At the end of 2012, the top marketing trends and predictions focused on gamification, mobile marketing and content marketing. Now that we're halfway through 2013, did these predictions hold up? Has mobile marketing hit its saturation point? Is the focus still on content and a broad social media and mobile presence? Let's take a look at how these predictions held up, and how they changed.
Mobile Marketing - is still on the rise. If growth continues at the current rate, by 2015 more users will access the internet through mobile devices than their computers. It's just a fact - when your phone is a portable computer you will use it whenever you don't have your laptop or desktop. Thanks to smartphones, every minute of someone's waking day could potentially be spent online. It's not a coincidence that 42.8% of marketers planned to increase their marketing spending in 2013, it's just good business sense.
Content Marketing - Recently, there's been an emphasis on content. Not just amount of content, but quality of content. With the advent of the blog, the initial theory (and instinctual impulse) was to just put as much information out there as possible. Update as often as possible and let the rest sort itself out. Now is the time to sort all that content out. Companies are re-evaluating their approach to content. How they organize, how they curate it, whether quality of content is more important then quantity of content, and the hammer is coming down on the side of quality. Producing less content, but of a higher quality is proving itself to be a better strategy then providing a lot of content without much consideration to content. While having a blog filled with posts back to 2007 is impressive, readers would rather not have to slog through a lot of mediocre content to get to the gems. Instead, they would rather read only the best of your posts, even if there are fewer.
Gamification - is a relatively recent marketing innovation, that's seen a lot of use in the beverage and food industry. Essentially, it turns marketing strategies into a game. The most classic example is when companies hold contests or surveys and let the consumers decide what the new candy flavor will be, or the logo, or the mascot. An adaptation of this strategy to the internet, particularly to social media, is to offer prizes or rewards based on likes, shares and re-tweets. For instance, if you share a certain link x amount of times, you get a special reward, rank or badge. Companies have also arranged internet "scavenger hunts" where consumers unlock certain rewards at each level, where each level involves some form of promotion, purchase or use of the product.
Whether these trends continue, or some new marketing strategies arise to take their place remain to be seen. What trends have you noticed so far? Is there any marketing strategy that you're glad to see go? Let us know in the comments below
twitter and facebook.
Showing posts with label social media marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media marketing. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
5 Tips to Improve Your SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, how do you make Google work for you. Anyone who's ever used a search engine understand the concept: the results on the top of the first page are the ones you click on. So how do you get there? Honestly, it's better to just hire a SEO certified professional, or a marketing team to handle it for you. But here are some tips to get you started.
1. Keywords - Figure out what sort of words people use to search for your product, and include as many of them as you can in your website. This is often done on a coding level, where the website itself is designed to make it as easy as possible for search engine indexing to find it.
2. Cross Linking - The more times people click through to and around your site, the higher it climbs in the search engine rankings. One strategy is to have, essentially, sets of links, where the main page takes you to a second page which takes you to the content you're looking for, to have links to other pages on the most important pages. There are ways to do this organically, without disrupting or annoying the user, such as linking to a page with services, then having the user click on each individual service to see examples of it.And/or, when organically mentioning another service in the description of your current one, linking straight to that service in the text.
3. Inbound and Outbound Linking - Advertise your website. have links to your website on your social media sites, on your blog, and links to your blog on your website. The more places that your blog or website shows up, the more it will be scene, and more importantly, the more it will be trafficked. One of the things search engine crawlers, the things that find and rate the sites, look for is how often your site gets mentioned on other sites.
4. Data and Analytics - Once you start getting traffic, you need to track that traffic. Search engine algorithms change all the time. Make sure that you know who's visiting your site, when, where and how, so you know how to change your website and your SEO tactics to match your demographic. Most companies that provide SEO help or expertise include analytics and tracking as part of the package, as it's hard to optimize something when you don't know h0w it's performing in the first place.
5. Sponsored Links - If doing SEO the organic way just isn't producing the results you want, you can always pay the search engine to get featured at the top of the results. Whether or not this is actually effect is up in the air. Many people, myself include, specifically avoid the sponsored links because we assume that their not actually the best results. Search engine user like to think that the reason an article or a business is at the top of the list is because it's the most popular, and most relevant result. Sponsored links bypass that, and as silly as it sounds, feels like the company is blatantly "cheating" to improve their standing.
These tips can get you started, but as you've probably figured out, SEO is best left to professionals. Luckily, there are a lot out there (including my company, UnimarPR). Just try to focus on companies that provide "organic" SEO optimization over sponsored links or pay per click, as search engine companies prefer websites and businesses that game the system naturally.
How important do you think SEO is to a business? If you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on twitter and facebook.
1. Keywords - Figure out what sort of words people use to search for your product, and include as many of them as you can in your website. This is often done on a coding level, where the website itself is designed to make it as easy as possible for search engine indexing to find it.
