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5 Ways You Can Promote Your Website For Free

izmirmani — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:27:45 +0000

5 Ways You Can Promote Your Website For Free

Look, as the old saying goes, ‘You’ve got to spend money to make money’. And… it’s true. Especially in digital marketing, which has become a field where businesses have to pay to play. From hiring a full-service marketing agency to spending money on Google advertising, these things have become common practices.

However, if you’re just starting out, it’s understandable you don’t have the budget to spend thousands of dollars each month. That’s why we’ve created a list of the most effective ways to generate new traffic to your website for free. The list includes:

Google Business Profile
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Social Media Activity
Building An Email Marketing Strategy
Registering in Local Online Directories

The intention of all of the 5 strategies is to bring quality traffic to your website. That means they will engage with your business in one way or another after visiting your website. That may mean generating more sales, signing up for your email list, or entering a competition.

You must be aware that some of these recommendations require a heavier time commitment and expertise than others. Of course, you avoid the costs associated with hiring a digital marketing agency to do it all for you. However, digital marketing services can consume a lot of your time and is what you must consider when taking it on yourself.

1. Google Business Profile

The first thing you should do is make sure you have a Google Business profile live. With over 8.5 billion searches a day, you can see how it’s beneficial to promote your business there. If you didn’t already have one, that is the first thing an SEO consultant would do if you hired one.

Setting up a Google Business profile enables you to be discovered by people in your area searching for your services. Thus, generating free traffic to your website with a strong intent to engage with your business. Although, as any SEO agency will tell you, it takes time for your listing to appear high in search results.

In order to get your business and website listed on Google, you should search for “Google Business Profile”. Alternatively, you can click through this link to get to the signup page.

Thereafter it is fairly a straightforward process to get your business listing details up on Google.

The process involves answering some basic contact questions about your business and a verification process thereafter. Depending on your business location and details, verification can take between a day to a few weeks. Once complete, you will get an update from Google saying that your business is now LIVE and listed.

If you run into trouble and don’t have an SEO specialist to turn to, you can contact Google support directly.

2. SEO

We’ve been mentioning Google SEO a lot already and there is a good reason for it. SEO services can prove to be invaluable to a business of any size.

In short, local SEO involves ranking your website high on a search engine for specific keywords. Unlike Google Ads, where you’re paying for every click, ranking organically on the first page means you don’t.

That is why SEO marketing is great for a small business on a small budget if it’s willing to put time and effort into it. The first thing you can do is wrap your head around on page SEO. This revolves around the content of your website inclusive of written content, imagery, video, and any applicable tools embedded.

An SEO expert will tell you to focus on keywords that are most relevant to the services or products you offer. Thereafter, create content that is as close as possibly related to those specific keywords. You must ensure that the keywords are also mentioned sporadically and organically within the content. The goal is to increase your organic search ranking simply because of the value you are providing to those searching.

Realistically, even the best SEO company will tell you it takes up to 6 months for a high-quality page to rank. Thus, you must be patient and come to terms with the fact that SEO ranking does not happen overnight.

3. Social Media Activity

You’ve heard time and time again about how social media marketing services can help expand your audience. It can cost thousands of dollars to hire a social media agency to promote your business and generate fresh content.

However, the good news is that you can start doing it yourself with an organic content strategy. That means posting regular and unique content to grow an audience based on your offering. The key here is to provide value in order to get organic engagement and traffic to your website.

Any social media marketing agency will tell you that consistency is key. You must also create original content in order to truly attract attention, especially when relying on organic growth. By organic growth, we are referring to growing a following without spending any money on paid advertising. As an experienced social media company, one of the best tips is to take notice of what’s trending. There’s great power in harnessing the attention of a current trend and creating content with your own spin on it.

Apps like TikTok have made it possible for anyone to go viral with a little bit of creativity and originality. Posting content across platforms and being consistent is the key to promoting your website and business through social media marketing.

4. Build An Email Marketing Strategy

We can’t stress enough the positive impact that email marketing has on your business. It is a great way to nurture brand loyalty and boost sales with special offers.

If you don’t already have an email database, now’s a good time to start thinking about one! An email marketing agency will typically recommend you send out no more than weekly and no less than monthly emails. If you don’t have the time, hiring someone for direct email marketing is a cost-effective way to promote your website.

The good news is that you can do it all yourself for free and with relative ease. For example, Shopify email marketing is easy to implement and readily available within the platform itself. It is a great way to engage with people who have subscribed to your email list or have purchased before. That way your email marketing campaign can link directly to products on your website and generate sales. The best part about it is that it’s already included in your hosting package and is free to use.

Your email campaign should be straight to the point and easy to digest. After all, people’s attention span is minuscule in regards to advertising so the email design and content must be impactful.

5. Local Directories

Once you’ve invested in good web design or built a website by yourself, you should search for free online directories. Not only does it help your organic SEO campaign, but it is also an opportunity for promotion via other websites.

There are many online directories here in New Zealand that you can register for. Here are just a few:

Neighborly (https://www.neighbourly.co.nz/)
Finda (https://www.finda.co.nz/)
NZ Search (http://www.nzsearch.co.nz/)
Zenbu (https://www.zenbu.co.nz/)
Fyple (https://www.fyple.co.nz/)
Hotfrog (https://www.hotfrog.co.nz/)
Zipleaf (https://www.zipleaf.co.nz/)

Most directories will require brief information about your business to get things going, with registration usually taking 5-10 minutes.

When you hire a local SEO company, this is generally one of the first things they do. That is because the more external links your website attracts, it sends signals of authority to search engines. Meaning, if another website refers to you about a certain topic, you must be a source of information in general. Therefore, boosting your SEO internet marketing rankings and driving traffic to your website for free.

Do you want to grow your business?

let’s talk

Services:

We are an official Google Partner

The post 5 Ways You Can Promote Your Website For Free appeared first on IM Creative.

Here’s How ChatGPT Can Help Your Marketing Campaign

izmirmani — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 02:43:45 +0000

Here’s How ChatGPT Can Help Your Marketing Campaign

ChatGPT is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot that has been developed to interact in a conversational way. The best way to describe it in simple terms is to imagine having a conversation with a search engine. It is optimised for dialogue, making it possible to answer follow-up questions, challenge incorrect statements and generate detailed responses.

While there are many ways to use ChatGPT that vary in complexity, we’ll be touching on a few easy strategies you can add to your digital marketing services. Regardless of whether you’re part of a marketing agency or an in-house team, these tips will be quite useful.

We’ll be touching on how ChatGPT can help with the following:

We’ll also discuss whether ChatGPT is a supplementary tool or a replacement for marketing companies and staff. Lastly, it is important to acknowledge that the tech is evolving and improving. We will finish with the latest developments on the next generation of what is to come from ChatGPT.

Social Media

Someone working in a social media marketing agency or managing a business’s social media presence can truly understand the challenges. Sometimes, people outside of the industry do not appreciate how much effort and critical thinking it takes to execute.

Working in a social media agency, I can confirm having spent hours in front of a screen in a rut. Why? Well, creating a caption for your 200th Facebook post in a client account can be very time-consuming. There are so many things to consider like avoiding repetition, being engaging, and matching brand values.

ChatGPT is a great way to spark up new ideas and help avoid staring at your screen blankly for hours. For example, let’s assume one of our social media company clients is a law firm. Here’s what ChatGPT can do:

Prompt: “Generate 10 Instagram captions for a divorce law firm”.

Not bad at all right? Depending on the content of your post, you can get even more specific with your request. You should tweak them to match what your audience typically reacts best to and avoid sounding overly generic.

SEO

The biggest part of SEO optimisation is content. Writing relevant, authoritative, and value-adding unique content will help elevate your website’s ranking on search engines.

ChatGPT is able to generate as much content as you request within a matter of seconds. Something that would take an SEO consultant hours of research and writing to complete. Here is an example:

Prompt: “Write about the benefits of wearing sunscreen on a cloudy day in 300 words”.

With educators concerned about the undetectability between AI-generated and student answers, it’s safe to say the content is pretty good. However, while it is a great starting point, it is not a finished product to be used for SEO marketing.

The reason goes back to the points made about what makes website content great for SEO ranking.

Your content must be relevant. Yes, that is a criterion that ChatGPT actually addresses and completes very competently within such a short period of time.
Your on page SEO content must be authoritative. There is a lack of authority in AI-generated content in its current state. Words like “can lead to” are less authoritative than “will lead to”. Granted, science may not have confirmed a statement as fact. However, linking your content to external authority sources can help validate your own take on the subject. For example, this study shows a direct correlation between UV exposure and skin cancer.
The best SEO content is unique and value-adding. Think about it, why would a search engine rank your website higher than your competitors? Their goal is to provide users with the best search results and relevant content. That is why your answer can’t be cookie-cutter and it must add something new and beneficial to the discussion. An SEO agency or consultant can help add that missing spark to your content.

