Grow your business manifold with effective digital marketing approachBusiness growth is directly proportional to profits recorded. Traditional marketing approaches are fading away. However, you can now count on current digital marketing methods for your business to gain traction. To get the best from digital advertising services, you need to turn to professional firms or agencies. Such agencies specialize in marketing brands and products digitally.
Clients always expect results when they invest in a service. Professional marketers understand this need. Therefore, the first step in delivering their services involves interviewing you to understand your business model and needs. This approach lays the perfect groundwork for developing a comprehensive, integrated and specific approach to an effective marketing strategy. The following strategies will aim at improving your return on investment.
Search Engine OptimizationYou must have encountered the term Search Engine Optimization (SEO) if you are venturing into online space. This strategy for cementing your online presence as a business plays a big role in a successful SEO campaign. SEO is broad and entails many aspects. However, a reputable SEO expert like LeadtoConversion.com will be sure to develop and follow a well-defined step-by-step approach in optimizing your website for search engines.
The initial steps involved in using SEO as a digital marketing strategy include an evaluation of your website and analysis of your competitors’ sites. These steps determine how to conquer your competition using other SEO steps. For instance, the information gathered in the initial steps will help in keyword research, social media optimization, link development, page optimization and the creation of high-quality content through blogger outreach services. The correct combination and execution of these steps will lead to a successful SEO campaign as you watch your website record high ranking, impressive traffic and increased online visibility.
Video MarketingThe use of videos for marketing products and improving website ranking has seen a boom recently. This could be because of shifting online marketing approaches. A closer look at video marketing would show a high possibility of engagement from the target and potential clients. Such interactivity results from the ease of video integration on websites and the addition of social media sharing buttons.



Working with professional marketers also increases the chances of boosting your search engine ranking. For example, the production phase ensures the video quality and content are impressive. Uploading such videos to established video sharing platforms will help your business capitalize on their ranking power to leap over your competition.
Pay-Per-Click AdvertisingThe aim of marketing and advertising your products and services is to generate sales. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can help your business achieve that objective.
To achieve the best results with PPC advertising, your hired experts will rely on various approaches. Initially, using different approaches will make it possible to determine those that are most cost-effective while recording conversions. Thus, your business will be in a position to continue using the most effective PPC advertising method and can eliminate the rest.
Content MarketingContent marketing still plays an important role in gathering highly targeted traffic. While content marketing might leverage video marketing, social media and sometimes SEO to push informative content, the fact that you are adding value to your niche and not necessarily making a sale makes it quite different.



You will be counting on the easy to distribute and share content to build you reputation in your market. The idea behind content marketing is using all the other marketing platforms to push your high quality content to a specific audience with the hopes of attracting a loyal following.
To succeed, you will need rigorous market needs research to ensure that you know what your target audience is or would be interested in. After this, write engaging content that addresses all the neglected problems under that topic in an interesting and authoritative way. You want to create a memorable experience, one that will push your brand beyond.
Noteworthy, other digital marketing methods also exist. They include:

• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Social SEO
• Local SEO

Having a sit-down with a marketing agency forms the basis for a successful push for your business online. Tangible return on investment will justify the decision to hire experts to market your brand.
Social Media MarketingAt a time when social media seems to cut through every aspect to potential clients, social media marketing should be very beneficial. Professional marketers will use this strategy to propel your business or brand to the next level. The main idea behind this strategy is to establish a strong social media presence and to develop creative ways of encouraging interaction.
To succeed in this strategy, expert digital marketers understand how to develop and fine-tune contests and promotions on different social media platforms. This approach relies on the viral nature of spreading information among social media users. Since the fine-tuned and custom campaign revolves around your business, the results will be in terms of measurable ROI and an increased customer base.

​Source: https://www.techworm.net/2017/03/effective-digital-marketing-approaches-growing-business.html