2. Cross Linking - The more times people click through to and around your site, the higher it climbs in the search engine rankings. One strategy is to have, essentially, sets of links, where the main page takes you to a second page which takes you to the content you're looking for, to have links to other pages on the most important pages. There are ways to do this organically, without disrupting or annoying the user, such as linking to a page with services, then having the user click on each individual service to see examples of it.And/or, when organically mentioning another service in the description of your current one, linking straight to that service in the text.
3. Inbound and Outbound Linking - Advertise your website. have links to your website on your social media sites, on your blog, and links to your blog on your website. The more places that your blog or website shows up, the more it will be scene, and more importantly, the more it will be trafficked. One of the things search engine crawlers, the things that find and rate the sites, look for is how often your site gets mentioned on other sites.
4. Data and Analytics - Once you start getting traffic, you need to track that traffic. Search engine algorithms change all the time. Make sure that you know who's visiting your site, when, where and how, so you know how to change your website and your SEO tactics to match your demographic. Most companies that provide SEO help or expertise include analytics and tracking as part of the package, as it's hard to optimize something when you don't know h0w it's performing in the first place.
5. Sponsored Links - If doing SEO the organic way just isn't producing the results you want, you can always pay the search engine to get featured at the top of the results. Whether or not this is actually effect is up in the air. Many people, myself include, specifically avoid the sponsored links because we assume that their not actually the best results. Search engine user like to think that the reason an article or a business is at the top of the list is because it's the most popular, and most relevant result. Sponsored links bypass that, and as silly as it sounds, feels like the company is blatantly "cheating" to improve their standing.
These tips can get you started, but as you've probably figured out, SEO is best left to professionals. Luckily, there are a lot out there (including my company, UnimarPR). Just try to focus on companies that provide "organic" SEO optimization over sponsored links or pay per click, as search engine companies prefer websites and businesses that game the system naturally.
How important do you think SEO is to a business? If you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on twitter and facebook.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Top Five Most Common Marketing Mistakes
It can be difficult to figure out what the right thing to do is when it comes to marketing your company. There's no magic bullet, no one size fits all strategy, and their so many different ways to market nowadays that knowing what's right for your company is almost impossible to figure out. When you don't know what to do, sometimes it helps to look at what not to do.
1. There can't only be one. Using only one form of marketing, having only a website, or only brochures, or only print ads, or relying only on word of mouth, does not work. While it may be difficult to figure out which marketing methods you want to use, it's vital that you use more than just one. It's fine if your business gets most of it's clients through word of mouth. But these days, with so much competition, if you don't expand, if you don't use online resources like ZocDoc.com, or list yourself at city hall, or have a presence on line, you'll miss out on clients and fall behind the competition.
2.The internet is your friend. A business without a web presence will not survive in our current climate. This is more than just having an eye catching, well designed website. It's about listing yourself online, being present not just at physical marketing conferences, but on online chat boards. It's about having a mobile website, and a Facebook page. The average person spends about 4 hours a day online. Americans spend about as much time online as they do watching tv, if not more. If you're advertising on TV, you should be advertising online as well.
3. Constant vigilance. The thing about cultivating an online presence, is that it must be a presence. Once you have your website, you have to maintain it. Having a twitter feed that only updates sporadically, if at all, defeats the purpose. Marketing online isn't like marketing in print or on TV. You can't just create an advertisement, put it out there, and ignore it until it starts delivering results. Fortunately, most web designers will also upkeep your website for you, but creating a site without maintaining it, or a Facebook group without updating it, is like buying a car without insurance.
4. But I have a superior product! It's an unfortunate truth that the quality of a good or service doesn't necessarily correlate to how well it does. It is perfectly possible to be the very best at what you do, but if the guy next door has a better ad campaign and slightly lower prices, he'll take all your business. Being the top of your field doesn't matter unless other people recognize you as such. A business can have a quality product, and only a few customers. Trusting only in your talent to see you through is tempting, but ultimately unwise.
5. All flash, no substance. On the flip side of the previous point, when advertising your product, there has to be content. It helps, of course, if you do have a superior product, but even if you don't, you must have an actual, tangible, product or service. Consumers are not stupid. If you have a flashy website with almost no real content, people notice. If you make big claims, but have nothing backing them up, people will notice. Just having a good product isn't enough. But not having a product at all is much, much worse.
Most of these mistakes come back to the same thing: the very human impulse to get more for less. (Or, in the case of point number 4, to rest on your laurels, so you don't have to do more work.) In order to make marketing work for you, you have to invest your time and your money into it. If you hire a marketing company, they'll take some of the personal time investment off your hands, but if you don't put in any effort at all, you won't get any results.
Think we should do more work? What common mistakes have you noticed? If you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on twitter and facebook.
1. There can't only be one. Using only one form of marketing, having only a website, or only brochures, or only print ads, or relying only on word of mouth, does not work. While it may be difficult to figure out which marketing methods you want to use, it's vital that you use more than just one. It's fine if your business gets most of it's clients through word of mouth. But these days, with so much competition, if you don't expand, if you don't use online resources like ZocDoc.com, or list yourself at city hall, or have a presence on line, you'll miss out on clients and fall behind the competition.
