Movers & Shakers - Your Digital Marketing Partner...Top 7 brilliant digital marketing tips to...

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7 brilliant digital marketing tips to differentiate your business

Movers & Shakers...

Valuable and Relevant Content

2Creating a Smart Website and Optimizing for Mobiles

Content

1Lets get Social

3

Email Marketing and SMS Marketing are Significant

5Right Analytics

6 7Pay Per Click Advertising: Google Adwords

Blogging

4

8About the author

Other digital marketers have been hiding these from youBusinesses are heading to the digital arena where digital marketing tools and techniques provide business owners the best opportunities for competition and business growth. However, as the industry grows,

achieving success can seem extremely complicated. Our 7 digital marketing tips to help differentiate your business will guide you through for making the most of your digital marketing efforts.

Top 7 brilliant digital marketing tips to differentiate your business

1CREATING A SMART WEBSITE

AND OPTIMIZING FOR MOBILES

As of 2014, mobile surpassed desktops as the primary device people use to access the inter-net. It is indispensable for your

business to make sure that your online presence is up to the par, by having an engaging customer experience, brand-ing and easy navigation. It is imperative for every business to adapt efficiently to reach consumers on any screen as many users may be browsing your site through their mobile devices.

Also, Google’s new algorithm encour-ages businesses to optimize their site for mobiles. On 21st April, 2015, Google rolled out a new update which penalizes any website that lacks mobile-friendly pages by decreasing the site’s ranking in mobile search results. Thus, if your web-site is not optimized for mobile traffic, your business could be losing potential sales and customers.

So, how to create a mobile-friendly site? There are three way of achieving a mobile-friendly site- Mobile site, Respon-sive site and Adaptive site. What do these options really mean and which one is right for your business, your budget and your digital goals?

Let’s start with a mobile site

A mobile site is a dedicated additional site that is designed, optimized and built for smaller screens, processing power and connectivity of a mobile or tablet device, with a completely different design & in-formation, functionality and user journey

as compared to the main web-site.

Now let’s consider responsive and adaptive websites

Instead of creating multiple websites for specific devices, responsive and adap-tive websites works by serving the same HTML code on the same URL regardless of the users’ device (desktop, tablet or mo-bile), adjusting the design and content.Responsive• It “responds to” or resizes itself de-

pending on the type of device it is be-ing seen through: A desktop computer monitor, a laptop, a 10-inch tablet, a 7-inch tablet, or a 4-inch smartphone screen.

• It is also worth indicating that respon-sive design is Google’s recommended design pattern.

Adaptive• Adaptive design takes the same site,

but has static designs for mobile, tab-let and desktop types. It will recognize the device being used and display the design it best fits.

• It has faster load times as content for smaller screens can be optimized and displayed and potentially lower devel-opment costs.

• Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer to the question of which ap-proach is best between responsive, adaptive and mobile, as all approaches meet Google’s criteria for being mobile friendly. Therefore, it all depends on which option fits best for your busi-ness. With one of the biggest digital market-

ing trends of 2015 being mobile, there is no reason for you to not set your business up for mobile success.

Did you know that

85% of Mauritians aged 35- 44 years have

a smart-phone?

5 tips for you to make your website easily accessible on mobile device1. Keep the design simple and clean.

2. Keep the content short and to the point.

3. Make it easy to find your phone number, location and contact info.

4. Remember to continuously keep testing the mobile user experience to improve overall site experience with usability testing.

5. Use high-resolu-tion images.

(Source: mcb.mu)

Top 7 brilliant digital marketing tips to differentiate your business2Valuable and Relevant Content

Good material that delivers val-ue is extremely significant to long term business growth. It is necessary to use long lasting

content if you want your users to actively engage with your content over an extend-ed period of time. Content attracts and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re edu-cating people so that they know, like, and trust you adequately to do business with you.

With content, the aim of your business should be to assist and inform your con-sumers. The idea is not sell your product directly, rather to give them an idea as to why the product is good and how it will benefit them.

After knowing what content marketing is, it is important to know why content marketing is important to your business.

To begin with, we will understand the four steps of a consumer’s

buying cycle • Awareness: The customers are aware

of what they need to purchase. • Research: Once customers are aware,

there will research to educate them-selves about what they need.

