Category: Sales & Marketing

Marketing campaigns don’t always work; sometimes even the most brilliant campaigns fall at the final hurdle. In 2017 alone, we saw dozens of high profile marketing fails, with the Pepsi/Kendall Jenner “Black Lives Matter” attempt topping the list. The campaign that was supposed to convince more black people to purchase Pepsi, the campaign which featured Kendall Jenner magically settling a standoff between protestors and public policy by offering an officer a Pepsi backfired big time, becoming a laughing stock on social media and attracting widespread public backlash.

And that’s just one example. There were many other high profile epic failures in 2017, costing marketers millions of dollars.

It’s possible that you too have experienced similar failures, even if not on a similar scale. Perhaps you dedicated the chunk of your marketing budget to a TV commercial and all it did was embarrass you with zero returns on investment. Or, if you haven’t, you could experience such a failure in the future.

You need to know that what matters most under such circumstances is what you learn from the experience. In order to avoid a repeat of the same mistake, you need to take a close look at the failed campaign and extract useful information from the experience to help you make better decisions in the future.

The following are five common lessons you’ll learn from failed campaigns;

1. Failure isn’t the end of the world

Seeing an entire campaign fail miserably can feel like the end of the road. Yet, it isn’t. After the failure, you’ll learn that there is life beyond any campaign; that irrespective of the magnitude of failure, you’ always have a second chance.

2. You learn that priorities are everything

One of the main reasons we often fail is getting our priorities wrong. Perhaps you’re beginning at the wrong end. Maybe you’re trying to focus on traffic without first working on your marketing messages. When you fail, something truly strange happens; you’ll begin to rethink your priorities and put things that matter most at the front of the queue.

3. It improves your perception of finance

Often, especially when you’re getting started, you could be tempted to go all in and commit every cent to that big dream. This isn’t bad at all. But it’s extremely risky. And, again, you’ll only get to better appreciate the risk when you fail. You’ll learn that you have to use your money more wisely, and, as www.ChadFocus.computs it, develop an entrepreneur mindset.

4. You understand the need to delegate

Another common reason businesses fail is trying to do it all alone. This is especially true for small businesses owners. Pressed by the need to cut costs, you may find yourself trying to run the business on your own. Failure will open your eyes to the importance and benefits of delegating responsibility.

5. You learn when to quit

Finally, and most importantly, failure will teach you that not all ventures can be successful; that sometimes it’s better to just count your losses. More importantly, you’ll learn whento call it quits.

So, Don’t Quit Now

It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. If you can always learn these five lessons and take them into your next project, your chances of success become much greater.

 

As entrepreneurs, we’ve ready plenty about marketing. We know that marketing is the life’s blood of our businesses. After all, without customers, there’s no money and without money, well a business is nothing more than a hobby.

One of the lessons that I’ve learned along my journey of entrepreneurship is knowing who your audience is just as important, if not more important, than knowing how to get to them. The reality is that the blanket marketing approach that most take is the same reason they fail.

What’s Wrong With Marketing Today?

Today’s form of online market is what I like to call blanket advertising. Advertisers generally look for lower costs per click to get their ads in front of as many eyes as possible. The idea is that as more people see the ad, someone is likely to click. So, the more we spend, the more eyes we cover, the more we make. The truth is that this is a broken model.

I recently came across an interview featuring Russell Ruffino, a quickly rising star in the world of entrepreneurship. Russ Ruffino’s interview suggested that instead of dragging a fishing net across a the bottom of the ocean trying to catch a big fish, we learn about the audience and target that specific audience. When talking about this exact scenario, Ruffino put it best when he said:

“So, even in the best case scenario, you’ll have to deal with many low-profit clients, which, in turn, will translate into a ton of issues to solve, complaints to sort out and details to micromanage. You will have no free time left, and you’re going to be a slave to your own work. There is a saying in Italy ‘work to buy a car you will use to go to work.’ Also, with these obsolete models, you’re definitely not going to buy yourself the expensive car you dreamed of.”

What Needs To Change For Marketing To Be A Success

At the end of the day, a successful marketing campaign is all about knowing your audience. Blanket marketing says that if everyone sees your ad, some interested parties will buy. However, if you’re a shoe manufacturer, would you rather sell a pair of shoes at a time or reach out to retail outlets that will buy in bulk? Essentially, we want to go for the big fish, and the first step is knowing who those fish are.

