Ah, the wisdom of the crowd. While turning to a crowd for inspiration or feedback is nothing new, the Internet has given crowdsourcing the opportunity it needed to shine.
Social media is now a multiplayer experience that relies on collective, thoughtful engagement, and makes it easy for businesses to engage customers, solve problems, and innovate on products or services. Recently Pepsi, Lego and Amazon joined a long list of savvy companies using crowdsourcing as a tool for marketing and product development – and you should too!
Whistler sees an influx of visitors over the summer, meaning now’s the time that your crowdsourcing efforts will have maximum outreach. Here’s how small businesses can benefit from crowdsourcing, and why now is the perfect time to start.
What is crowdsourcing?
Companies use crowdsourcing as a way to turn to Internet users for services or ideas, including opinions and feedback, ideation competitions, and open calls for ideas around a specific theme.
A great example of a company that has successfully used crowdsourcing for content creation is LEGO, and their LEGO Ideas Platform: Users can submit ideas for new LEGO sets, and vote on other submissions, and LEGO review and select popular submissions, and turn them into a reality. Not only does this platform support idea generation at LEGO, but it also allows them to validate the demand for those ideas.
How can crowdsourcing benefit small businesses?
You’ll have an endless audience
Traditional focus groups are expensive, intensive, and often have dominant participants that skew the entire session. Crowdsourcing, on the other hand, offers a seemingly endless supply of crowd, meaning you can reach a larger, more diverse population, and reduce the risk of participants influencing one another. You can target tourists, locals, consumers, enthusiasts, and even other local businesses, to raise brand awareness, demand validations, and tackle unsolved problems.
You’ll get immediate results, at no expense
The Internet never sleeps, and neither should your engagements. Consumers today are very keen to be involved in the companies that they buy from, so by tapping into your audience, you’ll be able to solicit immediate feedback from a passionate and engaged consumer base.
Unlike traditional focus groups, online crowdsourcing is incredibly cost-effective and often free – as no contracts are required, and you only pay for the resources you need.
You’ll get great new ideas for your company
While larger companies can afford to test and try many different services and not worry about immediate ROI, small businesses do not have that luxury. Your customers are a powerful resource capable of generating great content for your brand, and by hearing directly from them you can determine what they would find useful, and skip straight to success.
For a fresh approach to issues and problems, break up a big task into many small ones, and ask your consumers for their input. They’ll give suggestions, ask questions, and hopefully offer valuable feedback that will illuminate new marketing pathways and ideas.
You’ll increase your customer engagement
Who doesn’t love a bit of buzz around their business?
Crowdsourcing allows you to solicit engagement and simultaneously publicize your organisation. By asking your customer base “What kind of products or services that we do not currently have would you like to see us provide?” , you’ll show you care about their opinion, and you’ll spark an easy initial conversation. From there, you can continue interactions and develop a positive relationship with your consumers, who will in turn become loyal brand advocates.
We understand that summer is a busy time for local businesses, and crowdsourcing may not be at the top of your to-do list. However, crowdsourcing is an important resource to be utilized, and can help your consumers become actively engaged in the work your company does. If you have any queries, or are hoping to get started but simply don’t have the time, here at Cloud9 we would love to help. As a full-service marketing agency, we offer services across the board, including strategy consultancy and monthly social media services. You can get in contact here.
How to Launch a Successful Email Marketing Campaign
Despite an ever-growing surge of social media apps and platforms, email is still a major consistent player in the marketing world. Email marketing allows brands to connect and respond to their target audience, and has the highest return on investment of all online marketing channels. Plus it’s super affordable, which makes it great for small businesses. However, with over 269 billion emails sent each day, there’s a lot of competition out there. If you want to know how to run a successful marketing campaign that will drive engagement and sales, here’s our step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Define your goals
Your goals for your email marketing campaign should line up with the overall objectives of your company. Pinpoint exactly what you want your campaign to achieve, whether it’s welcoming new subscribers or boosting engagement. From there, your goals will give you a good indication of whether you should be sending promotional, relational or transactional emails.
