You are not alone…
A solid online marketing strategy requires regularly interacting with various online platforms to increase website enquiries and sales ready traffic.
it can be hard to get your head around all of this…
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30 Reasons to Use a Digital Marketing Agency
Turning to a digital marketing agency that understands your business for support is a great option because suddenly you have access to a host of marketing expertise in the one place. The dollars you spend on marketing go further and reap greater results. Digital marketing agencies are also continually adapting and evolving our practice based on the latest findings from testing and measuring the results on our live campaigns.
So I thought I would write you a list of benefits why I think using a digital marketing agency can benefit your business. I’m not sure I have covered them all. Don’t overlook number 27 & 28. I see these two ALL the time and they might be something you haven’t addressed in your business yet.
- You struggle to bring a consistent number of new sales enquiries to your business.
- You are not converting your enough perspective clients to new business.
- The sales leads you do generate are not the right ones for you.
- Not enough people are coming to your website or calling you
- People are coming to your website, but not getting in touch.
- You have no idea what marketing is working and you are unable to track ROI.
- Your sales are SOLELY dependent on a direct sales team – BIG ONE!!!
- You know you need a number of programs to not only capture new clients but also retain or reinvigorate your current client database – you just dont have the time or know exactly where to start.
- You get overwhelmed with the fast pace of online marketing and it takes you four times as long to put a campaign together as anyone else.
- Your previous efforts haven’t had the outcome you were expecting.
- Your business has grown quickly and you aren’t able to maintain the level of marketing activity you need to keep growing because other parts of the business now take more of your time.
- Marketing projects keep running over time and budget!
- Access to specialist marketing skills as needed on each project, rather than just what is available in-house eg. persuasive writing, offer orchestration, new web pages or sign up forms.
- The cost of having an entire marketing department is too high BUT you need access to varied range of skills.
- You my not need full scale marketing programs every month of the year, so want to avoid hiring a marketing person in-house yet.
- You struggle to differentiate your business from your competitors and therefore you are always competing solely on price and it is killing your business.
- You’re not reaching your target market effectively or you dont know how to find them.
- Prospects are seeing the value in your services and but they always seem to go with somebody else.
- Your marketing team have general marketing skills or are specialists in only a couple of styles of marketing and you need to bolster their skills.
- You know you want to publish regular news about your business or develop case studies, but it never seems to actually get done.
- Because of the complexity, you have no idea if your online advertising and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) providers have set your campaigns correctly or if they correctly reflects your business objectives. (PS You could be bleeding big money).
- You have never done an audit on your website, email marketing and search engine to see if they can convert better.
- Getting fresh information live on your website is an ongoing nightmare!!
- You have started using social media, but not sure you are actually achieving a thing.
- You have a CRM, but nobody really knows how to use it, or if its set up correctly for your business.
- Creating media releases, email marketing campaigns or a new item is inconsistent.
- Your in-house marketing person is at a junior/entry level and just need strategy and direction.
- Your in-house marketing person doesn’t also have a business development background and needs strategy an direction.
- You don’t have a lead follow up procedure in place.
- You are not sure how to make your website a valuable sales tool.
5 Tips to Overcome the Social Media Overload
On December 16, 2012
In Blogging, Business Growth, Business Strategy, Digital Marketing, Facebook, Google Plus, Marketing Tips, Social Media, Target Market
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Social media is everywhere these days, from personal pages on Facebook, to professional contacts on LinkedIn, to managing business pages on Google+, and all sorts of Twitter accounts. Add to that a blog, and anyone can see how businesses can quickly become overloaded and overwhelmed.
Is there such a thing as managing social media time in this social media-saturated world? Like anything in life, moderation is key. Follow these 5 simple tips to overcome the oversharing, and balance social media with the needs of your business and your life.
6 Different Ways to Use Email Marketing
On December 7, 2012
In Digital Marketing, E marketing, email marketing, Email Marketing Facts, Marketing Tips
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You may have heard of Life Cycle Email Marketing. It is built on the notion that all customers are in a different part of the purchasing journey with your business.
For prospects that are not ready to buy right now, great email automation can get them further along the buying cycle and automate your sales without engaging your business development team. You can even set up trigger emails to attract the customer’s interest, educate the buyer and nurture the lead.
As for new email subscriber, you can send them anything you like, such as a welcoming email, bonus offer if they share your news, free webinar, or a list of your frequently asked questions. These messages can be set up to deploy automatically, also called ‘auto responders’. You can even space the emails out as a series over an extended period of time.
Here are a few ideas for trigger emails to your prospects and clients.
How Top Sport Stadiums Do Social Media
On September 27, 2012
In Digital Marketing, Facebook, Marketing Tips, Social Media
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Social media is immensely important in sport across the world. Four stadiums recently have got social media “right.” These cases show how this is the wave of the future.
