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    Category: Copywriting

    How to allocate your digital marketing budget

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    While there is no universal strategy for small business budget allocation, successful e-commerce companies will invest in a mix of both paid and organic initiatives. With a wide abundance of marketing channels available in various sectors of online advertising, it’s important to know where your money can be wisely spent to yield a higher return on investment (ROI) and which activities will strategically reach your target audience. In this blog, we will walk you through some steps that you should take when appropriating your marketing budget and offer tips on how to better budget yourself in the future. 

    Making the most of your digital marketing budget

    Whether this is the first digital marketing budget you’ve ever built or you’re looking to give your process a little refresher.

    Here are some steps that can help you to determine where the money should go:

    • Use a budget tracker: All businesses need to track their expenses and analyze where cuts can be made to further the profit. Likewise, your first step to allocating a budget for digital marketing for a small business is to prepare data into a report that shows proposed spend, actual spend, and the results of your spend for future planning.
    • Review goals: Your organization’s top priorities and initiatives are things to consider when budgeting for the next quarter. However, when reviewing these goals, you also need to factor in new product launches, deals, promotions, and event signups.  
    • Select the right sales channels: What works for one business or industry may not work for another, which is why outreach, demographics, behaviours, and intent are elements to consider when choosing the right sales channels. This will not only help you to avoid wasting money but also build up your buyer persona. 
    • Paid search: Online ad campaigns like Google Ads may use up much of your budget because of the cost-per-click but if you secure the right visitors to your website, the investment is well worth it.  
    • Paid social: Popular choices include Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and LinkedIn ads, which show up for potential customers on their social feeds. Depending on the dollar amount you spend, your chances of acquiring new customers can become heightened. 
    • Content marketing: Content is king and since it can typically be put online for little to no charge, the only cost associated with the content is the time that it takes to write. If you can do that yourself, great! But if you’re one of the many who need to rely on freelance writers to produce awesome business content, be sure to budget what you can afford and post as much as you can. 

    If you allocate your budget based on data, you’re setting yourself up to be successful. Since Trek Marketing works with digital marketing for small business, we have all the services and expertise you need for allocating your budget. 

    What other strategies do you consider when depending on your business budget? Drop a comment below to share.

    Increase web traffic with these 4 strategic services

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Every online business wants to increase website traffic to drive sales and conversions. After all, an attractive website amplifies brand awareness and revenue. However, it isn’t easy to get noticed in the vast depth of organic search results, which is why we have four digital marketing services to strategically bring quality traffic back to your website. 

    Search engine optimization (SEO) 

    SEO encompasses a wide range of tactics for helping your website rank well in search engine results for relevant keywords and phrases. Since organic searches are most likely to begin via search engines, this digital marketing service has the potential to dramatically increase the quantity and quality of your website traffic by attracting users who’re interested in completing a sale.

    Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

    PPC advertising drives traffic to your website through the use of paid advertisements. These ads are strategically placed on search engine result pages (SERPs), social media sites, and other websites. While digital marketers are in charge of creating and managing these ads, with PPC advertising, businesses only pay when the ad has been clicked, making this a cost-effective way to increase website traffic. 

    Social media marketing

    Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are an excellent way to grow your brand, expand your audience, and drive more website traffic. By creating a social media following you offer added opportunities for users to link back to your website, which increases traffic and incentivizes viewers to learn more about what your business has to offer. 

    Content marketing

    Blog post submissions, infographics, videos, and podcasts are all elements that fall under the realm of content marketing. Whether you choose to create and publish content that aligns with the interests of your audience or keep things simple by outsourcing content marketing to a digital marketing agency, it’s important that you be strategic to increase page session times and conversions.

    Did you know that the following content marketing is more likely to drive website traffic?

    • Long-form content (more than 2000 words)
    • Informational pages
    • Product and service pages
    • Guides

    Trek marketing offers all of the above strategic digital marketing services, so perhaps it’s time that you found out more?

    If you had to prioritize, which digital marketing service would you try first to increase your website traffic?