Google Ads

It is incredible to sit and consider how far technology has come. In the case of ChatGPT and Google Ads working together, we are talking about a combination of AI-driven technology.

Campaign types such as Max Performance have revolutionised the way you can advertise on Google. A machine learning algorithm strives to maximise the return on ad investment with little human intervention. While this sounds great, it isn’t perfect and we wouldn’t recommend firing your Google Ads agency just yet. Why? Well, machine learning simply follows the data. If the data is skewed in an unfavourable way, your campaign can end up costing you much more than the manual services a Google Ads specialist will provide.

Nonetheless, here’s one way as to how you can use ChatGPT to improve your Google Search Ads:

Prompt: “Create 10 Google Search campaign headlines advertising a dentist clinic”.

Once again, not bad right?! Within a matter of seconds, it has generated some great headlines for your Google Search Ads campaign. Adding your targeted keywords within the headlines and customising there onwards will save you a significant amount of time.

Web Design

Besides content creation, ChatGPT can be used in various other ways when it comes to web design. Firstly, you are able to generate design suggestions in terms of layout, colour scheme, typography, and other design elements. Moreover, you can get recommendations on the best User Experience (UX) practices to help improve your conversion rate. The most impressive is its ability to generate HTML/CSS code to help create your custom website. Naturally, someone who is not familiar with responsive web design will not be able to make much use of ChatGPT. However, it can save a web developer hours of writing code and therefore bring your website design cost down.

Here’s a technical example of how ChatGPT can help a web design company:

Prompt: “generate the HTML source code for contact form 7 containing a contact form with the following fields: name, email, phone number, and a send button”.

We’ve just generated the source code for a Contact Form 7 form with a few simple commands. You are able to customise the form source code based on your requirements and the input fields necessary. That is just one example of ChatGPT saving website developers time to manually write basic source code.

Email Marketing

We’ve spoken about the power of email marketing in nurturing customer relationships and brand loyalty. However, regular email newsletter design and content creation can take a creative a long time to draft. That is because they have to consider the fine balance between constantly exciting content and avoiding repetition. If you are sending a weekly newsletter, you will struggle to create that fresh exciting content from time to time.

ChapGPT is again a great starting point to get your creative juices flowing for an email campaign. Here’s an example:

Prompt: “Create 10 ideas for an email campaign for a honey-selling company”.

Here we have another case of some impressive topic ideas you can include in your email marketing strategy. It is a goldmine opportunity if you are stuck in your creative process. As any email design professional will tell you, thinking of an idea is often much more time-consuming than execution. ChatGPT is your perfect creative assistant in this scenario which makes email marketing services much more efficient.

Tool or Replacement?

While new tech can be amazing, it is also important to not get caught up in all the hype. You couldn’t scroll through Twitter without posts about how we will all be living in the Metaverse any time now. People were spending millions of dollars to buy land in Web3 digital world projects, no joke.

Tools like ChatGPT are truly pushing the capabilities of what we can achieve. However, they are tools to use as a supplement rather than a replacement for an experienced marketer. As a digital marketing agency, we use it as a great starting point to generate primary ideas. Whether that is for Google advertising, email marketing, social media marketing services, or anything else.

That is because they often miss that human touch and feel. Content can lack depth and is not able to effectively convey complex viewpoints and emotions. Moreover, in its current state, ChatGPT is prone to errors and inaccuracies due to its inability to fully understand context. Thus, the human touch is still required to customise AI-generated content into a more digestible and original form.

What's Next?

It has been widely reported that Microsoft has recently invested $10 billion in ChatGPT maker, OpenAI. This will likely lead to further improvements in the current technology while also promoting wider consumer and business adoption.

We can only expect ChatGPT and competitive AI projects to get better, more efficient, and more useful. As a digital marketing agency, we look forward to advancements in AI technology. It is unlikely that it will be fully able to replace the creativity and critical thinking that human beings are capable of. Thus, whether you work in an ad agency or in-house, there shouldn’t be any concerns about being replaced by AI. Not for the foreseeable future anyway…

Do you want to grow your business?

let’s talk

Services:

We are an official Google Partner

The post Here’s How ChatGPT Can Help Your Marketing Campaign appeared first on IM Creative.

Google vs. Facebook Advertising: Which One is Best for You?

izmirmani — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 04:31:49 +0000

Google vs. Facebook Advertising: Which One is Best for You?

Are you wanting to begin your journey with digital marketing services but are not sure where to start? Ever wondered which platform is your money best spent on? Google Ads and Facebook Ads have long been compared to one another as competitors. But in reality, they are complementary. They both offer benefits that are unique and widen the scope of your digital marketing. So, let’s look more closely at what they are and how you can use them to your advantage.

What Are Google Ads?

Before we go on to compare the two, let’s start with what they are. The Google Ads platform was also once known as Google AdWords. It is essentially an all-in-one platform that allows you to advertise on Google and other closely related online channels. This includes things like YouTube Ads, Google Display Ads, and the most popular being Google Search Ads.

While YouTube and display ads are often used in Google remarketing campaigns, search is often used as a starting point. This is when search engines allow an advertiser’s ad to show up on their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). A user will search for something and certain keywords will trigger an advertiser’s ad to appear just above the search results.

You will notice this is the case with most of your Google searches. This operates on a pay-per-click model (PPC) where once the ad has been clicked, the advertiser pays the publisher. So you are only paying for the ad when it actually drives traffic to your site. The advertisers are basically bidding on certain keywords or phrases that users will use in their search.

What Are Facebook Ads?

Facebook advertising comes under something called “paid social” which is advertising on social networks. Facebook has the highest “number of monthly active users (or MAUs) of any social network in the world.” So it makes sense that digital marketers will jump on this opportunity to take advantage of all this potential traffic. Some may think that this is very similar to how Google Ads is used but in reality, it isn’t. Paid social is more behavioural. Social media marketing companies target users based on their interests and online behaviour.

Through the Facebook Ads platform, you can create display ads to be shown to audiences across Facebook and Instagram. You have multiple options to choose from in regard to where your ad is displayed. To name a few, that can be a post, a story, across devices, or mobile only.

A social media agency can help design creative and keep your ads fresh and eye-catching. According to Facebook itself, 1.6 billion people are connected to small businesses across its platform. Meaning it is a tried and true channel to engage with potential customers.

The Benefits Of Investing In Google Ads

Range of Ad Formats

When it comes to ad formats or types, there are many features that you can take advantage of. You have shopping ads, location targeting, Google search ads, YouTube, Google display ads, and much more at your fingertips. The options allow businesses to test multiple formats to maximise their return on investment and increase market share.

Having that ability really enables businesses to capture the right audience at exactly the right time. Google is also always adding new features which give advertisers more opportunities to drive quality traffic. Recently, it has added the Performance Max option which allows advertisers to integrate all their ad formats in one campaign. Through machine learning, it strives to maximise campaign performance and simplify Google Ads management.

Your Audience

Google is the biggest search engine in the world. Statistics show that it handles more than 40,000 searches every second, and over 1.2 trillion searches each year. People are increasingly reliant on Google for information. It’s increasingly being used as a source for news, product information, finding a local business, and more. As technology is forever improving and evolving, so is Google with machine learning tech and artificial intelligence. It’s fair to assume these future upgrades will up the potential of your marketing strategies and reach audiences more efficiently.

High Conversion

Google advertising can be expensive in many industries, but that is because it works more often than not. Businesses are willing to spend more on ads in a proven and tested platform with high conversion rates. The relevance and quality of an ad are defining points in cost and campaign performance. Hiring a Google Ads specialist will help maximise the return on your investment through tried and tested methods.

The Benefits Of Investing In Facebook Ads

Your Audience

As of the third quarter of 2022, Facebook has 2.96 billion users (monthly active users). It’s no secret that Facebook is enormous and having all those users at your fingertips is massive. Narrowing down an audience is possible through filters such as age, personal beliefs, hobbies and interests, job titles, and more.

Lookalike Audiences allow Facebook to promote your ad beyond your source audience to people who share similar interests and behaviours. The algorithm finds potential customers based on the same behaviours and interests as your existing audience or buyers. They become the targeted audience, therefore increasing the reach of your marketing in a very efficient way. This unique feature is what elevates marketing with Facebook and takes marketing in general to the next level.

