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    Tag: marketing strategies

    Performance marketing: What is it and why should you care?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Although many tools facilitate how to plan, track, and optimize digital marketing campaigns, measurable actions are best handled by those who know how to understand the data. Not only does this further the insight on how, when, and where to allocate a business’s spend but it allows businesses to be vigilant on what’s most important. Listed below is our summary of performance marketing and why you should care.

    What is performance marketing? 

    Performance marketing is an umbrella term that’s used to describe any online marketing activity that can be tracked and attributed to a specific action and/or result. 

    There are three main types of performance marketing payment models:

    • Percent of sale: The advertiser pays a commission on each sale generated
    • Leads: The advertiser pays a commission on each sale generated
    • New customers: The advertiser pays a fixed amount for each new customer acquired

    There are also situations where performance marketing models become hybrid and encompass many payment types. 

    Performance-based marketing tactics such as paid—where advertisers only pay when a user clicks on an ad—are not performance marketing. While pay-per-click advertising, also known as PPC, campaigns focus on action—the ad click—they don’t always lead to performance-based outcomes such as sales or sign-ups. 

    Why do businesses care about performance marketing?

    Since performance marketing opens up opportunities beyond traditional marketing, it’s important to focus on web destinations and creators across various digital landscapes. With platforms that help to bridge these relationships by offering means of measuring goals and compensation, businesses can achieve desired results through the assistance of performance marketing. 

    Who uses or works with performance marketing tools?

    Since performance marketing is data-driven, it’s best handled by digital marketing professionals. However, many people can utilize its strategy. 

    • Marketers plan and execute performance-based campaigns
    • Publishers track performance and get paid for results
    • Influencers find opportunities, set goals, and measure performance
    • Advertisers find publishers and influencers to work with

    How reliable is performance marketing? 

    While performance marketing is a critical strategy that offers advertisers the insight they need to run campaigns successfully, digital fraud is something that shoppers, 

    business owners, and advertisers need to be aware of this.

    Why does ad fraud happen?

    • Bots simulate real user traffic on the website to generate ad impressions
    • Invalid traffic is generated by humans who click on ads to deplete a competitor’s budget
    • Fake websites are created to inflate impressions
    • Domain spoofing imitates a premium website to sell fake inventory

    Since performance marketing campaigns look at actions rather than metrics, the best way to ensure validity in the actions you pay for is to hire a professional agency to manage your digital marketing services. This ensures that the leads you pay for are real people who have been contacted and are interested in what you’re selling. 

    What did you find most interesting about the above blog? Please leave a comment below to start a conversation.

    4 digital marketing ideas for Halloween

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    The spooky season is upon us! Whether you handle your business’ digital marketing or you work for an agency, there are so many creative and frightening ways to orchestrate Halloween marketing campaigns in 2021. So, if you were looking for the perfect way to break out of your traditional digital marketing mold, take a leap this year and start brewing up some creative Halloween-inspired marketing ideas.

    Curated videos that celebrate the chilling season

    We’re living in a digital age where many people are learning to engage with brands and businesses through video content. Since this type of digital marketing gets the most organic engagement, it’s important that your business learns to utilize video regularly—the same goes for Halloween marketing campaigns. Consider taking a stab at creating a product, service, or even staff-related video but be sure to include a spooky twist. Even if this strategy doesn’t offer scary-good conversion right away, it shows that you’re an edgy, up-and-coming company that’s committed to catering to societal trends. 

    Display ads that target a more devilish theme

    When creating a pay-per-click ad, it’s important to create personalized displays that meeting the browsing habits of your target audience. That said, building an ad that does all of the above is easy, but breaking the mold of a typical advertisement to get the attention of viewers can be challenging. It’s ingenious to give your PPC campaigns a little revamp by adding a creepy message, using a frightful font, or even changing the colours to orange and black to reflect the theme of traditional Halloween marketing campaigns. Your next data-driven campaign could use a little hocus pocus. 