2.The internet is your friend. A business without a web presence will not survive in our current climate. This is more than just having an eye catching, well designed website. It's about listing yourself online, being present not just at physical marketing conferences, but on online chat boards. It's about having a mobile website, and a Facebook page. The average person spends about 4 hours a day online. Americans spend about as much time online as they do watching tv, if not more. If you're advertising on TV, you should be advertising online as well.
3. Constant vigilance. The thing about cultivating an online presence, is that it must be a presence. Once you have your website, you have to maintain it. Having a twitter feed that only updates sporadically, if at all, defeats the purpose. Marketing online isn't like marketing in print or on TV. You can't just create an advertisement, put it out there, and ignore it until it starts delivering results. Fortunately, most web designers will also upkeep your website for you, but creating a site without maintaining it, or a Facebook group without updating it, is like buying a car without insurance.
4. But I have a superior product! It's an unfortunate truth that the quality of a good or service doesn't necessarily correlate to how well it does. It is perfectly possible to be the very best at what you do, but if the guy next door has a better ad campaign and slightly lower prices, he'll take all your business. Being the top of your field doesn't matter unless other people recognize you as such. A business can have a quality product, and only a few customers. Trusting only in your talent to see you through is tempting, but ultimately unwise.
5. All flash, no substance. On the flip side of the previous point, when advertising your product, there has to be content. It helps, of course, if you do have a superior product, but even if you don't, you must have an actual, tangible, product or service. Consumers are not stupid. If you have a flashy website with almost no real content, people notice. If you make big claims, but have nothing backing them up, people will notice. Just having a good product isn't enough. But not having a product at all is much, much worse.
Most of these mistakes come back to the same thing: the very human impulse to get more for less. (Or, in the case of point number 4, to rest on your laurels, so you don't have to do more work.) In order to make marketing work for you, you have to invest your time and your money into it. If you hire a marketing company, they'll take some of the personal time investment off your hands, but if you don't put in any effort at all, you won't get any results.
Think we should do more work? What common mistakes have you noticed? If you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on twitter and facebook.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
On Social Media
In celebration of Unimar’s emergence on Twitter and Facebook we bring you an exciting book recommendation. The
New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News
Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly,
2nd Edition, by David Meerman Scott, is a must read if you want to take your business to a new level when using Social Media.
Have you read this book? Agree or disagree? We always love to hear what you think so contact us on Twitter and Facebook.
Scott has some great insight on how to
use Social Media to drive your business in an organic way, providing a
great counterpoint to more traditional interruption-based advertising.
There are an incredible amount of tips and tricks, theories and methods
in this book, but Scott has boiled it down to a few basic principles:
1. Target a specific audience. Create a
page that reaches an audience that is important to your organization. It
is usually better to reach a small niche market than try to go large.
2. Be a thought leader. Provide valuable
and interesting information that people want to check out. It is better
to show your expertise in a market or at solving a buyer’s problems than
to blather on about your product.
3. Create lots of links. Link to your own
sites and blog, and those of others in your industry and network.
Everybody loves links—it makes the Web what it is. You should certainly
link to your own stuff from a social networking site (like your blog),
but also link to other people’s sites and content in your own market.
4. Encourage people to contact you. Make
it easy for people to reach you online, and be sure to follow up
personally on your fan mail.
5. Participate. Create groups and participate in online discussions. Become an online leader and organizer.
6. Make it easy to find you. Tag your
page and add your page into the subject directories. Encourage others to
bookmark your page with del.icio.us and DIGG.
7. Experiment. These sites are great
because you can try new things. If it isn’t working, tweak it. Or
abandon the effort and try something new. There is no such thing as an
expert in social networking—we’re all learning as we go!
This should be enough to get anyone
started in their own Social Media campaign, but to truly achieve
astronomical results we suggest you give the book a read.
Have you read this book? Agree or disagree? We always love to hear what you think so contact us on Twitter and Facebook.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
The Zen of Social Media Marketing
I recently spent 2 hours at Borders searching for the perfect book about Public Relations or Social Media. Finally I found it: ”The Zen of Social Media Marketing” by Shama Hyder Kabani. This book is a really easy read and is above all very practical. I recommend this book to any small business owner who is trying to get their company name out there and doesn’t have a multimillion dollar marketing budget. The book is filled with several tips that Kabani refers to as “Zen Moments” that work as sort of chapter summaries. The book explains the power of Facebook and Twitter for small companies and she gives detailed advice of how to use both social media websites.
The book contains online resources that I personally benefited from. Just one example is http://jigsaw.w3.org. If you have a website and want to make sure it’s coded properly go to this site, type in your URL, and it will scan it for you and point out any errors you may have.
Have you read this book? Agree or disagree? We always love to hear what you think so contact us on Twitter and Facebook.
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