Positioning is the foundation of every business.
In my experience, huge portions of superb marketing work is wasted taking a business in wrong directions.
e.g.
– you build up a successful content marketing engine… around the wrong customers
– you nail SEO for 100s of KWs… that bring low loyalty, low margin customers
/1— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) December 20, 2019
*Image credit : https://twitter.com/randfish/status/1208135554275012608
Desktop screen sizes are becoming larger and at the same time the consumption of content on mobile devices is growing exponentially.
A user browsing your website on a large desktop screen will certainly appreciate the large high quality images your website might be using but those same images can hamper the mobile user experience.
I already follow some of these tips and hence really liked the solutions presented in this article –
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/big-pictures-small-screens/
This basically means your mobile website will be somewhat different from your desktop website. This would help optimize the user experience on each device. Despite this difference, your website could still be “responsive”. You do not need two completely different code bases.
If your website is using popular platforms like WordPress you can use simple plugins for detecting whether the device is a mobile and then customize content as per the device. Media Queries (CSS technique) can also help in this but using media queries may not be efficient for “hiding” large images.
This post is not about the techniques to use but to emphasize that it is important to give your users an excellent experience.
You should definitely take the time to plan how your images are being served on different devices.
Marketing should be about bringing the right buyers to the right products.
Bombarding ads in name of marketing is something I have always been against.
“Consumers always have a choice” and mobile has strengthened this statement even more because now information is so readily available.
As Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP Ads & Commerce at Google himself says in this article :
The expectations for relevant, personalized, and assistive experiences will continue to skyrocket.
I am also of the firm opinion that marketing is going to play a more and more assistive role in future.
Most current websites (especially those of small businesses, local businesses) are just not ready for this change. They are still quite static almost like a brochure or booklet. Even many large companies do not have websites which are really driven by this assistive role.
The advertising also needs to change.
I have always tried to be granular in my approach, trying to align as much as possible with user intent, as much as we can understand it from just the search query. I have also run ads to test “user intent” in cases where the search term does not clarify the intent on its own.
I strongly believe that advertising and marketing must understand user need, and the messaging, as well as the medium of delivering the message, must be relevant to user need.
This is not new but still it is an often ignored situation because there are costs of going “granular”, in trying to understand and align with user intent.
However, now, it is time that marketers must align with user intent and user needs more than ever.
I agree with Sridhar that
We’re heading toward an age of assistance where, for marketers, friction will mean failure, and mass messages will increasingly mean “move on.”
Do read the full article written by Sridhar at this link.
You can also join the Google Marketing Next event livestream on May 23, 2017, at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET. I am sure it will be interesting. I will be joining for sure.
I rarely agree to trends but I found this article to be well written.
I agree with all the 8 trends mentioned in this article.
https://www.coredna.com/blogs/content-marketing-trends
5 Psychological Principles You Should Be Using In Your Marketing
I really liked this article by Kate Wilcox . If you have time, then the full article is well worth a read.
If you just want some quick action points (not as elegant or well explained as the original article), then the following summary (in my own words) might help :
1. Make the conversion process simpler.
Review this from time to time -How can you simplify your conversion further? If you have some dominant keywords bringing in traffic, can you simplify the conversion for each set of traffic understanding their intent?
2. Give something to get the conversion.
Make the user feel rewarded and willing to reciprocate.
3. People hate loosing. Use this concept in your copy.
Example “Offer closing soon”, “Book now before all spots sell out”.
4. A confident voice can influence the majority.
If you have some good (converted believer type) testimonials then present them prominently in your copy.
5. Social influence helps
We have a tendency to believe that if so many others found this useful, if so many others say this is good, then this must be good. Show reviews and ratings prominently (injected in copy or CTA if possible).
The new AdWords expanded text ads allows 45 more characters. Its time to be more creative with the ad copy. Try these 20 trigger words to possibly improve your ad copy.
Detailed article :
I will come to the trigger words later but first I would suggest including more “BENEFITS” in your ads.
I think the best possible use of the additional allowed characters might be to add more product or service benefits to the ad copy.
There is a very popular saying in marketing – Benefits sell, features tell. When writing ads and landing page copy, this simple statement has always helped me get better CTR and conversions.
However many of my clients do not have any significant benefit over competitors. In fact I had to think of some differentiating factors when I started AdWords for some of them. This is very typical with small business and many business verticals where the product or service is almost commoditized. How does one differentiate ads is such a case? While there are many strategies available but the following trigger words could also help in attracting and motivating your target audience.
Remember, trigger words are not magic bullets. They are just words to which people might respond favorably. When combined with other advertising techniques, they can significantly boost your results but real business reasons, real business USP which actually make difference to your customers makes for a much more successful advertising than any language gimmick.
These words could be helpful to gain that tiny (or sometimes significant) advantage over your competitors so do try to use them in your ads and share your feedback.
( Additional resource : A much more detailed and very popular article about power words is here. )
