Tag Archive for: seo

The Keys to Successfully Marketing on Amazon

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Today’s consumers no longer use Amazon just to purchase products. 90% of consumers use Amazon to price check a product, 72% of consumers visit Amazon for product ideas, and 56% of consumers visit Amazon before any other site to start their product search. In 25 years, Amazon has grown exponentially. It sees over 2,000 new sellers every day. If that’s not enough, here are some other remarkable statistics:

Amazon can be very intimidating, but it’s no secret there’s immense revenue opportunity there. To be successful, sellers must create a marketing strategy that attracts users to their product pages, then converting them into customers.

If you’re struggling with, or new to Amazon here are 4 tips to better market and sell your products. 

1. Drive Ratings and Reviews 

Amazon was one of the first companies to put a review system on their site back in 1995. Rating and review sections are now a part of almost all e-commerce sites, and many business/service sites, and are an important factor for online consumers. Good reviews can fuel sales for a few days, but a bad review can impact sales for months. When it comes to selling products on Amazon, reviews are vital. Getting reviews can be tricky, especially authentic and positive ones. On average 90% of negative reviews are unsolicited, while 90% of positive reviews are. You have to find ways to invite people to participate in the discussion, without influencing exactly what they say. There are plenty of “black hat” strategies to acquire a massive amount of reviews and fast, but that can get you into trouble in the long run. There are plenty of other strategies that work and are within internet law guidelines, such as:

 

  • Send follow up emails. After a customer receives a product, send a follow up email to inquire if they would be willing to review the product on the Amazon listing page.
  • Include a note in the package you send your products in. Today, a handwritten note can mean a lot. Including one in your package that thanks the customer for their business and asks for a review is an effective way to get positive responses.
  • Remind people on social media. Remind your followers to review your products on Amazon. You only want to do this every so often because you don’t want to be overbearing or annoying. You don’t need to offer any incentives, just explain why reviews matter and why you’re asking for their help.

 

2. Optimize for Search

To ensure your products are seen by people, your listings need to be optimized for search. When your listings are optimized, your products show up higher in search results. Your goal is to show up as close to the top as possible when your target customer is searching for keywords that relate to your products. Here are some tips to help you optimize your products for search and increase your discoverability. 

  1. Create product titles that read naturally and reflect a handful of relevant keywords. 
  2. Use special characters (like | or — or ,) to make your title more readable.
  3. Place the most relevant, searched-for terms first, in an order that makes sense. 
  4. Take a look at what works for competitors. 

3. Utilize Videos

Videos engage users and can help increase rankings more than any other type of content. Creating videos that promote or educate users about you or your products can help boost Amazon sales. While you can’t post your videos directly to Amazon, you can share them across your social channels and on your site and then link viewers to the product listing. 

4. Be a Reliable Resource 

With hundreds of thousands of competitors on Amazon, you need to find ways to differentiate yourself from them. For this to be accomplished you have to leverage your brand as a reliable resource. There are a variety of ways to do this, but here are 4 steps to get started: 

 

  • Determine the value you can offer to others and start sharing it. Users are always searching for answers. If you have those answers, or any beneficial information, find ways to put that into forms of content that educates people and aligns with the passions or hobbies that they care about. Once you’ve found ways to create that content, set up a blog or news page on your website to share it. If you’re struggling with coming up with topics, start with answering frequently asked questions about your products, services, or industry.
  • Send traffic to your original content. Now that you have this valuable content, you have to work to send traffic to read it. You can do this by running paid ads on social platforms and search engines, targeting keyword opportunities to get the content to rank organically, and just sharing it on social directly. 
  • Capture email addresses and nurture leads. Every user that makes it as far as to read your content is a sales opportunity. Put the tools and automation in place to capture email addresses, and build content-focused email drips that continue educating leads and nurturing them down your funnel. 
  • Always include compelling CTA’s in all content. Make sure all of your content and ads have strong and clear call-to-actions. You never want users to be confused about what you ultimately want them to do. Include buttons, use bright and bold colors, and send those people directly to your product listing and brand page on Amazon. 

 

Conclusion

Amazon can seem like a beast, but with so much revenue potential, it’s not a platform you want to ignore. With the right strategy and supporting tactics, it doesn’t take much to be successful and start capturing consumers. If you find yourself struggling with marketing on Amazon, or any digital platform, you may want to consider outsourcing for your digital marketing needs. At Onimod Global we are experts in everything from SEM, social media marketing, Google shopping advertising, and more. 

Learn more about what we do, take a look at how we’ve helped other brands, and become a client today!

Tips to Reduce Your Bounce Rate

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If you’ve been struggling with increasing traffic to your site, acquire downloads, leads, clients, etc. it’s possible that it’s due to a high bounce rate. A high bounce rate is one of the most common conversion killers. If the majority of your users are abandoning your website on the first page, you have no chance to convert them to a subscriber or customer. 

There are many things that can cause a site to have a high bounce rate. If this is something you’re concerned about, learn more about bounce rate and the top 5 ways to reduce it. 

What is Bounce Rate?

A “bounce” is a single-page session on your site. In Google Analytics, bounce rate is a metric that measures the percentage of users that land on your site but do nothing on the page before leaving. It’s calculated by dividing all sessions, or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server. In other words, it collects all sessions where a visitor only visited one page and divides it by all sessions. 

