Tools and technology Archives - W&Sin https://www.wsbusinessinc.com/category/tools-and-technology/ Creating an effective marketing strategy: tips and recommendations Fri, 17 Mar 2023 19:44:11 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.1 https://www.wsbusinessinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/cropped-WSin-32x32.jpg Tools and technology Archives - W&Sin https://www.wsbusinessinc.com/category/tools-and-technology/ 32 32 10 Top Marketing Trends for 2023 You Need to Know https://www.wsbusinessinc.com/10-top-marketing-trends-for-2023-you-need-to-know/ Fri, 30 Dec 2022 16:15:00 +0000 https://www.wsbusinessinc.com/?p=138 Choosing the marketing campaign that works best for your business can be overwhelming. Here are the best marketing strategies for 2023 that are more popular than your old-school strategies: Media marketing Social media marketing isn’t going anywhere in 2023. Marketers can use the growing number of social media users to promote their brands. Business statistics …

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Choosing the marketing campaign that works best for your business can be overwhelming. Here are the best marketing strategies for 2023 that are more popular than your old-school strategies:

Media marketing

Social media marketing isn’t going anywhere in 2023. Marketers can use the growing number of social media users to promote their brands. Business statistics already show that 80% of consumers resort to posting on social media before buying products, using discount campaigns and accessing other websites.

This means you can increase your sales, engagement and website traffic using social media channels. TikTok, one of the fastest-growing social networks with 1 billion monthly active users, is a top choice for marketers looking to increase their audience and campaign engagement in 2023.

Its laser-focused algorithms help companies effectively reach their target audience in the shortest possible time. The key is using standard length videos, the right hashtags, popular audio, camera filters and other TikTok tricks. Another marketing hotspot to consider is Instagram.

There’s no question here. 83% of consumers trust Instagram so much that they visit IG accounts to find and buy products and services. You can even post your ads on Instagram and distribute them to your target market.

It’s not a difficult task given that 87% of IG users reported that they follow brands, click on links to websites and make purchases after seeing IG ads.

Influencer marketing

Although influencer marketing is new to the industry, it is now worth $16 billion, more than $2 billion more than its value in 2021. And we’re already seeing it boom in 2023.

That’s because influencers and their followers are helping companies build brand awareness, increase lead conversion and build a pool of loyal customers.

Wondering how such neo-marketing tactics became so popular?

Well, the success of influencer marketing in recent years can be directly attributed to the increased use of social media. In 2021, brands were leaning more toward Instagram and TikTok influencers to increase engagement and sales. 97% of marketers believe Instagram is the most reliable platform for influencer marketing. Influencer Marketing Hub reported that from 2015 to 2017, the number of posts sponsored by brands on Instagram was 2.68 million and is expected to grow to 6.12 million by 2023.

On the other hand, TikTok’s growth in users and influencers has also made it one of the most attractive platforms online today.

According to the latest data, TikTok now has more than 1 billion monthly active users. That’s a big potential market to consider.

You may be wondering, why not just click on the influencers from Facebook, Twitter, Twitch and other social media sites? You see, these other social media sites may have more users per month, but none of them are as engaged and active as IG and TikTok. And as marketers, you know how important it is to engage your target market in your campaign.

If you want to integrate an influencer marketing strategy in 2023, focus on the right social media sites and the ideal opinion leader.

Video Content Marketing

Video marketing has been a popular strategy since 2010, and the usage statistics continue to grow. And about 99% of marketers who use video content plan to use it more in the future.

It’s no longer surprising that such a huge percentage of marketers and companies are switching to video advertising. With platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, Vimeo and YouTube dominating the Internet, it’s smart to use short videos to promote your brand. Even more remarkably, 66% of consumers would rather watch a short video about products and services than long articles and posts. This just means that videos that meet the standards of the above platforms get more attention than just articles, print publications and other forms of marketing.

Video content can better explain what your brand or product is all about, in an engaging way that’s what consumers need and want.

If you apply this video marketing trend to 2023, your customers will be able to retain and digest 95% of your content message, which will help them make a decision to buy your products and services.

Content Marketing

If you’re not interested in publishing blogs and white papers, sending out regular newsletters, publishing press releases and other digital content marketing strategies, it’s time to shift your focus in 2023. Digital media trends have gained momentum over the years, making it easy to spread the word about a brand. This makes it easier to share information and promotional content about your brand so your target audience can easily access them through their phones.

