Tag Archive for: digital marketing agency in Chicago

Tips for Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for Your Business

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Social media advertising can be a powerful tool for growing your company’s online presence. But it isn’t necessary to advertise on every single social media platform.

Whether you’re just getting started or you’re looking to expand your existing presence, it’s important to pick one platform and get it up and running successfully before opening another one. So how do you go about choosing which social media advertising platform is the right choice for your company?

Here are some tips from Onimod Global.

Consider your Company

When choosing a social media platform, it’s important to take into account the type of business you are and how you want your brand to come across.

For example, a small business that sells handmade products may find Instagram or TikTok more appealing because they are visual platforms. However, if your company is B2B and sells software or services, LinkedIn might be a better fit.

Each channel has its pros and cons. For example, Instagram is great for building brand loyalty among consumers but doesn’t have the same professional appeal as LinkedIn. Similarly, LinkedIn has an excellent reputation for helping businesses grow but some people don’t enjoy using it as much as others.

The point is: you have options! The key is finding the right match for your business’s needs.

Research your Competitors

Social media is a crowded place.

You can’t afford to not be on social media, but you also can’t afford to look like everyone else. That’s why it’s important to conduct a competitive analysis when developing your social media strategy.

A competitive analysis will give you insights into the competition that will help you:

  • Understand what platforms they’re using (and how well they’re using them)
  • Know what’s working/not working for them
  • Understand how engaged their audience is on each channel

Understand Platforms and their Use

When you’re looking to expand your company’s social media presence, it’s important to do some research on each platform. Each network has its own personality, and the more you understand about how the network works, the better you can tailor your content for that platform.

For example, Twitter is great for conversations and trending topics. LinkedIn is good for sharing professional expertise and company information. Snapchat was the first to introduce disappearing posts, but Instagram Stories are equally ephemeral.

By taking some time to understand the channels you’re considering—and their communication protocols—you will not only help pick the best platform(s) for your company, but also avoid communication faux pas that could alienate potential customers or clients.

Align Social Media with your Marketing Strategy

It’s absolutely essential to any good marketing strategy to know why you’re on social media in the first place. If you want to share content and engage with your followers, there are several platforms that will benefit that strategy depending on the type of content you share. However, if customer support is a top goal for you, Twitter and Facebook should be on your consideration list before Instagram.

Contact Onimod Global

Digital Marketing across multiple social platforms allows us to create visibility for your company in the places your customers are searching, interacting and engaging on social media properties. If you’re looking to take your social media marketing strategy to the next level, Onimod Global can help.

Schedule a consultation with our digital marketing pros here today!

6 Customer Loyalty Tips To Drive Local Search Traffic

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When dreaming up ways to improve search engine results, it makes sense to consider the customer loyalty factor. Why you ask? Customer loyalty plays a very crucial role in marketing for a company. Whether it may be more trusted customer reviews on your site or user-generated content produced by loyal customers, it is clear that customer loyalty is important to also driving you to the top of search page results. So how can you work to build customer loyalty online? Onimod Global specialists are here to break down 6 top tips on maintaining loyal customers.

6 Customer Loyalty Tips

The search engine optimization specialists from Onimod Global are here to offer several simple ways in which you can develop better customer loyalty within your own organization. The following 6 tips are based off of an article with Search Engine Land:

  1. Social Loyalty: Social media has grown to wield an impressive amount of influence over any given company. Facebook is a top platform that appeals to users looking for recommendations regarding any number of products or services. This feature allows other users to weigh in on the topic and recommend businesses that they find relevant to their friend’s search. This word-of-mouth by proxy through Facebook is significant because it disrupts typical search engine procedures.
  2. Narrative Control: As mentioned with the example of Amazon, online reviews carry an incredible amount of power. Make sure that you are giving customers a way to express their loyalty via online platforms such as Facebook and Yelp. You can even use this information as a testimonial to the benefits that your company offers.
  3. Forever Loyal: Truly loyal customers will seek out a preferred business no matter what the odds. Young used the example of Chick-Fil-A to represent this ideal. He noted that no matter where he goes, he can find a line out the door of Chick-Fil-A, even when other area fast food restaurants have no wait at all.
  4. Loyalty Economics: It can be difficult to track down truly loyal customers. Typically, a company’s marketing efforts toward new clients are much more expensive than if the company were to simply continue marketing toward dissatisfied customers. For this reason, it may be worth considering ways in which you can better the experience of existing customers rather than solely focusing on new customer leads.
  5. Loyalty Database: Data is an invaluable resource for any business. Data regarding repeat customers is even more essential to promoting growth and prosperity. Once you are able to gain information about current loyal customers, you will be more easily able to locate new ones, which cuts out a lot of wasted ad dollar being used in search engine marketing.
  6. Determining Improvements: Even if a company’s customer satisfaction ratings are high, there is usually significant room for improvement. This issue points back to the loyalty database and what insights it can provide to your business. By going back over the numbers you can begin to paint a much clearer picture for both current and potential customers about your business and why it is the right choice for them to purchase goods and services from.

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.

Native Ads: Are They Worth The Hype?

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Advertising in general has become so second nature to anyone browsing the web that they almost block out anything that could be considered an ad. This means that your ad either needs to stand out enough to somehow be memorable or annoyingly shoved in a potential customer’s face. Both options are not ideal, and may potentially irritate your audience more than intrigue them.