Once you know who the big fish are, it’s time to find out where they hang out. Chances are that there are plenty of them on Facebook. With 72.4% of the world’s population using the social network, just about everyone is on facebook these days.

Now, using the tools that are available to dial down the audience, do so. Dial your audience down to exactly what you’re looking for by advertising to people of specific ages, sexes and with specific interests. By doing so, not only will your ad likely be more successful, the cost per click for your ad will probably fall too!

What You Should Take From This Article

There are tons of articles about marketing and what you need to be successful. This isn’t like that. I don’t want you to use my system, buy my tool, or pay me for an eBook. I want you to be successful, and to do that, you need to take one thing away from this article. Ultimately, being successful in online marketing is all about knowing who you are marketing to. If you keep that in mind, you will likely find the success that it took me years to track down!

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), when implemented strategically, is one of the most cost-effective local marketing strategies within the digital landscape, perfect for your SME. SEO pursues audiences actively seeking a specific product or service and achieves cut through by ranking and displaying your business or services to those looking for it at a time when they are most likely to take action on your marketing message.

But What Is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

SEO in its simplest form, is the process of optimising web assets in a means that is complementary to Google’s search algorithm. There are two factors that come together to facilitate successful optimisation: on-page and off-page properties. On-page elements are those that are placed on your website. Off-page link building undertakings are those that exist externally on third-party websites.

11 SEO Factors To Keep In Mind To Drive Traffic To Your Website

Are you ready to increase visitors to your website and get them to subscribe, buy or call?

We asked a reputable and leading SEO agency what factors were important for driving quality traffic to your website when implementing SEO. These were their recommendations:

Web Page Titles: A vital element for both user engagement and search engine algorithms, web page titles briefly and accurately describe the topic and theme of the landing page.

Meta Descriptions: Not only are meta descriptions CTA driven, they assist search engines when indexing your web pages through relevant keywords to the content they describe.

Header Tags: Critical in assisting search engines in knowing what your page is about, header tags need to be fully optimised in conjunction with a pre-agreed SEO strategy.

Domain Level Links: This is simply a quality link from a third party site to a website’s home page. Over 150 SEO experts surveyed said DLL’s are Google’s most important ranking factor.

Page Level Links: Equally as important as a domain level link, third party PLL’s point to an individual webpage increasing the authority of this page on your website.

URL Structure: SEO experts ensure that both users and search engines are able to easily understand what is on each page just by looking at the URL. Say ciao to outdated URLs, such as /digital-9589=marketing

Internal Link Structure: A website’s internal links assist Google in establishing a hierarchy of importance. This enables you to have complete control over which pages you want to provide the most amount of link value towards.

Landing Page Content: Content on your site devised to appease both SEO algorithms and simultaneously is engaging for visitors.

Blog Content: If content is king, the context it sits within is queen. Increase your website’s long tail keywords and supporting contextual density with inspiring, educational blog content from experienced SEO writers that resides either on your site or on third party sites with backlinks back to your site or webpage.

User Engagement: With search engines constantly striving to improve their worth, prove to Google that your page is the thought leader in the industry with quality, engaging and resourceful content.

Website Speed: Page speed is important for SEO rankings and of course, positive user experiences.

Where Can I Get Good Help For SEO? What Does Good Look Like?

SEO is a specialist marketing activity. Therefore, you should seek a trusted SEO agency who can create bespoke SEO strategies according to your business’s objectives. A credible agency will conduct a thorough analysis or audit of your website, complete a competitive analysis, understand your unique selling proposition (and ensure it’s clear to your intended target audience) and asses your site’s online authority relative to the competition. With this information, the SEO agency will then develop a solution that is effective and delivers a sustainable, short and long-term ROI whilst being transparent with you along each stage of the process.

A credible agency will also deliver insightful monthly reports for you, ensuring you are clear of your progress and where improvements can be made to enhance your SEO success. Why? Because the SEO landscape is forever evolving.

SEO can be utilised as a localised, cost effective advertising method which should be considered by all SMEs.

The transformation which artificial intelligence and machine learning have introduced into the tech world is unparalleled. With the innovation of the likes of digital assistants and self-driving cars, what was once considered science fiction has now begun to materialize. For digital marketing, artificial intelligence offers an incredibly variegated assortment of opportunities. Ranging from process automation to consumer behavior analysis, to improved data gathering methods, marketing executives can now breathe more easily, as much of the work they have to do has become a lot more simplified. Here, we will consider ways in which artificial intelligence will help improve your marketing success and reduce your physical exertion.

