by Marelise da Silva | Jun 23, 2020 | SEO
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing the emergence of what digital marketing experts are calling the “infodemic”, but with proper SEO practices and a sincere desire to provide your audience with relevant, trustworthy information, your business can remain pertinent to consumers.
How SEO can help you sustain your presence online during COVID-19:
Stay visible
Now is not the time to relax and forget about your SEO strategy- your competitors won’t! Now is the best time to clarify what you want to achieve and how to use your SEO strategy to accomplish your digital marketing goals. The topics listed below can further help you to develop your SEO strategy. The effort you make during the pandemic will help you to establish your reputation in your industry, which will help you to outrank your competitors when the pandemic blows over.
Provide your expertise
Even if your products or services are not directly related to the pandemic, or deemed to be essential, you can still share your knowledge and improve your SEO ranking. The best way to approach the task of providing your expertise is to think about how your offerings can improve the lives of consumers right now. If you’re a restaurant owner, you might now be able to receive clients at the moment, but you can share some of your recipes or cooking tips that people can try at home. It won’t sell meals during the pandemic, but it will show your audience that you can impact their lives positively and that builds loyalty. Now is the time to serve your audience with your expertise and knowledge instead of trying to merely sell products.
Be sincere in showing empathy
If you’ve received an email from every brand you’ve ever interacted with, you will understand how awful some of the digital marketing efforts can be. Ensure that your content is positive, hopeful and most importantly, sincere in showing empathy. It’s one thing to tell consumers that you care, but a whole different thing to prove that you are sincere.
Extend a lifeline for other businesses
If you can help out other brands during the pandemic, create an offer and use your SEO strategy to reach the largest possible audience. If you’re considering an offer that provides a discount on your services or products during the pandemic, think strategically about how you can share the message with the largest group of people, including the use of SEO tactics to generate interest in your offering.
Stay on top of trends
Keyword research is always essential, but staying aware of the changing trends should be a fundamental part of your SEO strategy at the moment. Because changes are happening rapidly in the digital marketing industry, you need to stay up to date to edge out your competition. Look for trends in digital marketing, including social media marketing, web design and email marketing and implement these trends in your digital marketing strategy to improve your business’s SEO ranking.
If you need help to sustain your presence during COVID-19 with a good SEO strategy, contact WSIOMS for a quote.
by Marelise da Silva | Jun 15, 2020 | E-mail Marketing
During the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses across the globe are shifting gears when it comes to email marketing, using this platform to communicate a variety of important messages. If you are unsure of the kind of information you should include in your email marketing efforts, take a look at our guide.
Useful information to share in your email marketing during the COVID-19 pandemic:
Taking your business online
If your business can provide products or services during the pandemic without compromising the safety of your clients or overstepping regulations, you need to communicate this to your clients. Be sure to comply with any local regulations and only provide products and services that have been approved by your local government. You will need to inform your clients of your safety measures and communicate clearly what you can deliver and how you can continue with your operations.
New communication methods and channels
Due to the nature of the situation during COVID-19, your business might be expanding to include new communication channels. If you are engaging via webinars, podcasts or new social media channels, you should let your clients know so they can get access to your content and offers on all their preferred channels.
Stand-out communications
If you’re looking to make an impact, it will benefit your business to get creative with your branding or messaging during COVID-19. You can follow the example of popular companies such as McDonald’s, Burger King and Coca-Cola and adapt the visuals that will accompany your email communication to encourage social-distancing, self-isolation and staying home. Find ways to modify your branding to communicate your support for these health and safety measures. It will help you to stand out from your competition if they are sending generic communications.
Communicate special offers or discounts for essential workers
If your business can provide special offers, discounted prices or anything that will make life easier for essential workers, be sure to include this in your email marketing. You can include shareable images with your information in your emails and ask your audience to share it on social media so it can reach a broader audience. Even if your business only allows essential workers to skip to the front of the line, you need to share this information with your audience. Your audience members may know essential workers who deserve some special treatment and share your offers or special allowances with those essential workers.
Create special offers to encourage appropriate behaviour
If you have products or services that will make it easier for your clients to self-isolate, keep their distance and adopt better hygiene practices, create special offers around those products and services. This could include discounts on home-deliveries, special prices for protective equipment (like masks) and discounted rates for online interactions versus physical meetings (if meetings are even still allowed in your area).
Be sensitive in the use of your designs and copy
When creating your email content, be careful that you are not encouraging actions that could worsen the pandemic. Remove visuals depicting close contact like hugging or shaking hands and don’t encourage your audience to break the rules or take risky actions.
Provide discounted or free access to your resources
If you have valuable content that users can access online, now is the time to draw attention to it via your email campaigns and social media marketing. Many creators are offering free access to their content during lockdown periods. If you can provide access to your content at a discount or for no charge, it will help to show your audience that you are not just focussed on profit, but that your brand cares for its clients.
A few general rules to follow when creating your email marketing campaigns during COVID-19 is to be sincere in marketing your business, be responsible for the content you share and create value for your clients through every piece of email marketing you share.
If you need advice on your digital marketing strategy, including email marketing, social media marketing, web design, and SEO, contact us for more information.
by Marelise da Silva | Jun 11, 2020 | E-mail Marketing
As has become very clear to anyone doing any kind of digital marketing, strategies and tactics need to change substantially in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. For a long time to come, we will not be able to rely on the same techniques and approaches we used before. In fact, we may never be able to go back at all to the way things were. The beauty of marketing, however, is that it is endlessly adaptable when we set our minds to it. Here are some ideas that will help you maintain your relationship with your audience during these difficult times.
