Video marketing has many great marketing benefits, but what grabs the attention of your audience? We spend the majority of our time on our phones, the internet, or watching television. Gifs and videos are all around us, on TikTok and Instagram stories, capturing our attention and shortening our attention spans. It is hard to escape the virtual world we live in, so might as well let it help your business.
Here are the Top Three Reasons to Use Video Marketing in 2021:
Growing Revenue with Extra Exposure
Companies put a focus on revenue within their company to determine their goals for the business. If they see a decrease in revenue, then they will make changes in their marketing style. Marketing teams have seen a growth in revenue with video marketing due to the access of videos within our society. People spend their time on social media platforms, with videos popping up on their feeds throughout the day, and often share interesting videos with their circles of influence. Studies show that 48% of people said they’d be most likely to share video content with their friends.
In addition, social media algorithms now recognize and acknowledge videos (like Instagram Reels) much more than standard posts, which can increase your brand’s visibility and reach. Unfortunately but fortunately, the more videos you have, the more likely social media channels are going to direct people to your page(s).
Increased Traffic to Your Website
Tailing off of the first reason, the main reason companies put a focus on marketing is to increase traffic to their website and business. Companies can do this in several ways, such as newsletters, blog posts, social media, and more.
However, According to WordStream, viewers retain 95% of a video message compared to 10% in text. Organizations need to take a look into what type of marketing tactics they want to use to attract their targeted audience(s). The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video. Customers may not read the newsletters or emails, but they could retain most of the information from the video.
Video Marketing is not a new strategy but definitely one that every company needs to try. Need help with your video production but don’t know where to start? Contact us at PivotPath for assistance from start to final product.
Check out some of our video productions over the years:
How to Communicate with your Non-Profit Organization (The New Trends)
Nonprofits have seen a significant change in their marketing strategies, communication, and fundraising since the pandemic impacted their organizations. They have been creative in planning their communication with others and what that will look like post-pandemic. Look to see What’s Hot in Nonprofit Communication Trends.
University students talking to their teacher while learning the lecture over the Internet at the campus.
The Importance of Time Management for your Nonprofit
The pandemic took a toll on many companies in regard to planning the future of their business. Most goals were put on hold for a year or even longer. Companies are still apprehensive about planning due to the uncertainty of post-pandemic life. The company needs to manage its time efficiently so it can work towards completing the goals it did not get to finish before the pandemic. Employees and volunteers are also returning to the office after many months of working from home, which may come with distractions.
Virtual is the New Normal for Communication in your Nonprofit
What’s Hot in Nonprofit Communication Trends? A significant change in communication between organizations has been the use of virtual meetings. If it weren’t for zoom or FaceTime, most sessions would not have been as informative without face-to-face contact with people. Nonprofits have focused on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok to market to people. Social media has become a place for all ages to stay up-to-date on the news and find entertainment for hours on end. Nonprofits are still strategizing on better ways to communicate with others since COVID restrictions are easing up around the world. However, they may still try to utilize some of the marketing and communication strategies they learned from the pandemic into the future of their organizations. This will allow them to reach a broad audience that supports their organization and mission.
If you’re in the realm of marketing, chances are you’ve heard the term SEO before. If you’re not savvy with technology or aren’t as engaged in the digital side of marketing, the concept of SEO and the many facets of it can be overwhelming, to say the least.
Understanding the terms and basic ideas of SEO is essential to marketing in today’s digital world. Luckily, once you get past all of the industry jargon and complex-sounding terminology, SEO isn’t too hard to understand.
What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is how well a website, brand or page does on search engines. When thinking about SEO, you should consider all search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, to name a few. However, keep in mind that Google has more than an 80% share of the search market, so that should be your main focus.
SEO involves a lot of analytics, too. The research is just as important as the actual practice of SEO. Use tools like Google Analytics to understand how your website fares on search engines, and if your SEO practices are working.
Why does SEO matter?
In this digital age, search engines are the most popular’ go-to’s when trying to find a product or service. If you use SEO strategically, you can ensure that your company will pop up on someone’s first or second search page. Ranking high in search results will make them more likely to visit your page.
SEO words to know
Just understanding what SEO is isn’t enough, though. There are plenty of terms and topics that are important to know if you’re interested in using SEO.
Here, we’ve compiled a list of popular SEO terms that you can use to grasp the basics of SEO.
Understanding SEO can improve your rankings on search engines.
Keyword
What it is: A keyword is the word or phrase that you are using in your content to gain traffic on search engines.
For example, if you’re a marketing agency based in Georgia, your keyword may be “marketing agency in Georgia.” That way, your content will show up when someone searches “marketing agency in Georgia.”
Why it matters: Keywords are essential in SEO because they will help potential clients find your site or lead them to your content. To find the right keyword, make sure to research what phrases potential clients in your niche are searching for.
For more on keywords, check out our previous blog post.
Along with keywords, you may also hear the term keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing refers to the use of too many keywords or cramping the same keywords into a few short paragraphs.
This is a common mistake because many assume the more keywords, or the more instances of a keyword, the better. In fact, keyword stuffing will harm your site’s ranking on search engines.
