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    3 Automated Email Marketing Messages that You Should Be Using

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Email marketing is one of the best digital marketing services available and the power it holds can allow your company to exponentially grow in sales and noticeability. That being said, while you want your campaigning efforts to create the right amount of traction on their own, sending out automated messages that target specific customers based on their behaviours is another advantageous way to create buzz and draw in paying customers. So, whether you write these messages yourself or hire an agency to build upon up your automation list, here’s are a few types of email suggestions that can leverage conversions. 

    Sales trigger

    As part of your email marketing strategy you should formulate a sales trigger email so that when someone completes a purchase on your e-commerce website, they are automatically sent a thank you message. Not only will this establish a sense of trust in your brand, but it also shows that you’re an appreciative business owner who values your customers. You can even use this automated email as an opportunity to cross-sell another product, featuring something that your new customer may also find interesting. In your email copy, write something along the lines of “Since you loved [insert name of item here], we thought you’d also like [insert cross-sell item name here] too!” It’s that simple. 

    Customer support follow-up

    If you haven’t been following up with your customers post-purchase then you’ve been missing out on a great opportunity to connect with them. While following up by phone or online chat offers a more immediate response, many people find these methods to be bothersome, catching them at an inappropriate time where they feel pressured to respond. However, a friendly email allows your customer to know that you’re interested in their feedback, putting the choice in their court to open and read the message at a time that’s convenient for them. Not only do follow-up emails give your customers a support option if something is wrong but it also opens up the field of communication if they’re wanting to rave about their recent purchase as well. The best part is that it’s easy to integrate a customer support tool into your email marketing strategy. Simply write your follow-up message and have it sent automatically whenever a contact from your subscription list carries out a purchase. This message could include how to get help if they need it and even offer a survey to track the quality of their experience. We recommend also including a discount for a future purchase as an added incentive.

    Abandoned cart email

    Abandoned cart messages should play an important role in your email marketing strategy. When someone takes the time to find a product that they like on your website and proceeds to add that item to their cart, it means that they’re interested in making a purchase, now or later. This is a great opportunity to up your conversions by crafting an automated email that will send out encouraging them to come back and complete the sale. A simple reminder may be enough to spark that, “Oh, yeah” feeling in some customers, but an added incentive, such as a discount coupon may help to encourage more customers to jump back to their shopping carts and proceed to the check out with that desired item. 

    What important messages did we leave out of our automation list? Drop a comment below if there’s something that should be included.

    Utilize These Actionable Copywriting Techniques to Improve Your Digital Marketing

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Proficient writers are always looking for ways to expand their skills and those who’re designated composition tasks for e-commerce businesses need actionable writing techniques if they’re going to gain the attention of an online audience. The general population is exposed to numerous advertisements every day, so the ability to create engaging blogs, social media posts and newsletters can be troublesome. That’s why you must learn new approaches if you’re hoping to gain traction with your editorial content. Let’s learn how to correspond professionally to meet the needs of contemporary copywriting for digital marketing. 

    #1 Know your audience

    While we probably sound like a broken record when we give you this advice, writing is all about the reader and they need to be your focus point when you’re crafting your copy. If you aren’t able to pinpoint a definitive audience, start by anticipating the values of the type of people that might be reading your stuff.     

    #2 Make a plan

    While it may seem like most writers simply dive into creating longhand scribbles, good writers will take the time to make a plan before beginning the process. This could include a small brainstorm, research on some crafty words that they would like to include or even a brief outline to use as a resource while they’re writing the copy. We can assure you that your introduction will be rewritten multiple times if you start your content before a foundation is in place. 

    #3 Quick edits are a no-go 

    Most people think that an aspiring copy takes a demanding amount of time to write, but the truth is the editing process will consume some of the biggest chunks of your writing time. We all make mistakes and while the intention is for your copy to flow fluidly with a sense of concise clarity, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and punctuation flaws have the power to stop your readers dead in the tracks trying to comprehend your translation. What’s even more frustrating is that their trust in you as a writer, and in the brand that you’re writing about, can easily be swayed in another direction based primarily on lack of editing. 

