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    Tag: blogging and content creation

    Digital Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    If your business still isn’t using digital media for marketing, 2020 is the year to get started. While online marketing efforts have an assortment of benefits that allow your company to grow, don’t give up on the traditional marketing efforts that are already working well for your business. The key to advertising success lies with well thought out strategies and a coordinated budget that can juggle both online and offline opportunities. So, here’s how digital and traditional media differ and what exposure they need to be successful. 

    Digital marketing outline

    A simplistic definition of digital marketing is the promotion of a brand’s products or services through electronic media. An example of this would include developing a digital marketing strategy and using advertising mediums to promote business efforts through the internet by way of social media, mobile phones, and electronic billboards. And while this inventive business proclamation is relatively new, about 70% of consumers prefer it over traditional ad methods! 

    Digital marketing does well in contemporary society because so many people are spending their time online, whether it be on their way to and from work, on their breaks or simply while on the toilet. So, businesses need to connect to their target demographic by utilizing the power of social media, blogging, and emails. These advertising methods increase your online exposure and expand your overall visibility in a world where most business owners are experiencing cut-throat competition. However, while professional digital marketing is relatively easy and inexpensive, paying an agency to handle your affairs can give your business the perfect kind of traction it needs.  

    Traditional marketing outline 

    An effortless way to define traditional marketing is a kind of promotion or advertisement that companies use during the early period of a particular product or service. This would include print advertisements, billboards, flyers, pamphlets, TV advertisements, newsletters articles, and radio commercials. In addition, traditional marketing also covers direct mail postcards, brochures, and flyers that are sent through postal mail. On a positive note, 79% of households admit that they read or scan direct mail advertising! 

    Traditional marketing has become a costly advertising source, providing very little direct communication with your consumer audience. However, it does allow you to broadcast your message in a particular publication to cater to those who have an interest in your industry. Although, the main throwback to traditional is that it’s more of a one-and-done strategy that more times than not, has shoppers reading it and tossing it out afterward. 

    What are the favored tools for each outlet?

    Professional digital marketing relies on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to get the word out. They may also rely on WordPress as a blogging platform and e-commerce foundation. Video and high graphic images work well on all the following digital marketing channels and have a strong ability to influence consumer decisions. 

    When it comes to traditional marketing, newspaper ads, direct mail, postcards, magazine ads, and even exerts in the phone book as the time-honored ways businesses once got customer attention, however, while this type of classic marketing adheres to a high degree of trust in older demographics, it’s missing out on the growing opportunity to progress with modern marketing technologies. 

    When do you think traditional marketing outweigh digital marketing? Drop a comment below to share. 

    How Should Your Company Be Preparing for Black Friday?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    If you’re stumped on how to market for the holidays, you’ll want to purpose the following tips to easily plan out your seasonal marketing campaigns. After all, Black Friday success is best measured on the culmination of creative, strategic audience development and how well you can carry out your efforts leading up to the big Thanksgiving Day long weekend. So, it’s time that you opened your mind to some digital marketing options that’s pretty much guaranteed to heighten your conversion rates. 

    Prepare as early as possible

    As silly as it sounds, large-scale, e-commerce brands start their holiday preparations at the end of August because as soon as Halloween is over, the following two months are jam-packed with sales, promotions, and social media and email campaigns. So, if you want to start cashing in and taking full advantage of how to market for the holiday season, you’ll want to get a head-start next year by mapping out your plans for American Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Hanukkah, Christmas, Boxing Day, and Kwanzaa. Keep in mind that some of these celebratory days can be combined into one marketing campaign, such as “Thanksgiving Blowout Sale, all weekend long” because the days are inconsequential order one after another. 

    Build up your audience

    Black Friday shopping is all about zeroing in on your target audience to get them hyped up for the holidays, so, obviously, we suggest that weeks prior to your sale you work on building your customer list. People are less likely to make a purchase, even if you have a killer sale if they’re unfamiliar with your brand. That’s why it’s super important to extend your trust to savvy shoppers and cultivate their interest using social media marketing, email marketing and even blogging. This will give you a more direct line of communication and is a relatively inexpensive way to ensure that your messages are reaching the right people. 

    The key to whisking your audience away using social media and emails is to carry out campaigns and plan ahead to see how well your customers respond to your digital marketing efforts. If done skillfully, you’re able to extract value from the above tactics including repeat sales, word-of-mouth referrals, and an engaged audience. However, if you’re looking to get started on an email list or wanting to branch out to unknown social media channels, a professional digital marketing agency can ensure that you’re marketing content that your clientele will enjoy! 