Social media is a serious advertising option
If you have a business and a desire to grow it – and any awareness of mainstream culture – you’ll probably have wondered at some point whether social media is a worthwhile investment.
Though there’s no simple answer, there is clear evidence to suggest strong and widespread faith in advertising via platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. More than 80 per cent of advertisers now include social media marketing in their strategies; with over 65 per cent of online campaigns featuring paid placements.
The basics are free
Aside from the human resources required to set up, monitor and maintain social profiles, there are no automatic costs for a basic presence – so you really don’t have much to lose by giving it a try.
It also can be easily paired with your other marketing or advertising routes. Whether you simply have an A-board outside your premises, a Yellow Pages listing or a full website, you can mention your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn presence and invite people to find you.
Get creative
If you want to enhance your chances of success, the key is creative thinking. Viral campaigns – popular content shared repeatedly on a national or global scale – result in high visibility and increased awareness of a brand. They don’t have to be expensive; just appealing and easy to share.
The recent Harlem Shake dance video trend has inspired many businesses to create their own versions, including the Manchester branch of fashion brand Missguided, which generated over 2,500 YouTube views in just a few days. In fact, comedy has often proved to be the sharpest tool for sharing success, as shown by most entries in The Guardian’s monthly Viral Video Chart.
Meanwhile, images can also be powerful – particularly if paired with a sentiment that people can immediately relate to. This was demonstrated by a Facebook post by holiday company Cruisedeals.com [pictured above] which generated nearly 27,000 ‘Likes’ and nearly 1500 shares [correct at the time of publication].
Pay more for a focused approach
Like any other advertising route, the more you pay, the more visibility you’re likely to achieve – hence the afore-mentioned growth in use of paid social ads.
Social media also allows you to be more specific. Facebook’s user profiles contain a wealth of demographic information that can be used to target the right people for your business. For example, if you provide cake decorating or floral services, your ads can be shared with people whose relationship status is set to ‘engaged’.
If you want to appeal to other businesses or recruit without traditional agency costs, LinkedIn advertising is well worth a look. The professional networking service has over 200 million users – over 11 million of which are in the UK.
Choosing the right platform for your business
If you decide to enter the social marketing sphere, it is important to consider what will be most relevant and effective for your products and services.
For example:
Food and drink – Any company involved in this category can use Facebook and Pinterest to capitalise on visual appeal. Whether a restaurant dish or comfort food to devour at home, people eat (and drink) with their eyes first.

Everyday services – A seemingly-straightforward estate agent could augment its posting of property sale details on Twitter by highlighting examples of strange or shocking residences from around the world.

Professional services – To honour its serious image, a law firm might choose to publish an informative video on YouTube giving advice about dealing with a common problem.
Always remember that if people feel an affinity with your business, they are more likely to give you their custom.

Source: ​https://theeword.co.uk/viral-marketing/social-media-marketing-for-business/

Do you feel you’re not generating enough ROI from digital marketing efforts?
Or, worse, do you not know the true ROI from digital marketing?
Then, you need these tips for generating ROI. Also, check out the list [at the end of this post] to see other great tips for getting the most return from your digital investment. Feel free to share it, embed it, vote for tips, or add your own.
Tips for generating ROI from digital marketing1. Measure, monitor, improveWell, first you need to know 2 things:

1. Your current ROI
2. Digital actions that contribute to ROI — and here you need to consider the entire scope of customer engagement with your brand — from awareness, through conversion, to loyalty (and maybe advocacy). Check out this great image showing how businesses generate ROI from their digital efforts.

Once you have this information, set up a dashboard in Google Analytics or whatever platform you use to monitor key metrics related to business performance. At a minimum, your dashboard should contain:

• visits (sessions)
• time on page
• engagement with each social platform — shares, likes, comments, RT
• page value from multichannel attribution modeling
• AOV (average order value)
• Conversion
• Cart abandonment rate
• loyalty (percentage of visits with 1, 2, 3, … prior visits)
• Page exits from landing pages

You should also create reports for these metrics based on platform (ie. organic, social platform, direct …), key demographics and geographics of interest to your brand, age, gender, and, if they’re valuable, interest categories.
Now, run your dashboard at least once a week. Periodically, say every quarter, compare performance with performance in prior quarters. Try viewing data in a longitudinal fashion to get more insights.

2. Optimize content marketing strategiesIn the post-Panda world, content is king.


Here are some action items to help optimize your content marketing:

• start with a content marketing calendar to keep you on track to produce quality content on schedule. Check out the link to get some great templates to get you started.
• share content across social platforms — Buffer recommends sharing multiple times across each platform and I posted their schedule here along with some other great content marketing advice.
• Monitor the performance of your content and sharing tactics. Then, use metrics to guide creation of better content.
• Use a variety of content types — video, image, text.
• Create content suitable for each stage in the conversion process identified in the graphic above.

3. SEOSearch engine optimization ensures you get the most value for your content and I’m often surprised how few bloggers really understand how to do good SEO or even understand the importance of SEO for reaching their ROI goals. I think that’s because, pre-Panda, it was your developers who controlled SEO, but now it’s your content marketers and others involved in your digital marketing.
Here’s a crash course on SEO:

• Select keywords [actually keyword phrases] that match search terms for your target audience. Use Keyword Planner, a free Google tool within their advertising planform. Look for keywords, you’ll need 20+, that have high search traffic and low competition. There’s no magic formula here, just try to balance out these two criteria.
• Use keywords liberally throughout your site and in your content — just beware of keyword stuffing
• Install, or have your developer install, a good SEO plugin for your blog. I use Yoast’s SEO Plugin, but I’ve also heard good things about All in One SEO Plugin.
• Work to get authentic backlinks to your content. Use the link to get ideas on how to generate backlinks.
• Build engagement on your social networks.
• Rinse and repeat.

