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Month: November 2022

7 Reasons Why Your Business Growth Needs SEO Services

Posted on by Adithya Kumar

Search engines have transformed how we receive information and research products/services. These platforms store millions of data points that connect consumers to various brand websites. 

Unsurprisingly, consumers enter 40,000 queries into search engines every second, and it is well known that Google is one of the most visited websites. 

Now that marketers know that this platform is being visited by millions of consumers daily, make sure your brand is also among those search results that are a priority. One sure way to ensure your brand is visible and can be noticed by consumers is through SEO optimization. 

This stands for search engine optimization, a game changer for a brand operating within the digital arena. If you decide to undertake SEO for your business, you enable your business to be visible on search engines so consumers can find you and your products. 

This is done because search engine bots crawl the internet and find websites that would give the audience the best result for what they are looking for. For the bot to recognize that you are a trustworthy source, you must work on your website extensively to add value to the customer journey. 

SEO is a part of digital marketing and has been growing in popularity over the past decade. If you need more convincing on SEO’s importance in business growth, you have come to the right page. This blog will list down the reasons why SEO is vital to your brand in the long run.

The reasons are:

1. Organic Traffic 

An integral part of running a brand website is to have potential customers visit and have a conversion occur. The aim is to bring an ascending number of consumers through search engines. Consumers stumbling upon your page and going to your website can be called organic traffic. 

This kind of traffic is vital for any brand as it is free and means your website is being noticed. It is also a priority since around 53% of website traffic is organic, and SEO is the answer to achieving those metrics.

The trick is incorporating keywords into your website content and ranking your website higher on SERPs (search engine result pages). This will likely drive more organic traffic to your business’s webpage. 

The significance of showing up on the first pages of the SERP is immense since first page results on Google have 28.5% CTR (click-through rate). The likeliness of your link being clicked on drops the further you go on the search pages. 

It has been observed that after the 10th page on Google, your CTR is 2.5%, which is unreliable for any brand. The image below shows how the CTR percentage drops through each SERP position.

google ctr per ranking

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So you need SEO to ensure that your website is showing up as a priority on SERP and that consumers are willing to be redirected to your brand’s product pages. 

Without SEO, you are more likely to be missed or scrolled over by potential customers. The importance of SEO in business is incomparable in terms of organic searches.

2. Trust & Credibility

SEO was designed to get your website noticed but also to make your website more consumer friendly. When your site link pops up on SERP, people trust that Google has vetted your website and that they can be redirected safely to continue their customer journey. 

By ensuring search engines and potential customers that their user experience will be smooth and reliable, you build an excellent relationship between you, your customers and the search engine. This way, your web pages will be visited frequently.

When you secure trust and credibility for your website, you establish a significant brand authority on SERP. This is done by keeping a few factors in mind while building your website. These factors include complete trustable links, an understandable UI, machine learning AI and optimizing the content on your website. 

If you ensure you have these covered, your brand authority and consumer trust will naturally improve over time. This is not a short-term process, as it takes time for search engine bots to recognize and decide if your web pages add value and can be trusted. 

Following Google’s guidelines to rank websites on the SERP can help you push your website higher up in the search results. The image below explains how the ranking metrics change and what you need to do to be ranked higher.google focus on the user experience

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By staying up to date with Google’s policies, you ensure successful results in your SEO strategy. SEO will improve your brand’s website and secure more loyal customers through trust in your business. Using SEO for business growth and credibility is a sure way to flourish in the digital space.

3. Competitive Edge 

Just like most revolutionary techniques in business, the initial beginning stages of SEO were skeptical as many marketers were used to the traditional ways of marketing a brand. It took time and many successful brands later to be known as a must-have technique for any competitive digital brand. 

Since it does take time for the results to compound and amount to favorable results, the effectiveness of SEO as a tool comes with patience. Today, around 60% of marketers claim that SEO is their best ally in growing organic traffic for a brand.

The results that SEO has brought for numerous businesses since it started have cemented that you might fall behind in your industry without it. Not implementing SEO into your marketing strategy risks not being found on SERP and losing brand visibility to your rivals. 

You can bet that your competitors are already optimizing their brand websites for search engines and are playing the long game for profitable results. So to avoid not taking the top positions on SERP, you need to apply SEO to your brand marketing strategy.

Once you achieve the right level of SEO you want for your brand. You will have a competitive edge over brands that have not done the same, and you also are in the running to compete for top spots on SERP with optimized rivals. 

Consumers will notice this online presence expansion and consider your brand an option over your non-optimized competitors. Your market share will grow along with your digital footprint. Looking at the benefits of SEO, there is hardly any business that can ask what is SEO in digital marketing and why do they need it?

4. Buying Cycle 

Any business aims to have consumers purchase its products/ services sustainably. SEO can assist in achieving a better ROI for your business. By incorporating SEO into your business, you open up your brand to receive top-quality leads. 

It has been observed that leads generated by SEO have a 14.6% close rate among consumers. This is a significant jump in ROI compared to traditional lead generation methods like direct mail advertising which have a 1.7% close rate. A brand can quickly see how far it can go with SEO. 

The ideal SEO strategy is designed to give you more access to potential customers willing to make purchases on your website. This can be done by developing product pages using suitable short-tail and long-tail keywords, which is an essential part of SEO. 

These keywords will enable consumers to find you better and visit your website. For example, if your website link pops up on consumer SERPS, this is the first indication that your brand offers what they are looking for. Once they click on your link, you can then direct them to product pages and get them one step closer to making a conversion. 

This will always be the case since consumers do most product research on search engines. Without SEO, you will have to rely on unpredictable and unmeasurable marketing methods. SEO brings trust and visibility to consumers; these are two pillars determining a smooth buying cycle for any business in the digital space.

5. Cost Effectiveness

Every marketing technique costs money, but the bottom line is that SEO has considerably positive returns for the number of funds you invest in the practice. This might answer the question of why SEO is important for business growth.

For example, if you decide to use a traditional form of marketing like newspaper ads, there is no measurable return that you can notice from using that. Instead, you will have to pay to appear in those ads repeatedly. Even if you decide to utilize email marketing, you need more data on how many people are reading them and being redirected to your website. 

SEO is more of a one-time investment you make for your brand that can churn out favorable results for you over the next few years. You will need to find keywords that add value or hire an SEO agency to optimize your website. 

But once you have achieved the top spot on the SERP. You will not have to keep paying to be noticed by consumers, unlike other forms of marketing that require you to keep investing money to be visible. The ROI you receive from SEO has a compounding effect, and you will make up the money you initially invested over months. 

Even more advanced forms of marketing, like SEM, paid search ads and PPC campaigns, require you to put significant money into them to ensure you get short-term results. You can see how the average PPC prices have been increasing over the years in the image below.image2-4

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If you decide to use these methods extensively, you will burn through your marketing budget quickly, and it won’t leave a lasting impact on the SERP compared to SEO. If you are looking for long-game tactics for your brand, then SEO is the most cost-effective practice you can have for your brand. Not to mention maintaining what you achieve is a lot easier than maintaining constant advertising.

6. Page Load Speed

Have you ever found yourself on a SERP and seen an interesting link? You click on it out of sheer curiosity, but the page takes ages to load up. The likelihood of you staying on the page and waiting for minutes is highly unlikely. This is due to the attention span of most consumers being short. 

Right there is the perfect example of losing a customer because of the extended waiting times of brand webpages. You are not alone in feeling this way since around 40% of website visitors leave a webpage if they are made to wait more than 3 seconds. This might be a short window to load a page up, but it is necessary to stay relevant in your industry.

Most businesses advertise online, and consumers use a search engine to do their product research, so ensuring your load speeds for your website is critical in attracting potential customers. Not only will consumers decide to leave your webpage if it takes too long, but search engine crawlers will also recognize this as an undesirable aspect of your webpage and mark you lower on the ranking system. 

Technical SEO aspects help you detect page elements that increase your loading speeds and help you make your webpage more efficient. There can be many reasons your webpage is not opening up in time. For example, it could be non-compressed images or text-heavy content slowing the page loading time. 

These elements bring down the overall user experience of a brand website, making your brand less likely to conduct a conversion on the website. Google, one of the most significant search engines, has also marked loading speeds for pages as one of the leading factors in ranking your website on SERP. So if you want to be noticed and stay relevant, you need to use technical SEO analysis to improve your page speed.

7. SEO Is The New Norm For Businesses 

Now is the perfect time to start if you are yet to invest in SEO. Consumers have a taste for scouring the SERP to find the product/ service they are looking for, and it looks like this research practice will continue. 

It will pick up more technological advances, which is constant. Most brands understand this and are trying to find cost-effective and measurable ways by which they can reach consumers on SERP. 

SEO’s role in marketing strategy might change over time, and it could be the sole method by which brands reach customers. This explains SEO’s importance in business growth. By regularly utilizing SEO audits, you can find out what works for you and doesn’t. 

The idea of bombarding ads into the consumer’s feed or the page will desensitize them, and only organic search will be the most honest way to find products and services. This is where SEO will shine the most. SEO will always be used everywhere and by everyone to the point where brands can reach consumers through different entry points like wearable technology and apps. 

Search engines themselves are going to be updated, and the next generations of search engines will pioneer more organic ways to make your brand visible. It is said that deep neural networks and machine learning that power search engines will be valued at $55.7 billion in 2025, from their humble start of $14.9 billion in 2019. 

With this kind of growth, brands need to invest more in how to get recognized with search engine bots and optimize their brand’s online visibility. In addition, SEO can lead businesses to new business opportunities and valuable collaborations.

If brands want to succeed online, they need to focus on SEO. SEO is essential for business growth, and the tips provided earlier should have made that clear. However, if you’re not familiar with SEO practices, the initial investment can be challenging. That’s why it’s smart to hire an agency like SV Digital that offers SEO services in Abu Dhabi to assist you.

Digital Marketing Strategy Guide: How to Build a Solid Plan

Posted on by Adithya Kumar

Marketing strategies have changed from being a single-use technique to test the waters of the online space to becoming the primary strategy for most brands that operate in the digital space. Unfortunately, it was rare for small brands to venture into the online space because many marketers didn’t know much about digital marketing. Fast forward to 2022, most brands have social media accounts, run ads on search engines and heavily rely on online website traffic to spread brand awareness.

Today, small businesses have an equal footing with larger brands in the digital arena. If you don’t know what digital marketing is, it’s the form of advertising that enables your business to advertise itself through multiple channels at once. These channels are found on the internet and can be optimized for better targeting and finding your ideal audience. The problem is that you have many marketing channels to choose from now, from SEO to webinars to email marketing.

Remember that to be successful with digital marketing, you would benefit from creating a digital marketing strategy for a brand or yourself. It will help you manage what channels to use, what content to put out, and how to divide your time and resources. This digital marketing strategy guide will list how to spread brand awareness on those chosen channels and attract more customers.

A Powerful Online Value Proposition

Developing the best digital marketing strategy allows you to reach different target audiences. This will allow you to divide your online service, catering to your current loyal customer base while encouraging new consumers to convert. By segmenting your content, you don’t bombard customers with the information they already know. You also avoid overcomplicating delivery systems and scaring off potential customers.

