Super Marketeer: A Guide for Online Marketing in 2016
Mar 06, 2016
10 min read
Being a marketer in this digital era is difficult for those who have little knowledge about the channels that are available today where a marketer can promote their content. Since 2009, a lot has changed over the internet, Google improvising its ranking algorithms, social media coming into picture as a platform for marketing and many more. Today keeping a pace with all these changes have become a necessity for marketeers.
Today the need is to not only be creative in advertising but also promoting the content to the right audience. This digital age is fast changing and we all need to keep up with the changes that take place in the industry and the way our competitors think and strategize.
Being a one-dimensional marketer is simply not good enough to compete in the B2B world
Before 2009 marketers could get away by being creative powerhouses, but today its just not enough to be good at just being creative- today we have to become Hybrid Marketers. There is absolutely no profit earned from excelling in just one area- direct mail or email marketing, instead we have to integrate the old and new marketing strategies and create a master strategy that is a combination of many marketing channels.
The specifications of becoming a good marketer in 2016 is not limited to creating good campaigns, but he/she must be able technologists, savvy number crunchers and social media regulars and keep up with the updates that take place every now and then on the various marketing channels. Combining all these skills and how they fit together will help in propelling a brand forward and led prospects from the top of the funnel to the bottom(generating sales).
A marketer should be good at these:
Content
Creating a good content has not changed even with the onset of the digital age. Being creative is the first and foremost basic requirement of becoming a marketer and hasn’t changed much over the years. All that has changed is the creation of display ads to be put up on various channels: website, social media channels, banner ads, or billboards.
Putting time, and sometimes money into producing quality content that can be used or repurposed over a period of time across the panoply of marketing platforms. A marketer could learn tools like CorelDraw, Adobe Photoshop or should be able to guide the graphics design team about the idea that he wants to see translated into an eye catching content. Social Media and blogs have made it possible for people to make their content viral.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engines have been gearing up to increase the competition to fight for that first position in search everyone wishes for. In U.S.search market, the share of Google is about 65% and hence optimizing your content for search is a prerequisite to marketing success and getting traffic on your website. A marketer need not have the entire technical understanding about how search optimization works but having a basic grasp will be a boon.
Social Media
On the onset and recognition of these channels in 2009, it was a complete game changer for marketers to serve content on these channels. Social media is a channel that cannot be handed over to an inexperienced intern or an Exec., it has to truly come from the heart of the company as it is serves a purpose of catching eyeballs for marketers but also acts as a reputation management platform for the brand.
A company can anyday outsource this task to the agency ,but every marketer needs a hands on experience with these channels to make the best use out of it. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube and many more channels have come up with their business pages as an offering for companies to communicate with the target audience.
Marketing on this platform is good but making sure that you comply with the laws of the state also requires hands on experience on this platform. For U.S. , the U.S. Can Spam Act , applies and a marketer should be very well aware of the law before landing the company in trouble. It would be hard to believe but email works 40 times better at customer acquisition than social media, according to report by McKinsey.
Coding
When it comes to online marketing, having a basic understanding about how those good old ones and zeros work to make things happen over the internet will help. A marketer with a basic understanding about HTML5 and CSS, will help in making the website visually better or email newsletters.
Analytics
Back in 2009, tracking and measuring the ROI of the marketing expense was out of question. But as Google made it free for marketers to measure the results of the efforts, soon spending on marketing became accounted for every penny. Many tools came up on the internet and made a marketer’s life easy to measure the ROI of each campaign. Now every marketer can prove the results of spending every penny precisely and design campaigns based on experience. The future of marketers is to become hybrid marketers, or in other words super marketers. We got out of our old ways and bookish knowledge to do something new. But this is for sure that as the online world evolves, keeping an update with the changes happening is a mandate for marketers of future.
Want to know more about why Inbound Marketing is becoming the next level of marketing, drop a mail to info@saffronedge-1c17a3.ingress-alpha.easywp.com, or click here to read more on how you can enhance your inbound marketing strategy.
About Saffron Edge:Saffron Edge is a digital marketing brand with the purpose of assisting companies in improving their Branding and Search Visibility through Inbound Marketing.
