Tag Archive for: digital marketing strategy

Google Revamps Search Ads 360

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Google has revamped Search Ads 360, a search management platform, the company announced on February 8th. This update and refresh of this platform includes support for some newer Google Ads features such as Discovery campaigns and Performance Max, search engine support for other brands, a new interface for the platform as well as workflow improvements. The refreshed UI will start rolling out over the next few months. Google plans to share the timeline of migration as the year goes on.

What is Search Ads 360?

Defined directly by Google, “Search Ads 360 is a search management platform that helps agencies and marketers efficiently manage some of the largest search marketing campaigns in the world, across multiple engines and media channels.” The pros of this platform has been streamlined workflow and reporting features that enable buyers to run their campaigns more efficiently, and automated bidding is included as well to improve campaign performance. Built-in integration with the Google Marketing Platform allows buyers to manage and track digital campaigns across a single platform, enabling rich, cross-channel buying, reporting and attribution.

What’s new in Search Ads 360?

Supports new Google features. The new version of Search Ads 360 was redesigned and relaunched using the same technology that powers Google Ads, the newer platform between the two. Having this common technology as the foundation enables support for most new Google Ads features, such as Performance Max and Discovery campaigns.

Support for other search engines. One of the main selling points for the updated 360 platform is the ability to manage your ads across different channels, including other search engines. Search Ads 360 allows Google to add support for more features from other search engines.

For example, the updated platform now supports additional Microsoft Advertising features, which includes responsive search ads, call extensions, and additional Microsoft audience types like customer match. Support for Yahoo! Japan’s Dynamic Ads for Search and sitelink extension scheduling are also now available.

Google will continue to add more features and channel support in the coming quarters.

New advanced features for enterprises. In addition to support for existing features, Google is also rolling out completely new features for Search Ads 360.

“For instance, the new Search Ads 360 takes enterprise workflows to the next level by giving you new ways to centralize and scale your day-to-day tasks and key activities — like campaign management, automated rules and labels — and you’ll now be able to make these changes across multiple advertisers at the same time,” Google said in the announcement.

The company is also making upgrades to existing features: The “Performance Center,” which will become available later this year, is touted as an improved budget management planner with support for enterprise planning capabilities, like improved forecasting across search engines.

And, the existing inventory management and ad builder tools will be unified into one feature, which will be called “Templates.” Templates is also expected to become available later this year.

Refreshed UI. Google also updated the interface of Search Ads 360, borrowing elements from the Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising UIs. This may make navigation more efficient since advertisers may already be familiar with it.

More from Onimod Global

More information on the update can be found in Google’s update. In addition to Google news and other digital marketing updates, we will continue to share case studies and the latest SEO updates to help you drive your business. Our goal is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success.

At Onimod Global, we have endless experience and expertise when it comes to all things SEO, general social media advertising, and digital marketing. Got questions about Facebook advertising or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today.

3 Tips For Ranking Higher On Google Maps In 2022

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Whether you’re a local small business, a bigger brick and mortar, or anywhere in between, there is no arguing that your Google Maps ranking is one of the most important factors in your online presence. Did you know that 80% of local searches result in a conversion? If you aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity to rank in local searches coming up in 2022, you’re missing the chance to increase lead generation, attract more in-store traffic, and of course reach higher conversions and revenue.

But the hard hitting question: how do you maximize local search? Simple answer: marketing on Google Maps. Keep reading to learn what digital marketing strategy we recommend heading into 2022 and how to rank better on Google Maps to generate higher leads and generate more revenue.

Why your Google Maps listing matters

Google Maps is the most popular map app in the U.S. with over 150 million active users. Millions of people are on the app daily and searching for services to locate businesses meeting their needs. As you think to further market your business locally, you can make big strides in maximizing the benefits of Google Maps by ranking high in relevant searches.