Faster Data Gathering Methods

With the new strategies for gathering information for sponsored ads which are now being utilized by Google, Facebook and other online platforms, gathering relevant information for making functional marketing decisions has become a lot easier. These days, with the co-integration of online based platforms and software, advertisers can now effectively target the users of their products even without having to conduct polls. There are now different AI-based apps which can analyze user behavior, and tailor your offer to a specific user. Your browsing history is analyzed and used for strategically positioning ads that are relevant to you. Advertisers can now take advantage of this to target ads to specific users across the web. Advertising content can now target only people who have searched for, talked about or visited websites containing a particular product or service.

More Custom Support

With the arrival of artificial intelligence and the innovation of chatbots, trade and sales on the internet have become a lot more efficient and functional. There are not bots that can help you do anything from choose the right product for your specific needs, to helping you track an order you have placed with a specific website.

Also, the innovation of chatbots comes with very effective customer support. People have gotten accustomed to getting answers right away, and if you are a small company, you often can’t afford to hire a 24/7 customer support rep. Chatbots help you cut down the costs and are there to answer the questions and complaints of your customers, be it the middle of the night or a Sunday. If they run into a problem they can’t solve, they will reroute it to a human customer service agent – but the customer will still know that their problem is being solved. This will leave your human agents plenty of time to focus on more meaningful and important tasks.

Consumer Behavior Analysis

With artificial intelligence, analyzing consumer and user behavior online has become a lot easier. In the past, it had to be accomplished through polls, but these days, consumer behavior can be tracked and monitored through the use of this technology and the information can be used to focus marketing campaigns a lot more. What this does for the digital marketing executive is that it reduces the effort he needs to put into researching his marketing campaigns and helps their targeting be a lot more accurate. In the past, running ads was difficult and expensive because to launch ads online, marketers needed to first survey the demographic of people interested in the product or service and target that amount of people. This method was haphazard and barely effective. Ads popped up on the screens of people who did not need them and people reacted to this negatively, affecting the performance of some of those businesses and products online. But with this new technology, online based ads can be focused to target only those who have shown some form of interest in the particular product or who search for information related to the particular product.

Final Words

The reality of artificial intelligence is incredibly satisfying or ultimately overwhelming; because while we have unlocked several ways in which this technological innovation can help us, the full capacity of artificial intelligence is yet to be seen.

About Author

Michael Deane is a marketing executive for Servisbot, always interested in the next big thing developing in the world of AI and machine learning.

It happens to the best of us. You find yourself staring at a blank page, unable to write anything that sticks. All the usual tricks don’t work, and you finally reach the conclusion you’ve been trying to avoid the whole time: you’re out of ideas. Now, this isn’t as bad as it sounds. Marketers who create content regularly will eventually exhaust typical strategic plays like blogs, social-media posts, and email threads. The fact that you’ve made a ton of marketing material over the years is actually great news, and it can help you fashion new ideas in a pinch. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting the job done under adverse conditions:

Think Outside of the Bubble 

Don’t roll your eyes just yet. Yes, thinking outside the box is a worn-out cliche that isn’t going to help you build content at all. It’s too abstract to provide any value. However, we as marketers often stick to the things we know and don’t often venture outside of our personal “bubble” (also known as the dreaded “echo chamber”). When you’re low on fresh blog ideas it’s time to move outside of that comfort zone and see what else is going on in the rest of the world. Look for current events that tie in to your product or service. Even a tangential connection is okay. Furthermore, seeing how rival companies handle their content creation can help inspire your own team.

Repackage 

The next time you feel stuck on a project, remember that you’re sitting on a potential gold mine of good ideas. Getting extra mileage out of compelling content pieces from years gone by is a tremendous way to bust out of writer’s block. Consider combining a series of successful blog posts into a pillar page. Or else, think about repurposing a dynamite social media post into an email thread. Keep in mind that this is YOUR content –– so don’t feel bad about using it again. It’s one of the keys to constructing a marketing campaign that will last the test of time.

Switch Media 

Does your team currently use video? If not, then it’s probably high time to start now. That’s because videos are not only engaging, but also provide the perfect way to transfer old content to a new, more exciting medium. After all, what’s more likely to grab your attention: a blog post about how a hiring a party bus company will improve your evening out, or a video of actual customers riding a party bus and having a blast. That’s just one example, but note all businesses and professionals of varying skill levels can use videos to create new content in a jam. You don’t have to be Steven Spielberg to make an effective video for your business.