Tag Archive for: marketing trends

The Benefits of Blogging for Businesses

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Blogging isn’t just for style influencers and food recipes. Regardless of your industry, maintaining a dynamic and up-to-date blog is crucial for ensuring your content stays pertinent and engaging to your target audience.

Disseminating information through blogging is a pivotal strategy for connecting with a diverse consumer base and driving meaningful traffic to your website.

But how do you ensure your blog remains vibrant and engaging? Here are some straightforward strategies to guide you.

Bolstering Website Traffic Through Blogging

Visualize your website and blog as a dynamic publication that requires regular updates. This is one of your most valued assets as a digital marketer. A blog helps you stay relevant with customers, prospects, and search engines. Creating relevant content enhances website traffic, with an estimated 93 percent of online experiences beginning with a Google search.

Key benefits: 

Establishing Brand Authority via Blogging

Customers and prospects seek information. Blogging is an unparalleled strategy for establishing yourself as an industry leader. By sharing your knowledge through blogs, you can build trust and rapport with your audience, providing them with valuable insights into your company’s unique offerings.

To effectively build brand authority, focus on:

Enhancing Customer Engagement through Blogging

Effective blogging requires addressing topics that resonate with your audience. Engaging with your customers becomes imperative, ensuring your content is both relevant and impactful. By actively interacting with your audience and addressing their inquiries, you not only create content that resonates but also foster a community of loyal followers.

Ensure your blog’s content is crafted by knowledgeable individuals, particularly on complex topics like SEO or content creation, to maintain engagement and credibility.

The Imperative Nature of Blogging in Marketing Strategies

Blogging is a pivotal element of any successful digital marketing strategy, empowering and educating customers and prospects about your offerings. When executed proficiently, blogging has the potential to significantly contribute to your business’s revenue.

Final Thoughts

With over 13 years of creating customized content for our clients, Onimod Global stands as a beacon of knowledge in the digital marketing and advertising landscape. Offering a diverse range of services from social media marketing and business blogging to advanced SEO strategies and analytics.

Are you ready to elevate your marketing strategies for 2023? Contact Onimod Global today and let us assist you in navigating the latest marketing trends to enhance your digital presence.

B2B Marketing Trends To Look Out For

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As the second quarter of 2023 is underway, it’s a great time to reflect on the B2B marketing trends that have emerged and evolved over the past few months. The digital landscape is constantly changing, and marketers need to stay on top of the latest trends to remain competitive and drive growth.

Here are some B2B marketing trends to try in Q2 and beyond.

Personalization at Scale

Personalization has been a buzzword in marketing for years, and for good reason. It’s a critical component of any successful B2B marketing strategy. AI boosts personalization by using data from various sources like geolocation, recent purchases, and browser history. Marketers can leverage AI analytics to improve practices and achieve better results. In fact, 71% of B2B customers like the idea of AI for personalization, and 63% would use it for trend and pattern identification. 

Advancements in AI and ML have made it possible for B2B marketers to scale personalization to a level that was previously impossible. By leveraging data from customer interactions and online behavior, B2B marketers can create highly personalized experiences that drive engagement and conversions.

Video Marketing

Video Marketing has been on the rise for years, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. In fact, video is projected to account for 82.5% of all internet traffic by 2023. There are so many options when it comes to creating video content. Here are some of the benefits of incorporating video into your B2B marketing strategy:

  1. Increased brand awareness: Videos are shareable, which means they can help increase your brand’s visibility across social media and other digital channels. By creating valuable and interesting videos, you can attract more potential customers to your business.
  2. Better retention: By creating videos that provide valuable information, you can improve your audience’s retention of your brand’s message. Viewers retain 95% of messages when they watch them in video format.
  3. Improved SEO: Video content can help improve your search engine rankings. By optimizing your video content for SEO, you can increase your chances of appearing at the top of search engine results on pages.