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5 Dental Marketing Tips That Make You Stand Out From Your Competition
With approximately 7 per cent of daily Google queries being health-related, it's easy to understand why using the internet to promote your dental practice is a must for lead generation and brand-building. With so many marketing avenues to choose from, there are a few tried and tested strategies you should focus on to grow your business? Let's look at five pro marketing tips that will help your dental practice stand out from your competition. 1. Content Marketing Your target audience is searching for solutions to their dental issues online. The best way to find them is to position yourself as an authority and offer them the answers that they seek. Gone are the days, when setting up a website with a few pages describing in detail about your business and products and services you offer served the whole purpose. In the present time, you need to provide the targeted audience with informative content that is search engine optimized. Such materials are picked up by the search crawlers and are displayed in front of the user's when they search for solutions about their dental health matters. Effective content marketing involves creating content targeting at your local audience. Your aim should be to appear at the top of the search engine results when people within your radius run queries for dental services. A professional dental marketing company can help you set updated website design with plenty of quality content that showcases your competence while providing helpful information. An extension of your content marketing can include monthly or weekly educational newsletters, which you can send via an e-mail to your clientele. 2. Encourage Reviews and Testimonials One of the things people look for when searching for a dentist or other healthcare professional is for positive reviews and testimonials. 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Run Targeted Online Advertising Spending money on online ads can be an immediate source of new leads if done correctly. A successful Google Ads or Facebook Ads campaign that targets your local audience can give you an increase in appointments that you can count on like clockwork. A digital marketing company specializing in dental marketing can help set up your ad campaigns. They will also keep track of the performance of the campaigns t help you know which strategies are beneficial and which are not. By continually optimizing your ads, you reach a point where you're able to determine the approximate number of leads, and you will be able to generate based on the investment made. It also helps you know the cost per conversion and based on the same, and you shall be able to scale your ad spending. For instance, if you've determined that you need to spend X amount of dollars to get ten leads, then the following month, you can try spending 2X to see if you get 20. Finding a correlation between the money you spend on ads and the return you get is a vital element for your online advertising. 5. Track Everything The more you track your results, the more effective your campaigns will be together with high returns on investment of every dollar. But tracking isn't limited to advertising. You have to keep your eyes and ears wide open to the new trends in the social media sphere. This will help you manage your brand presence accordingly and will also keep you accustomed to PR disasters before it is too late. Talk to your digital marketing services consultant about social media monitoring based on the needs and requirements of your dental practice brand. They will also help you know which tools will help you productively perform the necessary tracking. Bonus Tip 1: Personalize Your Communication Research shows that 90 per cent of consumers prefers personalization, and a staggering 80 per cent are more likely to hire the services of a company that provides a personalized experience. Are you looking for ways to implement personalization in your practice that helps establish a good relationship with patients and the community as a whole? For a dental practice, personalization for patients may mean sending an email once every few months that contains information about their specific dental needs. Setting up such an e-mail list isn't as complicated as it sounds. There are automated email services called autoresponders that allow you to build segmented email lists and keep track of your communication with your patients. Another easy way to personalize your clients' experience is to create a few separate groups on social media platforms. These different groups catering to various dental issues, help you address the concerns raised by the patients. If you want to take an even greater step towards personalization, you can use direct mail to send out printed communication to your patients. Studies have shown that the tactile nature of printed media created a greater connection with a brand than digital communication. Since all of the competitors are opting for digital media and advertising - a personalized e-mail helps build a stronger bond with the clientele together with boosting brand loyalty. Bonus Tip 2: Hire a Dental Marketing Services Professional Running a dental practice takes up enough of your time. If you have to deal with all the tasks single-handedly - ranging from managing the daily operations to attending the patients to promoting your brand online as well over the social media platforms - its time to think of something sensible that is worth the investment made. Hire a digital marketing firm that comprises of a robust team of experienced professionals who can help you with dental marketing. Based on your individual goals, they can implement innovative and practical ideas in your marketing strategy. They will make sure that you are not wasting time and money on promotional efforts that are not driving you towards your goal. From Content Marketing to SMO to Paid Marketing, SaffronEdge provides a full suite of affordable digital marketing services that drive engagement, advocacy and conversions. Trust us in growing your business digitally. For further enquiries, feel free to reach out. ...
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10 Best SEO Tools Every Webmaster Should Know!
Every webmaster wants to get on the top of Google, but actually getting there is no walk in the park. You'll have to take care of each and every aspect of SEO to crack it - backlinks, meta descriptions, content quality, keywords and 200+ other factors that Google looks for on a webpage to rank it on SERPs. And taking care of optimizing all your webpages for all these factors can get a bit difficult for webmasters. Luckily, there are tools out there that can help you supercharge all your SEO efforts in a breeze. We actively use the helpful SEO tools we are about to tell you to provide unmatched SEO services to all our clients and drive massive search engine visibility and eventually, traffic to them. So, here we go - 1. Screaming Frog We are hardcore fans of Screaming Frog and have been using this tool since we started offering search engine optimization services in 2009. 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At Saffron Edge we use the same techniques to find out and create links for all the broken links for our clients. 9. Ninja Outreach Ninja Outreach makes reaching out to influencers a piece of cake. It is a tool that connects influencers with bloggers for easy collaborations. You can easily search for influencers in your industry and have a look at their platform specific following at a glance with the help of this powerful tool. Also, the tool provides ready-made messaging templates to reach out to influencers in a jiffy. 10. Google Mobile Friendly Test After Google rolled out the mobile-first indexing algorithm, getting a mobile website for your desktop website, if you didn't have one already, became a priority. After the update, mobile friendliness became a detrimental factor in assigning search engine rankings to websites. To help webmasters, Google created their own tool to make sure that webmasters complied to all the mobile website best practices there are and provided a seamless user experience to their mobile users. The tool weeds out and highlights every problem there is with your website that is hurting it's mobile accessibility. Are these tools the only ones out there? No way, there are literally thousands of tools out there that can help you with the above mentioned aspects of SEO. By actively making use of these tools you will be able to keep track of everything SEO related happening with your website and will help you stay on top of everything and gain better search engine rankings over-time. ...
