1. Data-Driven Marketing

Data is always important when making informed decisions, but reports are not always brought to marketing meetings. This is changing in 2023. Successful marketing involves research and numbers as well as creativity and uniqueness. Using tools like Google Analytics to track and collect data from your website, Google Ads, PPC ads, email surveys, social media, and other digital marketing avenues helps inform what areas your marketing team needs to focus on. Going into meetings with reports and findings can create better connection between your design and sales time. It can also save time during meetings because the data will guide the conversation so your marketing team can create item truly tailor for you target market. 

2. A Rise in Video Content 

Long-form video such as tutorials, essays on industry topics, or webinars are becoming popular amongst b2b communications. They are a great way to show off your topical knowledge and build your industry authority. Going live through video platforms, such as YouTube helps foster community and allows you target audience to know that there are real people behind your company. You can answer any questions clients have about your product or service and discover knowledge from other experts in your industry. Short-form videos are good for business quick tips, sneak peaks, and announcements. These are good to post on social media to quickly grab the attention of your audience. They also do not take too much time out of your day, which is important for busy business owners and employees. 

3. Dark Social Prevention 

Dark social refers to when people share website links through email, SMS, and private messages on social media. These links do not have tracking codes automatically appended, so it is not possible to know how the website visitor found the content. As a result, it hard to measure attribution which can make hard to know which platform needs marketing attention or is effective. It can also make it difficult to educate your buyers about your product or service. B2B buyers like to research and self-discover before contacting a sales agent. They want to learn, compare, and review product options well before speaking to sales. You want marketing to drive funnel conversions through smart use and encouraging of direct contact instead of platform avenues. 

4. AI Utilization 

While AI technologies are controversial in terms of art creation and body copy creation, there are other ways to use AI tech that are timesaving.

• Personalized shopping creates recommendation engines through which you can engage better with your customers. 

• Virtual assistants and chatbots help improve the user experience while shopping online. 

• AI can help reduce the possibility of credit card frauds taking place.

• On Instagram, AI considers your likes and the accounts you follow to determine what posts you are shown on your explore tab. 

• Facebook AI is used along with a tool called DeepText.  It can understand conversations and can be used to translate posts from different languages automatically.

• AI can deliver highly targeted and personalized ads with the help of behavioral analysis, and pattern recognition, etc. It also helps with retargeting audiences.

• AI chatbots can effectively resolve customer issues, respond to simple inquiries, improve customer service, and provide 24/7 support on your website and social media. 

5. Lead Nurturing 

The process of engaging potential customers and helping them become a sale requires nurturing, especially if you are in an area where the economy is in a tight spot. Drip marketing campaigns in the form of sending out automated emails over the course of several weeks or months is one way to nurture a potential client relationship. With business clients being every busy it is important to stay in contact with potential client to close the sale. When the sale is done, you are still not finished. Add them to your email list and offering deals or notifying them about sales will help them keep your company top of mind for other product and services. 

 Create an effective B2B marketing plan with us today. Call 248.528.3600

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1. Use referral emails

2. Highlight good reviews 

3. Allow customers to send a text message inquiry

4. Have multiple ways to contact you (chat bots, website, phone number, & social media) 

5. Run a paid search ad or Google Ad

6. Update Google My Business Profile 

7.  Attend a tradeshow or local fair

8. Sponsor a team, organization, or charity 

9. Run a new paid social campaign 

10. Build an email list through company blog, newsletter, & coupon codes

11. Use QR codes on business cards & social posts 

12. Refer customers to complementary businesses 

13. Join a networking group

14. Participate in local community events & gatherings

Start a user-researched web project today? Call 248.528.3600

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According to Google’s marketing retail guide, 40% of U.S. holiday shoppers say their holiday shopping experience has made them consider shopping much earlier for other milestones this year. This means your holiday gifts offers, specials, and other deals should be ready a couple months in advance. With consumers combining online and in-store shopping, preparing an omnichannel holiday strategy early will be critical to reaching shoppers along their purchase journeys. Have both your supply chain and digital marketing plan ready before November. 

