Creating a website is hardly a simple task. It requires extensive planning, intricate design and development work, and the right team of skilled experts to make it all possible. Each and every website is different because all brands have varying objectives and unique needs that they need to fulfill. That being said there is no “one size fits all” website design for brands that really want to use their online presence to promote business growth.

Our approach to design is often unique to each project’s requirements and scale. In the case of larger website projects, we have found that scalability, flexibility, and maintaining a consistent brand style across a large number of pages – often 10,000+ present some of the biggest logistical challenges.

An elegant solution to this is to follow an atomic design process. This is a much more modular and granular approach to website design and build. Rather than designing pre-set page templates and layouts, atomic design is the design of building blocks or content modules that can be added, duplicated and moved within a set of defined rules to create unique pages that work for each type of content and page on a site, while keeping it on-brand.

The atomic design methodology is broken down into 5 distinct phases of website design:

Atoms

In scientific terms, atoms are the basic building blocks that together make up matter. When you translate that over to a website design methodology, they serve a similar purpose. Atoms act as the basic building blocks for all of your website design efforts. While they aren’t design elements that can stand alone, together they create different elements that are used throughout your website’s layout.
In atomic website design, atoms serve as the starting point for all parts of your website design project. Without clearly creating and defining certain design elements, your project would lack consistency and cohesiveness. This holds true especially for projects that encompass an extensive amount of pages. Without defining basic design elements such as font on mobile or a paragraph style for section headers, it would be difficult to not only design but edit different pages as you continue through the design process. Atoms can include any of the following:

• fonts
• color schemes
• buttons
• form fields
• logos
• inputs
• labels

When following this methodology, a lot of designers create their atoms and compile them in a unique style guide. This holds all of the essential atoms you need so that you can pull pieces of each as you start the bigger design elements. Aside from selecting color palettes, or determining what all paragraphs would look like on your pages, designers have to think about the mobile and desktop versions of each as well.

Molecules

In chemistry, molecules represent the smallest part of any chemical element, and are made up from atoms combined together. Similarly, with the atomic design process, molecules are design features that are made up of the basic building blocks defined in the style guide—the atoms.

To better grasp how a molecule would be created in a website design, think about a simple search form. You may combine a button (atom) with the appropriate input (atom) and label (atom) to create a full-functioning search bar (molecule). Those items (the button, input, and label) together create something that is incredibly useful and essential to the functionality of the site, however if they were to act alone, they wouldn’t be as valuable.

Organisms

Organisms are groups of molecules together. What makes these organisms different from a molecule is that there are several of them, allowing the complexity to reach a new level. In website design, organisms are several molecules combined together on a section of your page.
When you think about the masthead at the top of your homepage, you can compare that to molecules combined together to form an organism. On your masthead you likely have your navigation, your search bar, and your logo all together to help your users navigate your site easily. Each of those three features could be used alone if they had to be (molecules). However, if you were to break them down even more, they likely wouldn’t stand alone, they would simply be the basic building blocks necessary to help create the other functionalities of your site (atoms).

Templates

The next phase doesn’t align as closely with chemistry as the previous sections have. Templates are created by putting together all of the organisms to create a website page. This provides you with a much deeper understanding of what the design and page will look like once it’s completed and live.
For the most part, templates are created to show structure and layout—not the specifics of what content will actually be on the page. You can see things like sizing and dimensions, but not how the actual content would fit in. Templates are designed to give a general idea as to what to expect when your site is live, and show how all of the pieces will come together to create a functioning page.

Pages

Very similarly to templates, pages are created to give an even more realistic outlook onto what each page will look like. Often there will be placeholders (ex. “content goes here”) and some imagery to provide a vivid sense of how the page will function.
Since this phase offers the most realistic and accurate depiction of what is to be expected once the website is live, this section is essential for testing and review. You can fully see how content will appear, how the site will function, how images will look next to each other, how text and photos can come together, and how the overall flow of the website and each page will appear. From here, you can make any edits necessary if you’re finding that certain functionalities seem off and the design isn’t supporting your needs as originally intended.

Scalability and Consistency

The best part of this type of website design is that you’re able to lay out exactly what to expect as you move from each design element to the next. By using the building blocks initially created together to create more complex systems within your interface, you can effortlessly focus on scalability and consistency, ensuring your project is completed to serve your users in the most cohesive and user-friendly way possible.

 

Creating a website is hardly a simple task. It requires extensive planning, intricate design and development work, and the right team of skilled experts to make it all possible. Each and every website is different because all brands have varying objectives and unique needs that they need to fulfill. That being said there is no “one size fits all” website design for brands that really want to use their online presence to promote business growth.

Our approach to design is often unique to each project’s requirements and scale. In the case of larger website projects, we have found that scalability, flexibility, and maintaining a consistent brand style across a large number of pages – often 10,000+ present some of the biggest logistical challenges.

An elegant solution to this is to follow an atomic design process. This is a much more modular and granular approach to website design and build. Rather than designing pre-set page templates and layouts, atomic design is the design of building blocks or content modules that can be added, duplicated and moved within a set of defined rules to create unique pages that work for each type of content and page on a site, while keeping it on-brand.

The atomic design methodology is broken down into 5 distinct phases of website design:

Atoms

In scientific terms, atoms are the basic building blocks that together make up matter. When you translate that over to a website design methodology, they serve a similar purpose. Atoms act as the basic building blocks for all of your website design efforts. While they aren’t design elements that can stand alone, together they create different elements that are used throughout your website’s layout.
In atomic website design, atoms serve as the starting point for all parts of your website design project. Without clearly creating and defining certain design elements, your project would lack consistency and cohesiveness. This holds true especially for projects that encompass an extensive amount of pages. Without defining basic design elements such as font on mobile or a paragraph style for section headers, it would be difficult to not only design but edit different pages as you continue through the design process. Atoms can include any of the following:

• fonts
• color schemes
• buttons
• form fields
• logos
• inputs
• labels

When following this methodology, a lot of designers create their atoms and compile them in a unique style guide. This holds all of the essential atoms you need so that you can pull pieces of each as you start the bigger design elements. Aside from selecting color palettes, or determining what all paragraphs would look like on your pages, designers have to think about the mobile and desktop versions of each as well.

Molecules

In chemistry, molecules represent the smallest part of any chemical element, and are made up from atoms combined together. Similarly, with the atomic design process, molecules are design features that are made up of the basic building blocks defined in the style guide—the atoms.

To better grasp how a molecule would be created in a website design, think about a simple search form. You may combine a button (atom) with the appropriate input (atom) and label (atom) to create a full-functioning search bar (molecule). Those items (the button, input, and label) together create something that is incredibly useful and essential to the functionality of the site, however if they were to act alone, they wouldn’t be as valuable.

Organisms

Organisms are groups of molecules together. What makes these organisms different from a molecule is that there are several of them, allowing the complexity to reach a new level. In website design, organisms are several molecules combined together on a section of your page.
When you think about the masthead at the top of your homepage, you can compare that to molecules combined together to form an organism. On your masthead you likely have your navigation, your search bar, and your logo all together to help your users navigate your site easily. Each of those three features could be used alone if they had to be (molecules). However, if you were to break them down even more, they likely wouldn’t stand alone, they would simply be the basic building blocks necessary to help create the other functionalities of your site (atoms).

Templates

The next phase doesn’t align as closely with chemistry as the previous sections have. Templates are created by putting together all of the organisms to create a website page. This provides you with a much deeper understanding of what the design and page will look like once it’s completed and live.
For the most part, templates are created to show structure and layout—not the specifics of what content will actually be on the page. You can see things like sizing and dimensions, but not how the actual content would fit in. Templates are designed to give a general idea as to what to expect when your site is live, and show how all of the pieces will come together to create a functioning page.

Pages

Very similarly to templates, pages are created to give an even more realistic outlook onto what each page will look like. Often there will be placeholders (ex. “content goes here”) and some imagery to provide a vivid sense of how the page will function.
Since this phase offers the most realistic and accurate depiction of what is to be expected once the website is live, this section is essential for testing and review. You can fully see how content will appear, how the site will function, how images will look next to each other, how text and photos can come together, and how the overall flow of the website and each page will appear. From here, you can make any edits necessary if you’re finding that certain functionalities seem off and the design isn’t supporting your needs as originally intended.

