1) It’s still important to have a strong brand.
In a business environment that emphasises instant results, we sometimes forget to plan for longevity - more specifically, we underestimate the power of branding and neglect to leverage it for future growth. And that’s a shame, because the advancements made in data-driven marketing could be even more effective if businesses established strong brands before embarking on their sales campaigns.
Joanna Lord, VP of Marketing at Porch, stresses that businesses should focus on market positioning through the creation of a strong brand before engaging in an extensive lead generation campaign. The right brand touchpoints help facilitate positive customer experience, which, in turn, makes your sales and lead generation activities just that much easier.
2) Design websites for great user experience
As influencers, emotions are stronger than thoughts. It’s just the way our brains are wired. Negative emotions result in greater perceived risk, and positive emotions reduce perceived risk. The implications for marketers are obvious: they should strive to inspire a positive emotional state in their audiences. But, to do that, they have to build trust.
Nathalie Nahai, a web psychologist, pointed out that a lack of trust is one of the biggest impediments to successful marketing. Buyers are more educated and critical than ever before, and decades of pushy advertising messages have convinced them that most businesses are only out for their wallets.
To remedy this perception, brands should be consistent in expressing their values – values that they hopefully share with their customers. People need to feel understood before they can trust someone, and shared values go a long way to establishing a sense of togetherness and understanding.
3) Distribute the right content at the right time
Whereas a few years ago brands could generate a significant amount of inbound traffic by publishing content that was just okay, the competition today is much tougher. With the widespread adoption of content marketing, the world wide web has reached saturation point, and a brand’s content has to really stand out if it’s going to get any attention.
In his analysis of this problem, Bas van den Beld emphasised that the key to better engagement rates was content relevance, and that to ensure content relevance you have to anticipate what your audience wants to read. How? By following industry blogs, monitoring your social channels, reading books on relevant topics, and conducting research. There is a world of analytics marketers can use to test their strategies and learn what content to send and when.
4) Engagement is more important than click rates
Like van den Belt, Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, emphasised that much has changed in the past several years. But, instead of stressing the importance of quality, relevant content, the bewhiskered Fishkin focussed on user experience as a means of improving online engagement.
He points out that the focus on engagement as a ranking factor is not limited to Google’s algorithms. Both Facebook and Twitter use engagement as a means of determining how posts rank. To develop a real online presence, digital marketers have to ensure that their posts and content inspire time on page.
To improve your engagement rates and reputation, you should strive to understand and serve all your visitors intents. Research, strategize, implement, and test. Hopefully you have been doing this already. Keep at it, but place greater emphasis on metrics that show engagement.
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