Visuals

Social media marketing, unlike search marketing, is extremely visual. This enables you to establish a brand voice beyond and grow a loyal following. Scrolling on your Facebook Feed, you come across hundreds of visual marketing in the form of pictures or videos. The best ads will capture the right audience’s attention and maintain it long enough to achieve the desired outcome. An experienced social media marketing agency will have all the right tools to create attention-grabbing visuals for your campaign. Alternatively, you can use cheap tools like Canva to design your own.

Cost Effective

Compared to search, Facebook advertising allows you to reach more people at a lower cost. However, creating an ad that will convert is the tricky part. Hiring the right social media company will ensure you’re on the right track to maximise your return on advertising. If done right, that can be much cheaper than search advertising.

Your Campaign Goals - Decision Time

Now that you have an idea of what Google and Facebook Ads are and what they can offer, let’s look at your campaign goals. What are you wanting to accomplish in your campaign?

Things to consider are getting new leads, completing sales, and even brand awareness.

With Google Advertising, you are more likely to encounter users with high purchase intent. A user may search for a “gaming keyboard” which signals their interest in buying one. Ads will come up with the search and may lead to a possible sale.

Facebook Ads reach consumers who may benefit by purchasing your product or service but aren’t actively looking for it. Thus, it is great for product awareness at a cheaper cost.

Overview

It’s without a doubt that both Google and Meta are giants in their field and have so much to offer. When comparing the two, it is hard not to see the great benefits of both. So, instead of seeing them as opposing sides, why not use them as complementary to one another? With both, paid search and paid social at your fingertips, you would have a robust digital marketing strategy. With changes in privacy legislation impacting Facebook recently, it is clear that overreliance on one channel will leave you vulnerable. Diversifying your marketing strategy is the best way to minimise your exposure to that and shield sales outcomes.

It is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of both these giants to make the most of them. If you would like some further insight and assistance around this, feel free to contact us for more information.

Do you want to grow your business?

let’s talk

Services:

We are an official Google Partner

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How often should you revamp your website?

izmirmani — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 00:31:42 +0000

How often should you revamp your website?

A website is never really “done.” You should always look for ways to keep it up to date and truly harness its benefits for your business. But how often should you actually revamp your website?

There are many reasons why you might want to redesign your website, and we’ll talk about the most common ones. Great website design can improve your conversion rate, and build trust with your audience. It can also make it easier for you to manage content and keep your site updated.

If you are not happy with the way your website looks or functions, then it’s time to consider a redesign. With a little planning and effort, you can create a much better experience for your visitors.

It depends on several factors, from your industry to your objectives. This article will explore key factors when deciding how often to revamp your website.

Why Website Updates Are Important

It is important to keep your website updated for several reasons. Regular healthchecks ensure that it is accessible and usable by visitors. If it isn’t compatible with web browsers, people may not be able to view it correctly or at all.

Additionally, an updated website reflects a commitment to keeping your business relevant and keeping your customers engaged. People are more likely to trust and do business with a company that invests in its online presence.

Furthermore, regular updates can help you improve your search engine ranking. You can either hire an SEO agency to do this on your behalf or you can do it yourself. This makes it more likely that people find your website when looking for information or products related to your offer.

How Often Should You Update Content

If you want your website to stay relevant and engaging, you need to regularly update your content. But how often should you updated your content?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The frequency of updates will depend on many factors, including the type of website, the industry, and the audience. However, as a general rule of thumb, most should be updated once a month. Once again, hiring someone to engage in SEO services on your website will go a long way to long-term success.

If your website is static and hasn’t changed much in over a year, you may as well not have one. That’s because an out-of-date site can leave a worse impression on potential customers than not having one at all.

If you can’t afford to hire an SEO company, take the time yourself to add new content at least quarterly. You don’t want to bombard your visitors with constant changes, like the homepage completely changing every month. But, you should keep your blog up to date with new topics and engaging content. Ultimately, it’s up to you to strike the right balance for your website.

7 Important Reasons To Redesign Your Website

A website is often the first interaction potential customers have with your business. So it’s important to ensure that the first impression is good.

Unfortunately, too many businesses treat their website as a static brochure instead of a living, breathing tool that should constantly evolve to meet their customers’ needs.

If you are stuck in this thinking, it might be time for a website redesign. Here are eight reasons why you should consider revamping your website:

1. One chance at a first impression.

Your website is the first thing potential customers and clients see when searching for you or your products online. If your website is broken, hard to navigate, or inaccurately reflect your brand, it will turn people away. Good website design is essential to any business in the modern world.

A revamp can fix all of these problems and make your site look more professional, modern, and polished. It can improve user experience by making navigation easier and providing relevant and targeted content. And it can ensure that your site accurately reflects your brand voice and values.

2. Your website is a reflection of your brand.

Your website is one of the essential marketing tools for your business. It is a reflection of your brand, and it should be crafted with your target market in mind. Showcase your brand professionally and stand out to be memorable.

3. Slow loading speed.

If your site takes more than 5 seconds to load then there is typically something to be fixed. Whether it is large files weighing it down or a messy structure, a good web development company can help.

4. Your website is not optimised for SEO marketing.

An SEO agency can help you reach more customers by driving traffic to your website. From web structure to content, and everything in-between, everything must be optimised in order to rank and attract new visitors.

5. Stay ahead of the competition.

Suppose a potential customer looks at your website and a competitor for a product or service. Say that you have content dating less than a year old versus your competitor with content from 2016. Who do you think the customer is most likely to contact?

6. Your website is outdated and not mobile-friendly

If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, it is time to redesign. Over half of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices, so your website must be optimised for them. A redesign can ensure your site looks great and works well on all devices, from smartphones to tablets to computers.

7. You do not have a clear call-to-action & offering.

Your website visitors need to know what you want them to do next, otherwise, they will leave without taking action. A clear call to action tells visitors what you want them to do and makes it easy for them to take that action. It’s a critical part of any effective website, yet many fail to include one. Any decent Google Ads management agency will reiterate the importance of this and its impact on your conversion rate.

Improve Your Conversion Rate

If you are investing with a digital marketing agency or spending any money advertising online, conversion optimisation is key. Normally, your website is the place that you will drive traffic to through advertising. If it doesn’t look good, takes too much time loading, or lacks quality content, your investment is wasted.

This is especially true if you are investing in ads through a social media marketing agency. Users on social media are minding their own business and aren’t thinking about you or your products. Therefore, everything has to be in top shape in order to convince them to buy from you. That means that your landing page not only has to showcase your offering, but also convince them why they need your product in the first place. People’s patience is very thin, and if your website lacks in any aspect, you’ve lost their attention. Therefore, you’ll be throwing money down the drain investing in social media marketing services without having your website in order.

The same goes for Google advertising. Although people are actively searching for products or services you provide, there are multiple companies competing for that work. With multiple options at the customer’s disposal, they have the power to choose with little to no effort. More often than not, a clear, concise, and attractive website will help sway decisions in your favour. Google Ad services can be costly in many industries, and thus you must ensure every dollar is being spent wisely.

How To Ensure Your Website Is Up-To-Date

It’s important to keep your website up-to-date with the latest trends, technology, and security standards. Here are a few simple things to keep in mind:

Technology – Make sure your website is built with the latest web technologies. It will ensure that your site loads quickly and is compatible with all modern browsers.
Security – Regularly update your security measures to protect against hackers and other online threats. Updating all plugins and systems will limit exposure to hacking attacks.
Content – Keep your content fresh and relevant. Add new pages and blog posts regularly, and update existing pages as needed.
Design – Give your website a fresh look every few years to keep things sharp and modern.

By following these simple tips, you can ensure that your website is always up-to-date and running smoothly.

Conclusion

There is no set answer for how often you should revamp your website. It depends on your business’ nature, and how important it is to your overall marketing strategy.

That said, it’s generally a good idea to update your website every few months if not every month. Naturally, we’re talking about content updates rather than a complete overhaul. Every few years, you will find the need to invest in a bigger refresh in order to keep up. Aligning yourself with a good web design company, should make it a seamless process with little friction.

Do you want to grow your business?

let’s talk

Services:

We are an official Google Partner

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How To Get More Google Reviews

izmirmani — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 01:28:24 +0000

How To Get More Google reviews

Whether you’re generating traffic through Google Ads management, SEO services, or social media, you must have a unique value proposition. Word of mouth has always been a great way to increase business and to aid this, we have Google Reviews. Having reviews not only provides information for your customers but also makes your business stand out. Around 90% of customers check reviews before reaching out to businesses and 88% trust them as much as personal recommendations. If you haven’t already given Google reviews much thought before, the time to change that is right now. There is a lot of potential to drive traffic and conversions to your site using this free and simple tool. People aren’t going to be impressed with the last review being from 5 years ago. They’ll probably think you’re out of business if no one has reviewed the business recently. This basically means that it isn’t enough to have a handful of awesome 5-star reviews. It has to be ongoing and fresh! Below is a list of ways to drive clients to leave reviews and how to do it.