    Have a simplistic checkout experience 

    While this digital development needs to be coded well in advance to ensure that it will be functional, we do recommend improving the checkout experience before you think of promoting a Boxing Day sale next month. When a user is convinced to click on your website, they’re already driven to make a purchase, however, even great prices aren’t enough to keep them from abandoning their checkout process. That’s why it’s essential to reduce the amount of time that’s needed to check out a customer cart, creating a simplistic experience that will translate to a higher conversion rate. 

    Will your business be running any year-end, holiday sales? Drop a comment below if you’re wanting some assistance with your upcoming campaigns.

    Gobble up these 4 Thanksgiving-themed marketing tips

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    November is a busy time of year for digital marketing agencies and the businesses that they manage, though it’s probably because there are so many holidays that are stuffed into the mix — Remembrance Day/Veterans Day, American Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. So, with so much going on it’s important to take a moment to pick and choose which seasonal holidays you’re going to focus your energies on, because, let’s face it, it’s rather difficult to juggle them all. That being said, if marketing for Thanksgiving is your projected winner, here are some tips we recommend using in your strategy carrying into this month. 

    Market your products with the season

    It isn’t hard to curve the appeal of your products during American Thanksgiving, especially if you use the right wording as an elevated part of your strategy. For example:

    • If your business sells clothing, put some Thanksgiving dinner outfit ideas together.
    • If your business sells perfumes and candles, market essences that exhibit cinnamon, pumpkin or any woodsy scents. 
    • If your business is decor-based, market some products that could be used for Thanksgiving centrepieces. 
    • If your business sells toys, position your content to market how your selected products work well to entertain kids while dinner is cooking. 

    Keep in mind that when you’re marketing for Thanksgiving or any holiday for that matter, it’s always best to promote across all your channels, including your varied social media accounts and informative newsletters. If time is a considered factor, have a marketing agency do the work for you. 

    Use all the hashtags

    Since you’ve chosen to go with a themed strategy, the next step would be to use and create hashtags to engage with your social media followers. You could ask them to drop a comment on your Thanksgiving-inspired products by asking them to share their favorite memory (#thanksgivingthoughts) or even by inspiring them to share what they’re most thankful for (#givethanks). Be sure to post a mention coordinating to how you’re thankful for their support and continued business. 

    Create some custom, Thanksgiving-themed content

    If you want your marketing efforts to be noticed, we recommend using a little Thanksgiving inspiration when you’re crafting your content. This means that you can utilize your blog to self-advertise some products, while still keeping to the seasonal theme of being thankful, indulging in family time, and pigging out on a delicious, wholesome feast. Think of how your products connect to the subject of Thanksgiving, research industry keywords and also be sure to include undertones that feature seasonal words like harvest, pilgrims, feast, and thankful. 

    Have a sale!

    A lot is going on in November, but it’s also the month where you start your preparations for December’s holiday festivities. So, by hosting a flash sale to promote celebrations this month, you’ll also be able to tease customers into taking advantage of your last sale before the holiday season. You can even position your marketing efforts to include a blurb about how awesome your products and services would be as a holiday stocking stuffer or how easy it would be to just start ticking away at their shopping lists. Even 10% can be enough incentive for potential customers to carrying out their purchase, especially if the sale is for a limited time only. 

    Do you know any other Thanksgiving marketing tips that customers would gobble up? Drop a comment below to inspire other readers.

    Digital marketing growth hacks to consider

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    Like anything, the tricks of the trade are something that’s generally learned over time, making experienced digital marketing agencies the experts when it comes to SEO and e-commerce. And while it’s important to start developing your own set of skills as you grow into your role as a business owner, it’s also significant to scale your digital operations to generate successful campaigns. After all, money is what makes the business world go around and if you don’t possess the know-how to utilize industry growth hacks your budget may start to dwindle faster than you anticipated. So, here’s are some tips for those seeking first-hand insight into how to grow their startup companies. 

    Create long-tail content 

    If you’re unfamiliar with the phrase “long-tail”, simply think of it as the holy grail for SEO and e-commerce. Using long-tail content as part of your website’s marketing strategy, which includes URLs, page titles and meta descriptions, is a great way to build authority and increase the organic traffic that’s coming to your site. For example, think about all the different combinations of words that people type into search engines every day and then think about how people describe what they’re looking for. Finding specific search terms and adding them to your content helps these people find what you’ve written, increasing the likelihood of them clicking the other parts of your site. So, we recommend that you always consider keywords when formulating your content, because it holds the power to climb the online rankings.  