What is a “good” or “bad” bounce rate really depends on site and business goals. For example, if your home page is the gateway to the rest of your site and a high percentage of users are viewing only your home page, then you do not want your bounce rate to be high. On the other hand, if you have a single-page site like a blog, or offer other types of content for which single-page sessions are expected, then a high bounce rate is fine. There is a general rule of thumb that: 

  • 80%+ is very poor 
  • 70-80% is poor 
  • 50-70% is average 
  • 30-50% is excellent 
  • 20% or below is likely a tracking error that should be further looked into 

While these metrics are a good start, bounce rates do vary across industry and content, so it’s beneficial to do deeper research depending on your niche. If your bounce rate is higher than average it could be caused by many different factors, such as slow page load time, bad design, lacking clear-call-to-action, etc. 

5 Ways to Reduce Your Bounce Rate: 

1. Optimize Page Load Time, Especially for Mobile 

The most common cause of a high bounce rate is slow page load time. 47% of users expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. It doesn’t matter the quality of the page’s content if the user can’t read it, or even see it. This is even more true on mobile. According to Radware, a connection speed delay of just 500 milliseconds can result in an increase in “peak frustration” of more than 26%, and a decrease in engagement of 8%. Not only does slow page load time increase bounce rate, it can also cause you to slip in Google search rankings. There are endless amounts of free tools to test page load time. If you have problems with page load time you can reduce it by: 

  • Optimizing Caches: This ensures that your mobile browser uses local memory to cache resources in order to avoid unnecessary server requests. 
  • Minimize JavaScript and Style Sheets: This helps to reduce the overall bandwidth consumption and improve mobile caching.
  • Minimize Image Sizes: High resolution images are heavy and usually absorb more bandwidth and take longer to process. Keeping images under 100kb can help achieve the ideal page load time for your site.
  • Apply CSS3 and HTML5: This framework is lightweight and makes it easier for mobile web pages to load quickly.

2. Use Pop-Ups, Sidebar Widgets, and Promotions Sparingly 

It’s no secret that pretty much all users are annoyed by pop-ups. Most marketing experts advise against using pop-ups just because they usually lead to a higher bounce rate. Sometimes, well designed pop-ups can be beneficial for growing email lists quickly. If that’s the main goal of your site, then pop-ups can be valuable, but if you want to build a long-term site that generates a good amount of organic visitors, it’s best to limit pop-ups or avoid them all together. 

Some webpages are ideal vehicles for offering relevant content, offers, and other material. However, cramming the digital margins of your content with ads, offers, award emblems, etc. is a surefire way to overwhelm visitors, tempting them to bounce. If you want to highlight additional content from your sidebar, it should be done so in a way that offers value to the reader. For example, related article recommendations that expand upon the topic covered in a blog post is a great way to make your site “stickier” as well as provide genuinely valuable and useful content to your readers. Also, be sure to give users enough time to immerse themselves in the content before pouncing on them with promotions.

3. A/B Test Multiple Landing Pages 

It’s possible that your headline, call-to-action, or page design is just not working. This is why it’s so important to run A/B split tests to see how different factors perform. To run an A/B test, you need to create two different versions of one piece of content, with changes to a single variable. Then, you’ll show these two versions to two similarly sized audiences and analyze which one performed better over a specific period of time. It’s important to make sure you run the test long enough to gain accurate results. Once the test is complete you can see what performance best among your audience. You should never stop A/B testing, though. It’s best to continue to tweak different factors and create new pages to ensure your site is the best it can be. 

4. Improve Site Readability 

Another reason users may want to quickly leave your site is lack of readability. Readability is an essential part of user experience. You need to make sure that your content is easily readable on all devices. This isn’t just limited to font size and color, this also includes line spacing, margins, language style, tone, etc. Some ways to improve your site’s readability are by: 

  • Making headlines and subheadings big and bold
  • Using bullet points for lists or anything worth noting 
  • Including charts, images, screenshots, etc
  • Bolding keywords 

5. Utilize Images and Videos to Engage Users 

High quality images and videos are two of the most effective ways to engage users. Today, many websites use high-quality images as fullscreen backgrounds because they’ve proven to be effective. You can purchase professional photographs from various stock websites, but there are several sites that offer royalty-free images as well. You can use these images as fullscreen backgrounds, parallax backgrounds, background slides, or as inline images next to your call to actions. Videos are even more effective in grabbing users’ attention and engaging them. You can use animations, music, audio, narration, colors, and so many different forms of persuasion tools. You can create a very effective video presentation with a small budget by hiring a freelancer.

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.

Infographic Tips Every Marketer Should Know

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Infographics are a great marketing tool, as they allow for easy communication of complex ideas in a visual way. Over the past few years, they’ve been forgotten due to the mass production of extremely low quality infographics strictly for link building. But infographics are not dead. When properly crafted, infographics, like other forms of visual content, are still highly effective at cutting through clutter and engaging online audiences. It was actually found that high-quality infographics are liked and shared three times more than any other type of content. As your goal is to provide value to your audience rather than generate link-bait, infographics are still highly effective as a content marketing tool.

Here are 5 important tips to keep in mind when creating and marketing a successful infographic. 

Determine Your Target Audience and Goal 

For an infographic to succeed, it needs to meet the needs of an audience. The first, and one of the most important, steps is identifying the audience you want to reach. Then determining their pain points, desires, etc. A common mistake made when creating an infographic is choosing a topic that’s popular in general, rather than specific to their audience. Infographics that gain the most attention and traffic are specific, relevant, targeted, and meet audiences where they want it most.