Scalability and Consistency

The best part of this type of website design is that you’re able to lay out exactly what to expect as you move from each design element to the next. By using the building blocks initially created together to create more complex systems within your interface, you can effortlessly focus on scalability and consistency, ensuring your project is completed to serve your users in the most cohesive and user-friendly way possible.

 

2015 is now well and truly behind us, and the world of B2B marketing in 2016 has started with a bang. B2B businesses need to get off to a good start in the New Year, and one of the best ways to do that is to create a holistic marketing strategy that incorporates some newer trends that other businesses aren’t willing to take chances on using.

2015 introduced lots of new and surprising trends and possibilities in the world of B2B marketing, and 2016 will mark the year many of these trends start to become a mainstay of marketing campaigns by brands that understand how to execute these new possibilities in order to stand out from the competition and generate the best ROI possible. Here are some facets of digital marketing where change is on the horizon in 2016, change that B2B businesses can use to their advantage when incorporating some of these new trends into their marketing strategies for 2016.

Site Personalization

When it comes to personalization, email seems to be the most popular channel referenced and thought of among B2B marketers – but in 2016 there will also be a push towards website personalization for each visitor as well. This includes a different homepage layout based on demographic, presenting products or services that are similar or pair up well with past audience behavior, location-based content, and loyalty rewards. These variations can be determined by what stage of the buying process an individual user is on, and serving more appropriate content or products and services across your website.

Invest in personalization as a part of your brand’s online digital experience may seem risky for B2Bs, but your customers unconsciously want and expect you to provide custom-tailored products and services on your site, based on their previous history with your business and will reward you with more sales or conversions when set up properly. An underlying benefit of presenting your online customers with dynamic content is that they will stay on your website longer, visit more often, and engage more with your business.

Whether they spend their time reading your blog, exploring the products and services you have to offer, downloading an interest form or whitepaper, or, most importantly, making a purchase, keeping users engaged with your website provides a myriads of advantages. Google will also recognize that your website is giving users what they’re searching for based on their engagement and bump your organic search rankings for specific pages.

At the end of the day, site personalization is all about appeasing your users with dynamic content that suits their needs and wants, but in doing so, it will also generate more qualified traffic to your website. Netflix, Amazon, and eBay are just a few businesses that have begun to master site personalization, and in 2016 look for more companies in the B2B space to start jump on the bandwagon and offer personalized content on their websites to users.

Email Marketing

With the number of email users in the U.S. expected to grow to 239 million in 2016 and with B2B companies ranking email marketing as one of the best channels in terms of return on investment, 2016 will be the year that “innovative” email tactics like personalization will become the industry standard.

Recent studies have found that 66% of emails are now opened on mobile devices, and more than ever before the shear amount of different email platforms means that special attention needs to be paid to subject lines and image load times. It’s essential to remember what was the last interaction that potential or existing customers had with your brand so that you can send customers tailored emails like:

• A Welcome Series
• General Newsletters
• Form Submission Thank You
• Post Purchase Review
• Loyalty Appreciation
• Events
• Order Status

You have to send emails at the right time for each of your customers, but you also have to segment your emails based on demographics such as company vertical and size. Personalization in 2016 will go beyond basic tactics like inserting a customer’s name in your email – customers in 2016 will be expecting personalized emails based off their past online purchases and interests.

Companies will start to take the time and effort to create email campaigns that communicate to users that they are aware of their relationship and interactions with their online brand, and users will take notice, appreciate the effort, and reward businesses with better email performance in terms of key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rate, lower bounce rate, higher open rate, and higher click through rate.

Digital Assistants

With the multitude of digital assistants across various platforms, there are a multitude of options that users can use to help them quickly and efficiently find what they’re looking for without a single keystroke. More than ever before, digital assistants can understand and execute the requests of users quickly and correctly – making them an easy way to search for things when on the go with a mobile device. As a result, digital assistants will slowly began to change the core of digital marketing by changing how users interact with the internet and how marketers are forced to optimize their digital content for conversational queries on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

As more people conduct searches on the go in 2016 and digital assistants drastically improve, users will conduct more voice queries and marketers will begin to have to create content that is not only informational, but colloquial as well, both for retail products and B2B services. Voice search is not a temporary fad, and Google, Microsoft, Apple, and even Facebook are constantly making improvements to their digital assistants so that they can better understand the questions and commands of the users interacting with them.

Instagram Advertising

Instagram has really taken off as a social media platform in the past several years, trailing only its parent company, Facebook, as the second largest social network and engaging 400 million active users per month. Instagram has opened up its advertising offerings to everyone this year, and due to high engagement with initial ads, eMarketer has projected that Instagram’s ad revenue will jump from $595 million in 2015 to $1.48 billion in 2016. The visual nature of the platform and the advertising features that it has integrated from Facebook will resonate with businesses and users alike, making Instagram and it’s advertising options a major player in the social media marketing landscape of 2016.

When marketers were asked which social media sites they were interested in allocating their ad budget towards in a February 2015 survey, 72% of them responded with Instagram. Why are marketers so eager to invest in Instagram advertising? Besides the jump in users from 77.6 million in 2015 to 89.4 million in 2016, the platform’s engagement rates are quite high when compared to those of Facebook and Twitter.

What makes Instagram so intriguing is that its advertising is not only based off its own behavioral data, but it will also replicate Facebook’s targeted advertising capabilities, like Custom Audiences. The image and photo-centric platform not only gives advertisers room to be creative in their ads, but it now will let them specifically go after their ideal user. Compared to ads on other social media networks, Instagram ads are subtle and outside of a small ‘sponsored’ label in the top right corner and the option for a CTA in the bottom right, they look exactly like any other post someone might upload.

Instagram advertising is great for increasing brand engagement, but the next step for marketers is to get their users to act and click on the CTAs provided to them in the sponsored posts. The platform is off to a great start with the creative freedom and unique, specific targeting capabilities it offers. While social media historically hasn’t been a huge investment for most B2B marketers, Instagram’s platform does offer up some unique opportunities that may be worth taking a risk on when going after businesses that have younger employees. 2016 will be the year that Instagram advertising will join Facebook and Linkedin in the world of social media advertising that adventurous B2Bs add to their marketing strategies.

Advanced Content Marketing

Content has become the standard for any B2B business’ digital strategy in the past several years, and for brands to really stand out and capture the attention of their audiences, they will have to do more than just branding, maintaining a blog, and actively engaging users on social with their content. With search engines constantly improving their retargeting and RLSA ads, and social advertising revenue expected to reach $9.7 billion in 2016, businesses will start to use more advanced forms of content marketing like storytelling and micro-targeting to communicate with and reach out to their highly-qualified potential customers.

Content marketing has always been about speaking to the needs of an audience. In 2015 76% of U.S. marketers said they would plan to increase their investment in content marketing and the number of marketers, as well as content occupying the internet, will only grow larger in 2016. So, how will B2B companies stand out from all the content clutter and distinguish themselves with their audience? Focusing on the emotions that connect their brand with their users and communicating their core messaging to that unique audience is a good start. Good B2B companies will start to break down their target audience beyond just a simple demographic such as age group and gender. Niche targeting will focus on a more unique audience that contains more qualified users that are far more interested in their products or services, making the ROI in the long term much higher.

In 2016, companies will start to break down their target audience beyond just a simple targeting like age group and gender. Even social media advertising has evolved to include specific targeting like interests, behavior, and lookalike targeting. Smart marketers in the B2B space will not worry about reaching less people with this type of marketing in comparison to traditional advertising where ads were blasted to a large group. Niche targeting will focus on a more unique audience that contains more qualified users that are far more interested in their products or services, making the ROI in the long term much higher.

Location-Based Marketing

Location-based marketing has been around for some time now, but in 2016 it will really start to be an instrumental tool for how B2B businesses advertise to consumers on-the-go. Not only does the continued boost in smartphone users year-over-year play a role, but also the arrival of wearable technology, and new developments in location-based marketing itself will start to make geotargeting and beacon technology more popular among marketers.

