Digital Marketing Consultant

Sales and marketing executives are always looking for better ways to get leads from qualified prospects. Despite the complexities woven into Google Analytics’ new multi-channel sales funnels (see below), a way of tracking all the various origins of leads that come into a website, the dynamic remains the same as it’s always been: deals happen after a large audience is filtered into prospects, those prospects are sorted for leads, and those leads are converted into sales. 

The Web delivers that audience, and the various platforms available on it provide companies with the tools to do the filtering, the sorting and even the converting too. 

Each platform does that in a different way. A comprehensive online marketing strategy would make use of Facebook’s flexible engagement (see the link below), Twitter’s networking, and content marketing’s message-building to mine different parts of an audience and bring out the leads present in each group. 

It’s a process that’s seen most clearly in email marketing.

A website might have thousands of visitors a day, most of whom will click through without leaving anything behind. A small fraction of those visitors though can be tempted to leave behind an email address in return for an offer of a free download or some other benefit. (For example, a platform such as TinyLetter now makes collecting those addresses simple enough for anyone to do.) Depending on the download they choose or the site on which they leave their email address, companies are able to create segmented lists that contain subscribers with a known interest in a particular kind of product.

That’s the first, filtering stage. It captures people who have a certain, though undefined, level of interest in a topic related to the product. The next stage, the process by which those prospects are converted into leads, can happen gradually as the company sends a regular stream of emails that don’t just offer deals, bargains and sales opportunities, but which contain enough usable content to build trust. 

Users who are ready to convert will hit the Buy Now button contained in an email marketing letter; the remainder, who will be the majority, should be left with a deeper level of trust that increases the chances that they’ll buy in the future. Eventually, the prospects on the subscriber list should become leads when they click through to a sales page.

That process from audience to prospect to lead to, hopefully, customer is a dynamic that remains true in every sales mechanism, and it’s worth keeping in mind as you’re assessing the various platforms available online. Sites like Facebook might offer a bewildering array of different tools to keep users engaged and to draw in new visitors, from face tagging to video uploads, but they’re all ultimately geared towards pushing a mass that contains some potential buyers through the same funnel. Tagging images of customers in a store, for example, can help a company bring in more potential prospects by putting their name in front of that customer’s friends; announcing on the site that the company is making a limited-time offer will turn those prospects into leads.

It’s a process that should be familiar to any experience sales executive. As you’re wondering how to make best use of the Web, try asking yourself which tools match which parts of your sales funnel.

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Digital Marketing also called Internet Marketing has the purpose to promote your products and services to influence your online customers.  Involving Digital Marketing strategies in your business strategies is not enough; to be successful, having smart marketing is even more important.  Smart marketing is not just about ranking; it’s about phone calls, mailings, socializing, interacting, and connecting etc.  In short, you must have traffic. 

To be even more specific, it is about the right type of traffic.  Of course, Digital Marketing can provide all such advantages through its digital tools - SEO, Google AdWords, Social Media, email marketing to name a few.  Hence, it is true that Digital Marketing can be smart marketing.

Digital Marketing has emerged from the Internet and has had a very profound impact on all businesses.  As you have millions of users who are dependent on the Internet, Digital Marketing is the way to get to such a vast crowd without spending an arm and a leg.  Digital Marketing focuses on customer relationships, shopping benefits, products, and service information, and almost anything that you can relate to your business.  Digital Marketing if made a serious part of your business will lead your business to new levels by generating awareness of your products. 

Digital Marketing is a never ending chain.  This means that if you are able to positively influence a single customer, he will promote your business to another and the chain goes on.  So, are you ready to make Digital Marketing part of your business plan?  Then it’s time you should know what Internet Marketing is offering:

• Encouraging thousands of people to take interest in your website
• Making people aware of your business (products and services that you offer)
• Establishing your brand image and your business reputation
• Keeping friends updated on the forums of their choice
• Capturing free traffic

Hence, to reach a wider demographic and to benefit from all the above-mentioned advantages, you must let the Internet Marketing power work for your business.  Why?