Next, determine what you’re trying to achieve with this piece of content. Where and how does it fit into your ultimate marketing goal? It’s important to be sure that an infographic is the best format to communicate your message. You don’t want to waste time on something that doesn’t fit into your larger strategy or miss out on a better solution.  

Chose a Compelling Title 

The headline of the infographic is extremely important. It needs to be compelling enough to grab readers’ attention, while priming them for the data they are about to digest. Clearly defining what the infographic will be communicating right at the beginning makes it easier to understand the rest of the graphic. You also want it to be simple. Titles that get too wordy may not keep someone’s attention long enough for them to make it through the rest of the content. It’s also very beneficial to try optimizing your title for SEO. Although infographics are technically images, they still contribute to the search relevance if part of a blog piece. If optimizing for search is part of your content strategy, we recommend including keywords in your title.

Stay Focused 

It’s best to keep infographics simple and focused on one main idea. It can be tempting to try to cram as much information as possible into the story. You don’t want your infographic to look like an attempt to randomly assemble as much data as possible. An infographic is most effective when it tells a strong and straightforward story that brings more clarity to a topic. 

It’s also important to establish a flow for your design. The reader’s eye should naturally go from one block of information to the next, moving them through a thought process. Once all of your information is in the right sequence and you begin to work on the first draft of your infographic, you can also use images and symbols to help reinforce the flow of your infographic, such as arrows.

Make Viewing Easy 

This tip is applicable in more ways than one. You want the infographic to be physically easy to view. Often times infographics are designed very large and must be downsized when published. This can cause readability to easily get lost. Make sure the smallest fonts can still be read without too much difficulty, whether the viewer decides to enlarge the infographic or not. This can also be done through using contrasting colors.

You also want to make viewing easy by making the infographic easy to find. Just as any other piece of content, it doesn’t just magically go viral. To help your team distribute the infographic effectively, there are a few extra steps to be taken. First, you should optimize your infographic for SEO, as we mentioned previously. Make sure you have the best file names and keywords to get the most traffic. Next, make sure your infographic is easily shareable. Make sure you have the right resolution, file formats, and sizes, whether it’s going out via email, blog, or social. You can even break up the infographic into different assets to get more mileage from one piece of content. Lastly, create a compelling pitch that explains why the content is interesting and relevant. You can do this through highlighting key takeaways, making the pitch personal and brief, etc. 

Double Check Facts and Cite Resources 

Infographics usually include a lot of specific data. It’s important to make sure the pieces of data used are accurate. This can be done by making sure the statistics themselves are true and the sources you’re using are reliable. When using outside sources, it’s also important to make sure you’re citing them. Try to use sources that are as up-to-date as possible. Using old stats, especially in an industry where information is always changing, makes you seem out of touch. It’s easiest to include those citations at the bottom of the piece, but you can include them in the body if it’s not distracting. 

Conclusion 

Infographics are alive, well, and very valuable when it comes to content marketing tools. They require a delicate balance between telling a story and providing hard-hitting points to drive your message. Creating a successful infographic doesn’t have to be difficult. It just takes a strong understanding of your audience, your goals, and willingness to put in high quality effort. 

More from Onimod Global 

To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here!

 

Optimizing for Voice Search in 2020

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It’s estimated that 50% of searches will be done with voice search in 2020. Optimizing for voice search is no longer a latest marketing trend–it is a necessity. Those who ignore its popularity risk losing a lot of ground compared to those who have already positioned themselves to capitalize on it. As voice recognition continues to improve, and usage of voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google continues to grow, it only becomes more essential. If you haven’t started already, here are 4 ways to start optimizing for voice search in 2020. 

Optimize for Question-Based Keywords 

It’s important to figure out how your audience speaks when searching for your business and products. Voice searches are more conversational and longer than text based searches. Most start with who, what, why, how, etc. Google and other search engines continuously crawl the internet to look for answers to these types of questions. To rank on the top of SERPs for voice searches, long-tailed keywords are key. While long-tailed keywords aren’t a new concept, the way they’re being used and why is changing. Before, they were mostly for the purpose of SEO. Digital marketers are now gravitating towards longer phrases for search queries. Those that have applied them have seen excellent results in search engine rankings. There are a variety of online tools that assist in coming up with relevant long-tailed phrases and optimizing content around them. Answer the Public and BuzzSumo are few examples. 

Optimize for Mobile and Featured Snippets 

Optimizing your site for mobile only becomes more and more crucial for businesses. When it comes to optimizing for voice search, it’s even more important. Most voice searches take place through mobile devices. A few things you can do to ensure your site is mobile-friendly are:

  • Make sure your site is responsive. 
  • Avoid software that’s uncommon for mobile, like flash. 
  • Make the information people look for easy to find. 
  • Use large and easy to read font. 
  • Compress images and CSS. 
  • Make sure links are far enough apart to avoid tapping. 
  • Perform regular mobile and page load time tests.