The number of smartphone users in the U.S. is projected to jump from 190.5 million in 2015 to 207.2 million in 2016. Wearable technology grew by almost 60% in 2015, and next year 63.7 million U.S. adults will use wearables. With just the sheer number of mobile and wearable technology users predicted to rise in 2016 and beyond, it’s no doubt that location-based marketing will take off to carter to these on-the-go devices.

Digital advertisers have always taken a leap towards innovation in their strategies, and location marketing presents a massive opportunity with a surface that’s hardly been scratched. For B2Bs specifically, a huge use-case for more specific location-based marketing is event and conference targeting. While beacons and geofencing allow this to happen in some capacity, narrowing down location further to specific conventional halls and areas of a convention without having to set up a beacon and spend large sums for a booth or exhibition opens up lots of doors for businesses that would be otherwise unable to leverage an event with the kind of ROI to make it worthwhile.

The use of smartphones and wearable technology will only increase in the coming years, and with top companies investing in the potential of location based marketing, expect to see a lot more messages and notifications as you visit your favorite stores in 2016.

Video Advertising

We see the influence that online video advertisements have had across various digital media platforms, and that momentum will not slow down in 2016. With the number of people consuming digital media increasing, the potential to reach customers through these channels is becoming more effective than investing in traditional advertising methods such as TV commercials or print ads. Marketers in the B2B space are recognizing the opportunities that lie in online video advertising and that an omnichannel video marketing campaign is required to succeed, and there will be more online video ads in 2016 as a result.

According to a survey conducted by BrightRoll, 72% of ad agencies believe that online video advertising is as effective, if not more so, than television. Video advertising is growing across channels outside of platforms with established video services like YouTube and Vimeo. Facebook and Twitter in particular, along with other social media platforms, are making strides in their advertising capabilities as individuals consume more and more video content through their mobile devices.

Television will be around for some time yet, and with them more traditional commercials and ads will stay an important part of any B2B advertising campaign that utilizes multimedia. However, with the constantly changing digital landscape, we can expect to see a consistent increase in online video ads in 2016.

Programmatic Digital Ad Spending

The process of using software to buy digital advertising instead of the traditional method of having humans buying and selling ads, programmatic advertising has a bright future indeed. Programmatic digital display ad spending is estimated to top out at $15.43 billion in 2015, which will account for 59% of spend on all digital display ad spending. Automated digital ad buying will only grow in 2016 as mobile websites and apps continue to gain a foothold over desktop, and programmatic digital goes beyond just the standard banner ad.

Programmatic technology will continue to grow in terms of capability and percentage of overall ad spend as it takes the work out of buying and selling ads. For B2Bs that like to rely on big data this is a godsend, as it assures that budgets are being spent appropriately with a mathematical eye towards the ROI of campaigns. Already, this has also saved time for marketers to focus on more important tasks like creating better advertising campaign creative and concentrating on which target demographic their campaigns will reach.

Furthermore, as online advertising shifts more towards mobile in the coming years, so will programmatic digital advertising. A February 2015 poll had the majority of U.S. marketers respond with mobile as the channel with which they saw the most potential for programmatic advertising. eMarketer backs that up as 69% of programmatic display ad spending in the U.S. is estimated to be from mobile at $14.89 billion.

As programmatic grows on mobile and opens up more opportunities for ROI-based algorithms to dictate ad buys, look for more B2Bs to utilize this powerful technology to take the guesswork out of their digital ad spending.

Take Existing B2B Strategies Further in 2016

With the notable exception of Instagram advertising helping to make social media more viable for a B2B marketing plan, most of the new trends that will define B2B marketing in 2016 are continuations of last year’s trends that build upon what worked. B2B marketers should look at what generated the best marketing ROI for their business in 2015 and add things like location-based marketing, programmatic ad spend, and content marketing if those are tactics that worked but need new tools to help achieve success again in the new year. At the same time, taking a chance on new trends could pay huge dividends for companies that can afford to experiment with new ways to stand apart from the competition.

– See more at: http://www.bluefountainmedia.com/blog/b2b-marketing-trends-2016-b2b-marketing-ideas-for-the-future/#sthash.us12LiqY.dpuf

With January almost at a close, if your business hasn’t spent the time to update its existing strategies already, it definitely should be at the top of your task list for the rest of the month. One of the key areas that every business needs to take a hard look at when it comes to marketing strategy in 2016 is how they are handling mobile marketing efforts. Having a responsive website is an absolutely essential first step, but this year it’s going to take a look more than the basics of mobile marketing to get ahead of competition that spent a lot of last year worrying about Google’s widely publicized but seemingly irrelevant “mobilegeddon” changes.

We’ve already covered the B2B marketing trends that will define 2016, now it’s time to turn our attention towards five mobile trends your strategies need to incorporate in the new year in order to stay ahead of the competition and get the best marketing ROI possible in one of the fastest growing digital channels in the marketplace.

Mobile Payments

Technology research firm, Gartner, predicts that by 2017, 50% of all U.S. digital ecommerce revenue will come from mobile. A big part of this increase will be directly affected by mobile payments and platforms such as Apple Pay, Google’s Android Pay, and Samsung Pay. Although many of these mobile payment options are just now entering the public conscience of consumers, eMarketer forecasts that in 2016, mobile payments on platforms like these will triple and grow by 210%.

When Apple, Google, Samsung, and even Facebook are all getting behind mobile wallets, it isn’t too farfetched to think that this will become a standard payment option, and it is no surprise that many new smartphones in the coming year will have the mobile wallets pre- installed. Helping this trend is the fact that in October 2015, many merchants were even made to switch their payment terminals from swipe and-sign to chip-and-pin machines, which will be compatible with mobile payments. With 37.5 million U.S. mobile wallet users in 2016, and multiple options to cater to different devices, mobile wallets, and the payments made using them increasing in size in the next year is looking likely.

With 37.5 million U.S. mobile wallet users in 2016, look for mobile wallets to enjoy increased usage and average payment size. While medium-priced purchases of $20-100 accounted for 45.5% of all mobile payments in 2015, eMarketer predicts that by 2018, the percentage will jump up to 63.9%.

App Indexing and Deep Links in Apps

2015 was an unbelievable year for mobile, with Google rolling out “Mobilegeddon” in April, and their announcement that the United States and 9 other countries had more Google searches on mobile devices than on desktops.

Google announced the ability to index apps back in 2013, but only recent developments in the past year have really caught the attention of marketers. Besides the huge announcement about the rollout of their mobile-friendly algorithm update on April 21 of this year, Google also said that indexed apps would be playing a larger ranking factor and show up more prominently in mobile searches. Other developments this year, like Google expanding their results to include apps that were not installed on phones, app indexing for iOS (not just Android) apps in Google search, and the latest news that Safari on iOS 9 would also support Google search’s app indexing have also forced marketers to take note and shift their strategies accordingly.

The mobile internet in 2016 will rapidly grow to include more and more content from deep links within indexed apps. It won’t be enough to just create an app anymore. In order to increase discoverability, downloads, and engagement, marketers will have to start indexing their app and its content with deep links. Mobile search will continue to outpace desktop search in 2016, and the ability for apps to be indexed with deep links on not just Google, but on other platforms as well, will allow forward-thinking companies to expand their online presence in the increasingly competitive mobile space.

Google is not the only platform implementing and encouraging app indexing. Bing, Apple, and even Facebook are starting to invest in app indexing to compete with the ever growing mobile audience. Likewise, marketers would be wise to deep link content and index their apps in 2016 if they aren’t already.

Mobile Buying Through Social Buy Buttons

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram have influenced many online purchases in the past several years, and they’re also extremely popular mobile apps. Out of established social media networks like Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram,only Pinterest is not in the top 15 smartphone apps in a June 2015 survey. The general consensus when it comes to using mobile devices for buying online is that users will do everything on their devices except actual buying. This is especially prevalent in the post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping season as users will check for sales, compare prices, and read product reviews, but make the actual purchase on a desktop.

