Marketing is not just a kind of activity, it is a living organism that develops, changes, and evolves with us. To succeed in the marketplace, any business needs to follow and be guided by this process.

We’ve explored a few of the top marketing trends that are set to gain traction. Start implementing them now to stay at the forefront of the market for the next year!

User-Generated Content

Instead of producing content yourself, encourage your subscribers to create it. Make your product packaging so attractive that customers want to post a photo of it in a story or share it with friends in a post.

Provide the service in such a way that you would like to talk about it with a mention of the brand. This content is free, and it serves as a recommendation from friends, which is trusted more than advertising content. It is important that users make such messages organically, and not with the help of challenges and contests.

Is SEO dead?

SEO is buried every year. But it doesn’t die, it just evolves. With the release of Google’s new BERT algorithm, which has become much better at understanding the meaning of texts, now you will definitely have to forget about spamming keys in content and meta tags.

Focus on creating more natural and expert content. Also, pay attention to micro-markup by content type on pages and optimization for voice search.

According to some studies, about 70% of users flip through paid ads, preferring organic search results. Therefore, SEO promotion is alive and well.

AR & VR

Another powerful trend is the creation of content using augmented or virtual reality. AR masks that work with the user’s smartphone selfie camera and games with augmented reality have already appeared on the Instagram network.

This technology combines impressive ease-of-use by users and is growing in popularity. In addition, augmented reality solutions encourage users to produce and distribute the very same User-Generated Content.

Interactive content

Content that not only conveys information, but interacts with the user, and, moreover, makes it interesting, bringing new impressions, is of increasing importance.

In 2020, brands will need to seek and find new original solutions, not only in how they will speak to their customers but also in what exactly is said. Society is becoming more and more information-rich, and in addition to the form of your message, its content will become more important.

Adapting content for smartphones

Already now, users receive most of the content not from a PC, but from the screens of gadgets, and in the future, this figure will only grow. Therefore, the display of information is increasingly being adapted for vertical reproduction.

In addition, subtitles are added to the video so that it is convenient to watch them without including sound. While the video turns from horizontal to vertical, then scrolling does the opposite transformation.

Users no longer want to scroll from top to bottom, and Stories are becoming the most popular type of content consumed from smartphones. It is in them that it makes sense to advertise and promote your brand in 2020.

Gamification

People are ready to play with brands, but they want interesting and engaging game formats. Now the trend is simple but exciting puzzles quests. They not only entertain but also motivate the audience.

Another trend is the use of interactive swipe links in stories. “Swipe the fly – get a discount!” – suggests the company, and the user instinctively swipes across the screen, going to the site.

Increase in advertising budgets

Every year it becomes more and more expensive to attract customers, so marketing costs are constantly growing. Users are becoming more experienced and more demanding every year – therefore, most businesses will pay attention to the UI/UX of their products, thereby increasing LTV and saving marketing budget.

It’s worth investing in experiments and split tests to test several ad campaigns and choose the most effective ones.

Experiment and find exactly those channels and tools that will generate the maximum ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) for you.

Picture Credit: Unsplash

The post New Marketing Trends and Strategies appeared first on Internet Marketing Blog.

You have certainly noticed that each page address in the address bar (URL) is preceded by the shortcut http or https. These are different protocols that inform about the way in which data is transferred between the user’s computer and the server (ie it is a way of data transmission).

Hitherto the most common one was http, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, but for some time now more and more website addresses have been preceded by the abbreviation https: // and the symbol of the green padlock. This is the example of the URL of the largest stores and websites, as well as Google itself.

What does it mean? HTTPS is simply “secured” http, i.e. http-secure. This protocol ensures the integrity of data transmission and prevents manipulation by undesirable persons. The technology that secures the transfer of data from the website to the server is ssl (Secure Socket Layer). It does this mainly through encryption and public key infrastructure mechanisms. It is important to know what it is, whether it is necessary and how its use affects the optimization of the site.