A veteran marketer will have many sure-fire techniques to gather the attention of B2B, B2C and D2C consumers to acquire sales and generate leads. You can engage with audiences on multiple channels by offering consumers value through your content. These channels can vary from search engines to social media to email marketing. A strong online value proposition through digital marketing can bring success to your brand in the digital space.

You Need To Be Integrated

A digital marketing strategy guide will help your business integrate better into the digital landscape. This form of marketing cannot be done on the side or given less importance than other aspects of your business. To be successful, you need to ensure it plays a significant role in your brand’s overall marketing strategy through paid, owned and earned digital media. If you want to stick to your roots and keep going with traditional marketing techniques, integrating them with digital marketing is the best strategy. 

Some audiences are still unfamiliar with the digital space and stick to traditional forms of media. For example, integrating digital and traditional marketing would be excellent to cover all audience types to ensure that all your ideal customers are reached. To ease the process, a digital marketing strategy would be essential for smooth transitional integration. 

Better Utilization Of Resources 

As mentioned before, stretching your marketing reach over many channels might be counter-productive for your overall strategy. For example, running ads or campaigns on every digital channel will be catastrophic for your marketing budget. So developing a digital marketing strategy will give you a plan for dividing resources and time. This would be more streamlined for your team to stick to and will ensure no confusion in the long run. 

You can optimize your digital marketing strategy with a plan to help you achieve your business goals. Big brands have the luxury of employing numerous advanced digital marketing tools and hiring multiple agencies for different projects. But without a digital marketing strategy guide, these efforts will be mismanaged and misguided, which could lead to a lower marketing ROI.

Now that the importance of a digital marketing strategy has been stated, it is time to dive into our digital marketing strategy guide for your business to prosper.

1. Defining Digital Marketing Goals 

To start a plan, you need to figure out what you want to achieve for your brand through digital marketing. If you are not sure why you want to pursue digital marketing, you are less likely to achieve success. Once you have decided on your goals, measuring the results and analyzing the data collected is simple. 

You must remember that these goals must be clear, detailed and measurable. The idea is to quote the numbers you want to achieve and the time frames. If you are not specific about these two factors, chances are they will not be achievable or measurable.

Being vague about your goals, such as increasing brand awareness or boosting conversion rates, could be unproductive as they are not specific. Any data or results you gather can be open to the wrong interpretation because of the absence of upper or lower limits. 

On the other hand, selecting a business goal like finding 20 new customers within a month is perfectly achievable and trackable. This way, you are given a number you need to get and the timeline. Specifics like this can motivate you and your team to achieve that goal. Once you have a measurable goal, you can start planning the strategy and delivery.

2. Selecting Target Audiences

One of the main advantages of digital marketing is that you can target anyone accurately. For example, many search engines and advertising platforms have mountains of data that can be used to find your ideal target audience. So if you are building a digital marketing plan, you need to determine who your target audience will be. 

A successful digital marketing campaign depends on reaching out to the right people. Advertising to the wrong consumers will waste your resources tremendously. It is best to divide your audience lists into segments and create buyer personas for each marketing campaign. 

You make audience segments to reach different kinds of consumers but with the same product. Your service might be the same, but your delivery to these audience segments will be different and with customized content. The messaging you use to advertise to a small business might impact an MNC’s marketing team less. 

So start by building buyer personas for each customer segment. Each persona can be created using various demographics such as age, income, job title, location, interests, etc. Depending on the demographics you pick, you can select what strategy to use on them accordingly. These personas will be aimed at getting to know your potential customers and how they react to your brand.

3. A Competitive Analysis 

This is an obvious but necessary step in making the best digital marketing strategy. Now that you know your target audience, it’s time to discover your industry competitors. Performing a competitor analysis is detrimental to estimating where you stand in the digital space. It will also help you understand your brand’s market share percentage and rivals. Once you know where the brand stands in the market, you can decide whether to have an aggressive or passive approach to your digital marketing strategy. 

When you conduct a competitive analysis, you need to explore a few areas to ensure you are being thorough. Firstly, you need to locate which audience segment they are targeting. This is vital because if too many competitors target the exact audience sets, the consumer’s attention might become saturated. This could also mean that if you target those segments, you will need a fresh and innovative approach to attracting potential customers. 

Next, you need to narrow down the digital channels your competitors are using to reach consumers. This could give you an idea of what channels work for them and how they approach publishing content. You will also need to research and determine where your competitors are most potent with brand presence and where they are lacking. Finally, going by the data you collect, you can put together a strategy to advertise on those digital channels which are not active so your brand can acquire more customers. 

Other parameters like the portion of earned/owned/paid media they use, the content they promote, and their brand tone need to be researched. With all this information, you can clearly understand where your competitors stand in the industry. This can be the turning point from which you can gain an advantage over your rivals and show consumers that you are a dominant force in the market. 

4. A SWOT Analysis

This analytical framework was introduced when you were in school and is very relatable in today’s business world. For those who do not know what this framework entails, it stands for strength, weakness, opportunity and threat. This is to define the forces that influence the market other than your rivals. Many marketers use this analysis to get a feel of the climate in the market, whether there are potential risks or opportunities and the scope of growth. 

To begin with, you must identify the elements that you can consider as strengths for your brand. Knowing your strengths is necessary to determine how to outdo your competitors. This process will also help you identify what makes you unique in the market. Next are your weaknesses. Knowing how to improve your brand in specific areas is vital. For example, it could be sales-related or a problem with your logistics or other elements. The point is to be transparent about the areas in which your brand might be lacking, so additional attention can be given. The more honest you are, the better the overall outcome will be.

The third factor is opportunity, which involves identifying the opportunities your brand has or will have in the future. You need to research and figure out the kind of markets your brands can venture into. Look up trends and technological developments in your industry that you can utilize in your content to give you a competitive edge. If any audience segments seem to be neglected, your brand could give those consumers the attention they need, leading to a new audience segment for your business. These opportunities must be realistic and align with your brand message.

The final element of this framework is threats. By locating potential threats your brand could face, you open up the discussion to mitigate said risks and plan for damage control. These threats could be a rival business looking to dominate more market share, a financial recession, or even natural disasters. The data you collect from conducting a SWOT analysis of your business and the market will help you build a well-detailed digital marketing strategy for a brand. You will be prepared for anything that could benefit or harm your business. 

5. Digital Marketing Plan Budget

Coming to the financial aspect of the digital marketing strategy plan, you need to create a budget. The budget will consist of how much your brand will spend on business marketing activities. This will help you divide financial resources between digital marketing channels to ensure you stay within your budget. 

When deciding to start making a budget, you must keep a few factors in mind. These will determine how your budget will be structured in the future. You base your budget on revenue, industry position, business history, business goals, location and potential profitability margins. These factors would influence the campaigns and tactics you implement. 

Now that you know how much you have to spend based on those previously mentioned factors, you need to divide your resources accordingly. This requires research to determine how much everything will cost if you go through specific campaigns or ads. 

While it is essential to fix your budget before you decide to start conducting marketing activities, you must leave a little flexibility for real-time adjustments. The digital marketing strategy for a brand is all about what the consumer thinks and feels. This can change in an instant and without warning. You might find that some campaigns are not on track with your expectation or that a specific campaign is doing better than previously anticipated. 

In these cases, you may need to reallocate funds to make the best out of an arising opportunity. Your budget needs to be able to move around according to the data-driven decisions you will make. For example, if your digital marketing budget has little room to be flexible, you might find it harder to grow your business in the long run. 

6. Select The Right Digital Marketing Channels

Along with a digital marketing strategy, you could also be making a content strategy. This would make sense since your content is vital to your marketing strategy. So you need to decide which channels you will be advertising on. This can be based on your audience segment, business goals and marketing budget. Since it would be foolhardy to conquer every digital marketing channel available, narrowing down the right ones would be beneficial. 

You would have had to define your business goals in the previous section. Remember, these goals would help you pick the ideal marketing channel to achieve them. For example, if you want to gain 20 more customers through leads, you could utilize Google Adwords. This platform gives you the ability to create PPC ad campaigns that are designed to generate quality leads. But, each digital marketing channel has a price for using its features. You could be choosing a few marketing channels, but based on your budget, it could end sooner than you think if they are not optimized. If you are not looking at the short-term ROI and want to think ahead, a cost-effective channel would be SEO or content marketing. While these methods are slow and take longer to accumulate results, they have excellent value for your money through the compounding effect. 

Another aspect to consider is knowing the behavior patterns of your ideal customers. For example, if you observe that your target audience is mainly on Instagram and Twitter, that might mean that those are your go-to channels. Likewise, if most of your customers are B2B, Linkedin and webinars would be the preferred channels. The main aim is that you can bring value to consumers on those channels, and in return, they will positively engage with your content. 

7. Create A Marketing Calendar

You have most of the elements to create a solid digital marketing plan, but now you need a schedule for exactly when you will implement these activities. That is where the marketing calendar comes in. This calendar will be a map you can follow daily to ensure you are on track with campaigns, initiatives and deadlines. You can also put down reminder dates to change your strategy or tactic to reach more customers. A standard calendar is usually for 12 months, and you segment each month which is designated for each marketing activity. This will give you enough time to prepare for each month and avoid confusion during the execution.

Be sure to list down everything you plan on doing for those months, no matter how small the activity might be. This will also help you keep track of the budget and ensure you will spend your money wisely. The level of accountability a marketing calendar brings is vital to keeping your productivity and team in check. Tasks can also be delegated easier when there is an overall outline of the activities. 

Different brand departments can coordinate to execute campaigns on time and effectively if everyone follows the same marketing calendar. Remember to make sure your calendar is realistic and achievable. Give ample time for activities to conduct themselves and run their course. Clumping many marketing activities together might be counter-productive, even if it saves time. Each deliverable should be within the budget and capability of your brand.

8. Develop Your Digital Marketing Tactics

Once you have figured out the digital channels your brand would want to pursue, you need to develop the tactics and strategies you’ll use within those channels. For example, if you focus on search engine optimization, you will need to research what keywords you will target and how you will target them. You may create a comprehensive content hub, online courses, SEO topic clusters, or online tools to implement them.  These will streamline your SEO strategy.

You can provide more detailed tactics like how-to information or deliver insights on upcoming trends, such as celebrity interviews. If B2B lead generation interests you, creating case studies showcasing your success stories might be worth considering. As you think through your digital marketing strategy, keep an eye out for new ways to set yourself apart from the competition because it’s about finding how to make your brand unique.

After reading this digital marketing strategy guide, it should be apparent that creating one from scratch will take time and effort. You will have to research and analyze data on competitors and your industry. After figuring out all those elements, you must create content and ensure everything goes according to plan. 

This can be overwhelming if you are starting out or have a big brand to manage. However, consider hiring a digital marketing agency like SV Digital to care for your marketing needs. They can handle every aspect of your brand’s digital marketing requirements and help you reach your business goals.

SEO vs SEM: What’s the Difference? How Do They Work?