Step 2: Build your email list
If your primary aim is to nurture existing subscribers, then you should already have a bunch of known contacts at your fingertips. However, if you’re starting from scratch you’ll need to build a list of promising email addresses. Google Analytics is a great starting point when it comes to finding valuable leads. Alternately, nonintrusive popups on your site that offer irresistible incentives – like discounts or free shipping on first orders – gain immediate attention, and immediate results.
Step 3: Craft your email
A great email starts with a great subject line. Personalizing your email and creating a hook right at the start will encourage subscribers to read on. When it comes to copy, keep it direct and simple, and break up your text with blank spaces and images so the reader can quickly scan the page.
The end of your email copy will contain your call to action (CTA). This reinforces what you want your subscribers to do. For example, a property management company in Whistler would use their CTA to encourage subscribers to book their winter vacation before a certain date to secure the best deals.
Step 4: Test it out
Your email marketing campaign will need to be constantly evolving to stay ahead of the competition. A/B testing is a great way to see which kind of email designs, subject lines and CTAs perform best. Alongside this, you should also regularly monitor your email list so that you can re-engage inactive subscribers, and remove them if your attempts fail.
Step 5: Be consistent!
Once all of the hard work is done, it’s important to keep at it! If you do choose to manage your email campaigns by hand, we highly recommend you use email templates to save time. Email automation is also a cost-effective option that enables you to enhance the customer experience by responding to customers immediately – at all hours.
If you need any help launching an email marketing campaign, or if you would like detailed tracking and reporting of your marketing efforts, please contact Cloud9! Our experienced team build successful email marketing strategies that cultivate audiences and connect businesses with their growing online communities.
The Makings of a High Converting Landing Page
There’s a common misconception that landing pages are hard to create and maintain. But we want to dispel that rumour! Many businesses don’t make the most of their landing pages, but – done right – they are one of the easiest and smartest ways to generate more leads for your business.
However, a high converting page does more than simply “look good”. To convert visitors into customers, there are a number of design factors you will need to consider. Here’s how you can make your page as appealing as possible to visitors, to encourage them to stick around.
What is a landing page?
Landing pages are distinct from your homepage, or any other page on your website. They are designed for one purpose and one purpose only – to convert visitors into customers by capturing their information. A good landing page will target a particular audience and convince potential customers to share their personal details in exchange for a deal or special offer.
Why do you need a landing page?
Put simply, landing pages are a great way to improve SEO and drive traffic to your site. They guide customers towards a specific offer or product, and encourage them to take action. This gives you a fantastic opportunity to create conversions and grow your consumer base.
A few rules to consider when designing a high-converting landing page
Never send traffic from an advert to your homepage
The first rule of thumb is to keep your landing pages separate from the rest of your website. The whole purpose of a landing page is to make sure visitors can’t miss your promotional campaign. Home pages often bombard visitors with images, text and information, which will make it difficult for them to focus on your offer.
Keep your landing page clear and relevant
Online you only have a few seconds to convince someone that your business is relevant to their needs. This means you need to make those few seconds count. Entice your visitors by making your offer as big and bold as possible, and removing all surrounding clutter.
Keep your copy to the point
If you want to stop traffic on your site, you’ll need to design a killer headline. Keep it short, snappy and engaging, so viewers will be compelled to keep reading. The rest of your text should also follow this format. Match your concise and relevant copy with keywords that you used in you PPC ads, to reassure visitors that they’re on the right track.
Focus on the visitor experience
While it’s important to keep the overall look and feel of it similar to your main site, your landing page should be all about the visitor. Their first impression of your landing page really counts, so capture their interests and showcase how your brand can improve their life.
If you need any help developing a high converting landing page, or if you’re running a campaign but questioning the results, let us take a look! Our team at Cloud9 would be happy to evaluate your campaign to learn exactly how to refine your ads to gain maximum response – for less cost.
What is Real-Time Marketing and Why is it Important?
Real-time marketing is nothing new, but thanks to the power of social media more and more businesses are starting to embrace it as an effective form of online marketing. RTM is bold, loud, and undoubtedly one of the best ways to garner attention. And even better, RTM doesn’t require fancy technology, extensive planning or complex automation: All you need is some clever timing. Here’s a breakdown of what real-time marketing entails, and how you can use it to increase traffic to your website and increase sales.