• Consideration: At this point, the cus-tomers starts comparing different products from different sellers.

• Buy: Finally, the customer makes their decisions and moves forward with the purchase.

The return on investment for content marketing can be remarkable if imple-mented correctly. Content marketing also provides supplementary benefits in that it supports other digital marketing chan-

nels. It provides added content for social media marketing and contributes to SEO efforts.

Moreover, we list down the following reasons why quality and

relevant content is extremely important for your business

• Content creates awareness for your brand: If your content engrosses read-ers, they will share it on various social media platforms, email or through word of mouth as a recommendation.

• Content drives results from SEO: Goo-gle has made this imperative when it launched. Content became, and still is the king, since websites are found mainly through content.

• Content drives purchases: Consum-ers base decisions on online content when shopping online, or researching offline purposes. Also, buyer behaviour has changed, and now they want to see broader opinions from others about products and services. Thus, they dig content to help their decision making.

Furthermore, we round up some interesting facts and figures

about content marketing • Less than 40% of all content marketers

are effective at content marketing.• The most effective marketers spend 39%

of their marketing budgets on content.• Visual content is a key component in

each of the top five most effective B2B marketing tactics.

• 69 % of content marketing lacks quality.• 72% percent of marketers think that

branded content is more effective than magazine advertisements; 69% say it’s superior to direct mail and PR.

• 70% of marketers are creating more con-tent than they did a year ago.

Content is the king to

your digital marketing

strategy.

(Source: CMO.com)


3LETS GET SOCIAL

Social media has definitely proven to be one of the successful mar-keting tools for many businesses. Now-a-days, people gravitate to

social media sites for information and interaction, whether for entertainment, feedback or insight. Social media sites offer businesses with an increasing user base of potential customers and com-munication free of cost. Whether it is Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ or Instagram, each social media platform provides an opportunity for businesses to form unique relationships. As social me-dia can seem enormous and massive, you can choose one social media platform that your customers, prospects engage the most – either Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and build your presence. It is advisable to invest you time and choose the right platform prudently and wisely.

The advantage of having your business presence on social media is that a busi-ness can promote and market its brand, with 46% of customers’ social media as a vital source in their purchase decisions. Branded social media pages increase rec-ognition and awareness online and busi-nesses can market their businesses to potential and current customers, through relevant content.

There are many ways to track the rep-utation of your business and how you are performing on social media sites.

A few examples include

• CTRs (click through rate): It measures the number of users that click on your specific link/site.

• The number of comments, ‘likes’, ‘shares’, ‘retweets’, ‘favourites’

• Statistical programs such as Google An-alytics to tell you how many people are visiting your site.

Also, we list down some important tips for YOU to take into consideration on social media platforms! • You should post regularly and have a

uniformed identity to your posts. • Do not use your social media accounts

only for promotional uses. Instead, find and share information that your customers want to see and respond to. Leverage your followers and make them feel like a part of your brand fam-ily.

• Think twice and review carefully before you post on social media. The ability to screenshot can make it difficult to cov-er your social media error, resulting in brand damage.

• Since consumers can start positive or negative conversations about you, make sure to set up alerts that notify you immediately. Approach the com-plaints as an opportunity to show your business customer-service capabilities.

Still don’t believe that being social is important?

We round up some interesting facts and figures to make you fully aware of the global movement toward the digital age. • 1.925 billion active users use their mo-

biles for social media platforms. • Social media users have risen by 176

million in the last year. • Facebook adds 0.5 million new users

every day, 6 new profiles every second. (Indeed a platform worth tapping into)

Social media is definitely #TheFuture of Digital marketing.

Social media

substitutes nothing,

rather accompanies

with everything!

(Source- wearesocial.net)


4BLOGGING

As marketers in a consumer driv-en world, it is necessary to un-derstand how to communicate with the audience in a way that

they prefer. In today’s atmosphere, where digital marketing reign above all, consum-ers are looking to absorb new and innova-tive content. One of the best ways to reach out to the target consumers is through a blog. A blog is a direct representation of the business, which is maintained through regular and consistent posts that are at-tractive to a specific audience.

