Saba Digital Marketing

How Neuroscience and Marketing Are Connected

Marketing companies in San Diego are more focused than ever on trying to connect with consumers. Technology once relegated to the medical profession is playing a role in achieving this goal. Welcome to the world of neuromarketing, a relatively new field of marketing using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to evaluate the brain’s response to marketing stimuli.

Common Tests

While experiments in neuromarketing can be all over the place, one of the most common studies involves eye contact. The goal with such tests is to determine where the human eye naturally looks first when seeing an ad or reading some type of marketing content. Other common tests involve:

  •  Determining how the brain reacts to familiar brand logos
  •  Gauging the brain’s reaction when viewing the same ad with subtle differences
  •  Evaluating the impact of subliminal messaging in ads

Interpreting Data

There is no gold standard for evaluating and interpreting data from experiments. For instance, research conducted by a car company suggested similar brain activity for car drivers and jet pilots. The resulting ad was based on how the company interpreted those results, but it was far from being a valid conclusion.

Mind-Body Connection

More serious experiments in the field of neuromarketing attempt to determine what influences the decision-making process in the human mind. The purpose of such cognitive research is to pinpoint what it is in the mind that convinces a person to physically make a purchase. One study evaluated electrical reactions in the skin to determine how physiologically arousing certain ads were for test subjects.

The field of neuromarketing is not an exact “science” by any means. Factors considered can vary widely from one study to the next, with data often being more subjective than conclusive. When you consider that the human brain unconsciously evaluates trust within a fraction of a second, however, it’s still an aspect of marketing worth exploring.

Saba SEO is a trusted online marketing company, helping local, national, and international companies improve their marketing effort with SEO, social media, PPC, and website design and development. Reach out to us at (858) 277-1717 to learn more about our services.

Top Things That Keep Customers Loyal

Increasing customer retention rates by as little as five percent can boost profits anywhere from 25 to 95 percent, according to a Harvard study. The challenge with keeping customers loyal, however, is the increased fickleness of consumers today. For this reason, it’s important to be mindful of what keeps customers loyal when putting together a marketing plan.

Engagement and Communication

Customers today expect to be “talked to” and not “talked at” via carefully worded ad content. Effectively communicate with customers by:

  •  Choosing appropriate social media marketing platforms
  •  Responding to customer concerns quickly and sincerely
  •  Presenting fresh, engaging content

Shared Values

Customers tend to be loyal to brands that share their values. Dive into your demographics to determine what your customers care about the most and find commonalities you can emphasize in your content.

Stroking Egos

Customers like to a feel a brand is representing who they are, which often extends to the images and wording used in online content. Knowing such details is going to involve really digging through available data to determine things like aspirations and goals common among your target audience.

Effective Selling

Customers are picky about how they’re targeted, right down to how things are worded. “A minimal shipping fee” is likely to be more effective than “plus a $5.00 shipping fee.” Words like “free” and “new,” and “instantly” will always have a universal appeal when it comes to selling.

Responsive Customer Service

Customer loyalty is heavily dependent on the quality of customer service. An unsatisfied customer has an amplified voice via social media and online review sites that can dissuade customers–or turn away ones previously loyal.

Rewarding Loyalty

Customers like it when their loyalty is appreciated. The biggest obstacle with rewards programs is overcoming that initial hesitation, which can be countered by offering an instant reward, as in a certain percentage off or free shipping

Want to learn more about your current customer base as well as how to attract new customers? Saba SEO is a trusted San Diego online marketing company dedicated to helping our clients increase visibility and grow and succeed in their specific niche. Reach out today at (858) 277-1717 and request a free consultation.

How to Maximize Trade Show ROI

Trade shows can be a great way to connect with an audience likely to be receptive to what you have to offer. While participating in and preparing for trade shows requires an investment on your part, such events can bring in more than enough profit to justify the effort. Taking the right steps ahead of time can help maximize your ROI.

1. Choose the Right Location

Just because a trade show fits within your industry doesn’t mean it’s the right show for you. Do some research and only participate in trade shows likely to have enough targeted prospects present to make it worth your time and money.

2. Establish Your Goals

Are you looking for potential business partners, or is your primary goal to generate sales? After selecting a show, outline your objectives for what you hope to accomplish with your participation so you’ll have realistic expectations ahead of time.