4. Know the facts about what works

Notice the high ROI from email marketing, although several marketing tactics seem to be missing from this graph. I suspect some, like content marketing, have such wide effects on ROI that their value couldn’t be adequately captured.
Recommended for YouWebcast, March 30th: Email Automation: 3 Workflows That Will Get Your Audience More Engaged and Boost Your Sales
Now, you might argue that email marketing isn’t true digital marketing, but you’d be wrong.
This means your digital strategy MUST include ways to build an email list of subscribers as well as a means to energize that list with periodic emails designed for their particular stage in the buying process.
So, bite the bullet, find yourself a good email client (I use AWeber, but Constant Contact is also good), develop premium content, like ebooks, to drive subscriptions, and develop a strategy for sending unique branded content to subscribers.
5. Remember digital is still marketingDoing everything digital perfect is great, but, remember, digital marketing is still, first and foremost, marketing and you can’t sell an overpriced, crappy product, with poor customer service. Promotion is still only ONE of the 4 P’s.
Digital marketing is but one part of the marketing ecosystem that requires constant attention to every aspect of the system identified in the infographic below.

​

The internet is full of tips, tricks, and tactics that promise to help you get ahead and beat your competition.
For example:

• “A website welcome mat can 10x your subscribers and leads!”
• “Double your content shares by adding social media buttons before AND after your blog articles.”
• “Are you embedding tweets for social proof? These can skyrocket consumer trust!”

But there’s a problem with these tricks. They don’t offer any real substance. At best, they simply scratch the surface of growth opportunity and potential that lies deep below. And at worst, they provide no real value for neither the prospective customer nor the organization.
This is also why many financial executives don’t trust marketing. When focusing on superficial activities, you’ll only get superficial results.



Conference season is just getting started. And no matter what conference you attend, you're guaranteed to hear some digital marketing tips, tricks, and tactics that promise to help you get ahead and beat your competition.
For example:

• “A website welcome mat can 10x your subscribers and leads!”
• “Double your content shares by adding social media buttons before AND after your blog articles.”
• “Are you embedding tweets for social proof? These can skyrocket consumer trust!”

But there’s a problem with these tricks. They don’t offer any real substance. At best, they simply scratch the surface of growth opportunity and potential that lies deep below. And at worst, they provide no real value for neither the prospective customer nor the organization.
This is also why many financial executives don’t trust marketing. When focusing on superficial activities, you’ll only get superficial results.
Let’s go Deeper with Digital GrowthIt’s time to go beyond reporting vanity metrics. Financial executives don’t care about views, clicks, and likes. They want to know bottom line numbers like conversion rate, total leads, cost-per-lead, total applications, and cost-per-application.
Having a mixup of try-and-fail digital marketing tactics and technology isn’t going to help you at all. In fact, it’s probably doing you more harm than good. And this leaves you feeling frustrated and overwhelmed.
So what can you do?
It begins with the end in mind. And that starts with developing a unified strategy that serves as the “why” of what an organization is doing and how it relates to a bigger purpose. In other words, a strategy first provides a bank or credit union with a system of checks and balances that provide an opportunity to review individual tactics to ensure the align with the larger vision.
If these tactics do align, they can proceed with the initiative.
If not, there is no reason to go past this initial stage of exploration.
We have a simple flowchart here at the office on one of our walls that help us to quickly identify opportunities and cast distractions aside.
At the top of this flow chart is our vision statement. Below that, we ask “Will this activity provide value to our organization in relation to our purpose?” From there, the flow chart branches into a binary sequence: there’s a bucket for “Yes” and one bucket for “No.”
If the potential tactic that we’re working through this flow chart falls into the “Yes” bucket, the sequence continues, and the activity must work itself through supplemental questions before becoming an approved initiative. However, if this pursuit doesn’t align with our purpose or provide value for our organization, the activity dies a quick and efficient death.
Seriously, why drag this vetting process out longer than necessary? This flowchart has helped us countless times in identify potential opportunities or eliminate half-baked distractions that can interfere with our overall strategy.
But there’s a problem within the financial services industry.
We know that over 80% of financial institutions lack a strategy for digital growth. Digital marketing tactics and technology are not inherently wrong or evil in and of themselves. But they cause great frustration for bank and credit union marketers when there is no strategy to guide them as tactics and technology must be rooted in, and inspired by, a greater purpose that provides clarity and confidence for future growth.
Your Strategy is Your North StarI get it.
It’s so easy to go to a conference and hear a speaker hype of the latest digital marketing tactics and technology. This is why when I speak at a conference or workshop, I always ask the audience to take what I am saying with a grain of salt as the insights I share fit into a much larger picture.
So instead of chasing the latest digital marketing tactics and technology, consider first creating a strategy for digital growth. And to get you started down this path, ask and answer these questions:

• What’s the purpose and objective of your digital growth?
• Who do you want to help?
• And how will actually help them?