You’ll also find a strong correlation between voice search and featured snippets. Featured snippets are selected search results featured on top of Google’s organic results, just below the ads. They aim to directly answer the user’s question and give additional brand exposure to the company that’s featured. Getting a featured snippet is difficult, but not impossible. You can increases your chances by:

  • Making an entire search query the title of a content piece. 
  • Using the question explicitly in the content. 
  • Summarizing the answer in a single paragraph. 
  • Using lists when relevant. 
  • Using question and answer formatting. 
  • Re-optimize pages that already rank highly. 

Pay Attention to Readability of Content 

As we mentioned previously, people use a more natural and conversational tone when performing voice searches. To appear in search results, your content has to match the search terms. Avoid complicated jargon or lengthy responses. The simpler the language, the better the chances of your content appearing in the search results. On average, Google gives voice search results of only 29 words. Using clear, concise content is key when it comes to voice search optimization. There are a variety of online tools that check the readability of your content, such as Hemingway.  

Utilize Google My Business and Implement Local SEO 

Another extremely beneficial tool when it comes to voice search is Google My Business. Having a listing makes it easier for customers to find you and get more information. It’s also important to use the right keywords to describe your location. One of the most common searches people do is “___ near me.” Strategically inserting phrases like “near me” in Meta descriptions, internal links, anchor texts, and title tags increases chances of resulting for those searches. If there’s a well-known landmark near your business, it may help to include that somewhere as well. Structure your data in a way that makes it easy for users to get as much information as possible. It’s essential to have contact information, open hours, etc. This all makes it easier for your data to be processed and for people to find you. 

Conclusion 

The use of voice search will only increase in popularity as time goes on. It might not be used by everyone just yet, but that’s where we’re trending. Whether marketers like it or not, it can no longer be ignored. To be digitally successful brands have to start optimizing for mobile, voice, search, etc. 

More from Onimod Global 

To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here!

Tips for Finding Your Ideal SEO Company

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SEO, or search engine optimization, can seem confusing, complicated, and difficult. That’s why many businesses turn to an outside SEO agency. With thousands of different agencies to choose from, it can be even more difficult to find a qualified and reliable one. When you know what to look for, it can become easier than you’d think. Here are 4 tips for finding your ideal SEO company. 

Clearly Establish Your Goals 

First, you want to be specific about your goals so you can find a company that can meet them. This should be more than just trying to get more organic traffic or rank for specific keywords. Establish exactly what you want to accomplish with SEO, whether that be to boost revenue or get more downloads or signups. No matter which company you chose, make sure you’re clear on the type of results you’re looking for and what services you need.

Their Strategies are Concrete 

SEO isn’t magic, so you should avoid any company that talks about it abstractly. There are no “secret” optimization techniques that manipulate search engines. The process of optimizing your website to drive organic traffic takes time and can be hard to understand. Those that claim to have “special insights” are misleading. Usually these “insights” include black hat SEO techniques, such as buying links and keyword stuffing. This can actually lead to search engines demoting your site because it violates terms. These techniques may drive traffic quickly, but you’ll lose rankings in the long run. Good SEO requires a deep understanding of search engines, algorithms, and following frequent updates. 

Avoid Google Lists 

Often times people will just search for which companies rank best in their area or for top SEO lists. It’s not always a good sign for a company to have outstanding organic rankings themselves. If the company has the time to constantly work on their own rankings, it may be because they aren’t doing that for others. The best agencies typically have a list of long-term clients who have and will refer other companies to the same service. It’s also important to remember that lists such as those are generally not impartial. Many of the lists are pay-to-play. The websites that post the lists require payment from the companies that they feature on them. The more they pay, the higher on the list they will be. That’s why using word-of-mouth advertising may be the best to find a qualified and trustworthy SEO company. 

Expert Employees 

Speaking with the CEO of a company is always compelling, but it doesn’t give true insight into the expertise and capabilities of an average employee. The CEO is going to be the most knowledgeable and persuasive person in the company. It’s important to speak with regular team members to evaluate the expertise of who you’ll likely be working with. Your ideal company will have equal expertise at all levels of the chain. The sales team should have a deep understanding of SEO, their strategy, be able to answer questions, etc. 

How Onimod Global Can Help 

An SEO company can have a major impact on your business and budget. At Onimod Global we understand how vital SEO can be. Search engine optimization is our core attribute and a pillar of our strategy. We develop  organic search engine optimization campaigns that deliver increases in organic traffic through an increase in natural rankings on major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. We are a trusted Google Partner and continually excel with their products. 

Take a look at how we’ve helped other companies, and learn more about what we can do for you!

We Are Ten! Celebrating a Decade of Innovative Digital Solutions

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Onimod Global is officially 10 years old! We’re celebrating a decade of providing expert and innovative digital marketing solutions for our clients. Working with companies of all sizes, in many industries across the globe has given us the opportunity to develop and perfect many different digital marketing strategies. 

We’re thankful for you, our wonderful clients, for putting your trust in our expertise, and allowing us to grow and perfect your marketing business goals year after year. With an innovative vision and a lot of hard work, Onimod Global quickly became one of the Midwest’s, America’s and the Globe’s fastest-growing digital marketing & SEO companies. Now spanning across six continents, our clients come to us – and stay with us – due to our proven business goal satisfaction rate and unique consultative approach. 

Over the last 10 years we have learned a lot about the changing face of digital marketing, but these are our core digital strategies we wanted to share with you. 