Reason 1

Digital Marketing is already successful for many businesses.  This means it is a proven strategy which goes beyond personal promotion.  More importantly, it is not just for corporate or well-structured businesses, but any size business to take advantage of its unlimited opportunities.

Reason 2

You can have Digital Marketing strategies that your customers are looking for.  This means you are providing your current and potential customers with information they need on the forums they want.  For example you can know if your website analysis shows that most of your web traffic is diverted from a Social Media network like Facebook, you can market on such forums in the future. 

Reason 3

None of your customers need to remain unattended.  This is the best thing about Digital Marketing as there are various ways to maintain your target audience and communicate with customers. 

Digital Marketing has opened horizons for marketers.  It has made it easy for businesses to include online customers as part of their target audience.  As we have stepped into the Internet world, marketing has opened doors for new fields and Digital Marketing is one of these.

Seeing its advantages, it is hard to ignore its importance.  You must be aware of some of the following Digital Marketing strategies, making sure you include most of these if not all, as your business strategies to cope with the ever increasing competition and stay ahead of the game.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Competent SEO structures your individual web pages as well as the website so that they are easily discovered, analyzed, and indexed by the various search engines.  Competent SEO knows the changes in search rules and helps your website stay at top of the various search result pages by anticipating logical algorithms such as most used keywords and other techniques.  It lets web crawlers work at the back end and doing their job in the most accurate and automated form. 

Advanced Link Building

This is another Digital Marketing strategy which involves getting your content rich with links and is also known as social bookmarking.  This requires you to know your audience in order to aware of the site they visit most frequently.  Avoid using hidden links and make sure visitors find your links useful.

Online Copywriting

This form of Digital Marketing strategy is the content of your site and your blog.  You must make sure your website’s content is not copied and is 100% authentic.  It will make your website unique which can be the reason for your improved website traffic. 

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing makes the biggest part of the Digital Marketing strategies.  It includes the entire Social Media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, and other such forums.  Hence, if you want your business to stay ahead of the competitors you will have to keep your audience interacting at such platforms.  There are professional consultants who are ready to help you if you are unaware how or don’t have time to use Social Media Marketing efficiently.  In fact, competent consultants probably will save you time and money.  

Email Marketing

This is another Digital Marketing strategy that businesses have been following.  It includes promoting your products and services by sending informational mails to a list of subscribers.  Some very advanced systems, such as WSI Digital Marketing Pro, can make sure that your email works efficiently and according to the regulations.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords is a service that is used to create and run ads to promote your business.  These ads run along with search engines and you are only required to pay when people click on these ads. 

Which communication best drives traffic for online retailers?  Social Media has received a lot of positive reports for driving traffic to online retailers.  Is it a valid assumption that social media is effectively driving traffic or is there yet a better way to drive your website traffic?

Recent reports have indicated that social media may not be the most effective method to increase your website traffic.  In fact, these same reports indicate that Email promotions produce about 10% of the traffic to retailers online.  The highest results were received by search engine results coming in at 13% of online retailer traffic coming from basic search engine results.  

Yes, it appears your efforts to obtain best search engine rankings continues to pay off with increased traffic.  It is also a good probability that efforts to freshen up your email promotions could be most valuable for the online marketer.

Social media is reported at the lowest for traffic building at a meager 3%.  Your efforts to build your brand and to promote your website continue to produce a high volume of visitors.  Approximately 46% of site visitors are generated in this manner.  

Sixty-two percent of target markets desire to be contacted by way of email.  Allowing customers to sign up for email marketing could be beneficial since it is a highly requested method of communication within the market.

Social media takes a back seat to email marketing and search engine ranking efforts for promotional marketing efforts.  At the same time, I stress that social media marketing should be added to your email marketing and website optimization.

Social media may be still gaining in popularity as a communication tool among friends and family, and, if your target market is there, social media is important, but website traffic generation is more directed and effective with search engine ranking strategies and email marketingefforts.

Establishing your marketing plan by methods requested by your target market can result in higher conversion rates and more satisfied customers.

Article and cartoons by Stu Heinecke

"Now John Danenbarger is ordering sandwiches. Is anybody writing this down? Let’s hurry up and order our sandwiches first!"