In 2022, video content is the top content marketing strategy for marketers, followed by blogs, articles and infographics. These are the primary media your target market interacts with before they decide to buy anything. If your content is informative, transparent and engaging, it can convince your audience and turn them into buyers.

Marketing with QR Codes

QR codes weren’t originally intended for marketing purposes, but thanks to new smart uses of the QR code generator and software, marketers have found a haven in this digital tool. Many consider these 2D barcodes a versatile marketing tool that can help marketers develop compelling digital marketing tactics.

You can encrypt a huge amount of information into a QR code, and it’s available in just one smartphone scan. QR codes can store up to 4,296 alphanumeric characters, 7,089 numeric characters and 1,817 kanji characters. You can paste website URLs, text, numbers and even files into the code. And this data is easily accessible with just your phone.

Marketers can use QR codes to enhance their social media, content, SEO, video and other marketing strategies. Why? Because QR codes are an interactive tool that can increase conversions and traction. In 2021, Statista recorded 75.8 million QR code scanners in the United States alone. That number is expected to reach 99.5 million by 2025, as U.S. QR code scanners will continue to use the code for various marketing campaigns in the future. But keep in mind, this is only in the United States.

QR code use in the country is mostly focused on QR code-based payment, rail ticket transactions, and other services provided by the consumer to the merchant.

Other Asian (mostly China and Japan) and European countries have also implemented QR code technology in the corporate sphere. Today, marketers use QR codes for restaurant menus, website content, social media accounts, digital business cards, online and offline documents and more.

Local search optimization

Local search optimizationThis year, 2023, learn how to say yes to a local SEO strategy for your website. You can easily rank your website in your target area with localized website content. And this strategy is proven to be effective.

In 2022 alone, 78% of consumers searched online for companies near them at least once a week. Additionally, 97% of Internet users search for local businesses to find products and services nearby.

Optimizing your business website for local search will simply help you become one of the top search engine results in your target market.

To start using this marketing technique, you can requestGoogle My Business page so people can easily find your physical stores when they search for products and services in your area through Google.

Make sure you provide accurate information about your business, use the right keyword (including the location of your business) and gather as many customer reviews and reviews as possible.

Voice search optimization

Voice search optimizationAnother SEO strategy worth looking at in 2023 is voice search optimization, and here’s why.
By 2022, more than 66 million U.S. households are projected to have smart speakers in their homes. And because of convenience, 71% of Internet users prefer voice search to typing in keywords. You can easily find what you’re looking for even when your hands are busy, like driving or cooking dinner.

What’s more, voice search allows users to be more conversational in their queries, creating a huge difference from regular long-tail keyword searches, which often seem robotic. Optimizing your website for voice search ranks your page faster.

This is because search engines (like Google) give priority to websites that offer useful content. The more accurate your target keyword information is, the better your chances of ranking. It’s a win-win for you and your target audience. You can boost your website’s rankings, and your audience can get quality and accurate answers to their questions.

AI-based marketing strategies

Indeed, the marketing industry went far beyond print media campaigns when AI marketing came into the spotlight. This cutting-edge strategy became popular in early 2010, helping companies and marketers optimize their work. AI marketing automates advertising strategies such as data analysis, search engine optimization, retargeting, customer support and creating marketing campaigns.

You can use the following artificial intelligence technologies for your marketing campaigns:

  • Search engine optimization tools
  • Chatbots to help customers
  • Content creation and validation
  • Digital marketing automation software
  • Ad targeting
  • Lead retargeting
  • Dynamic pricing

Thanks to artificial intelligence technology, marketers will have effective partners to help gather real-time analytical data about their campaigns. This new marketing trend also helps to target the right market, understand their needs and requirements, and decide which campaign is more effective for a particular demographic, season and location.

Using infographics and images

Visually appealing infographics can quickly grab your audience’s attention in a sea of text ads. 65% of B2B marketers primarily use infographics for their content marketing initiatives, and 84% of them find this strategy effective. You can do your best in your blogs, social media posts and white papers to provide extensive information about your brand. But strategically created infographics can also do the job.

You can quickly increase traffic to your site by 12% by integrating images and infographics.

How: It’s simple.

There are high domain authority (DA) websites that accept guest posts from you and allow you to use infographics. Or they can use your photos in their articles instead of external links. This backlinking helps you boost your website’s DA, allowing you to increase your online authority. What’s more, quality infographics will also help you gain market credibility.