3. Determine How You Will Participate

Once you know your objectives, consider the best way to achieve those goals at a trade show. Booths are great for showcasing new products and technology. However, a sponsorship can increase brand visibility and speaking can highlight your industry knowledge.

4. Coordinate Schedules

Make sure everyone is on the same page with schedules when it comes to who will be manning the booth, roaming the floor, speaking, or participating in meetings. A spreadsheet of assignments can help with coordination.

5. Have a Media Plan

Reach out to reporters covering news and events, like trade shows, within your industry. If possible, focus on something particularly newsworthy about your company that somehow relates to current industry trends.

6. Promote It

Promote your trade show participation. Generating attention via your website, blog or various social media platforms is a great way to boost attendance.

Don’t forget to follow up with any connections you make at the show. Finally, maintain your energy with nutritious meals or snacks throughout the event.

For more information about successfully marketing your business, contact Saba SEO at (858) 277-1717. We are a full-service San Diego internet marketing agency with a commitment to helping our customers grow and succeed.

5 Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Paid Campaigns

Nothing is set in stone in the world of online marketing, especially when it comes to your paid campaigns. While it’s wise to periodically update your paid strategy, it’s just as important to avoid common mistakes that could minimize your ROI.

1. Not Reevaluating Your Target Audience

Before you update your paid strategy, make sure you really know and understand the audience you want to target. Analyze existing data to determine if your PPC campaigns are still resonating well with these consumers.

2. Not Testing Offers

Ultimately, you want to boost your conversion rates with your paid efforts. Test different offers to see which ones are netting the most conversions and ditch or adjust ones not producing significant results.

3. Not Keeping Content Fresh

Whether it’s updating graphics or adding new phrasing, fresh content is going to produce better results. Continuously seek new ways to make your message resonate with your target audience via your paid efforts.

4. Not Learning from Existing Efforts

Before updating your paid strategy, go back and look how you’re promoting yourself on your website, blogs, and social media platforms. Determine if there is certain verbiage, including keywords, working well on your own platforms that you haven’t been using in your paid efforts.

5. Not Optimizing Your Bidding

People search differently depending on the device they’re using at the time. If weren’t doing it before, use bid modifiers to adjust bids based on your cost per acquisition to increase your ROI for each campaign as you update your strategy.

Don’t forget to track results in your analytics program as you make updates. Just because a paid strategy worked well in the past doesn’t mean it will stay that way. Be mindful of trends and new tools, often in the form of handy extensions, available for your use as well. At Saba SEO, we believe a balanced strategy using PPC and SEO in San Diego can drive the results you want. To learn more, give one of our friendly marketing experts a call at (858) 277-1717 today!

Must-Have Resources for Content Marketers

If your content marketing efforts are only a part of your overall online marketing strategy, it’s safe to assume you could use a helping hand with content distribution and management. Read on to discover resources you can use to gain valuable insights and access to useful tools and reliable support.

Content Creation

Get a better grasp of content creation by brushing up on the basics and catching up on current trends.

  • Content Marketing Institute provides news on recent trends
  • Exacttarget.com offers an introduction to the basics of content marketing
  • Contently presents tips for creating newsworthy content

Content Distribution

After you get into the habit of generating fresh, relevant content, the next step is to effectively distribute that content.

  • TapInfluence is one resource you can use to “tap” into influencer channels
  • Dynamic Signal offers employee advocacy software programs to online marketers
  • SocialChorus can help increase visibility with an employee advocacy campaign designed to encourage your employees to effectively distribute your content and amplify your brand message

Social Distribution

Reliable resources like Hootsuite and Likeable Local can help present your content to your target audience via your social media platforms. There are plenty of easy-to-use tools that can make distribution and management of social content less demanding.

Content Utilization

Ultimately, your content is meant to be used in a productive way to benefit your purchasing funnel. From a marketing standpoint, you want to get the most bang for your buck, which means leveraging your content across all online platforms. DemandGenReport.com offers useful tips on content value and utilization.

Marketing Automation

Find the support you need to manage your content marketing efforts by taking advantage of resources available from HubSpot and Ontraport. Companies like these offer access to on-call consultants and software programs you can use to track your efforts without having to invest in added technology on your end.

Discover additional resources and learn more about creating a strong content strategy from the marketing pros at Saba SEO. In addition to SEO, we also use social media and PPC management in San Diego to help businesses drive traffic to their websites and grow their customer base. Call (858) 277-1717 today!