What is real-time marketing?
Businesses use real-time marketing to interact with their target audience based on current local, national or global events and trends. Brands can engage with their consumers and connect them to what they need at critical moments. This doesn’t mean that brands are jumping on every Internet trend, but rather adding value to certain online conversations.
RTM is the antithesis of planning ahead, as it relies entirely on relevant news and current crazes. Businesses use real-time marketing for live event promotion, location-based deals, and most commonly for social media engagements. One of the most notorious RTM strategies comes from OREO, and their single tweet during the infamous 2013 Super Bowl blackout.
What are the benefits of real-time marketing?
It’s impactful
Marketers often struggle to come up with new, innovative ways to engage the always connected consumer. Real-time marketing offers a solution. Enabling marketers to adapt their message to a specific context, RTM cuts through the noise and allows businesses to connect with people in the right place at the right time.
It increases engagement
With RTM, businesses can reach people interested in their products or services wherever, whenever. Instead of blasting out generic messages across all social media platforms, you can personalize these messages to spark a dialogue with consumers, and increase the quality of engagements.
It diversifies your content
While it’s important to show your expertise through longer forms of content, sometimes shorter pieces can have more of an impact. These bite-size pieces of content, such as graphics or tweets, offer a quick and easy way to inform and engage your audience, giving them something to remember!
It increases a sense of urgency
Everyone wants to be in on the latest trend. When businesses tailor marketing to consumers in a time of need, their products or services become more appealing. Urgency motivates people and incentivizes them to engage with your brand. By structuring your advertisements to reflect a current event or trend, consumers will recognize how useful your products or services are in the current moment.
It’s inexpensive
Real-time marketing does not require huge amounts of money, making it one of best ways for small businesses to market their products or services. With a bit of swiftness and creativity, you can easily connect your brand with current and potential customers through relating to the most popular Internet topics and crazes.
Whether or not you’re using real-time marketing for your brand, it’s important to be in the loop with what your customers are talking about online. Here at Cloud9 Marketing, we specialize in social media management, as well as brand story-telling and graphic design. If you want to take your businesses marketing efforts to the next level, schedule a free consultation with us to get started!
Why Social Media is the Future of Customer Service
You don’t have to search for long to see that most businesses in Whistler conduct excellent customer service on social media. But how many businesses consider it to be their main support channel?
As we move further into the digital age, emails and phone calls are taking a lesser role when it comes to customer care. Instead, people are choosing to turn to social media to voice their complaints and complements towards businesses. Offering many benefits to both small businesses and to customers, here’s why social media is the future of customer service, and why – if you aren’t already – you should be consistently and promptly responding to customers online.
The power of social media
Social media already dominates internet activity. With over 1.5 billion Facebook users and 400 million Instagram users, the power of social media is ever-growing, and becoming increasingly accessible to people all over the world. With so many users, brands are able to reach an unlimited number of potential customers.
It’s customers preferred method of communication
90% of users prefer to use social media over other methods to communicate with brands. Understandably, people don’t want to wait hours for a response, or sit waiting on hold. Customers require instant gratification, and now expect companies to use social customer service to answer issues and problems immediately.
Phone conversations can occasionally leave customers with a negative impression of a business due to miscommunication. With text-based customer support, it is much easier for your team to understand and translate a customers issues, simplifying the process for both customers and companies.
It’s an inexpensive solution
Shifting customer service to social media has great financial benefits. On average, it costs $1 to solve a customer issue on social media…with conventional phone calls, solving the same issue often costs 6 times as much. This is partly due to the fact that customer service agents can solve problems much more efficiently through social media, and decrease the time spent on each issue.
It improves and increases brand reputation
Thanks to social media, customer service has become a spectator’s sport. But this can really work in your favour!
If you fail to respond, you’ll give off the message that you are arrogant and have nothing to offer in terms of a solution – all of which, as you can imagine, will greatly damage your reputation. However, provided you deal with situations appropriately and promptly, your outstanding customer service will play out in full view of the public. Your audience will be able to see that you are a trustworthy business that cares about your customers, and brand awareness will grow accordingly.