    #4 Use headings in copywriting for digital marketing

    Headings allow writers to craft an exponential amount of copy while keeping it organized on the page. Avid readers will enjoy the white space that headings bring to the copy, while potential customers will use this as a way to scan through the general concept of the writing. It also helps you to construct your copy based on priority, keeping the most important information at the top just in case your readers never make it fully through. 

    #5 It’s all about the energy

    Lively content yields great power in the world of digital marketing. That’s why we encourage copywriters to use lots of verbs to pivot the points in each sentence. Not only are these actionable words super punchy, but they’re the best way to sell products and services. Just be sure that the verbs you use apply to your audience, directing structurally complicated words at the right demographic. 

    You can also rely on these imperative tips if you’re copywriting for digital marketing: 

    • Avoid exclusionary words: These could be job titles that imply gender. (ex. Police officer vs. policeman). 
    • Avoid jargon: The overuse of relative phrases can often become meaningless. 
    • Own your work: Don’t start sentences with “I suggest”, instead, write confidently and command your audience with transitions such as, “I recommend. 
    • Use the Oxford comma: Business writers love this stylistic piece of punctuation to add consistency and clarification to the writing. 
    • Avoid redundancy: The same verb modifiers, again and again, make your writing boring and repetitive. Perhaps consider using an online thesaurus to familiarize yourself with fun, new words that have similar meanings. 

    Are you ready to tackle a piece of copy? Drop some tips below if you have some advice to offer our readers.

    Do outbound links affect SEO?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    The internet is full of diverse websites that are connected and linked via their commonality. However, depending on the type of e-commerce business you run, there’s a chance that relevant outbound links could affect the performance of your search engine optimization strategy. In this blog, we’ll take a look at the definition of outbound links, how they should be used to impact your SEO efforts. 

    What are outbound links?

    Outbound links, also referred to as external links, are clickable, content sections that send visitors to other pages on your website, or in most cases, other applicable websites. For example, if another website links to your e-commerce page in their content, it’s considered an outbound link. At the same time, if you link to another website in your content, it’s also considered an outbound link. 

    Typically, an external link can pass on more value than internal links because search engines believe that what other people say about you is more important than you simply crediting yourself. Essentially, when other online companies link to your website, you will appear as a more credible source. 

    What type of outbound links are there?

    There are two types of outbound links, dofollow and nofollow. Do follow links pass on ranking power from your website to the target page, while nofollow links aren’t able to do this. In other words, nofollow links tell search engines not to follow the links provided. 

    That being said, all links are automatically dofollow links by default, so to create a nofollow link, you would need to add a “nofollow” tag inside your code. 

    Why are outbound links an important part of your search engine optimization strategy? 

    There are several reasons that Trek Marketing suggests that you include outbound links on your website:

    Heightens popularity: Search engines show searchers the most relevant results, and external links determine the popularity of a given page by boosting the page’s rank. 

    Increases relevance: Outbound links are extremely helpful when it comes to giving users the information they’re looking for. The anchor text that’s used in the link is a good way to target your page and provide helpful hints about the relevancy of your page. Linking to relevant content is always beneficial when relying on search engines for traffic. 

    Improves reputation: Outbound links improve the reputation of your business because it allows you to develop an avenue towards resourceful content. Linking to spammy sites will reflect negatively on you as a business owner, so remember to link to studies and informative content as it holds the most authority. 

    Boosts value: It doesn’t matter if you dedicate all your time to developing informative content, chances are that you will never have enough relevant writing. This is why linking can increase the value of your website and make your visitors experience more rewarding. While you’re asserting yourself as an industry expert, you’re also accounting for the information that you’re not as knowledgeable about. 

    Encouraging backlinks: Linking out to other credible sources on the web means that these other websites may even be willing to link back to your site. As the web’s natural linking environment, not only are you increasing your engagement, but you’re also giving other business owners to interact and link to products associated with yours. 

    Are there any other ways that outbound links can affect your search engine optimization strategy? Drop your thoughts below to share with our readers. 

