Tag: Digital Marketing|SEO

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Effective digital marketing for a stronger 4th quarter of 2020 and a profitable 2021

The digital marketing landscape is evolving constantly. It is important to stay ahead of the curve if you want to be on top of your game. When it is about digital marketing, the focus remains on the future. Since 2020 is almost coming to an end, the question that comes up here is what does the final quarter of 2020 hold for digital marketing?

Yes, we shall get into it, but before that, let us have a quick look at the existing digital marketing trends in 2020.

What are the already-existing digital marketing trends in 2020?

In 2020, we have seen new and effective marketing trends. They are as follows:

Video marketing – Hosting videos became very much popular and an easier way to increase engagement and this is going to boost dramatically in 2021.

Voice searches – Since more people are using digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, SEO has inclined towards voice searches along with keywords that are based on how people talk and not type.

Chatbots – These are personal assistants without the personnel. 2020 tech trends have brought new life into the chatbots and AI, using them more convincingly in digital marketing.

Shoppable posts – This is also known as social commerce. You don’t need to leave the site or the app. These things came into existence in 2020 with Instagram and gained quick popularity in 2020. With 54% using social media for product research, the shoppable posts are great tools.

Direct messaging – This is one of the hottest marketing trends in 2020 – The DMs! Through Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, Twitter, and Instagram, brands have built a stronger connection with customers.

Micro-influencers – Influencer marketing was popular for a few years. In 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of social media peaked. At present, influencer marketing has become a commodity and it is a significant one. Micro-influencers are medium-sized influencers with narrow niches that are popular enough to be influential yet not too overloaded with offers.

Sentiment analysis – This is also known as social listening. It is the practice of analyzing the reactions of the users and customers on social media on a certain product or service. Sentiment analysis includes using data-collecting tools and algorithms to scour online responses.

Alternative social channels – The alternative social channels like Medium, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat are becoming new favorites for marketers. If you are a niche brand, then more specialized platforms are better to reach your target audience.

Programmatic advertising – AI and machine learning algorithms are now designed to make things easier. Starting from ad placement, performance tracking, media buying, and customer targeting, everything can be done through software.

Optimizing for the featured snippets – One of the primary reasons the digital marketing trends change is because the platforms change rapidly. Search Engines have become smarter, more search queries have featured snippets. Thus, at present, every piece of digital marketing content is created keeping in mind the featured snippets.

Now that we know the on-going digital marketing trends, let us have a look at the top digital marketing trends that will continue to exist in 2021 as well.

SL NO Digital marketing trends for 2021 Brief Summary
1 No click searches – aka featured snippets At present, when you search for something in Google, sometimes the answer is suggested at the top within boxes. This is the position zero box, aka the featured snippets where you get the answer without any clicks.
2 Google verified listings for local SEO For the businesses that operate on a local level, Google My Business offers valuable information and helps in establishing your brand in your location.
3 Visual search Instead of typing, the users have the option to upload an image and get information about any item.
4 Automated Smart Bidding in Google Ads These allow Google in using machine learning for analyzing a large amount of data on the users so that you can adjust your bids in real-time.
5 A change in the adoption of social networks Social media usage has naturally increased due to COVID-19 pandemic. With the social media platforms expanding its advertising and publishing options it will be interesting to see how brands use these short-form video platforms.

A few digital marketing tips for the 4th quarter of 2020

Here are a few things that you can do in the fourth quarter of 2020.

The 80-20 rule:

The 80-20 rule is applicable to a lot of things. Now here is how it relates to marketing and sales.

  • You get 80% of your profits from 20% of your customers.
  • 80% of the product sales will come from 20% of the products.
  • 80% of the sales are obtained from 20% of the products.

Now, the fourth quarter of 2020 is the right time to adjust your efforts to attain optimal returns.

  • Keep your focus more on 20% of your customers that generate 80% of the profits.
  • Also, put more energy into the campaigns around 20% of the products.
  • Increase the amount of expense on 20% of the ads that bring results for your company.