With the rise of mobile commerce increasing 32.2% in 2015, it only makes sense that the next step for social media platforms in 2016 is to leverage their countless mobile users by creating a more seamless shopping experience for brands to take advantage. It’s not a particularly new concept, as ecommerce third party platforms such as Shopify and Curalate’s Like2Buy are already making a name for themselves on Facebook and Instagram with companies such as Gap and Target utilizing them to increase their online sales via social.

This isn’t the first go-around with these third party platforms, and they will continue to be modified and perfected for each platform alongside each social media platform’s own offerings. As social networks provide statistics for Likes, Clicks, and Shares, look for ecommerce platforms to provide extensive acquisition, conversion, and retention metrics for companies willing to add an ecommerce features on their social accounts. 72% of retailers in a May 2015 survey said they already had social ecommerce factored into their overall digital marketing strategy. The same survey found that 40% of retailers expected at least half of their sales to come from social media by 2018.

Buying on mobile is not the same experience as purchasing on desktop, however with the rise of all things mobile in 2016, look for social media networks and their constantly improving ecommerce features, to be a driving force for mobile buying. As social media platforms begin to incorporate more ecommerce capabilities on their platforms, look to see more mobile buying instead of just browsing in 2016.

Snapchat Marketing

Snapchat has been around since 2011, and historically has been comparatively unknown when compared to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that are traditionally better known in the social media marketplace. Ever since its release, Snapchat gravitated towards millennials – as 71% of its U.S. users are between the ages of 18-29.

In January 2015, Snapchat caught the attention of advertisers with the rollout and success of its “Discover” feature. Essentially a “Snapchat for companies”, the Discover feature lets users access and view photos and videos from major brands, and by swiping up or down on these photos or videos, users are able to access more content and articles that are uniquely curated and presented for Snapchat.

Starting off with only a handful of companies, Snapchat Discover has since expanded and now includes a variety of major brands such as ESPN, BuzzFeed, CNN, iHeartRadio, and the Food Network – with more companies eager to test out how Snapchat will perform for them. iHeartRadio broadcast its 2-day music festival on the mobile app in September and was able to gather an impressive 340 million impressions. Digiday reports that Cosmopolitan, another Snapchat Discover brand, gets an average of 3 million views per day. Snapchat receives 4 billion video views a day on its platform (which is the same as Facebook), so it’s little wonder that companies are finding opportunities to get more of these video views for themselves.

What will truly make it a major marketing platform in the coming year is how organic, creative, and behind-the-scenes the branded content on Discover is compared to the advertising options on other social media networks. Even though reports indicate that Snapchat is asking for a steep price of up to $700,000 a day for their ads, major brands will be more than willing to pay up in 2016 if the results continue to trend upwards.

In 2016, Snapchat will grow to finally be on the same playing field in terms of established social media marketing platforms as the other major platforms as long as it can find a way to channel the initial of success of its “Discover” feature into a viable option for smaller businesses.

Apps to Rival Mobile Websites

While it might sound like an outrageous claim, in 2016, mobile apps will outpace mobile site growth and start to become a key player in mobile marketing. There is data to back this claim up. A 2015 study found that smartphone and tablet users spent the majority of their time on apps (75% and 81%, respectively). Another study found that big brands like Apple, eBay, Amazon, Target, Macy’s, and Walmart largely interact with their mobile customers through apps instead of mobile sites.

When asked why they prefer mobile apps over mobile sites, smartphone users 18 years and older responded by saying that apps are more convenient (64% of respondents) and easier to use (62%). 19% of users also said that mobile sites don’t look good or render correctly on their smartphones. Besides just the hassle of going on your mobile browser, the added benefits of an app include but are not limited to:

• Push notifications
• Cloud integration
• Offline/online access
• Enhanced security
• Branding freedom
• More personalization for users

Mobile users are already spending the majority of their time on apps, and with the capabilities of app indexing and setting up deep links that will eventually lead to seamless integration between apps and SEO, business owners will start to focus on creating and maintaining apps for their businesses instead of simply improving their mobile sites during the coming year.

Mobile Marketing Matters in 2016

Perhaps the biggest mobile-wide trend that we expect to see in 2016 is more purchases right on a user’s mobile device. Whether that is through a mobile payment solution, a mobile app or a social buy button, brands should be positioning themselves in such a way digitally that it is easy for customers to purchase on their mobile devices if they so please. Furthermore, making sure these apps and social presences are prominent through app indexing, deep links, and leveraging exiting social media platforms that are native to mobile like Snapchat is going to be a key any business that hopes to execute mobile campaigns properly. Brands that execute and evolve their digital strategies to include mobile in a prominent way will be ahead of the competition and can expect to cash in accordingly as mobile devices become a viable device to research and finalize a purchase on.

The New Year has come and gone, but that doesn’t mean that the time for celebration is over. Particularly if you’re lucky enough to be in New York City until February 5th, you can indulge in one of the great perks of the city – “NYC Restaurant Week”. Meals at great restaurants are greatly reduced, and for most restaurants it’s a particularly busy time of year.

With this added business comes an increase in website traffic for most restaurants, so its more important than ever that they make sure their websites are optimized to attract and capture the traffic of hungry patrons across the web. In honor of this great event, this month’s “1 Hour SEO Audit” will take a look at one of the most recognizable restaurants in the city – Sarabeth’s.

With more than 5 locations in New York alone, Sarabeth’s serves thousands of hungry customers each day – and their website needs to work overtime to make sure they’re top of mind for as many local and national eaters as possible so that they can consistently fill their many locations to capacity. Will their site be able to do this through effective SEO? Our audit explores this question by using our standard tools and ranking factors:

• Content
• Schema and SERP Friendliness
• Backlinks
• Site Speed
• Meta Tag Issues
• Title Tag Issues

Tools Used

• Ragepank
• Screaming Frog
• Mozbar
• Open Site Explorer
• Copyscape
• Microsoft IIS
• SEMRush
• GTMetrix
• Dareboost

Content

Although 2016 is now in full swing, some things that were important to SEO in 2015 haven’t changed all that much. One of those fundamental things is content. Particularly on the heels of Google’s announcement that their content-oriented Panda update is now part of their constantly running core algorithm, good content will play an even larger role in generating organic traffic for businesses. There is no doubt that content remains the best way for businesses to rank for long tail keywords by providing an avenue for brands to create high-quality content that keeps visitors engaged with their brand while building long-term customer loyalty.

Sarabeth’s goes all out when it comes to content marketing initiatives. On a general level, the site features phenomenal photography that helps sell products and keep customers hungry as they learn about the restaurants and the fantastic foods they prepare. From their “books” section that features offline cookbooks for sale directly from the website, to their extensive recipes, news, and blog content, there is a monstrous amount of content for users who are interested in learning more about Sarabeth’s and the recipes and food they provide to their customers.

The only negative onsite when it comes to content is that the “blog” and “restaurants” sections are on their own domains off of the main “sarabeth.com” website. This is a massive shame from an SEO perspective. All of the fantastic content that is on the blog doesn’t translate into much SEO value for the rest of the website and the same can be said for the restaurant site. With domain authorities of 41 and 30 on the restaurant and blog respectively, and with the main site only at a domain authority of 47 – it’s a shame that everything is so spread out across multiple domains. Combined into one powerhouse of a website, the overall authority would be much higher and would be likely to close more sales and attract much more traffic overall.

Grade: A-

Schema and SERP Friendliness

A lot of sites fall flat when it comes to schema, but recently we’ve started to see a number of sites implementing at least one form of schema somewhere on their site. This is great to see, because schema can be a massive asset for any business and is still one of the most severely lacking elements on sites in terms of SEO. Particularly for our previous two audits, Dollar Shave Club and Veuve Cliquot, there was at least a bit of information in their branded search engine result page or on the site itself for things like navigation elements.

More than any other single business that has been looked at it in this series, Sarabeth’s knocks schema out of the park. Not only do they have some branded search results for each of their locations, they also have included a variety of schema on their pages. This includes simple product schema as well as availability and offer schema as well. It’s great that they’ve taken the time to add all of these elements and they are the new threshold for businesses to live up to when they are featured on this series from here on out.