    How to use social media to market for the healthcare industry

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Although social media for healthcare marketing offers organizations a one-of-a-kind opportunity to inspire trusting relationships with their audiences, it can often be overlooked due to privacy and regulatory concerns. While most consumers are used to receiving their health results word-of-mouth from a medical physician, this is slowly becoming an outdated means of retrieval as it can be frustrating and timely, waiting on the scheduling availability of the medical facility. While we can agree that the results of personal health records are best handled in person, there are terrific opportunities to boost brand awareness by utilizing social platforms to educate on health issues and provide followers with the relevant hospital or clinic information. But just how beneficial can social media for healthcare marketing be?

    What are the benefits of having a social media marketing strategy? 

    There are several advantages for healthcare organizations to build meaningful relationships through social media. Let’s name a few:

    • To provide informative health information through social channels. 
    • Healthcare workers can proactively respond to questions. 
    • Hospitals can share high-quality content (ex. videos).
    • Ability to provide fundamental knowledge to help patients select the right treatment options, teach about preventative care and provide relevant how-to’s (ex. How to prep for major surgery).
    • Share links to credible industry studies.
    • Social listening will enable the industry to improve on new products and services. 
    • Healthcare professionals can demonstrate thought leadership through posts and conversations while making connections to industry peers. 

    Tips: Social media for healthcare marketing

    If you’re new to healthcare marketing, here are a few strategies that you can use to engaging with your audiences online.

    Position yourself as a trusted source for healthcare information: There are many questions about personal health that patients may be discouraged from asking. Although, most of the adult population will first look up their symptoms on the internet before scheduling an appointment with their physician. That’s why it’s important to assert yourself as a trusted source through the use of social media. This will enhance your credibility by allowing you to share helpful content that educates and informs your audience. 

    Share patient stories: With the permission of the patient, of course. A powerful way to connect to your audience is to share meaningful stories that put a face on the journey of a real person. This will allow you to evoke a sense of possibility and demonstrate that we’re not alone when we go through our healthcare challenges. 

    Have some fun: Health and wellness shouldn’t just be about diseases and pain, which is why healthcare organizations shouldn’t just restrict themselves to sharing serious and alarming stories and conditions. Social media for healthcare marketing should be engaging and the best way to engage is to make the content more human, unique and approachable. This means that from time to time, share a few memes and cartoons about health and wellness that has a more light-hearted feel. Your audience will appreciate the shared laughter. After all, it’s the best medicine! 

    What are your favorite health and wellness social media pages? Drop a comment below to share your thoughts.

    What are content calendars and how can they be used?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Let’s face it, cultivating creative content for your webpage and social channels isn’t as easy as it may seem. While your digital advertisements, high-quality graphics, videos and memes may be enticing to some degree, with the influx in brands and competition, there’s a likely chance that you won’t get noticed. However, the best way that you can combat this business hurtle is by building yourself a standard content calendar. Whether you’re a content specialist or a business owner who’s looking for ways to revisit your content strategy, using a content calendar is one of the best ways for you to keep organized, reflect your brand and provide engaging subject matter that’s both coordinated and formed around important dates, upcoming holidays and seasonal sales and promotions. How else do you expect to keep up with the pace?

    What is a content calendar?

    We define a content calendar as a shareable resource that allows the content specialist, business owner, or digital marketing team to plan all content activity and to visualize the content that is up for distribution. Usually created using a calendar-based format, the content calendar has several business benefits:

    • Access to the resources: Everyone who’s involved in the digital marketing content strategy process will have access to what’s being published when it’s being published and where it’s being published.
    • Avoids duplications: Because everyone is aligned with access to the content calendar, duplicate content is easily avoidable. 
    • Provides a well-round, visual representation: Whether you plan a week, a month, or a season ahead, a content calendar creates a clear vision of how your content with be distributed. 
    • Plan content milestones: Key events and important dates should always be a focus in your digital marketing content strategy. So be sure to use a content calendar to check off all the seasonal celebrations. 
    • Spot content gaps: Planning allows you to gain a sense of what needs to be planned and gives you more time leading up to deadlines. 
    • Plan ahead: One of the biggest benefits of creating a content calendar is the ability to organize far in advance, allowing you to pre-schedule your content. 

