Tag Archive for: Digital Marketing

Introducing the Mobile-Friendly Test API from Google

Google has finally released Mobile-Friendly Test API for webmasters so developers can now build their own tools around the mobile-friendly testing tool to see if pages are mobile-friendly.

Google’s John Mueller said, “The API method runs all tests, and returns the same information — including a list of the blocked URLs — as the manual test.” He added, “The documentation includes simple samples to help get you started quickly.”

With so many users on mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly web is important to us all. The Mobile-Friendly Test is a great way to check individual pages manually. They’re happy to announce that this test is now available via API as well.

The Mobile-Friendly Test API lets you test URLs using automated tools. For example, you could use it to monitor important pages in your website in order to prevent accidental regressions in templates that you use. The API method runs all tests, and returns the same information – including a list of the blocked URLs – as the manual test. The documentation includes simple samples to help get you started quickly.

Google hopes this API makes it easier to check your pages for mobile-friendliness and to get any such issues resolved faster.

We know the importance of mobile friendliness. It is one of the most important SEO trends in 2017. Google has given enough signs that mobile friendliness is critical for your website. For example, Mobilegeddon, mobile-first index, mobile friendliness warning, and so on.

So, If you still don’t have a mobile friendly website, Mobile-Friendly Test API is another reason to make one now. This proves Google is serious about mobile friendliness of your website.

For more information on how we can improve your website to become more mobile-friendly, contact a Digital Marketing expert at Onimod Global today.

MailChimp Moves Toward Becoming a Marketing Platform with Facebook Ads Feature

Oriented toward small businesses, the company wants to offer new features that build on the customer and product data stored in its email platform. Read more

Bing Ads Rolls Out Scheduling for Ad Extensions

The option to show extensions during store hours or time-sensitive promotions is available in all markets. Read more

9 Intriguing Digital Marketing Stats From This Week

The past few days saw the digital marketing world awaken from its post-holiday slumber and really put out some eye-opening stats.

Read more

How to Create Digital Marketing Plan for Start-Ups

Having a strong online presence has become a necessity for businesses of all sizes.

You just launched a startup and need to get your brand in front of as many eyes as possible. The problem is you are not just competing in your industry, you are competing with the millions of other marketing messages that consumers are bombarded with every day. What’s an entrepreneur to do?

Statistics show that more than half of consumers turn to the internet for information before making purchases:

  • Data reveals 67 percent of consumers are influenced by online reviews (Moz)
  • 54 percent of online buyers read online reviews before purchase. (Marketing Tech Blog)
  • More than half (54 percent) of online purchasers said they had read online reviews prior to hitting the buy button, while 39 percent of consumers who made purchases in-store did so, according to a study from customer ratings and review firm Bazaarvoice Inc. (Internet Retailer)

Fortunately, there are a few digital marketing tips for startups we wanted to share:

  1. Use your starting position as a baseline to measure your overall progress against.
  2. Determine your startup’s goals; ensure these goals are specific, measurable and realistic.
  3. Identify your customers.
  4. Study your competitors.

To start, it is important to set up a website for your startup if you haven’t already. Whether you hire someone to design and create your website or choose to build your own is up to you. However, it is often more cost-effective for a startup owner, especially one with a low budget, to build a website. From smaller websites for start-up to multi-language sites across the globe, Onimod Global has a perfect website for every budget.

Once you have your website set up, you’re ready to take the next steps to develop your digital marketing strategy:

    1. Implement perfect SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by researching keywords and building links.
    2. Create relevant content and use content marketing to attract potential clients as well as satisfy Google for ranking purposes.
    3. Consider email marketing to share the content you have created on your website.
    4. Use social media marketing to boost your startup’s online presence and increase traffic to your website
    5. Analyze your results to determine where you are seeing success — and make changes in the areas where you are not.

Onimod Global are here for you every step of the way as you build your company. We are Digital Marketing gurus with expertise in multipl-digital channels.

Contact us today and find out why we’re the best choice for launching your new business to where it needs to b this 2017.

5 Digital Marketing Predictions for 2017

This past year has been an intense one, to say the least. But we’re finally nearing the end, and we’re ready to set our sights on 2017! Of course, in order to make appropriate assumptions about what will occur next year, we have to look back at some of the notable digital marketing predictions that came true this year.