    3 digital marketing services that help online businesses boost sales

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Regardless of whether you run a small, medium, or large-scale business, you will face competition in an ever-growing market. While your company may be unique in your eyes, there are others that cater to similar wants and needs, which means you’re forced to find ways to stand out. There are many digital marketing services that act as pillars to granting success for online businesses by building brand awareness, leads, sales, and boosts in revenue. Here are three digital marketing tools that you should leverage to boost website conversion within your sector. 

    Email marketing

    While some people might argue that email communication is outdated, rest assured that it’s very alive and well in the world of e-commerce. As the oldest form of electric communication, it remains the most effective way to reach customers, both past and prospective. However, the trick to successful email marketing is to build a list of contacts who are interested in engaging with your brand. 

    Since many entrepreneurs need time to focus on other needs within their businesses, agencies like Trek Marketing offer an email marketing service that is created and managed by a team member. This service includes: 

    • Email strategy and audit
    • Email campaign management
    • Email marketing automation
    • Email template production 
    • Subscriber management and maintenance
    • Creative design and copywriting
    • Deliverability optimization
    • Analysis and reporting of campaign performance

    If you think email marketing is right for you, click here to email a team member and get started. 

    Social media marketing

    With so many channels available to effectively market to your customers, investing in social media marketing is a no-brainer for business owners these days. Also known as SMS, social media marketing utilizes a variety of platforms to interact with customers, including popular options like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. While communication is key to building your brand, SMS also helps to increase sales and drive website conversions and traffic. 

    While posting on social media is easy to do, it’s the strategic posts that successfully reach your growing audience. If you need help expanding your social reach between platforms or figuring out the preferences of your customers, allow Trek Marketing to extend its social media marketing service to you and your business. This package includes: 

    • Proactive customer engagement
    • Targeted follower/like growth
    • Improved search engine rankings 
    • Custom curated content
    • Regular posts and management

    If you think social media marketing is right for you, click here to email a team member and get started. 

    Content creation

    Not only does content allow you to tell web visitors about what your business does but it also allows you to gain a place among other popular search engine rankings. Content marketing can include posting an industry-related topic on your blog or simply updating product and service information to provide quality copy that helps web traffic roll in. 

    Since writing is a skill that requires a lot of time and effort, it’s often the first task that is outsourced to a digital marketing agency. Get the right content in front of your audience by relying on Trek Marketing to do it for you! This service includes: 

    • Taking professional product or service photos
    • Researching and writing blogs
    • Creating landing pages 
    • Updating product and service descriptions
    • Researching search engine keywords and incorporating them successfully into popular landing pages

    If you think content marketing is right for you, click here to email a team member and get started. 

    Which of the above three services would you prefer to outsource? Drop a comment below to share with other readers.

    Why is it so important to produce great content for your website?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Since the very popular phrase “content is king” was first coined in 1996 it has continued to connect online customers with their preferred businesses. While it may seem like visual aids have quickly overtaken the written word, if you wish to be successful in marketing your products and services to the masses, a content marketing strategy that works to develop ongoing copy throughout your website is what will help attract consumers, keep them involved, and coming back.

    What is content marketing and how is it strategic?

    Put simply, content marketing is a type of digital marketing strategy that focuses on creating and sharing consistent and relevant content. With a well-planned content marketing strategy—page creations, long-form text, and researched keywords—businesses can ensure that customers remain engaged while targeting a new audience of prospective shoppers. Not only does this approach drive profitability but it allows you to assert your knowledge in your industry among your competition. 

    What are the benefits of having a content marketing strategy?

    Good quality content isn’t simply about slapping copy to the page to racking up your word count, it’s about consistency and making a lasting impression on your audience. 

    Here are some reasons that a content marketing strategy is beneficial for your brand:

    • It allows you to establish a style, feel, and tone that speaks to your audience
    • Knowledge of your industry earns trust and respect for your business
    • The higher your rank via search engines, the easier it will be for shoppers to find you—targeting a wider, new audience
    • Customers are entertained and more fulfilled, building a relationship with your brand
    • It’s a cheap way to boost brand loyalty and create awareness 

    Since creating content from scratch takes time and requires a degree of experience to ensure that it’s search engine optimized, you should consider hiring an agency to perform the following content-related tasks:

    • Write step-by-step and how-to guides that can be used on your product and service pages
    • Update product descriptions and other important landing pages
    • Upload visual and promotional content that’s engaging and informative
    • Offer brand comparison to instill trust with the consumer
    • Write entertaining blogs that possess educational value

    Is your website’s content king? Drop a comment below to ask about getting on board with Trek Marketing’s content creation service. 

