Tuesday, 23 October 2018

Why Google Adwords Is Still Good For Business



Google Adwords has revolutionized the advertising industry, but it seems as if some think Adwords is no longer useful to small business.  Since Adwords launched in October of 2000 with 350 customers, there has been many changes and most noticeable is the increasing cost per click for keywords.
But Google’s pay per click platform still has many advantages over traditional advertising media like radio and television.  Business owners, marketers and even Adwords enthusiast should be testing other traffic sources, as it’s never a smart business move to depend on one lead source. However, Google Adwords is still one of the best ways to drive fast targeted traffic and should be considered as one of the first advertising methods you utilize to grow your business online.
Here are three simple reasons why Adwords is still good for business.
1. Starting Small – Google Adwords gives you total control on how you invest your marketing dollars. An advertiser can start with any budget and can turn off the advertising at any time.  This is a huge advantage to small businesses that may not have regular cash flow or big budgets to invest in commercials and or radio spots.  Adwords allows you to start small and to scale up. When you find some keywords that have a positive ROI the potential to grow your business is almost limitless.
2. Instant Traffic- Once you hit the enable button on your campaign, the traffic is almost instantaneous.  Adwords is like a grand opening event and there’s always a huge line waiting outside, all you have to do is open the door. Getting traffic on demand allows you to test your marketing more quickly.  Split test different ads, keywords, and landing pages in a matter of days.  If you find that a particular message is resonating with your market, change all of the ads that day.  If you see something is not working, change it or stop it immediately. Changing things on the fly is not even possible with most traditional advertising. Imagine trying to change a headline on a direct mail piece after you‘ve mailed it.  Not only would you have to wait for the reception of your mail but it would likely cost to make changes and print up new mailers.
3. Targeted Traffic- One of the biggest benefits of using Google Adwords is targeted traffic. When you advertise on television or radio thousands or even millions of people will be seeing your ads that have no interest in your product or service.  As an advertiser you pay for those unwanted views or impressions. Larger businesses with huge marketing budgets may not mind the waste, but smaller to medium size business can’t afford to throw away money on people who will never use your service or buy your products.  Adwords allows you to target potential customers exactly at the moment they are looking for you. What better way to advertise?
Adwords has evolved over the years, but it’s still one of the best options for online advertising.  However if you have no experience with Adwords, you should consider investing some time educating yourself on how to effectively use the platform or use a pay per click management firm to help you get started.

What’s The Purpose of a Logo



The primary role of a logo is to identify… Remember this, as it trumps all other advice you’ll ever hear. Identification is what really matters. That’s it.
Trends come and go, design tools and techniques will evolve, what we perceive a logo to be may even drastically change with time, but for all eternity the single most important goal of a logo will always remain this – to identify the person, product, business or service you’re designing it for.
Logo design is a strategic tool – it’s not art.
Logo design is not art – too many people mistake them for art since logos are a visual object.
Our role as designers is not to design a thing of beauty… and not to design something we or the client personally likes the look of, but instead logo design needs to be treated as a strategic business tool that will allow a company to be identified in the vast world we live in. Of course, a logo can still look good, but that should be a secondary factor when designing a logo. Identification comes first.
Why do logos matter to the world?
They are the face of a business, product or service
When you picture a business in your mind, you often immediately picture the logo, be it the golden arches of a famous fast food company, or the apple with the bite out of it representing one of my favourite technology brands.
Likewise, when you see a logo you’re familiar with, as you did with the Nike and Apple logos above, you’ll immediately associate it with your memories, experiences, and interactions with the brand.
Establish Instant Brand Recognition
A well-designed logo will be memorable, helping customers to remember the brand.
Shapes and colours are easier for the human brain to process and memorise than words are. This means that if the identity is unique in the marketplace it’s easy to find and identify the company once again to purchase its services, and to recommend to friends.
Logo design influences our decisions
From our very first day we build up a visual library in our mind and begin to associate fonts, shapes and colours with specific emotions and objects.
By simply looking at a logo, like it or not we will immediately make judgements, and perceive a business, product or service in a certain way.
If we think a company looks too expensive, too corporate, too fun, or too radical we will avoid it. Likewise, if the logo (and the associated brand identity) looks like the type of company, products or service we’re looking for, and wish to be associated with, we will actively engage with the company and buy its products and services.
This is why it’s essential the logo correctly represents the business, as you want to attract the right audience.
The logo forms expectations of the company, and if it fails to meet those, or if the business attracts the wrong people things will start to go down hill – wasted time and money serving people that won’t become customers, and potentially even bad reviews from disappointed customers… getting the logo right matters.
Logo design influences our decisions
From our very first day we build up a visual library in our mind and begin to associate fonts, shapes and colours with specific emotions and objects.
By simply looking at a logo, like it or not we will immediately make judgements, and perceive a business, product or service in a certain way.
If we think a company looks too expensive, too corporate, too fun, or too radical we will avoid it. Likewise, if the logo (and the associated brand identity) looks like the type of company, products or service we’re looking for, and wish to be associated with, we will actively engage with the company and buy its products and services.
This is why it’s essential the logo correctly represents the business, as you want to attract the right audience.
The logo forms expectations of the company, and if it fails to meet those, or if the business attracts the wrong people things will start to go down hill – wasted time and money serving people that won’t become customers, and potentially even bad reviews from disappointed customers… getting the logo right matters.
Communicate brand values & additional meaning
Although a logos primary purpose is to identity, they can also be leveraged to communicate important brand messages and values. Just make sure to keep it simple… ideally stick to just the one key idea.
As an example, the logo design for Amazon (shown below), has a smile beneath its name communicating the happiness of receiving something you’ve really wanted. This positivity is enhanced by the vibrant orange colour, a colour which I personally associate with warmth, fun and the sunshine. Beyond the obvious, the smile is also an arrow, connecting the A to Z, showing that they offer a wide range of products – very clever!