Throughout 2016, we saw a rise in voice search queries, Google’s Penguin algorithm began updating in real-time, mobile-friendly sites continued to be rewarded, and so much more. Social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram expanded their arsenals, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology was such a favorite this year that Amazon was sold out of its Echo and Echo Dot devices at one point.

Since many of these popular trends are still pretty new, we can only expect them to continue to grow in the new year.

Below are some of our digital marketing predictions for the upcoming year

1. The shift from desktop-first to mobile-first will continue

mobile firstMobile search has always been an important component of SEO — and of digital marketing in general — so it’s no surprise that its role continues to grow as years pass. In 2015, Google released a mobile-friendly update to their search algorithm. Since this update, mobile-friendly websites have had the advantage over others when it comes to mobile rankings.

Today, many businesses are receiving more traffic from mobile search over desktop. In fact, Moz performed a study that showed 20 out of 24 industry niches note mobile as their primary source of web traffic. As technology progresses and Google continues to reward those with mobile-friendly sites over others, we have no doubt that the mobile-first trend will continue to rise and most likely overcome our desktop-first mentality.

2. Say hello to Progressive Web Apps

mobile appIf the mobile-first shift comes to pass, it’s possible that the move towards PWAs will as well. Just as AMP (a code that optimizes mobile websites) took precedence in 2015 and 2016, PWAs, or Progressive Web Apps, may take center stage in 2017. Users are becoming less and less patient with page load speeds, and even a highly optimized site has trouble loading within 3 seconds. Enter: Progressive Web Apps.

They’re defined as user experiences that have the same capabilities as a web page, and are reliable, fast, and engaging. In other words, they allow a website/website page to work as if it were an app, without actually being an app. Although PWAs may not be suitable for every type of business, there are plenty that could benefit from them, such as content-heavy or real-time data sites, chat-related platforms, news outlets, and blogs.

As consumers yearn for safer, faster, and easier-to-use mobile-friendly websites, we can expect to see a greater prominence of Progressive Web Apps in 2017. They may even replace the use of separate mobile sites or apps entirely — but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

3. Live video will take over (at least with social media and content marketing)

live videoConsumers have become accustomed to carrying around mobile devices and having practically anything they need right at their fingertips. Now, both brands and individuals have begun using livestreaming as a way to be more in-the-moment with their followers (capitalizing on that whole #FOMO trend of the last couple years).

In the past, brands chalked up their entire video marketing strategy to the hope that one of their videos would go viral. However, as video (live video, in particular) becomes a larger part of users’ everyday lives, brands are going to have to work on continuously creating quality video content.

Joe Pulizzi remarks on how video will become an important part of content marketing strategies in 2017 in an article for the Content Marketing Institute:

“It doesn’t take “Chewbacca Mom” to show us how big and important using video and having a visual storytelling strategy are…most brands [should begin] building a process and organization around the ongoing delivery of valuable information through video.”

As top platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat are incorporating live video, we can be sure we’ll see it grow in 2017.

4. Native advertising will flourish

native advertisingBack in the good ol’ days, online advertising was defined by intrusive pop-up ads and annoying flashing sidebar ads. And it’s important to remember that most of those ads were irrelevant and spammy.

While there are still plenty of ads like this, native advertising has helped online ads become more user-friendly. And to ensure that users don’t click on unwanted ads, brands are required to clearly label these ads as such. Websites like BuzzFeed, Mashable, and even The New York Times offer sponsored content that relate the ads to content users are already interested in viewing.

Brands are also taking advantage of the native advertising potential on social media sites like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. With Facebook pushing their Promoted posts and ads and Instagram releasing it’s “Shop Now” button, we’re sure to see more online native advertising in the coming year.

5. People are going to want to SEE the data

data visualizationData is key to knowing the who’s, what’s, when’s, why’s, and how’s of your marketing strategy. However, that doesn’t mean analyzing data is easy. In all honesty, it can be boring and immensely time-consuming when done properly. Even if you analyze data every day, digesting all those numbers can be tricky.

Thankfully, there are plenty of data visualization tools that can help. As technology evolves, so are visuals; and as more data visualization tools become available, the more businesses are going to start using them. In addition, as narrative content grows in popularity, the need for visual storytelling grows.

