Mobile marketing

Mobile marketing is marketing through mobile devices, phones and internet. Some of these methods include text messages (SMS), picture messages, audio messages (MMS) and mobile internet. In an era like this where the majority of potential customers own or have access to mobile phones including mobile marketing, like social media marketing, would seem to be a very smart idea for any businesses marketing campaign. Depending on your customer group and your marketing objective there are many different marketing techniques you could use to market your business, product or service such as:

• Sales promotions - 'Text this number back to receive vouchers and discounts'
• Special offers - Sending special codes to existing loyal customers
• Information - Time, critical issues, reminders about events, products, services or appointments

Before begin mobile marketing there are several things you must take into account. 

• Check whether or not the person is eligible to receive the information in the text being sent out. 
• Deciding how to collect the numbers.
• Deciding if the customer will be charged to receive the text, and if so how much they will be charged.
• Know how to stop the message if requested.
• Exploring how to make your messages concise and interesting.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords is an online advertising service, developed by Google. The more you pay-per-click (PPC) the more likely your ad will appear in the search results. However, Google uses something called a "quality score" and it is not just the highest bid that is taken into account. Quality sore is when Google looks at how relevant and useful your ad is to the searcher and the search terms they’ve used. It also looks at how many clicks your ad has received previously (its click-through rate) and how relevant your landing page is. The higher your quality score, the better, even if your maximum bid is less than a rival bidder, you still may appear above their ad if your quality score is better. Although AdWords is not a free service it is relatively cheap and effective way to advertise your company/product.

Google Analytics

Google analytics is a freemium web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Integrated with AdWords, users can now review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals). This can be anything from sales to downl

oading a file, such as:

• Show you where your visitors are coming from
• What they did on your site
• How long they were on your site
• Tell you which of your pages receives the most traffic
• What keywords from the search engines brought your visitors to your site
• See your most important analytic data first
• Determine where your most frequent visitors are from
• Learn what people are searching for on your site
• Identify the wort performing pages
• Determine weather you need a mobile site

Using all of this information can help you make more informed decisions about potential changes to your website. 

How to beat banner blindness

1. Placing your banner ad above the field on a web page will gain more attention because of how viewers read a webpage. As i stated in the last blog viewers read a webpage in an "F" shape, which would mean that placing your ad on the top of the page would mean that it would be the first thing a viewer reads. 

2. Design your advert in the same form and function of the web page you are placing your ad on. This is known as native advertising, this entails your ad having the same looks and feel as the web page. This provides higher viability for your advert. 

3. Offering ads to users based on their interests and performances is a great way to reach your target audience. Under this term there is behavioral targeting which is essentially the same concept. Users will be served ads based on their browser history on the internet.

4. Tweak your ads design so that it will stand out on the web page. Take into account colour schemes, text and images while keeping in mind to stay as close to your brands image. Contrasting with the web page will call more attention to the ad and its content. For example if the host site is light - coloured use dark and so on. Maybe thing of including a CTA (Call - to - action) button. 

 

Banner blindness

Banner blindness is the phenomenon where the visitors on the website consciously or subconsciously ignore banner ads. Benway and Lane conducted a study on website usability. What they found was that any information provided through any ad banner was being over looked by users and people were altogether overlooking banners no matter where they were placed on the screen. What was even more surprising was they found that the traditional practice of making banners large, colourful and flashy had little effect on the blindness. Although the first ever banner had a click-through rate of 44% current banner ads have a miserable click-through rate of 0.1%.

Why does this exist? Well it was found that when users scan a webpage they normally read only the information that is relevant for them and ignore everything they do not need. An eye tracking study by Nielsen revealed that users would mostly navigate a webpage in an 'f' shapeed pattern starting on the content on the top of the page. Today as users are bombarded with ads on every site they have learned to focus on just the info permitted to them.

Banner advertising

A banner ad, also known as a web ad, is an advertisement that is displayed in a webpage. The advertisement consists of an image ( jpg., png., gif.) or a multimedia object (this could be created using flash or HTML5). By embedding the advertisement into the website it is intended to attract traffic to the website, of the business/service/product advertised, by linking to the website of the advertiser. Banners can also function as regular, print advertisements to inform or notify about a new product, to increase brand awareness and so on. Banner ads can come in a variety of sizes, 468x60, which is considered to be a full sized ad, 728x90, which is a leaderboard, and so on.You can start a banner advertising campaign with Google Adwords or any other display network.

Today the world of banner ads has developed from banners ads you see on websites to social media ads like Facebook Banners, Instagram Sponsored Ads, Snapchat Geofilters and other social media ads. Online advertising formats as banner ads, video, rich media and sponsorship will account for the largest share of digital ad spending. 