It benefits an integrated marketing approach
A successful marketing campaign can only succeed if it’s backed up by strong and solid customer service. Nailing the social customer service experience is particularly important for local businesses, as potential customers are likely to look up reviews before purchasing your products or services.
We cannot stress enough the importance of an integrated marketing approach. To create a seamless and positive image of your brand, it’s important to consider every aspect of your marketing strategy from awareness building to how you handle post-sale customer service. If you haven’t already invested in social media, now is the perfect time to get started. Cloud9 offer strategy consultancy and monthly social media services, and we would be happy to discuss all the ways in which you can improve the online customer experience. To get in contact, please click here.
How to Measure Social Media ROI
To measure social media Return on Investment (ROI), most businesses use the following formula:
Profit/ Investment x 100 = Social Media ROI
But this can be more complicated that it seems. For starters, how do you calculate profits? How do you work out which social media goals to set in the first place? And how do you prove which specific marketing campaigns were the ones to spark interest and drive sales?
If the concept of social media ROI feels a little daunting, you’re not alone. But calculating ROI doesn’t have to be complicated and time-consuming. We’ve composed a simple step-by-step guide that will help you measure your social media profits, and save a whole lot of time and money in the long run.
By seeing which of your marketing efforts deliver great results, and which ones don’t do so well, you can focus on the campaigns that really matter to maximize your ROI.
#1 Define your goals
Before anything, you will need to carefully identify your key performance indicators. KPIs will show you the progress of your business goals, and make sure you stay on track.
The more specific your goals, the better. Brand awareness means something different to everyone, so make sure you agree on a single, quantifiable awareness goal that you will be able to measure afterwards. For example, you could track new followers, clicks on links, or online purchases made.
#2 Track your goals
With your goals clearly defined, it’s time to start tracking. An easy – and free! – way to track website actions like sales and downloads is with Google Analytics. For tracking social media interactions such as shares and likes, Buffer is also a great tool to use.
#3 Attach a dollar amount
Once you’ve tracked your actions, you’ll need to assign them a monetary value. This is where it gets interesting, as there are many ways to do this. You could…
#4 Track your social media expenses
For the final step, you’ll need to deduct your investments from your overall ROI. These often include:
With your stats in front of you, you can calculate your ROI using the formula at the top of the page and see which of your social media marketing campaigns come out on top. Just remember your social media investments might be paying off whether or not you see a direct, immediate increase in revenue- so stick with it!
We understand that social media takes practice and may not be at the top of your to-do list if you’re running a small business. Our team at Cloud9 Marketing are social media whizzes, and would love to give a helping hand to boost brand awareness, improve online credibility, and increase sales. To put our social media management to the test, please get in contact!
Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for Your Small Business
So you’ve launched your website and opened your doors, but what’s next? To fully target your ideal demographic and start bringing in consistent sales, you’ll need to start marketing your business on social media. But even something as simple as choosing a social platform can be harder than you’d think…
In order to maximise your results, you need to make sure you choose a platform suitable to your business goals. Many small businesses make the mistake of tackling every social platform channel at once. However, we recommend starting with the most popular platform, and leaving the more experimental campaigns for later on. Let’s take a look at some of the most major social platforms, and see how they are suited to your audience, preferences, and other demographics.
Facebook
Facebook is the universal social media network, with more than 2 billion monthly users. With over a quarter of the world’s population scrolling through their news feeds, you have an unparalleled opportunity to reach virtually anyone, anywhere. However, because it’s so vast, you’ll need to be strategic when it comes to generating engaging paid and organic content. You’re up against a lot of competition, so post content that sets you apart from other similar companies.
One great advantage of Facebook is that it has a very low cost of advertising, with many advertisers saying they spend less than $1 per lead. For more information, here’s how you can optimize your Facebook Business page for success.
Instagram
As the fastest growing social channel, brands are rushing to Instagram to showcase their business to a largely younger audience. With over 800 million monthly active users, Instagram commands a 2000% better engagement rate than Twitter, and 58% better than Facebook.
Instagram is great for small businesses who want to turn heads with visually interesting products or services, like real estate businesses, local restaurants, and retail stores. Features like Instagram Stories and Instagram Live make it easy to connect with your consumers, as you can humanize your brand and build trust with your customers through these more candid moments.