If fact, it might be best to have new strategy right after the current holiday ends. According to the guide, June 2021 reported 31% of U.S. shoppers had already started their holiday shopping and 37% of shoppers who shopped the previous holiday season wished they had started earlier. During COVID-19 and currently, a lot of business’s supply chains had stock issues, causing over 50% of U.S. shoppers surveyed to say that they would start holiday shopping earlier to avoid an item being out of stock. This is especially important if you are an ecommerce business or a product-based company. Several suggestions from Google to include in a marketing strategy are:

• Use the Insights page in Google Ads and best sellers report to keep up with consumer demand. 
• Notify customers with promotions, sales, free and fast shipping options, and return and refund options directly to your product listings.
• Create a Business Profile and run a Local campaign to connect with local shoppers. 

If you are struggling with any of these items Miller Media can help with Google Ads and provides Google Analytics Consulting to create a marketing strategy that is successful. 

Multichannel Shopping is the Main Way People Shop

Omnichannel or multichannel shopping has led to only 4% of U.S. holiday shoppers not using digital channels for their shopping according to the retail guide. This means have a digital presence is a requirement for your business. Have a website, create social media accounts, and GoogleMyBusiness Profile for your business. If you are missing one or more of these avenues and can’t manage them yourself a digital marketing agency can help you. Also, convenience is key for people around the holidays. Minimize stress for last-minute shoppers, who rely on local and nearby stores. In Google Maps, searches for “gift shops near me” have grown globally by over 60% year over year. Make sure your on-page and off-page SEO is effective, so new or returning customers will see you first on Google’s results page. Other ways Google suggests helping shoppers see your business is with: 

• A Performance Max campaign, and through your app (if you have one) by deep linking to reach the right customers. 
• Smart Bidding for store visits or store sales. 
• Listing your products for free across Google Shopping 
• Local inventory ads and adding  Pointy  to your Business Profile to reach nearby customers by promoting available inventory. 

People Use Google for Holiday Inspiration

Google states that 43% of U.S. holiday shoppers that used Google said they did so to get gift ideas, and 64% said they did so for discovery and inspiration. This is very important for retailers. Search visibility is critical to capturing these shoppers. Include gift guides in your company’s blog. In addition, promote your products to your target audience at the right time across Google surfaces, like Search, YouTube, Gmail, and the Shopping tab. This takes SEO, website optimization, PPC, Google Ad creation, social media marketing, and other digital marketing services. All this can be overwhelming to maintain. If you are struggling to market your business while trying to run it, let the team here at Miller Media do it for you. 

Need help preparing for future holiday marketing strategies? Call 248.528.3600.

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What are Some Best Practices to Avoid Clickbait? 

Google’s algorithms can understand the content on your site and will check if it matches its headline and page title, so it is vital that you pay attention to your word structure. Google’s Page Title Update back in 2001 enables the search engine to display a “replacement” title tag when your page’s title does not accurately match its content. Make sure to check your page title and headers that they accurately represent what your content is about.

How to Create SEO-Friendly Titles & Headings

Start by doing keyword research. This can help you discover target keywords that you can include in your web page’s title, headings, and body copy. Using your target keywords throughout your content signals to Google that your page is relevant to your target keyword. You can use Google’s Keyword Planner to discover relevant or related keywords to target with your content and ads or hire a digital marketing agency with SEO services. Once you have your keywords, it’s important to implement them into your content. Include your target keywords in your page title and headings. Make sure you proofread to find and fix keyword stuffing in your content. Your goal is to make it friendly to web crawlers and readers. Pretend that you are a 5^th grade teacher and write your article in a simple manner. For your content’s semantically related keywords make sure to also check readability, page title meta descriptions, and backlinks.  