Voice search optimization

Voice search is becoming increasingly popular, thanks to the widespread adoption of smart speakers and virtual assistants. B2B marketers need to optimize their content for voice search to ensure they’re not missing out on potential customers. Here are some tips for optimizing your content for voice search:

  1. Long-tail keywords: Voice search is more conversational, use long-tail keywords that match the way people actually speak.
  2. Local search: Voice search is often used for local searches, such as finding nearby businesses or services. Optimize your content for local search queries by including location-specific keywords and information.
  3. Clear Answers: Voice searches tend to generate more direct questions than text searches. Provide clear and concise answers to common questions related to your business or industry.

Social media advertising

Social media platforms are constantly evolving, and this presents new advertising options for B2B marketers. LinkedIn, in particular, has emerged as a go-to platform for B2B advertising due to its highly targeted features. LinkedIn allows marketers to target specific companies and industries, making it an ideal platform for B2B marketers to connect with their target audience.

Other social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook also offer advertising options that can help marketers reach their target audience. On Twitter, B2B marketers can use promoted tweets and promoted accounts to reach their target audience. Facebook offers similar advertising options, including targeted ads and sponsored posts.

By leveraging social media advertising options, B2B marketers can connect with their target audience, generate leads, and drive growth for their business.

Final Thoughts

B2B marketing trends are constantly evolving, and it’s important for marketers to stay on top of trends to remain competitive. By incorporating some of these trends into your strategies, B2B marketers can drive growth in Q2 and beyond.

With over 20 years of experience, Onimod Global is an expert in B2B digital marketing. From content creation to SEO and more, we understand the need to keep up with technology trends in the digital marketing space.

If you’re interested in learning more about the future of digital marketing, contact us here.

YouTube Select: YouTube’s New Premium Advertising Program

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YouTube just recently launched their new premium advertising program, YouTube Select. “Helping you connect with your audience is our top priority. This is especially important as digital takes precedence in how we interact, communicate and stay connected.” Vishal Sharma, YouTube’s Vice President of Product Management wrote. The purpose of YouTube Select is to make this easier for brands. Offering more flexibility to reach hard to find audiences, with the confidence advertisers’ buys are brand-safe. 

New Features

Emerging Lineups: YouTube Select packages content in what it calls “lineups.” These are tailored by market for topics such as beauty & fashion, entertainment, technology, sports and more. They’re now introducing a new offering, called “Emerging Lineups.” These provide an easier way to extend the reach of campaigns among upcoming or niche channels.

Sponsorships and Programs: There are also custom sponsorships and programs available to help brands target audiences across top YouTube apps and vertices, such as YouTube Kid, Sports, Music, and Originals. 

TV Audience Targeting: According to YouTube, over 100 million people in the U.S. watch YouTube and Youtube TV every month. They also have a higher household reach and share of watch time than the next 3 ad-supported streaming services combined, according to Comscore. To take advantage of this surge, a dedicated streaming TV lineup is being introduced as another offering for advertisers. Streaming TV combines the best of YouTube TV and lineups content, both on TV screens. That means being able to easily reach your audience with a single, scalable offering on the big screen across the best content. This includes popular creators, YouTube Originals, live sports, feature length movies, timely news and more.

They’ve also recently announced Brand Lift measurements on TV screens, which will soon be available globally for the app and YouTube TV. Ultimately to give advertisers better help measuring their brand results. 

Better Buying Options: In addition to more capabilities on the TV screen, there will also be more choices on how advertisers purchase their ads. It will vary by region, but many countries are making certain YouTube lineups available via Google Ads, Display & Video 360 and reservation.  

Why this is Important to Marketers

Connected TV viewing continues to increase considerably, especially in the midst of the pandemic. Over the last year or so YouTube has started focusing more on marketing objectives, rather than media. Ultimately to become a stronger and more strategic marketing partner for brands. YouTube Select is making it easier to ensure brand-safety when ad buying. Granting marketers access to advanced suitability controls, as well as the option to only serve ads on videos that have been machine classified and human-verified across all lineups. Overall, it offers an easier way for you to authentically connect with your audience at scale. 

According to YouTube, brands are already seeing results. “In 2019, global lineups delivered an average awareness lift of 13 percent and an average purchase intent lift of 9 percent. And in an MMM meta-analysis we commissioned with Nielsen in the U.S., YouTube Select lineups had greater ROI than TV in 73 percent of MMMs that measured YouTube Select lineups, Other Digital, and TV in 2016-2018.” 

