Category: Digital Marketing

Think about the average online customer. He or she is probably too distracted and pressed for time to read the 2000-word text you wrote for a brochure that is waxing eloquent about the miracle anti-aging cream your company has just formulated. To really get through to your customers and use online marketing to sell to them, you need to write web copy, keeping online culture and the psychology of the online customer in mind. Here are 5 proven tips to writing great web copy.

1. Get into Your Customer’s Skin

Go beyond demographics for a while and think about what it is your ideal customer wants. If you are selling anti-aging cream, your customer is likely a woman who wants to retain her looks and needs a product that fights wrinkles, irons out crow’s feet, and lifts sagging skin better than her current product. Write your copy in a way that appeals to her.

2. Plan Your Copy

Make a list of all the problems your product solves, then list all of its benefits and come up with a comprehensive list of objections potential customers might have. Use technical words in your copy because it lends authenticity and credibility to your product, and by all means, if your anti-aging cream contains Retinol and mineral water from a spring in Europe, make sure to mention it. However, if you explain how the Retinol will fight wrinkles while the customer sleeps and how the nutrition-rich mineral water will add glow to her skin and plump it up, it gives your copy an extra punch.

3. Repeat the Call to Action

Place frequent calls to action throughout the copy on your website. Ask for the customers to buy, but avoid putting them off by pushing your product too much. Understand and respect that readers may not be ready to buy right this second, so invite them to “find out more” about the product or “visit our online store” and redirect them to other pages on your website.

4. Keep It Short

Before you start writing copy, think about the content, then break it up and spread it around the website. Though 500 words on a piece of paper may not seem like much, online it is a completely different story. People are often distracted, too pressed for time, and there is usually too much information to absorb the moment they go online. Keep your copy short and sweet and spread your call to action around the website and embed frequent invites to navigate the site. Have links to your contact information on every page.

5. Tell a Story

Customers love hearing a good story. For instance, if you have a compelling story to tell about how your anti-aging cream was tested on a group of women in their 50s who started looking well rested after a week of use, and the women in the control group who used anti-gravity planks didn’t, make sure you tell it.

If you follow the above tips from Saba SEO, a trusted SEO agency in San Diego, you will be writing better web copy in no time. The bottom line for creating web copy is that it needs to be engaging and, most importantly, effective. You can get creative to hold your customers’ attention, but if they do not pull out their wallets to pay, the point of writing the copy is lost, so never lose sight of why you are writing the copy.

Brand ambassadors are people who are genuine advocates of your Company and will go out of their way to recommend and promote your products or services. They are customers who don’t tire of praising your product, just like the Apple fans who don’t tire of singing praises of the iPhone. In this article — brought to you by Saba SEO, a San Diego SEO Company, we will discuss 5 easy strategies that can help you turn customers to brand ambassadors.

While dazzling marketing campaigns with top celebrity brand ambassadors advocating a product will make people sit up and take notice, the most powerful driver of sales remains a recommendation from a brand ambassador who people can relate to. Nothing is more powerful than a recommendation from a friend or a person who is as real as you and whom you trust. Many companies are now realizing that these ‘voluntary’ brand ambassadors wield a lot of power and looking for ways to utilize them. Check out this great article on “Why Brand Ambassadors Are Important.” So how do you turn clients into brand ambassadors?

1. Respond to clients who talks about you

Separate the wheat from the chaff. Just because someone bought from you and likes your page on social media doesn’t mean he or she can be your brand ambassador. Find the clients who are engaging with others and willing to recommend your product. You can monitor social media to track the people who mention your product and respond to them. Listen to what they are saying and use that information to reach out to them and build a rapport.

2. Give Them Special Treatment

Take the clients who love your product and are willing to praise it and make them feel special. You can reward them in various ways, especially by making them feel like they are ‘insiders.’ Foster a group of brand ambassadors who get to test your products or who get a sneak peak of a new highly anticipated product and then let them tell everyone.

3. Surprise Your Clients

How do you do that? By giving them a discount on a product or by giving them a free dessert with their meal. By sending them a sample or even just by sending them a thank you note you will generate upbeat conversation around your product.