Successfully Match the User’s Search Intent

There are 4 types of user intent you can tailor your content to. Let’s take a look:

• Navigational Intent

When a user wants to navigate to or around a specific website of a specific company, they will likely add branded keywords in their search (ex. “Starbucks website”). Target these branded keywords with ads to increase brand awareness.

• Informational Intent

When users want more information on a certain topic. They might ask questions or use keywords that indicate they’re looking for help (ex. “Where can I get a pumpkin spice latte?”). Target keywords with informative content, like videos, lists, infographics, blog, and tutorials. Focus on creating useful, actionable content that answers your readers’ questions. This also may help lessen the number of common questions your potential client needs to ask, quickening the path to purchase.

• Commercial Investigation Intent

Once a user decides they want to purchase a product or service from your company, they will likely perform a search to compare the different options available (ex. “Starbucks vs Tim Hortons.”) Target keywords with comparison articles of your competition, reviews of the use of similar products/services, and how-to guides to capture web traffic. 

• Transactional Intent

Certain keywords or phrases signal that a user is ready to buy (ex. “Add to Order”). Users are ready to buy and are now searching for the best price value or deal. They are more likely to be susceptible to clickbait while looking for the best deals. Be extra careful when creating discounts or being transparent with your pricing. Make sure if it has an expiration date it is easily readable or if it is a subscription the yearly or month payment is accurate. Target keywords with strong, SEO-friendly content that highlights your unique selling proposition. Also target these keywords with ads, but make sure your CTA is clear, precise, and your landing page reflects what is in the ad. 

Avoid clickbait SEO practice and call us at 248.528.360. 

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1. Build Your Mailing List

Your email must be shared by users of their own free-will. Forms such as “subscribe”, “contact”, “become a member” are good examples to have on your website. When you collect their data include name, date, email, birthday or month, and any more pieces of info tailored to benefit them. Be careful not to violate privacy policies. To not come off as a scam, it best to give something in return for the info. Examples include discount codes, free eBook, or member-exclusive video. Remember to ALWAYS have an option of unsubscribing from your email list. It is illegal to send marketing emails without the opportunity to disengage.

2. Select an Email Service Provider (ESP) 

The old-fashioned way is to collect email addresses, add them to your contacts list under a label, and send email newsletters that way. This is time-consuming, inefficient, and you could be missing out on some fantastic online services that will increase your business efficiency. Here is the top 7 ESP used according to wpbeginner:

• Constant Contact
• SendinBlue
• HubSpot
• Omnisend
• Drip
• ConvertKit
• MailChimp 

3. Create a Marketing Strategy

There needs to be goals that you aim to accomplish in your email marketing plan. First start with your audience. Who are you going to be emailing? Who are you targeting to grab details to send your emails to? Knowing your audience can help you build your customer base and make sure you aren’t sending it to people who don’t need your product or service. Once you have your list and have been emailing for a while, segment your email info into groups. Organize by who engages, who opens the emails, and who clicks through. This will allow you to tailor different campaigns to your most engaged viewers. Speaking of content and goals. Are you trying to get the people who engage less to click through more? Do you want to reward the most active people on your list? Do you have news to give or a new product or service to market? Your campaigns should focus on answering these questions and be designed to accomplish these tasks.

4. Design Your Emails

Plan text on a white background won’t cut it. These emails usually end up in someone’s spam box or worse you email is reported and banned. You must add you brand colors and imagery to the email, so you look legitimate. Most modern email software in use, will also allow you to include HTML links, embed videos, and more, making it much more desirable to the end-user. Interactivity should help the potential client through the sales process. If you are struggling hirer a graphic designer or a digital marketing agency with designers to help you. 

5. Test the Email Systems

Before you send ANYTHING, test that it works. This also includes any automation you’ve set up. Here is a checklist of items to go through before you send to customers:

 Subscribe to your service and see if your free offer works.

 Set a test list with five or so emails with different browsers or different email software systems.