Whether you’re new to the YouTube advertising space, or have been here for a while, YouTube Select is definitely something you should consider. 

More from 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.

Reopening Post Shut Down: Is it Worth it?

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As a business owner, you’ve likely been wondering what it would look like for you post COVID-19. While it’s not post COVID-19, states are starting to reopen and allowing businesses to reopen as well. Despite this, polls indicate the majority of consumers remain nervous about the virus. This raises the question for many business owners – is reopening worth it? 

Are Consumers Ready? 

A recent survey by the Washington Post found that while 56% of consumers are comfortable shopping in a grocery store, 67% are not comfortable with the idea of going into a retail store, and 78% would not go into a restaurant for a sit-down meal. Another survey by Fluent found that only 34% of respondents were comfortable with governors lifting stay-at-home orders. Despite those results, the survey also found that 60% of the audience feels “calm and collected or neutral” about COVID-19, while 38% are “nervous or very nervous.” 

These results are contradicting and confusing for owners trying to make critical decisions. This is probably due to consumers being confused themselves. People want to return to “normal” activities, but are concerned whether it’s really safe to do so.

Where Consumers Feel Safe

A survey from First Insights revealed how comfortable consumers are with going to different types of stores. Respondents were asked in which types of stores they would feel safe or very safe. These were the results:

  • Grocery stores: 54%
  • Drug stores: 50%
  • Big box retailers: 45%
  • Warehouse clubs: 43%
  • Local small businesses: 43%
  • Department stores: 37%
  • Shopping malls: 33%

Another contradiction was found when looking at smartphone location data. When Georgia reopened, location data showed more than 60,000 people came from neighboring states, to visit stores, restaurants, gyms, salons, etc. These data points suggest that even though majority of consumers claim they’re apprehensive about going to stores, there’s a sufficient amount of people that would still turn out for reopenings.  

E-commerce Continues to Surge 

There have been many surveys and other data indicating e-commerce will continue to grow even after reopening. E-commerce order volume has increased by 50% compared to 2019. Not only that, but 57% of consumers are shopping online more than before. And 65% prefer to do that shopping on a smartphone, rather than PC or tablet. New safety protocols on stores that do reopen may also cause enough inconvenience for consumers to find going to stores not worth it. For example, many stores are requiring shoppers to wear masks, some even requiring temperature checks, and some are only allowing shopping by appointment. While this is all for the safety of shoppers and employees, it may require too much effort for what it’s worth. 

Tips for Reopening 

No matter what, people will be going back into stores. Possibly in large numbers in those states that do open over the next month. Even with the regulations, details are complex and not always clear. Business owners will have to problem-solve and make their own plans on how they will keep their employees and customers safe. Here are some tips on reopening your business, including advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

 

  • Keep social distancing guidelines in place. Social distancing, meaning keeping 6 feet of distance between people, can be difficult in the workplace. But this will likely be the new norm, for a while at least, and it’s important for keeping employees and customers safe. Consider these efforts to ensure your business can properly social distance:

 

      • Rethink desks, displays, and workspaces to create proper distance. 
      • Consider staggering work hours to limit the number of employees there at a time. 
      • Limit the number of seats in common areas. 
      • Use tape to mark 6ft intervals where people wait in lines. 
      • Post signs in or around the building that promote social distancing and advise those who aren’t healthy to please not enter.

 

  • Encourage employees and customers to wash hands and use sanitizer frequently. By now, we’re all well-aware of the efforts that are necessary to help prevent the spread of the virus. Washing and sanitizing hands is crucial. Consider installing signs around the workplace that encourage employees and customers to wash/sanitize their hands:

 

      • When they get to work/enter the building 
      • After sneezing, coughing, or blowing their nose
      • Before and after eating 
      • Before and after touching their eyes, nose, and mouth
      • After interacting with coworkers and customers 
      • After touching displays and other equipment 
      • After visiting the restroom 

 

  • Clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces multiple times a day. This not only keeps employees and customers safe, but it can help customers breathe easier knowing anything that they touch has been cleaned thoroughly moments before. This includes doorknobs, light switches, countertops, handles, tables, desks, keyboards, remote controls, elevator buttons, toilets (including handles), faucets, sinks, cash registers/point of sale (POS), displays, business equipment, phone etc.

