Category Archives: Marketing Advice

• Saturday, November 1st, 2014

  Content Building and Best Practice to Keep You from the Wrath of Google’s Panda Updates

  Pandas and penguins were never such feared animals as they are now. Since Google’s algorithm updates have taken the name of these animals, they now often strike fear into the hearts and minds of many website owners and digital marketers. However, Google is really doing websites a favor because they are forcing ones who didn’t use best practices and promote the best user experience to change. Of course, businesses that were penalised won’t consider it a “favor”, but there are ways to recover and keep from getting penalised in the future. In late September, Google rolled out its latest Panda algorithm update 4.1. It is being called a softer Panda update because, according to Pierre Far, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, the latest update is aimed …

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• Friday, October 31st, 2014

  Coke vs. Pepsi: A Scary Halloween Ad Campaign

  This is a story about the perils of using your competition in advertising. It is also an excellent example of how brand advocates can save the day for you. Recently, Pepsi ran a social media campaign on their Facebook and Twitter pages that received a great deal of attention. With Halloween coming up, Pepsi thought it would be a cute idea to take a swipe at Coca Cola with the following image posted on social media: The text on the graphic simply says, “We wish you a scary Halloween!” The intention was obviously to offer the idea that being like Coca Cola for Halloween would be “scary”. The concept is not very strong in the first place. You might not have noticed at first glance …

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• Saturday, October 25th, 2014

  What Can You Learn from this Email Critique?

  A recent ClickZ article featured a critique of the email screen shot above. When you start marketing for your business, you can often spot problems with other email marketing campaigns. Careful analysis can help you improve your own email marketing because it helps you critique and analyse all of the details. You can even make a checklist to ensure that you don’t have any of the flaws in your own email sends. The author of the ClickZ article found 10 problems with the email. What do you see wrong with it? Here are some of the highlights of the problems. Look over your last email and look for any similar problems this company has with the email they sent out: Missing Newsletter Opt-in: The article’s …

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• Saturday, October 25th, 2014

  Social Media Marketing Trends for the Holidays

  As the infographic from Hubspot indicates, the holiday season is already here for us marketers and business owners. Last month we wrote about planning your holiday marketing campaigns. Now we are talking about social media marketing trends for the 2014 holiday season. This infographic highlights the survey results from over 120 marketing professionals, discussing their plans and predictions. It shows how important social media will be for marketing companies this holiday season. Here are the most important social media marketing trends this season.   $650 Billion in Holiday Spending Expected in 2014 The expected spend for the 2014 holiday season is $650 billion. That is an 8% increase from the $602 billion spent in 2013. The reach of social media shows how far and wide …

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• Friday, October 10th, 2014

  5 Common Email Mistakes to Avoid

  Sending commercial emails to your subscriber list is one of the best ways to communicate with your customers and network. It also is one of the least expensive ways to boost sales. The people connected to you by subscribing to your email newsletter are already interested in your product or service. Therefore, optimising these communications is a must! Here are 5 mistakes to avoid when emailing your subscriber list: Don’t Leave the Subject Line for Last: The subject line is one of the most important pieces of your email send. You should definitely review it last to make sure that your content matches the subject; however you should create your title first and base it on the overall theme and most important point of the …

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• Saturday, October 4th, 2014

  Prevent Damaging Your Brand with Paid Advertising Best Practices

  Even when you are running paid advertising campaigns, you should be thinking about establishing and maintaining your brand. Following some of the best practices for pay per click marketing helps improve your ROI and it also instills confidence in shoppers at the same time. However, when things go wrong with your campaigns, not only does it hurt your chances of converting a sale, it also can hurt your brain and confuse your potential shoppers. Here are 3 tips for paid advertising to help maintain your brand. Be Consistent with Your Messaging: Continue that headline from your paid ads on the landing page. If the messaging is not consistent then visitors who clicked through might feel lost, but they can also lose faith in your brand …

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• Saturday, October 4th, 2014

  Australian Marketing Trends for 2014

  With the 4th quarter upon us and the holidays looming ahead, we thought it was a good idea to take a look at the marketing trends for 2014 and what types of techniques and campaigns are working well to bring in the best ROI. Analyzing the trends will help you make the most of the important holiday season. This data on Asia-Pacific marketing trends comes from the CMO Council and Adobe. They benchmarked the level of digital marketing maturity and adoption across the Asia-Pacific countries. APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard Digital marketing continues to grow at startling rates all over the world, but it is especially in Asia. The importance is only going to continue to grow since 42 per cent of the world’s Internet …

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• Friday, October 3rd, 2014

  The Psychology of Conversions

  There is a great deal of psychology that goes into selling and the way you present your business to customers. What you say can influence how customers react, including taking out their credit card to make a purchase. It should come as no surprise that psychology has so much to do with the buying process because so many purchasing decisions are emotional. This infographic from HelpScout illustrates 10 Ways to Convert More Customers Using Psychology.   Help Customers Break Through “Action Paralysis” by Setting Minimums. This applies to different businesses and different products in various ways. As the example in the infographic shows, The American Cancer Society saw a 78% increase in donations by setting a minimum. You have probably seen this in many charity …

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• Wednesday, September 24th, 2014

  Time to Start Your Retail Holiday Campaigns Now

  If you haven’t already thought about starting your 2014 holiday campaigns, now is the time to not only plan your campaigns, but actually start them. Did you know that holiday shoppers begin their online search for holiday gifts in September? Of course, the “hot” shopping season begins after Halloween; however early searchers will give you hints as to the big trends for this year. In addition to that, planning and working with other departments such as creative and IT departments can often take some time to get your holiday banners, coding, and landing pages designed and optimised. Here are a few ideas for getting a head start on holiday campaigns: Product Listing Ads Start compiling your databases and get your PLA campaigns in place. Last …

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• Saturday, September 6th, 2014

  Small Business Social Media Disasters: Prevention, Coping, Moving On

  A Brisbane restaurant learned a very important lesson in social media last month. Hopefully it doesn’t end up being a painful lesson for the small business. Freestyle Tout in Rosalie, Brisbane has been around since 1996. It is a dessert restaurant also searing tapas, cocktails, and savoury specials too. Freestyle Tout has a very active Facebook page, so owner Martin Duncan took to the page to ask customers a favour. The customers and Facebook users did not appreciate Martin’s seemingly harmless plea that makes perfect sense to any business owner: Photo Credit: LocBox.com It makes perfect sense to a business owner, especially a restaurant owner to ask that the majority of seat holders order something to eat. However, it does not make sense in the …

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