    Social posts that are eerie-sistably boo-tiful 

    While sending a shoutout to Halloween day-of is the easiest way to get into the spirit of the season, giving your campaigns some added spooky energy leading up to the special day is far more exciting and memorable. That said, as soon as October rolls around, you’re in the clear to formulate some devilishly dark social media posts. Whether you do a quick disguise of your product with some enchanting props, snap a photo of it out in a pumpkin field, or simply advertise your service with a ghostly touch, there are so many opportunities to jump onto the bandwagon with a social media Halloween marketing campaign. 

    Blog posts that brew spooktacular ideas

    Since content can take a bit of time to create traction and spur engagement, it’s best to get on this opportunity as soon as possible, especially if you’re hoping to boost your SEO with a Halloween marketing campaign. The spooky season is a time of year for trendy searches since lots of people are on the hunt for the perfect costumes, decor, and party ideas. So, if you can find a way to create some spooky blog posts while using keywords that are trending, you can find a way to stay relevant during Halloween Google searches. 

    What is your favourite option from our suggestions above? Drop a comment below to share. 

    Your simple guide to marketing ROI

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Whenever an e-commerce business is looking at which digital marketing efforts to invest in, the first thing they should determine is their return on investment (ROI). The ROI allows you to project which efforts are becoming profitable for the company and at the most basic level, concludes which transactions are making the most revenue. So, if this is the first time you’ve heard digital marketing and ROI in the same sentence, it’s worth carrying out the equations yourself to test which investments your business is most benefiting from. 

    What is marketing ROI? 

    Return-on-investment (ROI) is a performance measure that’s used to calculate the efficiency of marketing investments. The ROI is directly measured by the amount on return there is on a particular investment, after subtracting the initial investment cost. 

    How do you calculate your ROI? 

    If you’re looking to calculate your businesses’ ROI, you’ll need to input your numbers into a simple formula — the benefit (or the return) of the investment is subtracted by the cost of the investment. The result should be then expressed as a percentage or a ratio. 

    Understanding your ROI

    Once you complete your ROI calculation you will be able to use it as a rudimentary gauge to understand the profitability of your investment. So, whether your company is looking to start up some search engine optimization or invest more in pay-per-click advertising, the calculation will help you to interpret the opportunities available before you. This gives you a better understanding of how much you can afford to invest in marketing monthly and be able to calculate your return on that investment to know if you should be putting more money into your digital strategy. 

    For example, if an e-commerce business owner invests $250 in email marketing, to calculate their ROI, they would need to determine their profits of the investment. So, if one of their monthly newsletters made $1,000 and it cost $125 to create (two newsletters monthly are $250 total, $125 each), the calculation would be, $1,000 – $125 = $875, which means their ROI is 87.5%. 

    How to get in contact with a profitable ROI marketing agency

    When you’re on the hunt for an ROI marketing agency that’s dedicated to increasing your e-commerce conversions, it’s also a good idea to consider non-financial elements as well. These could include how the company is getting you likes and follows on your social channels, traffic to your website or even how well their copy is increasing the trust among your target audience. While all the above are not immediate returns on your initial investment, they do indirectly boost the potential for purchases and allow you to better develop your customer relationships long-term. 

    Do you have more questions about your marketing ROI and how to strategically use it to increase your conversions? Drop a comment below and we will do our best to answer your questions. 

    How does digital marketing provide business flexibility

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    the benefits of digital marketing

    In a world where the benefits of digital marketing are ever-growing with wide-spread technological developments and the growth of online users, it only makes sense to promote state-of-the-art products and services through e-commerce websites. For decades conventional marketing was the only way to get the word out, but now businesses have the option to advertise electronically across various online mediums. The question is, how is it that internet marketing is continuing to offer entrepreneurs advantageous flexibility while placing classified ads are slowly becoming a thing of the past?  

