by Marelise da Silva | Oct 13, 2020 | Social Media Marketing
As part of your social media marketing strategy, you should include paid social media, dark social media, and influencer marketing. Here’s why:
Paid Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing has progressed to a point where sharing the odd post, no matter how well-crafted, with your followers and expecting them to do the rest is no longer effective.
To target your ideal customer, nurture their buyer journey, and ultimately get them to purchase from your website, you need to take advantage of the fact that all social networks now offer post promotion. Not only does paid social media put your message in front of far more users, not using this tool actually puts you on the back foot. According to a 2018 survey, 92% of small businesses are increasing their investment in social media.
Even though advertising on social media gives immediate visibility to your brand, don’t give in to the temptation to spend, spend, spend! From elementary user demographics to psychographics such as values and attitudes, interests and lifestyles, and personality, social media platforms have parameters to enhance your targeting.
But first, you need to determine whether Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Instagram is the best fit for your ideal client. It’s all about utilizing the appropriate platform to target the right audience with engaging content.
Facebook is by far the biggest of all the social networks, with 2.41 billion monthly active users. An average Facebook user clicks on 11 ads per month. Their advertising costs vary depending on many factors like your industry, location, and objectives, but the average price for an advert decreased 4% in Q2 2019. Facebook is, therefore, a good place to start.
Dark Social Traffic
Not to be confused with marketing on the dark web, dark social media refers to the sharing of your content without your knowledge. Although you cannot track the impact of dark social media with your regular analytics, more than 80% of sharing from marketing websites happens “invisibly”.
If you think of it as a digital word of mouth, it makes sense that this is even more powerful amid COVID-19 social distancing, working from home, and digital communities.
So how do you get in on this action? Make sure that you include buttons on all your output that encourage sharing through email, text message, or direct social messaging. Moreover, include a strong call to action to go to a landing page, read another post, or sign up for your email list.
Having a prominent, respected trendsetter in your niche share your content in this intimate way will drive mass traffic. That’s where the next category comes in.
Influencer Marketing
As consumers are bombarded with ever more marketing messages, so they tend to filter out an increasing amount. One way to catch the attention of prospects is to leverage the power of humans in your digital marketing.
Marketing guru Seth Godin notes that “People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic.”
From published authors in serious fields to mainstream celebrities for younger audiences, influencer marketing uses the trust they have established with their large following to punt your product by supporting or endorsing your brand or co-creating content.
This is not an overnight strategy, as you need to build a relationship with influencers in your niche. Engage with them to the point where they value your expertise and enjoy your content. Slow and steady is the name of this game, but the results are well worth the wait.
If you are looking for a world-class social media marketing agency to keep you current and competitive, then contact WSI OMS today.
by Marelise da Silva | Oct 7, 2020 | SEO
It’s easy to say that SEO has the ability to distinguish your product or service. But it’s all about keeping your finger on the pulse to know all there is to know about the latest nuances and strategies that might give you the edge to get onto people’s radar.
How do you improve your SEO?
First things first, go and look at your competition to see what they’re doing. Now that you know what’s out there and what has ranked in the SERP, improve on it or create a fresh angle that might be more relevant. Also, take time to put extra effort into your content design before you consider content marketing (nobody likes spending time on an ugly site or browsing content that isn’t visually appealing). Try to think of the search intent of a person who you want to come across your content – the closer the match between your content and their intent, the higher your rankings will be.
A link building strategy will definitely benefit SEO, as you’ll be guaranteed to get extra hits on your content. You want to create high quality backlinks through your content marketing, which can be done through being a guest on a podcast or a guest blogger – get yourself associated with credible platforms. Roundups have become a valuable backlink for organic traffic, so search for roundups in your industry and pitch your content to see whether you can be included in one of these lists.
Do keep your site’s on-page SEO streamlined. Shorten your URLs to get higher rankings on Google and spend some time to link internally between pages on your site. If you’re looking for a digital marketing agency to optimise your SEO for your online success, contact WSI OMS today.
by Marelise da Silva | Oct 5, 2020 | Website Design
There’s no doubt that the coronavirus has changed the way we do things. In particular, the online shopping world is booming thanks to its instant, no contact concept. The ever-changing world of website design and development is to thank for this solution, but just how big of a role is it playing in today’s world?