Traffic
What it is: Traffic is the amount of clicks and views your content gets. Organic traffic refers to traffic that comes naturally through search engine queries, social media pages, email newsletters and so on. Paid traffic comes from advertisements, such as sponsorships and pay-per-click ads.
Why it matters: Gaining traffic is a no-brainer because SEO is all about driving traffic to your website. It’s essential to getting more visibility and growing your business.
Meta Description
What it is: A meta description refers to a part of your content’s HTML (the markup language of online content) that has a small snippet of the content. It is usually 50-160 words and search engines may use it in search results.
Why it matters: If a search engine displays your meta description, it will influence the number of clicks your content receives. Your meta description should contain your keyword and be compelling, enticing the reader to learn more.
This meta description uses the keyword organically while giving a simple summary that engages readers.
Crawling
What it is: Crawling is a search engine process that uses crawlers (sometimes called bots or spiders) to go through the internet and find websites, links and other data. Using a specific algorithm, a search engine will determine which websites will be scanned and how often.
Why it matters: Your website being crawled by a search engine is the first step to getting it listed on a search engine’s database. From there, it will then begin to show up on search engine results pages. You can make sure crawlers find your most important content by making it easily accessible on your website.
Index
What it is: Indexing is the next step for a search engine after crawling. Much like a physical index, it is the database a search engine uses to store all information and data for websites that come up as search results.
Why it matters: If your website isn’t in a search engine’s index, it won’t show up for users. The index will rank websites based on relevancy, which will then begin to show up on search engine results pages, or SERPs.
Your SERP position should be a primary focus for SEO. According to this competitive research study, the first five results on a search engine page accounted for nearly 70% of all clicks.
Learning more
If you’re interested in more SEO terms and techniques, websites like Moz and Yoast are great websites to explore. If you’re ready to start or expand your SEO journey, contact us to learn about our copywriting services.
Alison Roller is a recent graduate of West Chester University of Pennsylvania where she earned a B.A. in English with a minor in journalism. When she’s not writing, she can be found wherever her cats are. Check out her LinkedIn profile here to connect.
Starting a blog is one of the most beneficial steps your company can take to grow its digital presence. Not only does blogging allow your team to share their expertise with the rest of the world via the internet, but it can also drive traffic to your website. Higher website traffic leads to more potential leads, which eventually turn into future customers. But this process doesn’t happen overnight. If you want your blogs to reach the highest number of digital consumers, it’s imperative to understand basic keyword strategy and search engine optimization.
Blogging isn’t always as easy as it looks!
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization (referred to as SEO) is the process of enhancing the content on your website so that you rank high in search engines organically. The most popular search engines in the United States include Google, Bing, and Yahoo – among others.
Organic Search Results: Where your company ranks naturally in the results page of a search engine, excluding pay-per-click (PPC) ads and other forms of paid advertising.
The most important and widely-practiced SEO strategy is to come up with target keywords for every blog post that you post online. Carefully wording your blog pieces and incorporating keywords will narrow the intent of the piece, make it easier for search engine bots to crawl your site, and ensure that anyone who searches for your content will find it.
Simple as it sounds, keyword research takes a lot of time and dedication. Don’t expect to see results overnight, but remember that every company has to start somewhere to create a habit. Here are a few easy steps to get you started on your blog optimization journey
1. Choose a Topic
This might sound like a no-brainer, but the first step to writing an engaging blog is to research popular topics and conversations happening in the industry related to your product. What are people most confused about? Is that something you could easily explain? Blog readers are looking for answers and new perspectives.
There are millions of blogs on the internet, so either think of a unique topic or create your own spin on subject matter that already exists. You don’t always have to break new ground, but clearly and concisely sharing relevant information will delight your readers and build your company’s credibility.
Some popular marketing topics include, but are not limited to: SEO, branding, graphic design, and finding your niche. There are plenty of other topics to research as well – just know what expertise your company offers!
Have a brainstorming session with others if you need inspiration.
2. Compile a List of Long-Tail Keywords
Once you come up with the right topic, it’s time to brainstorm different keywords. There are two types of keywords when it comes to optimizing online content: long-tail and short-tail.
Long-Tail Keywords: A keyword which encompasses several words or an entire phrase
If you need help figuring out what your long-tail keyword should be, think about what your customer would type into Google when they search for your blog. Write down a list of possible search phrases.
A common practice is to make one of the long-tail keywords the title of the blog post, or something close to it. Overall, the long-tail keyword should be specific and encompass the entire message of the blog post.
3. Pick a Few Short-Tail Keywords
Now that you’ve chosen a few long-tail keywords, it’s time to focus on short-tail keywords.
Short-Tail Keywords: A general keyword or keyphrase that doesn’t exceed one or two words
The short-tail keyword encompasses the general idea of your blog post. Sometimes customers browse the internet without a clear idea of what they’re looking for and only type a few words into the search engine. If your company can pop up on the first results page after someone types in a short-tail keyword, you’ve successfully optimized your posts and established yourself as an authority on the topic.
For example, let’s say the title of your blog post is “Why You Should Craft a Brand Strategy Before You Start Your Business.” The long-tail keyword would be something like “crafting a brand strategy.” However, the short-tail keyword would simply be “brand strategy.” There’s a slight difference, but one is specific and the other is very broad.