    Digital marketing allows you to make changes

    Traditional marketing comes in many forms — billboards displays, newspaper advertisements and even TV and radio endorsements — but one of the main disadvantages is that there is an inability to make tweaks to the campaign it has been launched. After all, it isn’t cheap or easy to take down a billboard and whip up a new one if something is spelled wrong, so, naturally, no one wants to have to throw away their publication. That being said, digital marketing has the ability to be a lot more fluid when it comes to fixing errors, allowing business owners to change around the text and image after publishing. Even social media posts, search engine optimization copy and curated blogs are able to be edited at a later date. So, this means that if you happen to make a careless error or a simple misprint, chances are that it can be fixed quickly and effectively.

    Digital marketing allows you to attach links

    Humans are visual creatures which means that a high percentage of our society processes things better through the help of visual aids. So, if you’re hoping to teach consumers about your products and services, linking your content will allow them to easily access what you’re selling, the reviews and other helpful sources that articulate your point. Not to mention links give potential customers a choice when it comes to clicking and viewing rather than a more forceful approach. The public can’t choose their radio advertisements, but they can choose which emails they open. So, having the choice to click and read through the use of helpful links is one of the many advantageous benefits of digital marketing, giving consumers an added element of control.

    Narrows your focus to the right audience

    While a traditional marketing advertisement is announced to the public, in a newspaper ad or in the form of a commercial, digital marketing is a more focused endorsement, only advertising to more narrowed group of willing subscribers, those who have searched for a specific key term or simply people who have liked the business’ social channels. While traditional ads do have the power to be geared towards a certain audience (advertising a sporting goods business on an all-sports channel) it doesn’t have the same opportunities to reach customers. The narrow focused of digital marketing has a greater chance of targeting an interested audience.

    How have the benefits of digital marketing helped grow your e-commerce business? Drop a comment below to share with our readers.

    What is the effect of digital marketing on the grocery industry?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    It wasn’t long ago that the concept of ordering groceries digitally was considered to be absurd. After all, how did we expect that the supplier would ensure high-quality products? Needless to say, with ever-growing e-commerce technologies working alongside large grocery chains, this absurd concept evolved into a graciously developed idea with an online platform that included a shopping cart, promotional discounts codes and even a section where customer reviews could be written about products and services. While brick-and-mortar grocery shopping will probably never fully disappear, as our lives become busier and more career-oriented, the convenience of online grocery shopping can only become more appealing. And just like how the world of reading newspapers and cutting out magazine clippings has become far less common; grocery digital marketing may strive to replace the tradition of word-of-mouth advertising.

    How has the influence of grocery digital marketing grown?

    Digital technology has the power to expand multiple types of shopping experiences, including the grocery industry. In fact, 51% of grocery sales in 2016 were influenced digitally according to this study.

    Just as the number of online shoppers and mobile users has skyrocketed in the past decade, so too has their trust for making their purchases online. And with other sectors, such as electronics, home, health and apparel having maintained a high frequency when it comes to digital shopping, grocery has proven its worth with advantages like the promotion of convenience and a clear way to assist with every day time management.

    There has been an increase in online revenue

    The most tangible evidence to support the benefit of online marketing is noticing an increase in business revenue. While grocery digital marketing has just started to hit the tipping point in regards to digital influence, over the past few years the industry has seen a shift with customers researching potential purchases online before heading to a brick-and-mortar shop to buy. While 9% more likely to carry out a purchase, customers are seemingly increasing their spending by 19% through the use of digital resources.

    There has been an increase in online reviews

    Past customer reviews harness power over future customer purchases. In fact, 29% of customers try out products based on a review that they read online. That’s why authentic reviews should be a part of your grocery digital marketing strategy. After all, credibility is essential if a business hopes to see more online sales.

    Foster their trust

    Digital marketing is a great way to foster the trust of new and potential shoppers. Even in the grocery industry, reaching out to your customers to find out how their experience was is essential, so, businesses hoping to maintain their confidence in buying should accommodate their interests by asking them to rate their purchase. They should even consider offering them a loyalty coupon in exchange for their time. This method will encourage familiarity and will also establish them as their main grocery supplier when life gets too busy to head to the store.

    How else do you feel grocery digital advertising has evolved over the years? Drop a comment below to start a conversation.