Use the holidays effectively

The final quarter of any year brings up the holiday season along with it. There are numerous upcoming festivals and in India where you as a brand can offer a lot to your customers. Instead of the boring discounts and price cuts, you can offer your customers something that connects with them emotionally.

Connecting with your audience emotionally is more important these days than offering simple monetary discounts. Thus, think about something creative to connect with your audience during the festivals. Have a look at our blog here on how you can make a content marketing calendar for the festivals in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Use the free time to your advantage

Since the fourth quarter of the year is a festive time there are opportunities to plan a lot of activities to engage your audience. You can do the following:

  • Start an email marketing campaign with a holiday theme.
  • Promote holiday offers through social media available until 31st December.
  • Line up a fourth-quarter social media strategy that revolves around Instagram, Facebook, Blogs, and Email.
  • Send virtual gift cards to clients and customers
  • Run a contest to grow your database, sign up people, partner with vendors for sharing expenses.
  • plan a get-together with clients, face-to-face, or through video calls.
  • Start a gift idea board on Pinterest and share it weekly.
  • Create a blog on the main product that you offer and use it to educate your customers.
  • Update the website to a new and more blog-friendly platform.

End of the year 2020 digital marketing aspects to monitor carefully

The New Year is almost around the corner. Sure we have talked about a lot of existing digital marketing trends like video marketing and voice search that will account for over 50% of the search queries by 2021. However, there are few interesting digital marketing aspects that no one is really talking about. Here are certain digital marketing aspects that you have to monitor carefully, especially now, when we are at the end of 2020.

  1. Companies that rely too much on Google Analytics will be beaten by their competition

We all love Google Analytics and there is nothing wrong with it. However, marketing is changing and new channels are introduced (like voice search). Transactions are no longer simple. There are upsells, downsells, repeat purchase, checkout issues.

Also, you can generate more revenue for your online business through affiliate marketing, partnerships, and even webinars. This is what led the companies to start using analytics solutions that tie to their database better, like Amplitude.

More companies are using business intelligence solutions like Google Data Studio. You can pass more granular data from the Facebook Ad Campaigns into Data Studio. This phenomenon would be difficult with Google Analytics.

Thus, if you want to win big, you have to combine Analytics with other tools like Google Data Studio to access advanced data for more informed decisions.

  1. Organizations will optimize for the voice searches but not for the revenue

In 2020, more than 50% of the searches are through voice search. However, that is not a new trend. So what is the big deal? To optimize for the voice search. Optimizing for the voice search is a great way to get your brand out there. The best example here is Jetson.ai.

If you are not familiar with Jetson.ai, it enables people to buy from your website using a voice search. It doesn’t matter whether it is Alexa or Google Home. It works with most of the popular devices. The best thing is, it can learn from the customers and customize the interactions.

For instance, if you order the same toothpaste from the same store, it will keep a track of it and help you to order the same product repeatedly.

  1. You have to look for alternative communication channels

Well, we all know that email is something that we use in the corporate world. However, the click rates from email marketing have dropped by 9.4% in 2019. Does that mean email marketing is obsolete? Absolutely not! Email is here to stay but the companies need to leverage other communication channels.

Chatbots, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp messenger is an even better marketing channel. Also, it is important to leverage tools that allow push notifications like subscribers. You can wait till next year for the chatbots and push notifications to get more popular but the sooner the better it is.

  1. Automation in marketing

Automated SEO solutions increase page views per visibility by 60%. Also, it offers 21% more keywords on page one. Yes, it is applicable to larger organizations. However, some startups like Ubersuggest, are starting to leverage AI.

In simple terms, the marketing field is getting even. If you want to do well, you need to leverage AI and automation. It will make quick changes and more accurately than any human.

There will be affordable AI options as well. It is just a matter of time. Now, if everyone is using it then how do you beat your competitors? Simple, you use what everyone else is using, which are the -price, customer service, upsales, operations, etc.