My husband won his workplace Footy Tips this week. But this isn’t much of a surprise since he is mad keen on AFL and immerses himself in the sport all year long, including trading camp. By about this time every year I’ve heard enough. BUT the truth is fans can’t get enough and are constantly talking about their beloved teams. In this increasingly social-savvy world, this chatter is extended to match day, spilling onto social media like never before. As a result, stadiums across the globe are jumping into social media in new and exciting ways. Let’s take a look at four great cases:
CASE 1: Barcelona FC – Camp Nou
The world’s largest football club (Barcelona) announced on their website that they had teamed up with telecommunications giant Telefonica to overcome the issue of network overload often encountered at games.
A football match is often the only time I experience this type of disconnection. A situation which also restricts the type of apps you build around sporting clubs, trying to avoid user exasperation when the app crashes due to high demand all at once. For example, at the final at Wembley, more than 6,000 Twitter messages were sent a second and Barça received more than a million mentions around the world.
CASE 2: Manchester City – Etihad Stadium UK
Sport is about passion and has strong links to community and heritage. Manchester City’s official website has been enhanced to represent a community hub with a breaking news service. This facilitates Man City becoming more of an entertainment brand, rather than a football club.
But by far my favourite addition is how Man City launched a partnership with Foursquare to allow people to check in at the stadium during a game and ask [City captain] Vincent Kompany questions as it was broadcast live across all social networks. Also a top hit is the Tunnel Webcam broadcast on YouTube.
CASE 3: Arizona Cardinals – University of Phoenix Stadium
Love this one too.: A social media “lounge” was set up at the University of Phoenix stadium in Arizona allowing fans to check-in and update their Facebook statuses, log into their Twitter accounts, take pictures with Cardinals cheerleaders and learn about ways to stay connected to the team using social media platforms. Fans have access to laptop computers at the lounge.
The Social Media Lounge is presented by the University of Phoenix, and is free to the public.
CASE 4: US Open – Billie Jean King National Tennis Center
Are you an Instagram user who loves tennis? Three of Instagram’s top users – @bridif, @takinyerphoto and @newyorkcity were given unprecedented access to photograph and Instagram the U.S. Open alongside traditional media outlets.
Evian, a sponsor of the event, brought the three photographers to the Open as part of a social media campaign dubbed Evian Day.
In the true spirit of social media, the photographers didn’t have to explicitly shoot the brand. Their goal was to connect Evian with the audience attending the matches and not forget the people watching the event abroad. Photographs they took were shared by the @evianwater account and the #EvianDay hashtag.
Some Final Thoughts
Stadiums are in a privileged position of being able to exploit the events they host, creating and monetising a vibrant online community is the use of social networks such as Twitter. Social media allows a multifaceted conversation between fans (& Clubs).
Sport is innately communal (my theory on why it is so popular in the first place). It is a coming together around a game which is epitomized at a stadium. Social Media provides a way of allowing fans to share that experience.
The bottom line is this: Stadiums need to go further to embed social media as part of the match day experience. Fans want to connect, want to share and want to get involved.
Can’t find time for the digital marketing programs you know are impacting your bottom line? Brief Us and tell us about your business goals..
Improve Email Marketing Results with Trigger Email
On September 17, 2012
In Business Growth, Business Strategy, CRM, Digital Marketing, Distribution, E marketing, email marketing, Email Marketing Facts, Email Newsletter Software, Marketing, Marketing Services, Marketing Tips, Viral Campaigns
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Is Your Organisation Harnessing the Power of Trigger Email?
Understanding its benefits and making sure your company properly uses trigger email can elevate click-through rates over business-as-usual email messages.
The proper utilisation of a trigger email campaign can have a marked effect on email open and click through rates, according to statistics taken from over 165 million triggered emails sent by Epsilon from January to March, 2012. Though these numbers focus on North American industries, the same trends are filtering through to Australia.
I’ve talked about trigger email before. They are a message generated as a direct response to a customer’s action. For the purpose of the Epsilon study, this included tracking Welcome, Thank You, Abandoned Shopping Cart, Anniversary, Birthday, Purchase/Transaction Confirmation, and Saved Cart emails.
But what do these benefits really amount to? Let’s review some of the report’s highlights:
- The open rates for trigger emails increased 12.6% from Q1 of the previous year (2011), leading to an overall open rate of 26.2%.
- Even more significant, the open rates for triggered messages were 75% higher than general email marketing campaigns (business as usual or BAU) in Q1 2012.
- Triggered messages continued to perform well with significantly stronger click rates (119% higher) than BAU.