4. Use Analytic Tools to Narrow Down Your Keywords
Once you’ve compiled two lists of keywords, it’s time to do a little research. Use platforms like Google Analytics or Moz.com to compare your different keywords and better understand what your customer base is looking for.
Figure out which keywords are the most popular, and which ones may be too specific. It’s important to find a happy medium: make sure that the phrase you choose isn’t so popular that your content will get lost in the mix. On the other hand, try to aim for an element of specificity if possible, so that people searching for your topic can find it quickly and easily.
Analysis helps you learn and grow.
5. Select Your Keywords and Write the Blog
After your research, you should have narrowed down the long-tail and short-tail keywords you want to focus on. Now that you have a broad and specific umbrella under which you can start to craft your content, it’s time to begin writing your blog post. As you write, keep your keyphrases in mind, but don’t pepper them in the body copy too much. Just finish the post to the best of your ability so you have something to optimize.
6. Make Sure That the Keywords Show Up in the Appropriate Places
It’s not enough to simply choose your keywords and integrate them into the title and overall topic. For search engines to recognize your site as a top resource, you must be purposeful by placing the short-tail keyword in a few strategic places. Here are the places where you should make sure to include your keyword:
At least one header
The blog title
Somewhere in the first paragraph
Throughout the blog, where appropriate
In the meta description
In the alt text of relevant images
If you struggle with figuring out how to properly optimize your posts, we recommend using the Yoast SEO plug-in through WordPress. There are many other plug-ins and resources on the internet to help you as well.
Do you want a seasoned team of content creators on your side? If so, check out our services at PivotPath
It won’t happen immediately, but the more you make a habit out of following these steps, creating optimized posts will become second nature. Being strategic about choosing the right keywords could be the difference between your blog post being read fifty times or five thousand times. With that in mind, happy writing!
Cammie Conn is a Theatre & Performance Studies major at Kennesaw State University, and she also studies through the Joel A. Katz Music and Entertainment Business Program. When she’s not practicing creative writing, she can be found playing her guitar, reading voraciously, or jamming to her vinyl collection. Check out her LinkedIn profile here to connect.
Did you know that 23% of businesses use artificial intelligence (AI) into their services? AI is one of the greatest innovations in marketing while enabling the ability to quickly meet your customers’ needs.
AI improves user interaction and the personalized experience.
It is evident that AI provides many research opportunities that go beyond what the human mind can absorb. It seeks information about different marketing segments at a specific time range. Also, AI is the development of multiple computer systems that require human intelligence. It computes and navigates algorithms that foster problem-solving skills, visual perception, speech recognition, and translation between languages.
There are many benefits of AI and how it improves business-to-consumer (B2C) experience. AI allows businesses to market more effectively and efficiently. Here are a few points to consider:
AI helps businesses build their marketing strategies at a simpler yet effective rate.
It helps answer marketing’s most complex questions.
It serves customers to have more control over what they want to search on a web page.
Digital Platforms that Implement AI Boost the Marketing and User Experience
The internet has revolutionized society by enabling individuals to have access to unlimited amounts of information. This broadens the door to global communication and ultimately changing how consumers and businesses communicate. Before getting into the heart of AI, it is important to understand how digital platforms evolved marketing strategies.
In the business world, the internet has transformed distribution into an e-commerce industry. This is where people can easily navigate and purchase items online. This also includes recommendations, web design, and customer interaction when users are new to an e-commerce website.
How Can AI Increase User Experience (UX)?
In today’s digital world, capturing the attention of consumers is of the utmost importance. With the introduction of AI, marketers can create personalized experiences for potential leads. For example, on a business website, design teams can implement user experience (UX) technologies such as personalized landing pages or heat mapping.
AI is enhancing websites to become more valuable and more personal for users than ever before. AI’s goal is to provide complete control for the user. Better control shows sharper preferences on social media platforms and the influence of their future spending choices.
The marketer has complete control over how an algorithm will advance their website’s tracking efforts.
AI goes beyond search history, saved sites, and the like of a post that will lead users to view similar posts. In addition, AI helps boost marketing by improving search engine optimization (SEO). By boosting SEO, it helps businesses target their buyer persona. Also, AI uses speech recognition and content recommendations to better personalize UX. Today, users see AI take over in many of their social media platforms. For instance, ads that correlate with their likes and/or interests on a certain topic or product of their choice is a branch of AI. There are a few points to consider in which AI is transforming how we see marketing-related topics.
1. AI Personalizes Pages and Recommendations
In this day and age, many consumers prefer to have a more personalized user experience. Rather than taking more time to search the web page for an answer, users want answers that are quick and reliable. AI is a useful tool for many well-known companies since it predicts the spending habits of its customers.
For example, Amazon uses AI to tailor specific preferences of a consumer based on their previous spending habits. This generating tool helps customers have a simpler and quicker browsing time when purchasing products.
So next time you are browsing on Amazon, your customized experience is all due to AI
Essentially, when marketers implement AI into their marketing strategy the end goal is to reach the needs of the user based on their preferences.
