{"id":4139,"date":"2014-10-17T11:40:47","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T15:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hellospark.ca\/en-us\/blog\/4-things-online-marketing-might-missing\/"},"modified":"2014-10-17T11:40:47","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T15:40:47","slug":"4-things-online-marketing-might-missing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hellospark.ca\/en-us\/blog\/4-things-online-marketing-might-missing\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Things Your Online Marketing Might Be Missing"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my first online marketing blog,\u00a0How to Market Your Business Online<\/a>, I outlined the top 5 most important advertising channels for your online\u00a0marketing strategy. In this blog, I delve a little deeper into the 4 key components to a fully integrated online marketing campaign.<\/p>\n

\"business<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Goals and ROI Driven-Metrics<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    At our full-service online marketing agency, I am most\u00a0thankful<\/a>\u00a0for real-time metrics. Online marketing is fully measurable and easily highlights ROI (return on investment). However, you have to remain cognizant of what metrics are useful to prevent getting buried in numbers. The challenge with many marketers is the tendency to measure everything rather than what is really important. In the long run, mountains of data cannot add value to your online advertising campaign if you can\u2019t align it with your company\u2019s revenue and goals. If your business\u2019 goal is to increase revenue by 25% in 2015, then work backwards to that result. Are your sales primarily coming from phone leads? Form submissions? Facebook conversions? Identify what is important to your bottom line, and measure the metrics accordingly. For example, if your goal for 2015 is to increase engagement with your brand, then monitoring KPIs (key performance indicators) like bounce rate, average visit duration, and social media interactions are your ROI-driving metrics to measure. Optimal results are achieved when you concentrate on measuring the metrics appropriate for your business.<\/p>\n

    \"Pay<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Comprehensive Paid Advertising<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, SEM (search engine marketing), CPM (cost per thousand impressions) marketing, and CPC (cost per click) marketing are all fancy ways of saying, Paid Advertising, or advertising I\u2019m paying for.\u00a0 As mentioned previously, this is probably the most direct, effective, yet most complicated, of all the channels in which to market your business online. If managed poorly, paid advertising is often ineffective and costly. Luckily, there are professionals out there\u00a0certified in Google AdWords<\/a>\u00a0to ensure you\u2019re not missing anything.<\/p>\n

      With paid advertising on Google AdWords, Facebook, etc., it\u2019s important to test multiple ad variations. Create multiple versions of every ad; often the tiniest change in ad copy or layout make a significant difference to CTR (click through rate), conversion rate, and CPA (cost per acquisition). DIY marketers may require more time to gather data to compare the effects of the ad variations, but it\u2019s important to monitor the ads regularly to eliminate the lowest-performing versions.<\/p>\n

      Similarly, many online marketers forget the importance of using Ad Extensions with their Google AdWords campaigns. Ad extensions include site links, location extensions, call extensions, etc. These extensions create more reasons to click your ad and tend to improve your ad\u2019s visibility, which will in turn increase your CTR. And we all know, more clicks means more traffic! In fact, Google rewards those campaigns utilizing ad extensions and will often bump your search results above your competitor (who doesn\u2019t have ad extensions) at a lower CPC to you. Pretty cool, right?<\/p>\n

      \"Landing<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Landing Pages for Lead Generation<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        So, let\u2019s say you\u2019re running an SEO, PPC, and Social Media marketing campaign. That\u2019s a lot of website traffic coming your way! However, if your site doesn\u2019t have landing pages specific to lead generation, then you\u2019re losing out on a tremendous opportunity to turn those visitors into customers. What do you want your visitors to do when they come to your site? Pick up the phone and call the office? Submit a form? Subscribe to your mailing list? Ensure your landing pages encourage a specific behaviour. For example, if your primary business goal is to increase sales by increasing the number of online appointments booked, drive your traffic to a landing page with an easy-to-use booking form. Your landing page should be\u00a0optimized for search engines<\/a>, with a crystal-clear headline describing exactly what your audience will receive when they perform the behaviour you\u2019re encouraging. An action-oriented headline like \u201cGet Your Project Started\u201d inspires one to behave accordingly.<\/p>\n

        Most importantly, following-up on those actions is key to the success of a fully integrated online marketing campaign. Many small business owners are often too busy to follow-up on the website leads they\u2019ve received. Remember these are individuals that took the time to fill out your form or call into your office, and are hot leads! These are potential customers just waiting to hear back from you, so follow-up with all website leads in a timely and efficient manner.<\/p>\n

        \"Content<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Content Creation<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          I\u2019ve said it before, and I\u2019ll say it again: content is king! Content marketing is no longer a trend; it\u2019s the powerhouse behind every successful online strategy. With a wide variety of content types to choose from to create, I predict 2015 will see a huge trend in rich-media content like video and dynamic graphics. The digital video landscape is changing and evolving. Whether it\u2019s embedding a Vine video on your Facebook page, using an MP4 clip on your landing page, or investing in PPV (pay per view) or CPV (cost per view) marketing with YouTube, video marketing is sorely missing from many DIY marketers\u2019 online strategies. Search engines love and reward video content simply because videos are sharable, highly engaging, show up across multiple devices, and allow brands to illustrate compelling stories that speak to the right target audience. Most importantly, the mobile consumption of data is increasing exponentially and mobile phone screens are increasing in size with every new iPhone launch, boosting mobile video consumption even further.<\/p>\n

          If you\u2019re not yet convinced about the effect video marketing will have on your revenue goals, check out this awesome GoPro YouTube Case Study:\u00a0http:\/\/youtu.be\/oCUjAmW5yCA<\/a>. In it, the owners share their insights into the rich media platform, \u201cCustomers were marketing the brand for us!\u201d and \u201cAs views increased, we immediately saw a lift in direct sales.\u201d<\/p>\n

          What\u2019s missing in your online marketing campaign? Paid advertising? Content rich website? We can help! Check out our\u00a0free guide<\/a>\u00a0to the 4 essential components to any successful online marketing campaign or\u00a0get in touch<\/a>\u00a0with a marketing expert at Spark!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In my first online marketing blog,\u00a0How to Market Your Business Online, I outlined the top 5 most important advertising channels for your online\u00a0marketing strategy. In this blog, I delve a…","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,499],"tags":[810,741,523,566,539,524],"class_list":["post-4139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-marketing-mashup-en-us","category-online-marketing-en-us","tag-content-creation-en-us","tag-landing-pages-2-en-us","tag-online-marketing-en-us","tag-ppc-en-us","tag-seo-en-us","tag-social-media-en-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellospark.ca\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellospark.ca\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellospark.ca\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellospark.ca\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellospark.ca\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellospark.ca\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellospark.ca\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellospark.ca\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellospark.ca\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}