4. Declare and Let Them Share

If you are a happening brand with plenty of marketing action and a social media site that is updated frequently with product pictures, giveaways and contests, you make it easier for your brand ambassadors –who we all know love to talk about you –to share their love for your brand. Make sharing on Facebook or Twitter incredibly easy and hassle-free. Need help with Social Media Marketing? Consider hiring a professional firm.

5. Personalize Your Customer’s Experience

A personalized service will work more for product sales than a sales pitch. Train your salespeople to be polite and to add a personal touch to everything and you will gain customers who can vouch for you.

Of course, the upshot is to offer your customers such a fantastic product – one that screams quality – so they cannot help, but turn into brand ambassadors. While all of these strategies can help you turn clients to loyal brand ambassadors, don’t forget that nothing is more important than delivering a high quality product or service and backing it up by exceptional customer service. If you don’t have the right experience or resources needed to reach out to potential brand ambassadors, it’s highly recommended that you seek professional help such as a PR company.

Digital marketing, and the technology that powers it, continues to mature at light speed, making it all the more important for digital marketing companies in San Diego to be adaptable to whatever the future may hold. Here are a few tips to ensure your marketing technology doesn’t get left behind.

Be Flexible

It’s good to have policies, procedures, and systems in place–but make sure they can stretch to accommodate unexpected changes in technology. This means creating a flexible framework where components can easily be modified or replaced altogether without needing to reconstruct the whole system.

Centralize Consumer Data

One thing you don’t want to lose is all the consumer data you’ve collected over the years. Have a central repository for all the data you collect from all your different sources, including social media.

Remember Technology Acquisition Never Stops

One key to staying ahead of the curve is to never forget that technology doesn’t stop evolving. Build your systems with that in mind, so all components have the ability to change as the technology does. This includes components of everything from content planning to budgeting.

Enhance Connectivity

It’s not uncommon for different tasks to be completed using different technologies. What you use to analyze and budget likely isn’t what you use to lay out an annual marketing strategy or content calendar. However, it’s important to increase connectivity between different systems and make transferring data as simple as possible.

Promote a Flexible Mindset

Your business as a whole should promote a flexible mindset when change, innovation, and new iterations are welcome across the board. Employees who thrive on change will have an easier time adapting as marketing technology changes. And employees with strong general skills may have an easier time keeping up than those with a very specific set of skills. As you hire new people, look for technical and analytical skills and build upon that foundation.

In marketing, technology isn’t the enemy–it can help you reach new heights provided you know how to use it to your advantage and don’t let your systems fall behind.

If you need help getting your digital marketing up to par and ready for the future, reach out to Saba SEO, a leading SEO and PPC management company in San Diego. Call our office today at (858) 277-1717 and ask about our free website consultations.

The trend towards relevance has made content marketing even more important today than ever before. Sure, other elements of San Diego SEO marketing are still essential and shouldn’t be disregarded, although it all comes back to the need for consistently meaningful content. If you need some convincing that content marketing is king, consider these six facts.

1. Increased Use of Ad Blockers

A couple hundred million people now use ad blockers. This is why Google is placing ads within similar content. Doing so can be an effective way to get your message across without being intrusive since most browsers don’t go to a website for the ads.

2. More Site Traffic from Content Leaders

Content leaders who create valuable and engaging content generate nearly eight times more website traffic than their non-leader counterparts. In other words, browsers expect more from their visit than a sales pitch.

3. Content Equals Brand Recall

You have a better shot of standing out from a crowd of competitors offering similar products and services if your brand is seen as a source of useful information. An IBM Digital Experience Survey found that nearly 60 percent of marketers equate personalized content with higher engagement rates.

4. Consumers Read Relevant Content

The average browser spends nearly 40 seconds reading articles. While there’s still a tendency to skim, useful content is compelling and a steady stream of such content can boost brand recognition.

5. Email Marketing Has a Ridiculously High ROI

For every dollar spent on email marketing, the ROI is nearly $40. When an email campaign is properly executed, it can be an effective way to keep your audience engaged since the content can be uniquely personalized.

6. Fewer Costs, More Leads

Content marketing-related costs are roughly 60 percent less than expenses related to outbound marketing efforts. More importantly, content marketing generates approximately three times as many leads as television, newspaper, weekly mailers, and other traditional marketing methods.

