Tag Archive for: Digital marketing news

Facebook Adds New Features to its Video Creation Kit

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On Tuesday Facebook announced new updates for its video creation kit feature. The updates are to give video advertisers more templates, editing options, and a new ‘save’ option. Facebook’s overall purpose of the new features is to optimize ad placement, while giving advertisers more support to create custom designs.

What is the Video Creation Kit:

Facebook released this feature back in August of 2018 with the mobile-first mindset, since it was becoming the most effective way to connect with customers. It enabled users to turn existing image and text assets into mobile-optimized videos framed in 1:1 for feed environments or 9:16 for stories on Facebook and Instagram. The template options are based specifically on what you’re trying to do for the product.

There are two 6 second video options if you’re promoting a product or selling multiple products. It allows advertisers to use keywords to generate interest and sales, or show a selection of products, promoting special offers. There are also two 15 second options to show product benefits or promote product discovery. You can highlight features, use case studies, explain how the product works, bring your brand to life, and share what makes it unique.

The platform gives those with limited video production staff or resources the ability to produce quality video advertisements. It’s most beneficial to small or medium sized businesses that may not have the tools or extensive knowledge on video production.

The New Updates:

Resizing Tool

Advertisers can now optimize the size of their videos for various ad placements. They say it only takes a click of a button to transform one video into many videos with multiple aspect ratios automatically for different places such as Stories or News Feed. Facebook says you will save time and be able to create videos that appear to be customized for each placement, without shooting additional content or having to edit manually.

Editing Options

Facebook has added new templates, including a single-image template with the option to add visually engaging motion, and 20 new fonts for text overlay. They have also added new event and seasonal stickers, such as Back-to-School season and Mother’s Day with more to come in the fall.

‘Save’ Feature

Before users were not able to start and stop projects whenever they wanted. Videos were required to be published in the same sitting as they were started. Now advertisers are allowed to save unfinished videos as drafts and return to work on it as they please.

You can read Facebook’s full announcement about the new features here.

Why We Care

The Video Creation Kit was made for anyone who wants to build Facebook and Instagram video ads that display well on phones, including digital and social agencies, in-house production team, Facebook marketing partners, direct advertisers, and digital creative agencies. Facebook is giving small companies with limited resources the opportunity to create customized content for multiple ad placements, ultimately allowing them to better compete with larger brands.

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Everything You Need To Know About Voice Search in 2019

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There is no doubt that voice search has arrived and is here to stay. Google Voice Search actually launched way back in 2012, however it’s only been the past 1 to 2 years that users have begun to utilize and listen to its benefits. The dynamics of SEO changes have completely shifted due to the use of voice assistants and the growing popularity of voice search in 2019. People are searching differently for things for the first time since Google came on the scene, therefore the way things can be found must also change.

 

How it affects SEO

Consumers are searching for things at a variety of times on a variety of devices.  We’re using everything from traditional desktop computers through to smart watches and, increasingly, voice search to discover new brands, find solutions to our problems and to research and buy products. Voice search has the potential to be huge for small business. 22% of voice search users are querying local business information, and this presents a great opportunity for small local business to appear on the first page of search results.

Typically these voice searches are for “near me” or other local queries, the potential for local brands is huge. Smaller businesses that may not necessarily have the budget to make their presence well known in years past can make themselves the top result for voice searches with a range of relevant questions and keywords.

 

Key Voice Search Statistics

SEO Expert Bradley Shaw shares significant statistics that display the importance of voice search in 2019:

– 58% of consumers have used voice search to find local business information within the last year
– 46% of voice search users look for a local business daily
– 27% visit the website of a local business after conducting a voice search
– 76% of smart home speaker users conduct local searches at least  once a week—with 53% performing daily searches

– 22% of smart home speaker owners have made a purchase using their device.

Voice searches aren’t just increasing, they are doing so in volume at a tremendous rate. Voice search queries are 35 times larger than they were at launch of the technology. Furthermore, statistical search analysis by ComScore which predicts that 50% of all searches will be accomplished by voice search in 2020.

More From Onimod Global

There is no avoiding voice search in 2019 or in the future, it’s time to optimize and ensure your business is performing the best it can in terms of SEO, especially for local business. Are you on the hunt for someone to help you create success for your business? We have you covered at Onimod Global! We would love to help you and your company succeed, request a quote or contact us here. We can’t wait to here from you!