Posted on by Adithya Kumar

Search engines like Google have been around since the beginning of the 2000s. They have evolved into the hub from which most consumers get their information and, in some ways, even more resourceful than specific libraries worldwide. Most brands know that the customer journey for most customers starts here and therefore is the perfect medium from which you can reach potential customers. 

So it is no surprise since Google observed that there are 2 trillion searches made on the platform daily. This platform is a launch pad for many businesses trying to get noticed and make their brand the go-to option for consumers looking to solve a problem.

Since most businesses know this fact, you can find yourself fighting to get the top spot on search engine result pages so you can get noticed. A lot of time, effort and money can go into figuring out how to show up on SERPs if you don’t know precisely how pages are ranked or how search engines can recognize your brand as a reliable consumer source. 

There are two methods by which you can achieve being noticed and ranked. The first is search engine optimization (SEO), and the second is search engine marketing (SEM). Both of these can help elevate your business in the digital landscape. Often, many marketers debate SEO V/s SEM: Which is better? The answer would require you to read on and decide for yourself. 

Search Engine Optimization

Simply put, this is how a brand can increase its organic visibility on search engines. SEO increases brand awareness and drives the desired audience toward your website. For example, a business needs to optimize its website to ensure it is an ideal landing page for oncoming consumers. This requires marketers to put together an off-site strategy. 

Most search engines like Google have algorithms that their AI uses to rank websites and position them when a user types in specific keywords. This ranking system is based on many factors, including content quality, webpage experience, links, etc. The main aim behind Google’s AI having such strict parameters is to give users the best results for what they search for. However, this can only be done if thorough screening is performed for rogue or spam websites. To ensure your SEO strategy is foolproof, you must follow a few necessary steps.

These steps are:

On-Page SEO

This technique requires you to optimize different elements on an individual webpage to assist search engines in understanding your page better. You can also find yourself adjusting your content to fit audience preferences. Other aspects, such as keyword intent, format, and comprehensiveness, can be included in this technique. The main aim behind this kind of optimization is to ensure that users understand your content, which will help them solve their queries perfectly. In addition, factors such as meta descriptions, titles, headings and images can also be optimized through on-page SEO for better visibility.

Off-Page SEO 

Off-page SEO is just as important as on-page optimization. This technique requires you to tap into your website authority potential. Now, this is also known as domain authority, which is vital in organic search rankings. For example, a website with quality authority backlinks will be scored higher in a SERP and therefore be noticed by consumers. 

Remember that backlinks are an essential factor to secure in terms of website ranking. Suppose your brand has an effective off-page SEO strategy. In that case, you can attract the right kind of attention to your website in terms of PR, social media, influencers collabs, and bylines, and you can build top-quality backlinks for your webpages. These links usually give your web pages more website authority according to the links they are attached to, which can be translated to the whole domain. 

Technical SEO

The technical aspects of your website or web pages need to be optimized. This is where technical SEO is beneficial, and it includes content management system, coding, scripts, page loading time, site speed, URL structure, etc. If you can optimize these elements, search engine crawlers will notice these pages and index them. The search engine AI will help get your site noticed if the website is technologically sound and stable. Technical SEO also ensures webpages operate within Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics. This way, consumers will have an excellent user experience, and your website will flourish.

Content Marketing

Finally, the last SEO technique is creating an effective content strategy for your website. This is a vital aspect of SEO since written content is one of the elements a consumer notices on a webpage. Suppose your content is well-written, informative, reliable and precise. In that case, Google AI will recognize it and rank your website high, thus ensuring the consumer that your website is trustworthy. The more keyword-rich and high-quality your content is, the more visible it will be to your ideal audience. 

Additionally, adding visual stimulates such as videos, images, memes and infographics will also contribute to how well consumers will receive your webpage. This incorporation will reach a larger audience and give a valuable starting point for link-building. 

Search Engine Marketing 

As discussed, SEO was aimed at organic awareness, while SEM focused on implementing paid marketing on search platforms. This is also used to gain more visibility for a brand in SERP and direct more traffic toward a website or webpage. SEM includes learning how the pay-per-click models work for ads, specifically on Google ads. If you decide to use paid ads, you must put together a budget, select ad types, run ad campaigns and write ad copy that captivates consumers. 

You must also be able to analyze various data collected when your ad runs on these platforms and determine whether your ads are successful. The ad campaigns can also be adjusted in real-time to appeal to different audience sets better. 

A couple of SEM components must be understood to take this marketing on. The first is bidding. For example, When you use Google ads, you use a paid feature to bid for specific keywords. If you use the pay-per-click model, each of these keywords is bid for, and if a consumer uses that specific keyword, your ad will pop up. The rankings of those ads are based on how much you are willing to bid. If you are the highest bidder, you can believe you will appear ahead of all the other ads. When a consumer clicks on your ad, you will have to pay the amount you big. This cost is known as cost per click or CPC.

Similarly, there is an equally important component called quality score. This is a Google metric used to rank your ad and to see if your ad matches what consumers are searching for. Google calculates this score based on a couple of factors such as click-through rate, landing page quality and your google account overall score. Google also gives marketers a discount on clicks if your google quality score is high. 

The next component is ad copy. This is straightforward and heavily influences your pay-per-click strategy. If your ad copy is well-written and clear, your click-through rate (CTR) will be high. Your quality score will also be high when you have a high CTR. Again, this would mean you pay less for a click. So with that logic, if your ad copy is of low quality, you will have a low CTR, and you might have to pay a lot more than you should. 

Below is an example of how you can manage your ad groups and optimize your ad spending effectively.

optimize your ad spending

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Now that the two concepts are explained, it is time to explore the differences between these two reliable techniques.

The difference between SEO v/s SEM is:

Cost 

It can be said that both SEO and SEM do have costs in terms of implementing the techniques into a brand marketing strategy. These costs affect ROI in different ways as well. For example, if you look at SEO, it is concerned with organic visibility for a brand that does not cost anything initially. But to optimize your brand’s web pages to be SEO effective, you need help and SEO specialists to get involved to sift through data and test different elements of your web pages. This kind of optimization takes time to see results. However, in the long run, some marketers observe that the ROI is much higher because the website will increase customers when optimized over time.

If you already have an SEO team, you will need to consider indirect costs like salaries, training, management and SEO monitoring technology. For example, hiring an SEO agency will also have your business paying a monthly fee and have an easier time setting up to start SEO activities. 

On the other hand, SEM is for short-term success. This requires paying for the services provided by a platform to use its ad feature. The effort it takes to implement SEM into your strategy is lower than SEO, and you will generate revenue quickly. For example, if you decide to run PPC ads, you can often budget your spending better in-house or through an agency. However, CPC costs could be expensive if they are run for long periods. As a result, some companies pay more for clicks than SEO functionality over a long period.

If short-term revenue is your objective, then SEM will surely be your first choice. But if you are planning for a longer-based strategy that could last up to 1-2 years, consider SEO your go-to. 

Time

Time is a factor that most marketers must consider when they decide to have a marketing strategy for a brand. Whether you are looking for short terms results or the long game, this is where SEM and SEO diverge, as one is a short-term technique, while the other is a long-term one. The idea is that SEM can generate website traffic almost immediately through ads and different platform advertising features. At the same time, SEO could take months to get noticed and have genuine website traffic directly to a webpage or website. 

You need to decide how quickly you need your results. An instant drive of consumer traffic toward a webpage for an event or promotion would mean that SEM is the better option. But if you are launching a webpage that has high-traffic keywords and will be used to drive traffic over a long period and have a collective effect on website traffic, then SEO is perfect for this strategy.

Compounding Value

SEO is your brand’s best and only option if your business objective is to stay on top of SERPs for years. The ideal strategy will ensure that you will keep generating revenue with minimal investment over an extended period. Most of the costs you incur are in the beginning phases of SEO when you need to create quality content and initiate link building. Once you have established your webpage on the top position of a SERP, maintaining it is relatively simple and eventually becomes self-sustaining. Backlinks are generated through organic traffic, and this keeps your rank high. 

When you work on SEO, organic search results compound, and your website gains authority over a domain. This way, individual web pages also reap the benefits. SEO is the only marketing technique that adds value over time. On the other hand, SEM is a single-use approach to marketing. You put in money behind ads, and you get results immediately. Once your ad campaign finishes, you can also expect the leads and traffic to stop.

Testing

As mentioned, SEO takes time to generate revenue and results. Therefore, even testing to see if your SEO activities are working will take months. After you have optimized your web pages, the results of using specific keywords and content will only be visible over time. But, SEM can be tested and monitored almost immediately. Considering how fast-paced and effective this technique is over a short period, the insights you collect are readily available to analyze using monitoring tools. 

Additionally, marketers can even text keywords and ad copy using A/B testing. Bidding strategies can also be tested to see what budget brings you the best results. The real-time data you receive through SEM can assist brands in building up more appealing and functional landing pages for consumers who visit your website. All of this is done within a short period.

SERP Capability 

The ultimate goal for any brand is to be visible to many consumers at any time. The best way to do this is to appear on SERPs. SEO does an excellent job at capturing the best positions for your brand on these search engine pages. You can occupy multiple positions at once if you can implement your content strategy effectively. If you incorporate map listings, video content, People Also Ask links, images and snippets. You can find that your brand’s web pages can occupy whole SERPs at once. 

While SEM only offers marketers ad positions, extensions and site links, this is for a certain period when you stop paying for the position; another brand could easily take it up. SEO allows a brand to dominate whole pages on search engines, while SEM can dominate the ad space on a page.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Since SEO deals with the organic side of being noticed by consumers, some marketers say that it has a higher chance of getting better CTR than paid ads. However, it is not surprising since paid ads are overlooked when searching for a product or service, compared to organic results that pop up when keywords are searched. For example, every industry’s average CTR for Google Ads is 3.17%. In comparison, the top organic position in a Google search has a CTR of 34.2%. 

This should be taken under supervision since it was also observed that the 3rd position on Google’s result page could gather around 8-10% CTR. However, it can be assumed that consumers trust organic search results more than ads, but ads are still needed to spark interest in a user’s mind and generate interest for a conversion.

If you review these differences and see where you stand on SEO vs. SEM, you can deduce that both have valuable pros and cons. The only way to determine which search engine technique suits you is by figuring out your business objective and ensuring you implement either SEO or SEM effectively. A helpful tip to remember is that for short-term results, you should opt for SEM. SEO is ideal if you plan to have slow but compounding results. 

However, managing both techniques can be challenging, primarily if you focus on your brand’s business side. This is why hiring a digital marketing agency like SV Digital to handle your SEO or SEM requirements is the best option for business. 

LinkedIn Introduces New Overview For Ad Tools and Options

Posted on by Adithya Kumar

LinkedIn ads have become quite popular in the last few years as more people realize their true potential and B2B capabilities. With the uncertainty of Twitter over the past two weeks, LinkedIn might be your best option. The platform might have predicted this shift in user perception of Twitter and decided to release a new overview of LinkedIn ad options.

This guide is to assist any LinkedIn marketers in better understanding each ad type and how their brand can benefit the most through each ad campaign or promotion.