Best Sources for Trending Content

One of the best ways to increase visitors to your site is to write articles about trending topics. Unlike evergreen content, these articles nearly always appeal to readers’ current interests. While they might not have the same staying power as evergreen content, articles on trending topics are an important component in many content marketing strategies. Here are a few places to find fresh and trending topics.

Reddit

While it is fairly easy to identify topics that are currently trending, your goal should be to find popular topics before they go viral. One of the best places to look for this kind of content is Reddit. Most of the content on Reddit is sourced by Internet users who truly care about their particular niches, and if you look in the proper subreddits, you can find content directly from industry leaders and other respected individuals. Setting up regular email updates from relevant subreddits is a great way to consistently find useful topics.

Facebook and Twitter

Pioneered by Twitter and continued by Facebook, the hashtag is one of the most useful tools for discovering content through keywords. Online marketers in San Diego can visit these social media sites to find trending keywords and topics that can be used to engage readers and optimize SEO campaigns. For SEOs in search of data and popular keywords, tools like Hashtagify can be very useful. Hashtagify aggregates hashtag data from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and reveals keywords and their relationships to events and other terms. You may benefit from using DrumpUp, a tool that searches social media sites for popular content based on keywords.

BuzzFeed, Upworthy, and Other Clickbait Sites

Websites that utilize clikbait headlines often know exactly what their audiences want to read. You can go scan the headlines of some of the most popular sites that use clickbait tactics to find ideas that will engage and expand your audience. This can become a very long process, but you can use the WordPress RSS Aggregator to receive a compiled list of headlines from BuzzFeed and similar sites at particular intervals. If you prefer to work from your inbox, you can use FeedMyInbox.

Google Trends

Google Trends is an excellent tool for identifying long-term consumer interests and top articles. While it is not updated as quickly as social media sites, Google Trends can inform you about major interests. Content writers can use this tool to find a wide variety of information, including a year’s top songs and holiday deals.

Looking for other ways to drive traffic to your site? Request a complimentary consultation with Saba SEO, a trusted SEO company in San Diego. We help businesses increase online visibility through SEO, PPC, and social media. Call (858) 277-1717 today.

 

Creating a Balanced, Effective Marketing Mix

It’s not all or nothing when it comes to marketing. Effective marketing is often a mix of both online efforts like social media engagement and PPC and traditional offline strategies. Creating a balanced, effective marketing mix is a task that involves weighing your available options and determining where to allocate your available resources.

Determine Your Weaknesses

It’s impossible to create a marketing mix if you don’t know where to focus your efforts. For instance, a good portion of your target audience may be aware of your brand but they’re hesitant to complete a transaction. Consequently, your weak point within the purchasing funnel is the point of making a decision.

Have a Method to Your Madness

Understand why you’re doing what you’re doing before investing in it. If, for instance, you’re re-targeting your ads to better reach your audience, are you trying to improve consideration and comparison against your competition or do you want to work on boosting conversions? Then ask yourself if your solution is really likely to accomplish that goal.

Weigh Resource Allocation Against ROI

Determine an initial mix of efforts like SEO, email, social media, paid searches, offline marketing, display ads, and other marketing resources. Periodically determine how much you’re getting back for your investment into each endeavor. You may find that, for instance, you’re investing too much in pay-per-click advertising and not enough in social media engagement. No marketing mix is set in stone, so don’t be afraid to shift your allocations.

Don’t forget about data tracking. Many businesses make the mistake of not putting enough time and effort into tracking results and diving deeper into available stats to get a better idea of what’s really working and what needs to be fine-tuned. Through careful observation and active engagement, you can find a marketing mix that’s right for you.

Saba SEO is a trusted online marketing company in San Diego that specializes in PPC, SEO, social media, and web design and development. Give us a call at (858) 277-1717 to learn more about our services or request a complimentary consultation.

What You Should Know About Influencer Marketing

It’s not unusual for businesses to actively seek out people who have a large, dedicated online following to promote their products or services. San Diego internet marketing experts are making the argument that this approach to engaging with customers, referred to as influencer marketing, is the next big thing in marketing.

It’s the New Word-of-Mouth

Long before the internet even existed, word-of-mouth was a powerful marketing tool. Influencer marketing is today’s version of the same concept. Consumer-to-consumer recommendations also tend to result in higher retention rates.

It Encourages Social Engagements

Thanks in part to influencer marketing, businesses have shifted away from talking “at” potential customers and towards engaging in real conversations. Since potential influencers can be anywhere, more businesses have an added incentive to drive conversations with engaging content.