LinkedIn
With a community of over 450 million professionals that love to engage with other brands, LinkedIn is the typical choice for B2B businesses whose main goal is lead generation. Allowing you to access a whole new demographic you may not have been able to find on other platforms, LinkedIn offers a targeting unparalleled in the realm of digital advertising. However, while the temptation may be to develop as many connections as possible, fewer, more personal connections can often provide greater value.
Youtube
This one may seem unexpected, but as the world’s largest video site (and second largest search engine), Youtube is definitely something you should eventually turn your efforts towards.
Video is now surpassing text as the best medium to engage with your online target audience, as it commands more attention and evokes emotion faster than written content. While it requires a bit more effort than other platforms, it’s really not as difficult as it seems. Weekly content doesn’t need to be completely entertainment orientated, as how-to demonstrations and interviews do just as well. Once you establish yourself on the video sharing site, it also makes it very easy collaborate and build credible connections with other relevant local businesses and influencers.
With a bit of practice, social media marketing is an art form that you can master. However, we know that posting consistent content across your social media channels is not the easiest thing to do when running a small business. If you need any help getting started, Cloud9 Marketing can create and manage your social media campaigns with effective strategies that drive quality engagement. To see if our social media management works for you, please get in contact! We’d love to help.
Why Crowdsourcing is Great for Small Businesses
Ah, the wisdom of the crowd. While turning to a crowd for inspiration or feedback is nothing new, the Internet has given crowdsourcing the opportunity it needed to shine.
Social media is now a multiplayer experience that relies on collective, thoughtful engagement, and makes it easy for businesses to engage customers, solve problems, and innovate on products or services. Recently Pepsi, Lego and Amazon joined a long list of savvy companies using crowdsourcing as a tool for marketing and product development – and you should too!
Whistler sees an influx of visitors over the summer, meaning now’s the time that your crowdsourcing efforts will have maximum outreach. Here’s how small businesses can benefit from crowdsourcing, and why now is the perfect time to start.
What is crowdsourcing?
Companies use crowdsourcing as a way to turn to Internet users for services or ideas, including opinions and feedback, ideation competitions, and open calls for ideas around a specific theme.
A great example of a company that has successfully used crowdsourcing for content creation is LEGO, and their LEGO Ideas Platform: Users can submit ideas for new LEGO sets, and vote on other submissions, and LEGO review and select popular submissions, and turn them into a reality. Not only does this platform support idea generation at LEGO, but it also allows them to validate the demand for those ideas.
How can crowdsourcing benefit small businesses?
You’ll have an endless audience
Traditional focus groups are expensive, intensive, and often have dominant participants that skew the entire session. Crowdsourcing, on the other hand, offers a seemingly endless supply of crowd, meaning you can reach a larger, more diverse population, and reduce the risk of participants influencing one another. You can target tourists, locals, consumers, enthusiasts, and even other local businesses, to raise brand awareness, demand validations, and tackle unsolved problems.
You’ll get immediate results, at no expense
The Internet never sleeps, and neither should your engagements. Consumers today are very keen to be involved in the companies that they buy from, so by tapping into your audience, you’ll be able to solicit immediate feedback from a passionate and engaged consumer base.
Unlike traditional focus groups, online crowdsourcing is incredibly cost-effective and often free – as no contracts are required, and you only pay for the resources you need.
You’ll get great new ideas for your company
While larger companies can afford to test and try many different services and not worry about immediate ROI, small businesses do not have that luxury. Your customers are a powerful resource capable of generating great content for your brand, and by hearing directly from them you can determine what they would find useful, and skip straight to success.
For a fresh approach to issues and problems, break up a big task into many small ones, and ask your consumers for their input. They’ll give suggestions, ask questions, and hopefully offer valuable feedback that will illuminate new marketing pathways and ideas.
You’ll increase your customer engagement
Who doesn’t love a bit of buzz around their business?