This guide explains each ad type in detail and gives you a complete overview of LinkedIn ad capabilities. It contains information on LinkedIn promotion types and newer formats like Document ads. You can also look at ad requirements and how to utilize the available ad formats effectively.

As you can see in the image below, each ad type is explained clearly with all the requirements like file type, aspect ratio, size, image and headline neatly listed.

ad type

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The LinkedIn guide also explains the best ad type concerning the different marketing objectives you might have for your brand. For example, if you want lead generation, the platform suggests you opt for video ads, dynamic ads or single-image ads.
These should be taken under review since you know your audience the best and know what they react to the best. If you look at the image below, you can view the different ad types according to your objective.

summary objectives

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You will also see the LinkedIn video specifications regarding the minimum and maximum limits depending on the aspect ratio. Have a glance at the options below. If you implement videos in your brand content, this would be a keen insight.

aspect ratio
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LinkedIn has been crowned as the best platform for business-related social networking communications and has surpassed Twitter, as seen by some marketers. This could be due to the noticeable level of engagement that surpasses Twitter, and therefore, the ad feature LinkedIn offers would be equally formidable.

This guide should be used to its full potential, and if you haven’t already started using LinkedIn’s ad feature, 2023 is the perfect time to start. With all this in-depth information available, you can monitor the reach and reactions you get and reap the platform’s benefits. You can use this information to create the next LinkedIn content strategy for a brand.

This new overview will undoubtedly help brands reach their full potential on the platforms and assist many in understanding how LinkedIn ads are effective. If this all sounds excellent to you, view the guide here and give it a read.

7 Online Reputation Management Techniques for High Brands

Posted on by Adithya Kumar

The online reputation of a brand translates into how consumers perceive your business. How your brand interacts with consumers is vital to the success of a business. Negative reviews or posts about your business can significantly affect your online reputation. This can translate to reduced traffic not on your online stores but also in your physical storefronts. The age of being canceled or boycotted is in full swing, and how you carry yourself as a brand can make or break your presence in the industry. 

But not to worry, to understand how to master your online reputation, you must first understand what ORM is. This term stands for online reputation management, which could be the saving grace for your business if you want to succeed in the digital space. Being successful online matters much more than it did 20 years ago. Since around 71% of all consumers begin their customer journey on Google, how your brand is seen on search engines is also critical to your online reputation, as 65% of online consumers trust online reviews on SERP. 

That being said, every brand is fighting for the top spot on SERPs, and everyone wants the best exposure for their brand. So managing your online presence means being seen in the right light and being seen first. Some marketers say that 98% of online consumer researchers never go past the first page of a search engine. This means you must ensure you are seen first. Only then will your website be found, and potential customers can explore your product pages. Firstly, businesses need to understand what ORM strategies are.

The online reputation management strategy aims at creating a positive and trustworthy image of a person, brand or business in the eyes of the general public. When conducting ORM, it can consist of monitoring what consumers say about you, addressing product reviews, and customer feedback (positive or negative). You can also find yourself implementing strategies that will mitigate any bad PR for the brand or accelerate the excellent image of a brand through the digital space.

To manage your online reputation, you must effectively manage the different digital channels your brand is operating within. Each of these channels can be split into four main categories. 

These categories are:

  • Owned media

As the name suggests, this would be all the media you completely control and do not have to share. This consists of the brand website, blogs, videos, social media content and your pages on third-party websites. However, you can assume that SEO is critical in managing this kind of media. Since your web pages will appear on search engines, it would be beneficial if they were seen on the SERP’s first page. 

  • Earned Media 

This is the attention and exposure your brand receives through other businesses or platforms. It is usually free and does add credibility to your brand. This kind of media can be seen through press coverages, articles or blogs on other sites where your web pages are linked, such as forums like Quora and Reddit. Google reviews also play an impactful role in this media since you cannot control what people say about your brand on the platform’s business review feature. 

Earned media can give consumers the trust and positive reinforcement needed to conduct business with your brand. However, when you achieve more positive reviews, search engines will also recognize the pattern and rank your website higher on SERP.

  • Shared Media 

This kind of media refers to social media where all your content is shared with other brands and users. This means anyone can comment on the content you upload on these platforms. It can either be positive or negative, depending on the content you are putting out. You must pay attention to how consumers react to your brand online through different media channels. Multiple negative consumer engagements across social media are an alarming sign of changing your brand image.

  • Paid Media 

This media refers to all the platforms you are present on that you paid to have a brand feature. This includes ads on Google, social media, Microsoft and Linkedin sponsored messaging. This kind of direct marketing toward consumers reinforces the brand’s image in the user’s mind. Even though it is essential, this media does not carry the same impactful weight as earned or owned media only because consumers trust organic interactions over advertisements.

After you have figured out the kind of media, you want your brand to emit toward consumers. So it is time to figure out how to execute the types of online reputation management techniques to navigate the digital space successfully and safely. 

These techniques are:

1. Strengthen Brand Presence 

There are three aspects of your brand presence you need to keep an eye on and maintain. These are the brand logo, colors & fonts and tone. To start with the brand logo, you must make sure that the brand logo is visible at all times and on all platforms the business decides to operate within. Having the logo on display pictures of accounts and account banners is usually common knowledge. Still, it is also vital to have the brand logo on any public content, such as social media posts, business presentations and website pages. 

The idea is to have the logo present but not intrusive. You want consumers to know the post represents the brand, but the visual content is still the main highlight. A valuable tip would be to include the brand logo in the corner of any content, so it is noticeable but not distracting. The reason for continuous brand logo sighting is to reinforce the rule of seven. This rule explains that the average consumer needs to have seven brand impressions to be remembered and recognized. That being said, you should not overload the consumer with the brand logo. However, creating thought-provoking content is ineffective if consumers cannot link it to your brand.

Another aspect to consider when you are concerned with brand reputation is colors and fonts. Specific colors and fonts are associated with big brands, such as red being associated with Coca-Cola. So to earn a reputation to be remembered, you must select a brand color and font to use universally over all your brand outgoing messaging, such as emails, social posts and video content. The current consumer is visual, so you use these colors and fonts to achieve brand retention in the consumer’s mind. Regarding fonts, corporate letterhead would be advised for all company documents and online prints.

The idea of using a universal color for your brand content and logo is to set your business apart from the rest. The average consumer scrolled through hundreds of posts with different colors and visuals. So associating your brand with color would be valuable in creating a reputation within the digital industrial space. You must use your various channels to make sure your brand colors pop and make an impression on consumers. 

Lastly is brand tone. This aspect is sometimes overlooked due to the kind of weight logos and brand color hold. But, the brand tone used in the messaging sent to consumers is critical to achieving effective brand representation. So it is essential to keep in mind to have a uniform tone across all platforms and also a tone that appeals to your target audience the most. Relating to who your target audience is would make your tone a lot more straightforward. 

Personalized message tones in content would make the consumer more comfortable interacting with a brand. Using marketing jargon and generic slogan will do no business any good. Instead, your brand will be more approachable and recognizable when your tone is apparent across all platforms. To achieve the perfect representation of your brand online, you must improve all three aspects to make an impact in the digital space.

2. Perform An Online Brand Reputation Audit

Another element of ORM is seeing where you stand on digital platforms. You can only deduce this by conducting an online reputation audit. This will set a benchmark to assess how consumers currently view your brand and the challenges you are facing. Only you figure these out, it would be easier to focus on improving your brand reputation. TO conduct an audit, you must perform brand monitoring. 

To start the process of brand monitoring, these are a few steps you need to follow. The first step is opening your preferred browser and entering incognito mode. This is to ensure that your previous history will not affect your search. Next, you must type your brand’s name into a search engine, preferably Google. Once you hit search, you must examine all the sites on the first SERP. Your business should pop up if you have set up a webpage beforehand. Please go through all the Google My Business information that pops up. This would consist of ratings, comments, reviews and user-generated content. 

After that, you can separate the site results into those you can control and those websites you have no control over. You can usually control the narrative when it comes to social media. Regarding third-party listings or news pieces, you will have to contact the authors or owners and request them to edit any distasteful content out of public viewing. The best-case scenario is every negative opinion these sites have about your brand can be changed. Finally, review all the reviews and see the consensus on how consumers feel about your brand and products. These reviews are essential because they will assist you in deciding which platform needs the most attention.  

Additionally, there are also brand monitoring tools  available for businesses to use. These will narrow down the search results you have control over, what websites are associated with your brand’s name, your online popularity, and assistance in understanding Google analytics and website traffic sources (either external or internal). Finally, the overall sentiment of people is easily identified through these tools.

3. Encourage Positive Feedback From Customers

The impact of brand reviews has been mentioned in the previous section, but what is the effect on a brand? Some market researchers have observed that positive online reviews influence 90% of consumer buying decisions. On the other hand, 86% of consumers will be reluctant to buy from a brand with negative reviews. This is why having a four-star rating on your reviews is crucial in attracting new customers and elevating your online brand reputation. One vital practice to incorporate into your brand strategy is to ask customers for feedback and reviews. 

Consumers are more likely to share a review if they have an incredible experience or a horrendous one. The trick is to pinpoint where the consumer is happiest on the customer journey and suggest if a review could be posted or filled up. This is usually done by sharing a link that can take you to a review page. Getting positive reviews is essential to SEO for your brand as they impact SERP rankings. Platforms like Google will downrank a site that has poor customer service experiences and negative reviews left by customers. 

There are a few ways to request consumers to leave reviews and feedback. The first way is by asking them directly, either in person or through an email newsletter. Similarly, you can add a small pop-up on your website that suggests consumers leave a review. This process should be simple, avoid unloading other features like sign-ups or personal details, or the customer might feel overwhelmed. 

Social media is always an excellent outlet for gathering customer reviews. The numerous features on every social media platform let you use creative and fun ways to have consumers leave reviews about the business and its products. You can also have an encouragement program that would reward consumers for leaving reviews. One critical practice you should incorporate in the process is always to thank every customer that leaves a positive review since time and effort from the consumer went into the review.

4. Working With Influencers

Influencers in the digital world are a well-known technique for advertising your brand and establishing yourself in an industry. Consumers follow influencers and can feel swayed to feel a certain way about brands over time. Influencers can influence consumers’ thoughts through reviews and feedback on products or services. Some advertisers found that 90% of consumers trusted the recommendation they got from an influencer. They also are more likely to trust a brand that has been referred to them by an influencer.

This is a potent tool in a brand reputation strategy, as this could make or break your business. So it is crucial to seek influencers representing your brand the best and ensure that you are seen in a good light among their followers. What an influencer can do for you is increase your audience and the reach your brand has on various platforms. Not only that, but your credibility will make consumers trust the business more. Influencers generate a lot of views and impressions on social media through their content. It would be a good idea to associate your brand with influencers to better manage your online brand reputation.

5. Tackle Negative Reviews

The impact of positive reviews was discussed in the previous sections, but you must also keep an eye out for negative reviews. These kinds of online reviews should be addressed, and it should not be assumed that they will disappear eventually. The perception of a negative review should also be changed. It is not a burden to the company but more of a second chance to prove to consumers you care about their opinion. Finally, addressing negative reviews shows consumers that you are well-versed in problem-solving and customer care and that the brand wants to build genuine customer relationships.