2. AI Pursues Customer Interactions: Chat Rooms
Understanding the needs of your customers is vital for the productivity of your business. Chat rooms are more prevalent on many websites because it creates a more interactive and user-oriented experience. AI revolutionizes chat rooms that provide essential information to answer a user’s questions. AI pulls information through its installed algorithms that can provide automatic responses to FAQs.
Businesses can benefit from this tactic because it builds trust between the user and the website. For instance, the needs of a user include that they are being heard and taken into account to help their purchasing decisions on a website.
The bottom line is that your business needs to ensure a user’s trust. Your business can tailor an algorithm that provides helpful answers for users while assisting them in making essential purchasing decisions.
How Does AI Improve Marketing Research?
AI improves marketing research by saving time and money by helping marketing researchers perform their jobs more efficiently. AI saves time by using algorithms to create a data analysis of consumer needs.
With generated natural-learning processes that are implemented in AI, marketing researchers have a sharper scope on their marketing research. By having a sharper scope, it provides a better understanding of who the target market is. When having sharper information about a certain segment, it helps marketers build better marketing strategies that best fit the segment’s needs.
AI quickens marketing research at an effective rate.
How Does AI Improve Pricing Strategy?
Also, it is important to note that AI helps predict dynamic pricing. This helps marketing researchers to understand better strategies when it comes to product pricing and placement that best fits their tailored persona. Knowing what users and consumers wish to buy is important to build your business brand and increase profit.
In order for AI to thrive in tomorrow’s leading innovation, it is important to understand how algorithms are either benefiting or hindering your marketing efforts. The goal of pursuing AI is to ensure that it will be a useful tool to advance customer experience and business relationships. With that in mind, implementing useful technology such as AI serves as a useful tool to strengthen your business’s goals to better your customers’ needs.
Thalia Rodriguez is a Communications major with a double minor in marketing and professional writing at Grand Canyon University. When she’s not practicing writing, she can be spending time with family and friends, going on hikes, or cooking delicious plant-based dishes. Check out her LinkedIn profile here to connect.
How to create content that people want to actually read.
Creating quality content is a feat, it takes time to research and be creative with word to capture the target audience. There is a lot of content out there – some with catchy and interesting titles but lacking in substance. Readers end up leaving the page even before they go through the entire post – most likely because it just contains fluff, or you end up reading a sales pitch.
So how do you capture the attention of your audience? One of the basic components of good content is trust building between you and your audience. It starts by curating good content the reader would want to read – to either educate, inspire, motivate them. If you consistently provide quality, there is no need to hardsell – instead you have people going in to your sales pipeline effortlessly.
Part of our advocacy is quality content. Here are our thoughts on how to create content that inspires loyal followers.
Do your Homework
Get your facts straight. Doing research is part of due diligence when writing good content. It isn’t just about sounding credible and trying to be an expert on a certain topic, as readers can spot pretentious writing a mile away. Instead, focus your energy on conducting thorough research on your topic.
Here are some aspects you can include when researching:
Learn more about your topics by surfing the web. Use the right keywords by searching and entering in the exact information you seek. For example: “How to rank on Page 1 on Google”, the more specific your keywords, the greater chances you will find relevant content
Most relevant content is found on the top 3-5 pages on the search engine page results or as what internet marketers call “ the golden triangle”. So start from there. Read, and determine the scope of the topics covered on the article- and create an outline from the ideas that you get, and add your own.
Once you have your outline, start adding your thoughts on the topics. Work on a catchy title, and catchy subheadings as well. Look into your competitor’s pages too and see how you can outrank them in terms of content.
An important note, when you want to share statistics, facts and case studies to support your claim, ensure that these sites are given credit by backlinking to them.
Catchy Titles and Subheadings
We have all grown accustomed to attention grabbing titles online. It is always wise to invest time coming up with one. Titles represent a short description of what the content is all about – and of course you have to stay true to the title. Nothing disappoints a reader when they realize the post is not what they expected. That goes back to the building of trust between you and your readers.
However, just because super creative titles are trending, doesn’t mean you jump in the bandwagon and copy the ones you like. Instead, get inspired and create unique titles of your own until you get it down to the perfect length; also, ensure it accurately represents what you are actually writing about. In this article, we titled it “Is your Content made of the Good Stuff?”. However, other options could include:
Quality Content: Are you doing it? Yay or Nay
What Makes Up Good Content and Why People Want to Read
How to Create Content People Care to Read
Free Guide: How to Write Quality Content to Gain More Followers
3 things you can do to make people read your content
And the list goes on and on. Of course, with titles you have to remember to Keep it Short and Simple, yet describes your article as accurately as possible. Also, most CMS like WordPress have a limit on the number of characters per title so ensure that you have title optimization in mind. Ensure your blog post title is no more than 60 characters.
A good title also depends on the emotions or behavior you want to evoke from your readers. Do you want them inspired and motivated? Do you want them to stay informed? What is the end goal of creating the content? Is it to get more social shares, to gain more followers, have them subscribe to your email list? Do you want them to purchase your product? Sign up for a webinar, etc.. Once you have determined the goal, ideas will flow. Otherwise, people drop off your page and do not revisit your content again.
Notice that most internet marketers use titles that immediately present what the reader can benefit from when they read your content. Take for example the title, “ Free Guide: How to Write Quality Content to Gain More Followers” or “Be the next top blogger online: 3 things you can do to make people read your content”. These are titles that offer value proposition from the start of the article.