 

Our Core Digital Strategies:

SEO

Search Engine Optimization has always been our core attribute and the pillar of our digital marketing strategy. SEO has become vital in achieving long-term visibility for websites, especially with the continued expansion of new internet and search engine users. We’ve learned how to develop search engine optimization campaigns that drive organic traffic through increasing natural rankings across all major search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. We accomplish this in a variety of ways. Some of our best practices include improving website crawlability and indexability, developing high quality content, and implementing proper metrics. 

Crawlability describes the search engine’s ability to access and crawl content on a page. Indexability refers to the search engine’s ability to analyze and add a page to its index. While these two elements are not mutually exclusive, it is extremely beneficial to have both for a site. If there is an issue with either, it prohibits search engines from analyzing and adding pages to their indexes. This ultimately makes it more difficult for your site to come up in search results. Our strategy starts with making sure that is not the case. We make sure there are no dead or broken links and that a site’s robot.txt file is properly updated. Following fixing all technical issues we start focusing on content optimization. Rankings continue to improve when quality content is consistently added to the site. This includes practices such as dropping relevant keywords into appropriate site places, using video and images when possible, and blog sharing. 

While these elements are extremely important, consistently measuring success is just as, if not more important. How will you know if your efforts are effective if you never check your progress? Measuring SEO success goes further than just tracking traffic and conversions. Time on page, pages per visit, bounce rate, scroll depth, and backlinks are all data points that give valuable insight to SEO performance.

SEM

Paid advertising across all search engines and social media platforms has become one of our specialties. Over our 10 years of SEM work we have become a trusted Google Partner, meaning we are a digital marketing company that is trusted by Google and excel with their products. We have learned to optimize our SEM strategy in a number of ways. A few of these include utilizing keywords and negative keywords, landing pages, and A/B testing all efforts. 

Finding relevant keywords and correct match type is essential for any paid search campaign. Irrelevant or low search volume keywords can result in a low quality score, which can prevent your ads from getting shown in search results. Generally, we suggest using on optimization for conversion match type, but it can differ depending on the campaign’s objective. Finding effective keywords takes a lot of trial and error. You want to use as many words or phrases as possible that align with what users are actually searching for. The use of negative keywords is important as well. You don’t want your ads firing for searches that are completely irrelevant to your services. We consistently watch the searches our ads fire for, ensuring we don’t waste budget on something that will never turn into a real customer or lead. 

Landing pages are something we suggest almost 100% of the time. Sending PPC traffic to a homepage can be a huge mistake. We believe that every search request is an opportunity and users are always looking for immediate solutions. If a user has already went as far as to click on your ad, make it easy as possible for them to actually convert. Sending them to your homepage means they will have to spend even more time searching through your site for what they actually want. If they don’t immediately find it, they’ll likely bounce and search elsewhere.

A/B testing is something that is widely underutilized when it comes to all aspects of websites and campaigns. You never really know how something is performing if it has nothing else to be compared to. We try to create different variations of ads and landing pages with various headings, keywords, body copy, placements, etc. To get clear results from tests it’s important to remember to only change one factor at a time and let it run long enough to gain accurate results. 

Social 

Mobile and social media have now established themselves as indispensable parts of the marketing mix. We utilize social media marketing to create social synergy for our clients. Social synergy is all about having visibility in the social spaces your consumers are searching, interacting, and engaging. The reason creating social positioning is so crucial is because it is now a great driver of leads and sales. An integrated social media platform can enhance marketing campaign effectiveness, help improve brand building across the enterprise, and make a real impact on sales and the bottom line. Integrated social capability brings another great benefit by keeping the enterprise updated with the latest innovations in social media. Sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are constantly innovating and updating their collaboration tools, content-sharing formats, etc. With integrating social capability, customers don’t need to change business functions in sales or marketing to catch up with these changes.

We help our clients leverage the power of their content to elevate their audience and customer base in dramatic ways. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. For content to be effective it must be consistent and high quality. We create and stick to monthly content calendars that guide our blog and post topics, which tags are used, where everything is shared, etc. Not only should the content you’re sharing be consistent, but it should have a purpose. Content should be based on questions potential customers might search for. The more direct and detailed the answer is, the better it will rank. It should also be actionable. Inform your audience about specific steps to take or resources they need to carry out the advice you’re giving. Content should always include a clear and a strong CTA, because the end goal is driving sales. In today’s much-hyped world of social media marketing, integrated social capability can make a direct and positive impact on the business.

What We Do Best 

We have a lot of digital strategies and solutions, expanding further than just SEO, SEM, and Social. But what we really do best is being our clients’ true marketing partner. Onimod Global can power entire corporate marketing departments or simply provide custom solutions for local businesses. We’re here for our clients 24 hours a day and live for the moment they’re in a pinch and need our help. We excel in customer service and serving as our clients consultative marketing team, delivering custom digital solutions client by client. 

Again, thank you to all our clients over the last 10 years, as without you, we would not be where we are today. 

More from Onimod Global

Learn more about what we do, take a look at some of our work, or become a client today! 

The Top Tips and Benefits of Content Marketing

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The use of content marketing has grown exponentially in recent years. While the vast amount of content on the internet can be a positive, it’s also left the market extremely saturated. This means that the use of content is much less effective than it was in the past, which is not a positive. This doesn’t mean it should be abandoned, there are still many benefits to content marketing. It just means the content used needs to be valuable, relevant, and correctly leveraged. 

