According to a recent study, UK adults are now spending 4 hours a day online – with the recent surge being attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. With government-mandated lockdowns causing many businesses to temporarily close up shop – online shopping has experienced a similar lift in popularity – which means that it’s time you paid a little more attention to your website. (more…)
Social media has become a significant part of most businesses marketing strategies. With the help of Twitter and Facebook, brands can reach out to shoppers directly. Instagram, meanwhile, influences purchases by leveraging celebrities to endorse products and services. (more…)
Outsourcing critical tasks enables you and the entire team to concentrate on the primary company vision and goal. You don’t want your staff to spend a substantial amount of time cleaning the office, taking care of IT issues, or handling broken down equipment. Instead, you want them to utilize their skills and talents fully and at the same time feel happy, appreciated, and motivated to report to work. (more…)
When it comes to running a business and striving to make it as successful as possible, there are a huge number of different possible factors to consider, and avenues to think about exploring.
For one thing, it’s important to have a clear sense of what “need” you are trying to address in the life of the respective client or customer. For another thing, you have to be good at managing your financial resources, and at focusing your efforts in alignment with a broad and long-term vision of what you want your business to achieve.
In addition to all of that stuff, however, there are certain specific techniques and approaches that you can utilise in terms of your communications and marketing materials, in particular, that can really end up making quite a dramatic difference.
Utilising video in your business, whether that involves contacting a professional Video Production Agency or relying on your own video editing skills, seems to be one of the most popular and potentially fruitful approaches out there.
Here are some reasons why you should consider utilising video in your business.
With written text, it’s certainly possible to have a snappy and potent slogan, catchphrase, or webpage header. But it’s very difficult to communicate core ideas as quickly and effectively by any other means, as by video.
Video naturally runs at the speed of speech, while simultaneously including the possibility of other communication elements that can ensure that you are able to distil and convey the key points about your business quickly and efficiently.
One of the benefits of this is that whoever is watching your videos will likely leave with a good sense of what you’re about.
One of the magical things about using video when trying to communicate with anyone, is the simple fact that video allows you to communicate with people through various different modalities at once.
In other words, you’re not just communicating through words alone as you would be in the case of writing. With video, you can include facial expressions, body language, intonation, and most of the other subtle aspects of communication that actually appear to convey more than words, themselves, do.
In addition to all those things, video can also include design elements, music, graphical displays, and all sorts of other features and elements that can make a powerful and lasting impact.
People generally tend to absorb information most effectively, and have their feelings about a topic influenced, by forms of communication that address them in various different modalities at once, and that don’t simply rely on appealing to people’s linguistic memory.
Increasingly in the world today, people by and large are looking for authenticity and a sense of earnestness and enthusiasm – both in life, in general, but also with regards to the kinds of businesses whose services they use.
Video is a great way of establishing a much more personal connection with a prospective customer than written text alone can, because with video you have the option of putting a real human being in front of the camera, and having them communicate a message to whoever is watching.
Particularly if you start running a video series, and bring the same individual in front of an audience on a regular basis, rapport can more easily form, and you can begin opening a two-way conversation with prospective customers that can have a wide variety of different potential positive outcomes.
It would be pretty difficult to not notice the fact that video seems to be an essential component of the direction things are heading in, with regards to general communication technology, and the Internet in particular.
Today, FaceTime and WhatsApp video calls are ubiquitous, and – particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic – businesses have increasingly been handling internal communications and meetings via various forms of videoconferencing.
Many businesses today still don’t do anything much with video, but it seems the trend is firmly set in the direction of things like video having an increasingly significant influence going forward.
Putting yourself in a position to be at the crest of the wave might be great for the future of your business, and your overall ability to remain dynamic and effective.
Of course, if you are actively staying engaged with video communications, presentations, and marketing materials, you’re likely to be pretty well poised to also notice adjustments and new developments as they arise, and to pivot and capitalise on those as well.
Maybe tomorrow the next big thing will be virtual reality welcome messages on websites – but even if that’s the case, you’ll be in a better position to pivot towards that if you already have a good amount of experience in utilising video.