Crowdsourcing allows you to solicit engagement and simultaneously publicize your organisation. By asking your customer base “What kind of products or services that we do not currently have would you like to see us provide?” , you’ll show you care about their opinion, and you’ll spark an easy initial conversation. From there, you can continue interactions and develop a positive relationship with your consumers, who will in turn become loyal brand advocates.
We understand that summer is a busy time for local businesses, and crowdsourcing may not be at the top of your to-do list. However, crowdsourcing is an important resource to be utilized, and can help your consumers become actively engaged in the work your company does. If you have any queries, or are hoping to get started but simply don’t have the time, here at Cloud9 we would love to help. As a full-service marketing agency, we offer services across the board, including strategy consultancy and monthly social media services. You can get in contact here.
What Is A Customer Journey Map In Digital Marketing?
In order to gain and retain loyal customers, you have to create a seamless online experience that leaves users with a lasting positive impression of your brand. Every single touchpoint with your company plays a role in converting your customer, so each one must be faultless.
A customer journey map is a visual representation of every experience your customers have with you. It shows you the route your customers take when navigating your website, and allows you to record every touchpoint. Developing a customer journey map can optimize your digital marketing strategy, as you can understand and address your buyer’s feelings, motivations and questions.
Here’s a breakdown of what customer journey mapping is, how it can help reveal gaps or issues within your strategy, and how to get started planning your own map.
What is a customer journey map?
The purpose of a customer journey map is very simple: it helps you understand the route your customers take when buying and using your products and services. It serves to tell the story of your customer’s experience, from their initial engagement with your brand, into hopefully a long-term relationship.
By charting and organizing your customer’s touchpoints with your brand, you’ll gain a holistic view of the process they go through when using your services.
Why do I need it?
A customer journey map is a powerful tool that allows you to clearly understand your audience’s needs. Here’s why it’s so effective.
It gives you clarity
Firstly, it gives you a complete overview of where and when customers are interacting with your business. You can understand the context of your users, and gain a clear picture of their needs, hesitations and potential concerns. From there, you can tailor your online experience and work towards establishing a long-term relationship with customers, based on consistency and trust.
You can address gaps and issues
While you can reward yourself for all the fantastically positive touchpoints you have created, you will also be able to see where you are currently lacking content and losing customers. This works in your favour, so fear not! Understanding where you need to invest time and money means you can immediately develop priorities to address these. You can then take steps to improve certain aspects of your customer’s experience.
Great! How can I create my own?
Now you’re fully aware of the benefits of a customer journey map, you’re probably wondering how to get started? As you can imagine, mapping out the customer experience takes some time, but it’s definitely worth the effort.
We recommend you start out by listing all online touchpoints your company has with customers. Keep it simple, and note what message your customer is receiving at each encounter, and what platform they receive this on. Once you’ve synchronized your messages throughout your customer’s journey, you can put together your map.
Below is an example of a customer journey map from Forrester Research. However, if you fancy something a little more visual, there are many tools such as Microsoft Visio and Glizzy that turn your data into flow charts and diagrams.
We understand that customer journey mapping is a complex process! At the end of the day, each and every map is produced differently, depending on your own, personal preferences. If you need help connecting with your customer and improving touchpoints online, as a full-service marketing agency here at Cloud9 Marketing, we would be happy to help. To arrange a strategy consultancy that focuses on your consumer’s journey, you can find us here – we look forward to hearing from you!
Identifying Your Online Target Audience
Can you identify your exact online target audience? If no immediate image or prototype pops into your head, you may need to re-evaluate your marketing strategy.
You could have the most visually appealing website to ever exist, but it will fail to make an impact if it’s not reaching the right audience. To make sure your hard work pays off, you’ll need to find out who your customers are and where they hang out online. By identifying your primary audience’s needs, you can increase your online conversations, optimize your social media marketing, and boost organic traffic.
Why identifying your target audience matters
If you know exactly what your customers want, you can optimize your site to maximise the likeliness of them coming across it in their online searches.
The same goes for what your customers don’t want- by understanding their state of mind you can structure and prioritise content on your site, and leave out what you know won’t interest them. Here are a few ways to identify your target audience.
Educated assumptions are a good place to start…
But they definitely wont deliver entirely effective results. If you have no paying customers yet, trust your instincts and make educated guesses. In an online world, location becomes irrelevant, so stick to making assumptions about your target audience’s lifestyle and needs.