    6 ways to rank higher using SEO

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    You can invest ample time and money into building your e-commerce site, but if customers are unable to find it in the maze that’s online shopping, it will just be another platform lost in a sea of neverending content. Search engine marketing helps businesses to optimize their content for better-searching power on websites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo so that customers find the sites that best meet their needs. While this can be done by using trending keywords, there are other ways to generate traffic and sales. Here are some tips that will help you to rank higher in online searches.

    Find and use the right keywords

    While it’s always best to use a keyword tool to appropriately calculate which keywords your potential clients are using, you can start the process by putting yourself in their shoes—What would you search for? By creating a list of phrases and words that you think shoppers would use to find your products and services on the web, you’re eliminating the guesswork involved. After building your list, you can then validate your suggestions to ensure they’re the best options. You can then use the keywords that you’ve narrowed down to create pages that rank higher when prospective customers search using said keywords.

    Be unique over your competitors

    Business and competition go hand-in-hand, so if you want to rise above your industry, you will need to use words that make your company stand out. For example, phrases like “near me” or that utilize geographic location harness a lot of power within local communities. It’s also great to use phrases such as “on a budget”, “savings”, and “best” alongside popular keywords to differentiate your low prices and quality products. 

    Don’t abuse keywords

    Although utilizing keywords is a great way to attract online attention, you should consider making landing pages that best appeal to search engines rather than having keywords sprinkled everywhere throughout your content. This is because overuse of keywords risks distorting the meaning and can irritate select shoppers who read lots of content. While traffic is important, it’s equally as important to ensure that your text is clear and easy to read. 

    Build lots of links

    The more websites that carry links to your website, the higher you will rank on searches. This is a great opportunity to develop partnerships with businesses that are similar but not in direct competition with yours. Keep in mind that quality is far better than quantity so it’s important that the links directing back to your website come from credible sources. 

    User-friendly websites are best for search engine marketing

    Functional and easy-to-navigate websites are more desirable to the shoppers who manage to find your business via an online search. That said, there are loads of ways to improve your website’s readability through web development and search engine marketing—add headings that feature top keywords, ensure mobile-friendliness, and upgrade site speed

    Measure results and make changes as needed

    There are a variety of free and low-cost tools (ex. Google Analytics) that help to provide you will details about the SEO performance of your website as well as data about your visitors—how they found your site, their gender, geographic location, and even how long their session time was on each page. Then, your team is able to use these measured results to make changes to future search engine marketing strategies. 

    Can you think of other ways you’ve used SEO to rank higher in various search engines? Drop a comment below to share with our readers.

    How does content work to improve your conversion rate?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Those who own an online business are no strangers to writing content, especially if they have yet to collaborate with a professional digital marketing team. Whether writing copy for pages on the website, updating product information, or delving deep into industry news using a creative blogging platform, content marketing is a crucial part of building brand awareness. That said, your brand’s impression heavily depends on increasing conversion rates to your website, and to do that, you must first understand how conversion rates work to improve visibility, traffic, and sales. 

    What is a conversion rate?

    A conversion rate is a general term that refers to the recorded percentage of users who have completed a desired action or site goal. The rate is calculated by taking the total number of users who convert—actions and goals come in many shapes and sizes (examples, clicking on an ad or completing a purchase)—dividing it by the overall size of the audience, and converting that figure into a percentage. 

    What is conversion rate optimization? 

    Known as CRO in its short form, conversion rate optimization is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take your desired action or complete your site goal—be that subscribing to a newsletter. CRO also involves understanding how users utilize your website, what actions they take, and what work needs to be done before their complete your actions and goals.

    Search engine optimization and how it works to improve conversion rates

    You could write as much content as you want, but if your copy isn’t following the right search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, potential customers won’t find it on the web. You will simply possess a low-traffic website that has tons of copy. This is because the CRO is closely related to SEO. By writing SEO-friendly content through the use of industry-researched keywords, pages can increase their visibility on popular search engines where customers have the chance to find them and click. There is also an opportunity to improve and generate lead growth by writing bulkier content and answering questions to improve click-through rates, which also assists in improved conversion rates

    What are some ways that you can improve your content to help with conversion rates?