    What is Google shopping and how does it work?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Google Shopping

    While there are many digital marketing tools that business owners can use to find advertisement opportunities online, investing in Google Shopping is a very advantageous way to display your product right at the origin of a customer’s search. After all, since many people use Google as their primary search engine when they’re on the hunt for a particular item, it seems like an appropriate way to get ahead of your competition. Needless to say, although Google Shopping is incredibly popular, it’s crucial to understand how this tool should be used to drive sales, leads and overall website traffic.

    What is Google Shopping?

    Google Shopping is a service that’s provided by Google which allows customers to search for, view and compare product pricing. It’s powered by two platforms, Google Merchant Center — where your product feed lives — and AdWords — where your shopping campaigns live, as well as where you set your budget, manage your bids, gain insights and make optimizations based on the performance of the campaign.

    What makes it so unique?

    Google Shopping is quite a bit different from traditional text ads. The setup and management that triggers your ads are determined by the feed, the site, and the bids that you make. While there are some strong similarities to SEO, success in the field of Google Shopping boils down to the following areas.

    • Feed creation and optimization: The diversity of your product data, product images and the price are all included in this area. After all, the more relevant your ad is to the searched keyword, the more likely that Google will display your product on that given search.
    • Bidding: If you bid too much your campaign will not work efficiently, but if you bid too little it will not be able to gain traction. When considering the amount that you’re going to spend consider the price of the product, your profit margin and the e-commerce conversation rate. Keep in mind that you want to make a profit, so, it’s important to find a sweet spot where you’re able to slowly increase your bids over time as they prove to be profitable.
    • Monitoring and Optimization: An added benefit of Google Shopping is the ability to keep tabs on your campaign performances. It’s important to monitor your data frequently so that you’re able to make adjustments to your strategy throughout the cycle of the campaign.

    How does Google Shopping work?

    The best part about Google Shopping is that initially, you don’t have to pay anything. Once a Google user searches your key term, if they happen to click on your product ad a payment will then be made. Following the click, the user will be directed to your online store in the hopes that they will follow through with a purchase.

    How can you set up Google Shopping?

    Before you’re ready to start promoting your products on Google you will need to set up an AdWords account and follow a series of steps to launch your campaign. If this sounds too complicated for you it’s best to speak with a digital marketing team that’s experienced with campaign management so that they can set up, launch and manage your Google Shopping campaign moving forward. Best of luck!

    Are there any disadvantages with Google Shopping over other digital marketing advertisement methods? Please drop a comment below to start a conversation.

    Tune into these inspiring 4 marketing podcasters

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    marketing podcasts

    Staying involved in your niche can prove to be a challenging task when your time is already split up between other business ventures and commitments. However, if you’re on the hunt to up your marketing game or in need of some help understanding new, trending strategies, then they’re some innovative marketing podcasts out there that will allow your team to gain some further insights into the world of marketing and business developments. 

    Moreover, for those of you who may not be technologically savvy, a podcast is a collection of digital audio files that are made available for listening or downloading to your computer or mobile device. They are personalized series that feature regular installments about a wide range of interesting topics. Now, that you’re in touch with the lingo, let’s take a look at some marketing podcasts that you absolutely must keep up with.

    Call to Action

    This marketing podcast focuses on highlighting online marketing success stories and how these real-life achievements can be de-constructed and used on your own marketing campaigns. The weekly show consists of candid interviews with digital marketing professionals and leaders and features tips for improving your conversion rates, optimization, content marketing and more.

    Social Media Marketing Podcast

    As the title of the podcast suggests this podcast helps you learn to engage with your customers through the use of social media profiles. There’s a lot to learn about social media marketing and this talk show podcast breaks down the barriers of the marketing genre and makes it easy for you to listen on-the-go to success stories and interviews as well as some in-depth insight from industry pros.