In addition to how relevant this is to the daily smartphone user, consumers often arrive at business listings via direct brand searches, keyword searches, and local discovery searches. With so many ways to get discovered by consumers, optimization has several benefits, which includes:

  •  Providing customers with more ways to engage with your brand
  • Appearing in the local vicinity with high ratings
  • Boosting visibility of your business

Steps to higher ranking

  1. Optimize your listing
    This is the simplest yet most important aspect to increasing your visibility on Google Maps. This particular listing is what your audience sees when they search through Google Maps. If you want to help your listing appear higher in Google Maps search results, you must optimize your listing. This includes adding your business name, phone number, accurate opening hours, and all of the basics. Whether someone sees your information on your Google My Business listing, Facebook, or your website, this information should be the same across all platforms.
  2. Place products at the top of your listing
    Information just released by Google and Search Engine Land explains how you can now add product placement at the top of your Google Maps listing and your Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business. Read more from Search Engine Land on this topic here.
  3. Reviews are key to success
    It can’t be stressed enough how important reviews are to your Google Maps listing. Reviews are crucial to increasing your brand trust and developing transparency around your business. If the Google review is negative, you should always leave a response doing your best to resolve any issue.

Final thoughts

As trusted Google experts, our team is here to help with holistic digital marketing strategies including optimizing your Google Business Profile listing and ensuring you have the highest rank possible. Whether it is SEO tips, social media digital marketing, or paid media strategies, our goal is to make your business more successful. To get in contact with an audit and to see how you can improve your digital presence, get in touch with us here.

Top 5 Must Use Digital Marketing Tools

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Fortunately in 2021, there are thousands of tools to utilize for your digital marketing efforts. Unfortunately, this oversaturated market has made it overwhelming for many to choose the right platforms for their marketing needs. 

With Americans spending over 11 hours daily on their electronic devices, there’s not much space left for traditional marketing. And while digital marketing tools help you execute a proper marketing strategy, they don’t do the work for you, and some work better than others – depending on your marketing goals.

With such a large selection of digital marketing tool available, it is important to know how each one will benefit you to help drive results. We’ve compiled a list of the all-around best tools that everyone can use and benefit from.

SEMRush 

When it comes to SEO, SEMRush is one of the most effective tools out there. This platform provides:

  • Keyword performance research 
  • Position tracking 
  • Backlink identification 
  • Technical SEO auditing abilities

SEMRush also just rolled out a few new features that include marketing, advertising and social media tools. If you’re looking for a comprehensive, all-in-one tool, this platform is the way to go. There are both free and paid subscriptions offered. But with a free account, your data pulling abilities are limited. You also won’t get access to all the additional tools they offer. 

Google Analytics

If you’re in the digital marketing space, you should be taking advantage of Google Analytics. This tool delivers vast amounts of insight on your campaign performance and how users engage with your website. It’s extremely beneficial when running A/B tests, keyword performance research and more. One of the best parts is Google Analytics is free to use. They also provide great educational tools to help increase your understanding in Google Analytics Academy. 

HubSpot 

HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing and sales software that assists you in attracting, engaging and nurturing your customers at every step of the sales journey. This CRM comes with a wide variety of tools that allow you to: 

  • Host web and landing pages 
  • Create blogs and email sequences
  • Track interactions with leads and customers
  • Analyze campaign success and user behavior

Canva

Canva allows users to create graphic designs and content simply and economically. It’s great because it helps you make professional graphics, even if you have no design experience. With the premium version you get access to over 50,000 templates, stock images, video, backgrounds, clip art and more. It’s the perfect solution for someone who doesn’t have the time to use InDesign or Photoshop, but still get high-quality designs to use for your business. 

Sprout Social

While there are endless social media management tools online that all provide similar features, the best overall is Sprout Social. It’s simple to use but also provides many tools to make publishing content and analyzing data easy. They offer dashboards let allow you to manage your pages all in one place, reports to help you manage your user engagement and ROI and scheduling tools. They currently support all platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Sprout has three different tier levels for their plans, but they’re fairly reasonable. 

Final Thoughts

When there’s so many tools out there, it’s important to know how each will benefit you and drive results. If you’re not using them correctly, or missing a few key ones you’re likely wasting time, effort and energy better put into other aspects of perfecting your marketing. That’s why sometimes, your best tool is a marketing partner. Someone who knows which tools are the best for your business, will help improve your marketing and drive success. 

