Tag Archive for: Digital marketing news

How To Advertise On Clubhouse

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Have you heard of Clubhouse yet? It’s the newest social media app to take the world by storm. The invite-only drop-in audio platform currently has over 2 million people users interacting with the platform each week. The new platform is currently valued at over $1 billion US dollars.

After a tweet recently sent out by Elon Musk, the platform received a huge push after he tweeted that he would be hosting an event on Clubhouse. It just so happened that he was joined by the Robinhood CEO, Vlad Tenev, gaining even more traction.

To sum up the platform in a few words, Clubhouse offers people a loose collection of drop-in clubs and events, where you can not only listen to people discuss topics ranging from startups and technology through to philosophy and comedy, but also contribute your own questions and thoughts. It’s kind of like a spontaneous podcast that anyone can listen to live, and several hundred to several thousand attendees dropping in from all over the world.

The platform has completely exploded in popularity and is growing rapidly by the day (the app had just 600,000 weekly users in December of 2020). The caliber of users is increasing since the Elon Musk tweet, and all are at least experimenting with the new platform. The obvious question for creators, brands, and contributors, however, becomes ‘how do we monetize this?’.

Currently, Clubhouse does not offer any in-app advertising functionality, as the company doubles down on the growth and user experience of its platform. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t advertise on Clubhouse. Let’s take a look at both podcasts and meetups (during normal non-COVID times) to discover how marketers can jump ahead of the curve and make money advertising on Clubhouse.

1. Branded Events and Clubs

It can be as simple as a branded event. Brand events and clubs always have an extra flare by adding something to the effect of ‘Presented by Company X’ in the title of an event. This is no different to many a local tech or startup meetup that might be presented either online or an in-person type of event. Not only that, but larger more traditional organizations — think IBM, Microsoft, and financial services organizations — are always more than delighted to align themselves with the latest trends and up-and-coming segments.

2. Guest/Celebrity Appearances

Both brands and personalities might want to access the spotlight at high-quality events that draw a large crowd and place them alongside influential figures.

As such, you might be able to offer pay-to-play for speakers/moderators at your events. This gives them an opportunity to get in front of their audience, build their own Clubhouse following, and develop or further solidify their brand and association with a particular demographic.

3. Product Placement

If you’re running an event on, say, beauty, and you have a club that regularly draws thousands of people to its events, then you will no doubt find brands that will want to get in front of your audience. Common in podcasts and events alike, product placement can be huge for an app such as Clubhouse. For example, it could be a conversation centered entirely around reviewing a certain product live, or discussing the features with a trusted influencer.

It might be as simple as name-dropping products, and if you have any reservations about this, limit product placements to products that you’re personally using and give out affiliate links for certain products and/or services that you would personally vouch for.

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Onimod Global is looking forward to the future and helping your business reach your full digital potential. Interested in growing your digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

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

What Will Influencer Marketing Look Like in 2021

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It’s fairly safe to say that 2020 was a tough year for us all, in personal and professional life. We have all needed to adjust to the new normal. One industry that was heavily impacted was influencer marketing, where they saw a sharp decline in the value of their content as people moved indoors and grappled with the loss that the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed on the world. What does this mean for the future of influencer marketing in 2021? Experts at Onimod Global took a deep dive into the topic to help you decide when it’s appropriate to use an influencer, and how that will change in the upcoming decade.

Where influencer marketing began

Initially, before brands used celebrity endorsements, they used characters to evoke empathy from consumers such as Santa Claus for Coca Cola and Tony the Tiger for Kellogg’s cereals. The next wave included all sorts of celebrity and public figure endorsements. This helped brands to get their consumers to connect the dots between brand, trust, and recommendations by public figures.

Then entered the influencer era: where celebrity endorsements are still popular, but now they have to compete with “normal” personalities. Influencers are similar to characters in the sense that they still perform the role of someone in an ad on social media but they are, and very well could be, your neighbors; just with hundreds of thousands of followers online. Influencer marketing has boomed in popularity over the last years, especially in the fashion and lifestyle industries. Consumers that would once shop based on cool advertising and customer reviews, have changed their ways and will buy based on a raving review from their favorite influencer. Today, influencer marketing is worth a reported $10 billion dollars, and now every social platform has been involved in some way.