E-mail marketers talk about CRM, conversions, engagement, social media and more, but none of these things matter if recipients aren’t opening and reading what you send. Without a powerful open strategy, newsletters, drip campaigns -- indeed, your entire sales funnel -- can quickly fall flat, so what’s a savvy e-mail marketer to do?

Return to basics. Magazines and newspapers have been conducting readership surveys for decades, so what do they find pulling top marks for readership and retention? Cartoons.

Cartoons are almost always the best read and remembered part of any publication they’re in, so it makes sense they would be just as effective at generating interest, opens and readership in e-mail.

In fact, cartoons can be even more effective in e-mail, because they can easily generate viral pass-along. Years ago, I had a conversation with the founder of Classmates. In those early days, the fledgling company had a rapidly growing database, but no communication with their members. I suggested sending a monthly page themed around a personalized cartoon users could re-personalize and forward. The result was a 130% open rate, stemming from repeated openings and forwards.

While cartoons are not likely to generate a 130% open rate for your e-mail campaign, they can boost open rates and create a high level of engagement across regular deliveries. But you’d better know what you’re doing.

David Ogilvy and other direct marketing experts have long claimed, “Humor doesn’t work,” which in itself is rather funny considering what we know about cartoons, but they did have it partially right. Just like when you tell a joke on-stage, if you don’t know what you’re doing, humor can easily backfire.

Fortunately, I have been putting cartoons to the test for nearly thirty years. The magic they exhibit in magazines and newspaper readily transfers, resulting in a long line of record-breaking campaigns and long-standing controls for many of the world’s biggest, most sophisticated direct marketers. Here are a few simple rules to help you maximize your results.

1. Humor = Truth: If you think about it, humor always reveals truth. When we laugh at something, we often find ourselves thinking, “Huh, but it’s true, it is like that,” or, “I know someone like that,” or, “I’ve been through something just like that.” That’s the magic of humor; it reveals truth, which creates agreement, which makes it highly persuasive. The bonus is how powerfully drawn people are to cartoons. It’s critical to grab their attention quickly, establish rapport and create a powerful point of agreement if you intend to move your audience to respond. It’s also important to be able to step back and understand the psychology of humor, so you can effectively direct the outcome of your campaign.

2. Steer based on the underlying truth: You’ll either be choosing a cartoon from an established image bank or having one created for your campaign. So you’ll need to steer your choice of cartoon based on its underlying truth -- and how that relates to your product, service or offer. The cartoons at the top of this article illustrate the point nicely. The group spying your order of sandwiches would be perfect for a promotion from a deli to surrounding businesses. The message: “if you’re going to have a lunch meeting, the last thing you should have to worry about is the food.” A lot of people feel stuck in their dreary jobs, and they should find the chicken-suit-lady cartoon especially relevant and endearing, which makes it the perfect involvement device for an offer from a staffing company. The sales chart cartoon speaks directly to the business results we all desire from our selling efforts. The sousaphone cartoon makes a great comment about the frustrations we all share when sitting through unproductive meetings. Can you see how it would be a powerful way to start an e-mail offering a solution to the problem?

3. Make it about the recipient, not you: The most common mistake marketers make with personalized cartoons is focusing on their identity rather than the recipient’s. In all of the examples above, there is no mention of brand or offer, just a singular focus on the recipient. And in every record-breaking campaign I’ve ever been involved with that uses cartoons, the focus has always been on the recipient’s identity.

4. The recipient always comes out on top: This is a pretty obvious point -- you don’t want to send thousands of personalized insults via e-mail to your prospect base. The difficulty is, the humor we’re most familiar with -- the type we use with friends is often biting and inappropriate for campaign use. The solution is to make sure the recipient is always paid a backhanded compliment, while one of the characters in the cartoon takes the fall as the butt of the joke. Can you see that in all of the examples above? The committee members are spying on you so they can copy what you do to keep up with anything and everything you do, even if it’s just ordering sandwiches; the chicken-suit-lady is in a frustrating position and looks to you for sage advice; the executive borrowed a symbol of your success to adorn his wall; the committee is about to honk out a song on a set of sousaphones, but before they roll it out, they want your opinion.