What is Content Marketing 

Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on creating and sharing valuable or relevant information on a consistent basis for the ideal buyer persona. The goal is to build relationships with customers, drive organic traffic, increase conversion rates, and ultimately capture more sales. It’s important to know that content marketing is not promotional content. The modern consumer is hyper aware of sales pitches or anything in-genuine. Consumers prefer being educated and informed about products and companies, and are much more likely to believe other consumers over a company. 

Content Marketing Benefits:

Higher rankings

One of the number one things you can do to increase your search engine rankings is add more content to your site. Search engines, Google especially, likes to provide users with results that deliver exactly what they’re searching for. Consistently adding relevant, keyword rich content in the form of blogs or landing pages is the best way to provide that experience. Having more pages doesn’t always correlate to more traffic, but having more quality pages indexed can grant you more opportunities to rank for more search queries. 

Brand credibility

Having high quality content on your site immediately increases your perceived expertise, authority, and trust of your company. Users thinking highly of brands that they feel are answering their questions and providing useful and relevant information. Higher domain authority strongly correlates with higher search rankings. So yet again, producing consistent quality content will help increase organic traffic for all pages of your site.

Drive sales 

The first goal of your content should be to deliver some kind of value to the reader. After that has been done, you can use any remaining space to tactfully promote your product, service, or brand. Content can inspire requests for more information, trials, downloads, consultations, and sales. Highly targeted content can be one of the best ways to speed up the sales funnel, as long as it’s done right. Your content should never seem like a promotional advertisement. 

Content Marketing Tips:

Your content should be the answer 

Content should be based on questions potential customers might have. The more direct and detailed the answer is, the better it will rank on Google or other search engines. Most companies are well aware of their customers’ problems and pain points. This can be transformed into tutorials, how-to-guides, etc. For a piece of content to be effective it needs to be actionable. Inform your audience about specific steps to take or resources they need to carry out the advice you’re giving. Your answers can vary according to audience demographics. If you know your audience is split, segment your content strategy to target each group directly, instead of writing generically.

Use images and videos whenever possible 

HubSpot’s 2016 video marketing statistics report that adding videos to landing pages can boost conversions up to 80% and that users are 64% more likely to buy something online after they’ve watched a video about it. You can integrate videos into blogs or create them separately as their own entity, like a “vlog.” When people only spend 8 seconds deciding whether or not they’re interested in a piece of content, it helps to be visually stimulating. So even if you can’t include a video, images can be just as effective. 

Create and stick to a content calendar 

For content to be effective it needs to be consistent. The best way to ensure you’re posting regularly is by laying everything out in a weekly or monthly content calendar. It should be more detailed than just reminders to post. Include things like what your blog topics will be, what tags you’re using for each post, where everything needs to be shared, etc. This way when the time comes you’re not scrambling to think of content ideas. There are a number of tools that can assist with content calendars. CoSchedule, WordPress, and Asana are a few editorial calendar and project management tools, but it can be done a basic spreadsheet as well. 

Make sharing your content easy

This is one of the easiest tips to implement to a site. Social sharing buttons should fit in with the site’s theme and be prominently placed throughout blog posts and web pages. If the sharing process is complicated and time-consuming, no one will do it. It should be a simple, one-step to share process. There should be options to share to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and any other platforms that seem fitting. 

Always include a CTA

Strong call-to-actions are necessary in any marketing strategy. It’s unlikely users will go to your homepage, browse to other pages, or end up where you want them to be. They need to be told what to do with a quick link to it. Whether that be liking/following a social media page, sharing a post, subscribing, requesting more information, etc. It’s beneficial to A/B test your call-to-actions as well. Try different locations, colors, copy, etc. It’s important to make sure the CTA doesn’t interrupt the flow of content, though. It should seem like the natural consequence of the content. It should also be clear and easily clickable. 

No matter your ultimate marketing goal, content is always a valuable addition. It works, and that’s why it’s so widely used today. The key is to ensure it continues to work in a saturated market is by leveraging new and innovative tactics, like setting clearer content marketing goals and A/B testing various content. 

More from Onimod Global 

Sometimes, outsourcing your content marketing is the right choice. At Onimod Global we’re experts in SEO, social media, and content marketing. We create visibility for companies in the places their customers are searching, interacting, and engaging. Take a look at how we’ve helped other companies, and learn more about what we can do for you!

The Importance of Social Listening

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Social listening is an invaluable marketing tool that not enough companies take full advantage of. It allows you to track, analyze, and respond to conversations about your brand, competitors, and your entire industry online. If you don’t have a social listening strategy in place, you’re missing out on critical insights.

 

What is Social Listening 

Social media listening is analyzing conversations and trends happening, not just around your brand, but your industry as a whole, and using those insights to make better marketing decisions. Social listening is not the same as social monitoring. Social monitoring involves tracking and responding to messages about or sent directly to your brand. Social listening helps you understand why, where, and how these conversations are happening, and people’s in-depth thoughts, not just their tags and mentions of your brand specifically. It can assist in forming future campaigns, improving content and messaging strategy, and building effective and impactful brand partnerships. Social listening is all about understanding the bigger picture. 

 

The Benefits 

Reputation Management 

This is the most common reason companies perform social listening. Companies can monitor mentions of their products and track overall brand health. Following conversations around your brand can allow you to illuminate consumer attitudes and sentiment drivers. Social media has become a leading customer service platform, and where customers prefer to complain. Whether it’s to a brand or just about one in general, customers openly share about any problem they’ve encountered. Other customers often judge brands by how they respond to these complaints. Companies that respond promptly with professionalism and empathy keep customers and gain new ones. 