Tuesday, 16 October 2018

Growth Hacking vs Search Engine Optimization (Seo)



Growth Hacking
Growth hacking is a comparatively new online marketing method that makes use of low-cost and random approaches to filling the company’s lead generation. This term was coined in 2010 by Sean Ellis and became even more popular during the next years. Here is the interest over time around the term ‘growth hacking’ by Google Trends. Inbound marketing and growth hacking might seem similar to each other, because both of them rely on data generated by prospects’ behaviors and actions. However, the way data is used differentiates these two methods.
Just like a computer hacker tries to break the server by trying different variations over and over again until he finally gets the right combination, a growth hacker tries every technique possible to get better results and online performance. Some of the ways that are utilized to facilitate the growth are outside the proper (sometimes ethical) boundaries of inbound marketing. Growth hacking includes tactics, like:
• Viral mechanisms like required social sharing in order to get access to specific features/content
• Automation of not-allowed emails, tweets and messages to users
• Other content assets requiring subscription or registration
Shortly, growth hackers develop strategies that rely more on strategies that create fast growth, disregarding trust, reputation or authority. Growth hacking was used a lot by tech startups like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn in order to grow quickly and get a lot of users as soon as possible.
 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Whenever you enter a word/phrase in Google or other search engine, you come across with a list of results that contain the keyword you entered. We all normally click on those websites which are at the top of the list, as those are perceived more relevant to our search. Some websites rank better than others because of SEO marketer’s work.
SEO is a mechanism that helps search engines find and rank your website higher than many other websites. As a result, SEO helps companies get lots of traffic from search engines. Here are the main components of a good SEO strategy:
• Keywords
In the inbound marketing section we already talked about the importance of keywords. Keywords are the first step to an effective SEO strategy. The first     task of SEO marketers is to brainstorm some keywords and see how the competition looks by using
• Meta Description
Meta descriptions don’t necessarily have a huge impact on SEO directly, but they do have an impact on searchers and help increase overall organic  search traffic. Meta descriptions appear on SERPs, just under the headline and represent a short, up to 70 word description that is aimed to tell the searcher what the page is about, prior to visiting it.
• Content
Content is king. SEO marketers state that creating high-quality content is the most effective way to not only appear at the top of SERPs, but also create positive user experiences.
• Backlinks
Backlinks are the links from other websites to your web resource. Remember that it is not about the number of the links, but about the quality of the links(or the domains of those links) that point back to the website.
• Alt text
Alt text is basically the name of an image. When searching for products, users not only consider the “web” results but also the “images” results. In order to rank well in search engines, SEO marketers create high-quality images and give them a name that is relevant to the content the image is placed in.
Besides implementing these practices, SEO marketers also analyze their competitors’ actions and see what they are doing in terms of on-page, off-page optimization and social media.
You might already see that all of these three approaches have their pros and cons. There is no one size fits all approach, and businesses should take into account their needs in order to understand which one will be better for them.
For example, growth hacking is best suited for technology based start-ups who sell online software and need to attract a lot of users ASAP. So, before hiring an inbound marketer, growth hacker or SEO marketer, businesses should, first of all, analyze their activities and understand what they want to achieve.

What Is Inbound Marketer



An online marketing plan, or rather a successful and comprehensive one, is a combination of numerous and varying marketing techniques. A powerful marketing plan includes social media marketing, content marketing, inbound marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, growth hacking, website design and maintenance, lead generation, paid ads and so on. In most cases, customers do not know the differences between these methods and find it difficult to decide which specialist they need to hire for their business.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketers contrast themselves with traditional marketers, who use marketing methods like TV, print advertising, cold calling and so on. Inbound marketing is more techy and utilizes blogs, social media channels, emails, websites, etc. to increase brand awareness and attract new customers. Inbound marketers pride themselves that their method is unobtrusive, insightful, educational and helpful for consumers.
In contrast to outbound marketers who need to bring customers in, inbound marketers earn the attention of customers and make it easy for the company to get found by them instead. Inbound marketers seek long-term sustainable growth, and their primary goal is to make the company a thought leader in the corresponding relevant industry. Here are the main objectives of implementing inbound marketing:
Here are the main components of an inbound marketing strategy:
1. Keyword selection
Keywords help make your content more relevant and targeted, which increases the chances of attracting high quality leads. Content that includes more specific, long tail keywords is easier to rank up in Google and will catch the attention of those people who are really interested in your business.
2. Landing pages
Conversion-wise, landing pages are needed for all stages of the marketing funnel. Use long-tail, relevant keywords in the landing page content and make sure to create a separate landing page for each piece of promotional content.
3. Blogging
To achieve great results, inbound marketers blog on a consistent basis and ensure that their topics are directly connected to their ongoing campaigns. A crucial thing to keep in mind is that blogs should never be silent.
4. Email Strategy
Inbound marketers develop editorial calendars that allow them to send related emails before, during and after their marketing campaigns.
5. CTA Buttons
CTA buttons are needed for converting visitors into leads. The more interactive and visual the buttons are, the more conversions will take place.