Impact of microinfluencers

While the influencers and celebrities with an established audience of hundreds of thousands of followers can make a significant impact on your overall sales, they can also take a massive toll on your company’s wallet. This is why brands also opt for “microinfluencers”, or social media personalities with a lower follower count.

Their content is usually centered around a very niche passion or community, some examples being health & beauty, trucking & logistics, or travel. The most incredible USP about microinfluencers is that they can have an engagement rate of nearly 60% versus that of a celebrity doing something similar. While being a cost effective option for a brand that wants to get involved in influencer marketing, they are also seen as very trustworthy source of information.

The future of influencer marketing

What’s up next for the future of influencer marketing? The first change we’ve seen thus far is influencers beginning to charge for exclusive content on Instagram and other platforms. Some charge a monthly fee to become a “Close Friend” on Instagram, while others are trialling WeChat’s new paywalls. In effect, content quality is becoming a focus.

However, this has the potential to also be a benefit for brands. If the influencers they work with are more invested in producing high quality content, they could be more likely to develop stronger partnerships with a select number of brands. “It will enable influencers to avoid having ‘one night stands’ with brands and rather focus on creating long-term ambassadorships with brands that are truly authentic to their lifestyle,” says Krishna Subramanian, CEO of influencer marketing and branded content firm Captiv8.

Private fan subscriptions are just one of many changes we predict will happen in the next decade, and Onimod Global experts will be sure to keep you up to date on all new influencer marketing news.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global is looking forward to the future and helping your business reach your full digital potential. Interested in growing your digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

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

Why Live Shopping Is The Future Of Ecommerce

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Brick-and-mortar retail was a significant revenue-driver as recently as 2019, but Covid-19 has changed everything. The pandemic has already accelerated levels of e-commerce growth not previously expected until 2022 at minimum. Live shopping is coming up as the latest Ecommerce trend that combines advances to technology and social media channels with the familiar, quaintly nostalgic concept of at-home shopping. Envision the Home Shopping Network (which continues to be quite successful) but streamable on mobile phones through websites and on social media apps such as Instagram with influencers that help to sell goods.

Onimod Global experts are here to break down what live shopping is and why it will be crucial to the success of your Ecommerce strategy in 2021 and coming years.

What exactly is live shopping?

Livestream shopping is a natural confluence of several current tech trends—streaming, influencers, social, commerce—and offers companies a new approach based on an old shopping trend to consumers’ hearts and wallets. Think back to when the Home Shopping Channel began to appear on televisions, first across North America and then worldwide. Previously catered to housewives, the live shopping on channels QVC and HSC allowed women to shop from the comfort of their couches just by calling in to the show.

Several decades and gender role changes later, live shopping provides a convenience that has now been completely taken over by ecommerce and the ability to do it all from one’s computer or mobile phone instead. Live shopping provides a real-time feedback loop for all consumers tuned in, including reviews and recommendations of products. Influencers and customers sharing among followers and friends, and asking questions about the product on the platform in use is an important piece of the puzzle for brands to embrace “social commerce.” As we’ve already mentioned, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of live shopping, giving ample space and opportunity for it to reach customers in North America and Europe. Beyond fashion and beauty, live shopping can be extended into many different types of categories. For example, cars and houses and all sorts of accessories sold in a variety of industries are emerging in popularity.

Live shopping platforms

Live shopping used to come from one customer and one customer only: the ones watching tv at home. Now the landscape has shifted entirely, where live shopping can happen on a buyer’s phone or computer, and, yes, streamed on their smart television, too.

This list of already existing streaming platforms from Shopify is a great place to start looking if you’re interested in offering live shopping:

The most important and largest platform to start live shopping for your business is of course, Instagram. Instagram live shopping is used in the following ways:

  • Product demos: Educate and engage buyers. Test the products for interested customers, answering any questions they may have.
  • Collaboration: Give buyers authentic reviews. Bring on other creators or brands with an influencer to give a level of insight and realistic product presentation to the process.
  • Human interaction: Invite buyers to participate. All of these options allow for your buyer to participate in the testing, learning, and shopping experience in a way that straight Ecommerce doesn’t necessarily provide space for.

The future of Ecommerce

Live shopping brings a humanized element to an otherwise human-less experience. One thing Ecommerce always had going for it was the fast and easy process, however no one had yet figured out a way to bring interaction to the table to match the USP of convenience. COVID-19 catapulted Ecommerce and online shopping in this direction, with no signs of slowing down.