It is easy to grow awareness using banner ads, businesses such as apple and Nike use banner ads to grow their businesses. With people seeing your adds on a load of websites they will easily recognize your brand in future. It is a great way to build a users base and if somebody came on your website but didn’t sign up on your newsletter or didn’t try out your product you can re-target them with banner ads. 

When choosing a site to place your banner advert make sure to take into account: 

• How much traffic the website gets.
• The price they will expect.
• Weather or not your target audience visits this website.
• Is this website in your industry or does it relate to your products, services, or interests.

When creating the banner ad follow these steps:

1. Take into account your target audience and what you want from them. Do you want them to click the ad and go to your site, would you like them to sign up for your newsletter etc.
2. Choose the size you wish your advert to be and remember the simpler the banner ad is the easier you can communicate the right message to your audience make sure no to overcrowd your ad and make it look sloppy.
3. Choose the text for your ad carefully and maybe use a CTA (call to action) button.
4. Take into account what font you are going to use, make sure it is readable? 
5. Low quality photos and images used in a banner ad can create the idea that your business is not great.
6. If you want to create professional banner ads and you want people to recognize your brand on the internet I recommend you to stay close to your brand color while also trying to contrast with the page it is on, this might mean tweaking the advert for every site you with the ad to be on.
7. Don't forget you company name logo and website.

Like any form of advertising you just need to know how to optimize it and get the best out of it. Try checking out other companies banner ads before starting your own and see how it is normally done, what is best to avoid, what makes it more attractive and so forth.

Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on being found by customers rather than seeking them out, like in traditional marketing

. 

What are strategies that seek out customers?

These are techniques that are poorly targeted and interrupt customers in their day to day lives. This sometimes causes them to not interact or becoming annoyed with the brand. Worst case scenario, the associate that annoyed feeling with the brand and have a negative feeling toward the brand making them more likely to purchase from competitors. Examples of this is cold-calling, junk mail, spam, etc.

The fact is these techniques are becoming less effective anyway with the developments in technology e.g. Caller ID, block calls, filter block mass email. 

Inbound marketing is essentially the opposite of outbound marketing techniques. Businesses set up blogs and social media sites that people will look for and subscribe to. Having the customer come to you makes it more likely that they will read the information you offer on these sites. Creating useful content on the site keeps customers interested and having contact info means they can contact you when they want rather than you spending money on cold-calls. 

Website rules

 When setting up a website keep in mind that there are people who will be viewing your website with disabilities such as visual, hearing, physical, speech, cognitive, neurological and so on. Remember to include aids to cater to a wider variety of people. Keep the content on your site simple and easy to read. Offer large print or sound files to assist users who need it. There is no problem experimenting with different font types but keep them easy to read, you don't want people having difficulty reading your text. Make sure to keep the background of the text a neutral colour also as it is difficult to read texts off some colored backgrounds, play around with the colour scheme and find out what works best. Navigation is very important on your website! Double check that users can easily navigate around your site and find their way back to the homepage simply. The best way to keep your site simple is to avoid having any pop-ups and other distractions, Keep in mind that there is information that must appear on your website according to the EU Ecommerce Directive. The minimum information that your business website must have is:

• Your name/Trading name
• The address you are trading from
• An email address
• Company registration number
• Registered office address
• VAT number if you are registered even if you are not selling online. 

You are also required to protect the privacy of your visitors. The office of the Data Protection Commissioner, Ireland sums up the data responsibility for organisations that you must follow on your website/blog. They are as follows:

• Obtain information fairly 
• Keep it only for the specified purpose
• Process it only in the ways compatible within the purpose for which it was obtained
• Keep it safe and secure
• Ensure that it is adequate, relevant and not excessive
• Retain it for no longer than needed
• On the request of the individual  you must give a copy to them

In addition to the protection of visitors privacy your website needs appropriate security measures against unauthorized access. You can do this by using a secure socket layer on the parts of your website where you capture and retain personal data. 

Why and how you should survey online

The best way to get customer feedback? A survey! This doesn't mean you need to forget digital marketing strategies either, technology has evolved so that a lot of strategies you can do offline i.e. Banners, etc. are also offered online too. In fact having a survey online is way more efficient as it will be analysed for you! 

Creating a survey online is much like creating one offline, to begin you must know what you wish to find out and what actions you want to take as a result of the survey. Make sure to list the most important topics first and remember to ask exactly what you want to know, you can't solve the problem if you ask the wrong question. Try different ways of phrasing the question so the respondents do not get confused. You may want to write and rewrite the question several times before you have the perfect question(s) for each topic. There are different types of questions better suited to get you the best information on return -open-ended, closed, rating and multiple choice. Make sure to keep your questions unbiased!! Remember to reread your questionnaire to find any major holes, better yet get someone else to do the questionnaire for you as a trial run. While your at it, time how long the questionnaire takes to fill out. A survey should take less than 15 minutes or people will be less willing to take part in it. Try protesting the survey on a small group of people to obtain feedback and revise again. Keep protesting and revising until the survey is perfect and you can begin distributing. 