The best way to identify your audience is to talk to them
While your own estimations are a good start, unfortunately you’re not psychic. Once you have a sketch of your target audience, put it to the test in the real world. Meet people and businesses that fit your customer profile, and converse and interact with them. Once you learn about the market you are operating in, it will be easy to tweak your previous assumptions and change course if necessary.
It’s also worth surveying some of your most recent customers on what they used your site for, and how your business has changed their life. Keep your questions short and neutral, but in-depth enough that you can gather some solid demographical data.
Do your online research
There are many web analytics services on the Internet, but Google Analytics is the biggest and the best. It tracks and reports website traffic to provide you with insightful data right at your fingertips. Use it to unearth near limitless data about your target audience’s demographic and psychographic profiles, and gain a better understanding of what they find important and interesting.
The custom reports it produces are also highly useful, allowing you to see which traffic sources convert the best so you can invest more time, money and effort into high performing traffic senders.
Connect with your customers
Once you’ve identified your target audience, you need to make them stick around. Learn about them, understand them, and represent them on your site. You can try using social media listening tools, or manual monitoring, to learn your audience’s common dialect and understand their social media conversations.
Then, it’s time to take the plunge and dabble in your own online networking. Connecting with your target demographic and having a strong social media presence will help build trust and loyalty between your customers and your brand. Done right, your social media marketing will also provide proof that you are a well-connected, conscientious company that is worth following and supporting.
Blogging is also a great way to increase your following and maximise online conversations, as you’ll produce valuable optimized content that establishes your expertise to your audience.
If you need any help identifying and securing your target audience, here at Cloud9 we’d be more than happy to arrange a strategy consultancy. We focus our marketing plans around digital marketing strategies that are proven to gain customers. You can book an appointment here.
SSL Certificates Are Simply a Must for 2018
If you have a website, you’ve probably heard of SSL certificates, but are you actually aware of what they are and why they are important?
If not, keep reading…
SSL is an acronym for secure sockets layer. SSL certificates are the backbone of website security, and are vital for any business with an online presence, especially in 2018. SSL certificates allow someone’s browser to bridge a secure connection to your server, ensuring that the information is securely transferred.
You can tell if a website is SSL secure by looking at the URL structure. If a website’s URL starts out with “http,” it is not SSL secure. If it starts with “https,” then it is secure. Some browsers will also display a small lock icon to indicate you are browsing a secure website.
Here are a few reasons why all of this is important.
1. Stops Information Theft
When information is submitted on a website, it usually goes through a channel of computers before it reaches the intended party. So the chances of that information being stolen along the way are higher if SSL is not applied. SSL encrypts the information so that it’s readable only to the party it is intended for. It does this by adding random characters to the submitted information, which can only be accessed with an encryption key. The information is useless to anyone who doesn’t have that key.
With identity theft on the rise, information security is more important than ever. SSL ensures you keep everyone’s information safe, which builds confidence in people who are visiting your site.
2. Provides a Sense of Security to People Visiting Your Website
With identity theft on the rise, information security is more important than ever. SSL ensures you keep everyone’s information safe, which builds confidence in people who are visiting your site.
3. A Necessity for Online Payments
An SSL certificate is a requirement for any website that accepts payments with an encryption of at least 128-bit. So, if you have an ecommerce site, you have to have an SSL certificate installed if you plan on taking credit card payments.
4. It’s Mandatory in 2018
To ensure safer browsing in 2018, Google flagged any website that doesn’t have SSL certification by the end of 2017. It’s important to note that this change will affect all websites and not just ecommerce sites. So, if you’re a restaurant owner, lawyer, dentist, realtor or consultant, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this change doesn’t apply to you. It does.
Now that January 1st has passed, when people try to access a website without a SSL certification, a ‘Not Secure’ message will appear, which will more often times than not prompt them to leave.
Maintaining an online presence can be tough, so don’t make it any harder for yourself than it already is. If you don’t already have an SSL certificate on your website, NOW is the time to do so. If you would like to speak with a Cloud9 hosting specialist about making your website secure, contact us today.