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The Best Marketing Automation Software for Small Businesses
Marketing is the blood of business - it decides how your customers react to your offered products and services, how long your business can survive, and what your customers expect from you. Whether you invest in a high-profile marketing campaign or sell out adverts in the local newspapers, marketing functions can apply in many ways for a small or a large-scale business. Moreover, with the introduction of technology into the business world, marketing tools have become wide open for you to secure and enhance the ever-growing relationship with your existing and prospective customers. Digital marketing has become a critical part of modern consumerism . When we speak of technology, marketing automation is a rather beneficial concept for your business. It significantly focuses on implementing technology and automation in your business' marketing activities. Digital media is booming! According to a recent survey, 77% of the CMOs say that they have experienced a massive rise in digital engagement. The same report also states that one in every five businesses drives 30-40% of sales through the digital medium. Marketing automation software for small businesses is essential in enhancing customer base relevance and transforming into a demand-specific entity. The Growing Adoption of Marketing Automation By automating repetitive tasks, marketing automation uses software tools and technologies to facilitate marketing in multiple online channels like emails, social media, websites, etc. It's important to note that marketing automation isn't just about saving time (although that's certainly a significant benefit). It is about designing better and more relevant advertising messages that will be well-received by the target market and benefit the organization. Marketing automation is highly valued in today's business environment, as seen by its quick adoption rate. According to Business Insider , 59% of CMOs have already integrated marketing automation tools into their operations. 20% of CMOs have indicated they plan to adopt marketing automation services soon, with an additional 11% aiming to implement them by the end of the year. Reasons Marketing Automation is important for small-scale businesses Per Salesforce’s State Of Marketing Report, around 67% of marketing leaders depend incredibly on marketing automation. Almost 82% of the marketers agree that marketing automation has offered them a positive return on investment (ROI). Although every business has a unique strategy for handling its marketing functions, the best marketing automation software for small businesses can help boost their return on investment, especially when they require it the most. Here are a few other reasons to justify that: Compounding Customer Data Under One Head Managing your customer base's vital information is quite a task. When compiling that information for report analysis, nothing better than marketing automation tools can ease the process. With the latest software, you can overview the data of your entire business’ customer base in a single view, making it easy to prepare detailed data reports. Moreover, marketing automation allows your business to study customer engagement and activity over your platform. Acquiring such user-driven information can help you understand a customer’s preferences and determine what type of by-product interests them. ROI Is The Real Deal For every business, time and money are two crucial components that it aims to save the most regarding how it functions in its operations. By making the most of marketing automation, your business can spend less time and effort on repetitive marketing chores that can be monitored via tech tools. It also minimizes several operational costs. This lets you focus better on your business’s core operations and contribute substantially to sales. Consolidate Sales and Marketing Functions When you start applying marketing automation tips to solidify your business operations, it becomes easy for your sales and marketing departments to work as one team toward your business's growth. For instance, once the marketing team puts forward marketing automation strategies to generate quality leads, the sales team must pitch product or service sales to those leads. Also, lead generation attains lead scores, and sales pitches become much easier as the sales team understands lead prioritization. Fulfilling Customer Expectations With customers’ ever-growing expectations, your business must live up to them. One of the prime expectations of every customer is efficient communication—getting an immediate response to a product query is what they look forward to. CRM marketing automation, email communication, chatbots, and autoresponder tools can help nurture and keep the lead engaged. Because customers can now switch to your business rivals at any minute, marketing automation enables you to focus on customer service, which is crucial in these times. Automated Greeting Program Most customers subscribe to the email newsletter of a business firm, and it then establishes a buyer-consumer relationship. Your business must ensure a welcome program to create a lasting connection. This program could include a simple email informing the customer about the brand’s products/services and gaining details about the customer's expectations from the brand. You can accomplish that with a welcome program that introduces surveys about customer interests and bases the data on that. Your business can then proceed with customized services and communication with the customer. Marketing automation can effectively act upon these programs, and with the help of data-driven tools, your initial greeting service can become a huge success. Retention Of Loyal Customers Marketing automation offers your business retention cues by transforming leads from abandoned carts or while on your website. It can be concluded that it is a critical element in increasing business profits. Increasing customer retention and lead generation can trigger any business's