    While content should be written with a clear vision of what needs to be conveyed to the consumer, it can also be crafted to build an emotional connection with the reader. 

    Listed below are actions your business should take to improve your content:

    • Include a call-to-action: Weak or nonexistent call-to-actions (CTAs) give customers zero incentive to engage with your content. Be sure to utilize this part of your copy to offer something truly valuable so that your copy doesn’t become buried over time. 
    • User-friendly development and design: Aside from having a website that functions well and transitions quickly, you should also ensure that it’s mobile-friendly and your information forms are short and sweet. Signups or checkouts that required too many fields or pages often lead to users abandoning before the desired action is complete. 
    • Clear contact page: Customers shouldn’t have to scour your website to find a phone number or email address. 
    • Use high-quality images: Stock images are great when you’re first starting out, but if you want to further establish your brand, we recommend adding photos of the staff, facilities, products, and services to better connect with your customers. 

    What methods have you used in the past to increase your website’s conversion rate? Please share them with our audience in the comments section below.

    How to create attractive and engaging content

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Content marketing has quickly become a strategic approach for businesses looking to share valuable and relevant information with customers within their industry. While it may be easy to share content on your blog, social media accounts, and through email, developing great content that stands out on a consistent basis to your audience is the only way to develop your content marketing strategy. Listed below are some steps you can take to help your produce content that will reach and engage with your target consumer. 

    Know your audience

    Identifying your target audience allows you to look beyond the basics. Things like their demographics, psychographics, and behaviours help to understand the type of content that may interest them. Content creators visualize their audience before adapting marketing personas that help to establish a composite of the reader. Whether it’s the topic of a blog, a social media post, or an email, knowing your audience before creating the content will do wonders in attracting them to it. 

    Ensure that your headline is powerful 

    The headline of your blog, social media post, or email is the hook that catches and lures in the customer. While it needs to be consistent with the information that you want to present, it should also exhibit actionable keywords that help with your search engine optimization (SEO) while also utilizing language that’s attractive to the audience. 

    Tell a story

    Part of creating engaging content is using a series of words to tell a story. You shouldn’t just jump into your piece without first setting the stage nor should you simply stop writing because you’ve reached your minimum word count (unless it’s a social post, of course). All content should have a beginning, middle, and end if you’re hoping to attract and engage with your audience.  

    Provide useful information that’s quick to read

    Online shoppers are time-crunched and may have just come across your digital marketing efforts while aimlessly perusing the web. All that matters to them at that moment is what your content is doing to educate, inform, or entertain them. Many customers are consuming content while on the go, in short spurts of time between other activities. Be sure to use simple words, write direct sentences, and use an active voice in your content. 

    Are you in need of a content creator? Trek Marketing offers a wide range of digital marketing services that work to develop your business’s content. 

    What type of content attracts you as an online shopper? Drop a comment below to share with our readers. 

    Important digital marketing tips for promoting Boxing Day sales

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Since Boxing Day is just a few nights of sleep away, we recommend bookmarking this blog and reviewing it next summer so that you can sort through its contents, pull some ideas, and prepare your holiday digital marketing strategy a few months in advance. After all, the holiday season really starts at the beginning of November, which means that you need to find ways to attract shoppers early for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Boxing Day, and beyond. 

    Competition is high during the holiday season, making it challenging to promote your brand to stand out from the rest. However, with a well-developed digital marketing strategy, you’ll be well on your way to boosting traffic, conversions, and revenue using the following various channels and techniques. 

    Launch some shopping ads

    If your e-commerce business sells physical products it’s important to launch a shopping campaign as part of your digital strategy. Shopping ad campaigns help give customers a presentation of your products along with prices and offered discounts. These types of ads are also visible on search engine result pages, making it easier to attract targeted traffic to your website. That said, we recommend that you start your ad campaigns at least a few weeks before the holiday you’re targeting (for example, December 1 would be a good deadline to set if you want to launch a Boxing Day ad campaign). 

