by Marianna Muscat | Jan 27, 2020 | Social Media Marketing
Are you using social media marketing to boost customer engagement and to increase sales? That it comes with its own costs is no secret. Facebook Advertising for one is a powerful social media marketing channel that has high conversion rates but isn’t free to use. If you have a limited budget but would still want to tap into social media’s considerable marketing potential, here are six of our most reliable tactics that are also easy on the pocket:
Don’t Be the Only Business that’s Not Using Chatbot
Chatbots are fast becoming ubiquitous in social media marketing and customer support. Thousands of chatbots are active on Facebook Messenger, with more being added all the time. What’s more, users are increasingly willing to engage with them.
The chatbot technology is more responsive than ever, meaning you can create sophisticated algorithms to drive chatbots that will talk to your customers as if you are personally dealing with each question. You never miss an inquiry, all customers are answered and happy, and your staff can focus on tasks that really need their direct attention.
Optimise Your Targeting and Posting Schedules to Get More Out of Your Video Marketing
Everyone is doing their best to make video marketing work. However, you need to remember that social media users are bombarded with video content all day long, everything from ads to cat videos. You can’t compete by throwing your carefully created visual media into the “general population” of the social media world. Forget about going viral. Use keywords, good quality and clever timing to hit the right audience.
Use Facebook Custom Audience for Precise Targeting
Facebook’s Custom Audience feature is something you should absolutely be using by now. If you aren’t yet, then look into it right away! It is the best way to make your PPC spending worthwhile because it enables you to target your advertising specifically at those people most likely to convert their clicks into sales.
Say, for instance, you put out an ad that receives a high number of clicks from women aged between 20 and 25. The response from this group is huge but, unfortunately, few of those clicks (each of which you’re paying for, by the way) have been converted into sales. You find instead that men aged between 30 and 35, although fewer of them click, render many more conversions. With Facebook Custom Audience, you can then eliminate the non-converting group and target the converting group alone, maximising your spending and making more sales.
Invest in Short-Lived Content That Drives Immediate Engagement
Many social marketers have scratched their heads wondering how to make content that lasts on platforms where each post only has a lifespan of a few minutes. The approach now is to go the other way. Nobody is going to scroll back through their feed or search to find a story you posted yesterday. So, why not rather create content that appears, makes a strong impression and then expires. This will generate engagement and drive users to your website if they want more information. Fleeting, yet tantalising content is the way to go.
Voice Search Is on a rapid Rise. Take Advantage!
The ascent of voice search means that you should start shifting your content mix on social media towards a higher proportion of audio and video, as opposed to text. How-to videos, podcasts and the like, will all be valuable to you as more people adapt to hands-free and reading-free searches
Track Your Conversions and Use the Data to Tweak Accordingly
In order to make targeted marketing work, you have to track your clicks and conversions carefully. Facebook Custom Audience, for example, can only work if you have done all your homework. Set specific social media marketing goals and then measure your results against them with as much accuracy as possible. You can then constantly tweak your tactics to hit the targets better.
WSI OMS specialises in developing social media marketing strategies that adapt to the changing demands of the market and which align with your overall marketing goals. Contact us for help on how to develop your own winning social media marketing strategies.
by Marianna Muscat | Jan 21, 2020 | E-mail Marketing
Want to learn how to write a high-impact promotional email and improve your email marketing strategy? We’ve put together a guide that will not only help you formulate your message more clearly, but that will also convert subscribers into loyal, paying customers.
Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing:
Grab Their Attention from the Start
Your subject line and preview copy need to stand out and make your reader want to open the email and see what you’ve got in store. Keep in mind that you are competing for attention in a mailbox crammed full of promo emails. So, take your time to carefully formulate these two sections. In need of inspiration? Look around for catchy email subject lines and create your own content from those examples.
Know Your Audience
If you want to have your reader’s eyes glued to your email, you’ll need to know what makes them tick and how you can solve their problems for them. Research your audience and pinpoint what the struggle with, then offer them the solution from the get-go. Adding value is a certain way of getting casual readers converted into paying customers.