We consider your digital growth strategy to be the guiding light, or your North Star, that provides you with a vision for every action you take to help guide consumers towards a brighter financial future.
A tactic is simply a single action you take. And these come and go based on constantly changing trends, like consumer behavior, marketing, sales, and technology.
Alternatively, a strategy tends to stay the same for an extended period.
Strategy Keeps You FocusedDigital growth strategy is the documentation of how you are going to use digital channels to become, and remain, unique in your marketplace. This starts with defining “why” you do what you do. Tactics, inspired by your “why” are “what” you will do and “how” you will create more value than your competition for a specific market segment of consumers. Strategy and tactics complement one another, but initiatives quickly fall apart when you’re primarily concerned with single, one-off tactics as the strategy becomes secondary.
Now let’s take these academic principles and make them a bit more tangible. Here’s an example of a digital growth strategy for a financial institution with complementary tactics:
Strategy
We will become the most helpful financial resource for young families in our community to help them save more money while they live healthier and happier lives. And we will do this by producing and distributing helpful content and campaigns that provide value to prospects in exchange for their email address.
Tactics

• • Place digital ads targeted to moms promoting a chance to win $10,000 for their family for lead generation.
  • Ads drive moms to a specific landing page with a simple lead form.
  • Build a targeted email list of moms.
  • Ask one question on thank you page to segment families by financial goals.
  • Send a thank you email with a link to mom focused financial blog.
  • Use a welcome mat for first-time visitors only with a great offer to download “20 Free Family Outing Ideas for Your City.”
  • Build helpful content library that’s easily shared with social media and on local community-focused websites.
  • Follow up mom leads with email nurture sequence based upon their family’s financial goals.
  • Provide full funnel reporting to show bottom line impact of initiative

See the difference?
A strategy is a vision for how you will become, and remain, unique in your marketplace while the tactics are the specific steps to get you there. Without a strategy, these tactics look OK on the surface, but there’s no overarching theme guiding them along the way. And when that happens, it’s easy to get distracted and make no real progress along your digital growth journey.
Strategy is what keeps you focused on the greater vision.
Work Backwards to Go ForwardsOne of the easiest ways to define a digital growth strategy is to start with the end in mind and work backward.
Here are some examples::

• I want to generate more mortgage loans.
• To sell more mortgages, I need to nurture leads over a 30-60 day period. 
• To nurture leads over a 30-60 day period, I need a five-step email nurture sequence. 
• To get leads into a five-step nurture sequence, I need a downloadable consumer buying guide.
• To tell prospects about my guide, I need a bigger email list of specific people who might need a mortgage. 
• To build a bigger email list, I need to drive more targeted traffic to my website.
• To drive more targeted traffic to my website I need to show up in places where prospects are currently spending their time. 
• To show up in those places, I need to start with research.

While this is a simple exercise, it can be expanded upon further as you start with end goals and objectives and work yourself backward through each step. Each step has a specific tactic associated with it. And if that tactic doesn’t work, which does happen sometimes, it’s important to remember the strategy doesn’t change, only the tactic does.
Focus. Focus. Focus.I hear it from prospects and clients all the time. “Digital growth feels so overwhelming. I just don’t know where to begin. And each time I try something new I get frustrated because it does not provide the return I was hoping for.”
This is where having a digital growth strategy can provide your organization with focus as the tactics are laid out in an incremental and logical progression. You can’t perform full funnel reporting if you haven’t closed the loop with your online applications. And you cannot close this loop until you work with your third-party providers to create the infrastructure for conversion tracking.
A strategy informs you what you will do as much as it tells you what you will not do. It also prevents shiny object syndrome. And as someone with ADD, I understand how easy it is to get distracted and feel overwhelmed when you trying to do everything at the same time.
A good strategy implies simplicity.
And simplicity requires focus.
Focus on the task at hand that makes the most sense for where you are in your strategic process.
In addition to focus, it’s hard to measure specifics when you’re trying everything all at once. What tactics are working? Which ones are not? If you’re not able to figure this out, how will you know where to focus your time, effort, and energy in the future?
Thankfully, when you implement tactics systematically derived from an overarching strategy, you create processes and systems that can be reused over and over again in the future for other products and services. These processes and systems then become an asset that can continuously be optimized over time.
So before you start trying (or keep trying) random digital marketing tactics you read on blogs or hear about at conferences, think twice about why you’re doing them. Are they part of an overall strategic plan? If you’re not sure, start thinking about your digital growth strategy first.