    Run blogs as Google dynamic search ads

    While most e-commerce business owners are running search or display ads on Google, you could be the one who drives traffic strategically by using content pages you’ve already created. For example, if you went ahead and focused on our tip above, you would have implemented long-tail keywords within your content. If this is the case, your blog is already ranking organically somewhere in the search results. Content-focused pages rank higher than pages with no copy, so using your blog can help to increase your high-quality score. Thus, if you want to increase your chances of receiving clicks, give this tip a try and see how it works out for you!

    Follow up with potential shoppers

    Once you generate more traffic and increase your leads, you should create a means of following up with clickers. While it can be difficult to personally target each person, it’s easy enough to use some form of marketing automation to do it for you. We recommend using email marketing as your way to connect to your target audience. Start by creating a series of emails to engage with these leads, including subjects like product information, customer testimonials, and even something that tells the story behind the brand. All of this content is valuable and can work as a channel to reach your prospecting clientele. 

    We hope the above ideas will help you to get on track and start scaling up your business. However, since new hacks are readily growing, if you aren’t keeping up with the changes, it’s easy to lose the customer’s interest. That’s why sometimes it makes more sense to leave the work to the professionals.

    Which SEO and e-commerce hack did you find the most interesting? Drop a comment below to share with our readers. 

    Do outbound links affect SEO?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    The internet is full of diverse websites that are connected and linked via their commonality. However, depending on the type of e-commerce business you run, there’s a chance that relevant outbound links could affect the performance of your search engine optimization strategy. In this blog, we’ll take a look at the definition of outbound links, how they should be used to impact your SEO efforts. 

    What are outbound links?

    Outbound links, also referred to as external links, are clickable, content sections that send visitors to other pages on your website, or in most cases, other applicable websites. For example, if another website links to your e-commerce page in their content, it’s considered an outbound link. At the same time, if you link to another website in your content, it’s also considered an outbound link. 

    Typically, an external link can pass on more value than internal links because search engines believe that what other people say about you is more important than you simply crediting yourself. Essentially, when other online companies link to your website, you will appear as a more credible source. 

    What type of outbound links are there?

    There are two types of outbound links, dofollow and nofollow. Do follow links pass on ranking power from your website to the target page, while nofollow links aren’t able to do this. In other words, nofollow links tell search engines not to follow the links provided. 

    That being said, all links are automatically dofollow links by default, so to create a nofollow link, you would need to add a “nofollow” tag inside your code. 

    Why are outbound links an important part of your search engine optimization strategy? 

    There are several reasons that Trek Marketing suggests that you include outbound links on your website:

    Heightens popularity: Search engines show searchers the most relevant results, and external links determine the popularity of a given page by boosting the page’s rank. 

    Increases relevance: Outbound links are extremely helpful when it comes to giving users the information they’re looking for. The anchor text that’s used in the link is a good way to target your page and provide helpful hints about the relevancy of your page. Linking to relevant content is always beneficial when relying on search engines for traffic. 

    Improves reputation: Outbound links improve the reputation of your business because it allows you to develop an avenue towards resourceful content. Linking to spammy sites will reflect negatively on you as a business owner, so remember to link to studies and informative content as it holds the most authority. 

    Boosts value: It doesn’t matter if you dedicate all your time to developing informative content, chances are that you will never have enough relevant writing. This is why linking can increase the value of your website and make your visitors experience more rewarding. While you’re asserting yourself as an industry expert, you’re also accounting for the information that you’re not as knowledgeable about. 

    Encouraging backlinks: Linking out to other credible sources on the web means that these other websites may even be willing to link back to your site. As the web’s natural linking environment, not only are you increasing your engagement, but you’re also giving other business owners to interact and link to products associated with yours. 

    Are there any other ways that outbound links can affect your search engine optimization strategy? Drop your thoughts below to share with our readers. 

    How to digitally market for the real estate industry

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    niche digital marketing

    The doggone days of campaigning are slowly coming to end as more and more real estate companies have turned to digital marketing as a way to sell homes and acquire new clients. While the real estate industry requires some niche digital marketing strategies in order to successfully approach their audience, the efforts of direct mail, radio and TV have been squashed, allowing them a better means of directly identifying with their targeted audience. So, as real estate shifts to the world of social media marketing, emailed newsletters and informative blog posting, it’s important to know how to navigate your way through the transition. 

