October 2020 - Big Bold Thinkers

Online Business: Understanding Your Visitors and Customers

Posted on October 24, 2020August 26, 2021 by Alice Momo

Last year, almost 1.8 billion people shopped online. For any online business, that’s a significant number of people to engage. To make the most of today’s increasing online shoppers, you need to understand your target audience.

There are a few critical factors to consider when marketing to online business customers. Read this guide to learn more ways to boost engagement and generate leads.

Site Analytics

Analyzing your website can tell you a lot about site visitors. The customers of your online business will behave in certain ways, which special tools can track. You can audit your site and generate valuable data on these users.

Google Analytics is a free tool that works for most websites. There are plenty of other alternatives, too. You can find comparable analytics tools, or better yet, consult professionals in digital marketing.

Typically site analytics measure several elements. These metrics include the following:

Session visits: number of site visitors and the effectiveness of calls to action
Marketing channels: paid and organic search, email, referrals, social media, and display ads
Bounce rate: who visits your online business and leaves after one webpage
Conversion rate: contact forms generating leads, or other KPIs for your online business

These metrics inform potential action steps you can take for your business. Knowing what motivates your visitors is easier with site analytics.

Click-Mapping

One important extension of site analytics involves click-mapping. It shows everything online business customers click (whether it’s clickable or not). You can learn valuable information this way.

For example, you’ll learn what parts of a webpage receive the most attention. You can see which links get clicked the most and how far down they scroll on a page. There are a wide variety of click-mapping tools available to enhance your online business.

Using this tool, you can create heatmaps of virtual hotspots for online business visitors. You can learn which ads are most or least effective. You can even discover new opportunities for lead generation based on where customers click the most.

Feedback

You can understand your online business audience beyond studying their behaviour. Customer data is certainly invaluable, but so is customer feedback. One of the best forms of engagement occurs with intentional interaction.

However you communicate with customers for your online business, they need engagement. Whether it’s reviewed on your site, comments on social media, or direct email contact, listen to them. You can incentivize responses or use whatever customers provide.

Customer feedback offers rich opportunities for growth and development. The more you listen to customers, the more engaged they feel. They’ll share more and you’ll understand how to best market your business to them.

Learn More Tips to Boost Your Online Business

The world of digital marketing is constantly changing, just like your consumers. To stay ahead of these changes, you need the latest information. We call ourselves Big Bold Thinkers for a good reason.

Part of thinking boldly means staying ahead of the latest industry developments. As experts in digital marketing, we understand how important it is to keep ourselves (and you) informed. Follow the Big Bold Blog to learn more ways to boost your online business.

3 Psychological Tricks to Make Your Email Newsletter Convert

Posted on October 15, 2020August 26, 2021 by Alice Momo

It’s time to start your next company newsletter to inform your customers and subscribers of new developments and draw in more business. You’ve tried a few different tactics, but it seems like fewer and fewer people open your emails and even less convert to sales.

These days people get so many emails every day that it seems daunting to look through anything that isn’t urgent. Studies show that office workers get about 121 emails each day!

So, what can you do to make your email newsletter stand out to your subscribers? We put together our top 3 favourite psychological tricks to use to boost your conversion rate.

1. The Psychology of Color

Have you ever noticed that you tend to feel hungry in a room with red lighting or walls? Your hunger could have more to do with the colours around you than the appetizing food. The power of colour is real!

Colour therapy and psychology have shown that colours do things in our brains and affect our minds and bodies. For instance, using blue in your marketing emails makes you seem more trustworthy while lots of greens show that your brand is natural.

But, you should avoid using excessive amounts of red in online marketing because that signals rejection or something negative to the consumer.

Be sure that your colour choices reflect the tone and intent behind your email to avoid mixed messaging or ineffective marketing.

2. Use the Words “Free” or “Sale” in Your Email Newsletter

It’s one of the oldest digital marketing tricks in the book, but it works! Getting the word “free” or “sale” into the subject line draws more people to open the email and read what’s inside.

You might need to get creative to fit these eye-catching phrases into your subject line, but make sure it’s legible. You don’t want people trying to decipher codes to read their subject line!