At Onimod Global, we have endless experience and expertise when it comes to digital marketing tools. Meaning it’s simple for use to identify which are right for you. Got questions about marketing tools or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today. 

Social Media Design Mistakes All Marketers Should Avoid

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Social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest in particular, have become a vital part of every marketer’s toolkit. But just posting carelessly is not enough. If your content isn’t reaching or engaging as many users as you’d hope for, there could be a specific reason. It’s quality over quantity when it comes to social media posts, and graphics are essential for success. Small changes can make a huge difference when it comes to design.  

Keep reading to learn the top 5 mistakes to avoid when it comes to social media design. 

Blurry Images 

If your image file is too small and has to stretch, this usually results in pixilation and poor quality. This can make your brand look unprofessional and are rarely shared by other users. Make sure the images you post to your pages are high-resolution and are the right dimension for the platform. 

Hard to Read Fonts 

While a font may be pretty, it might not be the best for social media. When users are scrolling, you want to make your graphics eye-catching, but clear and easy to read. When you have limited time to get your message across, you want to make it count. Many marketers go with Sans- Serif fonts because they’re modern, simplistic and good for digital screens. 

Limited Viewing Options

Most social media users scroll via mobile devices. So you need to make sure your designs transfer from desktop to mobile. It’s important to always keep in mind that not all graphics are one-size-fits all, especially when going from platform to platform. When your channels and audience varies, so should the style of your content. 

Stock Imagery 

Authentic content is key when it comes to social media. Users like to feel connected to brands and get a peek behind the curtain. Taking your own photos is one way to support this connection. 

It should be noted we’re not suggesting to never use stock photos. They do have their place, as adding royalty-free images to blog posts or articles are a convenient way to compliment your message. 

Too Much Clutter

A common mistake made with design is filling up every inch of space. This looks cluttered and can confuse users. Negative space is essential with good design, as the background is just as important as the imagery. White space helps direct the eyes of your audience to important points of your content, helping you get your message across in the most efficient way. 

Social Media Marketing with Onimod Global 

When you take the time to plan, create and customize your graphics to suit your brand and preferred social platforms, the results are worth it. Sometimes, outsourcing these efforts can make a world of difference. At Onimod Global, we’re experts in social media, digital marketing and graphic design. We offer high-end design and branding for your business, as well as the ability to boost social reach, engagement and conversions. Ready to bring your social media marketing to the next level? Contact us today.

5 Ways to Improve Your Website’s CTAs

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The CTA is a key element to any effective webpage. It lets users know what to do, helping them move through their buyer journey and ultimately works to increase conversions. Continue reading to learn more about CTAs, as well as 5 strategies to make yours stronger. 

What is a CTA? 

A call to action (CTA) is a prompt on a website that tells visitors to take a specified action. They’re typically written as a command or action phrase, like ‘Sign Up’ or ‘Download’ and generally take the form of a button or hyperlink. 

5 Ways to Improve Your CTAs:

1. Pick the right color and design. 

The look of your CTA has an immense impact on its effectiveness. The main consideration should be visibility. If users don’t notice your CTA, they’re not going to click on it. This is why experts recommend using a button, rather than a text link. After landing on a design, you have to consider color, which also has a large impact on effectiveness. 

Keep in mind that different colors have varying connotations, especially when it comes to marketing. For example, red induces urgency, while blue is considered trustworthy and black is seen as luxurious. It’s also essential to consider how the color fits with your brand identity and how it contrasts with your site’s color scheme to draw attention. 

2. Choose compelling, but careful words. 

What your CTA actually says is just as important as the design. The message should be short, simple, clear and concise. Obviously, the message itself will vary depending on what you want your visitors to do, but it should still follow these rules. Being specific and concise beats out vagueness every time. You should also focus on using positive sentiments and power words to make your copy more persuasive. 