HOW AN SSL CERTIFICATE AFFECTS POSITIONING

Data encryption is important in the context of page optimization. The SSL implementation confirms the credibility of the domain and the fact of protecting our personal and other data, such as, for example, passwords and logins. In addition, the ssl certificate allows you to automate the issue of proper processing of personal data in the light of the provisions of the GDPR. Currently many domains require the user to leave / send different types of personal data, for example contact details, e-mail address and even credit card number. Becoming the administrators of this data, we must ensure that they are properly processed and transmitted and protected against leakage.

The main task of SSL technology is to protect Internet users against:

• data deletion and / or falsification,
• theft of passwords, card numbers, account numbers and the use of them,
• digital crime,
• theft of login data,
• phishing (online scams).

IS IT WILL NEED TO OBTAIN ANY SSL CERTIFICATE?

No SSL certificate does not send the site in non-existence, so theoretically it is not mandatory. Slowly, however, it becomes an unwritten requirement and a necessary change to be made on the site. You can find the migration guide from http to https in this Google guide: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6073543. The use of an SSL certificate is required by more and more web browsers, including the popular Google Chrome group. Already in Google 2014 announced that sites using the secure protocol https will be evaluated by the algorithm above, and those with http – will be marked as dangerous. In fact, since July 2018, Chrome version 68 means unsecured websites as compromising the security of user data. We wrote about it on our blog.

This fact can seriously weaken traffic on the website, and in the case of positioning, less traffic on the website is almost a certain decrease in the position. To go further to the “dangerous” site, the user must curse permission to take the risk. This message blocking the loading of the page is a disincentive to users to visit it. And this already causes a real loss of potential customers for our services or goods in the online store.

ESSENTIAL SSL VALIDATION TYPES:

The process of implementing an SSL certificate initiates the owner of the domain, but it can only be issued by entities independent of it, so-called Certification Authorities. There are three main types of verification: OV, DV and EV. They are a canon offered by all companies:

DV (Domain Validation) – this is the cheapest and the simplest form of security, which will be sufficient for ordinary sites that do not process a large amount of sensitive data. It is aimed mainly at the interest of the domain owner himself, i.e. protecting his own data, documents, photos, etc. sent to the server.

OV (Organization Validation) – is an intermediate type of security that, like DV, provides encryption of transmitted information in a designated domain. The difference is that the verification is not only subject to the domain itself, but also the company that owns it. Here, the user is clearly informed which company belongs to and which organization is responsible for its level of protection. In addition, OV validation confirms the authenticity of the company’s existence.

EV (Extended Validation) – this is the most advanced encryption used by institutions such as banks, government institutions, social networks, booking services, etc., that is, those that collect, for example, identity cards or credit cards. It contains all the necessary confirmation of the authenticity of the company’s data, which is marked in the address bar (green string).

SSL CERTIFICATION – FREE OR PAYABLE?

Free certificates are a good way to start, but only for a small domain or blog. Certificates of this type are only DV validation, and are issued for a short period (e.g. 3 months). In order to receive such a certificate, it is not necessary to send in principle any documents confirming the existence of the company that owns the site.

In the case of online stores and websites that use sensitive personal data, the possession of a higher-order SSL certificate is obligatory. There is no mercy here – you should buy an OV certificate, preferably an EV certificate. As the process of transition to the https protocol is implemented, the implementation of SSL technology services is offered by more and more companies, mainly hosting companies.

The price depends on the period of validation, the certification body and the type of certificate. Is it worth investing in a good certificate? In my opinion, yes.

Picture Credit: skylarvision

The post What Are SSL Certificates & Why Do You Need Them? appeared first on Internet Marketing Blog.

COMES TO THE DOCTOR SEO
This fairly simple analogy with a medical visit can illustrate how SEO consulting works more or less. Companies and individuals use it most often. Those who want to find out why their positioning does not bring the expected results or beginners in the e-commerce industry.