Market Research 

Social listening can supplement – or sometimes even replace – traditional market research strategies. Traditional market research methods such as surveys, focus groups, interviews, etc. only reflect attitudes of a small group of people at one point in time. The information gathered can be time-constrained, selective, and skewed. Social media analytics can produce data in hours or days, as opposed to the weeks and months for conventional methods. When the information gathered is unprompted it’s more likely to reveal consumers’ true, unfiltered feelings. Social media listening can help quickly identify market issues, consumer concerns, and preferred product features. For most companies, their markets are constantly and rapidly changing. Those fail to keep up quickly get left behind, such as BlackBerry and Nintendo. 

Competitor Analysis and General Research 

The purpose of social listening doesn’t just stop at your brand, you can also monitor competitors, as well as just any general phenomenon being discussed online. Occasionally checking a competitor’s website doesn’t really give the full picture about how they’re performing in the space. Companies can gain a wealth of competitive intelligence through monitoring what’s being said about your competition on social networks, in the general media, on discussion boards, etc. This can give you data on new product development, marketing strategies, product positioning, key consumers, and any PR activity. Identifying competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and successful/unsuccessful strategies can help you determine things to try and avoid. 

Additionally, you can monitor anything in general that you find relevant to your brand. Whether you’re a journalist writing an article on a political issue, a charity wanting to evaluate the volume of conversations around a social cause, or an entrepreneur looking to start a business and doing market research, social listening can assist you. 

Identifying User-Generated Content and Potential Influencers 

Consumers frequently post photos and videos praising products online. User-generated content can be an enormously effective and affordable way to market yourself. Countless studies have shown that consumers trust recommendations made by other customers more than brands, especially if the consumer has influence. Social listening enables brands to find this type of content, amplify it, and repurpose it for marketing purposes. 

Through social listening you can also identify the impact and reach of your brand mentions and find who your most influential advocates are. If you’re looking to partner with an influencer, you can create a social listening alert for your industry and see who are the most influential people in your niche. It’s also smart to note competitor’s influencers because they would likely make a good fit for your brand as well. 

 

The Top 5 Social Listening Tools of 2019 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion 

Social media is an invaluable resource for insights and trends in consumer behavior that not enough brands take full advantage of. Social listening tools continue to get more powerful and affordable as more brands turn to them for market research, customer insights, competitive analysis, and to gain leads. If you settle on purchasing a tool it’s important to remember that just monitoring isn’t enough. To make it worthwhile, you need to act on the data. Which means engaging with customers that are mentioning you, spotting trends to adapt to your marketing, customer services, and product strategies, with the overall goal to better serve your customers. 

 

More From Onimod Global 

To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here!

Marketing Automation: Why It’s Essential and What to Avoid

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As more businesses shift away from traditional marketing tactics, agencies should follow suit. The times of one-time projects, lower value relationships, and thoughtless solutions with no unified reporting will lead to failure. The demand for full digital marketing services continues to increase, meaning agencies are taking on new clients while trying to keep existing ones happy. But with the rise for the need of digital services also comes the rise of resources available that makes providing those services easier. 

Some agencies have started using automated marketing systems to increase both sales revenue for both their company and their clients. These solutions allow repetitive tasks like email marketing, social postings, and ad campaigns to be automated, not only for efficiency, but to also create a more personalized experience for users. Not to mention, every step customers make can be triggered and tracked as they go through your marketing funnel. Allowing marketers to make appropriate adjustments to ads, campaigns, website, etc. 

Marketing automation is becoming a must have for agencies to stay relevant, but it can lead to failure if it’s not correctly implemented. 

 

Why You Should Use Marketing Automation 

 

Higher Value Relationships 

Marketing automation presents the ability to build and provide hyper personalized services for clients. This includes things like initial automation technology adoption and strategy, creation of email templates, nurture sequences, landing pages, as well as ongoing campaign assets, analytics, and optimization. Providing all these services ,in addition to the initial transition, makes it difficult for clients to change agencies. Not to mention it sets you apart from the competition, as many agencies have not yet integrated automation into their marketing strategy. 

Recurring Revenue 

Marketing automation is what can make an agency go from completing endless one-time projects, to being a consistent, must have resource for a number of companies. Marketing automation is necessary for almost any client and many companies struggle with technology. Many companies also struggle with knowing where exactly they need to personalize messages and where they shouldn’t. That’s where you should come in, and ultimately move towards a retainer-based relationship and consistent revenue. 

Proving Value 

Clients always want to know they’re getting the best ROI possible. When marketing automation is carried out correctly, there should be no issues presenting results. It gives you the ability to show measurable results with comprehensive lead-to-revenue reporting. Since it’s rooted in data, you’re provided the necessary numbers to help clients pinpoint what should be focused on and what should be tossed. Marketing automation also becomes more valuable and a better investment the longer it’s used. The more data there is, the more accurate the results will be, and can hopefully show month to month improvement. 

It’s Necessary to Stay Afloat 

According to Ad Age’s Agency Report 2018, U.S. agency growth is the slowest it’s been since 2010, except for those offering digital marketing services. With the need for digital services growing, marketing automation is basically becoming a must to stay in business. Companies need more data than ever to feel confident about their spending. Marketing automation can assist with all of these aspects when executed correctly. You can create new streams of revenue, attract new clients, provide real evidence of ROI and a service too complicated to take on in-house. 

