by using PayPal products like Refunded Return and Buyer Protection. We also believe that data shows a huge opportunity for South African merchants, as they have the potential to trade all over the world with minimal capital costs.”
Other things that you can do to drive traffic to your website include:
- Paid search advertising,
- Email marketing,
- Mobile marketing, and
- Social media marketing.
If you need help with your digital campaigns for Christmas, contact WSI OMS today.
by Francois Muscat | Nov 29, 2017 | Digital Media Marketing
If you’re wondering why your competitors are outranking you in Google’s local pack then perhaps it’s time to do a competitive analysis. By comparing your business against some of your local competitors you’ll be able to get some insight into which factors Google is weighting most for specific search terms and improve your digital marketing as a result.
After you’ve identified those factors, you’ll be able to create a game plan to help you move up the rankings. So what makes the difference?
Well, while some sites might perform better in their organic results, they might still be beaten in the Local Pack. This is when it’s important to look at content and on-page SEO. Simply optimising your title tags, implementing H tags and some schema will help your site pass Google’s mobile-friendly test, while basic on-psge SEO can contribute to some organic wins.
In order to defend or improve your local ranking the following factors are important to consider when doing a local competitive audit and finding ways to win:
- On-page SEO
- Strong content
- txt
- Citation health
- Directing the non-www version of your site to the www one
- Site design for improved conversions
- Earning links
- Earning reviews
If you focus on having a professional, optimised website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc. your site could definitely overtake all other contestants.
As part of our Website SEO audits we look at all aspects of your site that can affect
your search engine rankings by providing you with a list of actions that you can take to improve your search engine visibility and rankings. Each point noted in our report will include simple explanations of what needs to be done and recommendations of improvement.
Our Website SEO audit will take account of:
- Navigation structures
- Internal linking
- Link building campaigns
- Content issues
- PageRank issues
- Competitor analysis
- Keyword research
If you need help with your digital marketing or conducting an SEO audit of your website and those of your competitors, then give us a call today to find out how we can help you with our range of services.
by Francois Muscat | Nov 22, 2017 | SEO
Search engine optimisation is all about getting Google to recognise your website content as relevant and good quality, so that it appears higher in search engine results. You can improve your website’s Google ranking by removing or revising pages that don’t make the grade – but how can you tell which pages are considered low quality by Google?
According to Google, high quality pages meet the following criteria:
- They have unique and relevant content (not just the same information repeated in a different way).
- Content is well written, grammatically correct and correctly spelled.
- They are well designed, with an intuitive user experience and are responsive across all devices.
- They load quickly on different devices and connection types.
- Images and videos have text alternatives.
- Plenty of high quality, external sources linking to a web page as reference.
- They are successful in answering a query (in other words, the searcher does not immediately click back to Google and choose a different search result).
In addition, you can test the quality of your pages by analysing your website and social media marketing statistics. Positive signs are:
- A high number of unique monthly visits.
- People visiting other pages on your website after landing on the home page.
- Lots of sharing activity on your social networks.
- Pages that have a high rank for their own title.
- High click through rates on Google Search Console.
- No duplicated content.
If you have analysed the pages in your website, and find that some of them are lacking, you can take these steps to rectify the situation:
- Delete pages that are duplicate content or extremely poor quality
Quality is better than quantity when it comes to Google. Rather than trying to salvage any web pages that aren’t interesting, relevant or beneficial, it is probably best to just remove them.
- Create exceptional content
Content marketing is one of the most important aspects of getting a good Google ranking. Take the time to write superb content that is unique and relevant, or consider hiring a digital marketing agency to ensure that it is the best quality possible. Pay attention to your grammar and spelling. Not only is poor content off putting to Google, but to your website visitors too.
- Network to ensure high quality links to your site
The more external websites (that are considered high quality by Google) that link to your website, the higher your Google ranking. The best way to achieve genuine links is to build real relationships with websites offering related services. For example, offering to write a guest post on a popular industry blog, that can then link back to your website. You can also purchase quality links to improve your ranking, but organic and ‘real life’ links are always best.
- Ensure that your web design is user friendly
If you need to pay a professional to update your web design, then do it. Websites that are beautifully structured and designed to be user friendly, intuitive and mobile responsive are excellent for search engine optimisation.
- Put effort into social media marketing
Sharing your website content via social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn is a relatively easy way to gain exposure that will be picked up by Google. The more your posts are shared, the more people that click through to your website via social media, the more Google will consider your content to be relevant and thus high quality.
Find out more about how to boost your website’s SEO through expert digital marketing – contact us today for further information.
by Francois Muscat | Nov 15, 2017 | Digital Media Marketing
Ever heard of social media listening? It’s the next big thing in social media marketing strategy, enabling you to tailor your online marketing for higher engagement with your target audience.
We’ve known for a long time that social media marketing is about creating conversations with potential customers, but unfortunately for many brands communication has become all talk and no listening. By monitoring social media reactions to your brand, your competition, and your industry at large however, you gain valuable insights and feedback that allows you to fine tune your strategies and services to be more effective.
Social media listening is now far more accessible thanks to easy to use tools that are standard with Facebook and Instagram business accounts. These insights give you statistics on engagement, demographics and the activities of competitor accounts. There are also external tools that can help you track social media behaviour around your brand, giving you loads of information that you can use to create engaging content and better digital marketing campaigns.
So how can you use information gleaned from social listening to better your online marketing?
Engaging content that is truly relevant to your market
When it comes to content, quality is far more important than quantity. By looking at what people are actually saying, and what they are reacting positively to, social listening enables brands to have insight into what people actually want in terms of quality website content, and then change things up to deliver just that. Any new strategy in website content should be reflected across the board on all social networks, so that the power of social media can be leveraged to drive traffic back to the website.
Stay a step ahead of your competitors
Social media monitoring gives you access to a wealth of data on your competitors – from what their strategies are, to what customers are saying about them. Most importantly it gives you info on any negative feedback, so you can see where they are going wrong and take steps in your own marketing and service delivery to offer an improved offering. By monitoring online conversations that involve your competitors, you can stay one step ahead of the game while also gaining vital insights into the needs of your target market.
Improved search engine optimisation
One of the most difficult aspects of SEO strategy for smaller businesses, is developing keyword strategies that rank high enough to make a dent in Google search rankings. Social listening allows brands to track the words that people are using when talking about their products or services, and can assist with providing new keywords and search terms that had not been thought of. By monitoring social media conversations, you can also pick up on trending topics that can be then used to leverage engagement for special campaigns.
Develop a fantastic online reputation
Reputation can make or break any business, and when reviews and opinions spread like wildfire across social media, just one small slip up that goes unresolved can be extremely damaging. Social listening helps brands to identify customers who are unhappy with their product or service, and take appropriate steps to make amends or otherwise rectify the situation. Because this is done online, on a public platform, the brand is then seen to be humble and trustworthy; while formerly disgruntled customers end up becoming positive ambassadors for the brand.
If you are in need of digital marketing strategy for your online business, contact us today for expert, professional service!