With everything from groceries and beauty essentials, to other items like books and even children’s inflatable pools, online shopping seems to be the answer to the pandemic’s clampdown on social distancing.
Even more interesting than that is the fact that online shopping has been around for years, yet it only recently became mainstream. A great example is Amazon, an online shopping company that’s been around since 1994. In 2010, online shopping in the US made up just 6% of retail sales.
Now, online sales as a total percentage of sales in the UK jumped from 2.8% in November 2006 to 18.9% in February 2020 and skyrocketed again to 30% in April 2020 due to the pandemic. In May 2020, sales from online retailers in the US went to 30.8% from the same time last year.
What once was a novelty has now become an increasingly popular way to get your goods without the hassle of leaving your house. So, how did we get to this point?
Where it began
The first person to buy anything online was a 72-year-old grandmother named Jane Snowball from Gateshead, England in 1984 from the comfort of her couch via her TV remote; buying margarine, cornflakes and eggs. This was done via the Videotex system developed by English inventor Michael Aldrich, according to Jonathan Reynolds, associate professor in retail marketing and deputy dean of Oxford University’s Saïd Business School.
The technology was used to generate a shopping list on Snowball’s computer which was phoned into her local Tesco, and the items sent to her door. According to Reynolds, the service was created for the elderly and disadvantaged but gained momentum.
The next milestone took place in 1994 when a 21-year-old web development wizard called Daniel M Kohn created an online marketplace called NetMarket. This was the first digitally secure transaction, with the first buy being a Sting CD that cost $12.48 (£10). After that, the early internet became more and more common in households.
At this early stage in what we now know as e-commerce, only a handful of companies were involved in what was considered cutting-edge technology at the time. Pizza Hut was one of those companies. In 1994 the US franchise sold pizzas online via their PizzaNet portal. It was basic, with a grey colour scheme and fields only for a customer’s address and phone number. 1994 was also the same year Amazon began, and at the time sold mostly books. eBay launched soon after in 1995. Japan’s major e-commerce site Rakuten launched in 1997 followed by China’s Alibaba in 1999. These companies were trailblazers in the online shopping space and took web design to new heights. Globalisation and a more connected world are also to thank for this major jump in the web development world.
Gaining momentum
2017 was also a landmark time in e-commerce. Smartphone ownership reached 80% globally, which has been a useful tool in how easily we shop online nowadays. Data from 2019 shows e-commerce makes up for 16% of sales in the US – that represents a staggering $601.75bn (£489bn) of spending! Global e-commerce giant Shopify also reported that globally, online sales reached $3.5tn (£2.8tn) the same year.
Those numbers rose more than 14% in the first quarter of 2020 from the same period of 2019 (before the pandemic, surprisingly). However, the pandemic has accelerated online shopping’s natural growth, with marketing professor Barbara Kahn from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business stating that the pandemic accelerated online shopping adaptation by two to three years.
The main items were, unsurprisingly, groceries. In the US, between March 2020 and April 2020, e-commerce sales jumped 49%, and online grocery shopping led with a 110% boost in daily sales.
Is e-commerce here to stay?
Although the natural flow of adaptation to e-commerce and the need to shop from our own homes due to the pandemic has shown massive growth in e-commerce and web development in general, it’s also jumped due to how quick and easy it is to simply shop online. It’s also important to note that consumers are trying to spend less money due to money worries brought on by the pandemic, even with the necessity of online shopping in current times.
We could also see more hybrid shops like Amazon, which offers both online shopping and storefront options with Amazon Go. The company tracks your online buying patterns and has groceries ready for you to pick up at a physical shop.
Keeping up with the times via e-commerce and web development
Although online shopping became necessary for social distancing measures, the nature of online shopping identified a gap in the market long before and has steadily grown since it first began. It seems likely that we will continue to see steady growth in the use of e-commerce for both companies adapting to change and consumers embracing change. If you’re looking to take your company to the next level via e-commerce, contact WSI OMS for cutting-edge web design and development services.
by Marelise da Silva | Sep 29, 2020 | Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is the most popular way to reach potential clients, since everyone has a smartphone in their hands nowadays. What do you do when your target audience isn’t on social media, though?