Grade: A+

Backlinks

It’s harder than ever before to organically amass great inbound links, and as a result there has been no better time to consider how important an overall backlink profile is for business owners and digital marketers. They play a pivotal role in how well individual pages and overall domains rank for target keywords, and it is extremely important that business owners are able to identify where their backlink profiles are strong and what aspects might need a bit more work in order to take them to the next level.

At face value Sarabeth’s does a decent enough job with their backlink profile. They have a domain authority of 47 with 2,083 links from 451 root domains, which comes out to roughly 5 links per domain, which isn’t bad at all. However, as we’ve already mentioned, if you dig a little deeper there’s a pretty big issue with the site – there are 3 separate domains. This means that the main domain is missing out on adding another 1400 links, from sources like ABC, CBS, Timeout NY and Mashable. This is a huge loss for the domain authority and possible keyword rankings for the main domain and I strongly believe that unless there is a branding reason to have 3 separate sites that all sites should be formed into one quickly and efficiently without loss of functionality to get the most SEO value possible out of all three.

Putting domain issues to the side, it must be said that Sarabeth’s has very nicely varied and natural anchor text. There are a lot of branded terms, as well as some nice keyword rich text like “bakery”, “kitchen”, and “preserves”. Clearly the links they have gotten have been naturally acquired and they should be able to grow their backlink profile without any fear of penalization from search engines like Google.

Grade: B

Site Speed

Site speed it an important part of SEO and should be a focus for any business owner that is looking to take their website to the next level when it comes to attracting organic traffic. Good site speed paves the way for better user experience, brand credibility and on-site conversion rate, while simultaneously playing a slight role in keyword rankings. A website that loads quickly can be the difference between your business getting a new customer and not, and this fact alone should give a business owner enough of a reason to ensure that site speed is optimized appropriately.

Sarabeth’s fundamentally fails when it comes to site speed and generally has a lot of room for improvement. While their GTMetrix score wasn’t particularly bad, they received the first “F” we’ve seen from PageSpeed in a very long time and definitely need to fix pretty fundamental issues like serving scaled images, specifying image dimensions, and avoiding bad requests. These are all very simple fixes and there is no reason they shouldn’t be relatively straightforward to make in order to get extra SEO and usability value.

Grade: D

Meta Tag Issues

While there have been some outliers in past 1 Hour SEO audits that have done meta descriptions quite well, like Odoo and Casper, most businesses fall short when it comes to creating self-defined meta descriptions for their website. For whatever reason, businesses seem to think it is acceptable to allow Google to define meta descriptions for their business, even though the process for doing that doesn’t make the page attractive to searchers and fails to facilitate higher click-through rates for the pages in question. As user behavior is an SEO factor, having more people click through to a page from a search result is a positive signal for a website. As a result taking the time to do this process properly when defining a meta description is a key part of taking a website to the next level.

Sarabeth’s has a little more than 16% of their meta descriptions marked as duplicative by Screaming Frog, but perhaps more importantly, they’re missing almost 42% of their meta descriptions entirely, which is a shame. Particularly for the homepage, and the about us, recipes, and restaurants pages, this is a real shame because the text used by search engines likely has very little to do with describing the content on the page. All of these pages could be generating good inbound traffic on their own, but without an interesting meta description it is very unlikely that people that are even searching for these pages specifically feel any sort of desire to click to these pages based on the meta description they are given in the search results.

Grade: C-

Title Tag Issues

Until Google can figure out a better solution, which seems unlikely, title tags will remain the first and most important part of a page when it comes to SEO value. Having a title tag that is optimized correctly for a keyword that will drive qualified traffic to your website can often be the difference between a website that gets lost in the anonymity of the internet and one that succeeds at generating new sales for a business.

Sarabeth’s does a fantastic job with their page titles. They aren’t missing a single one, and while a few are above and below the required character length very few are over by a noticeable amount – minimizing the chances of a search engine rewriting their page titles for them.

While Screaming Frog shows them with 16 duplicate page titles, the problem is actually symptomatic of a larger issue that has more to do with URI structure than page titles. For some reason a few pages (such as The Bakery, chocolate chip cookies, and preserves pages) have two URI configurations – one in lowercase and one with a first letter in uppercase. This means there are two duplicated pages on the site with the same title tag. This is certainly a massive issue, but one I don’t think Sarabeth’s is aware of – obviously one of the page versions should be removed, 301’d or at the very least canonicalized as quickly as possible to solve this problem.

Grade: B+

General Suggestions

While there are a lot of things done right on the Sarabeth’s site, one thing stands out more than anything else. There are three different domains, one for the blog, one for locations and reservations, and one site to sell products. I suppose from a branding/usability standpoint this made sense at the time as presumably each site has separate functionality or content management systems that made it difficult to combine them all, but the reality is that all three of these different domains really should all live on one domain. Having three relatively strong sites that could easily just be on one domain is a massive waste from an SEO standpoint. If all the inbound links were added together, the Sarabeth’s site would likely ranking for many more keywords in higher positions and all three sites would enjoy increased traffic and conversions.

 

Any competent business owner knows that marketing mistakes can be incredibly costly. From the missed opportunities that come with failing to reach your target audience, to competitors muscle in on your market share and negatively impacting sales, marketing tactics that negatively impact how clearly you’re able to communicate your value to users can destroy brand growth in a matter of months, weeks, or even days. Oddly, you’ll often hear and read stories about how to do digital marketing the right way, but those sorts of articles and stories don’t address what exactly went wrong and what you as a business owner can learn from these mistakes.

In an effort to help you learn what not to do when creating a digital marketing campaign so that you can quickly and efficiently build campaigns that won’t suffer from reduced ROI, I’ve identified 5 of the most common marketing mistakes that businesses make and address how these issues can be solved:

1) Marketing Without Goals

Nothing is more disappointing than when a client says they need to focus on a specific marketing channel, yet have no plan, strategy or rationale as to why that channel makes sense for helping them to achieve their goals. It’s impossible to start marketing without knowing what your milestones, goals, or key performance indicators (KPIs) are. To try and do so is a huge mistake, and while it seems fairly obvious the reality is that a lot of businesses out there do this all the time.

If you fail to identify what you’d like to accomplish with a marketing campaign, there’s no possible way you can measure effectiveness and hold any specific elements of your strategy accountable for success or failure and reallocate budget appropriately. For example, if a single channel of your marketing strategy is bringing you a certain number of leads, how can you tell if it’s the best performance possible? Without a strategy that includes clearly outlined goals, and performance thresholds there is no way to accurately develop a plan that will let you reach the goals you’ve set.

2) A Dollar and a Dream

A lot of people understand the premise “in order to make money you have to spend money” but a lot of people fail to establish it to their business. Whether you are a startup or an established brand in the Fortune 500, this theory is true. A lot of businesses think that they can bootstrap their marketing efforts using things like social media, free email platforms, template websites, and SEO, but the reality is that these all have a very low growth ceiling and in order for them to grow you need to spend – whether that is an actual budget for paid advertising or for manpower to create content, designs, emails, and other collateral you need to succeed.

When considering marketing budgets its important to understand that whatever product or service you sell, for every dollar you spend you won’t get return on investment right away. Sometimes this is because of something called a “loss leader”, which is when you lose money in order to acquire a first time customer, and then get more than even return on investment over the course of that customers relationship with you. Marketing investments take time, and while the buying cycle for each company varies most B2Bs have a buying cycle that could be anywhere from 6 months to 2 years, and for a B2C the product cycle could range from a single day to a 1-3 month period.

3) Not Focusing On Returning Visitors

On most websites it’s not first time visitors that are going to make massive purchases, regardless of whether a business is B2B or B2C. Repeat visitors almost always convert a higher rate and with a higher average purchase than first time visitors. A lot of business owners overlook this fact and remain focused on continuously bringing new customers to their website instead of considering how they can get customers to come back and buy again.