THE SEO CONSULTANT IS FOR A TASK:

• conduct a short interview with the company (like a medical history),
• provide such a company with a solid foundation of positioning (guidelines for a healthy style of functioning),
• outline what harmful practices should be avoided (basics of prevention),
• determine what action should be taken immediately to achieve satisfactory results.

Good SEO consulting is consultancy based on which you can carry out many activities. For example, analysis of competition activities, develop a content marketing strategy or analysis of incoming links profile.

SEO consulting are not strictly SEO activities. Consulting allows us to outline the basics of a good strategy for future activities. It is a service that allows, for example, novice companies to get an idea of the subject in terms of their website or store.

At the same time, buying an SEO consultation allows you to avoid a situation in which we first pay a cart of money, and only when we learn that some of these expensive activities are inappropriate, and some are unnecessary at all.

The second important note: SEO consultation is not an SEO audit. This is just a preliminary examination of the situation of your website or online store. It is a service that is cheaper than the full audit. Returning to our medical analogy: SEO consulting is like a family visit, and an SEO audit is like a set of diagnostic tests done in a hospital. More accurate, more time-consuming, more analytical, more comprehensive and, of course, more expensive.

IS IT WORTH TO PAY FOR A CONSULTATION WHEN IS IT EVER INTERNET?
Many people who own a website or an online store go to SEO as something easy, because there are various guides, there are commonly known Google ranking factors, there are free support tools etc. Yes, that’s all true, but there is one small detail – it’s all general knowledge, not referring to the specific situation of a particular website. Everyone can “diagnose” via the Internet, but it is only a visit to the doctor that will let us know what may be wrong with us.

SEO consulting is a service offered by more and more SEO agencies. It has been designed for people who do not want or do not have time to explore the ropes of positioning knowledge. Not everyone has to know everything. Owners of online stores and companies usually have too many other things to “embrace” to still deal with SEO. SEO consulting is good for them.

SEO CONSULTING – FOR WHOM?
This type of consultation is useful for people looking for, for example, the reasons for the low conversion rate in the online store. If you want to compile a list of the best keywords for the site or, for example, you plan to introduce a new product / service and do not know how to become visible in organic – consulting can be just for you.

SEO consulting can also be a good solution for people who are considering changing an SEO agency that supports their website or store. It may also be useful for those who are just wondering whether or not to outsource these activities to an external entity. It is also a good method to verify the effectiveness of the SEO company that you work with.

SEO consulting can shed new light on our company’s existing activities in the field of positioning. Remember that a fresh look at a given issue is always desirable. In the end, without it, the civilization known nowadays, am I right?

Picture Credit: bertholdbrodersen

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As you know, the brand has several channels of communication – more precisely, several types of channels. These are the so-called:

• owned media (own channels: website, blogs, social media);
• paid media (all types of online advertising, everything that is bought);
• earned media (discussions of users, that is, content created not by the company, but by consumers of its products or services). If before the earned media played a secondary role, now thanks to the high level of Internet penetration, they become more significant.

Discussions and feedback from users on the network about the brand and products can cause a wave of discussion. At the same time, “wave-lifted” users will not necessarily be popular media persons.

In my practice, there are a lot of cases when clients use SEO and SERM tools to correct the company’s reputation in the network. But this is just a disguise of the problem. If it’s enough for you to bring “good and loyal” resources to the top of the search engines – approx.

But if you want to listen and hear your customer where he talks about his problems, help him, make interaction with your product pleasant and useful, you need other methods of work.

So, where to start?
All work is an answer to three questions:

Where?
What?
How?

1. Where
Of course, everything starts with research. To begin with, using manual and automated monitoring, we need to find key areas in the network where discussions about our product are conducted. Classify these sites.

When analyzing sites, it is important to consider:

• as the site is represented in the issuance of search engines (on which page of search results);
• how much fresh mention of your product / company on it;
• how often there are discussions;
• how exactly here it is accepted to conduct discussions.

When the top sites are determined, it is best for each of them to make their own passport with a brief description of the main features, pitfalls, the portrait of the audience and the messages that you want to convey to these people.