    How do you build a content calendar?

    Content calendars are an essential part of your digital marketing content strategy, so here is how you can go about creating your own.

    • Repurpose past videos, images, and blogs and formulate them to appeal to the current calendar you’re working on.
    • Do some research and leverage the data that you found to create infographics or industry stories. 
    • Tap into the expertise of your colleagues and create a video or audio interview to share. 
    • Utilize whitepapers and reports and add them to your calendar as automated content. 

    Now that you know the type of content that can be repurposed and created, we will show you how to formulate this content into something that can be planned and published. 

    First, download an online calendar or create one using Microsoft Excel and ensure that you’ve highlighted all the important dates that month, including industry anniversaries, holidays and social media celebrations. Then, it’s essential for you to take note of the season or month you’re planning for. For example, if it’s October, you should be looking at your Halloween content plan but also preparing to market for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Remember to give yourself enough time when planning out your content calendar to ensure that when your content is published, it will be at an appropriate time. Once your calendar has been filled full of content, start creating it and pre-scheduling it. Once it’s published, you can choose to promote it across all your social channels to track analytics about how your content is getting noticed, at what time people are engaging and which days are working well. After you make note of this data you can tweak the upcoming content in your calendar and utilize what you’ve learned to published more engaging content in the future. 

    Sound too complicated? You can hire content specialists that will handle all the workload for you and even create the calendar for your approval! 

    Do you plan to create a content calendar and integrate it into your digital marketing content strategy? 

    How to use social media marketing to boost brand awareness

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    The general population is bombarded every day with so many diverse advertisements that it can be hard to create impressionable content that will stick. This is part of the reason that so many businesses rely on targeting their niche audience by building brand awareness through social media. After all, while each person has the opportunity to like and follow company pages, they will only engage with brands that attract a similar mindset. It comes down to catering your business to find the right people who can relate to your content and it’s a battle of quality over quantity.

    How do you find your market?

    If you’re hoping to boost brand awareness you should find out how to reach your target market through the use of social platforms. Each social site has a search engine that can be used to track conversations about your industry, the products you sell or your specialized services. So, the best way to lead your target audience to your brand is by engaging in these conversations and getting a feel for the audience before you start directly reaching out. This can be made a fundamental step in your social media marketing campaign. 

    Get visual

    Now that you know who your prospecting customers are you need to get creative with your content and start producing alluring visuals that will entice them to read and click. The feeds of popular social media channels are noisy, filled with hundreds of eye-catching videos, peer photos and aspiring quote graphics, so if you want your content to grab the attention it deserves, you’ll need to start attaching images to your posts to get in on the competition. 

    Try your best to get conversational 

    It’s always a good practice to monitor your social feeds for comments and personal messages. Whether a customer has a problem with a product or service or they simply had something to say about your recent posting, striking up a conversation through mentions or further engagements can help you to establish a following and increase your clickthrough. 

    Leverage the trends

    The thing about trends is that they’re monumental and popular one minute, but if you turn away and blink, you may have missed your opportunity to cash in on their interest. That’s why it is increasingly relevant to keep your eyes on trending news stories, memes and other social content of heightened intrigue so that when something grabs the attention of the media, you’re able to add it to your channels to cling to it “in the moment”. 

    Track everything you do

    To boost brand awareness, you need to know where your efforts are proving to be successful and where they need more work. That’s why measuring everything you do by tracking your content will help to provide you with some noteworthy, engagement statistics. While certain social channels provide insights to business profiles, you can wage this by using URL shorteners to track your web analytics and show you who’s buying, when they’re buying, how much they bought and which campaign received the most traffic. 

    Which tips will you be using to boost your brand awareness? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

    How to digitally market for the real estate industry

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    niche digital marketing

    The doggone days of campaigning are slowly coming to end as more and more real estate companies have turned to digital marketing as a way to sell homes and acquire new clients. While the real estate industry requires some niche digital marketing strategies in order to successfully approach their audience, the efforts of direct mail, radio and TV have been squashed, allowing them a better means of directly identifying with their targeted audience. So, as real estate shifts to the world of social media marketing, emailed newsletters and informative blog posting, it’s important to know how to navigate your way through the transition. 