So be vigilant and respond to every negative online review your brand receives, whether on search engines or your brand website. Thank customers for their reviews, even if they damage the brand. Once you have acknowledged the issue, you need to offer up valuable solutions to combat the issue the consumer faced. For example, if a customer had a bad experience with your product, offer them a discount on their next purchase or a coupon. You can also go as far as refunding the money spent as a sign of goodwill from the business. This interaction will help with a brand reputation as you will be seen as a business that handles issues and knows how to keep the customer happy.

6. Incorporate SEO In Your Strategy

SEO is known to help brands appear on SERPs in advantageous positions, but when you use it for online brand management, there can be a slight difference. The main difference is that instead of getting many brand web pages ranked on search engines, For ORM, many websites are ranked to acquire brand-focused queries. This way, you will be able to push up positive owned media on search engines and push down negative search results. 

The main focus of this SEO strategy is to optimize only entirely owned media to associate it with brad related keywords on SERP. For example, you can create content on your website that can be reviewed—building backlinks to key pages that can be ranked. You can also find positive brand mentions through events, influencers, digital PR and sponsorships. 

Being active on social media platforms adds to the strategy and also optimizes third-party sites where the brand operates, like Yelp and Trust Pilot. Google will consistently rank reputable sources higher on their search pages which will assist in your reputation management. Ensure that your website and web pages are credible.

7. Humanize Your Brand 

You can do all the above-mentioned techniques, but to truly connect with consumers, you need to seem more than just a business entity. The time when consumer awe at MNCs is over, and people are shifting to brands that have a human element to them. Now, if you run a small or big brand, showing consumers that your human side, as in the actual people behind the brand, always has a positive outcome. 

A brand’s online reputation is based on how relatable a brand is to the average consumer. The younger buyer these days wants to know the ins and outs of a company. They want to know who works there and who manages everything. The inner workings of a business are what consumers want to see.

The more transparent you are as a brand, consumers will perceive you better. The treatment of employees and different departments is vital to the modern-day consumer. For example, brands can use their online channels to upload content about their employees and how they do business. This reinforces the positive perception consumers will have about a brand. Equality and fair business practices are critical for consumers; some might not even budge about their stance about how they feel about it. As a brand, you can share weekly videos about employees from different levels of the company talking about their experience at the business and use that content on social media to improve your brand’s online reputation. The more you humanize your business, the more trust you will have among people.

These techniques will assist your brand in securing a better online presence and, eventually, an excellent digital reputation in different industries. It would be best to focus on what the consumer sees and how they react. Not addressing negative consumer interactions can also lead to worse results for your brand. But if focusing on these techniques is challenging, you are in luck. Digital marketing agencies like SV Digital can help you with brand reputation management at affordable rates. Contact them to learn more about their services. 

11 Reasons Why Digital Marketing Is Important for Brands

Posted on by Adithya Kumar

Marketing has evolved over the years to cater to more informed and resourceful consumers. This new user has emerged through the popularity of the internet. This called for a new type of marketing that could tackle the challenging landscape of the digital world. Digital marketing, as many brands call it, is highly adaptable and can be customized to fit the brand mission of any business. 

For example, if you are a business starting on your customer journey, this kind of marketing might be perfect for you to venture into. This marketing activity has brought success to many emerging brands through the use of SEO, emails, social media and websites to reach out to consumers. The best part of digital marketing is that you can get noticed by consumers anywhere and everywhere, depending on how well you are versed in digital marketing. 

The first step to achieving success in digital marketing is to put together a strategy based on your business goals. This is because you must have a direction for reaching your ideal customers to fund a digital marketing strategy. Fortunately, the whole umbrella of digital marketing is powered by AI, which gathers data on your activities and potential business activities online to figure out how to tackle the issue of reaching the right people. This is one of the reasons why digital marketing is important for brands.

Additionally, AI also decides whether your marketing campaigns or ads on digital platforms are ranked high enough to be seen. This is why mastering digital marketing requires understanding the different kinds of digital marketing. 

Some of these are:

Search Engine Optimization

This refers to improving your brand’s web pages so there is better exposure to the brand on SERP. When you optimize your website, platforms like Google will take notice of your page and position the business in a better spot on the SERP so you can reach more consumers. 

Pay Per Click Advertising

If you decide to advertise on search engines or social media, you can use a payment model that requires you to pay only when your ad is clicked. This form of digital marketing is popular as you pay for only those interested in your brand, which could lead to a conversion.

Social Media Marketing

Since social media has taken off over the past decade, many advertisers are looking at social media as a never-ending audience pool. This is why social media marketing is required to get your brand noticed by consumers and drive traffic to your brand website.

Email Marketing

Emails have remained relevant and are still a promising communication between a brand and consumers. So by putting together a mailing list, marketers can use this medium to send out marketing emails in the form of brand promotions or offers to consumers that might be interested or even to repeat customers. 

Influencer Marketing 

This form of digital marketing has become an integral part of any marketing strategy. Using influencers on social media or the digital space to promote your brand is a sure way to inform consumers of your brand and build a sense of trust among consumers through the assurance of an established influencer.

These are only a few examples of what digital marketing can consist of if you pursue it. You also have search engine marketing, content marketing, affiliate marketing, video marketing and mobile phone marketing. Each is unique and can benefit any brand that implements these activities into its digital marketing strategy. But why is digital marketing important to a brand? Explore the reasons to use digital marketing in the next section of this article. 

1. Brand Awareness  

When brands used traditional marketing methods to reach consumers, there was always a limit to where their reach would extend. This was based on their physical location and if they had various storefront locations. The potential of reaching other cities or states would have been farfetched. It was mostly possible for multinational companies and brands with the resources to push traditional marketing like flyers, door-to-door sales and billboards into other cities, states, or even countries. 

Digital marketing has pushed those boundaries and given the ability to reach millions of people worldwide through the internet. Even the smallest brands can reach consumers in the world’s furthest corners if they wish to. Brands can use different digital marketing strategies to get noticed by audience groups that will most likely find their products/ services interesting. The first step is establishing an online brand presence through social media, SEO and email marketing. But you can also utilize other channels such as podcasts, webinars and video marketing to attract consumers to your web pages and increase your brand awareness in the digital space. 

The best part about increasing your brand reach through digital marketing is that you do not require a large budget to do so, compared to traditional print or TV advertising. Instead, you can pay to run digital marketing campaigns that aim to reach audiences. This kind of targeting ensures you reach the right people without wasting funds on mass marketing. There is also the option of running A/B tests to tell you which digital marketing channel best suits your brand and will give you profitable ROI. This can only be achieved if the ideal consumers are reached and advertised.

2. Personalization

An essential part of digital marketing is the ability to customize your ads and campaigns to fit the ideal consumers you want to advertise to. By customizing ads, you can better target audiences that have the highest chances of giving you a conversion. This saves you time and money instead of targeting the masses with generic campaigns. 

This is possible because of the large amounts of data that many digital marketing platforms hold. Social media and search engines collect mass amounts of consumer data that can be used to create personalized audience lists. Once you build your customized consumer audiences, you incorporate them into your campaign strategy. It guarantees profitable success if you are detailed with the audience lists. The more targeted the list is, the better your chances for a conversion from a consumer. 

The data you have access to usually consists of consumer behavior and demographics. For example, you can create tailor-made ads or campaigns using the various parameters within these targeting sets. For example, if you are a sports drink brand, you can create an audience list that reflects the people who would most likely be interested in the brand. You can sift through consumer data and pinpoint aspects like people under 40 and people who like exercise and the outdoors. 

Using those patterns, you can make an audience set that will only target those people through your ad. These parameters for targeting give digital marketing its edge over traditional marketing. For small brands, targeting the right people is vital to gain more profits and reduce unnecessary advertising costs.

3. Lead Generation

For a business to be successful, it needs top-quality leads to be generated so it can turn into a conversion. The beauty of digital marketing is that one of the sole reasons to implement this strategy is to increase leads. When brands decide to take their business into the digital space, they make it easier for consumers to find them when they search for a specific product/service. It also gives potential customers the portal to explore your brand’s website and learn more about your company. When consumers see this kind of information upfront, it creates a sense of trust that can eventually become a lead you can pursue.

Now, digital marketing has a unique channel called SEO, which helps brands appear on the SERP. Not only will you appear there if you optimize your website or ad effectively, but you could also be in the top position of the search page. This will only happen if a consumer searches for a specific keyword linked to your site or ad. Elements of digital marketing such as SEO give brands economical ways to be noticed by consumers on pages like Google and better chances at gaining leads.

Most consumers constantly research brands to find out what they sell and what the business stands for before giving them their business. It can also be assumed that most top results on SERP are the ones that get clicked on the most. Digital marketing campaigns can be set to generate leads only and focus on bringing in as many relevant leads as can be sustained with the budget you set. You can also use other forms of digital marketing to generate leads, such as content marketing, email marketing and digital ads.

4. Customer Acquisition Cost

The above-mentioned reasons touched upon cost, one of the main driving forces for a brand to utilize digital marketing in its marketing strategy. Unlike traditional marketing, which requires a lot of capital to start, maintain and even stop, digital marketing allows brands to monitor their costs closely, specifically the cost of customer acquisition. This refers to the number of pays a business spends on acquiring a customer through marketing. It can be assumed that traditional customer acquisition cost is much higher because you don’t know precisely who the ad/ campaign is reaching and how much of an effect it has on consumers.

For example, if a brand decides to pay for a billboard, you can never measure its impact on people. Not to mention the cost of advertising on a billboard is a lot higher than advertising on Google. But on the other hand, economical payment modes within digital marketing make acquiring a customer reasonable and do not force you to overextend yourself.

There are a few reasons why digital marketing lowers your customer acquisition cost. These are:

  • You can target the ideal consumers and create personalized messages to appeal to them.
  • You can generate top-quality leads and improve website conversion rates.
  • You can run retargeting campaigns that guarantee conversions and automate almost every aspect of campaign monitoring.
  • You can also track your campaign results more accurately and make real-time adjustments that can save you resources. 

5. Digital Marketing Can Be Automated

Automated marketing would be highly beneficial if you run a brand that requires much attention to other aspects of your business. By automating your marketing, you can put out more inline campaigns through the internet and monitor them effectively without much effort. This also brings down your overall costs when you automate marketing activities.

Automation gives you more time to focus on your business and less time to try to gather data to fuel your campaigns/ads. For example, some activities you can automate if you pursue digital marketing are scheduling social media posts, sending emails, monitoring online shopping carts on your website and generating leads. You can also automate customer follow-ups and responses to filter out unrelated queries. Focusing on digital marketing automation will ensure you can scale up your business effectively and nurture more quality leads that will generate more conversions for your brand.

6. Targeting The Marketing Funnel

The marketing funnel is a standard benchmark to use when you are developing a marketing strategy. Each funnel section marks the consumer’s journey to buy a product or service. So usually, through traditional marketing, you could only target one section of the funnel at a time due to time and resources. Digital marketing, on the other hand, allows you to target the entire funnel at the same time. 