2. In parallel with Where we find out What
Namely – What does your audience say about you? What problems worry her? We create top problems and together with the brand we are looking for answers to the questions that worry users.

3. How
The most important question.

We write a strategy for dealing with problems and questions of users. In social networks and on forums it is impossible to answer with press releases or on scripts of a “hot line” – will tell, what is it it is banal, all this and so understand? Unfortunately, there are brands that still make such mistakes and speak with users in the language of robots.

Key recommendations:

Pay attention to the intensity of the discussions. At each site, the speed and duration of commenting are different. Depending on these indicators, plan your work on a specific portal: if the peak of discussions passes several hours after the publication – to be included in the discussion in a day does not make any sense. If you work as a contractor – it is important to bring it to the client and work out an algorithm for working with each resource. For example, on some sites with a high speed of commenting, you can not approve each text of the response with the client, so as not to lose efficiency.

Keep up with the new comments. Do not leave the discussion after answering the first questions. If you get involved in a dialogue, it is not enough to give several answers and switch to other resources. Discussions can sometimes last for several days, and your silence can play against you.

Adapt the tone of voice (re-policy) to the accepted rules of communication on the resources. On the one hand, you must not violate brand guides. On the other hand, as I already wrote above – to communicate the language of press releases and scripts of the hot line on the earned media platforms is absolutely impossible. It is better not to go there at all. Of course, this also does not mean that the representative of the brand should communicate unceremoniously and too naturally. Look for the golden mean, become “your”, without violating the rules of brand communication.

Do not react to all critical references. But if there is an opportunity to help solve the user’s problem, specify details and let me know when you can return with an answer.

Do not forget that you can not control the dissemination of information on the network. Leaving a comment, always remember that you are in public space. Be prepared to be quoted on other resources.
Separate the opinion from the facts. And remember that you, leaving comments on behalf of the representative of the brand, associate with the audience with the entire brand as a whole.

Recommendations for working with the project team:

Immersion. Project managers should be immersed in the topic they are dealing with as much as possible, and they must constantly monitor trends and trends in the sphere of the client’s activities. The implementation of quantitative KPIs is half the battle. If the project team does not have a global vision of the situation, understanding the ultimate goal of the campaign – there will be no success.

Analysis.  Without it, nowhere. Constantly answer yourself to the following questions: “What do we do – we do it one hundred percent?” Or can we better? Or it is necessary in another way? ». Many managers at the moment when the project “gets on the rails”, begin to mechanically perform their work. Without thinking about whether you can do something else, can you apply some new tools in your work.

Feedback from the brand. If you work as a contractor – talk to the client not only in the reports. Meet and discuss the current situation on the project. The client knows the product as their own five fingers, and you – you know the network audience that is discussing this product. Only having combined these two parts together (well and having executed all conditions about which we spoke in this article), you can make efficiency of your project on work with reputation in a network the maximum.

Image credit:  TitanSeo

The post What Makes an Online Reputation Powerful? appeared first on Internet Marketing Blog.

According to surveys conducted in the USA, the rate on a blog in marketing contributes to a multiple increase in ROI. B2B companies that have launched a corporate blog generate 67% more leads than slow competitors who ignore blogging.

This is the harsh statistics of modern business, which requires keeping pace with the times.

But it’s difficult to launch a successful blog. Too often companies are trying to start a similar project without a pre-worked out promotion strategy – and without success.

According to IBM, 77% of US companies have a corporate blog, but 85% of these projects serve a modest staff of up to five employees! Sad numbers.

10 tips for creating a successful corporate blog:

1. Know your audience

Before you post anything, clearly identify the target audience. Ask yourself: who is reading my blog? What are their needs? Why are they interested in our content? Find the pain points, the motivation of your Central Asia, learn to speak it with your tongue.

2. Rewrite, rewrite and rewrite again

Generating unique content for the same tattered topics can not last forever. Month after month, year after year, thousands of SEO-copywriters paint the same things, sometimes from different angles. Decision? The secret of filling a blog with new content sometimes overlaps with a rewrite. A qualitative rewrite and “re-profiling” of ready-made content.