 

Marketing Automation Mistakes 

A misconception has grown around automation that is can salve for any slowdown in marketing growth, including the need for generating new leads. This leaves many marketers with sophisticated tools automating the middle-of-the-funnel, but no real strategy or solution to generate new leads to nurture in the first place. This commonly results in marketers purchasing email lists to nurture instead of generating inbound leads. While this is a quick solution, it doesn’t work long term. This strategy fails to create a solid foundation for healthy, long-term customer relationships. Instead, it produces spammy content and incredibly low ROI. 

Another mistake is using marketing automation to force customers through a funnel with arbitrary touch points and irrelevant content. Marketers try to pass customers on to the sales department as quickly as possible, creating a disjointed customer experience. When marketing automation operates in a silo like this, points of friction are introduced that stall and strain what could have been productive, long-term customer relationships. Instead, there should be a contextual experience built on each customer’s individual needs. 

 

Final Thoughts 

Marketing automation can be a powerful and effective tool. To make it work it’s essential to understand all components and distinctions. Marketing automation should always be backed by an inbound strategy centered around the prospect, using all the information known about a person to inform the automation strategy. The ultimate goal is to deliver the information people need to make a purchase, when they need it, right where they’re looking for it. 

 

More From Onimod Global 

At Onimod Global we are experts in marketing automation and customer relationship management software. Our work is creating digital synergy and cross-channel digital marketing campaigns driven by machine learning analytics and human intelligence. Together ensuring your brand meets the consumer when and where they need them. Learn more about what we do, or become a client today. 

 

 

Measuring SEO Success

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Consistently measuring SEO results and success is crucial to maintaining an effective SEO strategy. But what exactly should you be basing your SEO success off of? With so many different measurement strategies, you need to make sure you’re choosing what’s relevant to your company. What small business consider successful for an SEO campaign, large corporations probably would not.

While all businesses are aware they should be focusing on SEO to generate website traffic, it can still be a struggle to create an effective and comprehensive campaign, especially when it comes to small businesses.

Standard Measurements of SEO Success

Website traffic and conversions are the top two ways businesses measure SEO success. While traffic is important, focusing on that alone puts businesses at risk of missing other crucial metrics. Conversions do often equal success, but it’s almost impossible for a company to have a 100% conversion rate. It also depends on what the company considers a conversion. If it’s an online retail store a conversion is probably a purchase. But often times conversion doesn’t equal new business. For example, an online loan company would consider a conversion someone submitting an application, but what if the application was denied because they didn’t meet the requirements?

The metrics chosen should be relevant and align with your company’s ultimate goals and objectives. The most important aspect to be tracked is overall traffic and conversion quality. Are those coming to your website or filling out forms turning into new and legitimate business opportunities?

Measuring Quality

Time on Page & Pages Per Visit

Depending on what your goal is when a visitor reaches your site, these two things may be beneficial to track. For example, you posted a new blog and you know it takes an average of 3 minutes to read, but the average time visitors spend on that page is only 10 seconds. That probably indicates people are not sticking around to read it. It’s the same with pages per visit. Is the goal to keep users engaged on one page, or is there a final step you want them to reach? If your site’s pages operate independently then this wouldn’t really matter, if not, this may be something you want to consistently track.

Bounce Rate

Bounced sessions indicate that a searcher visited the page and left without browsing your site any further. Bounce rate can determine not only traffic quality, but also quality of the site itself. A high bounce rate can sometimes indicate your website needs improvements. Making it more engaging by including links to other posts or pages is one strategy to keep visitors interested. Though a high bounce rate doesn’t always mean the website needs to be updated. This can also mean visitors are just quickly finding exactly what they needed, such as hours, menus, addresses, etc.

Scroll Depth

Scroll Depth determines how far visitors are scrolling through each individual web page. Are visitors regularly reaching your most important content or the call to action? If not, consider rearranging the content of the page, putting the more important information higher up. Consider the quality of the content as well. While keywords are important and should be included, you don’t want that to be the extent of your content. The information included on the page should be enticing and valuable. Put yourself in the user’s place, what would make you continue to scroll down the page?

Backlinks

Backlink quality is measured by the number of links from websites with high domain authority. While you can’t control all the links that come back to your site, you can target backlink quality by reaching out to other sites that provide domain authority and a new, but similar audience. Keep in mind relevance and novelty. Endorsements from new sites can have a greater impact than repeats. The more relevant the site is to your content, the better endorsement as well.

Putting Your Resources to Use

Google Analytics is a great way to track and measure all of this data in one place. If you already enacted an SEO campaign, you most likely have access to all these capabilities. Google gives you an extensive list of metrics to use, but it can be difficult to know where to start or exactly what the data means. A few places to start could be by tracking isolate organic traffic, page visits, campaign traffic, or click through rates.

How Onimod Global Can Help

As experts in SEO and Google Partners, we know exactly what you should be tracking, and how. As one of our core attributes, we can develop SEO campaigns across all major search engines that deliver increases in organic traffic and natural rankings. We are cross-channel digital marketing experts that work with companies of all sizes, all around the world. Read more about what we do here, or contact us with any questions here.