Subheadings help organize your ideas throughout your article, so make sure that your content is optimized with subheadings that keep the readers remain interested. Also, subheadings provide navigation especially with long articles, and make your content SEO-friendly.
Lastly, if you are running out of ideas, you can look into blog title Generators online. They are free and easy to use and is an effective guide to creating an SEO friendly title. Some blog title generators like Hubspot title generator are good resources for validating titles you may have in mind, and help optimize
Make it SEO friendly
Does it matter? Yes, and your readers may not notice as they read through the article that it has been optimized for SEO. Ensure that you have a list of secondary keywords and latent keywords to use all throughout the article. Aside from the major keywords you want to rank for of course.
To structure your content in the most SEO friendly way, start with an optimized title. Continue on to optimize the sub paragraphs and subheadings, making sure that you do not veer off course the topic, as you group thoughts ideas and concepts into a bulleted, numbered or indented manner.
Also use proper grammar all throughout. Tools like Grammarly help you fine tune your spelling and language, and at the same time improve your Readability score on CMS platforms WordPress.
In addition, the use of transitional wordssuch “as” “such as”, “however” ”and” “in conclusion”, “moreover”, etc. helps organize paragraphs and optimize it for better readability. You can look up lists of transitional phrases online to use as a reference when you write your content. If you are using the Yoast SEO plugin, then chances are, it will require you the use of this in most parts of your post. These phrases help link ideas together and keep your posts organized.
For the rest of the content, keep your readers engaged by writing in a certain tone that appeals to most audiences. Make them feel you are talking to them directly, and set the tone that the article is about them, not you. How they benefit, what can they can out of it and how they can improve out of it – If you are writing it essay-like on boring topics such as the ‘potato famine in Ireland” – make sure it still resounds to the current times and what can everyone learn from it. In short, keep them engaged and interested.
According to Neil Patel a good length of an article starts with 500 to 1500 words. Since Google likes content rich pages, ensure you update your posts until it reaches 2000 or more, keeping in mind to optimize sub-headings accordingly and use internal links for added reader benefits.
Creating good content takes time and effort but it should be something that you enjoy doing and have a good grasp on. Nowadays, it is not only what you write about but also how you write it. By keeping in mind the to maintain the integrity of your topic, optimizing the title and the entire contents of the article and making it SEO friendly, you can be on the right track to getting more likes and shares on the articles that you share. Remember, social media traffic is just as important so ensure that your article is directed accordingly and most of all, worth sharing.
No time to write? PivotPath can help you get started on creating quality content posts that your readers will surely like and share on social media. Let us know what your ideas are and we can brainstorm together to come up with an optimized content calendar. Learn more.
In a rapidly changing world of technology, it’s easy for your website to be out of date. We constantly need to look into ways to improve it and stay updated. Of course, it helps when your website is built with a strong foundation at the time of its conception. Even so, websites demand constant care and maintenance to thrive online.
We often talk about online presence and what steps to take to improve and maintain our website. And a big portion of it is taking care of your business’ flagship as it runs 24/7, one of your most powerful assets for lead generation. You may be asking yourself, do I need to redesign or re-build it then? The answer is…Not necessarily. Sometimes, small tweaks here and there can make drastic improvements.
At the core of these enhancements is User Experience and it is different for everyone who visits your website. What makes a great user experience then? By now, you have probably identified your audience or your website visitors, and by knowing who they are, what they need, and how you solve that challenge/”problem”. Your website must reflect that.
How exactly do you do that? Here are 10 ways:
Use more white space.
Don’t be afraid of using white space on your website. Sometimes it may feel like its a bare piece of online space that needs to be filled with images or ads. White space makes your website simple and elegant thus allowing users to better focus on the more important elements such as content and images. Simplicity on your website’s background creates a more open, modern and fresh feel.
Simple Navigation
Make it easy for your website visitors to go through your website. Ensure your navigation bar functions properly so your visitors stay longer on your site. Remember your navigation bar serves as a compass to your visitors so have it visible at all times. Make sure you label the pages on your menu distinctly and use familiar words so users can guess the content before the click. Remember, a poor navigation design can hurt your website’s bounce rate. The moment users can’t find the way around or have difficulty finding what they are looking for, then they will leave, causing your exit rates to increase.
Optimized images (atl images)
Images bring life to your website whether it be via blogs or homepage. To optimize your images, check your competition if they are using the same stock photos, so ensure that your images are unique to your brand. If you are using stock photography, use images that do not use too many filters and use natural lighting. The more realistic it looks, the better. If you prefer to use illustrations, ensure that they are licensed and should follow a specific theme. Bear in mind, optimized images affect your SEO performance.
Page Speed
Nothing is more frustrating than a slow website so make sure site speed is optimized. When you want to read or watch content, you want it right away. And waiting for a website to load is just a deal-breaker. Users leave- at once. There goes your bounce rate. In this day and age where everyone uses all types of devices, mobile phones, smart TVs, you need to make sure your site is optimized across all mediums.
So how do you go about fixing that page speed? Google is the best alternative as it offers information on your page speed, load time all across devices, and provides you with recommendations on how to improve it.