    Establish your businesses niche

    Both inquiring, first-time buyers and excited, focused sellers, need a real estate company that possesses the right expertise and knowledge pertaining to specific neighbourhoods, properties and prices. That’s why you should operate within a specialized niche, catering your judgment and experience towards the market that you know best. For example, you could focus on highlighting the apartment living lifestyle as your focal area of expertise. This means that you will cater to young professionals who likely have a higher yearly income and can afford to live in the city. Keep in mind that it’s still beneficial to have experience with a wide range of age demographics and property prices, just remember to separate each target audience and cater your digital marketing campaigns to reach and connect with them individually.  

    Craft an intuitive website 

    The best part about partaking in niche digital marketing is that you’ll be able to target your efforts to reach the right audience. As an important step, it’s always recommended to have a website that’s mobile optimized and easily navigable with the functionality and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques utilized to help draw in prospecting clients. Keep in mind that a contact form works as a great call-to-action and an assortment of images (especially of homes you have sold or are selling) is advantageous in evoking a connection. Also, ensure that all the properties of the website, including listings and blogs, are easily shareable to social media. 

    Promote on social media 

    When it comes to promoting your business it’s incredibly important to build a strong social presence. Developing a Facebook page, Instagram profile and Pinterest Board will allow you to share pictures and videos of the real estate properties. You will also be able to utilize your assortment of social channels to share tips for both buyers and sellers, as well as highlight hot spots to encourage your stream of content to become more shareable among your followers. That being said, if you’re able to put some of your marketing budgets aside, you can work with a digital marketing agency to facilitate your budget into powerful, social advertisements. 

    Create some video content

    An impressive, dynamic video is a perfect storyteller. Allowing the information to smoothly flow in a way that’s more digestible and easier to understand. This is why the real estate industry has started to use video to advertise their brand and seek viewer attention. Live content taps into our physiological motivators and in the grand scale of things, is fairly effortless to carry out. Use your channels with a video stream to showcase the scope of your properties and perhaps do short, informative videos answering frequently asked questions. This will help you to develop a trusting, online reputation. 

    Are there any other niche digital marketing methods that would be beneficial in the real estate business? Drop a comment below to share your opinion.

    Good Grammar Is a Marketing Must

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    blogging and content creation

    You can start out with a fantastic business idea, develop some state-of-the-art products and increase the connection with your customers, but if you don’t take the time to cultivate your grammar skills, your business’s respectability will appear incredibly sloppy. That being said, if you’re the one writing for your business, a red flag will rise in regards to your professionalism if you aren’t taking the time to proof-read your blogging and content creation. So, in the spirit of National Grammar Day (March 4), we want to emphasize a few tips to keep in mind when you’re trying to catch your typos and dangling modifiers. 

    Proofread your writing

    It can be incredibly easy to just hit publish after you finish writing your blogging and content creation without taking any additional time to re-read and edit. So, if you’re wanting to promote expertise in your writing style, it helps to take the time to check over your work in order to catch any stray punctuation errors or misspelled words. After all, the content on your website should embellish an experienced image.

    Another way to tackle proofreading is to have a second set of eyes look over your work. Often times it can be difficult to catch our own mistakes so having another person, preferably someone with writing experience, will leave you with some sharper, more refined diction.

    Needless to say, if you don’t have anyone that’s available to help you immediately, try using a grammar and punctuation tool to help proofread over your work. Nobody’s perfect, so it’s important to condition your time to allow for quality checkups.

    Keep an eye out for any malapropism

    The word malapropism is used to refer to the use of an incorrect word in the place of a word with a similar sound — there are several examples to consider when you’re keeping an eye out for these grammatical errors. For example, you could have accidentally used a word that sounds the same as the word you meant to use, but means something completely different, like the words “tandem” and “tantrum”.

    Another example that’s commonly mixed up is the definitions of the following speech words “there”, “their” and “they’re”. These contractions mean very different things and can easily be incorrectly interchanged when you’re rushing to finish blogging and content creation. Take the time to re-read your writing and perhaps even say it out loud so that you can catch these tedious, incompetent mistakes.

    Watch your apostrophes

    In case you’ve forgotten your elementary school English lectures, here’s a quick primer. An apostrophe should only be used after a noun to make either a possessive (Jack’s sandwich) or a contraction (Sally’s going to the park, a contraction of “Sally is going to the park”). Always remember that an apostrophe should never be used to make pronouns possessive (hers, its, theirs), but they can be used it to make a pronoun into a contraction (It’s sunny, you’re awesome, they’re angry).