When posting your survey online the answers will be automatically analysed for you -how many people completed the survey, how many of the same answers there were, etc. Interaction with customers is a must and giving them a chance to give feedback on your business/product/service makes them feel involved. So remember the to create an online survey as well as hard compiles next time, you will get more willing participants and a broader range of opinions. 

Blogging as a business

How can blogging help spread the word of your brand? A blog is a regularly run website or web page. It is typically run by an individual or a small group, it is usually written in an informative or conversational style. A bog post can be any size a sentence, a paragraph or a page long. There are free sites in which you can register and create a website by choosing a template to start. Having a blog can allow you to post product reviews, demonstrations, comments about your business, products, services etc. Having a blog is a less formal way of communicating with your customers. Including opinions and reviews about your business/product/service can influence how conversations about your company goes. Blogs are open to feed back and this is the best way to create a good business image. 

Ways to use blogging to market your business/product/service:

• Highlight your businesses expertise.
• Share information about your latest news.
• Provide information on your products/services.
• Share instruction manuals, guides and tips.
• Offer advice and useful information.
   

Integrating digital and traditional marketing

While many companies just opt for one or the other the best marketing strategy is to integrate digital and traditional marketing to widen the rang of the potential customers. There are many ways to integrate both digital and traditional marketing strategies. In recent years companies have become very imaginative with integration. 

The most commonly used integration method that is seen virtually everywhere nowadays is having their offline ads encouraging the reader to continue the conversation online. Examples include: Flyers prompting consumers to "like" them on Facebook or "follow" them on twitter, Facebook organised events encouraging people to attend these live events. Even at these events the spokesperson could ask the audience to share their experience online and follow their businesses page.

Another commonly known integration method is traditional mailing being followed with a  supportive email campaign. Sending out an email to those who have revived the mail will ensure that those who have disregarded the the mail will  have a second chance to view your content. This strengthens the brands name and may even mean more traffic on your site or social media or vice versa. 

Now don't let these strategies be your only choices, as i have stated before companies have come up with their own original ideas. These companies have had the best success with integration and most believe it is the best way to market your product, service or business.

Want to know the difference between digital and traditional marketing?

Traditional marketing is based offline whereas digital marketing is all online. The largest difference between the digital and traditional is the cost. Sites such as Linkedln, Facebook and so forth aren't free if you wish to be promoting your business on them although it is by far a lot cheaper than any form of traditional marketing. Printing out brochures, flyers billboard posters cost quite a bit to get as many as would be needed to get the word out. To pay for television adverts and any other traditional marketing strategy can cost an amount of money small businesses could never have paid for. Making digital marketing the best marketing strategy for businesses of every size, not just the large ones with a lot of money to spend on every campaign. 

The second difference between digital and traditional marketing is the time needed. While you need to take into account the amount of time needed to print your paper advertisements, like flyers and such, the only time you need to account for with digital marketing is the time you may need to allocate toward making it. A big plus is that once you send out your information on the internet it could go viral within a matter of hours, hundreds of people could read your advert within an hour.

While your text online is easily changed, your traditional is less easy to edit. Once your your flyers, brochures or billboards are up and out in the world there is no way to easily correct a mistake such as a misspelled word. one of the perks about marketing online is that once a mistake it is noticed it is very simple to edit your post whether its on social media or an advert on google. 

Although you can hand out a flyer to everyone you pass on a street there is no guarantee that each or even half of those people will read the information you have handed them. An advantage with your online advertisements is that you can track every one of your advertisements, you can know exactly how many people have viewed your information and where they went from there.

Digital marketing is a brilliant platform to easily promote your business/product as a great deal of the target market is online these days and, as i have stated before, can be spread quickly. However there is an entire set of potential customers out there that do not have internet connection or who do not have any social media profiles, meaning to limit yourself to only market online you are ignoring an entire section of the market. This is why companies tend to opt for marketing in both traditional and digital.

Viral marketing

Viral marketing, a marketing technique that encourages the passing on of information, like a virus, your post spreads. How it works - By using pre-existing social media networks you can easily spread brand awareness. Viral marketing can take form of anything, video clips, ebooks, text messages, emails, interactive flash games or web pages. But for viral marketing to be successful your message needs to be captivating, try making your post creative, different, amusing or special the receiver needs to be encouraged to share your message. The success of your post going viral is all down to your potential customer forwarding your information. 