It’s a Source of Motivational Content

Several influencers recently posted pics wearing the same dress, and it became an instant best seller. This is evidence that influencers can help brands know what’s really motivating customers through the images and posts they share and content that can be easily repurposed.

Consumers Are Burnt Out on Paid Ads

Paid advertising in one form or another has been the gold standard for advertising for generations. Influencer marketing presents a new method of presenting options in a way that’s less invasive than endless paid ads, which tend to have very low recall rates.

It’s Good for Your SEO Efforts

If influencers like something you’re offering, you’ll get plenty of attention online and a boon to your search engine optimization efforts. The added references to your brand increase both awareness and visibility.

There are many tools, such as Appinions and SocMetrics, that can be used to identify potential influencers by geographic area and other specific criteria. Forming a productive relationship with influencers isn’t that difficult. In many cases, all it takes is an engaging social post to catch the eye of an influencer.

The SEO Guide When Moving Your Business

Your business may have physically moved, and while your website hasn’t changed, a new physical location can make your company harder to find online. Unless you revisit your current SEO efforts, customers who routinely turn to search engines for local business information aren’t going to be directed to your new location, which could unintentionally direct local customers elsewhere.

Start with Your Website

Search engine marketing agencies in San Diego recommend updating all relevant parts of your website first. Other than your contact info, this includes your “About Us” section and anywhere else your location is referenced. SEO updates on your website can also include:

• Website headers and footers
• Schema markup in your website code
• Replacing photos of your old office

Mark Previous Listings ‘Closed’

Do a Google search and close any listings for the business that previously occupied your location by submitting the edit in MapMaker to avoid causing confusion for searchers. Your Google My Business dashboard info should also be updated.

Enable a Map on Your Location Page

Create an accurate location marker for your new location by updating your Google Plus business page. Doing so also allows visitors to access any Google reviews for your business.

Update Billing and Government Records

Search your state’s Secretary of State website to update your business license. Listings for your monthly business bills should also be updated since Google sometimes pulls info from these sources.

Update Niche Directories

If your business is listed on a niche directory, such as a directory for dental practices, make sure your address has been changed on those sites. Update your major data providers and directories as well to change location info on the most common directories.

Periodically check for duplicate listings with your old address and make sure driving directions to your business are updated. Taking steps to update location information can help ensure that local searchers will still be able to find you online.

Managing SEO efforts in-house can be challenging, especially for small businesses. The San Diego SEO experts at Saba, Inc. can help your business build a strong online presence and climb the SERPs, before, during, and after your move. Give us a call at (858) 277-1717 and request a free website audit today.

 

5 Effective Ways to Implement Local SEO

Driven in part by Google’s increased emphasis on geographic-specific results, local SEO is more important than ever for businesses looking to achieve prominent placement online. If you haven’t gone local with your search engine optimization efforts just yet, it may be time to consider implementing some local SEO strategies.

1. Encourage Link Building

Local SEO that includes quality links tends to be highly regarded by Google. Whether from businesses offering complementary services, social media posts, or guest blog contributions, relevant links within your content can be an effective way to increase local visibility.

2. Have a Mobile-Friendly Website

Many local customers are in the habit of searching on the go. You’ll have better luck with a website that’s designed for mobile access, which means an uncluttered design with pages that load quickly.

3. Go Social

Local SEO can be applied to your social media platforms to help drive traffic back to your website with links included in your posts. You can also use your social sites to promote local events that are somehow related to your business to further catch the attention of local searchers.

4. Create Engaging Content

There’s no better way to connect with local customers than to be perceived as an authority. Make an effort to create content that, while optimized for search engines, also provides useful information geared towards your intended audience.

5. Allow Customers to Leave Reviews

People searching for your business are more likely to be convinced to visit your website after reading a positive review. Customers may decide to submit positive reviews via survey emails or a feedback form included on your website.

One of the easiest ways to go local with your SEO efforts is to build local citations, or listings of business information on directories like City Search and Yellow Pages. Make sure your business info–company name, address, phone number, hours, etc.–is accurate and identical in all listings.

Find out how your business can benefit from local SEO by contacting Saba, Inc. at (858) 277-1717. We are a search engine marketing company in San Diego that serves local businesses as well as companies through the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Reach out today and let us help you determine the strategy right for you.

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