If you are going for the top of the funnel, you can run campaigns that would spark interest among consumers about your brand through a pre-selected audience list. You could also incorporate SEO, digital PR and content marketing to ensure every base is covered. The middle of the funnel can be targeted by giving consumers valuable information about your products through webinars, emails and lead generation. This would incline them to move down the funnel. 

Finally, if you are targeting the bottom funnel, you can use offers and promotions in ad campaigns to convince consumers to buy your products. This would allow consumers to trust your brand enough to engage with brand loyalty programs and make repeat purchases. Digital marketing allows you to perform these activities at once and gives you feedback about whether the three-pronged approaches on the funnel are practical. 

7. Tracking Performance and Monitoring Of Marketing Activities

For digital marketing to be effective, you must achieve positive ROI. It is necessary first to establish key metrics and track them. You will then be able to see which campaigns and channels are most effective so that you can improve your overall marketing plan. When it comes down to it, digital marketing offers plenty of tools for this process; they allow marketers to make real-time adjustments, unlike traditional marketing, such as billboards and flyers, which cannot be tracked in terms of performance.

For example, if you run an ad on Google or Instagram, you can see how many people the ad has reached and how many people clicked on it to be redirected to your website. You can figure out how well different ads are doing through A/B testing. You can find what kind of users react to your ad the most: desktop or mobile phone users.

Suppose a particular ad performs poorly or a landing page does not convert as anticipated. In that case, marketers can use these platforms to make changes – even small ones – until they find what resonates best with users. For example, tools such as Google Analytics can inform you how many people you’ve reached based on ecommerce sales figures.

8. Adapting To Customer Behavior Pattern

Marketers must embrace new ways of thinking about customer behaviors, which are constantly evolving. For example, a marketer who doesn’t take steps to adapt will find their efforts now become dated and unproductive. Online marketing allows marketers to easily modify their strategies in response to current trends without relying on outdated methods. For instance, during an epidemic, many consumers began shifting from traditional retail outlets in favor of shopping at digital storefronts first. 

This change necessitated a shift of budgeting priorities so that it focused more heavily on investments made through digital channels rather than offline ones, or you may notice one particular channel (like PPC) is not generating desirable results anymore. With online marketing opportunities available today, such as content marketing, adapting your tactics has never been easier than before.

9. Scalability 

Digital marketing offers many significant benefits – even for smaller businesses. It provides an equal playing ground and the ability to continue scaling as you grow. If digital marketers have a tight grasp on their campaigns, they will always be able to contend with large ecommerce brands like Amazon; all it takes is a proper digital marketing strategy to put yourself out there. 

Digital marketers can build powerful SEO strategies that’ll allow them to rank in new areas/keywords or launch ads on social media platforms while targeting audiences they weren’t reaching. They can also split up their content into smaller pieces which means they’ll appeal to larger audiences. Plus, thanks to automation tools built within some aspects of digital marketing, these marketers don’t need as much time/effort. All this reinforces the significance of investing in digital marketing today—as well as how great it could be for your brand.

10. Reaching The Right Customers

Digital marketing lets you speak to customers eager to purchase a product or service. Every person has different interests at every point in their customer journey, which dictates the kind of content that will respond best. No matter where consumers are in the customer journey, online marketing persuades people to take the action they want.

To attract people who would like to purchase your products and services straight away, it is advised that one focus on topics like the bottom-of-the-funnel keywords. You should also offer free trials or discounts, product demos or consultations, CTAs inside your emails and use social media advertising targeting similar audiences through lookalikes.

Traditional approaches don’t typically come with instantaneous responses because most consumers will have seen an advert long before deciding whether or not to act upon it. In comparison, digital platforms allow you to seize the opportunity whenever possible. 

11. Brand reputation

Online reviews play a vital role in how consumers perceive your brand online. Even if you are not very active on the internet, your brand could still receive a bad reputation if complainants and inquiries are not appropriately addressed.

One of the key benefits of digital marketing is that it allows you to impact your brand’s reputation positively. For example, effective SEO enables you to dominate the front page of Google for critical keywords. In addition,  social media monitoring tools enable you to track mentions about your company or other keywords. 

Negative mentions can be responded to quickly before they cause unfavorable feelings toward your business among consumers. You can also use various forms of content and content marketing practices across different channels to impact audiences positively, thereby having more positive reviews of your brand. The culmination of positive reviews left by consumers will give other potential customers a sense of reassurance about your brand and the products offered.

Going over the reasons why digital marketing is important, it can be assumed that this marketing is the future for any brand looking to be successful in today’s digital age. While getting noticed in the sea of brands online might take a lot of work, it can be achieved when you know how the digital landscape operates. Building a brand is challenging enough when you need to venture into an unknown territory of digital marketing. If you need professional assistance, seek agencies like SV Digital, which are experts in digital marketing.

The Complete Guide to Social Media Analytics

Posted on by Adithya Kumar

Nowadays, a digital marketing strategy is only possible by tackling a brand’s social media platform presence. This is no surprise since over 3.8 billion social media users are present worldwide. It is an enormous audience pool that cannot be missed by any business out there. As a brand, a part of your social media strategy would be to put enticing content out on these platforms to reach your audience, but another element is social media analytics.

Social media analytics are the metrics you use to measure performance on social media. This is usually done when you are running a campaign or at the end of it. There are many ways you can measure your brand campaign’s performance by analyzing likes, shares, conversions and reach. These are the few basic parameters that you can measure. Other more detailed social media metrics can measure ongoing engagement and ROI using different analytical tools.

Surprisingly, only 43% of companies have cross-platform analytics. A social media analytics guide is vital in numerous ways to a brand. For example, these analytics can show you exactly who your target audience is and how they spend their time on social media. You can also pinpoint which one of your social media accounts receives the most attention and traffic. When you are putting out content on these platforms, these analytical tools analyze posts and highlight what receives the most engagement and conversions.

You will also have a better insight into what kind of content does best on what platform so that you can adjust your content strategy accordingly. Social media campaigns can also be reviewed to determine what works well and appeal to your audience. This is usually done while the campaign is running or after having completed its operational cycle. Finally, analytical tools can help you build a robust and effective social media strategy that aligns with your business goals. These goals can range from marketing to sales to service management. 

So social media analytics metrics are essential for the success of a brand that is trying to reach more consumers and also be established on various platforms. This is a momentous task when you need the correct data. So let us explore the kind of information you will receive if you pursue the analytical approach to social media marketing.

The Different Kinds Of Social Media Analytical Reports You Need

First, let’s break down what exactly a report like this consists of. These reports will have data, such as the engagements and impressions your content has received once posted. That data will be gathered from all the platforms you currently operate in. Depending on your social media analytical tool, you can get one report at a time from one platform or a collective from all social media platforms you post on. 

This benefits you because each report is customizable, meaning you can extract only the data sets that are interesting to you and valuable to the brand. Below are some important metrics you can measure using social media analytics tools like HubSpot. 

These metrics are:

Audience Analytics Report

This report will show you how many followers you have on each of your social media accounts. It will also show the number of new followers you’ve gained over time, such as last month or year. An example of this report is given below.

audience analytics report

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Published Post Analytics Report

This report displays the number of social media posts you have uploaded to different platforms over time. Here is an example of this report:

published post analytics report

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Interactions Analytics Report

This report shows the number of likes, reactions and comments on all published social media posts. This summarizes all the interactions between the post and users at any given time. Here is an example of this report:

interactions analytics report

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Sessions Analytics Report

This report shows you how many web sessions occurred on your website. It’s based on how many consumers were directed to the brand’s website through social media. You can view an example of this report below.

sessions analytics report

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In addition to tracking clicks, shares and impressions, social media analytics metrics also let you know much about your customers. The following section will discuss how to understand your customers using analytics.

Understanding Your Customer Better With Analytics

Social media analytics can provide you with insight into your customers’ behavior, preferences, and buying patterns. Once you have cracked the code, you can tailor your content to attract more loyal customers. The following metrics can be analyzed through social media analytics tools to benefit your brand:

Audience Size

Social media analytics will show your audience size, including how many people follow your pages. This tells you how many consumers view your online content. Remember that an enormous number of followers on social media does not always mean you receive a lot of engagement on the content you upload. So, perform an audit of your audience pool to understand them better and curate content that is more targeted toward their interests.

Engagement Statistics

This metric has been mentioned before, but only because it is detrimental to giving your content the exposure it deserves. You want your content to be engaged proactively; the more engagement you have, the better exposure you receive for your brand.

Customer Demographics

Knowing the consumer profile that appeals to you the most is vital for your brand on social media. Once you have narrowed down the criteria of who to target with campaigns, it can be easy to find more of the same kind of consumer. This can be based on the age, income, geography and job a consumer holds in the real world. This metric saves you time since you will focus on consumers who will most likely give you a conversion through your social media.

Industry Influencers

You need more than just understanding your customer to have an impact on social media. You also need to build a relationship with influencers in the industry. These influencers are vital in extending a brand’s reach as they usually have a large following and advertise your products on their platform. You might not have to seek them. If your content is gaining traction, you might have influencers gravitating toward your brand pages. 

Social media analytics is excellent at identifying potential customers and highly functioning influencers through their presence and habits that are exhibited on social media. Some tools like Meltwater can also match you with influencers that would match your brand message the best. This is done by the tool reviewing the analytical data collected from your social media.

5 Important Social Media Analytics Tools For Businesses

You might find this section useful if you’re wondering what social media analytics tools are helpful for your business. The analytical tools will assist you in gathering data and suggesting strategic changes to make to your marketing approach. Here’s a list of some of the most important tools to consider.

HubSpot

This tool will break down consumers’ journey on your social media. The analytical tool provides marketing insights that are tailored to your brand and can help you understand what elements affect your bottom line.

Tweet Reach

Don’t let the name fool you; this social media analytical program is designed to help you monitor Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. It allows you to access quick reports that analyze elements like engagement and conversions.

Buffer

This tool can help you grow your social media presence. It will measure your performance on numerous platforms and create detailed reports to improve your brand reach and engagement.

Hootsuite

It’s a popular tool among marketers because it allows you to create customized reports based on over 200 metrics. You can monitor your brand’s social media accounts and the campaigns you run on them, as well as get easy-to-read reports that serve as benchmarks for proving ROI.

Sprout Social

This tool is another great way to figure out what your audience needs. It can help you understand how your followers interact with your content on any platform. The data it gives you can help improve how your audience engages with what you post and what tactics to adjust for better results.

There are several social media analytics tools available to brands and businesses. Each tool provides a different data point and functionality, so it is wise to figure out what you want to achieve in your marketing strategy and implement a tool accordingly.

How Social Media Analytics Tools Can Improve Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns

So now you have the tools to use analytics, and it’s time to explain how to put them to work for your business. Here are some factors to keep in mind:

Choose Your Objectives Wisely

When running a social media campaign, you always have a specific goal. Your goals can range from increasing brand awareness to improving sales to growing your audience. The analytical data you focus on is based on the objective of your campaign.

For example, if you’re running a social media campaign to grow your audience, you will pay attention to analytical data around the brand’s reach. You might focus more on engagement and click-throughs if you’re running a brand awareness or web traffic campaign. Once you know your campaign objective, it is easier to measure its success through social media analytics.