  1. No more silver bullets

Previously, a lot of businesses were built on a single marketing channel. For instance, Dropbox grew by referral marketing where you used to get more space by inviting more friends. Facebook grew by email address book where Facebook could tap into it and invite your contacts to use Facebook on your behalf. Yelp and Quora were built on SEO.

Yes, all these factors help in driving the business. However, you can no longer do business with a single marketing channel. Good channels get saturated. Also, when a single channel works, your competitors will jump on board and make things harder for you.

This is why, marketing today, is shifting towards marginal gains. Digital marketing today is about improving in multiple marketing channels instead of sticking to a single “holy grail of marketing”.

Starting from the split testing of the title tags to tweaking a few ranking improvements, to adding a few check-out bumps to spend a little more on your paid ads to using the Google Data Studio to optimize for your lifetime – it is all about the little things now.

Practical digital marketing recommendations for a profitable 2021

It is important for all business organizations to review how they can harness the latest marketing trends. It will help them in applying the latest innovations.

According to Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist,

“70% of the time we’re going to focus on things that we know that are very core to our business. 20% is where we’re trying to push the boundaries. You get into the known unknowns. And the last 10% is true crazy experimental stuff. Trying to figure out how to do uncomfortable things that we’re going to fail at more than we will succeed at. But with every success, you build a competitive advantage.”

Thus, evaluating the innovations will help you push boundaries and help you improve digital marketing activities.

  1. Monitor the core Google Updates on organic search

In 2020, the core updates had a significant impact on organic visibility for multiple brands and businesses. According to Google,

“Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our search results. Most aren’t noticeable but help us incrementally continue to improve. We aim to confirm such updates when we feel there is actionable information that webmasters, content producers, or others might take about them”.

  1. Check out the opportunities from structured data and SERPs features

Structured data will reshape the future. It is true because, by September 2020, Google implemented structured snippets with SERPs. As you can see the “how-to” schema carousel is right above the featured snippet. Once you click on the steps on the how-to schema, it will take you to the site listed within the featured snippet.

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5 Red Flags that make up a Bad SEO/Digital Marketing company

When it comes to choosing an effective SEO/digital marketing agency, you will find a lot of organizations at present. Given the number of emerging digital marketing agencies all over the globe, this is pretty much normal.

The problem is every organization will claim that it delivers the highest quality performance for every single client. But in the end, a lot of these organizations fail to keep up with the claims. That’s what affects your business.

In this blog, we are going to share the 5 warning signs to consider before choosing a digital marketing firm. This is going to help you sort out the agencies for your business.

1. Asking to own your data/logins

If a digital marketing company asks to own your data/login credentials it is a hallmark sign that this is not the right one. A lot of companies fall for this guise. But this can be tremendously dangerous if things don’t work out between you and the company.

There are a lot of shady organizations that will hold on to your data and logins as a hostage to get the contract going. This can lead to legal disputes getting stretched for months or years maybe. You will need to create new login credentials and add new tracking codes for your site causing unnecessary harassment.

Thus, before hiring any digital marketing firm, check their background, and obtain references. If they are not able to offer any references, look for other companies.

2. Guaranteeing #1 rankings in the search engine results page

There is no one and I repeat NO ONE that can guarantee #1 rank in search engine results page. There is no magic formula to crack Google’s algorithm. It is controlled by a machine learning AI. It modifies the search results depending on our search habits and learning.

What these companies do instead is they will get you ranked on page 1. Getting ranked on Page 1 and getting ranked #1 is a completely different story. You will find a lot of ads claiming to get you to rank on #1. You see those ads, get in touch with them, and convince you to give them a shot.

Now, the work starts and in a few weeks, you start to see certain keywords getting ranked to page 1. You feel that they are fulfilling their claims. The problem starts when there are no leads for quite a long time even when your website is on the first page of Google.