Ideally, businesses should use a broad range of marketing tactics to achieve this goal. Email marketing and display advertising retargeting are two very effective and widely used options. Once you capture a user’s email, you can send them high quality-content with an incentive or perk that they will find valuable and appealing. Similarly, proper retargeting while show customers a product or service they were considering in order to get them back to the website to complete their purchase. Going beyond things like standard pay per click and display advertising in order to add retargeting is something that doesn’t happen as often as it is should, and not doing so is a huge mistake that leads bundles of money unclaimed for any online business.

4) Content Lacking Value

Everyone knows that content is king when it comes to generating new traffic to your website that builds brand recognition and gives your business more potential customers to convert. What a lot of businesses seem to miss is the fact that the content actually needs to be valuable. Users want to invest their time and money with your brand because they know you’re knowledgeable in your specific industry. If you don’t provide them with the content to showcase that, users won’t see your value.

In order to make content valuable to your audience focus on he needs of your users, both real and perceived, and address them quickly and efficiently. Include vibrant imagery such as infographics, graphs, animations, and photos to reinforce messaging without overwhelming the reader with too much text. Also including quantitative data like relevant statistics to help substantiate any statements or thoughts you’re presenting in your content is a great way to add legitimacy and trust.

If this isn’t your first time on our blog, you know that we share all of our expertise here and have garnered a significant following because of it. Content marketing has helped us to grow immensely as an organization by presenting our employees as thought leaders, and its played a key role in attracting new clients for us.

5) Not Knowing Your Audience

Too often, you’ll hear start-ups claim they have the best product in their vertical, and that it’s for everyone. This is rarely (if ever) true, because in general most businesses understand that products and services can’t be designed for everyone – they should aim fulfill a unique need to a very specific audience. Just from a financial standpoint, unless you’re a Fortune 500 company, you’re not going to have the finances to market to “everyone” correctly anyway.

If a business thinks that their target audience is everyone, then they probably haven’t done proper due diligence to identify who your target customer is and likely don’t have a strategy that is aligned with that customer’s needs in mind either. This is setting up any marketing efforts for failure.

Know ho your market is – the more niche, the greater your chances of success. It’s better to target a very narrow demographic of users you know how to reach and whose behavior and interests you understand rather than just going after “everyone”.

Your Brand and Your Marketing Needs Are Unique

Marketing mistakes can be costly on so many different levels. From financial losses to missed opportunities, if you’re trying to grow your brand you can’t afford to make any of the common and very fixable mistakes I’ve outlined above. Take the time really understand who your company should be trying to attract with your marketing efforts and to try and understand their unique needs.

 

The commercials that air throughout the Super Bowl are a time-honored tradition in the football-watching world (America). However, what was once the Monday morning water-cooler topic of conversation, has evolved into something much greater. As the marketing industry continues to change, these game-day advertising campaigns now begin long before kickoff, and continue way after the Lombardy trophy finds its’ new home.

Traditional marketing campaigns have a hard time surviving on their own in the digital world. No matter how memorable the commercial may have been, it needs to have a digital component to supplement the campaign, and keep it fresh in the minds of audience members. If you want your next marketing effort to be talked about and remembered, take a note from the companies that topped our list of the best digital marketing campaigns of this year’s Super Bowl.

Amazon: #BaldwinBowl

For Amazon’s Super Bowl commercial debut, Alec Baldwin hosted “The Baldwin Bowl” as a way of promoting the Amazon Echo and virtual assistant Alexa. For the days and weeks leading up to the big game, celebrities like Missy Elliot (who ended up being featured in the commercial) took to social media to show that they were invited to “The Baldwin Bowl,” and planned on attending. It wasn’t until game day that we found out it was actually for the commercial, rather than a real party we all wish we were invited to.

The company released two commercials, one during the game and one after, and the team managing the Amazon Echo Twitter account immediately congratulated the victorious Broncos with a little video. This was among a number of other supplementary videos that were posted throughout the game to accent the commercial itself, spitting out various facts about Alec Baldwin and Dan Marino and even updates on the score of the game.

 

They were setting the scene for their Amazon Echo advertisement from before the Super Bowl even began, and maintained it throughout the night. It’s one of the commercials that everyone is talking about, and current Amazon Echo owners are using social media to share their experiences with the product, helping the hashtags #AskAlexa and #BaldwinBowl gain some traction. To top it all off, Amazon Prime is now streaming Missy Elliot’s new song Pep Rally that premiered during the commercial.

The number of things actually being advertised within this campaign is hard to keep track of, but it’s a great example of how these successful Super Bowl marketing campaigns actually begin long before the Super Bowl itself. Businesses are no longer restricted to a 30 second ad spot, and are able to stretch their creativity to multiple channels for a longer period of time (and a smaller budget).

CFDA & NFL: Bespoke Designer Footballs

In preparation for the Super Bowl 50 (and a little thing called New York Fashion Week), the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and the National Football League (NFL) teamed up with 50 designers to customize their own footballs and auction them off with all proceeds benefitting the NFL Foundation. From Tiffany & Co. to Betsey Johnson, many of the designers took to Twitter and Instagram to promote their bedazzled footballs, and encourage fans to bid on their respective items in the weeks leading up to the big game.

 

While you may not immediately think of the fashion and sports industries joining forces, this campaign pays homage to the fashionable football fandom by saying that you can be a diehard fan, and look good while doing it.

Crossing these two unique demographics, was a great way of getting two different audiences involved with one worthy cause that was relevant to the big game. The designs (like Rachel Zoe’s pictured below) were on display at various events around Levi’s Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, allowing fans in the area to get a good look, and share their experiences on social media. This campaign was a great example of cross-promoting industries, and using digital media to get audiences involved.

The designer footballs are still up for auction at NFL.com/auction until February 14th, so bid on them while you still can!

Gatorade Bath Snapchat Lens

Snapchat is a frontier that advertisers have begun to explore while trying to manifest destiny and reach the millennial market. Gatorade utilized a customized lens to fulfill everyone’s secret desire to have a famous “Gatorade Bath,” and become a part of the Super Bowl tradition of having a bucket of the stuff dumped on your head. This is what it feels like to win the big game, and this is what it looks like to successfully market your product on a social media platform.

On any normal day, a sponsored Snapchat lens can cost a company $350,000. However, on days like holidays or the Super Bowl (an unofficial holiday) the price is estimated to exceed $750,000. This may be a lot to risk on a social media campaign, but when you weigh the audience reach, and compare the price to a $5,000,000 commercial slot, it’s a creative and unique way of selling your product.

PepsiCo, the company that owns Gatorade, is all too familiar with Super Bowl advertisements. They own the halftime show, and fill most of the available advertising spots each year with their products (Pepsi, Doritos, etc.) Their Snapchat efforts were abundant this year, and the Gatorade filter was a perfect look at how marketing surrounding the Super Bowl is going to continuously evolve in future games.

Uber: Puppy Bowl

Maybe more important than the actual Super Bowl, is the annual Puppy Bowl that airs on Animal Planet. This year they teamed up with Uber and the Humane Society of New York the week before the big game to bring puppies right to your door after requesting them through the Uber app. Then you would have time to play, snuggle, and even adopt the little pups!

As avid puppy lovers, we here at BFM had multiple people trying to get these puppies to come and visit us that morning. Just when we thought all hope was lost, and all the puppies were “currently being snuggled” by some other lucky individuals, we got the call that we were about to have some fluffy visitors!

It was a lot of fun, so naturally we are big fans of how this marketing campaign was executed. All day long you would find #UberPuppyBowl on almost every major social media platform with people sharing their puppy pictures. Different adoption organizations in major cities across the US took place in the promotion, marketing the Puppy Bowl, finding the dogs homes, and turning an average work day into something much more enjoyable.

The blend of offline and online advertising is something that marketers should be taking note of when coming up with creative strategies. While both channels can be influential on their own, the magic really happens when they come together for one successful and cohesive marketing campaign.