Select Effective Channels 

Being present on every social media platform might sound like a beneficial idea, but it is time-consuming, and you can think of better ways to use brand resources efficiently. By using social media analytics, you can observe which platforms give you the best results and which aren’t fruitful. 

Through the data you receive, you can make an informed decision on which platforms will give you the best ROI for your brand.

Tracking 

Monitoring the results you receive through paid ads on social media is vital in measuring the success of a campaign. You also need to track the results from ads on your website. Social media monitoring tools will help advertisers review content engagement, whether over a specific period or within a short period. You can use this analytical data to compare it with your competitors in the same industry and measure the campaign’s success. 

These tools can help A/B test your content to determine which posts will perform best on different platforms. For example, some content might be better for Instagram, while other posts should be shared on Twitter. These analytical tools highlight the best results for your content and suggest where your resources should go in a marketing campaign. This can be used to test different images, CTAs and formats for your content. Analytics also provide data about your most profitable platforms through performance tracking.

Strategic Adjustments

While you gather data on your campaign using social media analytics, insights you receive during the campaign can help you make data-driven decisions. This could be to change certain aspects of the campaign while running to ensure it is more impactful on the audience. This analytical data can be used in real-time and will save you from getting unfavorable ROIs at the end of the campaign. These decisions would be made not on feelings but on proven data.

This guide will show you how to track your social media analytics and how this information can help your business succeed. You need to understand what works best for your brand and business, then stick with it. Monitor your results regularly and make adjustments when necessary.

If you feel overwhelmed sifting through data and managing your business, there is always a solution. Digital marketing agencies like SV Digital handle every aspect of your social media marketing needs and provide excellent results.

9 Ways to Make Facebook & Google Work Better Together

Posted on by Adithya Kumar

Google and Facebook might seem separate entities regarding who owns the platforms, but for you as a brand, they can be used as a synergy. So if you are making up a digital marketing strategy, it would be beneficial to your brand to use these platforms differently to achieve the same goal. 

The goal is to create brand awareness and increase conversions. This combination is not new, as some marketers have realized that Google and Facebook ad services account for over 50% of all advertising revenue worldwide. This is no surprise since the platforms house around 2 billion users each and can be considered two of the most effective platforms present in the digital space today.

 Some people might pit these giants against each other and compare results to see which will work best for a brand or business. Still, only veteran marketers know that they provide different results to give you overall success on various fronts. For example, Facebook ads are excellent at gathering new leads and satisfying the needs of existing customers. While Google ads focus on consumers searching for the kind of products and services you are selling, it targets them directly. 

To link Facebook with Google can be challenging. These two functions must be used simultaneously for a brand to see fast results and profitable returns. The art is to master how Facebook and Google ads work together. Follow this blog to explore how you can utilize these effective platforms for your brand’s success and achieve your desired marketing goals. 

 The nine ways to use Facebook and Google together are:

1. Initiate Searches = Google And Execute Conversions = Facebook

 When you start a campaign and run ads on Facebook, having these ads targeting the right audience can lead to profitable results. You can reach not only more consumers but also cold audiences. If you achieve this feat, the number of users searching for your brand can increase; therefore, the number of brand searches on Google will also improve. 

Since most consumers use Google as an initial form of research about a brand, you will find consumers trying to find contact and product information. This is when Facebook comes into play, where you can direct users to the brand’s page and interact with consumers directly. Through conversations on Facebook, you can take this opportunity to give them valuable information in response to their inquiries and push for a conversion. You can also make this happen by running Facebook ads on various platforms.

Most of the time, consumers will see Facebook ads about a brand, go to Google to do their research and then go back to Facebook to engage in a conversation with a business. This usually happens before the consumer even clicks on the ad since we all know that clicking on ads gives more data to brands about your online behavior. So a cautionary measure is to research before giving a brand consumer data. Some marketers observed that Facebook has led to an increase in brand searches on Google by 34%.

As a brand, you need to use the business’s name as the keyword in search campaigns and link the messaging to the Facebook ad. This will ensure consumers can find your brand on Google. This coordination gives consumers a sense of trust and solidifies the marketing message you are trying to put out there. 

If you have been running Facebook ads and are ranked high on the SERP, this practice will still benefit you. You can test your messaging concerning CTR and conversions by targeting your brand name as the keyword. This can work in tandem with what ad copy is being used in your Facebook ads.

Below is an example of the Facebook ads that consumers might see, followed by the Google search result that works with the ad.

execute searches

automate the way you sell

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2. Optimize Retargeting 

Retargeting is one of the most reliable features linking Facebook and Google together. Facebook can be included in marketing strategies as an effective way to retarget potential customers for a brand if they have seen a search or display ads. When consumers visit brand websites after searching for them on Google, then advertisers can use cross-platform retargeting through Facebook. This can work either way when brands are found on Facebook and are retargeted through Google. 

Remember to ensure you are using customized landing pages for search ads and only send some traffic to one landing page. Segment audiences on Facebook and make different landing pages accordingly. Similarly, you can also omit consumers that have already filled in surveys or customer forms. This way, you will not annoy customers with numerous ads and lose their interest. 

An excellent practice to initiate is creating Lookalike Audiences. This feature is only available on Facebook and not on Google Ads. These audiences help advertisers target consumers with the highest chances of appealing to your ad. This is done by creating an audience list based on your top customers and their interests. This targets other consumers with similar behaviors and interests, which would result in finding other potential customers. 

You can also create a lookalike audience group based on parameters like consumers who visited your website through a Google campaign. This is how you can use the data collected on Google to complement your audience list on Facebook. Finally, be sure not to run both platforms’ ads simultaneously to avoid overcrowding. As we mentioned before, a consumer seeing your ads on two platforms constantly might create discontent for the brand and burn through your marketing budget by double targeting.

3. Tracking Conversions On Both Platforms

Conversions can come in many variations, such as signups, forms filled out, a sale or message interactions with a consumer. So keeping track of these kinds of consumer activities is vital to measure the effectiveness of an online marketing campaign. This data tells you not only how many consumers clicked on your website link but also how many consumers decided to make an effort to share their information. 

On Facebook, tools like Facebook Pixel are a segment of code that tells the platform when consumers visit your website and what page they clicked or navigated to. It also tracks the activity they performed on your page, such as purchasing a product, filling out a survey/form or including a product in their online shopping cart. 

Similarly, Google has multiple ways to track these kinds of conversions. This requires a segment of code as well, through Google Ads. It can either be Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics. The data you gather from both platforms can be used to audit your campaigns. You can also figure out what works for your brand on both platforms since they need synergy.

4. The Rule Of Seven

If this is the first time you have heard this rule, do not worry. The rule is that a brand needs to interact with a consumer seven times before taking any action from the user’s side. This translates to a brand marketing message being spread on multiple platforms. In this case, it would be over Facebook and Google. The logic behind this technique is that if users see the same ad repeatedly on one platform, either Google or Facebook, they will eventually ignore your content. 

You can avoid this through omnichannel marketing, which is marketing across platforms. The perk of implementing this into your digital marketing strategy is that it will speed up user interactions between the brand and consumers. So, focusing on just Google will take the average user a long time to encounter your ad seven times. This goes for just using Facebook ads as well. 

But by coordinating between both platforms and using the ads services provided by both, you reach the seven-point ad marker a lot quicker and thus achieve a consumer decision over a short period. You also reduce the overall cost of marketing by advertising on two well-established platforms since they have such a large consumer base. The platforms also have various cost-effective methods to use their ad tools and target consumers more effectively than other marketing mediums, such as radio or television.

5. Optimizing Google Ads With Facebook Data

Some marketers consider Facebook to have better detailed demographic information than its counterpart Google. Sifting through all that data and exacting what you need for Google ads is ideal for reaching a large audience and will save your budget. On the other hand, the data will help you stretch the campaign over time. Creating a specialized URL using UTM parameters would be best to achieve this activity. This is another segment of code you add to your URL, intended to be used in brand ads. The UTM links can be found on UTM builders, and the final URL would look like this:

https://www.example.com/page?utm_content=buffercf3b2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

All the code after the question mark is the UTM parameter. Once you have created this customized URL, you can use it in your Facebook ad campaign, and once it starts tracking, you will see data appearing in your Google Analytics tab. Using this data, you can create audience lists with Google Analytics Audience Builder. 

To access this tab:

  • Go to Admin and then to Property view.
  • Click on Audience Definitions (as seen in the image below) and then Audiences to build the audience list.
  • Import the audience into Google Ads, and you are ready to go. 

Optimizing Google Ads With Facebook Data

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6. The Appeal Of Google And Facebook Ads

It can be assumed that these two platforms have ads that give off a different feel to consumers when they first come across them. Google ads are logical, while Facebook ads are considered to be more emotional. This is because social media is all about user emotions, either through images or videos posted on a platform. 

By evoking the feeling of emotion in consumers through a Facebook ad, you can nudge a train of thought about a product or service they didn’t think they needed or wanted, but now they do. This is how users discover brands when they search for them on Google and come across an aesthetically pleasing website, and then consumer conversions can occur.

Google search ads are designed to target a user with exactly what they are looking for, and at the specific time they are looking for them. This is very direct, gives consumers the gift of convenience, and puts their minds at ease when looking for a product or service. This happens as soon as a consumer enters a keyword into the Google search bar, and it triggers the ad to pop up. Consumers can click on the ad and go straight to the landing page of the brand website. Again, this is where your website copy will wow consumers and accomplish a conversion. So, it can safely be said that you need to work these ads together to appeal to different customers, one being the consumer attracted by emotion and the other through convenience. 

7. Use Facebook Custom Audiences and Gmail Promotions Together

Marketers are convinced consumers still check their Gmail daily and scroll through Facebook to connect on social media. This is why Gmail-sponsored promotions are still used, with the data from customer match targeting. Facebook ads are also powered by custom audiences based on the data collected. These two activities go hand in hand.  

The way you can incorporate both methods is by using the ad set for consumers who are Gmail users. This needs to be done because the Gmail Sponsored Promotion (GSP) might have been avoided, but the consumer might be close to a purchase. By setting GSP targeting on the mailing list and creating a Facebook custom audience using the same mailing list that was used on the Google Adwords customer match audience, you achieve synergy between the platforms. 

You can then create another ad set on Facebook. This would exclude Gmail users and drop the bid on this ad set because the audience has not rejected the GSP. This way, both platforms share data and reach consumers who typically avoid ads from both platforms separately. Ensure to cap the list size so it stays high after the exclusions.

8. Facebook Store Visit Ads To Boost Search Campaigns 

Google Adwords gives advertisers the option of targeting consumers based on their location and also gives you the ability to add location extensions for search ads. While Facebook gave rise to an ad format that attracts users through store visit ads, these are aimed at clicking a CTA to get the direction to a specific store in the locality. 

This feature is impactful because a user might be looking for a product/ service. Still, the option of an outlet for a product they might desire can be shown to them and having an offer attached to it is a bonus.