    Marketing Over Coffee

    Just like the title of this marketing podcast suggests, it’s best to tune into this ingenious discussion and get your creative juices flowing with your morning coffee. After all, the host of the show does. That being said, the show primarily likes to focus on traditional marketing methods that work as a good foundation for your marketing strategy and branch off to other topics such as rebranding.

    Copyblogger FM

    If you’re an aspiring copywriter, an entrepreneur or even a digital marketing manager, you would be able to benefit from this particular marketing podcast. The show analyzes the trends of digital marketing and talks about the challenge of changing practices in content marketing, copywriting, email marketing, conversion optimization and so much more.

    If you need help developing your digital marketing strategy, Trek, alongside these amazing marketing podcasts, can help get you on the path to increase your brand’s recognition.

    Are there any other marketing podcasts that you enjoy? Drop their details below to share with our readers.

    Social media marketing: The importance of two-way dialogue

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    the importance of two-way dialogue

    The emergence of social media has created an opportunity for businesses to engage with their consumers online. These social media platforms have allowed brands to interact with their target market without actually speaking to them face-to-face. Although this method may seem a little futuristic for some people, it’s important to remember that how we choose to communicate is constantly changing.

    The vast development of social platforms has allowed companies, located anywhere in the world, to spark intriguing conversations with their consumers by understanding the importance of using two-way dialogue.

    What does two-way dialogue do?

    Two-way dialogue allows e-commerce businesses to build online communities, create brand ambassadors out of their customers and increase the positive visibility of their brand.

    Not only does two-way dialogue within social media provide you with the opportunity to provide damage control immediately online, but it is the fastest growing means of conversation.

    What are the benefits of using two-way dialogue?

    • It allows a human-to-human connection: Unlike a one-way conversation where a company dominates the narrative, two-way dialogue allows communication to flow more gracefully between the brand and the consumer.
    • It shows off your brand’s personality: Two-way dialogue within social media allows you to show off a certain cultural humor. By posting memes, responding directly to customer complaints or comments and posting photos for your followers to comment on, you are creating a brand personality that will resonate with your customers.
    • Gain insights into the consumer: Whether you like it or not, the online world can be a mean, miserable place. With that taken into consideration, engaging with your consumer, whether they provide you with positive or negative feedback, is a crucial way to gain insight on how you can improve your customer service and your business overall.

    Just take advantage of social media. If you’re able to get your social media followers interacting, you’ll have an opportunity to build important connections with the people that love your brand.

    We would love to hear about how you’re reaching out to your consumers. Share your strategies in the comments section below.

     

    A few marketing books to add to your summer reading list

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    marketing books

    With summer already in full swing, you’re probably looking forward to your leisure time on your days off. With the rise in temperature, naturally, comes more time spent enjoying the outdoors. Take a load off, relax and read your way through some of the most favored marketing books of the year.

    Here are a few reading suggestions for lovers of all things business and advertising to take with them anywhere their summer vacation leads.

    John Hall’s, “Top of Mind”

    This marketing book is about exploring opportunities. Hall examines the notion that opportunities are more likely to appear before people that create meaningful relationships in both their professional and personal life. He also speaks about consumer needs and how those have shifted over time. It’s important to build trustworthy, strong relationships with your clients so that in turn you will earn space at the top of your customer’s mind.

    Robert Glazer’s, “Performance Partnerships”

    Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing that involves the affiliate website, the affiliate network, the advertiser and the buyer. Not as common of a marketing avenue to take, affiliate marketing allows the business to reward other parties for their marketing efforts. Glazer explains the concept more in-depth in his marketing book and examines the evolution and ongoing transition “into one of the most important forms of direct-to-consumer digital marketing.”

    Jay Baer’s, “Hug Your Haters”

    In this marketing book, Baer explains that you don’t possess the ability to please everyone and that you need to learn to ignore the complaints if they begin to bother you. Although most companies boast about their customer service skills, most consumers will have a thing or two to say about that. Baer’s customer service novel describes what you as a business owner need to do to regain your consumer-focus and how to properly handle those people with attitude.

    Do you know any other marketing books that our fellow business owners might enjoy? Tell us in the comments section below.