 

 

We are very proud to announce that our collaboration with Service King, a leader in automotive collision repair, has been selected as the winner of the third annual Westwood One Super Bowl Sound Awards. Service King’s “Mission 2 Hire” radio spot was crowned the winner of this distinguished honor for audio creativity based on a combination of votes from listeners for their favorite radio spots as well as through a comprehensive Nielsen consumer study. You can listen to the ad below:

Our team worked closely with the Service King team to write and produce a creative and compelling radio advertisement that promotes their Mission 2 Hire program. Dedicated to hiring 500 veterans and their spouses at their various collision repair centers throughout the U.S., the program aims to give back to the community by giving to jobs to those who deserve them most.

The 30-second radio spot captured the essence of the brand with unique elements such as an emotional perspective that helped to illustrate the goals of the program and provide a memorable listening experience that uniquely positioned the ad to stand apart from the competition. Narrated by 13-year Army veteran Jeremiah Kuehl, one of nearly 100 veterans recruited and hired by Service King as a part of its ongoing Mission 2 Hire campaign, the radio spot was a part of a larger omnichannel marketing campaign that has included a website redesign and a multi-faceted digital marketing strategy.

“Audio builds brands and drives sales. Today we celebrate excellence in audio creative on the Golden Anniversary of the Super Bowl, Super Bowl 50,” said Brandon Berman, SVP, Sports Sales & Marketing for the competition’s sponsor, Westwood One. “We congratulate Service King, Motel 6, and Wendy’s for their audio excellence.”

Westwood One is the exclusive national radio partner of the NFL and aired national play-by-play coverage of Super Bowl 50 from Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California last Sunday. Their broadcast was heard on more than 650 radio stations and simulcast on SiriusXM Radio, the TuneIn Radio App, NFL Game Pass, NFL Mobile from Verizon app, and on the American Forces Radio Network. With more than 28 million fans engaging with their coverage via on air, digital, and social media platforms, the Super Bowl Sound Awards were created to encourage brands and their agencies to fashion memorable, breakthrough creative that resonates with listeners.

An array of online, on-air, and social media promotions encouraged listeners to vote for their favorite Super Bowl commercial from midnight Wednesday, February 3rd through 12:00 pm Monday, February 8th. Nielsen also conducted an 8-minute self-administered online survey from January 29-31, 2016, among 3,030 U.S. residents 18 and older that were not employed in advertising. The winner was determined based on the percentage of respondents rating how they liked the ad on a 1 to 5 scale. Each respondent also ranked each ad in terms of how memorable, engaging, and relevant if they were able to remember the brand or product/service for each ad.

 

When it comes to your marketing budget, you want to make the most out of every dollar you spend. Some businesses may have tighter budgets than others, which is why it is important to analyze which channels will benefit your marketing efforts the most.

The debate between digital and print advertising is a conversation that marketers have faced for quite some time. Both options have their benefits and drawbacks. However for companies working on a limited budget, it is hard to deny the fact that the cost of generating a qualified lead, as well as some brand exposure, is far less in digital than in print.

Print vs. Digital

Before we get to deep into weighing the different channels, lets clarify that when we discuss print advertising, we are strictly talking about magazines and billboards. For digital marketing we are referring to search engine ads, social media, and email marketing. For our research, we are looking at the cost of an impression, instead of a click or an actual lead, and what that cost looks like in both print and digital.

As we know, almost every company is online and starting to take part in digital marketing right now because it is easier to target, and the entry to barrier on digital is far lower than it is for print advertising. For companies that are working on a limited budget, the digital options are a way for a company to create a foundation for their marketing efforts, while print can do more from a branding prospective.

Print Ads

Print advertisements can be extremely beneficial to a company, especially if it is done consistently, and targeted properly. It is not something you just do one time in a magazine with a big name, it’s a long term game. When looking at the several different magazines, a full-page ad can cost you anywhere from $20,000-$300,000. With varying circulation numbers, the average CPM was between $140-$1,300.

Its important to consider that the number of magazines in a given circulation, does not equate the number of people that are going to see your ad. Since every magazine isn’t purchased, many are left on the stands by the time the next circulation comes out.

Digital Ads

When looking at digital ads for our own accounts as well as some of our clients, the CPM can range from $2.00 – $12.00. This is a big gap that is difficult to overlook. With search campaigns, you are able to customize them to target specific audiences, and make changes at any time. If you see that they are performing a certain way in your data, you can make adjustments to improve it or alter it in any way that you see fit.

What is even more interesting is the fact that for some digital marketing channels, your CPM can be free. Google display ads for example, charge you CPC instead of CPM. Overall, if you are looking to make the most out of a marketing budget, you can see your efforts go a long way with online marketing.

Analysis

For companies that have the budget and the resources to spend money on a print advertisement, it’s a wonderful form of branding. However, if you have a small budget and are still looking to make an impact in print media, consider smaller publications when pursuing the right outlet for your business. While the big names are great, they may not always be great for your brand. Consider the people that you are really trying to reach, and research the unbelievable amount of print sources that cater to niche audiences. Advertising in those specific locations show that you have an interest in the demographic they are targeting, and show those reader that you are a leader in that field.

That being said, the customization options that come with digital marketing are extensive and difficult to ignore. As a business, you have much more control over how the ads get displayed, who sees them, and what they look like on every device. The detailed analytics that come with online marketing allow you to track the impact of your ads, and give you the insight to create ones that will perform the best for your business. Rather than waiting until the next circulation of magazines, you can make alterations whenever you want.

No matter what, it is important to understand that when it comes to branding, you want to be everywhere. For any print effort you make with your business, its important to have a digital supplement to it. An online presence is essential for a business to survive in today’s world, and if you want to invest in print, you need to make sure there are digital efforts to back it up. When the two channels work together, you can have a very strong and successful marketing campaign.

Whatever your budget may be, we hope this insight can help you make the most of it. Every dollar you spend plays an important role in the growth of your business. Take the time to analyze what you are trying to accomplish for your brand, and determine what marketing channels will help you execute that plan.

 

If you’re selling directly to customers online, either as a small online shop or a full online retail platform, your online marketing strategy can make or break your store. Web Designer Vip have one aim in mind – to increase your ecommerce sales revenue whilst actively getting more for your marketing spend.

We believe that ecommerce marketing is all about having your product visible at the time that users are ready to make a purchase. We do this by making sense of the sales data and translating this into actionable items for strategic execution to increase your ecommerce sales.

What Ecommerce Marketing Services do we offer?

• Ecommerce PPC
• Ecommerce SEO
• Ecommerce Design
• Ecommerce Social Media

Ecommerce PPC

Our Google analytics qualified account managers are passionate about craft creative ecommerce PPC campaigns aiming to attract those potential customers often in highly competitive markets. From Google Shopping Feeds, to Mobile Ads we can help create the perfect PPC campaigns for your ecommerce offering.

 

 

Enter The Global Marketplace

Marketing is all about communicating with your potential customers and clients, which means more than just speaking the right language.

Our multilingual marketing consultancy and suite of associated services helps you to make sure you are speaking to your customers on the right channels and in the right away to help your brand and business grow.

The multilingual marketing services Web Designer Vip offer, provide a lot more than just translating text into the local language and hoping for the best.

The modern multilingual marketing strategy we will work with you to create needs to take complete localisation into account which includes cultural and religious differences as well as linguistics. Just some of the services we offer include

• Localisation (including cultural and religious aspects)
• Culturally sensitive marketing and brand design
• Search engine optimisation and keyword research in multiple dialects as well as languages
• PPC, email marketing and other advertising for multiple languages, dialects and global regions

Take Your Marketing International

We always pay attention to colloquialisms and dialogue, as well as imagery, colour schemes and the general mood and feel of your brand – it may be fine for your core “home” audience but will it be popular, or even ethically acceptable, when you enter the international market?

Cultural sensitivity is absolutely critical with any form of multilingual marketing which is why we use native staff to ensure all aspects are covered. Across the world you may find that humour works differently, etiquette when dealing with people from various walks of life differs from your home equivalents and the sort of incentives and rewards that encourage action or performance are also completely different from what you may be used to.

 

Grow Your Business With SEO

94 percent of B2B buyers research online for purchase decisions. These days, brands can’t afford to ignore SEO! Search engine optimisation can be the difference between failure and success. Our passionate SEO specialists provide comprehensive, customer centred SEO services which can be tailored to meet your precise needs.