Be willing to help others
If COVID-19 has proven anything, it’s that none of us is in this alone. Accordingly, we can’t just carry on doing business by looking out for ourselves alone. Be prepared to make some sacrifices and to give to your clients and associates. Giveaways are always a good tactic, even in a good economic climate but there’s a distinction here: don’t offer giveaways as sales tactic, but rather as a demonstration of your social conscience, as a way of giving back when times are tough. Customers are very likely to respond to this. You may not get increased sales right away, but you will boost your brand and you will draw more followers, friends and subscribers who will think very highly of you. That will pay dividends further down the line.
Invest in pay-per-click ads while prices are low
The demand for paid ads has dropped substantially since the crisis hit. This means that ads are cheaper than ever. At the same time, people are spending more time online and are thus a captive audience for you to reach with ads. So you can spend less on ads and have a greater impact. If you tended to avoid spending on PPC advertising before, now is a good time to start making the investment in bidding for those ads.
Adjust your payment options to boost conversions
Since the outbreak started, conversion rates have taken a massive dive in most industries. People have not stopped visiting pages – the hits are as high as ever – they just don’t move to close the deal. This is understandable, of course, as people are being especially careful about their spending at the moment. So why not, meet people halfway? Introduce payment plans or discounts to help people take advantage of your offers. The people who really want what you are offering will gratefully grab the opportunity. Those who are less sure may be swayed by your willingness to accommodate them.
Offer training courses
As unemployment and redundancies loom large for many people, they are starting to look for alternative career options. As their old industries become unviable, they seek to upskill themselves in professions that are likely to be more in demand. If you offer training, you can both help to lift people out of unemployment and expand your own HR capital, both of which are also great for your brand.
Diversify your audience geographically
The current crisis is affecting different countries in different ways. If your business depends on only one country, you are limiting yourself severely. Through international SEO, you can expand your reach and find new customers in territories where the economies are more open than in your home country.
WSIOMS can help you modify and perfect your digital marketing campaigns during the COVID-19 crisis. Contact us for more information.
by Marelise da Silva | Jun 9, 2020 | E-mail Marketing
Consumers are being hit from all sides with information about COVID-19, including in the email marketing that gets fired into their inboxes every day. You have either already sent a COVID-19 email or are considering doing so, but how do you ensure that it says what it needs to and communicates your message effectively? Here are five tips that should help your COVID-19 mail to cut through the clutter.
1. Make sure the information is genuinely useful
Don’t be tempted to send an email on this subject just because that’s what people are doing. Only send one if you genuinely have something insightful and relevant to say. It can’t be generic either – it should relate directly to your line of work and your customers’ interests.
2. Be concise and to the point
Your readers can watch the news and do their own research – they don’t need a lot of technical information or jargon from you. Stick to the point and include only as much background information as is absolutely necessary to back up your specific message.
3. Make the content easy to skim
This is true of all emails but particularly so if you want to include a great deal of background info leading up to your main message, as many companies are doing with COVID-19 emails. Many mails out there are made up of big, dense paragraphs. Nobody is going to read those. You need to cut down the text to its essentials and space it out so that readers can scan through it quickly. If you don’t, you risk losing your message completely.
4. Instead of a dedicated mail, add to your existing newsletter
You may not even need a dedicated mailer on this subject. Think about whether it would really suit your business and marketing goals. You may be better served by adding a short note at the top or bottom of your usual weekly newsletter.
5. Ask for feedback
If you’re uncertain about what you should be communicating to your audience about COVID-19 – or about any topic in the midst of the pandemic – just come right out and ask them. They might be overwhelmed by COVID-19 information and would rather like to hear about your products alone. Or they may not be in the mood to make any consumer decisions right now and thus, not interested in your latest business developments. Just be honest with them and they will probably return the favour. This is just good customer relationship practice.
If you need more help making your COVID-19 emails as effective as possible, or for assistance in designing a powerful and impactful email marketing strategy, contact WSIOMS.
by Marelise da Silva | Jun 8, 2020 | Inbound Marketing
There are so many reasons why all businesses need to adopt a solid inbound marketing strategy. Firstly, this manner of marketing helps to ensure a more targeted approach to drawing in new clients because it focuses on the buyer’s journey by tailoring content to edge the consumer ever closer to making a conversion. Secondly, it ensures that you cover all bases from a digital perspective, making certain that you fully embrace all opportunities to make a lasting impression. Sound interesting? Here are the five elements that go into creating a strong, successful inbound marketing strategy.
Search engine optimisation
SEO is arguably the most vital aspect of this kind of strategy purely because it is responsible for attracting more visitors to your website. By optimising your site for search, as well as for improved user experience, your chances of gaining a higher number of leads are vastly increased.
Social media marketing
Social media provides you with the chance to interact with your customers and potential customers directly. It is also a tool that allows you to extend your reach and brand influence, all the while moulding a positive online reputation.
PPC
Fast-track your way to the top (literally) by dedicating a decent amount of your marketing budget to PPC, otherwise known as Pay Per Click, advertising. This advertising will push more customers onto your website and further boost your chances of them making a conversion. Maximize this opportunity by making doubly sure that your landing page and website design is easy to navigate and appealing to your specific target market. Do not forget to go beyond Google Ads and investigate remarketing and display advertising opportunities, too.
Content marketing
By creating quality, relevant content, you actively engage your customers in your brand while setting yourself apart as an industry thought leader. Content marketing should extend from blogs and videos all the way through to beautiful images, podcasts, and more.
Email marketing
It is a proven fact that email marketing can encourage customer loyalty and retention. It is a wonderful tactic for keeping customers interested in your offering, ensuring a constant flow of traffic to your website, and putting up-sell ideas and tactics into practice.
Are you in search of a full-service inbound marketing partner? Look no further than WSIOMS. We will help you to bring all of these elements together for a seamless strategy that will generate the results that you deserve. Contact us now to learn more.