Online marketing isn’t always easy to accomplish alone. As a leading company that specializes in search engine optimization, we make it our mission to identify your target audience and generate relevant content that draws in new and returning customers. Call us today at (858) 277-1717 to request a free website audit.

With content marketing on the rise, there are internet marketing agencies in San Diego of all shapes and sizes hiring content marketers and managers. Content marketing is a niche of its own, making it challenging to find just the right person to fill the role. If you’re looking for a person (or people) to fill content marketing roles, here are a few of the best interview questions to ask.

1. How do you adapt your tone, voice, and style?

While all writers have their own style of writing, part of being a content writer is being able to adapt to the company, audience, and desired format. Be sure to ask for specifics on their process.

2. How has your content been critiqued?

Chances are, no one is going to tell you they flew off the handle during a critique. Instead, watch for a shift in body language, listen for evasive language, and also pay attention to words and phrases that show this person is open to improvement and creative feedback.

3. How do you develop a content marketing strategy?

This will help you determine if the candidate can handle the position you have in mind for them. If they draw a blank, they might not be suited for a position that will involve a complete overhaul of your current system or implementing a new one.

4. How do you measure content success?

Any content marketer should be able to tell you what makes content successful. Listen for the interviewee to use words and phrases like “shares,” “retweets,” “traffic,” and “improved search engine ranking.” Follow-up by asking them to describe their own success with a piece (or pieces) of content.

Some companies find it easier to outsource content marketing efforts, and that’s where we come in. As a leading San Diego SEO agency, we can help you define your target audience, understand their motivations, and create content that converts. Give us a call today at (858) 277-1717 today and ask for a free website audit.

Buyer personas are now a commonly used marketing practice that helps businesses better understand their target audience and how to communicate with them. However, many businesses remain unsure exactly what a buyer person is and how to create one. Here are a few common mistakes San Diego digital marketing companies are still making when creating buyer personas.

1. Describing the Buyer, Not the Decision

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is profiling the buyer rather than the buyer’s decision. After all, buying is the behavior all marketers want to influence. When creating a buyer persona, your first priority should be to understand decision criteria, buyer attitudes, and what causes buyers to believe one option is better than the other. Outside of retail environments, things like marital status, hobbies, and gender rarely matter.

2. Making Stuff Up

Most buyer personas are based on information marketers get by talking to sales reps, product experts, or by conducting online research. Rarely are buyer personas based on information provided by the buyer. Your content won’t be any better than it was before creating personas if the personas are based on generic information. Spend several hours every month having in-depth conversations with recent buyers, both those who chose your product and those who chose another.

3. Having Too Many Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are meant to help marketers, but creating new persons defined by company size, industry, demographics, age, motivations, etc. can create an unmanageable amount of personas to keep up with. Instead of creating a new person for each segment, ask yourself if you’ll increase revenue by building separate strategies. Separate buyer personas are really only important when buyer insights differ significantly, and those are rarely impacted by things like company size, industry, or job title. If buyers have identical priorities and challenges, regardless of industry, age, etc., a single persona may be the most effective means of marketing.

Need help creating the ultimate content marketing strategy? Turn to Saba SEO, a leading SEO agency in San Diego. In addition to SEO, we specialize in PPC and social media management. Call us today at (858) 277-1717 and ask about our free website audits!

Year after year brings new and interesting insights in the ever-expanding industry that is digital marketing, and 2017 is no different. Read on to learn more about what content marketers can expect in the coming year.

1. Native Advertising

Native advertising is increasing in popularity because it isn’t disruptive to the user’s experience and is usually relevant to their interests. In 2017, content marketers can expect to spend nearly as much time promoting the content as creating it.

2. Visuals and Videos

Most brands don’t utilize video in their digital marketing strategy, and those that do just hope for a viral video rather than planning out a long-term storytelling strategy that engages customers.

3. Snapchat

Speaking of video, Snapchat took some time to gain social media marketing momentum, but now it’s here to stay. It also gets more video views than Facebook, making it a worthy consideration for any social media marketing campaign. While it won’t integrate seamlessly for all companies, businesses in retail, sports, and hospitality will find it especially useful.