Also, start by evaluating the images that you use, and see if they are compressed before they are loaded into the website. If not, look for websites like compressor.io to help you improve that page speed drastically. This all sound too draining and cumbersome? We can conduct a website analysis to determine the best ways to optimize your site and get it running!
Calls to Action to Website
This nifty feature is a powerful one when used. A call to action is a button/text that prompts the user to act. Common examples are: Learn More, Sign Up, Subscribe, Download Now, etc. One of the biggest considerations is the use of color. The psychology of color is known to be very effective at how website users respond to the call to action. So choose your colors well, taking into consideration, complementing colors, easy on the eyes, and colors that evoke your target behavior.. Also, ensure your action words catch the user’s attention by using value offerings. This means that the actions will benefit the user and prompt them to move forward with the action.
Social Share Buttons
Since social media platforms have taken the world by storm, you would want your website to have a strong online presence on social media. Adding social share buttons on every page of your website are similar to calls to action- as it prompts the user to share your content to the word. Remember part of a solid SEO campaign would be to ensure you rank in social media traffic – otherwise, it will be a little challenging and costly to rank your website without these buttons. Ensure that your social media links are properly configured on your website and your social media accounts are live and maintained.
Testimonial Pages
Pages like testimonials give your website more credibility and allow you to showcase your top clients. If you have clients who have great things to say about you, go ahead and post their testimonials. Most users won’t go directly to a testimonial page so make sure you strategically place them on your homepage, or throughout the pages on your site. This is an extra selling point for your business so make sure you post a couple of testimonials from your top clients. Including their company name and logo can also bring your website some added benefits.
Value Proposition
Why do you need to do this? Having a mission or vision statement, allows your users to know your services and products and why you are in business and how users will benefit if they buy or subscribe to your products and services. A value proposition statement should be found on the Home page section, as much as possible in the headline or near the headline.
You can start your statement with title such as Who We Are, What We Do, or come up with a brief statement such as: “ We are an email marketing company from Nashville, with the goal to bring your business to the next level of digital transformation and capture your target audience with dynamic marketing campaigns custom fit to your business size and budget.”
Sharing your business goals and objectives helps users determine if you are the right company they can bring their business into. Try to make sure that your mission/ vision helps them understand that you are there to help, and how beneficial you are to them.
Optimize responsive and mobile-friendliness
If you haven’t worked on this optimization step, then chances are your site is not user-friendly on all types of devices. Since the core purpose of improving your website is User Experience, this is an essential element.
Google may penalize sites that are not optimized for mobile devices and this is something you want to avoid. There is an emphasis on the importance of your website’s responsiveness as more users use mobile devices more than ever.
Remember, accessibility to all devices can be very assuring to your users, as they know that you can be accessed anytime, at any device with the same great positive user experience. This lowers bounce rates and increases website traffic and returning users.
Be mindful of 404s.
It is imperative that each link that your users’ click will take them to the page they want to go. Again, once users are directed to a blank page or a 404 page, this affects your user experience, affecting your bounce rate and overall website metrics; plus it’s annoying.
How do you determine pages that have potential 404 errors? Simply use this free tool by Google, called the Google Search Console. This is a webmaster tool that will crawl your pages and send you a report on pages with errors, that way you catch them early on and do a fix. If just in case one of your pages need more time to fix, or its been taken down due to some major redesign, ensure that you create page redirects or some creative 404 pages to let your users know you are aware and that page will be back soon. Here are some cool ideas and ways to show your 404 pages just in case.
Your brand defines who you are and how you set yourself apart from your competitors. and it’s always good practice to know where you stand among other brand contenders. When it comes to creating a truly authentic brand, maintaining a competitive edge should always be the goal as this is what keeps you maintain your market share and position.
So how do you stay on the cutting edge of things? PivotPath can show you how to monitor the attributes and actions that make up your industry’s competitive landscape so you can identify the opportunities and improve your brand identity and image. If you are looking into doing rebranding or repositioning your brand, this checklist will be a great start.
First things first. You need to build a strategy that will ensure you are effectively tracking your competition on a regular basis. Competitive analysis entails a more structured way of keeping tabs on competitors compared to just monitoring them on social media. Having this process in place helps you stay updated and get a more in-depth understanding of your industry’s key players.
In this post, we will share a checklist of some strategies to further your understanding of brand competitors, and how to maintain your foothold in the market.
Research
Start by compartmentalizing your competitors and similar brands into two types:
Direct competitors – companies offering the same service or products in the same geographical area with the same target audience, fulfilling the same market need.
Indirect competitors – companies offering the same service or products in the same geographical area but with a different target market or fulfilling a different market need.
Categorize and Organize
Make a list of at least 5 -10 direct and indirect competitors and enter them into a spreadsheet.
If you haven’t identified your competitors yet, then you can find them on search engines like Google or use tools such as SEMRush (free) or Ahrefs (paid). These tools provide a lot of insights as you go deep into your competitor research.
Once you have them laid out on the spreadsheet, add the basic detailed company profile information such as:
Annual revenue
Products and services offered
Clients
Number of offices and locations
Number of employees
Locations
Homepage / Website
Social media accounts
Featured products
Price and product range
Selling point
Target market
Email marketing tactics
PPC campaigns
Special offers and discounts
Google and Yelp Reviews
Other significant attributes that you think are significant to you.