The Top 2019 Digital Marketing Trend: Digital Personalization

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The digital marketing industry which is forever fast-moving has sought to combine data with advertising technology –  2019 may be the year of implementation. Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) is a display ad technology that creates personalized ads based on data about the viewer at the moment of ad serving. DCO is more relevant to the consumer and typically outperform static ad copy frequently by a significant margin. So why is 2019 the year that digital personalization will make the move to large-scale usage, you ask? There are three core reasons signaling this year to be the year that we see personalization technologies integrating rapidly into digital communications and video content.

 

Technological Innovation

In years past, DCO has been a term used to describe testing a variety of versions of ads for performance-based campaigns. According to Marketing Tech, DCO campaigns used techniques such as multivariate testing aiming to establish which combinations of assets perform the best, and optimize the creative towards those results.

There are pros and cons to dynamic creative optimization, and one of its significant shortfalls is requiring a significant amount of data to learn and optimize. This can be rather lengthy and costly to format requiring high skill and expertise.

Today’s leading personalization technologies are highly sophisticated machines; referencing multiple sets of data to identify individual consumer preferences and profiles to serve the optimum combination of creative content to each consumer in real-time. With this new technology and approach that has developed over the past two years, it has opened a variety of new opportunities to run highly personalized campaigns across all marketing channels.

 

Removing Obstacles, Increasing Results

Advertisers can dynamically create a variety of ad groupings in real-time using only a single tag with digital personalization technology. This not only simplifies ad production and trafficking to save time and money for brands of all sizes, but it also allows your advertising team to focus on their specialized areas maximizing your results even further. On average, personalized advertising created and executed in this way sees between 2.5x – 4x uplift in consumer engagement compared to version-based advertising.

 

Video Personalization

Video personalization has arrived! This technology is available to serve the most appropriate content and messaging through a single VAST tag, which removes brand dependence on ad serving technology. Personalization is a key strategy for many brands and companies in 2019, and video content is a key component within the personalization strategy.  Until now, being able to dynamically create and serve video advertising at scale and across all devices had been a challenge, both technically and operationally. With the upgrade in technology, there now exists a huge window of opportunity for advertisers to engage and build relationships with consumers that just weren’t possible in years past.

 

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As digital personalization continues to advances continue to progress, adoption of this digital marketing strategy will help your brand build stronger consumer relationships across digital touchpoints.

Are you ready to grow your brand and take your digital marketing to a new level?

We have you covered at Onimod Global! We would love to help you and your company succeed, request a quote or contact us here. We can’t wait to here from you!

4 Tips To Success For Your Brand’s SEO Strategy

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As the online environment becomes increasingly competitive for businesses and brands, SEO is more important now than ever. Just how important is it? According to Marketing Land, over one-third of U.S. consumers started their online purchases with Google or another search tool in 2018. Paid search can only take you so far, we find that success lies in organic search results. Before you can take your SEO to the next level, you need to know where you are now and what to do next. Check out these 4 tips from Onimod Global that will give your brand the biggest competitive advantage in organic search results and make your SEO strategy a success.

 

Crawlability

The first step is making your site visible to search engine crawlers. A crawler is a program that visits Web sites and reads their pages and other information in order to create entries for a search engine index. In order to show your site crawlers your site structure for better indexing, you may need to update and expand your sitemap or build one from scratch. Updating your site’s robot.txt file with instructions will tell crawlers which pages you want indexed and which you don’t. After this step is complete, submit it to Google and other search engines so they can re-crawl your site as soon as possible.

 

Content Optimization 

After you resolve your engine crawler issues, the next thing you’ll want to focus on is content optimization and leveraging your existing assets. Doing this will improve ranking with specific keywords you want your brand to be associated with. There are a variety of tools to develop a list of keywords, the best one being Google Keyword Planner which develops a list of target keywords based on volume and ROI. From there, you can use this list to enhance meta tags and content you add to your site. This tip is very important in improving your SEO so your brand is shown to the right audience at the right time.

 

Build Links and Engagement

This tip is an offsite strategy, and the more complete content-optimization process is, the more SEO benefits you’ll see from your link-building and influencer efforts. We recommend researching link building and reviewing Google’s link-building ethics and best practices before you begin. Marketing Land also shares that a 10 to 15 percent response rate is good for link-building campaigns — so don’t get discouraged by what may seem a small response to your outreach efforts.

Influencer marketing is a strategy that is taking off and getting bigger every year. In order for this to be successful, you have to know your product and audience. From there, you can identify the social media user that has built a specific following specific to your industry or product. It is also important to recognize that large social influencers may not get you the best ROI, and it may be better to go the micro-influencer route. These are people who may only have tens of thousands of followers, but they’ve earned a high level of trust and authority within that group you are targeting.