Although social media is at the forefront of marketing, there are other ways to reach your target audience without social media marketing. Here are some useful tips that’ll help you connect to potential clients:
Keep your social media accounts active
Even if your target audience isn’t on social media, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should abandon your social media platforms altogether. In fact, once somebody has heard of you, they will usually check out your company’s social media platforms to make sure that your company is legit. Hold their interest and establish your company as an authoritative figure by constantly sharing relevant content that lets them know you’re passionate and knowledgeable about your field.
Standout by establishing yourself as an industry expert
Establishing yourself as an expert in your field will allow for more potential customers to come across your brand when doing their research. To do this, you need to create helpful resources for your target audience to use. A great example would be a blog that discusses the core issues and questions people may have when using your product or service. HappyFox is a useful example of the above.
Start a podcast
Podcasts are a great way to share knowledge and connect with your audience. With millions of people tuning in weekly to listen to podcasts, you’re sure to tap into your target market at some point. Providing a podcast that is both informative and entertaining will ensure that listeners keep coming back for more, as it’s both helpful and a great way to keep people entertained on their way to work, or even at work. Check out the Marketing Speak podcast as a good reference in terms of how you can approach it.
Conduct research and compile white papers
By conducting original research on your industry and putting together an in-depth report on a key topic, you’ll easily manage to connect with and inform your target audience. Giving people useful statistics and data will help you establish your brand as an industry leader and you’ll, in turn, be quoted by other key individuals and organisations. You can also provide the information via a white paper, which highlights the problem and gives solutions.
Contact WSI OMS for help with social media marketing
By trying out the above mentioned methods as a way of connecting with your target audience, you’ll be able to easily connect with them in a user-friendly way, without having to break the bank either on fancy marketing tools.
Looking for some extra help with your social media marketing? Contact WSI OMS today!
by Marelise da Silva | Sep 22, 2020 | Content Marketing, Digital Media Marketing
Running out of content marketing ideas for your blog? The good news is that you don’t have to search far and wide for fresh, informative content. Your blog should be focused on telling the story of your business in a compelling way, so the ongoing development of your business has limitless potential for content marketing topics.
Armed with this ever-developing story, creating engaging blogs is then a matter of fitting the content into pre-existing paradigms and formats. These have already proven themselves reliable vehicles for marketing content, and offer you inspiration and a structure to help you organise and present your information. They are frameworks and general outlines into which the story of your business can be molded. There is a saying among musicians that there are only 12 notes but thousands of ways of playing them. The same goes for blogs: there are only so many kinds of blogs, and the key to their substance, variety, and level of engagement is your content. Here are four of the most popular blog post concepts or formats into which any business can fit its stories.
Content marketing ideas and topics for your business blog
Your business story, the day to day activities, your industry, and latest trends should give you plenty of inspiration to create relevant, exciting content for your audience. Let’s take a look at some of the topics that you can use to tell your business story:
Share your successes
There’s nothing wrong with taking a moment to brag a little – provided you do it with style, of course! A well-chosen success story allows you to demonstrate how your products or services work in a real-world scenario. Pick an example, describe the salient details, and use the moment to show, rather than tell your readers, why they should buy your products.
Delve deep with a series of posts
Sometimes a single blog, consisting of a few hundred words, is not enough to communicate the information you want to get across. You may want to explore the background of your industry, analyse complex market trends, or expound on the many uses and benefits of a particular product line. The best thing to do – both for your sake and your customers’ – is to break it up into shorter pieces that you can publish over several weeks or months. It would help if you didn’t let this run on for too long, however. Strike a balance between detail and sustained engagement.
Guide your audience through common mistakes in your industry
This is a very popular choice for almost all industries. Listicles that expound on the various ‘what not to dos’ of your industry enable direct and honest engagement with your readership, as well as the chance to present your business as a solution provider. You draw readers in with questions of how they could be doing things better, and then you provide the answers.
Showcase the latest trends
This is one of the simplest options. All industries are constantly shifting and evolving. If you take the initiative and use a blog to highlight your industry’s condition at any given moment, you present yourself as a business that has its fingers on the pulse. You can use the opportunity to tell readers how your products and services exemplify, take advantage of, or provide solutions for the current trends.
Creating your blogging strategy can be a daunting task; why not let us set you up for content marketing success? At WSI OMS, we have worked with clients in a multitude of industries, providing them with expertise and quality digital marketing, including SEO optimisation, website design, and social media marketing, among many others. Get in touch for more information on our content marketing services for your business.