Going through each of your identified competitors’ profiles allows you to step into your target market shoes and go through a customer journey. Take it further by subscribing to their newsletters and weekly blogs or webinars; be a part of their marketing circle so that you can gauge and compare how you fare versus your competition.
Experiencing the competition by creating a database of their information will give you a lot of insight from a customer and a competitor’s perspective and soon enough you will know each one like the back of your hand.
Check market positioning
The best way to do this is to run website metrics and diagnostics with free tools like Google Analytics, SEMRush or if you have the budget, Ahrefs, Buzzsumo or Moz. These online tools will work their magic, providing a drill-down of where your brand is in terms of online presence, social media engagement, active users, sales, the locations of users/clients and the like.
You can run weekly metrics and track your progress; at the same time, make the necessary adjustments you need to keep up (Paid Ad campaigns, social media engagement, SEO optimization, etc.).
Doing keyword research is also one of the best ways on how to determine where you stand among the competition. You can keyword research using Google Search Console, Ubersuggest, MOZ keyword explorer, Ahrefs, SEMRush, and more tools here.
On a less technical side, you can go back to basics and make a list of all your brand strengths and weaknesses. Be objective when you do this, and make a consumer’s point of view when doing this. After that, create a list of your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses and compare notes. You will be surprised at how much you will learn if you do this process objectively.
Reviews
Google and Yelp reviews are also one of the best ways to understand your competition and a great opportunity to outdo them when it comes to customer engagements. Check their reviews and determine where the clients are from, and what products or services get most reviews.
You may also want to take a look at the number of reviews, and how responsive they are to their audience. Gauging customer experience through these reviews gives you the chance to look within your business and makes steps on how to improve. Doing this helps motivate you to optimize your business listings to be at par with the competition.
Implement
Data without action is a futile exercise. Having spent so much time collecting data and putting a plan or strategy into action will keep you from being blind-sided by your competitors. Once you have run a comparison between your product and your competitor, formulate a strategy based on your findings, and execute your plans, after which you can monitor and re-adjust as needed.
Don’t have the time to collect competitor data? PivotPath can help you do your competitive brand analysis. Click here to get started.
Are you currently on the quest for ways to boost your city, county, state, or nations’ tourism site? If you feel that you have exhausted all your marketing campaigns, look no further.
Being a city manager or clerk requires you to wear different hats everyday. Part of your job entails you perform sales and marketing as well as all the other tasks. With the help of PivotPath, you won’t have to miss time from important tasks or deals in the pipeline and can focus on more important matters. Let’s get you one step closer to your goals of maximizing your tourism bureau website.
Here are the 4 things we can do for you:
Branding Strategy
Creating a strategic plan for your tourism website increases your chances of success because it allows you to develop a step-by-step guide for your business initiatives. Most brilliant marketing plans go awry when it is not put into writing, so it is important to have a branding strategy document to use as a guide and update as your strategy evolves.
It’s important for you to identify your goals and objectives for your website; as this will be the base of all marketing initiatives as we launch your marketing campaign. Is the goal of your tourism (CVB) site to attract tourists to the new shopping center? Beautiful wedding venues? Neighborhoods to reside?
From your goals, we will help you determine and segment your target audience. In this case, focus on each traveler type and hyper-target the marketing efforts to each. Then identify which marketing channels are most effective to use depending on the segment. This is a crucial step in every marketing campaign as you need to zero in on a target market and position strategic content to capture their attention for engagement.
SEO-Optimization
SEO or Search Engine Optimization requires a lot of time and attention but is essential to the success of your tourism/CVB website. Investing the time in SEO will tremendously help to gain visibility on the search engine results page.
The more website traffic you get, the more Google (and other search engines) remembers that your website has the authority and the relevant content that is worth ranking high in searches. Not only that, you want repeat visitors on your website, so SEO is an essential part of this process to ensure repeat visits and social media shares.
While it is necessary, SEO is not for the faint of heart; leave it to the experts. Here at PivotPath, we will optimize your website with an attractive custom theme, stunning photos that capture the audience’s attention, and SEO-optimized content that converts. Our SEO technical expertise can help you make that all happen.
Content Marketing
Just like SEO, chances are you’ve heard of the quote, “Content is King”. Indeed it is. The key to a higher Google visibility is to ensure your website is more informative, valuable and useful than your competitors. Here at PivotPath, we will create a content strategy for your tourism or CVB website to make sure that you capture the right audience. We also develop a keyword strategy campaign to make your website more searchable and visible on Google or other search engines.
Along with content, images are also part of content marketing. One crucial ingredient for a tourism website is stunning images of your locale to capture travelers and potential visitors. Since travelers do have quite a number of online travel resources they look to, it’s important that your website belongs to the short-list. Creating stunning videos of your area (city, county, state, etc.) is also another way to optimize content.
Blog posts are another fun way to do content marketing – don’t have time? We can do that for you too. Blogs are a great way to feature travel spots and destinations and provide detailed descriptions of the place and what to expect, what to do and what not to do. Sharing helpful tips that travelers can use when visiting your place or share a top five must do list when traveling to your destination is a must.