Though a post-COVID life is hopefully coming soon, and whatever version of “normal living” is sure to resume soon after, live shopping—like many other new or adapted consumer behaviors and technologies—is likely to remain a pillar of the buying experience.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global is looking forward to the future and helping your business reach your full digital potential. Interested in growing your digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

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

What’s In Store For Digital Marketing Agencies in 2021

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Nobody was prepared in the slightest for everything that occurred in 2020, and that includes digital marketing agencies. When initial shutdowns began worldwide, agencies all over the world decreased significantly in revenues.

While 2021 still holds some economic uncertainty, leaders in the digital marketing realm have indicated that their agencies have been remarkably standing strong, according to CallRail’s fall survey of 167 global marketing leaders who use its services. The findings show that most agencies will finish 2020 with higher annual revenues than in 2019.

2021 financial outlook

In the CallRail’s survey, 88% of agencies indicated they are satisfied to extremely satisfied with their agency’s financial health in 2020. Only 3% were extremely unsatisfied. Most agencies also anticipate exceeding their 2019 revenue by the end of 2020, which are in line with the rest of the findings.

As most business shifted from offline to online at a rapid rate, it makes sense that a majority of agencies are succeeding this year financially. The vice president of Avalaunch Media, Kyle Shurtz, shares how his business experienced an increase in financial success, “Because we focus strictly on online advertising, we had more business come through as people shifted from offline to online. We anticipate 2021 to be much more of the same. Our goal is to grow by about 20% year-over-year.”

The value of digital marketing agencies

The key value that digital marketing agencies bring to the table for clients is their strategic value. Being seen as a strategic partner is one of the primary ways agencies can increase their value to clients. Most agencies felt as though they were doing quite well in this area. According to 67% of agencies, the primary reason that clients choose their agency is because they’ve established themselves as strong strategic partners.

The longevity most agencies have with clients is another indicator that clients believed agencies are delivering enough value to continue to use their services. Long-term relationships of two years or more were common for 69% of agencies. Only 4% said the client relationship lasted less than one year.

What this means for 2021

Uncertainty of course remains, but the future looks very bright for digital marketing agencies in 2021. And there seems to be agreement among agencies that even if more lockdowns occur, it likely won’t be a repeat of spring. As agencies look ahead to 2021, there’s every reason to believe they will continue to realize increase revenue, growth in business, and overall strong financial health.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global is looking forward to the future and helping your business reach your full digital potential. Interested in growing lead generation and sales revenue for your company through digital channels? Reach out to us here!

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

The Top 5 Google Ranking Factors – SEO Guide

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With so many different ranking factors for Google, over 200 in total, it’s important to identify which are the most important that are essential to your success. Overall, there are several ranking factors that do little to nothing in terms of SEO, so we’ve created a definitive list of Google ranking factors that can make or break your search optimization strategy.

Mobile Optimization

Google announced that starting from September 2020 all websites without exception will be judged on their mobile version, not the desktop version. So essentially if you want your website to have any chance of ranking, it definitely needs to be optimized for mobile landing pages. It also provides your customer with a better user experience, so it’s a win win for everyone involved.

Structured Data

This is where you implement tags that are crucial to Google understanding everything about the content you are posting. Structured data can be used to tag authors, ratings, product features, locations, and so much more. This is a not-so well known SEO tool that can do wonders for you in terms of ranking — creating links between entities, pin your location, and enhance your search snippets with rich elements.

Google My Business Listing

Creating the listing, optimizing, and then maintaining your Google My Business listing is hands down the most important thing you can do for your local SEO. It helps establish your company as an entity, which in itself is a great asset to your SEO. Even more, it will skyrocket your local search performance. Once you create a listing, it becomes eligible for the local business panel as well as Google maps, opening your business to nearby searchers. For example, if someone is shopping and stopping for a coffee, your Google My Business listing will help show you in the search results of a nearby option.

Backlinks

Google has said that they are planning to move away from backlinks in the future, but for now they still remain the most important ranking factor for your pages. Except now you have to be very straightforward with your SEO strategies — your links have to come from a variety of high authority websites that are similar to yours. Furthermore, there are Google sources who say that freshness and traffic may also be important backlink metrics.