Every now and then, new graphs appear showing the results of surveys on how people divide their attention online, and how much time they’re willing to spend viewing particular web pages, or engaging with particular forms of content, before clicking away.
Inevitably, the trend seems to be that people have a very small amount of patience for most content on the web, and short attention spans for any written content – with the general pattern being that the title and first paragraph will get skimmed and not much else.
A clear consequence of this is that one of the most pressing issues facing businesses in general and marketers in particular, is finding out how to grab people’s attention.
Simply put, video can often grab people’s attention very effectively and very quickly, depending on how well put together the video is.
If you can hook someone with a strong visual element in the first couple of seconds of a video, they are much more likely to watch the rest of the video than to read through a mountain of written content on a landing page.
If you’re looking for new ways to market your business, some of the marketing trends of today are highly effective. Many of them might seem a bit too ‘out there’ for your business at the moment, but soon, you’ll notice more and more businesses taking advantage of these techniques. Read on for the marketing trends to watch in 2021:
AI is taking over many basic jobs already, and is becoming more advanced as time goes on. Artificial intelligence can have advantages over hiring a human employee. For instance, there’s AI designed to predict and prevent crimes, as well as take care of reporting suspicious activity, which can be a great way to patrol car parks and certain areas, for example. Areas such as basic communication, email personalization, and content creation can also be taken care of by AI technology.
Many businesses are incorporating AI by using chatbots to communicate with customers. Chatbots are available day or night and provide instant responses to simple questions, ensuring customers are satisfied. They also offer great customer service as they never grow impatient, have all of the customer’s history available, and leave you with free time to take care of more important tasks.
Personalizing content, products, and emails can give you an edge over similar businesses. Many consumers admit that they feel annoyed with generic advertising efforts, and 90% say they find personalization more appealing. That is a huge percentage of people who could be persuaded to work with you if only you would personalize your interactions with them. Use a customer’s history with the company to build personalized stories and recommendations for them. For example, you could find a way to recommend flavors, styles, and other options based on data including their age, interests, and location.
Video marketing is set to be one of the biggest marketing revelations of the next 5-10 years. It has already been made abundantly clear how fantastic video marketing is for your seo, with stats to back up the claim. A staggering 70% of consumers have shared a brand’s video, and 52% admit that watching a product video makes them feel confident when deciding to purchase from a company. Video marketing is a popular way for customers to learn about new products, and with the growing shift to mobile devices, it’s an easier way to present information to customers who probably won’t want to read huge chunks of text. It isn’t just about creating attractive, well edited, informational videos, either. Many people are loving short and concise videos from the likes of TikTok, and even Instagram reels. There’s also the opportunity to take advantage of live video, where you can show live viewings and events to people who may not have been able to be there in person.
Marketing trends can change quickly, but the above marketing trends are here to stay for the foreseeable. Make sure you stay flexible and incorporate the above trends to supercharge your marketing efforts this year.
Marketing budgets can be tight when you run a small business or perhaps you’re a solopreneur. Knowing what you should be spending your money on to promote your brand isn’t always easy. You might know that digital marketing can be better when you have a small marketing budget and more traditional marketing methods tend to be more expensive. But even then, how do you decide which digital marketing methods are worth your time and money? Some may be more effective than others, so you need to know what’s going to get you results. Have a look at these cost-effective options to market your business. (more…)
Marketing has the potential to put businesses on the map and send sales soaring, but it’s not always easy to design and implement effective strategies. In this guide, we’ll explore ways to ensure your campaigns count in 2021. (more…)
If you research online, you’ll find that there are numerous guides that claim they can make your business successful far more rapidly than you might expect. Unfortunately, most of these possibilities are either scams or false promises. There are a lot of marketing companies out there who will claim that they can get your brand to page one of Google. This should immediately set off red flags because even Google is on record as saying that they can’t get a website to the top of the SERPs. There’s no way to trick the algorithm without putting the work in and providing the right level of quality. (more…)