The other side of knowing your audience is to understand what will make them click the trash button on your email. By avoiding spammy behaviour, copy that sounds unnatural as well as ‘salesy’ and other triggers, you’ll see a higher conversion rate from your email marketing efforts.
Paint a Picture
Colours, literary devices, buttons and designs can help you communicate your message clearly and concisely. Email content should be limited to only a few paragraphs, so make good use of the space you have by introducing visual aspects combined with the right copy to pack a powerful punch in your email. Don’t go overboard with visual aspects though! The idea is to be memorable, not overstimulating. Emotive words, good design elements and a strong call to action will help you to communicate your message in an impactful but tasteful way.
Set a Goal and Be Laser Focused
Each email you send out needs to have a specific goal in mind. In addition, it must be finely tuned to reach the target audience. There’s a world of difference between an email you’ll send to a new customer and the one you’ll send to a repeat customer, so don’t get those wires crossed. If you are not clear on your goal, your copy will be all over the place, and you’ll confuse your reader who will merrily run over to your competitors with clearly formulated messaging.
Get a Little Personal
It is becoming more and more important to show a little personality when trying to stand out from the myriad of competitors in your field. If readers feel like they can relate to you and make a personal connection, they will reward you with their loyalty. This personal connection also extends to treating readers as individuals with desires and needs. Personalising content for different segments of your audience can help to convince even some of the toughest readers to spend their hard-earned money with you.
Seal the Deal with a Strong CTA
Your entire carefully-crafted promotional email can amount to nothing if you don’t have an intriguing call to action that will get readers to convert to paying clients. You need to align the content of your promotional email in a way that will funnel the reader to your call to action and make it very clear what the reader needs to do next. There are many fantastic examples of CTAs that you can use as a foundation. So, start researching how to create a call to action that your audience will respond to.
If you’ve neglected your email marketing until now, get in touch with WSI OMS to create a powerful digital marketing strategy that will help you to convert casual readers into loyal customers.
by Marianna Muscat | Jan 10, 2020 | E-mail Marketing
Email has been around for a long time. And, despite the rise of instant messaging apps, social media platforms and enterprise collaboration tools like Slack (which incidentally positions itself as ‘the alternative to email’), email is not going away any time soon. Part of the reason is that it is such an effective marketing tool. If you are looking to up your email marketing game, triggered emails are the way to go.
Triggered emails deliver content and messaging that’s relevant to the stage a customer is in their journey with your brand. They target leads at specific points in the sales funnel to nurture and gently guide them towards conversion.
Types of Triggered Emails
Triggered emails may include welcome emails that are sent when someone new signs up to your mailing list, as well as cart abandonment emails, to remind potential customers that they have yet to complete an order. You will need to create these emails and organise them by pre-set triggers. This email marketing automation takes the pressure off you, all the while ensuring that your customers remain engaged and interested in your business and its offerings.
Why Triggered Emails Must Anchor Your Email Marketing Campaigns
Triggered emails work to your advantage because they are designed to push a potential customer ever closer to making a purchase. They are considered to be an important part of both email marketing and content marketing, and have been proven to boost sales. According to statistics released by Bouncex, marketing software manufacturer, batch-and-blast emails generate only about $0,04 in revenue per send for the average e-commerce retailer, whereas behaviourally triggered emails generate $0,95 in revenue per send. That is quite a substantial difference. It signifies just how essential triggered emails can be to any company marketing strategy.
Here at WSI OMS, we are determined to help brands realise the untapped power of triggered emails. Powered with marketing automation, triggered emails do the heavy lifting in the backend, leaving you time to work on the other areas of your business. Contact us today to get more information on how to maximise the benefits of triggered emails.
by Marianna Muscat | Jan 6, 2020 | Digital Media Marketing
While the digital marketing industry is always changing, 2020 promises to be an especially exciting year for social media marketing, content marketing and SEO. Here’s a forecast of what’s in store for the year ahead.