Enter Native ads: a fairly simple yet powerful tool, and a true master in the art of camouflage. The whole purpose of native advertising is to blend in with other website content so your audience doesn’t necessarily recognize it as an advertisement.

But of course the main question is: do they work?

Answer: Yes, but it really depends on your goals and your industry.

What does a native ad look like?

Here is an example from Yahoo News of an advertisement for a SmartWatch disguised to blend in as a news article.

native ad example

Native ads can show up in several different places, and can be optimized for desktop or mobile. News sites are the most common as it’s common to blend in with other news articles.

Why are they growing in popularity every year?

Outbrain, one of the most popular native advertisement platforms, has several reasons listed.

Reason #1 is fairly straightforward, the data.

Native advertising works. Consumers look at native ads 53% more than display ads. Native ads create an 18% increase in purchase intent, and the visual engagement with native ads is the same, and even slightly higher, than the original editorial content.

Another reason for booming success is native ads combat ad fatigue. Is the frequency on your ads through the roof and your clickthrough rate shrinking by the minute? Native ads are brand exposure nestled in with editorial content, so they don’t exhaust your audience. As long as the content you provide is relevant and engaging, you will see native advertising engages the audience.

Why should you use them?

If your ads are constantly being blocked by ad blockers, native advertising will be a great place to start. A lot of advertisers are also seeing an increase in brand awareness and engagement as a result of using native ads compared to banner ads.

 

Why shouldn’t you use them?

It depends on the product, service, and industry on occasion, and it may also be the case that you shouldn’t go for native ads. It may be the case that targeting options from native ad platforms are too broad for your industry. It could also be your target audience may engage more with an advertisement truly presented as an ad and not intentionally camouflaged into a news page.

At the end of the day a native ad is a native ad. We sometimes click them if the ad creative and headline is promising enough. But at the end of the day, it’s no secret. We all know it’s an ad and we’re okay with it. We highly recommend running a pilot with a native advertising platform and testing your performance. After all, the data will drive your strategy decisions in the long run!

More from Onimod Global

Looking for an agency to help you with a holistic digital marketing strategy and optimize your native ad performance? 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.

Restaurant Digital Marketing Strategies That Will Increase Traffic

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Managing a restaurant in today’s fast paced, digital environment can be very difficult to keep up with. It’s well known how competitive the restaurant industry is, so how can your venue stand out from the crowd? Implementing effective digital marketing strategies is critical when it comes to increasing restaurant traffic and overall revenue. If your restaurant is unfamiliar with SEO, social media marketing, or any other aspect of digital marketing, this post will provide strategies to help your business stand out.

Invest in a Highly Functional Website
Investing in a responsive, professional website may seem like a major expense to restaurant owners, but it’s essential in today’s digital world. According to a survey from OpenTable “86 percent of consumers go online to view a restaurant’s menu prior to visiting the venue.” This demonstrates how today’s consumers are visiting venues online before physically entering restaurants. Because of this it’s also important to ensure your restaurant’s website is optimized for mobile, as the industry is known to experience a massive amount of mobile traffic. Be certain to never hide important information from potential consumers on your site such as menus, hours, contact information, photos, and any call to actions (reservations).

Prioritize Social Media Advertising
Having an effective social media strategy is essential to restaurant success. This seems obvious, but many restaurants don’t know how to reach the right audiences or execute their overall plan. According to an article from Forbes, some common mistakes seen in the industry are “not connecting Facebook and Instagram accounts, marketing to a national audience instead of local, using hashtags on Facebook, and many others.” This mistakes are not too difficult to correct, yet it requires an investment of both time and money to be properly executed. Ultimately, because social media marketing is such an integral part to restaurant success and takes time, outsourcing to an experienced digital marketing agency like ours is probably your best bet.

Pay Attention to Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is an important tool that provides local businesses with an opportunity to appear in Google search and map results to essentially increase local SEO rankings. Having a GMB listing and being active is critical in today’s digital world for local restaurants in order to stand out from the crowd. Including restaurant information, uploading appealing images, optimizing your GMB listing, and frequently posting updates will greatly improve a restaurant’s digital visibility. Utilizing Google My Business allows your organization to take charge of what people see when conducting a local search for your business, and it should never be overlooked.

Analyze Website Traffic and SEO Rankings
Having a professional website is great, but does it rank well on Google? The survey from OpenTable also found that “87 percent of potential consumers go online to find a restaurant in their area prior to visiting any venue.” Therefore, an enhanced SEO presence is critical, especially for local businesses. Not ranking on the first page of search engines for relevant search queries in the restaurant industry can potentially set your business up for failure. Monitoring website traffic is also crucial so be sure to install Google Analytics on your website to help with traffic analysis.

Bar & Restaurant Case Study
Wondering what kind of bar & restaurant digital marketing experience Onimod Global has? Take a look at our Case Study and read about how one of our clients in downtown Chicago is outranking their competition and seeing sales soar as a result. We developed a highly functional website, increased organic SEO rankings, and spread the word about their incredible services across all major social media platforms. As displayed in the chart below, in the first 3 months alone of 2018 our client has been found 146,000 times in Google Maps and a total of 321,000 times on Google.

Contact Us
Is your restaurant in need of superior digital marketing services? Reach out to us at Onimod Global and see what digital solutions we can provide for you!