    Create engaging copy

    While there are a variety of ways to bring traffic to your website during the holiday season, festive copywriting is a great way to stand out when competition is high. Whether you choose to put new content right on your homepage, under the description of your products and/or services, or through your social accounts, it’s important to write copy that ties in with the holiday season, and if you can, include sales and discount information as well. 

    If you want to go the extra mile you can also take the time to design a landing page to match. Not only will this boost Boxing Day sales, but it will offer page users a place to click that leads them directly to the holiday hype. Plus, there are many ways to make the landing page appealing by opting to have promotional rewards and offers, a beautifully designed banner, and even a countdown clock to show urgency and prompt visitors to take advantage of a time-sensitive discount. 

    Set up remarketing campaigns

    It can be challenging to boost your sales during the holiday season when many other businesses are doing are attempting to do the same. That’s why you need to recapture the people who have shown interest in your products or services before. Remarketing campaigns allow you to easily advertise interested consumers while also retargeting existing customers who are likely to convert. Emails are also an effective channel to do this. Simply make a list segmentation filled with customers who have recently purchased and let them know about your Boxing Day offers! 

    *Before you run or schedule a campaign to promote holiday offers, be aware of the right time to achieve the best results from your target audience. If you need help using Google Analytics or social media insights and/or other tracking tools to promote your digital marketing strategy, Trek Marketing is here to help with your holiday planning!

    Are there any other ways that you prepare for the approaching holidays? Please drop them below to share with our readers. 

    How to create a holiday content strategy

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    While it’s far too late to orchestrate a 2021 holiday season digital content strategy, there are many annual upcoming holidays where an equal amount of planning is required. That said, for this blog, we’re going to focus on the festivities to come. Between holiday baking and wrapping gifts, you should also be putting spirited cheer into your business’s content, jam-packing it full of consumer goodies that grab some of that holiday traffic. While having a digital content strategy months in advance ensures the best outcome, there are many ways that you can implement great content weeks or even days before the season begins. 

    Anticipate the season’s trends 

    The thing about holidays is that they return year after year, which means that data from previous seasons can help e-commerce business owners predict popular trends. For example, simple, accessible resources such as Google searches can tell you a lot about mobile shopping trends. With the buzz of popular holidays like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and Boxing Day, mobile traffic is likely to increase due to people trying to avoid the crowds. This means that your digital content strategy should be catering towards making shopping convenient. This could include sending out an email or social media message advertising a pre-holiday sale or an add-to-cart discount that encourages consumers to buy more to receive a larger deal. 

    That said, how else can analyzing past trends help you with your digital content strategy?

    • Allows you to prepare pages, blogs, or other types of content that’s optimized for mobile searches
    • Email marketing and social media marketing can take a bit of time to prepare which is why it’s important to launch your discounts with ample time to take advantage of them.
    • Cater to users that are searching for holiday gifts and be sure you advertise them taking into account shipping waits. 

    Ask your audience

    In some cases, there might not be enough data on your industry to plan a successful digital content strategy. If this is the case for you, we recommend asking your audience what they want. 

    Marketing research requires time and resources, which is why many small businesses opt to spend their time targeting what their audience wants based on what their audience has asked for. 

    The best way to grab hold of their answers is through surveys that ask indirect questions like:

    • What’s your #1 concern going into this holiday season?
    • How are you planning for the holidays this year?
    • What are you most looking forward to during this holiday season?
    • How could our brand make your holidays run smoother?
    • What’s your best holiday memory?

    The goal of these questions is to get a feel for your audience’s goals, concerns, interests, and struggles and find innovative ways for your product or service to solve them. 

    Audit existing content

    If you don’t have the resources to create new content, you can audit existing content by updating it. This is only possible if you’re a more established business that has published holiday-related content before and you simply want to update it so that it applies to a new shopping season. For example, if you wrote a blog that was entitled, “2020 gift guide” it would be easy enough to change it to “2021 gift guide” and simply add some new products and then hit publish. 

    We do recommend that new business owners write fresh content on their own or hire a professional copywriter to handle the challenge of creating engaging content with traffic potential.

    What other methods do you use when preparing your digital content strategy? Please drop feedback in the comments section below.