Of course, pay special attention to your own, author’s content. Each document, e-book, report, slide show and webinar that you publish can be divided into many separate posts for the corporate blog.

3. Contact the experts

Another great way to entice the target audience is to invite reputable experts from your industry. If the leaders of thought are at least once a month on a voluntary basis or for a reward to appear in the podcast – traffic growth is ensured.

Giving each expert one post a month, a year later the corporate blog of the company shines with a whole archive of actual materials for clients.

4. Plan your publications

The content plan for a corporate blog is an urgent need. Even if the pace of publication is only 2-3 posts per month, the time of their appearance and the subject should be clearly regulated. The content plan is your commitment and discipline, as well as a way to keep subscribers.

5. Remember SEO

You do not have to invent anything tricky in trying to fool the search engines (this can have unpleasant consequences), just use the basic principles of SEO.

Refer to the relevant content and sources where necessary. Enter targeted search terms in headings and descriptions. Publish images and infographics. Just write quality and content for people – and Google will reward you.

6. Publish the summary

Among your readers there may be people with acute shortage of time. They are your potential customers, they are interested in the subject of the blog, but there is no way to reread a multi-page novel or an article-novel from New Yorker.

So, let’s get down to business. Tell the reader in the first paragraph what to expect from today’s publication, and what questions should she answer. This will save people time and significantly increase the loyalty of the audience. Respect the time of your customers!

7. Use a call to action

At the end of the posts, do not forget to use a call to action that distinguishes an amateur blog from a real conversion machine. Link to closed content that opens when you navigate a particular topic.

8. Guest blogging

Many corporate sites use so-called guest blogging – a powerful tool for blog promotion. To do this, it is sufficient to invite other authors to contribute to your project with mutual benefit for the parties.

Guest blogging is a win-win game for both you and the author. You get valuable content and traffic, and your guest expands the impact on a new audience.

9. Place images

The publication of images is no longer a luxury. Polls show that posts with images attract almost 94% more views than similar content without visual elements. About 60% of users admit that they trust such publications more than boring and dry text.

10. Draw your conclusions

The blogger should analyze what techniques work for his target audience, and which simply spend time and money. To do this, follow the life and interests of the target audience, track unique views, bounce rates, conversions and other objective indicators of user interest. Experience is the surest way to success.

Image credit:  pixabay

The post Creating a corporate blog – 10 checkpoints for success appeared first on Internet Marketing Blog.

If statistics are to be believed, more than 90% of the consumers tend to make purchases over the net rather than traveling places. This implies that those who don’t have an active online presence are missing out on million of potential consumers out there. Nevertheless, web surfers find it all the more very irritating and time consuming wading through the plethora of information; it’s not always that we go for results exceeding first three pages. For online success, it is pertinent that your prospective website should appear in the top results of the search engine result pages.

Search engine optimization, company abbreviated as SEO is one such fold of digital marketing that goes a long way in increasing the number of customers visiting your site and generate a highly targeted traffic to your website. Hiring services of a Search Engine Optimization Company ensures that your website appears on the top rankings of the major search engines. A Search Engine Optimization Company takes into account the following three factors to rank them high in distinctive search engines:

On page optimization

It is quite obvious that people browse over internet for information. This implies your company’s webpage ought to have all sort of content that is relevant to the search terms you hope to appear for in the major search engines.

Off page optimization

This means that the titles of the webpage and the headlines on the website should comprise of keyword you wish to optimize your site for.

Back links

These act as important votes of confidence for your website. The higher the number of votes for your website, more credible and popular it would be and thereby it garners higher rankings based upon it. It encompasses composing fresh and original articles that include links to your website. A word of caution would be it should be of minimum 400 words and comprise of relevant information.

To put it in nutshell, WebSight Search Engine Optimization Company is a great tool in the online business world to generating sale leads and boosting business. Outsourcing the work is sure to get those phones ringing off the hook!

Picture Credit : pixabay.com

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