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Traditional print advertising is great and it’s been the cornerstone of retail advertising since the invention of the press. However, the sad fact of the matter is that every day brings new challenges to advertisers as they face severe limitations around their print campaigns. They’re currently hard-pressed to find ways to maximise their reach by printing less and, even before the Covid 19 pandemic, they’ve actively been looking for other ways to reach their audiences.

In 2006, the Association of National Advertisers reported that 40% of marketers increased spending on digital media and 38% decreased print by 20%.

The print industry has been impacted by a variety of new challenges that impair its ability to reach demand, such as the scarcity of papers and the high cost of imports due to the global shortage in shipping containers.

These limitations have encouraged many advertisers to increase their budgets for digital advertising instead, which provides more measurable metrics and allows them to better monitor insights such as:

1. Reach VS Distribution

Whilst advertisers are limited to the number of printed issues distributed, with digital it is possible to see how many unique people are reached at an impression level. Additionally, these new metrics may provide better insights and offer more accurate reporting than just “number of printed issues distributed.”

2. Personalisation that scales

Digital advertising provides the ability to target a specific audience better and scale up quickly where necessary, allowing full control over what content goes where without concerns about having enough inventory for print campaigns. This gives advertisers the opportunity to reach different audiences with tailored messaging.

3. Rapid testing of new messaging and ideas

Digital allows advertisers to explore what content resonates with people more than other forms of media, which should ultimately lead them to a better understanding of how best to communicate about their products or services. This means they’ll be able to reduce the time spent on finding the perfect creative message for each campaign since digital is so easily measurable by conversion rates, click-through rates etc.

Digital also allows advertisers to quickly tweak out messages that seem less effective in driving conversions or engagement between audience groups – meaning it doesn’t take long before you know which message or offer has proven most successful at generating results.

4. User share content on social media

Many people are looking to social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, for their news, which means that they are captive audiences ready to soak up information that is relevant to themselves. Added to this, digital content is extremely easy to share across these networks, without having to print out a physical copy of a brochure or catalog.

This has become increasingly prevalent as more and more people look to the convenience of simply going online to get the specific information they require. The ability to share information is an added bonus for users – they can instantly recommend products or services across a broad network of acquaintances, something which is not easily achievable with print broadsheets or catalogues.

5. Cross sell and upsell

Digital marketing has the ability to cross sell or upsell products to users who have bought specific items in the past. Marketers find that this is a great way of keeping these customers engaged with their company; it can also be made into an automated process which means that when customers come back, they are more likely to buy again, as well as recommend the product or service to others.

One is not advocating that marketers should not be using print but there is a strong case for using digital to supplement and amplify print campaigns. There is no arguing the fact that digital advertising has the ability to achieve more personalised content, is highly measurable and ultimately can provide precise metrics such as Return on Ad Spend (RoAS).

When faced with the question of what budget should be allocated for specific campaigns, advertisers should use digital to complement their print in order to drive deeper insights that are not available through print alone. This will help marketers extend their advertising reach with a relatively precise knowledge on the efficacy of their campaign.

In the modern age, it’s more important than ever to have a website. But just because you have one doesn’t mean that people will visit or buy from it. That is why digital marketing has become such an integral part of the world we live in today.

This article discusses 7 questions every business should ask themselves before creating their next website, and how these will help them fit into this new world without sacrificing what they do best.

1.  What do you hope to get from your website?

This is the most important question. What is the main objective you need to achieve with your new website? It might be to generate more leads, or sell more products.

What are your goals? Do you want people to sign up for membership on a blog or newsletter? Is it important for them to contact your company through the website? What about finding out how much they can spend towards an order online before contacting sales support? The answer will help determine what type of CMS framework is best suited for you and the features that should come with it.

2.  Who are your customers?

Who will be the primary users of your website. Is it for children? Adults? Young Professionals?

The first step to building a website is figuring out who will be using the site. What age group are they in, what gender identity do they have, and most importantly- what social media networks would best reach them.

If you understand your customers and where they spend the most of their time online you can build a website that delivers a more relevant experience to your prospecting customers.

3.  How do they access the internet?

When building a new website, you should be sure that your site is optimised for mobile phones. Users may become frustrated and leave your page if they are unable to download the content on their phone.

If you are targeting people using a mobile data connection like 3G, make sure that your site loads quickly and does not get bogged down by heavy images or video content. If your website is too complicated or takes a long time to load, it will be frustrating for users.

4.  Should you customise their experience?

If your audience is mostly Western, it may make sense to build an English language website. If you’re more of a global company or are targeting international audiences, then it’s worth considering other languages and their corresponding alphabets as well in order to reach the largest possible audience with one site.

5.  How often do people visit your website?

Its important that your content be dynamic and updated frequently enough so that visitors can find fresh information about topics they care most about while also maintaining some semblance of consistency from page to page. A blog post should probably be published at least once every week but frequency could vary depending on how often you have new things to share with readership categories like infographics or podcasts might warrant updates more often than say a static page about your company’s history.

6.  What questions are they asking Google?

Are they looking for a product, service or solution? If so, what are they trying to do and how can you help them with that? What information is needed to fulfil their need from your company and why should someone trust you over the competition? How will this purchase benefit them in the long-term? Who else has had success with these products/services or solved similar problems before? Where did they find out about it (what search terms were used)? Is there something unique about your website content that sets you apart from others?”

7.  How big is your budget?

Your budget will determine the type of website you can create.

If you are on a tight budget, then think about what your business needs most from its site and design accordingly – for example, if SEO is important to you, prioritise that in the content strategy phase. If it’s not an option but mobile optimisation is high on your list of priorities, make sure this becomes part of the design phase.