• Years of Ethical SEO experience
• Revenue Growth
• No Contract
• Transparent Reporting

Years of ethical SEO experience

We have over 10 years of experience of creativity and innovation in SEO and have always prided ourselves on providing ethical, white hat SEO services. None of our clients have ever seen a penalty from search engines – and we’ve helped several websites recover successfully from a harmful penalty.

 

Boost Your Traffic With PPC

Our comprehensive professional PPC services are designed to help your business grow in visibility in a competitive marketplace for the search terms and phrases that matter to you. Our paid search marketing is a highly consultative service which works closely with you to select the best strategies and solutions that will give you top ROI for growing your business online.

• Outshine competitors and grab the attention of potential clients
• Grow awareness of your business and your brand
• Improve the volume of revenue from your website
• Get more new business leads from your website
• Convert your website from a useless expense into a valuable business tool

Professional PPC services can be one of the most effective and sustainable methods of growing your business presence throughout the world. Our dedicated and experienced team of qualified in-house paid search marketers can help you put together a plan for sustainable online growth optimising your paid search account and getting the most from your advertising budget, improving your visibility to give you an edge over competitors for years to come.

All the time we’re working to keep our goals in line with those of your business, so we keep our focus on improved visitor numbers, rising numbers of leads, larger customer base and the best possible return on investment. This holistic approach doesn’t just give you high ROI marketing but makes a real, positive difference where things really matter – your bottom line.

PPC Services Example Results

• Advertising spend reduced 70% while giving increased revenue
• Four times more sales and double profit in less than two months
• Sales value increased 127% in only one month
• 150% increase in goal conversions in under two months
• New business enquiries up 126% month on month
• Cost per conversion down 74% month on month

We always align our aims with those of your business, which is why you’ll see our PPC services focus on raising your visitor numbers, improving your number of leads and growing your customer base, giving you the best return on investment in your paid search marketing that will positively impact your bottom line.

 

Bring Your Content To Life

The content you use is critical to the success of your marketing – everything from online search engine optimisation to logo design and even the copywriting of your brochures and business cards. Content strategy is becoming steadily more critical to successful marketing both on and offline and in order to help your growth you need to ensure you have something in place for your business that goes beyond simple blog posts.

• Content needs to add value to your site and not act as “content stuffing” designed to just fill up the website with keywords and links
• Content needs to be useful to, and written for, real users rather than search engine crawlers and robots
• All content must be original and unique, not copied from competitors or repeated from existing search results
• Make good use of multimedia with entertaining and informative videos and images which will draw in your users
• Ensure content is easy to share so that visitors can help publicise it for you across social channels both on and offline
• Keep content generation aligned with your main brand in terms of quality, tone and style so that users are able to easily identify and attribute its source

Content Strategy Services

Our content experts can help you to formulate a comprehensive and effective marketing content for your business, whether you need consumer-targeted content aimed at viral marketing and social sharing or high authority or technical content and online PR in order to establish your company as a leading authority in your market sector.

• Video, image and infographic provision and design services
• High quality technical articles and PR material
• Relationship development with authority websites and bloggers to raise your profile online
• Fun and exciting consumer content to bring your products to life in the minds and imaginations of your target audience
• Everything from high quality copywriting (in many languages) to graphical design and interactive services like games and shareable apps

 

Professional Brand Management

We supply full brand management services including strategy, positioning and identity to help you establish your brand in the marketplace and give you a complete understanding of how your business and brand is perceived by your potential customers and clients.

The core concept of brand strategy is relatively simple, but actually realising and then implementing a strategic direction for your brand is far more complex. The core of brand strategy is to place your brand in a unique market position which fully plays to your strengths. External marketing strategists can be invaluable in this exercise as they permit key issues to be identified and addressed in a timely manner.

Our holistic approach to brand strategy includes

• Define your current marketing environment (your brand and your competitors’)
• Identify a vision for your business and opportunities to realise it
• Determining how your brand needs adjustment in order to fit into this vision
• Brand definition to drive further creative and marketing work
• Brand guidelines for everything from look and feel to mood and voice

Brand Design Services

Our brand management and design services can bring your business to life. We supply a comprehensive service that covers everything from mood boards and logo design to brochures, website design and full branding guideline documents.

 

Get Your Business Found

If you are looking for a way to make your business more visible to potential customers and clients online then search marketing can raise your profile on the Internet and drive more relevant traffic to your website to improve your lead generation and revenue.

• Grow highly relevant traffic to your website
• Improve your visibility on major search engines – whatever your language
• Focus on ROI, not just numbers – we aim to boost your leads and revenue, not just visitor numbers
• Sustainable and ethical SEO services to help you reach the top of your marketplace
• Become more visible to your potential customers and grow your online business

Paid Search Marketing

Paid search marketing makes use of platforms such as Google Adwordsand other pay-per-click platforms in order to place your website and business in a highly visible position. You pay for only the relevant clicks you are bidding on.

• Fast to set up – start getting relevant traffic to your website on the same day
• Easy measurement means easy to keep close track of ROI
• Rapidly responsive to marketplace and consumer demand changes

Natural Search Marketing

Natural search marketing makes use of organic search engine optimisation techniques in order to raise the profile and visibility of your website on major search engines and encourage traffic for relevant search terms.

Natural search is sustainable and grows traffic steadily over time so is often more cost effective in the medium to long term than paid search marketing.

• Long term and sustainable growth for your website
• ROI focused to bring in the highest converting keywords
• Build up useful traffic over time with continuous search marketing improvements

 

Plan Your Marketing Moves

A well planned and executed strategic marketing approach will grow your brand and increase your business in the most cost effective way possible. Unify your online and offline channels in order to present a cohesive, holistic plan for your future growth.

With over a decade of experience in a variety of sectors, we can help you understand and put together a comprehensive strategic marketing plan. Our strategic marketing consultants work with you to ensure that every step of this plan is built around your business objectives so that you’ll get the best possible return on investment for your marketing.

• Market research
• Brand and channel strategy
• Branding creatives
• PR and social media
• Direct and Internet marketing
• Search visibility and brand impact

Our marketing services offer:

• Transparency
• Measurability
• Responsiveness
• Attribution

Transparency

Using leading industry tools and software combined with our expertise Web Designer Vip provide an integrated, transparent marketing strategy. We give our clients clear processes, transparency in results and a partner to work collaboratively with to maximise your leads and sales.

 

Brand Strategy

The core concept of brand strategy is relatively simple, but actually realising and then implementing a strategic direction for your brand is far more complex. The core of brand strategy is to place your brand in a unique market position which fully plays to your strengths. External marketing strategists can be invaluable in this exercise as they permit key issues to be identified and addressed in a timely manner.

Our holistic approach to brand strategy includes

• Define your current marketing environment (your brand and your competitors’)
• Identify a vision for your business and opportunities to realise it
• Determining how your brand needs adjustment in order to fit into this vision
• Brand definition to drive further creative and marketing work
• Brand guidelines for everything from look and feel to mood and voice

Channel Strategy

This is essential in order to determine how you will reach out to and communicate with your potential customers and clients.

• Select the right channels for your optimum target market
• Prioritise marketing strategy to the most profitable segments
• Refine your message and direction for each marketing channel
• Determine the best possible channels for each segment of your target market

 

Understand Your Brand

Our expert marketing consultants can provide you with a complete service to include brand strategy, positioning and identity as well as general marketing advice and guidance.

This is a substantial process and you will end up with greater awareness of how your brand is perceived in the international marketplace and how you can leverage your brand to improve the marketing for your business as a whole.

Formulate Marketing Strategy

We can help provide a clear definition for your business and/or website in terms of realistic goals and required functionality. This will include information on domain names and defined actions to maximise value from these and other potential assets. We provide complete definitions to ensure complete understanding of your vision and strategy for your brand.

Move Your Business Forward

All our marketing consultants conduct comprehensive background research, particularly on the competitiveness of the market both on and offline.

The full branding and strategy exercise is designed to help clients develop into new markets or in order to clarify the requirements of a new website, design development or any other marketing materials.