3. Trigger the FOMO Response

One thing that drives many consumers’ behaviour is the need to feel included. If you create a sense of urgency, people will pay more attention.

The term FOMO means “fear of missing out” and this psychological trick works almost every time! Some ways to trigger a FOMO response in your audience is to do limited time offers or flash sales.

Marketing Is a Contest for Attention and You Need to Win!

There’s a ton of psychology tricks you can use to improve your marketing strategy. Mix and match some of these tricks to see what resonates best with your audience.

It might take a few tries to find the formula that gets the results you want from your email marketing. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see results from the first few newsletters.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article and that you learned a few things about improving your email newsletter. If you have any questions about this article or if you need some marketing expertise, subscribe to our blog or contact us today!

5 Steps to Building a Results-Focused Digital Marketing Campaign

Posted on October 8, 2020August 26, 2021 by Alice Momo

How can your business build a digital marketing campaign that focuses on results?

Wasting your budget on a scattergun approach may bring some extra traffic. But if those visitors don’t want what you’re selling they’ll soon leave.

This article gives 5 simple steps to consider when creating your digital marketing strategy.

We ask what is digital marketing? How do you select your target market? What marketing channels should you choose and how do you manage them?

Read on to see how the right digital marketing campaign can grow your audience and boost your business.

What Is a Digital Marketing Campaign?

Digital marketing is a catch-all term used to describe how businesses use technology to promote themselves.

A campaign is a marketing effort that drives engagement, traffic, and conversions. It has clear objectives and should have a start and endpoint within a set budget.

The key to creating a good return on investment (ROI) is planning before execution.

Unfortunately, many companies don’t do the necessary research. With that in mind, here are 5 things to consider when asking how to build a digital marketing campaign.

1. Define KPIs and Target Market

Key Performance Indicators or KPIs measure how core business objectives are being met.

For digital marketing campaigns, KPIs could include:

Cost per lead acquisition
Conversions per site visits
Traffic count from organic search

The target market is the group of customers that the campaign aims to reach.

Demographics like age, marital status, gender, etc. narrow the target audience. Matching them with your products or services is a vital step in producing the best ROI.

Target the wrong customer base and the campaign is dead before it begins.

2. Set a Realistic Budget

Estimate your marketing budget before your campaign goes live puts a ceiling cap on spending. So how do you do this?

In our advertising costs blog article we examine average advertising costs for Google and Facebook.

The advice boils down to researching your competition and platform rates. From there you can calculate an average daily spend and multiply that to a monthly or yearly figure.

3. Choose Matching Marketing Channels

Should you choose Google Ads, SEO, social media advertising, or emails as your marketing channel?

The answer lies in your brand type and what you want to achieve.

For example, if you want to reach a younger demographic through social media choose Instagram. Facebook now attracts an older audience with 60% of baby boomers having accounts.

Targeting the right channel will boost your campaign.

4. Research Keywords

All SEO digital marketing campaigns should build on the search phrases or keywords their visitors use to find them.

Discovering the highest keyword volume will determine how ads are formed. Basing a campaign on phrases that are seldom used will result in failure.

Use services like Google’s Keyword Tool to see what your audience searches for. Then shape your marketing on those results.

5. Setup and Manage Marketing Platforms

You have your campaign mapped out but how do you implement it?

Setting up a Google Ads account or email list requires a lot of effort. You also need to learn marketing concepts for each platform. Facebook works differently than YouTube, for example.

Once your campaign is live you must manage it correctly.

That involves analyzing data like traffic and conversions. And tweaking daily budgets and keywords based on changes in competition.

The results are worth it but many businesses don’t have the time or skill to manage their campaigns effectively.

Your Digital Marketing Strategy Needs to Think Big and Bold

Building a results-focused digital marketing campaign takes careful planning.

You need to set the right key performance indicators and choose the correct market. Matching marketing channels and keyword research takes time and expertise. And setting-up and managing each platform is not to be taken lightly.

Big Bold Thinkers offers digital marketing services with targeted results at the core.

Our expert digital team can help create and manage your digital marketing ideas. With a solid foundation in SEO and social media, we can bring traffic to your digital doorstep. Then help convert those visitors into paying customers.