​Source: https://www.cuinsight.com/digital-marketing-strategy-vs-tactics-credit-unions.html

Media Announcement: In this competitive business world, taking courses in the field of marketing has become a necessity. Learning the ropes when it comes to marketing businesses and advertising courses is a minimum requirement to make one’s business successful. With digital marketing courses, one can...

Media Announcement: In this competitive business world, taking courses in the field of marketing has become a necessity. Learning the ropes when it comes to marketing businesses and advertising courses is a minimum requirement to make one’s business successful. With digital marketing courses, one can expand their knowledge in marketing and advertising their business on the internet. In order to know which courses to take, there is now an extensive overview of the best digital marketing course options for 2017.
“Taking a digital marketing course online is a better, faster, less expensive alternative, in order to help you learn how online marketing fundamentally works,” says a company representative. “It’s an alternative to graduate-level digital marketing education. We curated together a curriculum with online content that is available to everyone and is substantially more effective and less expensive than any graduate school degree. There is also a lot of (mis)information out there. We’ve curated only the best content and organized it in a way that will allow you to learn everything you need to understand how digital marketing fundamentally works.”
One of the main benefits of taking digital marketing courses is the significant difference in price. Enrolling in an online Digital Marketing Course will save around ninety percent (90%) of the fee that one would spend in grad school. Despite these courses being a lot more affordable, the quality of education will not be any different. The main difference is that these courses specialize in specific fields of digital marketing while if taken in grad school, a more general perspective will be taught. A course about digital marketing will educate students in the following fields: Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, Video Optimization, Conversion Rate Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Data Analytics, 3rd Party Certifications, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing Fundamentals, Product Launches, Search Engine Optimization, Mobile Marketing, and Marketing Automation.
One of the courses that an enrollee will be taking involves the Google Online Marketing Challenge. This course will help students gain the necessary skills that they will need in the competitive world of business. Not only will they be qualified to answer in the Google Partners AdWords Certification exams, they will also be able to use this knowledge and experience in their own businesses. Other digital courses are Digital Marketing Courses on Udemy, Digital Marketing Institute, Digital Marketing at General Assembly, and many more.

​Source: https://mobilemarketingwatch.com/overview-best-digital-marketing-course-options-2017-71251/

Marketing is the key to success for any business. If you’re already an entrepreneur or planning to launch your startup this year, it’s crucial to have your marketing strategy in place right away.
It’s very important that you set a budget and try one marketing channel at a time to see the ROI and decide whether to keep at it or move on. I believe Facebook advertisements will surpass all other digital marketing channels in 2017.
Here are the 8 reasons why it makes the most sense for businesses to use the social media giant to advertise their products.
Related: 21 Hidden Facebook Features Only Power Users Know
1. Custom-targeted audience
Facebook advertising campaigns are built around (and for) specific audiences. For this reason, the Facebook Custom Audience Tool can work magic. This tool enables marketers to upload lists of contacts such as emails, UIDs, and phone numbers so you can target them with certain ads.
This is perfect for everyone from entrepreneurs with only a few hundred contacts to giant enterprises with hundreds of thousands.
Take this past election for example. Donald Trump won the Election with $150 million dollars of Facebook and Instagram advertisements in the final weeks of the campaign. Trump’s team took its custom database (Project Alamo) containing identity profiles of 220 million Americans. With time running out, Trump’s digital operation executed a last ditch strategy with targeted Facebook ads discouraging Americans from voting for Hillary Clinton.
On November 8, there ended up being record low numbers of voters in the polls in Democrat strongholds. A good chunk of this can be attributed to Trump’s Alamo Project effort.
2. Maximum visibility at minimum cost
If you’re planning to launch a business online, you want to build where the people are. Currently, Facebook is at #3 for the most populated online platform with 1.79 billion active monthly users.
Advertising on Facebook is comparatively cheaper than on Google. Also, Facebook video views are cheaper than YouTube.
Research shows that consumers spend 90% of time spent on mobile is on apps and Facebook leads the way as the most downloaded platform of the first half of 2016.
Although you shouldn’t be spending all your money on Facebook advertising, these numbers are simply too big to ignore.
Related: How Your Business Can Capitalize on Facebook Live
3. Early-stage brand awareness
Facebook can work a lot like PR if managed strategically. The Brand Awareness ad objective uses a combination of real-time proxy metrics with both the reach and attention users give to a campaign to provide brands with maximum exposure.
Getting started with this early on is critical so that later campaigns can have a bigger audience. The goal is capture attention across the board to get in front of people most likely to be interested in your brand.
4. Facebook Live
Video is the undisputed champion of customer engagement and sharing. Facebook Live was introduced within the last year and has taken the internet by storm. It allows any user to record live videos and share them with friends.
Businesses can use this to their advantage in several ways.