3. Use scarcity and free trials. 

An important aspect of a successful CTA that people often don’t think of is making sure to include the benefits for the user. People are much more likely to click on something when they can see a clear, positive outcome. You can also play to users’ fear of missing out, or (FOMO) by offering deals for a limited time. Whatever strategy you go with, the key is to make the offer clear. 

4. Choose the correct locations. 

The final important aspect to a successful CTA is location. Most users read websites in an F-shaped pattern, according to a study by Nielsen Norman Group. Because of this, it’s best to place your CTA higher up on your web pages. 

While you want users to have multiple opportunities and exposure to your CTAs, they should still be used sparingly. Every CTA should have a purpose. Bombarding users with pop-ups and buttons can confuse them or come across as spam-y. This all could result in a decrease of clicks or increase your bounce rate. 

5. A/B Test

Lastly, it’s essential to A/B test all of the variables we discussed above with different options. You’ll never know what truly performs best if it’s never been compared to other options. 

Final Thoughts

A strong CTA can make the difference between a purchase and a lost sale. Your CTA is where you get the chance to directly influence your visitors to make it to the end of their buyer journey. If you’re struggling to increase your online conversions, sometimes it’s best to rely on an expert, digital marketing agency. At Onimod Global, we are your in-house in-house marketing team, working for you, creating cross-channel digital marketing campaigns driven by machine learning analytics and human intelligence. 

Learn more about who we are, and get started today. 

4 Tips to Improve Your Online Webinars and Increase Business Success

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Webinars can be an extremely effective tool to educate your audience, while moving leads down the sales funnel. While planning a webinar can be simple, keeping viewers engaged and driving results can be difficult. Let’s explore 4 effective ways you can work to improve your webinar and support your overall business goals. 

1. Ask Questions and Include Polls 

A great way to keep attendees engaged during the presentation is to ask questions that require the use of the chat box feature. Asking questions throughout the webinar makes sure that your audience is paying attention or draws them back in if they’ve been multitasking. Incorporating poll questions is also a good way to keep your attendees engaged. These questions should be centered around your content and getting audience feedback on their thoughts on it. It’s also important to give your attendees enough time to think about the question and provide meaningful answers. Between 30-60 seconds is best practice. It can also be helpful to share the results of the polls with all viewers. This is a great way to gauge where your audience is at and help other attendees learn what their peers have experienced in this industry. 

2. Offer Incentives

Another simple way to improve engagement is to offer incentives related to the webinar content. Let attendees know if they participate in polls, answer questions or stay till the end of the webinar they could be entered in a giveaway for prizes. An additional way to increase reach is by asking attendees to mention you on social media and include a specific hashtag in a post and enter those users into a prize drawing as well. 

3. Distribute Recordings Following the Webinar 

Even after the webinar is over, you can continue to reap the benefits. Consider recording your webinars to create an on-demand version and distribute it through multiple channels. By posting a recorded version of the event, you can actually exceed your registrant totals and market to a new audience. As best practice, on-demand webinars should be gated. Webinars are considered premium content assets and are likely being viewed by users who did not sign up for the original event recording. We suggest letting your audience watch around 5% of the webinar and then present a form for them to complete to continue watching. 

4. Create Automated Programs to Follow-Up with Attendees 

Following the webinar, it’s best practice to create automated programs that consist of 4-5 emails that continue to showcase your organization as a thought leader in your space. The messaging should be centered around your products or services and how they can solve your audiences’ pain points. Be sure to also include strong CTAs in all of your messaging as well. 

Final Thoughts

If you want to reach out to a broad audience, and boost your engagement and conversion rate, webinars are the way forward.

If done right, webinars can be better than visiting prospects personally or jumping on a call with them. The biggest benefit here is that it provides an online space to nurture your seasoned, quality leads. On the other hand, you can also leverage webinars to form a great first impression. If you’re looking to up the engagement of your webinars, follow the simple tips we’ve outlined in today’s blog. 