Avoid Content Saturation

In the past, you could overload your content with keyword rich information. Now things have changed, and for the better including everyone involved. Your SEO content has to contain an appropriate amount of relevant keywords, entities, and images for the length of the copy. The content should not be completely filled, like in the beginning days of SEO, it should rather be a natural-sounding copy written in an informative style.

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Looking for an agency to help your small business with your search engine optimization? Reach out to us here!

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

Why Your Small Business Ads Are Getting Blocked By Facebook

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Facebook, one of the largest social and advertising platforms in the world, is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to monitor the platform. If your small business ads are continuously getting blocked on Facebook, there may be another reason besides errors in your ads.

Bloomberg stated in a report that errors made by AI algorithms looking to remove offensive ads from Facebook’s platform have caused already struggling small businesses to miss out on online sales opportunities.

As helpful as Facebook ads have been for all business in general, there are several drawbacks to the platform that have made it increasingly difficult to find success in some situations. Drawbacks include problems with the company’s content-moderation software, limited options for customer support and lack of transparency about how to fix problems.

Interviewed by Fortune, New York-based businesswoman Ruth Harrigan selling honey in souvenir shops has had to rely heavily on Facebook ads  for sales during the coronavirus period. Her business was abruptly stopped due to Facebook blocking her ads account due to policy violations. Harrigan is one of millions of small business advertisers who have come to rely on Facebook Inc. because the coronavirus has shut down many traditional retail channels.

Facebook’s human moderators have been focusing on the US election and Covid-19 misinformation this year, so the company has leaned more on artificial intelligence algorithms to monitor other areas of the platform. That’s left many small businesses caught in Facebook’s automated filters, unable to advertise through the service and frustrated because they don’t know why and can’t reach adequate support to fix the issue.

A Facebook rep interviewed by the Post says, “We know it can be frustrating to experience any type of business disruption, especially at such a critical time of the year. While we offer free support for all businesses, we regularly work to improve our tools and systems, and to make the support we offer easier to use and access. We apologize for any inconvenience recent disruptions may have caused.”

Appealing these often-automated decisions has also become a lot harder. “Due to a temporary reduction in our review capacity as a result of Covid-19, we could not always offer our users the option to appeal,” Facebook wrote in its third-quarter report.

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Looking for an agency to help your small business with your paid social media, specifically running Facebook ads? Reach out to us here!

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

Google Search Results: Page Experience Update Coming 2021

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Roughly a full year after the first announcement, Google confirms a new page experience update is coming to Google search results May 2021. This gives us all another 6 months to ensure pages are optimized to full user experience potential.

But what exactly does the new page experience update entail and how can you start prepping early? Onimod Global experts are here to dish all there is to know and prepare for.

What exactly is page experience?

Google will evaluate a set of signals that are meant to understand how a user will perceive the experience of a specific web page. These signals will cover topics such as how quickly a page loads, mobile-friendliness, runs on HTTPS, has invasive interstitials and whether content jumps around as the page loads.

A great resource for more information on this topic is Search Engine Land’s Guide to Core Web Vitals for a deeper dive into what you need to know about these vital user experience metrics.

Google page experience update: What you need to know

With user experience gaining ever-increasing importance for brands and consumers, it’s only natural that the world’s dominating search engine takes into consideration this element. Another area Google wants to experiment with is testing a “visual indicator that highlights pages in search results that have great page experience,” and how they will perform, according to Google.

“We believe that providing information about the quality of a web page’s experience can be helpful to users in choosing the search result that they want to visit,” Google wrote. “On results, the snippet or image preview helps provide topical context for users to know what information a page can provide. Visual indicators on the results are another way to do the same, and we are working on one that identifies pages that have met all of the page experience criteria.”

– Google Webmaster Blog

Google plans to measure a website’s performance based on user experience by using Core Web Values. The metrics’ role is to identify how a user would rate their experience on a given page. Some of the factors that will be looked at include loading speed, mobile-friendliness, if the page is HTTPS-based, use of advertising, content structure, and more.

How You Can Prepare

It’s likely that even with the 6 month buffer period to prepare, several companies will fall far behind in SEO and quickly.  In fact, research from August revealed that no more than 15% of websites could pass the assessment of Core Web Vitals due to poor optimization.