 Send the emails and then read them to find spelling or grammatical errors you may have missed.

 See if the emails work on mobile devices as well.

6. Implement Email Automation

If everything is working and you are quickly gaining more emails, it is time to start automating simple tasks. Have a welcome email, thank you email, the gift, and the multi-step EDM campaign all automated. This will free you from micro-managing email marketing and open up your time schedule to work on other more productive and profitable things with your business.

Too busy for email marketing? Let us do it for you! Call 248.528.360 

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1. Collect Detailed Demographic Data

Ask “Do customers even want this project?” or “How does my product/service meet my customers’ expectations? After that, do market research on who might need your product or service. Discover their daily habits and compare them to your product or service. Think about in what way will it help improve their lives. UX focuses on getting to know a specific demographic and building a product/service that will enrich and engage those users. The goal should be to get them to purchase initially and continually engage with your business. Use Google Analytics and keep track of who is already visiting your website pages to start. Look for their location (do get more local engagement or distant engagement?), age, gender (including non-conforming), profession, and lifestyle (what other items or brands do they purchase from).  

2. Build Strong Customer Relationships 

UX incorporates extensive knowledge of the customers to gain an understanding of why they use the products or services they do. This helps you build what customers need, as well as what they want. Getting to know the habits and expectations of your target audience means you can speak to them more easily. Hit specific messaging points that will bring them into harmony with your company’s mission. Social media and information sharing define consumer tastes. So, if you get stuck don’t be afraid to ask directly through email surveys or social media polls or questions. These two effective marketing avenues could be considered a successful user experience in themselves. 

3. Create an In-Depth Competitive Analysis

Examine the landscape of products and services that users may choose to use instead of yours. It is vital for creating the right set of features that will make your business different from similar brands or services. You want to fill in the gap that your industry has yet to solve. This type of analysis helps your marketing team recognize what features resonate with potential consumers, and therefore should be emphasized in your marketing material. Start with a framework to guide your assessment. Frameworks usually include these items:

• Mission
• Elevator pitch
• Products offered
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Brand differentiators

After establishing a framework, select targets based on what other options your customers have. Prioritize which competing businesses you want to keep a close eye on and those that currently offer a product or service most like yours. You want to monitor them in the long term. Also be on the lookout for partnership opportunities with your competitors. Sometimes your strengths and weaknesses balance each other out. 

4. Make Sure There is Adherence to a Core Idea 

Your product or service must serve its central goal. Every feature and interface element needs to serve the core of the product/service. Follow good UX practices, like staying true to your core messaging at all your company’s brand touch points. From your website and offline to social media, your marketing material must look like it belongs to your company while simultaneously relating to you target viewers. Regularly audit your marketing material to make sure every piece has purpose and is fulfilling the mission of your company. If you are busy, start with hiring a digital marketing agency once a year to consult and discuss your marketing material. They can help with one area of your marketing that you are neglecting, or they can simply provide thoughtful questions to help you improve your client’s experience. 

Let us help include thoughtful UX into your business’s marketing strategy! Call 248.528.360

The post 4 Necessary Elements of UX Design for Your Marketing Plans  appeared first on Miller Media, Digital Marketing Agency, PPC, Industrial Web Design, WordPress.

 View Content Through a Broader Lens

Creative art is an indispensable success factor, which is why more than 70% of businesses invest in professional design to help their brands stand out against their competition. Digital marketing agencies have teams of graphic artists who are experts in visual communications who put images, typography, and graphics together to create compelling designs for digital projects of all kinds. Consider working with seasoned designers in producing content assets you need to raise brand awareness and generate interest in your business. 

In B2B marketing, the rise of content marketing has put more focus on the creation of white papers, e-books, how-to guides, and infographics because these items are key to attracting and keeping audience retention. Content strategies to create and deliver online experiences for deeper, more meaningful interactions with their various audiences has grown as well. There is more of an emphasis on optimized content for web and mobile engagement. These avenues provide opportunities to drive creative material and lead generation for your business 10x over. 