They will explain that SEO takes time; it’s a slow process…..blah blah blah, but you will not see any return. Ultimately after, 6 or 8 months when you look into it, you will find that they have used keywords that have no monthly search volume and are irrelevant to your business.

Always remember that there is no one that can guarantee #1 ranking on Google. If any of us could, that company would become extremely rich.

3. They will promote their story, not yours

Coming to the red flags of a bad SEO services company, their reports are filled with their story and not yours. This means, they would always shine a light on what they did good, what went right and why should you pay more.

Such a company is more desperate to get their contracts renewed. They would never talk about what didn’t go right and what is not working. SEO is all about trial and error. It is important to take the lessons when something doesn’t go right with your digital marketing strategies.

If the agency is not maintaining transparency from their end, do not choose them. Such digital marketing agencies are always afraid to share what they are doing. They are scared to give away their “secret formula”.

The point is it is important for you to know what worked and what didn’t work as well. If a company doesn’t offer you that, then it is not the right company.

4. A transactional partnership should be prioritized

Observe how an agency is pitching their products and services to you. A digital marketing agency that wants to help you will genuinely help. A company that doesn’t want to help you will only tell you how much their services cost. That’s the difference.

If any organization spends one/two hours and only talks about how great they serve, then it is not the right choice. When you are having a meeting with a company, they should have some insights into how they can improve your brand.

There is nothing wrong with bragging a little bit. But the important part is to provide actionable things that can be accomplished together. Those are the ones that genuinely care about your business. There should be some kind of partnership between you and the company.

5. Out-dated case studies don’t work anymore

When an organization is showing you the results of their previous work, make sure to ask what year the results are from. Old and out-dated case studies will not do you any good. This is an injustice to the organic search.

SEO tactics and trends change every single day. The tricks that used to work 2 years ago, will not work now. Consider the time of the case studies that the companies will present to you.

Skyram Technologies as a successful SEO agency

As a pioneering digital marketing agency in Kolkata, Skyram Technologies offer all-round SEO services for small, medium, and enterprise businesses. The objective of Skyram Technologies has been to deliver optimal digital transformation utilizing cutting-edge technologies. Our specializations include Social Media Marketing, Web Development, UI/UX, Digital Marketing, E-Commerce, CRO, Web Analytics, PPC, Mobile Marketing, SEO & Google Ads.

As one of the most preferred digital marketing agencies in India, we have worked with both local and global clients. Delivering effective SEO strategies with increasing organic traffic has been our forte. Here is a quick look at the wide array of clients that we have worked on.

Skyram esteemed clients
Our esteemed clients

One of the primary reasons for the success of Skyram Technologies as an SEO agency is we evaluate the existing website thoroughly. Once that is done, we present actionable insights on how to enhance your website presence in the search engine results page.

Not only we ensure consistent growth in online presence but we also take care of your brand awareness. Rest assured that we shall capitalize on every opportunity to reach your target audience.

Our professional & certified SEO team evaluates the present SEO strategy and suggest optimized recommendations. This is what ensures a competitive edge. Our on-page SEO services include keyword research, technical optimization, and page optimization.

The search engines will amplify online presence based on your website ranking. Our SEO team ensures that you are creating the right connections by properly handling the outreach link building and cleanup. Take your business to the next level with premium digital marketing and off-page SEO services.

With premium Local SEO services, Skyram Technologies ensure optimal conversions and drive targeted traffic. Users that search with local terms are highly likely to convert. We will increase your brand recognition by targeting the people in the area where the business is located.

Using Local SEO we shall make things easier for your target audience to get in touch with your business/brand. Skyram Technologies has worked with a plethora of clients requiring customized SEO services for their business.

Get in touch with Skyram Technologies to avail a portfolio on how we have benefitted multiple clients. We share a detailed report on the kind of organic growth that we have delivered to our clients along with an evaluation of your website as well.

Digital marketing and effective SEO services can cause help to establish a strong online presence for any brand/business. If you are seeking to create a meaningful connection with your target audience, get in touch with Skyram Technologies today!