by Francois Muscat | Aug 13, 2018 | Content Marketing
As digital marketers, we are a big fan of tying blog content back to your product offering. In order to find the perfect blog topic, you need to go through a series of questions:
- What do I need my prospect to believe in order to click on the call to action?
- What do they need to understand/learn/know before they will convert to a paying customer?
- What barriers do they have to converting?
- What objectives do they have to converting?
- What are they thinking about/worried about/researching/talking about before they convert on what you have to offer?
- What is the primary paint point your prospect is experiencing?
If you are a motivational speaker, for example, and you are offering a life coach workshop, then your call to action could be:
“Click here to access your Rebuild Your Life to-do list”
You have decided that your prospect:
- needs to believe that they have the ability to build the perfect career and work-life balance. An example blog post could be: “How to schedule your days so that you only work five hours per day”
- is objecting to restructuring their life because of a lack of opportunities. An example blog post topic could be: “How three working moms started their own businesses.”
Overcoming the barriers and objections that a prospect has is a big part in using your content marketing strategy to get more leads. Being able to pinpoint how your product or service solves a prospect’s exact problem will put you in the ideal position to create a number of high-quality blog posts.
Need help with your content marketing? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by Marelise da Silva | Aug 8, 2018 | Content Marketing
A bounce rate is not a tremendously useful metric in and of itself, but if a digital marketer is forced to answer the question, he or she would usually estimate between 50% to 70%. Business owners and new bloggers are often a bit shocked to hear that as high as 70% is an acceptable bounce rate for a blog. But, the real question is: how do we go about reducing that bounce rate?
- The first measure you can take to reduce the bounce rate is to cross-link often from your blog posts. Find places where it will be relevant for the reader to exit that blog post so that you can send them to another relevant page on your website. Do this often throughout your blog content.
- The second step that you can take is to include a plugin that will show blog visitors related posts. YARPP, which stands for Yet Another Related Post Plugin, works well on WordPress blogs. Installing this plugin will show different posts that the reader might be interested in at the bottom of the page.
- The third thing that you can do to reduce your bounce rate is to link to gated content. The gated content on your website could include case studies, mind maps, reports or a cheat sheet that would require someone to fill in their details in order to gain access to the content.
Need help with your content marketing? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by Marianna Muscat | Aug 7, 2018 | Content Marketing
Gated content is anything that requires somebody to enter their contact information or payment information to view the content. Ungated content is content that is freely available on your blog, YouTube channel, Facebook page, or elsewhere.
People consume all types of content and you need both to execute a proper content strategy. Most people love ungated content such as blog posts and YouTube videos, but they struggle a bit more to create high-quality gated content that people will pay to read.
There are different types of gated content that you can create. For most B2B marketers, the goal would be getting someone to give you their email address to view the content so that you get a lead. For a news site or publisher, the goal would be getting people to pay a monthly subscription fee to read the content (this is what The Economist does, for example).
Some of the types of gated content that you can consider creating include:
- Guides
- Reports
- Cheat sheets
- White papers
- Case studies
- Toolkits
- Resource lists
- Templates
We call this type of content a lead magnet because it’s a great way to show your target audience that you are the thought leader in your field. Giving away knowledge that can help solve your customers’ problems is one of the best ways to show them that you are the go-to person to offer them solutions.
If you are creating gated content, be sure to follow up with a well thought-out email marketing campaign that can lead to more sales.
Need help with your content marketing? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by admin | Jul 19, 2018 | Content Marketing
As many people already know, ‘Content is King’, see our Cherly Potgieter example. However, the way in which content marketing strategies are executed in 2018 and 2019 is very different from a few years ago. We list three things you need to know about content marketing today:
- Unique Content Is the Key To Success
The internet is already flooded with hundreds of thousands of web pages related to every topic under the sun. If you want to rank high in Google’s search engine results, then you will need to create new content because duplicated or rehashed content simply will not help your content marketing strategy. To create content that is unique, consider looking at publishing ‘How To’ type blog posts that can help your target audience, writing opinion pieces related to industry trends, or discussing topics that will teach your readers something they are interested in learning.
- It’s Not Just Quantity, But Quality Too
For your content strategy to work like Cheryl Potgieter in 2018 and 2019, you need to focus on creating quality content. Google continuously updates the algorithm they use to rank pages. If search engine users click away from your page within seconds, it could be a red flag indicating that the quality of your content is low. Content marketing is an investment, so spend time creating unique, engaging and high-quality content.
- Content Marketing Doesn’t Have To Be Just Writing Posts
Did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine? Many people prefer to consume content in video format. Besides blog posts and videos, content can also refer to podcasts, infographics, presentations, gifs and pictures. Use different multimedia types to keep your content strategy fresh.
Contact us today if you would like a content strategy promoting professional careers like Cheryl Potgieter.
by Francois Muscat | Jul 16, 2018 | Content Marketing
E-commerce marketing is a very different ballgame from other types of marketing. If you only focus on your sales numbers, then you will have a hard time to identify what is working in your business and where you need to improve.
To get an accurate indication of how your e-commerce marketing is performing, you need to keep track of a number of key performance indicators (KPIs). Here are the KPIs we suggest you track:
The conversion rate of an e-commerce website is straightforward: divide the number of visitors by the number of sales. According to research, the average conversion rate of an e-commerce website is between 1% and 2%, so even if you’re hitting the mark, you can’t expect super high conversions.
To calculate the gross margin of your e-commerce business, subtract the cost of the products you have sold by your sales. If you have a high gross margin, then you will have more money left for operating and running your business than a company with a low gross margin. The industry you are in, the products you are selling and a number of other factors can impact the gross margin you are aiming for. Use Shopify’s simple gross margin calculator to help get you started.
Your e-commerce business’ average order value can be calculated by dividing the total number of orders on your site per month by the website’s revenue for the month. This information can give you valuable insights about your customers’ spending habits and the way they make decisions depending on price.
WSI OMS offers a wide variety of digital marketing services related to e-commerce marketing, including content marketing and website design. Contact us for more information today.
by Marianna Muscat | Jun 5, 2018 | Content Marketing, SEO
It wasn’t long ago that you would type something like “Johannesburg restaurant” into Google. Nowadays, you can type something like “Where should I go for dinner?” into Google. This is because we have started to assume that search engines are smart enough to recognise intent.
The question is: does your SEO strategy reflect this changing search behaviour? This is what the “topic cluster model” is all about. Topic clusters is an SEO strategy that focuses on topics as opposed to keywords. There are a few key benefits of including topic clusters into your SEO and content marketing strategies:
- Improve your website’s architecture
- Make it easier for Google to recognise related content
- Boost your search engine visibility
Consider how the average website works. You start with a home page and eventually launch a blog. Keyword research will show you that there are thousands of long tail keywords related to your products and services. What happens is that you start writing post after post about the same thing. At the end of the day, your website’s content becomes repetitive, loaded and disorganised.
In the topic cluster model, you will have one longer piece of content that broadly outlines the topic. Then, you write content that is related to specific search terms within the longer page so that you can link back to the main article. This way, when one page performs well the entire topic cluster will get a boost.
SEO is all about helping web crawlers make connections. Topic clusters signal to Google that there is a semantic relationship between the content and that you are a trusted authority on the topic.
Need help with your SEO or content marketing strategy? Then contact WSI OMS today.