Need to Know Beforehand...

Before you get started though, there are a few important things to know beforehand. This is crucial as it will allow you to have more control over the strategies in this post.

Google’s Policies
When requesting reviews, you must be in line with Google’s Terms of Service. Basically, you cannot offer rewards so that people write a review. Moreover, you should ask them about their experience, whether positive or negative. It pays to read through the policies to ensure you’re not breaching any rules.
Be a “Place” on Google Maps
By doing this, you will have a Google Business Profile so that customers can write reviews. Click here for more information on how to do this. This will also have a positive impact on local SEO services and campaign.
Have your Google Business Profile verified
When you have created a Google Business Profile as per above, the next step is getting it verified. Becoming a “place” on Google Maps will not do this automatically. You must create a Google My Business account and have your ownership verified through it. Click here for more information around this.

1. How to Write a Review

Okay, now that you have more reasons to do this, let’s look at how your consumers will go about this. Here it is in a few easy steps:

Open your Google Maps
Type the business name in the search bar and click on it
Scroll down to the Review Summary
Click on Write a Review

Alternatively, you can search for a business on Google and their Google Business Profile will appear on the right. Below the Questions & Answers section, it will have the Reviews section where you can Write a Review.

Both ways work just fine and all up, it takes a customer a couple of minutes to complete. Super easy to do, so now, let’s look at some strategies to gain more reviews.

2. Create a Shortcut to Write a Review

Instead of having to explain each step to your customer, why not jump ahead and create a shortcut to the review link? You can easily put this shortcut link on your website and direct your customer straight there. In order to get the link, you can:

Jump on your Google My Business account. On the Home page, on the right hand side, there should be a box that says “Get your first/more reviews.” There will be a “Share review form” button there which you can click on and then copy the link.

Another way to do this is to:

Search up your business in Google
Your Google Business Profile will pop up on the right
Click on Write a Review
Copy the address in the address bar

3. Shorten the Review Link

As you may have noticed, the link to Write a Review is extremely long. You may want to have the link on your business cards but imagine trying to type that out? That is where a link-shortener comes in handy. There are free providers to access such as bitly.com where you can easily shorten the link as well as customise it.

This way, you can have a simple phrase link on your business card or poster that people can remember.

4. Google Review - Link on Your Website

One of the first places a customer will look to leave a review is on your website. Why not take advantage of that and provide a simple call-to-action (CTA). If you have a testimonials section on your site, you can strategically place the CTA under it. Make it simple, clear and easily accessible, like the example below:

By placing a link on the word “here”, it takes the customer straight to the Reviews page on Google for your business.

5. Showcase Google Reviews on Your Website

As mentioned above, you can create a Testimonials page on your website to showcase your reviews. On this page, you can list your reviews as well as having a CTA for people to leave a review. Having this section on your site not only increases social proofing but also encourages customers to leave their own review.

You can screenshot your reviews and place them on your site but it would be best to have them in a text format. The text format allows for rich-keyword content which aids your SEO services strategy. One option to display your reviews is by using a template that suits the style of your site. Alternatively, you can search for platforms or plug-ins that can pull your reviews over to your website automatically. You can also get in touch with IM Creative regarding website design.

You can also use your reviews as creative for Google Display Ads or forward through to your social media agency.

6. Ask a Customer Directly

After you have landed a sale or completed a service for your client, you noticed they are very satisfied. What better time is there to ask? In my experience, this has worked wonders as most are willing to leave a good word for the next person. Asking them could be over the phone, in person or if your communications were online, via email. Here is an example of an email template you could use:

Thank you for your purchase/ booking,

If you have time, we were wondering if you wouldn’t mind rating us on Google for our services,

The link is below for your convenience:

Thank you and hope you enjoy the rest of your week,

Kind Regards,

As shown above, always thank your client and make the link as accessible as possible. In addition, you can also mention that you read all your feedback as it helps better your service/ products. This is a simple yet effective way to gain those reviews you need to validate your business to prospects.

7. Pop-ups & Calls-to-Action on Your Website

We all procrastinate. Sometimes we just need that little nudge or something to pop-up right in our faces before we do the task. So one way to combat this is having pop-ups and CTA’s on your site. You have probably seen these in action before where a chat box will pop up saying “Let us know how we are doing! Leave us a review!”. There will be a link in the box that will take you straight to “Write a Review”. When it is right in your face – there are only two options. Close the box or write the review. It’s a 50/50 chance to gain that much needed Google Review. However, it is a fine line between subtle and spammy. Talk to us about the right UX & website design.

8. Google Review - Email Campaign

Email marketing, remains one of the most effective marketing channels. Whether you write a personalised email or a blanket statement for the campaign, it is 100% up to you. Some businesses pride themselves in their close relationships with their clients and would take a more personal approach. You must be mindful not to over-fluff the request with jargon or descriptions but keep it to the point. Your customers will appreciate that.

There is nothing wrong in asking for a review, and happy customers are more than willing to do it. IM Creative specialise in email marketing services and can help create a one-off campaign for you.

9. Google Review - Link in Email Signature

In your email signature, why not slip in an easy link to write a Google review? Most if not all of you will have an email signature with your position and business logo. Add in your shortcut link where ever looks best and it could look like something along the lines of:

– Happy with our service? Leave us a review here.

– Satisfied? Let others know too and leave us a review here.

– Happy? Help others find us – Leave us a review here.

Simple and easy and you are left knowing that you are covering your bases.

10. Social Media

Social media has been a massive game-changer all around, especially in marketing. It is important that you take advantage of its benefits even if you are not tech-savvy. You can hire a social media agency to manage things for you if required. The main platforms you can utilise are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Tiktok. On your page, you can screenshot a great review and post it to reach your audience and beyond. In your post, make sure to paste your shortcut link in as well for convenience. Also, one tip is to keep your content similar if not the same across all your profiles for optimum results. Just be aware that Facebook has their own reviews system so you could mention both Facebook and Google Reviews.

11. Vendors & Partners

This one is a great way to get some high quality reviews. Other tradespeople would understand and appreciate the need for Google reviews. They also would have a fairly good idea of what it is like working with you and your service/ products. If you are confident in your offering, why not mention it when you see each other next? Importantly, it can be tit-for-tat, they leave you a Google review and you leave one in return!

12. Responding to Reviews

Now once all your reviews are flooding in, it is important to take some time to read through them. When you read and respond to reviews, it shows your customers that you are willing to hear their feedback. It also shows that whatever time they took to write your review was worth it.

Of course, you will get some great reviews and some not so great and how you respond matters. Here is how you can respond to them:

Positive: respond in a timely fashion and express thanks and gratitude. By responding positively back, other potential customers will see this and feel motivated to write their own reviews.
Negative: respond timely as well and politely. Try not to engage in an argument and also try to resolve the issue. Having empathy and understanding their point of view, you show that you are professional as well as “on their side.” This can even result in turning a negative review around to a positive one.

As a digital marketing agency that has worked with clients in many different industries, one thing is clear. You can’t have a 100% track record and positive feedback. If you are handling a high volume of customers, some will have a negative experience. The important thing is to handle it in a mature and professional manner and move on. It is impossible to please all people but you can learn and upskill from negative feedback.

Conclusion

To conclude, taking the time to implement these small strategies can benefit you in more ways than one. They barely take up any time to do and are more importantly, free. If you have any queries or questions around Google Reviews, feel free to get in touch. IM Creative is a digital marketing agency that can help increase your Google review count and improve brand reputation.

Do you want to grow your business?

let’s talk

Services:

We are an official Google Partner

The post How To Get More Google Reviews appeared first on IM Creative.

Top Reasons for High Website Bounce Rates – Google Analytics

izmirmani — Sat, 21 May 2022 06:47:30 +0000

Top Reasons For A High Website Bounce Rate

There can be many reasons why your website would have a high bounce rate and not all are “bad”. But in most cases, having a high bounce rate is an indication that something isn’t right. You’re not alone as many businesses face the same issue and may not even understand what it means. If you’re reading this, it’s a good thing, at least you know that there are many opportunities for improvement.