5. It’s got to be funny: Another obvious point, but one that is often missed by marketers. Readers are attracted to cartoons because they’re funny. If your cartoon has no gag, you will disappoint your audience, who will in turn, disappoint you. I remember a mailing once sent by a printer, featuring a cartoon-like illustration of a mailman remarking about an exploding mailbox nearby, with the caption, “Looks like another HOT mailing for John Smith!” Hmmm. Do you see anything funny there? Actually, this piece illustrates how, by focusing on their own identity (their mailings are HOT, not yours), the advertiser endowed the cartoon with all of the appeal of a smelly sock left in your mailbox.

      E-mail can be such a powerful platform for marketers, but only if your audience is paying attention. You could be using the latest sales automation solution on the back-end along with the best social media strategies for greater visibility and pass-along. But none of it matters if no one is opening and reading your e-mails. With so much attention focused on new-tech solutions, it’s interesting to see how a simple cartoon can elevate a campaign to cult status. Recipients become fans, and fans can become fiercely loyal supporters and clients, much like the enduring readership of The New Yorker, thanks in large part to cartoons. That’s a pretty powerful bonus when all you were looking for was a few more opens.

-----
Stu Heinecke is author of Drawing Attention, a new book that explains how to put the magic of cartoons to work in marketing, advertising and sales promotion. He is also a published cartoonist, Hall of Fame-nominated direct marketer and President and founder of CartoonLink, a marketing service based on the use of cartoons in various media.

There are some real necessities when it comes to Internet and Digital Marketing.  These basic tips can make the difference between success and failure.

Keep your Focus

Maintaining a schedule will help you to stay focused on the big picture while taking care of the details of Internet Marketing.  Internet Marketing can be a little challenging when it comes to staying on task.  Following a well established schedule will help you accomplish your goals.

Schedule your Marketing Promotions

Plan a schedule of promotions.  You will need to focus on specific marketing periods such as Christmas and other holidays if you are a retailer.   Any special dates for your product and service line should be given consideration of promotion worthiness.  These are marketing opportunities for specific products with a high market potential.

Project Schedule

You project schedule should include a task schedule.  This will help you to accomplish smaller goals within a larger project.  Preparing and following a schedule can also prevent you from missing important tasks.

Buyers Schedule

Schedule all purchases.  Working with a purchase schedule will prevent impulse buying.

Time Schedule

Prepare a time schedule that includes work and personal time.  Yes, that is correct, schedule personal time.  To keep your mind fresh and new will require some time away from your valuable work.

Keep Good Records

Good record keeping can provide assistance in a few different areas such as financial, file security, promotional campaigns, affiliate program information, contact information, and passwords.

E-Mail

Use an ISP that provides for ultimate filters and folders.  This will increase your overall productivity.  Take the time to learn the shortcuts and file transfers to enhance your mail management process.  Take the time to find the best emailing system for your needs.

Internet Connection

Make the investment for a high speed internet connection once again for maximum productivity.  Productivity enhancement translates to more money.

Exceed Your Promises

Over deliver when it comes to your promises.  Never short change; always provide more.

Keep Notes

When you get an idea in your mind be sure to write it down.   If you would rather, you can record your ideas instead of writing them down.

Provide Free Information

Free information can be provided in the way of articles and ebooks.  Information on your niche can be beneficial and promote traffic to your site.

Use Professionals to Support You

It is a full-time job for a team to do Internet Marketing correctly.  Hiring Internet Marketing professional consultants can save money and accelerate your results.

That email marketing is a powerful and valuable tool in communicating with others about your business is not a secret.  But some secrets with email marketing should be beneficial for you know about if you are promoting an online business. 

Signup confirmation and unsubscribing codes of conduct compliance is essential for any successful marketing campaign based upon email marketing.

Some geographical locations have laws requiring marketing emails to include links for unsubscribe purposes in all marketing types of emails.   Creating an unsubscribe link uses a simple one click method is highly recommended.  

Signup Confirmation

Sign up confirmation should use a process for double op-in.  This method uses an email confirmation.  To prevent any appearance of spam a link to the website should be included in the Email to your target market.