4. Good Writing

It’s easy to forget that good writing is the foundation for stellar storytelling. Most online communication is text-based, whether on social, blogs, or paid ads. Finding great writers who understand the brand and can clearly convey a message will become all the more important moving forward.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing is far from a lost cause, but many marketers don’t invest the time to come up with a real drip campaign strategy. Automating emails is a great way to expand the reach of your content, gain addition insight into your customer base, drive desired actions, and improve your overall customer experience.

These are just a few things that will be focused on more in the coming year, so take the time to get a step ahead by evaluating your current processes and revamping in time for 2017.

Saba SEO is a San Diego-based digital marketing agency that specializes in search engine optimization, paid advertising, and web design and development. To learn more, call (858) 277-1717 today.

Do you want to simply present your content for the world to see with absolutely no barriers or do you set up roadblocks and require some info before allowing access to that spiffy new e-book or latest edition of your newsletter? If you lead a San Diego digital marketing team, this is one of the choices you’re going to have to make when deciding how your content is accessed by customers.

Gated Content

One of the biggest cons against using gated content, or anything that requires people to sign up or provide info before viewing, is the resistance to providing too much info online. While ungated content may generate more downloads, that doesn’t necessarily translate to more leads or conversions, so there are plenty of compelling reasons to go gated, which can be successful if you:

• Make the value clear
• Minimize required signup info
• Map out your sales funnel so you know who’s likely to be interested

Ungated Content

Videos you post to YouTube or on your website or blog content viewable to anyone are examples of ungated content. Unrestricted content certainly has its place when it comes to boosting your brand image and it does get more people to download your content and see you as a trusted source of reliable information, all good things. Ungated content can be useful if you want to:

• Get more shares
• Attract more fans/followers
• Convince browsers to consider your gated content

Test It

If you’re not sure whether or not to make content gated or ungated, do some testing. For instance, you can make one month’s newsletter free to anyone and require a signup the next month to gauge whether or not people are willing to take further action to access that content.

There is no clear “right” choice when it comes to gated and ungated content. Find a balance between what’s best to present without barriers and what’s likely to produce better long-term results with some strategic roadblocks in place.

For help getting your content marketing plan off the ground, reach out to Saba SEO by calling (858) 277-1717 today. We specialize in local San Diego SEO, PPC, and social media management. Reach out today and ask about our free website audits.

 

A content curator sifts through the large sea content on the internet in order to single out and present only what is most relevant and meaningful to their audience. Unlike content marketing, which necessitates the creation of new content, content curation is the process of discovery, archival, and targeted sharing.

Why Is Content Curation Important?

One of the biggest and most immediate challenges faced by a nascent brand is building its following and establishing a strong online presence. Content curation is essential to establishing brand identity, increasing brand awareness, and developing relationships with customers and followers. By regularly sharing relevant, interesting content from other sources, you establish your company as a thought leader in your industry, connect with other thought leaders and influencers, and economizes marketing resources. It also provides more content for your followers to share and supports SEO efforts.

How Do You Successfully Curate Content?

The most essential characteristics of a savvy content curator are vigilance, attentiveness, and discretion. A content curator must constantly be on the lookout for relevant content while keeping in mind that each piece of content that a brand shares has the power to either increase or decrease its value. While relevant content can foster a stronger connection with the target audience, irrelevant content can quickly repel the audience and hurt the brand’s reputation.

Because of the abundance of online content, automated tools can help streamline the task. Specialized curating services such as Curata allow curators to swiftly organize, annotate, and share the most valuable trending content at any given time. The Tweeted Times can be used to organize new posts in the user’s Twitter stream by popularity among the followers. Rock The Deadline is a service that allows publishers to instantly curate topical multimedia content on each of their profiles in a timely manner.

Content curation is an essential component of any content marketing strategy, but it’s a big task that some companies can’t manage on their own. If that’s the case, we can help! Saba SEO is a digital marketing agency in San Diego specializing in SEO, AdWords management, and social media marketing. Request a free consultation today by calling (858) 277-1717. We look forward to hearing from you!