• Provide a behind-the-scenes experience to customers.
• Show sneak previews of new products or updates.
• Promote events.
• Answer questions.

People spend 3x longer watching live video than native content. With this in mind, it’s becoming a requirement to include it in Facebook marketing.
5. Chatbots
Ever since Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s 10-year roadmap, every business is trying to utilize Facebook Messenger to communicate with their customers. For a good reason: it now has a billion monthly active users.
A while back, Shopify announced they will let their stores sell directly on Facebook messenger. This is a game changer. When more and more businesses start selling on Facebook, user engagement and hours spent on the platform will continue to increase.
With more consumers interacting with brands on Facebook, the use of chatbots will inevitably become a necessity. With chatbots, you will able to create structured messages including images, links, and call to action buttons.
Brands will be able to design bots so that conversation with customers and purchasing can be instantaneous.
6. Quick feedback
In the old days, when businesses wanted to reach out their customer base for feedback on products or services, they would have to do things like direct-mail voting polls or cold call surveys. Luckily, those days are over and brands need to look no further than social media.
Facebook makes it easy for businesses to simply post a question on their status and sit back and watch for the comments.
Time is perhaps the most valuable asset in business. Facebook is great for companies looking to get an impression of their image and product quickly so they can see what works and what doesn’t without hassle.
7. Consumer psychology
One of the biggest advantages of Facebook (or social media in general) is that it gives everyone a voice that will be heard.
In addition to providing the ability to share opinions on products or services, Facebook enables users to endorse businesses within their own community by simply hitting the “Like” button.
Companies can leverage this phenomenon and turn everyday users into brand influencers. 9 in 10 consumers take the words of their peers into account during the buying process. Why not let your customers do the talking for you?
8. Growth
Facebook is improving by the day. In the last four years, the number of users has almost doubled. The future is looking very bright. There will be more users to show your content to and advertising will likely keep getting better and cheaper.
In the last year alone, Facebook has launched a number of new features such as:

1. Facebook Live Video
2. Facebook Professional Services
3. Facebook at Work
4. Improved Search
5. Uber/Lyft integration
6. Facebook Shopping Tab
7. Instant Articles
8. Facebook Events
9. Non-profit crowdfunding
10. Music Stores

This is a very exciting time for Facebook. Business owners and entrepreneurs should brace themselves and prepare to make these features a significant part of their marketing strategies.
There is no denying that Facebook is here to stay. It’s amazing to think that what started as a simple way to stay in touch with friends has turned into a platform that connects people and brands all across the world. Keep your ears open for new developments about how Facebook can help build your business for the future.
If you are newbie to Facebook advertising, here is a step-by-step guide to learn about Facebook Advertising.

​Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/286441

We all seek experience. Personally and professionally, experience captures what we’ve done and what we have the potential to do. In hiring, prior experience is used as a shortcut to qualify job-seekers for interviews, job offers, and higher compensation. This shortcut works well in steady fields where the practices of the industry rarely change. If someone has done it before, they can probably do it again.

But does this shortcut work in a field that is dramatically changing? Marketing is an occupation undergoing rapid change. Adults now spend six hours a day with digital media, compared to three hours a day in 2009. As consumers move social, professional, and personal interactions online, advertising has followed.

2016 was the first year that digital media overtook TV as the largest channel for ad spending. Successful digital campaigns now require proficiencies across a host of new platforms, and the question for veterans and aspiring marketers is: Does general experience in marketing still matter?

On one hand, many of the same principles apply across both digital and traditional marketing. All good marketers have to know their target audience, reach them, and engage them. 

On the other hand, marketing has morphed from an offline world with limited data and imprecision in targeting audience segments, to an online world where every consumer action can be tracked analytics and every campaign can be personalized for micro-audience segments.

In this situation, it turns out that experience does not matter. More specifically, traditional marketing experience does not matter in predicting whether someone is a good digital marketer.

In a study it was explored whether years of experience predicted assessment scores among traditional marketers. We expected to see one of two things:

1. Experienced marketers would outperform newer professionals, indicating that traditional skills may translate over to the digital world.

2. Newer professionals would outperform their experienced counterparts, indicating that digital natives may hold a natural advantage.