Keeping these technological and content marketing trends in mind, 2017 is probably just the beginning of the data visualization revolution.

Recap

While we don’t have a crystal ball to know exactly what 2017 will hold, we feel it’s safe to say there is a lot to look forward to. What are your digital marketing predictions for the upcoming year? Leave your thoughts in the comments — we’d love to hear ‘em!

H/T: Business2Community

Happy Holidays from Onimod Global

At the holiday season, our thoughts turn gratefully to those who have made our progress possible. It is in this spirit that we say… Thank you and best wishes for the holidays and happy New Year!
The team at Onimod Global.

 

8 Fun & Noteworthy Digital Marketing Stats From This Week

The last several days provided an array of digital marketing data points, with figures aplenty about consumers’ search habits, mobile habits, social platforms, bad ads, chat bots and more.

The following eight stats particularly got our attention.

1. Santa Claus = “totally a dog person”
SLI Systems studied more than 5.5 million consumer searches on ecommerce sites during the four weeks leading into the holiday seasons, and it found dogs are more than twice as likely to receive gifts from their owners than cats. Purr-ty surprising, huh?

2. Insta-success
On Thursday, Instagram revealed it now has 600 million users. The photo- and video-sharing app has been on a rapid growth trajectory, adding 100 million accounts in just the past six months. Check out this six-year timeline to see its quick ascent in the digital realm.

3. Publishing anarchy in the U.K.
KPMG’s recent survey of 2,000 Britons found that 49 percent of them expect to download ad blockers in the next six months. Forty. Nine. Percent.

4. Irrelevance sucks, AGAIN
Speaking of bad ads, Fiksu DSP released a study on Thursday, most notably reporting that 77 percent of consumers are likely to delete an app if they repeatedly receive an irrelevant ad. It’s the second week in a row we’ve highlighted such a stat about brands’ lack of relevance.

5. Yikes, Yahoo!
With its Verizon merger at risk, this had to be a painful admission: Yahoo said Wednesday that more than 1 billion user accounts were breached in August 2013. The hack appears to be separate from the 500 million account breach that Yahoo reported this September, and it follows a history of security problems for the digital company.

So, Yahoo has 1.5 billion accounts? While there are obviously individuals with multiple accounts, just for fun, let’s imagine every user only has one: That calculates to 20 percent of the world’s population.

6. The potential marriage, by the numbers
This year, according to new eMarketer numbers, Yahoo will get $2.98 billion in total digital ad revenue worldwide, or 1.5 percent of the global digital ad market. In 2017, Yahoo’s net worldwide digital ad revenue is expected to grow to $3 billion, per eMarketer, but its market share will drop to 1.3 percent. Meanwhile, the researcher estimated Verizon garnered $1.41 billion in digital ad revenue worldwide this year, or 0.7 percent of the global ad market.

7. Ever-expanding web of influence
Meanwhile, new research from Conductor concluded that 80 percent of marketers plan to ratchet up their investments in 2017 when it comes to online marketing, SEO and content. The study’s results suggest that digital’s years of growth will continue for at least one more.

8. Chatty folks
According to a [24]7 study, roughly 29 percent of consumers stated that chat is their preferred method to contact a retailer when shopping online, making it the most popular channel of customer service over phone and email.

Bonus stat: the smartphone era
Hey, we’re not done! A Forrester Research study commissioned by SteelHouse revealed that 3 out of 5 marketers said they would prefer a single platform for media buying.

Double-bonus stat: Hey Phelps, you rule
OK, we have one more. Adweek creative editor Tim Nudd has selected Under Armour’s “Rule Yourself” spot, starring Olympic swimming great Michael Phelps, as the Ad of the Year. It has been viewed on YouTube 11.6 million times. Check it out below.

H/T Adweek

8 Companies Doing Social Media Right and What Marketers Can Learn From Them

Are you reaching your audience on social media the right way? Marketing Land Columnist Jordan Kasteler takes a look at 8 brands you can take a page from. Read more

Essential Steps to Implement Now for 2017

As we approach the final month of 2016, it’s time to reconsider your ongoing SEO efforts and look at ways to step it up a gear for 2017. Read more