In need of additional webinar help? Sometimes, relying on digital marketing experts that specialize in webinar hosting and marketing campaigns is the best way to ensure results. At Onimod Global, we help hundreds of clients, nationally and internally, develop and execute webinars to generate leads and drive sales. 

Ready to get started? Contact us here today. 

Four Ways to Improve Your Customer Journey

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Improving your customer journey can have a major impact on your bottom line. To improve your customer journey you have to identify the gaps in your service delivery to your customers, as well as focus your efforts on providing the desired experience at every stage of the sales funnel. 

Here are four ways you can work to improve your customer journey. 

1. Identify pain points. 

Analyze your touch points to determine if there are areas where customers have difficulties. These are the points that customers will remember the most, so you’ll want to remove these points if possible. While not all pain points can be completely removed, so focus in on other elements that can make the experience better for customers. 

2. Remove unnecessary steps. 

Similar to tip number one, you’ll also want to analyze all touch points to determine if you have any unnecessary steps required to perform an action. Try to minimize the effort (time, cost, steps, reasoning) your customers need to give in order to get to the core of your products or services. 

3. Answer questions in advance. 

Think about what types of questions customers might have or tips that would make purchases easier for them. You can add these to your website’s FAQ page or create other content around these topics, such as case studies, videos, blogs, etc. The key factor is that you answer questions in advance, so a question doesn’t turn into a complaint or prevent people from making a purchase. 

4. Personalize your content. 

Monitor customer interactions to understand the unique needs of each customer. This insight can help you to personalize messages to each of your customers so they feel that they have a real relationship with you and that their needs are being taken care of. 

Final Thoughts

As customers become savvier and more empowered, it makes the customer journey experience even more important. When you put a greater focus on customer experience strategy, your results can have a positive impact on customer loyalty, higher retention and increased revenue growth. 

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Simple Ways to Reduce Your Website’s Bounce Rate

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If your website is struggling to generate traffic and leads, it could be due to a high bounce rate. While reducing bounce rate doesn’t automatically mean you’ll increase conversions, it could help. The ultimate goal is to increase engagement, user satisfaction and making it easier for them to find what they’re searching for. 

With that, here are 5 simple ways to improve your website’s bounce rate. 

What is Bounce Rate?

A bounce is a single-page session on your site. Is a high bounce rate a bad thing? According to Google, it depends on what determines the success of your website. For example, if users come to your homepage first but you want them to get to your sales page, then you don’t want a high bounce rate. A high bounce rate can also indicate that your visitors may not be engaged or satisfied with your site. Ultimately, we work to reduce bounce rate because it can also mean you’re making users happier and delivering them what they’re searching for. 

1. Increasing Page Speed

The longer a user has to wait for the site to load, the more likely they’ll leave. So, making your website faster is one of the easiest ways to reduce your bounce rate. Also, speed is a Google ranking factor, so it can help improve your SEO as well. Some simple ways to improve website’s page load speed is through: 

  • Optimizing images and video: Make sure they’re all sized appropriately and compressed. 
  • Leverage a caching, page speed plugin. 
  • Upgrading your web hosting package. 

2. Strong CTAs

No matter what your conversion goal is, the best way to improve your CTA is by including ranking keywords in the CTA itself. To accomplish this, you can go to the Google Search Console, determine what your pages are actually ranking for, take the top keywords and include them into the CTA. For example, if your conversion goal is to get visitors to download a white paper, your CTA would say “Download my white paper.” This is a lot more powerful than using a generic vocabulary. 

3. Use an Inverted Pyramid Writing Style 

If a person lands on your website from a search engine, it’s likely they’re searching for an answer for something. We want to draw them into your content and hook them in as soon as possible. With the inverted pyramid style of writing, you include the most important information in the beginning, then go into more details and give the least important information last. This also helps to create more engaging content that’s clean and has a good flow. 

4. Add Visual Appeal  

Visual content, such as photos and videos, always has higher engagement rates. This is due to videos and images being easier to consume than standard text. If you have a longer piece of content, it’s best to try to turn that into video form. It’s more likely for users to watch a long video than read a long blog, for example. It’s also easier to draw people in with visual content. And hopefully, once you’ve drawn them in, you can get them to convert. 