 

Content Creation 

Your content is by far one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle to success for your brand. If your company is mature in its SEO program, you can focus on content creation at a whole new level. By this we mean your content should go beyond answering the basic questions of your products or services to answering questions that relate to what you sell. For example, if you are a company that sells bar shelves B2B, you can create content on how to effectively sell liquor in certain seasons by the lighting in your club.

It’s important to recognize these tips go in order and allow your brand to build level by level. Establish a solid foundation with crawlability and optimize your existing content — before you know it you’ll be creating unique content and your brand will see significant growth in your organic search traffic.

 

How Onimod Global Can Help

Are you on the hunt for someone to help you create an SEO strategy and increase your organic search traffic? We have you covered at Onimod Global! We would love to help you and your company succeed, request a quote or contact us here. We can’t wait to here from you!

 

10 Digital Marketing Statistics You Need To Know In 2019

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Digital marketing is forever changing and revolutionizing the way the industry interacts with consumers. The rapid evolution of digital marketing is more significant than ever. According to a survey by Adobe, 76% of those asked felt “that marketing had changed more in the past 2 years than in the previous 50”.

As time goes on, keeping up with the changes to digital marketing can be challenging. To keep you up to date, Onimod Global is here to provide you with 10 digital marketing statistics covering topics from conversion optimization to mobile marketing to start off 2019.

 

1. 60% of people have started using voice search within the last year. (Venture Harbour)

Search marketing has experienced some of the largest changes in regards to digital updates and Google algorithm updates. This shows that voice commands on Google, Amazon, and a variety of other sites are only increasing in popularity and a force to be reckoned with when it comes to search queries by consumers.

 

2. 85% of mobile advertisers think they’re providing a positive experience; only 47% of users agree. (Unlockd)

3. Mobile is predicted to account for 72% of digital ad in 2019. (eMarketer)

If you yet to optimize your site for mobile, now is absolutely the time to do so. While desktop advertising will always be a portion of your marketing budgets, mobile is where it’s at in 2019 and will only continue to increase. By now, it’s time to recognize the impact of smartphones and stop cutting yourself short of potential leads and conversions your business should be experiencing on the mobile platform.

 

4. Segmented email campaigns have an open rate that is 14.32% higher than non-segmented campaigns. (MailChimp)

It’s fairly common knowledge that segmenting your email campaign lists will increase your click-through rates, however it’s always positive to see this backed up with data. By narrowing your focus and sending messages to targeted groups within your lists, your recipients will find your campaigns more relevant—and relevant campaigns get better results.

 

5. The average ROI on CRO tools is 223%. (Venture Harbour)

6. 4.8% is the average conversion rate for websites using video, compared to 2.9% for those who don’t. (Adelie Studios)

A high conversion rate is crucial to the success of your business specifically generating leads and sales. You can use conversion rate optimization to persuade your website visitors to complete the desired action whatever that may be. Utilizing sources like Google Analytics and other CRO tools will significantly impact your success in 2019.

 

7. 72% of marketers worldwide said relevant content creation was the most effective SEO tactic. (Marketing Profs)

8. Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads. (Demand Metric)

Websites that consistently generate new, valuable, up-to-date, and original content should see a steady increase in organic search traffic and improved positioning in search engine results. This is the best way to increase your rankings for any topic or industry and saves a big chunk of your budget. Always make sure your site is rich in both keywords and helpful, useful content to help “sell” your business.

 

9. Infographics are Liked and Shared on social media 3X more than other any other type of content. (Mass Planner)

Infographics are great for a variety of reasons! They are eye-catching and persuasive, easily understood, and memorable. They are successful because they are informing versus selling. With an infographic, you’re sharing information, building a relationship, and creating a potential customer without being pushy.

 

10.  Social media has become the most popular content marketing tactic reported by 90% of B2C businesses. (Content Marketing Institute)

The key to social media is recognizing which platforms work best for your industry. Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest are clear winners for retail business whereas plumbing would utilize other social platforms. This is the most popular content marketing tactic because it’s the best way to get your brand and business in front of the right audience with minimal costs to your marketing budget.

 

More From Onimod Global

For more information regarding digital marketing expertise, trends and insights, visit the Onimod Global Website. We provide weekly news updates on the latest in the world of digital marketing. Enjoy!