Keywords to Avoid

There are certain keywords which should be avoided for both content and subject.  These words consist of free, save, and discount.

Emails to your target market should be personalized with you addressing them by name.  This will get you started on building a relationship with your target market. 

Research has shown that email links that are blue, bold and underlined have an improved response rate.  Studies have also indicated that the best days to send emails are in the middle of the week on Tuesday or Wednesday.

You will need to be patient when you start using email for marketing purposes.   As with any new marketing strategy there will be the need to perform testing and make adjustments as needed for a successful campaign.

By applying these secrets to your email strategy you can find success in just a short while.   Take your time to get started correctly for the very best results.

If you want to see a great system for doing email in exactly the right way, see these pages.

Pressure to Reduce Marketing Costs

Companies that have large marketing budgets are looking for ways to cut costs and still have the same visibility to their prospective clients. TV, radio and newspaper advertising can be expensive as it requires repeated messages to be pushed out to the masses in the hope of attracting attention and convincing you to engage with the company.

Companies know that using the Internet can help them reduce their marketing spend and measure the results. But in many cases, most of these companies resort to using the same advertising techniques online as they use offline.

They embark on “banner” advertising and “email blasts” and soon realize that these mediums can be just as costly if not managed carefully as their online marketing spend.

Effective Online Marketing

Companies have heard of many ways that others are using social media, but they still struggle with how to leverage this medium and optimize it for the best possible results.

With the advancement of the Internet, many new marketing channels have become available to both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sectors and the challenge is to understand the best ways to take advantage of the World Wide Web for online marketing.

Online marketing and social media marketing provide a cost-effective and practical way for small and medium sized companies to compete effectively against their larger adversaries especially since they operate on smaller marketing budgets.

Would it not be an ideal solution be to present your marketing message to your targeted prospect at the very moment they are looking for information on your products or services? This is a major shift from push marketing to pull marketing. It is using content to attract your audience and then market to them when they are ready.

So what are the new ways to be found on the Internet?  Answers begin in the next post.

Yesterday, I wrote that Mobile Marketing is similar to email marketing.  What I did not tell you was that, for the time being, mobile marketing has a huge open-rate and click-through compared to email marketing which makes Mobile Marketing extremely attractive despite a higher cost per sending.

Because mobile marketing requires the customer to opt in, you are reaching people who are most interested in receiving your promotions.  Your business will not be able to purchase mobile phone number lists and send SMS messages uninvited.  This would be spam.

The mobile phone is a highly personal device and you may risk customer backlash if you do not first receive permission. Instead, you will need to promote your offers by building a permission based customer list of mobile phone numbers. It is this opt-in permission that is precisely the reason why mobile marketing works so well. Targeted messages to customers that have requested the information.

Tomorrow I will go through how to build this list.  When you have questions, write to us or comment below.

Email marketing is not new to the world of Internet marketing tools.  We have just presented a series that explains how and what to do.  You should look at the last month's posts on this blog to understand exactly what and how to do it. So the summation of everything is as follows:  

The first question which needs to be asked is the basic question of, what is Email marketing?   Email marketing is simply sending emails to a list individuals.   The emails used in marketing usually provide for promotion of services and products.   Email Marketing Systems are a great way to send your email marketing campaign out to your list of contacts.   But other email tools are often available in well-constructed websites.

One of the questions that routinely come up regarding email marketing has to do with effectiveness of email marketing.    Email marketing done right is effective both now and in the future. 

The effectiveness of Email marketing is supported by people’s desire to socialize and relationship building. By socialization and building relationships, individuals place their trust in businesses and over time will become loyal customers for your business.  Setting up Email marketing is simple to do especially when using an Email Marketing System.  An Email Marketing System allows you to take your email marketing campaign hands-free and automatic.  

Email marketing is cost effective and saves the resource of time.

Email marketing may not be a new vehicle or tool for your marketing tool bag, but it is still an effective tool while building your online success.   It is important to work smarter, not necessarily harder when trying to generate traffic to your website.  Email Marketing Systems can help take some of the work out of email marketing while pulling more traffic to your website.