Prioritising during each stage means less chance for errors to crop up later down the line as work moves towards completion which could result in costly backtracking and time wasting mistakes due to too many cooks stirring with no clear idea of where they are headed.

It has never been easier to get your digital marketing projects started. Schedule a free digital consultation today and let us help you maximise your Return On Ad Spend. Our digital marketing consultants will work with you to understand your project and utilise their expertise to improve conversion rates.

You want more customers. Generating leads to turn them into prospects is key, but without a large budget and full-time staff dedicated to lead generation it can be difficult for small businesses.

Luckily, you don’t have pay an arm and a leg for lead generation – there are plenty of ways around this with digital marketing! In this article we’ll go over 4 lead generating tactics that will help your business generate leads quickly and easily.

Use lead magnets

Lead generation is about trying to attract someone’s attention with your lead magnets, the content you produce that is typically used for free in exchange for contact information such as an email address.

This is an effective way of generating more qualified leads because you’re providing them with valuable, free resources and they have no reason not to provide you with their email address or any other personal details (within reason) when signing up.

The lead magnets can be anything from e-books on a certain topic which might cover how they were able to generate more conversions through marketing automation software like HubSpot, access to exclusive webinars about topics important in your industry such as digital advertising techniques, downloadable workbook templates detailing different sales processes within your company etc

Ask for a referral

Recently, I was talking with a colleague about what lead generation strategies work best for our clients. We realised that asking customers to refer their friends is one of the most effective lead-generation tactics we have available!

This strategy works well because it’s in consumers’ nature to want to share information and ideas with others they trust. They also don’t see referral requests as sales pitches so much as they do advice from someone who cares deeply about them…someone who can help make things easier!

Make your business discoverable

Posting blog posts on your website and linking them to other sites will lead to more search engine rankings, allowing people to find you in their feed when they use google or another search engine.

These type of articles also have the potential for social media shares: people may share it with friends who are looking for similar products or services as well as provide a link back to your site if someone is interested in checking out what you offer.

It can also lead to links from other websites that want you post content about related topics–and again increase web traffic towards your business! Blogging has a lot of benefits but one thing it does not do is take up time without giving something back so be sure this

Advertise your business

Google Adwords is a cost effective lead generator, and it has the added bonus of being very targeted. You can run ads to reach your ideal customer using demographic information such as location or age range.

Facebook Ads are another great lead generating tool because they allow you to reach people who have shown interest in your products and services by “liking” your page on their personal profile or clicking into one of your posts. The benefit with these platforms is that they offer an instant return on investment which means they’re also less expensive than traditional forms of advertising like radio, print media, etc.

Digital marketing may seem daunting, but not with the help of Bastion & Flowe’s in-house strategist to run your campaign. Book a free consultation today and see how we can work together to turn your investment into success and grow your business.

You might think you’re doing a great job as a digital marketing manager if your website traffic or facebook followers has doubled over the last year. But, is that really a good sign? What does it actually mean for your business to have more people looking at your site or following you on Facebook? How many of those visitors are converting into customers? Do they stick around and come back again and again? Vanity metrics can be exciting to point to if you want to appear like you’re improving but often aren’t actionable or related to anything you can control or repeat in a meaningful way.

Successful performance marketing is only as good as the metrics they gauge. These are defined as any type of measurement that can be counted and has a measurable impact on your bottom line.

Without performance metrics, agencies can’t be accountable to their clients and are flying blind. Performance data points like conversions or leads help them know how they’re performing against other publishing efforts from month-to-month so that all of your hard work isn’t going unnoticed – without accountability you could lose out on potential revenue!

A new study by Contently has found that the most successful brands are not focusing on vanity metrics like social media followers, likes and shares but instead they’re going for high-impact content such as quality engagement. The emphasis is put more heavily on getting customers to interact with their posts in a way that will have long term benefits rather than short-term gratification from constantly checking analytics reports about how many people liked your post or who shared it first.

While other tactics may get you some quick wins along the line (like amassing an impressive follower count), what really matters at this point in time are ROI measurements; “loyalty conversion rate” that shows how often followers buy something from you post-following.

ROAS is a measure of how successful your marketing and advertising investment has been and one of the most popular metrics for our clients. Given that it measures whether or not what you are spending money on has proven worthwhile and effective in generating revenue for your company, its importance to the long-term success of your business can’t be overstated.

Marketers who insist there’s no way to measure ROAS on specific campaigns are wrong – in most cases, where the customer journey is not incomplete, only two possibilities exist for when it might be difficult: either your solution is inadequate or your customer journey needs simplifying. Business of any size experience these pitfalls constantly because few can understand the process well enough and fewer still sketch out a clear path.

An agency can measure performance by looking at the data on websites, social media accounts, email lists, or any digital property that is up and running. Once metrics have been identified as critical for measuring success of digital marketing efforts are decided upon (i.e., monthly), an agency should set a goal in terms of what it wants those measurements to look like on average each month—this would be considered your baseline metrics.

We often find that marketers lack understanding when targeting customers who may visit a website but not engage or convert through their first interaction, irrespective of the platform. Companies and brands ideally need to engage with customers by building a complete customer journey that connects data from all touch points to create a single customer view.

To solve this problem and help companies improve their lead conversion rates, we’ve created a customer journey framework that details key metrics (or OKRs) for each customer touchpoint. By monitoring these metrics, digital marketing managers are able to avoid vanity metrics and drive better returns on ad spend (ROAS) by providing actionable insights via journey mapping, sentiment analysis and cross- channel analytics.