Now, accept the fact that some viral marketing techniques work better than others. Remember also that your viral marketing campaign need not include all the strategies but the more you have may make for a more successful campaign. Three of the most commonly used strategies are:

1. Give away's - Free products or services are one of the quickest way to grab the attention of the audience. Cheap or inexpensive way generate a wave of interest, but free will usually do it much faster. 

2. Team up with unlikely partners - Teaming up with people outside of your usual industry means a new potential customers. This could also mean creating a buzz around your campaign.

3. CTA buttons - Call to action buttons makes it easy for people to share your content.When you compel your new visitors to share your content, you’re able to increase the chances of getting more traffic to your page and your message is spread to an audience that may not be your target audience but may still be interested in your product/service. 

Social media campaign do's and don'ts

Social media has become a large part of the daily lives of most

people these days, people spend hours on there social media accounts catching up on peoples lives, reading articles etc. This means using social media as a marketing platform would be a huge advantage. Make sure that you apply smart integration with social media channels that suit your brand image and the product/service you wish to promote. Not all social media channels will bring about the positive feed back you are looking for but this can be used to your advantage. Publicly dealing with customers problems and trying to help will create a positive image for your brand. Keeping a social media account running, or multiple, can be difficult. You must interact with customers, listen to their criticisms and adapt, have quality posts, etc. You should ensure you have a social media team that will be about quality over quantity. Content is key!  Putting effort into making your social media accounts engaging, proactive and fun will make all the difference. Just by adding puzzles, teaser or games could create a buzz around your business.

Try to avoid restricting feedback to a Facebook wall instead try setting up a discussion board. Also don't just post and move on make sure to interact with customers weather the feed back is good, bad or indifferent, constant interaction with customers or potential customers will create a good name around your brand. Never try to be something you are not. Be ethical, deceiving or lying to your potential customers will not pay off because if someone suspects then, creating a false feel to your brand and lying and deceiving will more than likely go wrong leaving only bad words in the mouths of your audience.

SEO and SEM

SEO
Search engine optimization ensures that your website

will be  constructed in such a way that it will be
returned high on the first page of results for any
relevant search made. This is to maximize the number of visitors to a website. This is essentially getting traffic on your website from the 'free' search results on search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo who 's primary results are ranked on how relevant they are to the search.
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SEM
Search engine marketing is a form of internet marketing. It involves promoting your site by increasing viability on search engine result pages. On websites such as Google Adwords. Google Adwords is a site in which you can bid for certain keywords for your website against other advertisers. If you win the keyword for your website, the site will appear on the search list as an advert high on the list.

Stages of a digital marketing campaign

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for the marketing of products and/or services using digital technologies, including the internet, mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium. With most competitors and potential customers online the only way to stay ahead is digital marketing. There are six steps to ensure a successful digital marketing campaign for any business. The stages involved in a digital marketing campaign are underpinned in the SOSTAC model. SOSTAC stands for:

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1. Situation analysis - Analyse the companies position, the best way to do this is to ask where is the company now?, getting customer insight, competitor analysis and keeping up with market trends.

 

2. Objective - The first step is to set an objective, an overall goal that your campaign is about. Ask yourself, 'what is it that i would like to have achieved at the end of this campaign?', and go from there. Remember the goal must be realistic, there is no point setting a goal you know you will not obtain. Identify methods to measure your performance such as Google Analytics. Don't forget to also set a time period in which you would like to achieve the objective. The best way to stay on track is to stick to the SMART acronym. Make sure your objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time based.

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3. Strategies - How to get there, ask yourself these simple questions.  How do you wish to divide up the market?, which part of the market is going to be your target market (a particular group of consumers at which a product or service is aimed) and how would you like to be perceived in each segment of the market.

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4. Tactics - Now to deal with how your going to implement your strategies. Decide on what communication tools you are going to use and how you are going to use them. Figure out what message you wish to communicate to the public. Make sure you are consistent across the bored so that the public will recognize your company straight away.

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5. Actions - It is time to assign jobs and time limits. Who is going to do what?, when are they going to do it?, what resources are available for this action?, what are the key performance measurements? and how are they going to be recorded?

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6. Control - This is the most important of them all, without control your campaign could fail. Keep in mind your objectives, strategies and tactics at this moment, do action performances measure up? Did you make the right choices with your strategies? Is the message you wish to communicate consistent throughout your campaign? Make sure to keep the frequency of reports up so that your control over the campaign does not slip. To create a successful campaign control is a must.

About

Hello,
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My name is Jessica. I am a student at Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa studying Business Studies, Fetac Level 5.

This page has been set up as part of an assignment for my digital marketing module. The aim of the assignment is to develop and run a digital marketing campaign in order to create an online digital marketing business.
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The business i have created is Digi Hand, a helping hand in digital marketing. I am going to try my best to inform you on any and all information i have on digital marketing. I am also happy to answer any queries you may have to the best of my abilities.