 

  • Provide PPE to employees and create a policy that addresses guidelines and proper usage. Depending on the state where your business is located, you may be required to supply your employees with gloves, masks, etc. Even if your state doesn’t have requirements, it may be in your best interest to provide your employees with them anyways.

 

 

Final Thoughts 

The decision to stay closed or to reopen is ultimately up to you. At this time, it’s difficult to know when to do anything. You know your business and your customers best. If you believe they’re eager and ready to get back outside, reopening may be a smart business decision. If you can see that the majority of your customer base is still very apprehensive and nervous about the current state of things, staying closed may be the better option. When you do choose to reopen, make sure you take the time to prepare and protect yourself, your employees, and your business. Rushing things will not help your chances of doing well as we all face the next steps. 

More from 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.

Common Facebook Ads Mistakes and How to Fix Them

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The benefits of advertising your business on Facebook are endless. With over a billion active users, cutting edge features, and detailed targeting ability, why wouldn’t you market yourself there? Despite all its advantages, many businesses still struggle to gain qualified leads from Facebook Ads. 

Advertising on Facebook isn’t as easy as everyone believes it to be, but it can be worth it. If you don’t put in proper time and effort into your ads, it could result in the waste of a lot of budget. Here are the most common Facebook Ads mistakes made by marketers and how to fix them. 

Audience Selection is too Narrow or too Broad 

Facebook provides extremely detailed targeting capabilities. Most people believe that the more specific you get with your targeting, the more effective it will be. This, however, could actually be your downfall. When your audience selection is too narrow you risk exhausting the segment too quickly, driving up your cost per click. The other issue that can result from overly-specific targeting is lack of responses. No matter how pin-pointed your audience is, only a small percentage will respond. When it comes to upper funnel advertising, numbers are the most important, and if your audience is too niche, the numbers are not on your side. 

On the other hand if your audience is too broad, you risk serving your ad to people who aren’t interested in your offer. Again, you could drive up the cost per click because of a poor audience-message match, or you risk paying for clicks that won’t convert to leads or customers.

Wrong Bid Strategy 

Oftentimes marketers just go with the default option when it comes to bid strategy. This is fine in some cases, but if the automatic option for lowest cost isn’t delivering results, it might be time to rethink. Here are the the other available bid strategies and what they’re best used for:

  • Bid Cap: Best for when you want to set a max bid across auctions to control cost and reach as many users as possible at that bid. 
  • Cost Cap: Best for when you want to maximize cost-efficiency or you need to keep cost within a specific threshold. 
  • Target Cost: Best for maintaining a consistent cost. 
  • Value Optimization within Min ROAS: Best if ROAS is the primary measure of success and you’re able to pass back transaction values to our platform. 
  • Highest Value: Best for getting the highest ROAS, want to spend full budget and when unsure of min ROAS/bid amount.

Too Large of an Ask 

Facebook users don’t have the same intent as those on search engines. If you’re asking for a large commitment from someone that has just been exposed to your brand for the first time, you’ll likely get poor results. When you’re still at the top of the funnel, you should be focusing on smaller asks, such as newsletter sign-ups, likes, comments, shares, etc. Once they have had more engagement, you can begin pushing larger asks, such as purchases, event sign-ups, etc.

Failing to Test Your Campaigns 

Launching ads on Facebook is easy. Finding a successful strategy, however, is not. The only real way to know what works and what doesn’t is by testing it. This sounds like more work, but Facebook actually makes A/B testing simple. A/B testing lets you change variables, such as your ad creative, audience or placement, to determine which strategy performs best and improve future campaigns. An A/B test lets you quickly compare both strategies to see which one performs best. After choosing which variable you want to test, Facebook divides your budget to equally and randomly split exposure between each version of your creative, audience, or placement. A/B testing can then measure the performance of each strategy on a cost per result basis or cost per conversion lift basis with a holdout. If you don’t test your way to success from the beginning, you may never figure out how to make Facebook Ads work for your business.