 

 

 

eCommerce Website Performance Tips To Boost Conversions

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The way brands engage with their consumer is always changing, especially in the past 10 years compared to the rest of the digital age’s history. eCommerce sites have made the biggest leap digitally by engagement occurring almost all online. In fact, global eCommerce sales are predicted to almost double between 2017 and 2021. From a digital standpoint, there is always room for improvement from website design to your website performance. With the constant updates to different site platforms and detailed coding, it can be difficult to keep your site up to date on web performance and speed.

If a main goal for your current business regards significant growth, you’ll want to make sure your eCommerce site is able to keep up with the traffic that will be directed to your site. Certain themes are common among businesses in areas of eCommerce that could be improved upon. The following tips found from Liquid Web will help your team decrease shopping cart abandonment, improve your site performance, and boost conversions.

 

Quality Web Host – Solid Foundation

Like anything, the foundation of whatever you are creating is the most important factor. This is no different for website development – your website performance depends on this being solid and sturdy. A host that offers 24/7 support and real people versus automated responses. The experts at Onimod Global also work with website development, and you can request a quote for new website development here!

 

Optimize Your Product Images – Faster Load Times

Optimizing images on your site is a very important step to take. This is a combination of keeping your file sizes reasonable, keeping resolution in mind, using relevant file names, and more. Typically, product image optimization is a large mistake when it comes to website performance for larger eCommerce sites. Oleg Korneitchouk, Director of Marketing at SmartSites, was quoted by Liquid Web on this topic:

“When businesses take high resolution images and don’t properly resize and optimize the format for web, images are unnecessarily large in file size and hamper web performance. It’s best to resize them to fit their purpose, save them in the proper file type and compress them using one of the many tools online.”

 

Leverage Browser Caching – Loading Content Faster

Implementing caching into your site is crucial to your success, it is one of the largest culprits eating up load times for sites. Research shows that slower page load times will result in larger amounts of customers leaving your site. Even one second shaved off of your page load time can increase your conversions by 7%! Browser caching specifically can be very helpful, and the Google PageSpeed Insights from Google Developers are a great resource for recommendations on a caching policy.

 

Request An Audit With Onimod Global

Are you thinking your eCommerce site may be struggling due to any of the above common issues? We can help! Request a fully-customized digital audit for your website, and we’ll review your website performance at no charge. Click here for your audit, we can’t wait to hear from you!

Final Results Of Black Friday Shopping 2018

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Consumers took Black “Friday” by storm this year setting ground-breaking records with the largest online presence in its history. 2018’s Black Friday shopping festivities also started earlier than ever. Right after Thanksgiving dinner, consumers everywhere jumped straight to their cellphones to begin their holiday shopping. SalesForce reported that peak sales times were between 8 to 10 pm and started ramping up as early as 4 pm local times. Black Friday was also the first day ever to see more than $2 billion in sales coming from smartphones alone. According to MarketingLand, a record $6.22 billion was recorded in online sales for Black Friday — an increase of 23.6 percent from last year.

 

An Adobe Analytics spokesperson shares more on the trend of online shopping on Thanksgiving day over the past several years:

“We attribute this to many consumers being on the road or with family during the holiday, and they’re using this time to shop (often via mobile). The takeaway for marketers is there’s an opportunity to market to consumers on and around Thanksgiving Day – not only the traditionally known shopping holidays like Cyber Monday and Black Friday.”

 

What’s New This Year

Another rising trend in the year of 2018 holiday shopping thus far has been buying online and picking up your purchase in-store. The growth in this shopper has risen 73 percent from Thursday to Friday, which can be credited mainly to stores being closed on Thanksgiving day. Nevertheless, this is a trend gaining ground quickly and presents an opportunity for marketers to capitalize on and make easier for consumers.

More than one-third of online Black Friday sales were made on smartphones surpassing last year’s 29.1 percentage of online purchases. $2.1 billion were done in sales this year via smartphone on Black Friday, completely shattering the record set last year on Cyber Monday at $1.4 billion. The trend of smartphone shopping is here to stay and will only continue to increase every single year.

 

Why These Sales Are Important

Holiday shopping is just getting started! While 2018 Black Friday and Small Business Saturday shopping is in the books, Cyber Monday kicked off today and is predicted to be the largest online shopping day in history. The opportunity here is recognizing the importance of mobile to consumers in today’s holiday shopping adventures. The companies that place their efforts in developing an extremely user-friendly mobile interface will be very successful with their consumers. It is also recommended to pace your holiday sales throughout the holiday seasons instead of focusing solely on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

How To Master Storytelling Content

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A popular shift in content marketing has taken the form of storytelling. Consumers have shown that a product or service that offers an experience is much more attractive to them. Storytelling takes content marketing to a whole new level where a customer is understood, inspired, compelled and ignited to use their imagination.