We learned that both hypotheses were wrong. 

This data does not support the notion that deep experience in traditional marketing translates to capability in digital marketing. Similarly, the data does not support the notion that digital natives are generally better at digital marketing.

These results probably shouldn’t surprise us too much. As marketing has changed, industry professionals have expressed doubt in their own digital capabilities, as documented in surveys from The Boston Consulting Group. Participants in the survey rated their own digital skills at just 57 out of 100. At the same time, there is no reason to expect that active use of social media leads to skills in social media marketing, which requires a keen knowledge of customer acquisition cost and lifetime value.

What does this all mean?

For companies, don’t use general experience in marketing as a proxy of capability. Instead, look for a track record of success in digital marketing or, given the short supply in experienced digital marketers, widen the talent funnel and consider a broader range of candidates by using objective measures of digital marketing skill.

For aspiring marketers, there’s never been a better time to enter the profession. 

As marketing becomes an increasingly data-driven discipline, many of the open positions require analytical or data skills commonly found in fields like finance, business, statistics, IT, and project management. Individuals with these analytical skills, or with the capability to learn them, will be common among marketing executives in the future.

This is edited excerpt from an article titled, “Experience doesn’t matter.”
by Kieran Luke, lead at Credentials business at General Assembly and a teacher on Udemy, appearing at theindex.generalassemb.ly

Discover your talent for digital marketing. Learn on campus or online with General Assembly’s part-time, career-boosting programs.

source: http://bwdisrupt.businessworld.in/article/Experience-Doesn-t-Matter-in-Digital-Marketing/25-03-2017-114656/

 this digital age, any business without a digital strategy is bound to fail. Digital marketing is important if you want to gain new customers or to build deeper relationships with existing ones. However, many small businesses find it hard to build their online business due to budget constraints.
We have shared below 5 such free digital marketing tools that can be implemented for an effective digital marketing strategy.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the world’s most recognized free web analytics service. This freemium web analytics service tracks and reports website traffic and combines multiple analytical features for mobile as well as traditional users.
It is integrated with AdWords and users can review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals). Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file.
Google Analytics shows high-level, dashboard-type data for the casual user and more in-depth data further into the report set. It can identify poorly performing pages with techniques such as funnel visualization, where visitors came from (referrers), how long they stayed and their geographical position. It also provides more advanced features, including custom visitor segmentation.
Keyword Planner
One of the best research tools available for SEO purposes Keyword Planner is like a workshop for building new Search Network campaigns or expanding existing ones. You can search for keyword and ad group ideas, get historical statistics, see how a list of keywords might perform, and even create a new keyword list by multiplying several lists of keywords together. A free AdWords tool, Keyword Planner can also help you choose competitive bids and budgets to use with your campaigns.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a platform for managing social media in which the system’s user interface takes the form of a dashboard and supports social network integrations for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, and more.
It helps businesses, SMEs, and start-ups to execute targeted social media strategies across their organizations so that their message can be converted into meaningful relationships that matter.
The free version allows the user to connect and manage up to three social media profiles and comes with a 30-day risk-free period.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo can be used for content marketing and SEO campaigns. It has the ability to quickly identify what content is working well in an industry and who the major influencers are. Content marketing is not only essential to SEO, but to digital marketing as well and this means that you must have access to useful and relevant content if you want to make a difference.
All you need to do is to input the key phrase or long-tail keyword that you wish to promote and BuzzSumo generates a list of the most popular posts (related to your area) that are currently trending.
SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is an online digital market intelligence tool that provides traffic and in-depth marketing insights for any website. With a single click, you can not only get a quick overview of a site’s ranking and reach but also its user engagement. By entering a specific website URL, or doing a category search by industry or country, users get access to data from the top 50 websites.
It also provides a rich visual dashboard with lots of important data and metrics. The free version allows you to compare two websites and with the PRO version you can compare up to five websites.

​Source: http://www.pcquest.com/5-free-digital-marketing-tools-every-small-business-owner-needs/