Important internal business content comes in many forms, including PowerPoint Presentations or Keynote, Word, and Excel files plus structured documents like investment prospectuses, technical manuals, and pharmaceutical labels. Government agencies are also digitizing their forms, legislative documents, codes, and standards documents. Even bots, powered by AI and ML, need to reflect brand standards, therefore creating a design that expands through all these items are critical. These documents require layouts and branding, so hiring a professional design agency to create these less glamorous but important forms will make the content more impactful and easier for employees to keep their attention.

 Become a Key Business Partner

Work directly with subject-matter experts across your company and the marketing agency. This includes product managers, designers, and developers, even the CEO (especially if they are the final decision maker). Produce the content that is required using important information gathered from each team, whether that’s a product video, or layout design for the website, etc. Explain how your product/service addresses a market need or have subject-matter expert do it for you. Use their words to build the narrative that will help build a brand story. Then use a designer to think about which visual elements will have the most impact. Together, your words and images work together to tell a compelling story that educates, entertains, or influences the target audience who will experience it in the various ways established.

Digital devices have given consumers more power and control over how and when they shop, search for information, read the news, or watch their favorite shows. They have their own path that allows businesses to reach more people like them regardless of geography, which can translate into more influence and potential growth for your business. Expectations are high, even B2B companies and their stakeholders appreciate not only accurate and consistent information but also attractive colors, interesting images, and interactive elements. B2C and B2B design are becoming similar in experience, which means old boring black and white formats don’t cut it. 

You don’t have to recreate every new design for every channel. Automated omnichannel publishing makes it possible to accomplish these tasks quickly. Create a single piece of content and publish it to all channels simultaneously, without compromising format integrity. This makes marketing more productive, and your client gets your message into their hands or onto their screens faster. Understand technology trends and stay current on how to incorporate them into your work process. Quicken productivity through tech will enable you to pursue more opportunities and deliver greater value to clients. Technology should be part of your exploratory process for your clients too. This will also build stronger partner in-house or external client relationships if you can do the work quickly with less friction in the creation process. You will be their vendors to support them with the right skills and proper scope.

 Understand Content Complexity & Compliance

Volume, variety, and velocity. Huge amounts of content in various formats need to be produced quickly to meet client demands. That might look like giving employees in the customer support department the standard operating procedures in the form of an interactive pdf they need to enroll customers in a new service. This could also mean updating your website so customers can see the menus from their favorite restaurants online, order, and have them delivered to their homes.

Hundreds of data sources might be required to power a website, especially if it has an e-commerce platform. Data can come from copy, charts, forms, videos, shopping carts, etc. Many people are involved in supplying the data as well as reviewing and approving the front-end copy and creative before it can be published. Website designers will have to interact with people from marketing to IT, product management, finance, and legal as well as operations, distribution, and customer support. Make sure the final design translates across the numerous web browsers and that it scales up and down correctly on tablets and mobile phones.

Logo and color scheme, selected fonts, and established a tone of voice are important elements in brand building. A brand guide enables marketing and all departments to create a consistent image, and, in so doing, increase brand awareness and equity. Brand compliance is part of business compliance is important to reputation, value, and growth overall. 

Other regulatory compliance in other forms of compliance vary by industry and geography such as health, safety, and manufacturing controls. This can also apply to content. For example, “According to Life Science Leader,” states that it costs between $800 million and $1.2 billion to bring a new drug to market. That means meeting regulatory requirements for the associated content is a quarter of that cost. A pharmaceutical company might have to make more than 30,000 label changes during a year, and complex label changes can take more than a year. Having a professional agency have a design ready for these flexible changes could cut the cost and knock off one less stressor to the product development phase. From websites and apps to offline documents, regulatory compliance is a key consideration when creating, managing, and publishing this type of content.

Overwhelmed on how to approach your content marketing strategy? Call 248.528.360

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