Principal analyst Brian Solis with Alimeter Group shares with MarketingLand what marketers must know today about the gap between content marketing and storytelling.

 

What should businesses know about storytelling?

Brian says: There are some common pillars of quality storytelling — and it all starts with knowing your audience, what they love/don’t love, what they value, etc.

Aside from the seven common plots of story, there are pillars that resonate with certain audiences, depending on their goals and yours. These include inspiration, usefulness, importance and inclusivity, just to name a few — and these apply to content marketing, too.

How can you apply this to your campaigns?

The arc of a marketing campaign is usually the opposite of a traditional story arc. The climax, which is typically the product launch day in business, is followed by the supporting action and road to wider adoption — until the budget runs out or the campaign is over.

Stories are continuous. Opportunities for engagement are always on. Customers do not go on/off based on your campaign or content calendar.

Why this content is rising in popularity.

You’re creating a larger emotional impact with your consumer leaving them with a lasting good impression of your company. Stories help everyone understand a concept much easier. Stories help solidify abstract concepts and simplify complex messages. Stories are a universal language of sorts, and implementing this strategy into your content marketing will resonate with consumers if done correctly.

 

More From Onimod Global

We would love to work with you and assist with your company’s content creation needs. To contact our experts or request a quote, please click here. We can’t wait to hear from you!

 

Updates To Google AdSense

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Google continues updating their advertising platform to create ways that benefit you, the users, in bigger and better ways. The latest update involves Google AdSense and how they will process monetizing new sites.

Overview of Google AdSense

AdSense is one of many ways you can earn money from the internet. You can choose to place Google’s contextual ads on your blog, website, or search engine. Google will then distribute a portion of that revenue to you, and this varies among the type of keywords your site is using to generate these ads.

Prior to now, AdSense users could add their AdSense code on a new site without having to set it up as a separate site in their AdSense account.

 

So What’s New?

Every new site in every AdSense account will go through a verification process to review the following:

  • Ownership of the domain OR have the ability to modify its content
  • Compliance with the AdSense policies

There will also be a slight name change within the AdSense interface. The MySites tab will be renamed to Sites, and this tab will be much more prominent on the interface allowing for easier navigation.

These changes apply to all new and existing AdSense accounts.

 

How It Affects You

Frankly, this is an update that shockingly is just now coming into existence. Google has been working to make their Ads platform and supplemental application better protected, so this verification process is not at all surprising.

Most users won’t have to take any action, it will mostly be on Google’s end to verify the listed email is matched to the correct AdSense code.

According to MarketingLand, publishers are advised to stay tuned for several more updates from the AdSense team.

 

More From Onimod Global

For more information regarding digital marketing expertise, trends and insights, visit the Onimod Global Website. We provide weekly news updates on the latest in the world of digital marketing. Enjoy!

 

Image credit to: MarketingLand

Updates To YouTube Advertising Platform

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A social site that is growing larger and larger everyday is YouTube.  As its followers have grown significantly in the past few years, so has their advertising platform.

With growth comes some changes, and the experts at Onimod Global are here once again to give you the latest updates.

 

According to MarketingLand, YouTube announced it is changing the attribution criteria for TrueView for action video ads. This specific type of ad is known and designed for advertisers that perform and feature call-to-action banners at the base of the video ads.

MarketingLand also shares with us two specific key attribution points that will be changing:

  • YouTube will now count an ‘Engagement’ whenever a user clicks or watches 10 seconds or more of a TrueView for action ad when using maximize conversions or target CPA bidding. That’s a change from 30 seconds.
  • A ‘Conversion’ will be counted, by default, when a user takes action on an ad within 3 days of an ‘Engagement.’ If you want this changed, you will have to ask your Google rep to customize this time frame. That’s a change from 30 days.
  • For users who click your ad, YouTube will still attribute conversions according to the conversion window you have set (the default is 30 days).

 

What does this mean for advertisers?

This change will most likely significantly influence your budget spend and the performance. If you use the SmartBidding tool, this change will effect you being charged per engagement. Any target prices set by the advertiser will be billed on an impression basis due to TrueView for action campaigns using Target CPA and maximize conversions.

 

Always stay updated on the latest digital marketing news on our Onimod Global News page.