Grow your business manifold with effective digital marketing approachBusiness growth is directly proportional to profits recorded. Traditional marketing approaches are fading away. However, you can now count on current digital marketing methods for your business to gain traction. To get the best from digital advertising services, you need to turn to professional firms or agencies. Such agencies specialize in marketing brands and products digitally.
Clients always expect results when they invest in a service. Professional marketers understand this need. Therefore, the first step in delivering their services involves interviewing you to understand your business model and needs. This approach lays the perfect groundwork for developing a comprehensive, integrated and specific approach to an effective marketing strategy. The following strategies will aim at improving your return on investment.
Search Engine OptimizationYou must have encountered the term Search Engine Optimization (SEO) if you are venturing into online space. This strategy for cementing your online presence as a business plays a big role in a successful SEO campaign. SEO is broad and entails many aspects. However, a reputable SEO expert like LeadtoConversion.com will be sure to develop and follow a well-defined step-by-step approach in optimizing your website for search engines.
The initial steps involved in using SEO as a digital marketing strategy include an evaluation of your website and analysis of your competitors’ sites. These steps determine how to conquer your competition using other SEO steps. For instance, the information gathered in the initial steps will help in keyword research, social media optimization, link development, page optimization and the creation of high-quality content through blogger outreach services. The correct combination and execution of these steps will lead to a successful SEO campaign as you watch your website record high ranking, impressive traffic and increased online visibility.
Video MarketingThe use of videos for marketing products and improving website ranking has seen a boom recently. This could be because of shifting online marketing approaches. A closer look at video marketing would show a high possibility of engagement from the target and potential clients. Such interactivity results from the ease of video integration on websites and the addition of social media sharing buttons.
Working with professional marketers also increases the chances of boosting your search engine ranking. For example, the production phase ensures the video quality and content are impressive. Uploading such videos to established video sharing platforms will help your business capitalize on their ranking power to leap over your competition.
Pay-Per-Click AdvertisingThe aim of marketing and advertising your products and services is to generate sales. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can help your business achieve that objective.
To achieve the best results with PPC advertising, your hired experts will rely on various approaches. Initially, using different approaches will make it possible to determine those that are most cost-effective while recording conversions. Thus, your business will be in a position to continue using the most effective PPC advertising method and can eliminate the rest.
Content MarketingContent marketing still plays an important role in gathering highly targeted traffic. While content marketing might leverage video marketing, social media and sometimes SEO to push informative content, the fact that you are adding value to your niche and not necessarily making a sale makes it quite different.
You will be counting on the easy to distribute and share content to build you reputation in your market. The idea behind content marketing is using all the other marketing platforms to push your high quality content to a specific audience with the hopes of attracting a loyal following.
To succeed, you will need rigorous market needs research to ensure that you know what your target audience is or would be interested in. After this, write engaging content that addresses all the neglected problems under that topic in an interesting and authoritative way. You want to create a memorable experience, one that will push your brand beyond.
Noteworthy, other digital marketing methods also exist. They include:

• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Social SEO
• Local SEO

Having a sit-down with a marketing agency forms the basis for a successful push for your business online. Tangible return on investment will justify the decision to hire experts to market your brand.
Social Media MarketingAt a time when social media seems to cut through every aspect to potential clients, social media marketing should be very beneficial. Professional marketers will use this strategy to propel your business or brand to the next level. The main idea behind this strategy is to establish a strong social media presence and to develop creative ways of encouraging interaction.
To succeed in this strategy, expert digital marketers understand how to develop and fine-tune contests and promotions on different social media platforms. This approach relies on the viral nature of spreading information among social media users. Since the fine-tuned and custom campaign revolves around your business, the results will be in terms of measurable ROI and an increased customer base.

​SOurce: https://www.techworm.net/2017/03/effective-digital-marketing-approaches-growing-business.html

Internet Retailer's recent report series The Best Digital Marketers in E-Commerce confirms what most industry experts see as a 2017 priority, truly understanding today's customers and, in turn, successfully driving consumers to buy across multiple marketing channels.
From looking at the winning strategy of the retail giant Target, it is clear that customer data ultimately determines how the retailer determines its digital marketing budget to drive online sales. “We’re one of the lucky ones with rich first-party data,” says Kristi Argyilan, Target’s senior vice president of marketing. “That enables us to target real human beings, which helps us get greater returns than targeting audiences that rely on aggregated information to find signals of intent.”
Target has also dissolved its marketing silos by bringing together the teams that handle various marketing channels so that everyone can examine the same data to see where the retailer needs to change its budget. This sharing of data has helped the Target marketing team see better efficiency and effectiveness of its email, social and search strategies.
One channel that Target has been especially active with is paid search, buying an amount that would be a fourth of eCommerce juggernaut Amazon's $41 million monthly 2016 paid search spend. Argylian says those dollars are well spent given that paid search drives 13.5% of Target.com’s overall traffic while also contributing to in-store traffic and sales.
The 174 page series provides exclusive rankings and analysis of the top retailers across all digital marketing channels including The Best Social Media Marketers in E-Commerce, Best Search Marketers in E-Commerce and Best Email Marketers in E-Commerce. That is a lot of good information for web merchants and multi-channel retailers who can never have enough data.

​Source: http://www.webpronews.com/best-digital-marketers-e-commerce-announced-2017-03/