Companies that blogs increase visitors to their websites by 55%, and enlighten-ing their social media efforts. Moreover, Google gives high priority to sites that cre-ate high quality content that is relevant to their audience. It is the perfect vehicle for sharing the best you have to offer, making your business remarkable and sustaining presence online.

So, here are 5 important tips to blog your way to success

1. Know your audience and promote your brand: It is imperative to know who you are talking to before you start blogging and therefore, having an ab-stract idea about the audience and target segment is required. You should identify the demographics, personal-ities, behaviour traits, and purchasing pattern.

2. Plan it out: Before you start blogging, you should plan a promotional plan, and know what exactly what you want to post and when you want to post it. Recognize various events, occasions and dates when you can create engag-ing content. Keep in mind not to post too much in a single day as it will drive readers away. Also, utilize prominent elements such as videos, pictures, pre-sentations, and infographics.

3. Engage your audience: A blog is a two way communication system that should engage your audience and the content should resonate with them. Gather interesting and present infor-mation and highlight them in your per-sonal way.

4. Allocate specific resources: A blog is an independent endeavour on its own and should not be give last priority. Allocate resources dedicated to your blog such as experienced writers, pho-tographers and digital analysts, making your blog a self-sufficient entity which drives readers.

5. Measure, analyze, and evaluate: You should track every step to measure the results and enhance your content creation. Use various analytic tools, in-cluding daily visits, clicks, time spent, search results, virality to study the growth rate of the blog and tweak the plan where necessary.

If a company’s blog satisfies the audi-ence engagement, delivery of informa-tion, and acts as a conversion, it will be on its way to become a digital marketing success.

• Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI• 82% of marketers who blog daily acquired a customer using their blog• Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website• Blog articles with images get 94% more views

We round up some interesting facts about

blogging for you!

Source- hubspot. com

Companies that blogs in-crease visitors to their web-sites by 55%,

and enlighten-ing their social media efforts


5Email marketing and

SMS marketing are significant

G iven the penetration of mobile phones, it is not surprising that SMS would be an impactful

marketing medium. SMS gets to the point with beating around the bush making it an easy communi-cation. With message relevance considered critical to the effective-ness of the campaign, the avail-ability and affordability of SMS marketing services have allowed various businesses to capitalize on

E-mail marketing is one of the most important digital marketing techniques, get-ting increased budgets in

companies. There are more than a billion email accounts today and most users check their email at least once a day. With email mar-keting, you can have a communi-cation with your users in less than three hours saving time, effort and costs.

Well, marketing research shows that numerous consumers and inclined to make a purchase on association with a well-planned email campaign.

It is important to know that at-tributes of an email can make you or break you. However, one way to upsurge them is with a great headline, or subject line. A strong, compelling headline can be your only chance to

get someone to open an email, take an action and have a huge in-fluence on your business.A few important tips to con-sider are: • Be clear on what’s

inside: For example - A

gift vouch-er only for you

• Tell them what you n e e d them to do:

For example

- Claim your offer, and start shopping today

• Tell them what the benefit for them is:

For example- Buy today and get 50% discount on your next visit

Let us now consider

SMS marketing.this strong and valuable resource. A few important tips to consider are: • Clean your database regularly-

A business database has to be preserved for relevance

• Allow for opt-ins and opt-outs- Target message recipients must be given the option of whether they want to be kept in or out of the database.

• Be friendly- Create your mes-sage in a personalized manner and build empathy with your audience.

Emails are dead? Not so rapidly!

Email and SMS marketing re-main old, yet significant tac-tics. Also, it is relatively easy to get started with them, so businesses must definitely

take advantage of these two tools for their digital marketing success.


6Right analytics

To digital marketers:Fast! How many visitors

are coming to your web-site per month? Where

are your best visitors from? What are your top and worst performing pages? Have you reached your target au-dience? How did your target audience re-act to your marketing message? Did they connect to your brand? New customers? Repeat customers? Market penetration? Conversion? Incremental Revenue?

If you feel lost, then you are surely throwing away opportunities to improve. While having a strong online presence can be vital to your business’ growth, it’s not the whole story yet! How can you craft a strategy without up-to-date information? That’s where having the right analytics will help. Analytics tools allow you to get secret information about your visitors, whether it is for your website, paid ads, campaigns and so on.