    Well, there you have it! A little refresher on some common grammatical copy mistakes. If you’re still stuck when it comes to grammar and feel as if you need some advanced help, considering consulting with a professional digital marketing team and sort through your writing with a fine-tooth comb before it’s published for the world to see.

    In your opinion, what is the most frustrating part of grammar? Tell us in the comments section below.

    Do brick and mortar businesses need a digital marketing strategy?

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    brick and mortar businesses to use digital marketing

    If you’re a retailer that prefers the more traditional selling approach that brick and mortar businesses have to offer, you may still find that you need a digital marketing strategy to get your business noticed. Although you offer your customers a more personable face-to-face interaction, when it comes to doing business, it is difficult to complete with your web-based counterparts. While ecommerce businesses make it their job to become noticed on the web in order to receive any sales at all, brick and mortar businesses can also leverage the benefits of digital marketing to their advantage

    What is a brick and mortar business?

    The term brick and mortar is used to describe a company that possesses a retail store, factory or warehouse for its operation. Your local bookstore or grocery shop is a perfect example of this. Brick and mortar businesses offer their consumers the opportunity to touch, try out and discuss any concerns they may have with an item prior to making any purchase. These types of businesses also provide consumers with an immediate form of gratification because they do not need to wait for the item to be shipped before they can enjoy it.

    Needless to say, even though a business is doing well in physical form that doesn’t mean that with a proper digital marketing plan it couldn’t be doing a whole lot better.

    Why does your brick and mortar business need a digital marketing strategy?

    With the rise of ecommerce businesses snatching up internet friendly consumers, it is important for brick and mortar businesses to use digital marketing to establish a strategy in order to remain technologically with the times. Many long-time retailers — Sears, Zellers and Kmart — have shut down dozens of store locations due to slow traffic and a decrease in sales.

    Whether your company is better suited as a brick and mortar business or you’re resisting the need to embrace e-commerce, you can have the best of both worlds with the proper digital marketing strategy.

    In order for brick and mortar businesses to use digital marketing to its fullest potential they will need to:

    • Build an online community: This will increase your customer base and allow you to offer your product to a much larger demographic.
    • Find your target audience: Unless you have found a location in a local neighbourhood where everyone uses your product, a digital marketing strategy will allow you to find an online audience that has an interest in the product or service that you are selling.
    • Engage with your consumers: Although it does not offer the same face-to-face personalization as the traditional brick and mortar business, digital marketing allows you to speak to customers online, comment on their reviews and troubleshoot any problems they are facing without them even needing to step foot in your store.

    If you need help getting started with your digital marketing strategy, consult our team of professionals to learn more about what we can do for your business.

    Do you prefer to shop in retail stores or online for your products? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

    A few marketing books to add to your summer reading list

    Posted on by Alex Wilks

    marketing books

    With summer already in full swing, you’re probably looking forward to your leisure time on your days off. With the rise in temperature, naturally, comes more time spent enjoying the outdoors. Take a load off, relax and read your way through some of the most favored marketing books of the year.

    Here are a few reading suggestions for lovers of all things business and advertising to take with them anywhere their summer vacation leads.

    John Hall’s, “Top of Mind”

    This marketing book is about exploring opportunities. Hall examines the notion that opportunities are more likely to appear before people that create meaningful relationships in both their professional and personal life. He also speaks about consumer needs and how those have shifted over time. It’s important to build trustworthy, strong relationships with your clients so that in turn you will earn space at the top of your customer’s mind.

    Robert Glazer’s, “Performance Partnerships”

    Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing that involves the affiliate website, the affiliate network, the advertiser and the buyer. Not as common of a marketing avenue to take, affiliate marketing allows the business to reward other parties for their marketing efforts. Glazer explains the concept more in-depth in his marketing book and examines the evolution and ongoing transition “into one of the most important forms of direct-to-consumer digital marketing.”

    Jay Baer’s, “Hug Your Haters”

    In this marketing book, Baer explains that you don’t possess the ability to please everyone and that you need to learn to ignore the complaints if they begin to bother you. Although most companies boast about their customer service skills, most consumers will have a thing or two to say about that. Baer’s customer service novel describes what you as a business owner need to do to regain your consumer-focus and how to properly handle those people with attitude.

    Do you know any other marketing books that our fellow business owners might enjoy? Tell us in the comments section below.