9. The Power Of Facebook And Youtube Video Combined

Most people know that Google owns Youtube, so it comes under the same umbrella when Facebook and Google use the same strategy. That said, the video features on these platforms are detrimental to persuading a consumer to convert. These platforms reach consumers at different stages of the customer journey. Video content on Facebook usually appeals to consumers who want entertainment on social media. In comparison, content on Youtube is deemed entertaining and informative.

An advertiser can use these outlets and their impact differences to attract consumers to the brand. As a strategy, Facebook users could be attracted through brand-centric videos on Facebook to spark their interest and emotions and then directed to the brand’s Youtube page, where product/service-based video content is present to be more informative. This continuous flow of video content from one platform to the other guides the consumer through the customer journey, eventually leading to a conversion.

It can be safely assumed that this synergy between these two successful platforms will bring a brand to a position where conversions will be easier to achieve. Using only one platform might sound beneficial initially, but combining the efforts on two platforms will bring beneficial business returns. So be prepared to link Facebook to Google.

Some of these tips might be challenging to achieve, and you might ask yourself, how do I improve my Facebook and Google ads? The simple answer is you can hire a digital marketing agency like SV Digital to provide your business with social media marketing services to assist you. 

How to Reduce Cost Per Lead in Google AdWords

Posted on by Adithya Kumar

The art of marketing has evolved into reaching your ideal audience through search engine results pages, specifically Google. This platform is the biggest search page consumers go to search for products and services they need. So it makes it a strategic gold mine for marketers to advertise their products or services on the platform. Now the challenge is to be seen by said consumers on the platform rather than exhausting your budget. So while Google has made an advertising tool available for brands to run google ads and target a specific audience, you might need to pick up a few tips on how to use it effectively. 

Some businesses and brands that start on the platform use the PPL campaign payment model, which means you pay for every lead the ad generates. The cost of the generated lead is pre-decided on the platform. Once you start generating those leads, payments must be made for the ad to run without interruptions. This form of advertising can be structured to stay within your budget to get top-quality leads while also paying the Google leads cost. Remember that the average Facebook cost per lead across all industries is $19.68. So a good cost per lead would be around that amount. This blog will explore how you can successfully reduce CPL in Google ads. 

The following ways to reduce your cost are:

1. Narrow Down Key Words

When you start with Google Ads, your natural marketing instinct will tell you to cast your net into the vast ocean of consumers and see how many users you can get. This might not be effective initially because you would be waiting for your resources of consumers that might not be interested in what you provide. The Google Ads platforms functions based on specifics and how well you understand your target audience. If you can pinpoint exactly what your audience is looking for, then you will appear on their search results more frequently and get more success with leads. The more relevant your keywords are, the more relevant your audience will be. Please do not get stuck including broad keywords in your ad metrics, as it is not cost-effective and you will probably not get the desired results. You can always access PPC keyword ideas through third-party sites.

Once you have narrowed down your keywords and made them more specific to your product or services, this will reflect on the Google Ad platform. The ad copy will be more refined and targeted, while the keyword bidding strategy will be more effective. For example, if you want to find Nikon camera patrons in Sao Paulo, Brazil, you need to enter specific keywords to find your ideal audience. A broad keyword like Brazil will give you a large audience pool that might prefer something other than cameras. Including just Sao Paulo and camera might get consumers who don’t like that camera brand. But, including Nikon will narrow the audience pool to a specific number of consumers with the highest chances of generating a lead. This kind of directed and throughout keyword selection will save you money on leads that will not be conversions.

Similarly, when you know exactly who your audience is, you can match your ad copy to be more specific and have the ad speak directly to consumers. This would feel relatable to your target audience, as generic ad copies don’t make an impact on niche audiences. With time, you can make more directed ads and hone in on what your consumers want. Your budget will also be more streamlined for your future CPL campaigns. 

2. Observe Consumer Search Queries 

As mentioned before, being specific is essential. What also is vital to achieving a reduced cost for your leads is figuring out the kind of search queries consumers in your industry are putting out. This play a significant role in creating a solid PPC (pay-per-click) campaign. You can effectively hone in on your most promising customers in the process. By analyzing the search queries on Google, you can find the audience that would be most beneficial to your ad and the least desirable audience pool. If you figure that difference out before you start running your campaign, your ad might be clicked on by these uninterested groups, but the leads would be fruitless and will take up your time. This would also reduce the CPL in PPC campaigns in the long run.

Including negative keywords in your ad targeting metrics is an effective practice to incorporate into your strategy. This is an economical method of spending your ad budget. By including these words, you also open up new avenues by which you can explore new keywords that have better relevance and results. For example, you can redirect more money into the new keywords you find and stick to high-performing ones as well. Negative keywords might sound like a bad idea to someone starting just from the name, but they are the opposite. These words can positively affect the growth of your PPC campaign and help ease any staring on your ad budget. 

There are three main reasons veteran marketers include negative keywords in their ad targeting metrics. The first is that it assists in filtering out any irrelevant or non relatable searches. For example, if you create an ad for running shoes, you could put your negative keyword as shoes. This would prevent your ad from popping up on the SERP of consumers just looking for shoes rather than running shoes. Then, thereby you save money from your ad appearing on unnecessary searches. 

The second reason is your ad will show up on the SERP of consumers that want the product or service you are selling. These consumers would also click through your ad and give you a quality lead that you can follow up on. The final reason is negative keywords reduce the overall cost you spend on keywords by eliminating the ones that give you the least amount of ROI. Of course, your conversions would also be better when your negative keywords are included and the overall cost of leads will be reduced.

3. Conduct A/B Testing For Different Ad Elements

If you have been in digital marketing, then you are well-versed will the capability of split A/B testing. For those new to the space, this testing compares two ads based on their ad copy and design. These ads are shown to test consumer groups and the results in terms of reactions are analyzed. The main aim of this comparison is to find which ad format and content perform better within targeted audiences. 

It would be best if you remembered that the landing page you use for both ads needs to be similar so each has a similar customer journey. At the same time, the ad copy and elements like imagery and tone can differ to give a consumer opinion from different perspectives. The results of conducting A/B split testing will give you a better idea of what kind of content the target audiences lean towards and what drives the highest click-through rates. This will lead to higher conversion rates for the brand’s ads. 

Google Ads offers users different options when they want to optimize this testing:

  1. Optimize for clicks; this pinpoints ads that will gather more clicks for you.
  2. Optimize for conversions; this shows ads that will lead to more conversions. Then, there is rotate evenly; spreading the ad exposure over 90 days and optimizing it.
  3. Rotate indefinitely is when Adwords shows the low-performing ads more evenly on the platform, as shown in the image below.

These optimization options should be thoroughly examined and selected according to the marketing goal you want to achieve through advertising. 

A/B testing for different ad elements

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An effective practice is to select the rotate evenly option initially. This would show you which ad copy performed the best over 90 days and then you can pick the most successful one to fit into the relevant search queries. Similarly, just like how you can use A/B testing for ad copy, you can use it for landing pages. In this case, you stick to the exact copies for both ads but use different versions of landing pages from the brand website. So, for example, if you decide to test your landing page, ensure you click on the rotate evenly option. This will again show what ad performed better with your target audience. 

The A/B split testing can be done for any element of an ad to determine what is best for your audience. For example, when you figure out the most effective format for your intended audience, you will only pay for leads that will bear conversions. Instead, your overall costs for CPL ads will reduce because your ads are more appealing to the right customer. 

4. Use Location Reports To Optimize Your Ad Costs

Location is essential in how your ads will perform with audiences and how much you will spend on running those ads. For example, you should access Location reports on the Google Ad words dashboard to view that data. These reports’ significance is to detect the locations where you would achieve the most success. These areas would be hotbeds of potential prospects and audience pools that have yet to be exposed to your brand. 

To implement this data into the ads, you must first enable location targeting settings on your campaigns. After some time has passed, you can go back to the settings tab and under locations, you can monitor or track the ad’s performance according to which location you selected. When the data is located, you will be able to receive two different kinds of reports. The first is the geographic location report. This report shows consumers’ geographical location and the locations users are interested in based on their search queries. This kind of data aims to expose your ads to consumers who might not be in the exact location you are at the moment but might be interested in the area you operate in. Either for a holiday or business or an event. 

For example, if a user is situated in Kyoto, Japan, but is still looking for leisure activities in Tokyo, where your business operates. It might be worthwhile to include them in your audience pool as you offer leisure activities and the consumer is interested in those activities in your area. Similarly, the second data point you can access is the user location report. This shows the consumer’s location, irrespective of whether they are interested in another location. The data you receive here will assist you in targeting the right audiences and you will not spend money on less opportunistic geographical areas. With better targeting and better leads, your cost will reduce and conversions will increase.

5. Review Your Ad Quality Score

This concept is straightforward, Google will give you a discount on the cost you have to pay for the lead based on the quality score of the selected keywords. You will also have to funnel less money to secure an ad position. The quality score components include ad relevance, landing page experience and expected CTR. Your score for each factor is added and you are given an overall score as shown in the image below. The higher the score, the less Google will ask you to pay. 

review ad quality score

Source

Let us explore the different factors one by one. The first is ad relevance, you must ensure that at least one of your keywords is included in your ad headline to make it relevant to the ad group you have selected. The next is the landing page experience. This factor has many subgroups you need to keep in mind. 

The subgroups are:

  • Originality – This means the content on your brand pages needs to be original and not plagiarized from other sources
  • Navigation – Your page should be clear and consumers should flow through pages easily. This includes consumers viewing the website on their mobiles.
  • Trust & Transparency – All your product information and company information should be displayed so consumers can understand your brand before they share their information or make a purchase.
  • Page Load Time – If your pages load quickly, it makes the user experience a lot smoother and consumers are more willing to spend time on your website

Finally, the last factor is expected CTR. This stands for click-through rate and Google will assess the estimated rate you will get for that specific keyword. The assessment is based on the performance of your ad. To ensure you have a high CTR, only select keywords that are relevant to your brand and your ad copy. If you are too busy to audit the quality score for your ad, view the Shown Due to Low Quality Score warnings on some keywords. Avoid them, or they might harm the overall score of your Google account. You can also use other methods to improve your Google Ads CTR.

These tips are designed to help you reduce the cost of your leads and also ensure you are getting the most out of what you pay. This is a trial-and-error experience for any digital marketer and you will only get your desired result if you experiment with different parameters. It might be tedious and time-consuming, but the overall results benefit your business. Google opens up a new avenue to reach consumers for your brand, but navigating through it all is challenging.

It would also be helpful to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing using PPC competitor analysis tools. If you need assistance in your journey, feel free to reach out to experts like SV Digital, who offer excellent PPC services for their clients.

SV Digital is a global leader in SEO and the pioneer in Indo-UAE digital marketing services. In a short span, we have grown by simply helping businesses across the globe leverage the latest innovations in digital space to stay ahead of the curve.

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Contact

Office C40 - P1 - V106, Podium 1, Entrance 1,
Yas Creative Hub, Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Email us: info@svdigital.ae

Call us: +971 52 555 9163

Landline: +971 026668991

Copyright © SV Digital 2024. All Rights Reserved.

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