The take away here is clear: trigger email is one of the most effective ways to get customers to click through on email marketing campaigns. This is because the very nature of trigger email is to catch a customer when he or she has performed a very specific action and you can respond in a very targeted manner. When consumers receive a direct response to an action through trigger email, they feel closer to your company and are more likely to continue their relationship with you. So tell me, is your organisation harnessing the power of trigger email?
Are you looking for online and digital marketing services? Contact us now to get started!
Why People Ignore Your Email Marketing
On September 16, 2012
In Advertising, Business Growth, Business Strategy, CRM, Digital Marketing, Distribution, E marketing, email marketing, Email Marketing Facts, Email Newsletter Software, Market Research, Marketing, Marketing Consulting, Marketing Mix, Marketing Services, Marketing Tips, Viral Campaigns
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There are some common reasons why people chose to open or ignore an email marketing campaign. You need to know what customers want to know and how to provide it in timely, relevant manner.
Email marketing is a tough task for many businesses. Though we seem to understand the importance of email and the unique opportunities it offers, many businesses can overdo it. This was an important theme in a recent report co-released by Chadwick Martin Baily and Constant Contact. The report, titled “10 Facts about Why and How Consumers ‘Like’ and Subscribe” serves up some not so surprising results. Here’s a sample:
Don’t over send.
People choose not to open email for a variety of reasons, but chief among these (45%) is that they receive too many emails from a particular organisation. This makes it ultra-important for businesses to be strategic about the amount of email they send.
People sign up for email for relationships and deals.
There are many reasons that consumers cite for signing onto a company’s email list, but 58% do so to receive special discounts and promotions. This means that the content of emails should appeal to consumers’ desire to gain significant advantages as a kind of reward.
Overload equals unsubscribe
The top two reasons that consumers give for unsubscribing to email is an overload of messages and irrelevant content. This is good news because it proves that people want less communication than you think and brings down your content creation demands. However, it also keeps you accountable for making sure every single email marketing is meaningful and serves your mail list members.
Are you interested hiring an online business marketing consultant? Brief Us and tell us about your business goals..
Why Every Business Needs a Digital Curator
There is a lot of hype around online marketing these days. At Pollen Marketing, we use a four-point approach that aims at developing strategy in the key digital areas. These are: Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Email Marketing and Social Media.
From the countless marketing campaigns we conduct per year, this order also relates to the amount of leads each business will generate on average. Bottom line, none of these options will work without a strong focus on the first: Content Marketing.
Why? Digital Content Marketing focuses on more than one area of customer development and lead generation. Since it is focused on what I have termed ‘downloadables’ or free information, products, what-have-you, the investment on the part of the customer is minimal out of the gate. Content Marketing focuses on reaching the customer early in the buying process. Plus, people love getting something for nothing. Whether you produce a white paper, an eBook, or offer some sort of insight into your business and your industry, the base concept behind Content Marketing taps into that love of “free” and “privileged.”
There’s more going on, however, than just an exchange of digital material. When a customer chooses to engage with your company’s content marketing strategy: they get to know you. Especially in B2B marketing situations where information sharing and innovation drive consumer demand, showing off your knowledge through content that is freely available establishes you as an expert in the customer’s mind. This leads to trust, which is paramount in turning a lead into a sale.
Are you looking for online and digital marketing services? Contact us now to get started!
Image by King Kong 911
Digital is Dead
Came across this take on Digital Marketing in the Twitter stream of my good friend @nottheword.
Slide Deck summed up in one sentence – Digital must enhance what is great and amazing about life to work.
Note to self: Must find out what the not word is?!
Digital is dead
View more presentations from Kai Platschke
Or is it life?
Have you ever worked with a professional online marketing agency before? With more and more businesses using the internet to source products and services, it’s imperative you get digital marketing right! Contact us now to get started!
What Online Marketing Has the Greatest Return On Investment? Email Marketing
Drum roll…..According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing returned $43.62 for every dollar invested in 2009, and it may surprise you that this trend has changed very little since then.
This highest yielding ROI medium also allows you to communicate directly with your top prospects. And the icing on the email marketing cake? According to the ForeSee Results 2010 on the effectiveness of social media, promotional emails are the second biggest influence on retail website visits, second only to the actual pre-awareness of the brand. Well ahead of social media. Today, savvy businesses consider email marketing to be the best channel among all online technologies.
Anyone who knows me well knows I am a big fan of social media, but in most cases, it should not be the cornerstone of your marketing. So perhaps you currently don’t have an email marketing program live or you do or it just hasn’t quite hit it’s potential yet. Or maybe you thought you could avoid it all together and just send a few tweets instead? It is certainly time to reassess.
THE PLUG – This is why I thought it is important to write the very candid book to help you - “Effective Email Marketing Guide.“
Are you looking for digital marketing services? Contact us now to get started!
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