As an experienced digital marketing agency, IM Creative puts serious consideration into bounce rate data and the factors behind it. We try and maximise every dollar a client spends with us. Thus, using our Google Ads management services as an example, we don’t want a high bounce rate. If people are clicking through the ads at our clients’ expense but bouncing right away, this is money wasted. That’s why factors like relevancy, loading speed, and technical faults should be your first check for a high bounce rate.

We will be giving you some insight into the reasons for high bounce rates but first, let’s look at the basics.

What is a Bounce Rate?

According to Google, bounce rate is the number of users who visit your site but don’t take any other action. It is classed as a single-page session. It is referred to as a “bounce” as they view one page and then “bounce”/ leave.

This is calculated as a percentage and can be found in Google Analytics. Here, you will be able to see the percentage for all the individual pages on the site as well as the overall average. In addition, Google Analytics is great as you can also see other metrics such as:

The time on site
The average number of pages visited and
How many visitors have come by

It pays to look at the bigger picture when looking at your bounce rates. Look at the metrics in conjunction with each other to get an accurate reading. For example, you have a high bounce rate but also the time spent on the site is high. This could mean that users have gotten what they came for on that one page and then left. Or the page with a high bounce rate is the Contact page where users are coming for a phone number. The bounce rate may be high but so is the success rate. It all depends on what your site is used for and your current site goals.

What is Considered a Good or Bad Bounce Rate?

As mentioned above, a good bounce rate depends on your needs. A high bounce rate could be good news for you and vice versa. The average bounce rate is between 26% to 70%. Bounce rates differ across industries so it’s hard to give one figure around what is good and what is bad. Instead, we can look at what is a high bounce rate along with supporting metrics.

70% and over is classed as a high bounce rate and it isn’t good when conversions are also low. If you have looked at your Google Analytics and at the right metrics, you can determine what needs work. Does the page have a low conversion rate? Are user’s not spending a lot of time on a page? Is the bounce rate high? If so, then you know this page needs attention.

Now, let’s look at some of the reasons you may have a high bounce rate.

Possible Reasons for a High Bounce Rate

1. Content

When users click on a website, they generally come to find the information they are looking for. After reading and scrolling on the landing page, they will be able to determine if your site was what they were after. If not, they will turn to another site – namely your competitors.

To combat this, you must understand your users and your target audience. Why do users choose your site over others and how can you improve this? With that in mind, alter and develop your content to fit those needs and answer their queries. Declutter and rearrange if necessary, removing anything not relevant and it may just be what you needed. If you find users are not spending enough time on your site, you can strategically place CTA’s or other written content to entice them to move around your site.

The medium where your visitors are coming from will also have an impact on the content expectations. Google advertising can drive visitors with intent and ready-to-go. A social media agency on the other hand brings visitors who need more information to make an informed decision.

Generally speaking, user attention span is generally extremely low. You’ve got a few seconds to answer their questions and provide them with a solution. That is why the solution can’t be hidden in a sea of content. It must stand out. In particular, if you’re engaging in SEO services, content must be of high quality and straight to the point. Shy away from cheap content providers that will overload your website with poor unrelated content.

2. User Experience

A user’s experience or UX can be affected by a lot of things. The layout of the site, the colour palette, pop-ups, ads, or site navigation. All these things can make or break the user experience. That is where hiring a good website design company makes a huge difference.

Sometimes less is more when it comes to your site. A simple layout with just the right colours does wonders, as well as cutting back on the clutter. In terms of navigation, you will know your site inside out but you may overlook certain things unknowingly. Like adding a search bar or tinkering with your menu to make it user-friendly. Remember, people aren’t as invested in your site as you are. Things must be clear and easy to navigate from the offset.

It may even pay to have a web design company look over your site for that second professional opinion.

3. Not Mobile Friendly

Everyone knows they should be mobile-friendly but not everyone has made the shift. If your site hasn’t been tweaked for mobile compatibility, it might run slower and look different. It may be too big for mobile screens and some of the content will be squished or below the fold. All this will most likely steer users back to Google and to the next result in line. Mobile phones are in almost everyone’s pockets, so it’s recommended you take the leap if you haven’t already. According to BroadbandSearch, 56% of internet traffic was done through mobile. Therefore, if your site isn’t mobile responsive, more than half of internet users may have a poor experience.

In particular, when generating traffic to your website through email marketing, mobile responsiveness is crucial. People generally tend to view open emails on the go and on mobile. Thus, if you’re directing mobile users to a bad landing page, your conversion rate will suffer.

If you aren’t 100% sure if your site is mobile-friendly, jump on the Test My Site tool to check.

4. Speed

As you probably know from experience, a site should load up almost instantly. If it doesn’t, then you are most likely to either try again or look elsewhere. Fixing or improving the speed of your site is never a waste. Some practical ways to improve speed are reducing image size, browser caching, and removing unnecessary code.

You can even jump online to PageSpeed Insights for website performance and testing analysis. Check your website’s loading speed as well as a breakdown of opportunities to improve.

Any SEO agency will tell you that loading speed plays an important role in search rankings.

5. Technical Issues

It’s highly probable that there is a technical issue if you have a high bounce rate and users are spending a few seconds on that page. For example, it could be due to an error with JavaScript or a plugin. A way to check this is by looking through your user’s eyes and going through your site as they would. This could be through Chrome on your mobile or Safari on a desktop. Google Analytics is great as it will break down the devices and platforms used to access your site. This way, you are replicating their experience and have a higher chance of catching that technical issue. If one is found, make sure to fix that straight away or ask someone who can.

6. Asking too much?

Does your site require your user’s to enter their information at some point? What are you asking of them? Sometimes, user’s can be put off by what information a site requires of them. This could be their credit card details, DOB, children’s names, IRD number, etc. At some point, a line needs to be drawn and you need narrow the information gathering down. If possible, and based on Google Analytics, cull the unnecessary and keep it minimal. In today’s day and age, internet privacy is big and users steer clear of those who ask for too much.

Tips to Reduce Your Bounce Rate

Seeing the whole picture when it comes to bounce rates is crucial as it is not always bad. But after looking at the data from Google Analytics, you will be able to pinpoint the areas that need work. Once you have found that, here are some tips on what to do next:

1. Start With the Page With the Worst Bounce Rate

If you have a high bounce rate overall, then it’s likely that one or two pages are copping it all. Once you have located it, as mentioned above, look at the metrics data. Are users getting what they came for? Are they spending a lot of time on it or barely a few seconds? You can look at your layout and content next to try and find the culprit. If you are still struggling here, you can even ask a friend to navigate the page and tell you what stands out. An outside opinion might just do the trick.

2. Visualisation Tools

To take it a step further, you can access these two visualisation tools to get an inside scoop. Website recording, such as Hotjar, shows you how your users navigate your site. You can see when they click on the mouse, where they hover, and what routes they take on your site. It is a super handy tool you can access, especially on the high bounce pages. Another tool you can use is HeatMaps via Hotjar. It allows you to see the “heat signature” where your user’s cursor lands on-page and where most activity is. If you find there are certain spots their cursor is landing, this could be a place to put a call-to-action. With this tool, you get an idea of what is working for your users and what isn’t.

3. A/B Testing

With the assistance of the above visualisation tools, you can implement some A/B tests. This is where you copy a page from your site and make minor tweaks here and there. For example, you could change the headers, images, or content. Once you have made a copy, upload it and see how your users interact with the updated content. This way, you can see which of the two pages is more appealing and potentially lower your bounce rate.

4. Your Content

Sometimes it’s not clear if the beginning of your content is what you make it out to be. It takes reading and re-reading many times before it can be refined. Whatever it is you are advertising, it must be reflected in your content. As in you can’t say you have the “best” product in the market but it barely has a 4-star rating. Make sure it aligns with what you are providing as well as getting content spell-checked too.

Conclusion

A “bounce” is when your site is visited but the user doesn’t go beyond that initial landing page. They leave a few seconds later or so, with or without converting. The “bounce rate” is the percentage that this happens and for some, a high rate is not desirable. Note that having a high bounce rate on some pages may be what you want or isn’t an issue. Things like affiliate links or blogs will have high bounce rates as it is a single visit in most cases.

So, not all bounces are bad but if it is an issue, there are things you can look at to combat it. Make sure your site is user and mobile-friendly. Remove any outdated content and maybe invest in a site revamp. Colours and layouts are just as important, so take note of some sites you like and how they do things. A high bounce rate doesn’t have to be the end of the world but in many cases, you can lower it.

For help with these tips and a site assessment, feel free to get in touch.

Do you want to grow your business?

let’s talk

Services:

We are an official Google Partner

The post Top Reasons for High Website Bounce Rates – Google Analytics appeared first on IM Creative.