Digital Marketing in 2020
Here’s a forecast of the top four digital marketing trends for your business in 2020:
A New Kind of Content
It should come as no shock that content remains of the utmost importance in digital marketing, but in 2020 we’re expecting audience interaction to bring about the biggest change to content marketing.
The digital generation gets bored easily and is, therefore, always looking for the next big thing. And, that’s why it’s no longer good enough to put content out there to sit and gather virtual dust. Companies will need to make their content interactive to be noticed.
Interactive content is engaging, stands out, keeps eyes on your page for longer and is more likely to be shared by audiences. Plus, there are limitless ways to make content interactive including:
- Virtual reality (and its fast-growing relative, augmented reality),
- Chat bots with improved AI, and
- The use of video in ground breaking ways.
If executed correctly, interactive content won’t just keep audiences around for longer, it will also help marketers to gather important information about audiences, which will allow them to create highly personalised content (see below).
Personalisation
In addition to making content more interactive, creators will also need to focus on personalising content for unique viewers. With all the digital noise around, audiences are becoming more adept at tuning out generic content. This is forcing content creators to shift drastically to focus their energy on personalised marketing efforts to individuals rather than mass audiences.
The good news is that many forms of digital marketing lend themselves well to personalisation. The key in personalisation will be in executing the following successfully:
- Creating content that is based on good quality data,
- Segmenting markets properly, and
- Showing a deep understanding of what each segment will respond to.
Success awaits marketers who send a sincere, personalised message to the correct audience.
Recognisability and Influence
While these factors are hardly new to marketers, brands will face increased competition from individual influencers to gain trust from audiences. Social media, blogging and vlogging are the playgrounds of influencers. But, even traditional forms of marketing are increasingly being taken over by influencers and smart brands are making use of virtual stars to push their messaging.
The shift in influencer marketing continues to be focused on micro-influencers. While they may have smaller follower counts, they still exert a strong influence over those who trust them. This trend is leading to smaller businesses making use of influencers to communicate their messages.
Featured Snippets (Search Engine Results Page Position Zero)
SEO might not be going anywhere soon, but number one is no longer the top spot in SEO rankings, position ZERO is the new top dog in organic results. These featured snippets (along with a link to the source page) appear first above other results, and they are going to be a massive draw for audiences.
Brands need to optimise their content to earn this illustrious position by creating really good content and ranking in the top 10 positions organically. Sound HTML code, short sentences, list format and use of keywords also contribute to earning the top spot.
Need help with your digital marketing strategy? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by Marianna Muscat | Dec 20, 2019 | Social Media Marketing
Social media plays an integral part in your company’s digital reputation and should, therefore, have priority placement in your digital marketing strategy. If you’re wondering how to dominate the social media sphere starting from next year, here are a few predictions in terms of what to expect.
Instagram Will Remove its ‘likes’ Functionality
We hear you! How will brands measure the impact of a campaign if they cannot see the exact number of how many people liked a post? Not with ease! Brands will have one of two options to ensure that their campaign success is still measurable:
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- Run Instagram ads, or
- Pay an influencer.
Running Instagram ads will probably be a safer option. Instagram seemed to be serious about getting rid of this functionality, claiming that it is for the greater good. In reality, it is a move that will likely see a sizable increase in the platform’s bottom line. However, if this change does come into effect, advertisers are also potentially going to set their sights on making their mark on another platform altogether. The final decision is said to be released early next year.
Social Will Start Affecting Search
There has been much debate over just how much a company’s social media following and reputation affects its SEO rankings. In 2020, it is predicted that social will start having a much more powerful and noticeable effect on search results. This means that brands should start working on improving their social media presence now in order to benefit.
Free Social Media Scheduling Tools
There is talk amongst digital marketing professionals that Google may soon introduce a free social media scheduling tool. If this is indeed true, brands’ social media related expenses are sure to decrease quite substantially, leaving them with more budget for paid advertising.
Looking for assistance with social media marketing? Allow the experts at WSI OMS to lend a hand. Contact us for more information today.