    Establish your businesses niche

    Both inquiring, first-time buyers and excited, focused sellers, need a real estate company that possesses the right expertise and knowledge pertaining to specific neighbourhoods, properties and prices. That’s why you should operate within a specialized niche, catering your judgment and experience towards the market that you know best. For example, you could focus on highlighting the apartment living lifestyle as your focal area of expertise. This means that you will cater to young professionals who likely have a higher yearly income and can afford to live in the city. Keep in mind that it’s still beneficial to have experience with a wide range of age demographics and property prices, just remember to separate each target audience and cater your digital marketing campaigns to reach and connect with them individually.  

    Craft an intuitive website 

    The best part about partaking in niche digital marketing is that you’ll be able to target your efforts to reach the right audience. As an important step, it’s always recommended to have a website that’s mobile optimized and easily navigable with the functionality and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques utilized to help draw in prospecting clients. Keep in mind that a contact form works as a great call-to-action and an assortment of images (especially of homes you have sold or are selling) is advantageous in evoking a connection. Also, ensure that all the properties of the website, including listings and blogs, are easily shareable to social media. 

    Promote on social media 

    When it comes to promoting your business it’s incredibly important to build a strong social presence. Developing a Facebook page, Instagram profile and Pinterest Board will allow you to share pictures and videos of the real estate properties. You will also be able to utilize your assortment of social channels to share tips for both buyers and sellers, as well as highlight hot spots to encourage your stream of content to become more shareable among your followers. That being said, if you’re able to put some of your marketing budgets aside, you can work with a digital marketing agency to facilitate your budget into powerful, social advertisements. 

    Create some video content

    An impressive, dynamic video is a perfect storyteller. Allowing the information to smoothly flow in a way that’s more digestible and easier to understand. This is why the real estate industry has started to use video to advertise their brand and seek viewer attention. Live content taps into our physiological motivators and in the grand scale of things, is fairly effortless to carry out. Use your channels with a video stream to showcase the scope of your properties and perhaps do short, informative videos answering frequently asked questions. This will help you to develop a trusting, online reputation. 

    Are there any other niche digital marketing methods that would be beneficial in the real estate business? Drop a comment below to share your opinion.

    What are the benefits of integrating SEO with PPC?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    how to market an online business

    How to market an online business has evolved significantly over the last couple of decades, making it harder and harder every day to prove more advantageous than your competition. In fact, today search engine algorithms are faced with cut-throat competition between various brands who’re fighting amongst each other to reach a strong, organic reach as well as top in search rankings. However, not all hope is lost! We’re here to tell you that SEO and PPC is a match made in heaven for those seeking help with their digital marketing strategy. So, let’s learn how to market an online business by integrating SEO with PPC! 

    What are the benefits of this integration? 

    Since every business wants a prime location on Google Search, the best way you can beat out your competition in this vying world is to push them out by combining your SEO and PPC practices. Following strategic SEO practices means that you’re able to increase the quantity and quality of the traffic coming to your website through the use of organic keywords that are researched for your industry. Whereas PPC marketing practices follow an internet advertising model that only pays the publisher if the ad has been clicked on. Both digital marketing tactics increase your chance of conversions and when combined, have the ability to add value to each other.   

    How do the two intertwine?

    Let’s say that you’ve discovered some effective keywords based on researching your industry and you’ve taken the time to rewrite stronger content (using these keywords) within the product copy and pages of your e-commerce site, good job, you’ve been following vital SEO practices. Now, your target audience is able to find your website easier. So, now you can combine these efforts with PPC. To achieve that, PPC is able to offer you a form a remarketing that pre-occupies ad spaces in websites within Google’s network. This means that you’re able to reel in your audience using SEO strategies and re-target them later with PPC’s remarketing feature. It’s the perfect combination to encourage customers to complete their purchase. 

    Still asking yourself how to market an online business? Consider consulting with a professional digital marketing agency if you want to start utilizing SEO and PPC integration. BAM! Take that competition.

    How else do you boost your digital marketing efforts? Drop your ideas below to share with our readers.