Google Analytics – What Metrics You Need to be Looking at.

izmirmani — Sat, 16 Apr 2022 02:13:19 +0000

Google Analytics - What Metrics You Need to be Looking at.

If you currently run a website then you will most likely have heard of Google Analytics. This tool provides you with data from your website on its performance. When running a website, it is invaluable to have this information to understand the state and quality of your traffic. This comes in handy to understand what’s going on and how you can increase sales, and leads through digital marketing. Google itself describes the platform as essential to customer insights.

As a digital marketing agency, the first thing we ask new clients is for access to their Google Analytics accounts. This is to understand the current state and track performance of our campaigns in the future. It doesn’t matter whether they’ve hired us for Google Ads management or our SEO services, or any other service. Using Google Analytics allows us to see what’s working and what isn’t and ultimately provide them the best ROI possible.

So what metrics should you be looking at? All that data can be daunting and most don’t know where to begin. Here are nine metrics you can focus on as well as where to locate them in Google Analytics. Most importantly, how you can make use of them. But first, let’s break down Google Analytics so you can navigate it effectively.

Google Analytics

To keep things simple, Google Analytics is sorted into four different sections.

Audience: You can explore who your current users are such as their demographics, device technology, location, and so forth. With this information, you can analyse the effects on user segments.

Acquisition: This shows how your users get to your website, as in how you acquire them. You will be able to see what channels yield the most traffic as well as compare them.

Behaviour: This shows what your users do while on your website, as in how long they stay and what pages they click through. You can analyse this information to further understand the effects on retention, engagement, and their overall experience.

Conversions: This keeps track of whether users do what you want them to do while on your site. This can assist in seeing how effective your funnels are for purchases, for example, and see how your site encourages this.

Now, let’s take a look at the metrics you should be assessing.

1. Users

‘Users’ refers to how many people visit your website and they are split into two groups: new and returning. New being first-time visitors and returning being users who have visited your website previously.

This is tracked by the use of cookies which is data that’s collected from your time on the site. Keeping this in mind, it is important to note that although the use of cookies is effective, it is not 100% accurate. This is even more relevant now that cookies are going. Say the user visits your site but from a different device/browser and they have blocked the use of cookies. This means their visits will be marked as a separate new user. This also occurs if Incognito or private browsing is used.

To access this metric, you can find it under the Audience > Overview section in your Google Analytics. In this section, you can also find information about new users, number of sessions per user, page views, and more.

All this information is great for analysing your marketing strategies as it shows how often users interact with your site. Another benefit is that the data gives insight on how effective your campaigns are to drive traffic. For example, when a client hires IM as a social media agency, we can follow the user journey through this.

2. Sessions

The metric for sessions refers to the number of times users are active on your site. They start when a user first lands on the website and end when there is thirty minutes of inactivity. It can also end when a user enters through one campaign, exits, and then re-enters via another campaign or past midnight. Although the default time is thirty minutes, you can adjust how much inactivity will cause a session to end. This can be done via your Google Analytics Session Settings.

The way sessions differ from the user metric is, for example, there are 100 users and there are 200 sessions. At a glance, it suggests that each user visited twice on average during a specific time period. This metric is useful to track changes to your session count rate to assess the effectiveness of your campaigns. There must be a reason why people are more inclined to re-visit under different campaigns. Sessions help pinpoint what source is bringing you traffic that will stick around longer. Under sessions, you can also see the average duration, as well as the average amount of pages visited per session.

Access to this information can be found in the same place as users – Audience > Overview.

3. Devices

This metric tracks your visitors based on the different devices used. These can be either through mobile, desktop, or tablet devices. The reason why this metric is of use to you is that it can show you where to focus your efforts. Your website may look great on desktop but the data is showing that people mainly come through mobile devices. As smartphones have driven more people to browse online on-the-go at a higher frequency, this is a relevant scenario. According to StatCounter, Mobile market share (56.45%) has surpassed Desktop (41.15%) as of March 2022. You will then must optimise to improve that particular experience. Mobile optimisation is a key factor in our website design services.

To find this metric, you go through Audience > Mobile > Overview.

4. Average Time On Page

As the title states, this metric covers the average time a user is on a single page. By looking at this average, you get an idea of how engaged they are with that particular content. With this information, you can clearly see which pages are working and which clearly aren’t. For instance, you have a page that needs more traffic so now you can find ways to increase it.

This could look like adding in videos, changing the layout, or making it more accessible from the home page. This way, you can see what content is working and what isn’t.

If you are running an SEO Services campaign, track the average time to ensure a good landing page experience. If people are exiting after only a few seconds, this gives Google an indication that your content isn’t relevant. Thus, it can significantly damage your rankings if you don’t improve user experience and average time on page.

To find this information, you can go to Behaviour > Site Content > All Page > Avg. Time on Page Column.

5. Organic & Paid Sessions

These two metrics go hand-in-hand. Organic traffic is from users who came to your page via non-paid search engine results page. IM Creative is an SEO agency that works to increase the number of quality organic traffic to your website. Paid traffic is from users who have clicked on one of your ads on a search engine. IM Creative also offers Google Ads management services to increase the volume of quality paid traffic to your website.

Organic traffic gives you an indication of how effective your current search optimisation strategy is. This kind of traffic is what you want to increase as a cost-effective long-term strategy. The Paid search metric is great as it shows how effective your advertisements are currently. From this information, you can gauge and tweak the paid ads and even reduce the costs over time.

Comparing these two metrics is a start to seeing your site’s overall performance and if any improvements can be made.

There are also other sources that can be identified through channel overview. If you’ve hired a social media agency, you can check the number and quality of traffic it’s generating. The same principle goes for email marketing and tracking users from that particular source/channel.

All these metrics can be found under Acquisition < Overview, Channels and Source/Medium.

6. Landing Pages & Page Views

The first metric refers to the pages that users enter your site through, also known as landing pages. This is useful as it shows what pages are receiving the most traffic and which are not. This can be a result of organic rankings or driven by your campaigns actively pushing traffic to any particular page. You can use this to evaluate the user’s experience on the site, your marketing, and the quality of the content.

Landing pages metric can be found under Behaviour > Site Content > Landing Pages.

For page views, it is referring to how many views each page is getting on your site. If a user views a page more than once, these are counted as individual page views. There is also the unique page views metric which is closely linked to this as well. It takes note of the number of times the pages are viewed during a session.

To access these, go to Behaviour > Overview for page views and unique page views.

7. Top Queries in Search

This metric gives you all the words that were searched in the search bar of your site. As you can imagine, this gives you insight into what users want to know or find. It is also a great indicator of what keywords people are interested in. You are able to track their queries as well as see if your content is satisfying their needs.

To find this metric, go to Behaviour > Site Search.

8. Goal Conversion Rate

Firstly, goals are what you set up for your site. Typically, these can be around purchases, form submissions, or even how many pages a user has visited. There can be plenty of things! So the above metric is basically how many of these goals are achieved on your site.

This metric allows you to measure how effective your current campaigns are at delivering results. From the user metrics, you’ll be able to see the different factors around the success and failures.

It’s very important that you set up conversion goals that enables you to accurately measure return on investment. In particular, this is something we do for all of our Google Ads management clients.

You can find this metric in Conversions > Goals > Overview and then use the dropdown to access.

9. Bounce Rate

A “bounce” is when a user visits your site but doesn’t interact and only visits one page then leaves. This user doesn’t trigger anything else that would be recorded by Google Analytics. So the Bounce Rate is calculated as a percentage of all the sessions that were bounced.

Depending on the page, a good/ bad bounce rate varies. You will have pages that have been set up with the intention to drive traffic around your site, for example. If this page has a high bounce rate (70% and over) then this is a clear indication that things need to be tweaked. A high bounce rate almost always indicates poor relevancy and/or user experience. One way to combat this is you can sort out the data to try and find any underlying issues.

Importantly, a digital marketing agency should focus on creating the right message and advertising to relevant audiences, on your behalf. This is the number one way to reduce bounce rate supposing there are no technical issues.

To find the Bounce Rate information, you can go to Audience > Overview. To view the individual pages percentages, you can go to Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages.

What are the Limits of Google Analytics?

Google Analytics gives you invaluable data about your website’s user interactions. All this information from the metrics can be used to your advantage to optimise your marketing strategies. But even with all this, it is important to know the limits of Google Analytics.

It works as great insight and provides guidance around your website traffic BUT it is not always 100% precise. We recommended leveraging other tools alongside Google Analytics.

You can add a user-tracking tool like Hotjar for heat mapping and recordings.

Google Analytics can seem difficult to navigate for many people. Industry jargon and an overwhelming amount of data can make it difficult to digest information.