In the next paragraphs, we are elab-orating on analytics for websites as this is one of the most important one for all brands. Still wondering what type of se-cret information you can get about your potential customers?

Have a look at some of the valuable data an effective web analytic program can give you:• How many visitors are currently on

your website?• Where are your visitors from?• How did they reach your website?• What do they read most?

But for those who are new to analytics for websites, this whole thing may look confusing. So, which metric should you focus on? Usually, it depends on the kind of business you are doing and your indi-vidual digital goals. But as a general rule, there are some common crucial data as seen below for a good overview of your

website user-friendless, visitor pro-files and traffic sources:• Sessions• Page views• Average time spent on your website• Visitor’s location• Keywords• Direct visits• Referral websites• Visitors from social media channels• New visitors rate• Exit rate• Number of visitors from mobile,

tablets

For example, if you have a huge num-ber of visitors from mobile and your web-site has not been optimised, then this data can prompt you to take further ac-tion. Each data helps you take enhanced decisions!

Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing initiative helps you grow big-ger and better! Measuring what’s work-ing and what isn’t should be core to your overall digital strategy. Be on top of your game and get it right from the start! These facts are invaluable in helping you enhance your user experience, optimise marketing campaigns, target audience and take strategic decisions.

Think of this as a

roadmap to success.

Measuring the effectiveness

of your marketing

initiative helps you grow

bigger and better!


7Pay Per Click Advertising

M illions of firms are showing off their brands online, so how do you get yours no-ticed? Pay-Per-Click adver-

tising or PPC in short, can not only draw attention, but go a long way from convert-ing your efforts into sales.

Pay per click Adver-tising is still puzzling to some. To make it simpler for you, PPC is an online paid advertising which displays your advertising on search engines result pages. It is a great way to promote your com-pany online to potential customers. In the PPC marketing model, an ad-vertiser bids on specific keywords that normal users type in to look for a similar products/services in search engines, in or-der to display related ads to those users and as a result, hopefully draws their attention to the advertiser’s site.

If you use Google Search, you may have noticed that sponsored ads are captivat-ing more and more of the search engine results page. Still unclear to you? Have a look below and I am sure you will say: ‘that is something I see every day’!

For business that are reluctant to dip their toes into PPC advertising, here are a few reasons why this investment will be worth your while:• You only pay when a potential custom-

er clicks• You set your own budget• Unlike organic search, you can instant

results• You can target your demographics

But how to get the perfect PPC cam-paign? Follow our detailed steps to set up your first-ever PPC campaign:• Know what PPC advertising is (We al-

ready explained above, no need to thank us.)

• Set your objective and budget• Pick a relevant search engine• Choose your keywords strategically• Write a persuasive title• Link to a landing page instead of your

homepage• Track your ROI and optimise for better

resultsDo you think that nobody clicks on

search engine sponsored Ads? Think again! Sponsored results account for 64.6% of clicks while organic unpaid ads accounts for 35.4% only.

There is a lot of hard work behind an effective PPC campaign. If done and op-timised correctly, it can work wonders to your brand. The plus point is that thou-sands of people can see you even if they are not clicking on you, online exposure for almost-free!

Ever heard about PPC? If you don’t

know about PPC, you

are surely missing

out on extra revenues!

If you use Google Search, you may have noticed that

sponsored ads are captivating more and more

of the search engine results

page.

about the author

Ranjana FoogooaManaging Director

E-mail: [email protected]: +230 433 8020Mob: +230 5710 3647

CEO and Founder of Sphere Media Technologies, Ranjana has 10 years

experience in Digital Marketing. Having started her career at Shop-

ping.com, later acquired by eBay Inc., Ranjana was among the first in

Europe to join the online space.

With a technical background of Computer Engineering and Net-

working, Ranjana has in-depth digi-tal marketing knowledge and ex-

pertise through driving advertising campaigns and working with major search engines like Google, Yahoo!

Ranjana has led and implemented EU-wide online revenue generation

strategies for Apple/iTunes, P&O Ferries, Vodafone, Expedia and

other market movers and shakers, while being based in London.

There was a gap in the market and it presented itself as an

opportunity to bring change. Sphere Media Technologies was created to fill this gap and to help clients differen-tiate themselves, build their digital footprint and join the

ever-changing, revolutionary, digital band-wagon.

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