Final Thoughts 

The Facebook Ads platform is simple, but getting quality conversions can be difficult, which is why many businesses struggle with it. Luckily, these common issues are easy to resolve. Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to campaign optimization. The best strategy for you ultimately depends on your products, website, customer lifecycle, objectives, and intended user experience. 

At Onimod Global we are experts in SEM and social media marketing. We know which platforms are best for brands, and create visibility for brands where customers are searching, interacting, and ultimately converting. Find out more about we do, or contact us today!

4 Digital Marketing Trends to Pay Attention to in 2018

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The scope of the digital marketing industry is constantly changing, so being able to adapt to these changing trends is a must. So far in 2017 we have seen new technologies like the IPhone X, Google Home, and other innovative products that continue to change the dynamic of marketing. Listed below are some digital marketing trends that organizations need to watch out for as we approach 2018.

1. Voice Optimization
With technologies like Siri, Google Home, and the Amazon Echo becoming popular, marketers must understand the importance of optimizing content for voice search queries. According to Google, “in 2016 more than 20 percent of online searches were conducted through voice search. And by 2020 that number is expected to increase to 50 percent.” Therefore, with an increasing number of voice searches, optimizing for longer keyword phrases and “conversational language” is an SEO strategy that should be implemented moving forward.

2. Instagram’s Value Increasing
The continued growth of Instagram is a trend that all marketers should be paying attention to. This year Instagram announced that “about 800 million users are active on the platform each month.” They also noted that their updated story feature is now “more popular than Snapchat.” Because of their focus on images/videos and appeal to younger generations, it’s no surprise that this platform continues to gain popularity. Some marketers like Deep Patel even believe that Instagram is “poised to become the go-to channel for brands interested in social media marketing.”

3. Twitter on the Decline
Contrary to Instagram’s continued growth, Twitter is a social media platform that has seen a decline in activity so far in 2017. It appears as if Twitter has put little effort towards their advertising platform compared to their wants of acquiring more users. Moreover, advertisers have allocated more time and money to other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat as a result. In the end, this trend of decline is expected to continue for Twitter and according to Patel, Twitter is “dying a quiet death.”

4. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Messaging
Although artificial intelligence (AI) exists today, it’s future implications on digital marketing can’t be ignored. According to the Entrepreneur article, Deep Patel mentions how “artificial intelligence is taking over website messaging.” More and more businesses are now utilizing AI live chat programs to communicate with their consumers. Essentially, as artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve with messaging platforms, marketers must be able to adapt and learn how to most effectively communicate with consumers online.

Contact Us
For more information regarding digital marketing expertise and news, visit the Onimod Global Website. We look forward to hearing from you!

The Future of Marketing Leadership

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While some individuals seem to be born with the gift of great leadership, for many others it is a skill that is learned over time. There is no perfect formula to follow when mastering such a skill. In reality, there are many different paths that people can take in becoming an excellent leader.

Most often, this path starts with a journey of self-discovery. Building off of one’s biggest strengths has proven to be very effective in personal growth. Rather than focusing on areas of weakness, it is much more valuable to focus on an individual’s strengths.

As great leaders develop their skill sets and emerge into the modern age of marketing, huge challenges await them. With this type of constantly evolving environment, leaders must learn to evolve as well.

Future leaders that are willing to adapt and experiment with new technologies, methods, and strategies are much more likely to succeed. As humans, we often resist change, but that does not stop it from happening. This ideal will be key to upcoming leaders in the marketing world.

In particular, columnist Colin Lewis believes that the hiring process will be greatly affected by advancements in the advertising industry. He makes a clear argument over the fact that, “new skills are going to be required that we cannot even imagine today, just like we could not imagine a ‘social media manager’ role 10 years ago.”

Of course, we cannot expect every aspect of the job to change. Cornerstone characteristics of today’s marketing industry such as creativity and exceptional communication abilities are not going anywhere. However, Lewis says that for the future marketing leader, these skills will not be enough.

Instead, future leaders will take on all tasks. This includes ones that definitely fall beneath them to lower ranking employees. These leaders will do it all anyway, because they know that all levels of the marketing process are important and hard work always pays off.