Hiring a digital marketing agency that’s truly passionate about helping with your online presence can help maximise Google Analytics benefits.

Do you want to grow your business?

let’s talk

Services:

We are an official Google Partner

The post Google Analytics – What Metrics You Need to be Looking at. appeared first on IM Creative.

(web) Cookies Are Going

izmirmani — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 04:23:59 +0000

(web) Cookies are going - How will this impact your digital performance?

A big part of digital advertising for both companies and marketers are Cookies, and I don’t mean the chocolate chip kind. Due to increased public concern over privacy, governments worldwide are creating policies to add additional layers of protection online.

Every time a website is clicked on or used, a digital data-trace is left behind. This data, which is collected by the websites, are ‘cookies’. It helps companies and their digital marketing agency understand who comes through their websites in order to create better experiences.

Early last year, Google Chrome made the announcement that the use of third-party cookies will eventually be ‘phased-out’. Thus, directly addressing the questions of user privacy that has naturally blown up over the past decade.

Their aim is to have this implemented by the end of 2023. However, first-party cookies (which we break down below) will still be supported and endorsed for use.

What are Cookies?

According to Google’s Privacy Policy, cookies are small data files created and sent to your browser when visiting a website. The data holds information from your time on their website. For instance, you accidentally leave the site but you had items in your shopping cart pending. The cookies will have them remembered and still loaded for a period of time for when you return to the site.

For example, cookies remember your preferred language or passwords for logging in to a particular site. In addition, cookies also help advertisers tailor their digital marketing services to show ads more relevant to you.

Essentially, cookies are used to improve the browsing experience for both the user and website owners.

First-Party vs Third-Party Cookies

Not sure exactly of the difference between the two?

To start off, both cookies basically work the same way. They both collect data of website users and send it to the browsers. What separates them is how the data is collected and what they are then used for.

For first-party cookies, they are generated by the website the user visits and the data is stored on their host domain. The data that is collected can include methods of payment and language preferences, usernames and passwords, and so forth. The website owner can see how often you visit, what you did while on the site, and any other analytics to aid with their marketing. An example that most if not all people would know is Amazon. Existing users will find login information that is already loaded as well as the three items in your cart. This is because they have first-party cookies in use on their site.

Here is how third-party cookies differ. Instead of being made by the website owner, they are generated by a different domain altogether. So when users visit a site, third-party cookies gather data but send it to the third-party that generated the cookie. This could be an advertiser and support chat widgets, for example. Third-party cookies enable tracking of users across different websites (cross-site tracking) to display personalised ads and build wholesome visitor profiles. A social media marketing agency and Google Ads specialist will use third-party cookies to run targeted ads matching your interests. Unlike first-party cookies, users must be notified of third-party cookies in use and prompted to accept by entering the site. This is due to the quantity of data that is retained by companies.

Why are Cookies Important?

Despite the concerns around users’ privacy in recent controversies, cookies have their uses. Cookies are used to optimise users’ web experiences. For example, think back in the early 2000s and how far website design has come. Tracking how users interact with websites, gives a web design company the ability to learn what visitors like and dislike. In addition, we all get a little annoyed by the ads interrupting us halfway through a YouTube video sometimes. Can you imagine how much more annoyed you would be if the ad had absolutely no relevance to you whatsoever? Cookies give marketers the ability to limit that by matching ads with your interests and lifestyle choices. So basically, they are like little behind-the-scenes workers that make internet surfing a breeze.

There are different types of cookies or data that can be collected and here are four of them listed below:

Strictly Necessary Cookies: a user cannot access the website’s features without these. These are used to distinguish when a user has logged in, remember previous information on forms, and security authentication. It is not used for ads or communications.
Functional Cookies: these are for personalised experiences such as remembering a user’s language preference, layout, font size, and whether they elected to complete a survey.
Performance Cookies: these are used to gather information around website traffic and visitor profiles. They collect information on “how users use the website, which pages they visit, which links they click on” and more. They cannot, however, identify individuals.
Targeting Cookies: these are in advertising campaigns and are based on the user’s navigation and behavioral data. For example, they can use this data to show you ads on other sites that would appeal to you.

How will this Change Impact Digital Marketing?

Since the announcement from Google, many digital marketing companies have expressed their disdain for the change. While that was occurring, GetApp was conducting surveys around the potential impact of the decision. Their survey revealed that just over 40% predict they will need to increase their spending between 5% and 25% just to reach the same goals as last year. Also, “41% (of marketers) admit the biggest challenge will be tracking the right data.” In addition, marketers will look to invest in other channels such as email marketing to strengthen their overall strategy.

So companies relying heavily on third-party cookies will be dealt a heavy blow in terms of campaign reach and targeting. There will be limited to no visibility on audience behaviour other than your own website via first-party cookies. Also, ad blockers count on third-party cookies and with them gone, they definitely will be needing a new strategy. Without cookies, marketers are going to have a tough time accurately delivering targeted ads suited to the appropriate online audience.

What does this mean for the users, though? Internet surfing without cookies working in the background shows promise of more security for your personal information. The intention of the change is to aid this at the cost of a less personalised browsing experience. The digital landscape will change along with this incoming remodeling. Ultimately it is up to marketers using Google Ads and social media marketing services to be proactive about it. What alternatives will come to light and how will this impact advertisers and online users is the ultimate question.

Alternatives to Cookies

Let’s look at some alternatives that you can explore in the meantime. It is best to be as proactive as you can so that you can adapt accordingly. Below are some examples of things you can try:

Creating a Privacy Policy: this shows that you are transparent and can gain the trust of your web visitors. The policy must be available on your website in clear language and clearly advise how their data is being used. Also, you can show the users how they can control their data. For example, opt-out of the company’s records or customise what information can and can’t be stored.
Direct Data Collection: as in collecting your data directly from people. What was life before cookies were available? It looked like market research surveys and interactive content. You can also explore the use of social media polls or rewards in exchange for users’ data.
Privacy Sandbox: Google has brought forward Privacy Sandbox, which is an initiative to allow websites to access and collect user information without compromising privacy. Its purpose is to replace third-party cookies’ role in the online advertising space. It definitely pays to look into this as it is looking to be the future of safe data collection at the present time.
Be Transparent with Users: people’s personal information shouldn’t be seen as just data. It should be treated as property and when dealing with people’s property, there’s no room for smoke and mirrors. People want and need to know what you are doing with their data as well as how you are obtaining it. It is not a legal requirement but it builds immense trust with your users.

How to Prepare

So, what can you do in the meantime to prepare for this impending change? For starters, don’t panic. Everyone is looking for solutions and there is bound to be something that works for everyone. You should stay up to date on announcements around third-party cookies and other privacy changes that may affect your revenue. You should also keep an eye out for software and strategies that are bound to take their spot. Another strategy to focus on is growing your database while cookies are still in play. You can also maximise the use of first-party cookies to make up for the loss. Promote the opt-ins for emails and improve your email marketing strategy.

What is also important while you still have the opportunity to do so is to test and monitor different tactics. Take advantage of this time to assess what works best for you and will take you through the incoming storm.

Lastly, there is no better time than now to hire an SEO agency and beef up your organic reach. Search engine reach will remain untouched and one of the most effective marketing strategies. While the landscapes shift, making sure you have your SEO in order will continue generating new and previous visitors. Gaining organic traffic to make up for the loss will do wonders down the track.

Conclusion

The internet is a vast ocean that is made up of trillions of droplets of water that never really ‘disappear.’ We all search online and use many websites but our first thought is never about the trace we leave behind. The phase-out of third-party cookies was evident as more and more privacy laws came into play. It was definitely hard news for some but it didn’t really come as a surprise.

The best thing to do, going forward, is to create a new marketing strategy and soon. Have you hired the right SEO agency to future-proof continued success? Can you grow your email marketing list and deliverability? How will this impact your Google Ads management and social media ads? IM Creative is a digital marketing agency that offers complete digital solutions to help weather this post-cookie storm. Jot down your alternatives, get them action-ready, and test them out before 2023 rolls on through. Strengthen your basics and maximise the use of your first-party cookies. Especially if you relied heavily on third-party cookies. The future is looking to be cookie-less so the time to adapt is now.

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Top 6 Digital Marketing Trends 2022

izmirmani — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:11:19 +0000

Top 6 Digital Marketing Trends to look out for in 2022

Technology is evolving and has taken some big strides in recent years. With it, so do the needs and complications around digital marketing. It’s a constantly changing landscape. From the rise of TikTok to new privacy regulations, content, and forever changing algorithms.