sales. Additionally, marketing automation aims to communicate with your customers through product-relevant messaging strategies that can encourage customer engagement. Personalization WAccording to Gartner, 63% of digital marketing leaders struggle to provide personalized experiences to their consumers. Customers do not like to be considered merely as a headcount; they expect customized recognition. Therefore, marketing automation software for small businesses provides numerous ways to categorize priority customers based on their purchase and interest profiles to better target them with what they aspire to. Once automated software creates a customer profile, your business can stay updated with customers’ needs and plan its marketing actions based on the reports. This also lessens the burden on your marketing team, as they are not confined to researching and analyzing a large amount of information. Key Marketing Processes to Automate When implementing marketing automation software for small business, it's important to focus on these key processes: Email Marketing: Email marketing automation. Salesforce and similar platforms enable marketers to send emails based on the customers' actions, thus making communication timely and relevant. Social Media Management: Organize your posts, monitor the activity level, and control the overall presence on social networks. Lead Nurturing: Use lead nurturing to help potential customers move through the buying process. Analytics and Reporting: Generate automatic reports to track your marketing performance and ROI. Choosing the Right Marketing Automation Tool When choosing the best CRM and marketing automation tool for your business, key features that can significantly impact your decision must be considered. Let’s look at some essential features to look for: 1. Email & Campaign Builder A useful marketing automation platform should have an all-in-one email service that allows for a wide range of personalization. Look for tools with easy-to-use email builders that can be customized and work well on mobile devices. An easy-to-use interface is important for creating and managing targeted marketing campaigns without trouble. 2. Landing Pages & Forms Top marketing automation tools allow you to create forms for capturing customer data that can be easily embedded into your website. Whether on your landing page, blog post, or whitepaper, these forms should be simple to integrate. Advanced options such as dynamic forms are beneficial for collecting data from multiple streams. Good landing pages help you get leads. You can use various SaaS marketing automation tools to create landing pages tailored to your requirements and include your forms. Tracking how well these pages are doing can give you useful information about your campaigns. 3. Integrations No single platform can fulfill every need, so compatibility with other third-party apps and integrations is vital. For example, chatbot marketing automation, email marketing automation, and more require integrations with data or data training to work better. Ensure the marketing automation tool you choose supports numerous app integrations and offers API connectors. 4. CRM Customer Relationship Management (CRM) capabilities are crucial in a marketing automation tool. A built-in CRM lets you track marketing, sales, and customer service activities in one place. An integrated CRM streamlines information gathering and makes data accessible to all relevant team members. It can also update contact information in real-time, helping your team close leads more efficiently. 5. Cost The price of the software is the determining factor. Limited platforms provide a purchase-and-own option. Normally, you pay a monthly fee, so it's important to ensure you make the correct investment. Don’t go for a platform with undisclosed charges or a variable pricing model, as this can become costly rapidly. Best Marketing Automation Tools for Small Businesses 1. HubSpot Marketing Hub HubSpot is a comprehensive marketing automation tool that can benefit small companies. Its features include email marketing, social media management, content creation tools, and analytics. Key features: All-in-one marketing software User-friendly interface Strong integration with HubSpot's CRM Comprehensive analytics and reporting 2. ActiveCampaign ActiveCampaign is popular for its robust email marketing and automation features. It is ideal for small businesses that want to design complex and unique customer experiences. Key features: Advanced email marketing automation CRM with sales automation Machine learning capabilities Robust segmentation options 3. Mailchimp Mailchimp has grown from an email marketing platform to a marketing automation tool. It is the best email marketing and automation tool for growing businesses. Key features: User-friendly interface Strong e-commerce integrations Affordable pricing for small businesses Built-in design tools for creating marketing materials 4. Thryv Thryv is a do-it-all business management software that includes marketing automation features. It's designed specifically for small businesses, with 97% of its users coming from the small-business segment. Key features: Customer communications Social media management Reputation management Appointment scheduling 5. Insider Although Insider is not specifically marketed as a small business tool, it’s worth mentioning because it's been recognized as a leader in various marketing automation categories. Key features: Cross-channel experience building AI-powered intent prediction Personalization capabilities Conclusion If you're ready to start improving your business's marketing, consider exploring marketing automation tools for ecommerce and other small business solutions. Saffron Edge allows you to transform your business’ marketing strategies by linking technology with them, positively affecting your lead generation actions and customer retention. Our end-to-end, highly optimized marketing solutions enrich our clients' professional experience. To know more, give us a call now! ...
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