5. Make Site Search Simple

Lastly, it’s important to make it easy for users to search your site. If you can provide an easy search experience for users, it’s less likely they’ll bounce back to Google to search elsewhere. The longer you can keep them on your site, the more engaged they are and the more opportunity you have to persuade them to convert. 

Contact Onimod Global

Struggling to make your landing page convert or just need some digital marketing advice? Contact us! We are experts in all things digital marketing including SEM, Web Dev, Automation, Analytics, and much more. Learn more about what we do here, or keep up to date with all things digital marketing on our news page.

 

Tips for Performing a Successful Brand Audit to Improve Your Marketing

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Conducting a brand audit can help you understand where you stand within your market and in the minds of your consumers. More specifically, you can: 

  • Identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
  • Discover positive and negative perceptions of your brand 
  • Align offerings with consumer expectations 
  • Determine where you stand among competitors 
  • Adjust your overall brand strategy 

Follow these necessary steps to perform a successful brand audit, check in on your brand’s health and ultimately improve your marketing strategy.

1. Create a Brand Audit Template 

It’s beneficial to set up an analysis template to guide your brand audit process. Prior to getting started, you should build a framework around how you will actually conduct it. If you’re doing this internally, you’ll want a guide to follow so that the collected data can be put into action. It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers, so you want to identify the data that actually means something to your business. 

You can define your framework with a checklist of what should be examined and the methods you’ll use to do it. It’s also helpful to organize the list by internal and external brand elements. 

2. Examine Your Website’s Analytics 

Just because a website is visually appealing doesn’t necessarily mean it’s high-performing. If your website isn’t converting, it’s crucial that you understand why. Analytics you should be looking at include: 

  • Traffic 
  • Page views 
  • Bounce rate 
  • Conversion rate 

There are plenty of tools that can provide website analytics but we recommend Google Analytics, as it provides rich performance data, both historic and in real-time. 

3. Analyze Your Sales Stats 

This is one of the best ways to get insight regarding both customer and industry trends. An in-depth sales analysis can show customer buying patterns, which you can then use to redirect your focus. Some things to look for are irregular dips in sales, change in buyer location and competitors offerings. 

4. Take a Look at Your Social Media Metrics 

Social media contains mass amounts of information on your consumers that you can’t get anywhere else. It’s important to analyze your demographic data to have an understanding of who your social media audience actually is. Because it’s common that our target customers may not be the ones interacting with us on social media. Analyzing social data will help you identify who engages with your channels the most, allowing you to reevaluate your communication strategy accordingly to get the most out of your efforts. 

5. Observe Competitors 

To get a full understanding of your own brand health, you also have to determine how your competitors are performing. Some things to check include: 

  • The type of content they’re writing
  • Any brand partnerships 
  • If they’re getting frequent recognition 

Most of this work will be manual, but there are tools that can help give a deeper look into specific elements of a brand. Some competitive analysis tools can provide SEO-driven data, help you monitor your niche, give info on organic traffic and keywords, as well tell you how you rank among competitors. 

6. Ask Your Customers 

If you want to get insight on what your customers think about your brand, just ask them. You can do this through surveys, polls or by just asking for feedback directly. It’s important to look into the minds of your consumers to find out what motivates them, what their pain points are and what influences their decisions to ensure your brand can best meet their needs. 

When it comes to customer loyalty and brand advocacy, you want to measure your NPS (Net Promoter Score). This is found by asking customers how likely they are to recommend your product or service to friends and family via an opinion score. The NPS opinion scoring system is on a scale of 0-10 with 0 being “very unlikely” and 10 being “extremely likely.” 

Final Thoughts

After you’ve completed your brand audit, it’s important to determine what data you want to use and how. Set some goals into places before acting on your findings. What do you want to see come out on these changes? Whether it be an increase in conversions, a more cohesive look or a new customer base, it’s essential to have a clear goal in mind. Lastly, create an action plan to carry everything out.

More from Onimod Global 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.