The pandemic has certainly presented some great opportunities in the digital marketing space. It’s not exactly easy to foresee and accurately pinpoint how new trends will play out in the coming year. However, it doesn’t do any harm to be prepared for them.

With 2022 just beginning, here are some of the top digital marketing trends out there to continue and help increase your revenue, raise awareness and reach. If you are looking for a digital marketing agency to help you get there, get in touch.

1. Social Commerce

Social commerce experimentation kicked off mostly in 2021 with large companies taking to Tiktok and Instagram to get their products out there as the pandemic wreaked havoc around the world. This proved to be very successful as it reduced the gap between discovery of a product and conversion of a sale.

What’s great about this trend though is that it isn’t limited to large corporations – it can be utilised by small businesses too. The CEO of Plant Mother came forward and claimed that they had seen “a 100% increase in revenue and a 1280% increase in referral traffic after launching an Instagram shop.” Small brands have found it hard to compete with their larger counterparts when it comes to advertising. Now with platforms like Instagram, it has levelled out the playing field. Instagram has a few features to use to your advantage such as Instagram Shop, Stories, Reels and regular posts.

Also within social commerce, live streaming is picking up steam. According to Social Republic, online consumers were willing to spend “three times longer watching live videos than pre-recorded visual content.” The boost came as a result of the pandemic where more and more consumers tuned in to live streams. A place to view and purchase products and has now been estimated to be worth a billion dollars. Livestreams are not only available on Instagram but also on Tiktok, Facebook and Youtube. Furthermore, as the technology improves, so will your digital marketing opportunities. They are all fairly simple to use and most if not all have the option for Business accounts. Whether you hire a social media agency or have an in-house marketing team, social commerce is worth exploring.

2. Simple Yet Effective

Since the pandemic started, walk-in purchases were no longer accessible so the alternative was (and still is) online shopping. Consumers have a growing list of products and services available to them. The question now is how will your content stand out? The answer is simple – have simple and clear content.

There is no need for the flashing lights and overcrowded descriptions. People are drawn to things they can understand and navigate easily and having clear content will do this. This could look like smooth navigation of your website with clear and concise options to choose from. There is nothing worse than trying to find the answers to your questions on a product but having to go on a treasure hunt just to find it. Thus, website design plays a crucial role on your conversion rate. The visuals and jargon should also be easy to comprehend. Keeping descriptions short if possible to capture the essence of your product/service is a great place to start. In terms of visuals, it may pay to go through the industry and see what is working and what isn’t. It could simply be a colour change, decluttering or even a change in font. All techniques to reduce your bounce rate and minimise wasted social or Google Ads spend.

Google puts alot of emphasis on page experience when ranking websites on the highly competitive search engine. It is defined as a set of signals on how users perceive the experience on your web page. Essentially, a great page is one that loads quickly and visitors get what they are seeking within seconds. That is your best chance to succeed in getting your message across online, keep it simple and precise.

3. Sustainability and DEI

Over the last few years, what has become important to consumers is sustainability and DEI. Consumers want to buy from brands that have good values and impact. Sustainability is all about companies that contribute positively throughout the value chain and life cycle. This can look like environmental, social and economic benefits while protecting public health and environment. DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion, and like sustainability, is not going away in 2022.

Here’s a look at the growing trend of people searching for ‘sustainable brands’ through Google.

But it isn’t enough to just slap on a ‘sustainability’ sticker and call it a day. A term becoming more and more prevalent called “green washing” is essentially the epitome of misleading or empty sustainability statements. Core values need to be at the forefront and spread throughout the entire company to be seen as legitimate. Some have partnered with nonprofit organisations in a win-win for both sides. They get an increase in their customer bases as well as helping those in need.

David Bitton, the CMO of DoorLoop, puts it best. “It’s a win-win situation where you can make a significant contribution to humanitarian efforts while simultaneously improving your brand and reach. However, merely expressing your support for specific NGO’s would not suffice… consider affiliate marketing, giving a portion of your revenue or profit to the organisation and corporate funding as part of your marketing strategy.”

People want to know that the product they have purchased has gone through the most ethical channels. Studies have even shown that people are willing to change to a retailer that reflects their values. If there was any time to look into the switch, the time is now. Are you prepared?

4. Micro-Moments

Google tells us this is when we make decisions in an instant. For example, people reflexively turn to a device. How many times have you caught yourself swiping through Instagram stories. It is as if we always have to be doing something, learning, discovering, or buying something. What is interesting is that in these micro-moments, there is an increase of expectation and a lowering of patience. From the daily use of smartphones, we have trained ourselves to receive things immediately. Immediate responses, immediate information and immediate delivery. The success comes from creating a strategy to understand these and meet the buyers needs in their micro-moments. Your strategy can begin with social media listening. Here you are basically ‘listening’ to your consumers via their comments on social media around the brand and the industry.

And why should marketers care about micro-moments? It means that your competitors’ customers are fair game. If you can get ahead of the game here, you definitely have a shot at making that much-needed sale.

Capturing your readers’ eye and attention within moments is key. So you have to ask yourself – what are the questions they are asking? From there, you can create and secure short ads that meet these queries at the exact moment they are needed. But when it comes to digital marketing, it can’t be too plain or you will fade in line with others. For example, a logo and a 50% discount isn’t going to cut it. Add a little colour, and product description. Indeed, it is all about the micro moment, but it has to be fully comprehensible and relatable.

It is one thing to create web traffic though an SEO agency, Google Ads management, or a social media agency. However, to capture attention in these micro-moments, conversion optimisation is key.

5. Metaverse and VR/AR

Last year, the announcement of Facebook changing names to Meta came along with confirmation of the project called the “Metaverse.” According to Wired, the metaverse is basically a combination of VR & AR technology becoming more widely adapted in society. We’ve seen it with the likes of Fortnite where it is accessible through your gaming consoles, PCs, and phones.

We’ve seen it time and time again with new technology. When something new comes through, early adaptors are rewarded handsomely for their efforts. There is plenty of information available to assist you in the planning of your strategies. Additionally, plenty of apps that already operate in augmented realities.

With the Metaverse, there is the opportunity to observe many areas of interest. Patrick Casey, the director of growth for Felix Health mentions that you “will be able to experiment with how long virtual objects are held, how much space they take up in a user’s peripheral vision, and even where users are looking when experiencing an ad.” If there was ever a time to start looking into this, it is now, while it is still being developed.

6. Gender Neutrality and Accessibility

A growing and ongoing trend that needs to be addressed is gender neutrality and accessibility in products. Becoming inclusive of all, you are essentially increasing your audience. All-inclusive messages and products present a big opportunity to scale. We’ve already seen major brands move away from traditional messaging of gender roles to stop the alienation of their consumers.

Some things to think about if you’re not sure where to begin is by asking yourself some of these questions:

Is my product or service catered to a specific gender and does it have to be?
Who are we targeting and why?
How can we redefine the audience of whom are most likely to purchase our product/ service?
Is our product inclusive of those with disabilities? If not, how can we fix this?

In regards to accessibility, there is definitely a lack when it comes to disability-friendly products and services. There are over 1.85 billion people with disabilities in the world. According to Svetlana Kouznetsova (consultant to businesses on improving accessibility), “they control over $1.9 trillion in annual disposable income. Their families and friends add another 3.4 billion potential consumers. Together, they control over $13 trillion in annual disposable income.”

This opens up a whole new target audience that is largely untapped potential. Those who normally wouldn’t choose your service or products are given the opportunity to explore it. An example of this came from JCPenney, who are a large department store located in the States. They released a children’s and adults clothing line in July 2021 of ‘Adaptive Clothing and Accessories’ that caters to those with disabilities. Some of the adaptations are “easy-access openings, sensory-friendly seaming, hidden abdominal access and no tags.”

Conclusion

There is a fine balance between not trying enough and trying too much. 2022 is a year for exploring new tech as well as simplifying your message. Think of Apple. It has built a stellar reputation and devoted fanbase on simple elegant designs and messaging. You do not need all the bells and whistles but you certainly can’t afford to miss out on new trends. These trends and technology are things such as social commerce and metaverse hype. 9/10 times, early adaptors get rewarded for their efforts, and these are trains you don’t want to miss.

In addition, society in general is becoming more aware and conscious of sustainability and inclusion. People essentially want to associate with brands they share values with. In a sense, it makes people feel good about themselves when they support a brand who does good for everyone. Do you not think that is an opportunity to focus on in 2022?

How does your marketing strategy stack up for 2022? IM Creative is a New Zealand based digital marketing agency that can help take your brand to the next level. Get in touch for a free digital strategy plan.

Do you want to grow your business?

let’s talk

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