According to Search Engine Land, The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console is a great place to get started with understanding your initial benchmark and get a good sense of how your site is performing in these page experience areas.

Contact Onimod Global

Still need help to prepare for this new page experience update and to be part of the top 15% of websites that will pass Google’s user experience assessment? Reach out to us here!

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

The Guide To Optimizing For Featured Snippets

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Rising to the top of Google’s search results is no simple feat, but definitely doesn’t mean you can’t win. Even if you aren’t in position 1 you’re still able to outrank it. How so? The holy grail of SEO: featured snippets.

In this post from Onimod Global’s experts, we’ll discuss what are featured snippets, what are their benefits for SEO, and how to optimize for them.

What is a featured snippet?

A featured snippet shows up as a block that contains the exact answer to your query. It’s a two to three sentence summary of text that appears at the top of Google. Featured snippets provide a fast and straightforward answer for a user’s query directly in the search results. Receiving a featured snippet is shown to result in more traffic for a given page.

The featured snippet appears to work on a more simplistic algorithm than Google’s “primary” one. This search result is significantly more influenced by simple on-page adjustments that very clearly define the topic to users and their search queries. See a simple example of a featured snippet below, allowing for users to get a fast answer to their question and also an opportunity to receive more traffic to their page.

featured snippet example

How to optimize for the featured snippet

  1. Add a “what is” heading.
    To start your featured snippet optimizations, you’ll want to look for a place in your content to add a “What Is [Keyword]” heading tag. This is a clear signal for Google that you have a fast and efficient information to share with a user with a specific search query. You will even notice at the top of this article, the first headline contains a “What is” statement, queuing Google to recognize information to include and what they can pull into the featured snippet.
  2. Use sentence structure “is”
    It is very important to use an “is” statement when optimizing for featured snippets. Structuring content this way appears to act as a trigger that allows Google to easily find the text that’s relevant for the featured snippet.
  3. The topic must be fully explained in 2-3 sentences
    Being concise is key. Feature snippets are meant to give users as much information about the topic as possible in a short amount of time.
    Here are some general guidelines from Search Engine Land to follow while concisely defining featured snippets:
    – The first sentence should define the topic
    – The second and third sentences should describe 2-3 must-know facts about the topic
    – Try to avoid using any extraneous phrasing in your definition

Contact Onimod Global

Looking for an agency to increase your SEO and optimize your website content? Reach out to us here!

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

Why Google Ads Plans To Limit Search Terms

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Google has started to alert advertisers that it will soon stop showing search queries that triggered their ads when there is not “significant” data.

What is exactly changing?

On Google’s Search Terms Report support page they state, “Starting September 2020,  the search terms report only includes terms that a significant number of users searched for, even if a term received a click. You may now see fewer terms in your report.” In simpler words, advertisers will have reduced visibility into which search queries trigger their ads, even if they register a click or conversion.

Google’s statement from Search Engine Land. “In order to maintain our standards of privacy and strengthen our protections around user data, we have made changes to our Search Terms Report to only include terms that a significant number of users searched for. We’re continuing to invest in new and efficient ways to share insights that enable advertisers to make critical business decisions,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land Wednesday.

What does this mean for you?

According to Seer Interactive, you will lose roughly 28% of your budget’s visibility for paid search.

Prior to the update

  • For every $100K you spent on Google search, you got search term data for $98,700 of it.
  • For every 100K clicks you got, you saw search term data for 98,300 of those clicks.

After the update

  • For every $100K you spend on Google search, you get search term data for $71,000 of it.
  • For every 100K clicks you get, you see search term data for 77,900 of those clicks.

That’s ~$27,000 worth of search term data unseen for every $100K you spend.

Why we advertisers care.

The purpose is to prevent advertisers from having the ability to use minimal query data to identify users or have access to any personally identifiable information users may include in their search queries. Protecting user privacy is important and should be prioritized. However, Google limited query data in Search Console for this reason before the update. The difference is that advertisers pay whenever a user clicks on an ad triggered by a users’ query. Losing this data will have severe financial impact on advertising budgets.

In addition to financial implications, there will also be an effect on the optimization of campaigns and negative keyword lists. Not having any access to this data means that advertisers won’t be able to determine if those queries should be added to negative keyword lists to make their campaigns more efficient.

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