Social Media Marketing
Always an effective and efficient way to share your content to the world. But it’s not just a matter of posting any type of content on your social media accounts. There must be a strategy behind every successful social campaign. Just like content management, posts and images are planned strategically and set on a timely manner to capture the right audience.
At PivotPath, we help you share your most unique experiences and events in your city, help you highlight what’s new in your area, especially with holiday posts to keep your visitors in the know about the latest events and the fun things to do when they visit. Tools like SocialMention also help you in sharing user-generated content in social media.
Extra Tourism Website Tip:
It is also important to optimize your website on the mobile version since most travelers rely on their phones as a source of information. We will help you optimize your website to be more mobile friendly and accessible. Take note that millenials and Gen-Z spend more time on their phones than any other device, and they do travel more than any generation, so ensure that your website is always on its uptime and accessible anytime.
Bring your travel website to the next level – start marketing with PivotPath today.
Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), and Business-to-Government (B2G). We’ve all read these terms somewhere. What do these terms mean and why should it matter to you as a marketer? Or even as a consumer?
The steady rise of digital marketing is undeniable, and marketing companies have sprouted out of the woodwork as a result. With high technology as a steady partner, brand marketing companies thrive due to these innovations that are developed to support it.
So what do these differences between both marketing types mean to your agency? Is it really worth the effort in procuring the requirements to be a government contractor?
B2B Marketing
Business-to-Business includes marketing to businesses that conduct business for a profit and to those organizations that have a non-profit charter. B2B focuses on selling products and services to other businesses rather than to the government or specific consumers.
B2C Marketing
On the flip side, B2C, or business-to-consumer marketing, takes place when a business—such as an online store, manufacturer, online medical information organization—markets their products or services to the public. This involves identifying buyer personas, and engaging with them on the omni-channels such as social media, email marketing campaigns and customer calls.
B2G Marketing
Government Marketing or B2G (Business to Government) is a derivative of B2B. As a small business, this involves bidding on contracts set by government agencies who are in search for marketing agencies to set up marketing campaigns for any type of industry. Most commonly, landing marketing government contracts are available to industries such as environmental, financial, information technology, logistics and energy.
Government marketing is certainly a great resource to tap into. But how to get started on this venture requires a few different steps than what you are normally used to within other sectors.
Here are some helpful steps to get started:
Do your research: Conduct thorough research on finding government consumers. Check the GSA schedules program or the Federal Procurement Data System database to search for potential markets. Look around for agencies that need your services and make them a priority in your list.
Register your SAM profile: This is a very essential step when you want to land a federal government contract, so be certain that your profile is optimized. Be very clear about your capabilities as a contractor by sharing your past successes and how they can benefit from your agency. Do extensive research on competitor companies. Remember, you will be bidding against a lot of competition so make sure you stand out in a unique way.
B2G marketing may use the same strategies of B2B, especially for marketing destination conventions and visitor or travel bureaus (CVB). Ensuring a solid marketing strategy for government marketing can help your agency reach new levels of success.
Defining the purpose, focus, and objective of a government agency’s CVB website will help gauge the targeted audience and user experience. Is the agency looking to promote a new shopping mall? Vast variety of wedding venues? Knowing this information will help in developing SEO-optimized branding (website) and increase the agency’s web traffic.
Create Engaging Marketing Content
Content marketing is identified as the top five marketing trends over the past years, simply because consumer behavior thrives on content. It’s not only important that your target markets read the content, but that they resonate with the messaging. Having your target consumers read and share your content increases brand credibility and consumer confidence.
Whether you engage in either of these types of marketing, the most important thing to remember is to always, always know your market. Developing a solid marketing strategy for each different type of industry is made easier by the automated marketing tools available anywhere. And, being in such a competitive race, you have to clearly distinguish yourself from the rest.
Ready to build or upgrade your CVB site? Contact PivotPath today for a consultation!
5 Key Tracking Metrics to Boost Your Business’ Online Presence
Google analytics is a necessary evil for many small businesses. Many companies have the bootstrap code affixed to their site, but barely leverage it due to its perceived high level technicalities. Although this might be true for some, neglecting the data it houses is not recommended. In fact, this data can be essential in growing and strengthening your business and increase your leads and sales.
Here are 5 key metrics to boost your business
Demographics: This metric identifies who visits your site and provides a better understanding of who your users are. Importantly, it can help you craft your online content and communication style with new and existing customers.
Location: Knowing where your visitors are can play a key part in more targeted marketing and advertising and understanding who you are reaching.
Site traffic: It is extremely critical to understand which online channel generates the most traffic to your site. This is essential when determining which strategies effectively bring the most visitors to your website and provides a solid direction on where to focus or improve.
Referral Sources: This metric helps you understand the strength of user engagement. It can serve as a guide on the engagement on your social outlets.
Behavior: Tailoring your site to maximize User Experience is vital for retention and growth. “Behavior” helps you understand where to refine features and content, and how to create a brand and product that is useful to your targeted audience.
Google Analytics is an important tool to help you make strategic decisions for your business. At PivotPath, metrics from this tool provide directional data and allow us to aid in increasing your reach. Contact us today to learn how we can help you.