Seeing your memorable and informative images may encourage them to share them on their social media and networks.

Podcast marketing

A broadcast that you can play on demand is a podcast for you. And yes, this is one marketing trend of 2023 that you should consider. This fast-growing industry has already attracted 63% of consumers and listeners in the U.S., making podcast platforms ideal for promoting your brand. And about three out of every four podcast listeners in the U.S. use podcasts to learn about new things.

Marketers can leverage this by curating podcast content that informs their target listeners about their products and services. Indeed, using a podcast marketing strategy allows companies to increase their brand awareness and recognition.

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7 Best Marketing Metrics https://www.wsbusinessinc.com/7-best-marketing-metrics/ Mon, 12 Jul 2021 19:06:00 +0000 https://www.wsbusinessinc.com/?p=135 If you don’t know where to start, here are some key metrics to track. These are key metrics that will help you assess how people are responding to your brand, whether they are engaged, and how your spending and revenues compare. Lead Generation This can include metrics such as cost per lead (CPL), click-through rate …

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If you don’t know where to start, here are some key metrics to track. These are key metrics that will help you assess how people are responding to your brand, whether they are engaged, and how your spending and revenues compare.

  • Lead Generation.
  • Conversion rate.
  • Retention
  • Attraction
  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
  • Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
  • Return on Investment (ROI)

Lead Generation

This can include metrics such as cost per lead (CPL), click-through rate (CTR), qualified leads for sales (SQL) and qualified leads for marketing (MQL).

Leads are users who could potentially become customers/buyers, so it’s pretty important to measure the volume of these generated leads.

Leads can be generated in many ways, including contact forms, landing pages, email campaigns, blog CTAs, online events and seminars, and more.

If you’re getting a large number of leads, it means your strategy is working and your customers are seeing the value of what you’re offering.

Conversion Rate

Conversion is when a user takes the action you want them to take, whether it’s making a sale, joining your email list, sharing your social media article, or simply filling out a survey.

To determine your conversion rate, you simply divide the number of conversions by the number of visitors.

The type of conversions you’ll track depends on your goal, but either way, conversion tracking will let you know what successfully drives your potential customers to action and increases your chances of converting them into customers.

Retention

Generating interest in your brand is great, but it’s also important to remember your existing customers.

Retaining customers means keeping them in mind throughout the customer journey and building brand loyalty by responding to blog comments, offering them discount codes, asking their opinion through surveys/quizzes, accepting guest materials, and so on.

To track retention, you can track lifetime customer value (CLV), churn rates, revenue growth, and net promoter score (NPS).

Look at loyal visitors to see what they like and interact with, and then incorporate that into your marketing campaigns.

Engagement

Customer engagement metrics tell you how and whether people are interacting with your brand, whether it’s on social media, search engines, email or your website.

This is a critical metric that will tell you a lot not only about your audience, but also which of your marketing activities are working and which are not.

The specific engagement metrics you decide to track will depend on your overall goals, but they can include everything from overall social media activity (shares, likes and followers) to CTR, time on page, follower list growth rate, sessions and so on.

The best way to determine if you’re succeeding in this area is to look at engagement as a percentage of your audience. To do this, take the total number of engagements and divide by the number of impressions or reach. A high rate means that people are finding your content interesting.

Your engagement report should also include different networks so you can see which platforms are performing best.

Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC)

The cost of customer acquisition is how much money you spend to attract a new customer; a user who purchases your product or service. It’s important to keep track of this so you know how much it costs your company to attract each new customer and how profitable your current strategies are.

CAC refers to the resources and cost of acquiring a new customer and helps measure the return on investment in your efforts to expand your customer base.

To calculate this metric, add up all the costs associated with converting leads to customers and divide by the number of customers acquired.

You may also want to track how long it takes your business to recoup the CAC spent on attracting a new customer. To do this, take the cost of attracting a customer and divide it by the margin-adjusted revenue per month for the average new customer.

Return On Advertising Spent (ROAS)

ROAS is the amount of revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. If you want to know how effective your digital advertising campaigns are, this is the best metric to look at.

To calculate this metric, divide the revenue generated from an ad campaign by the cost of the campaign.

Monitor this to determine how effectively your ads are generating clicks, impressions, and revenue.

For example, you invest $100 in an ad campaign and generate $200 in revenue. Dividing $200 by $100 gives you a 2:1 ratio (200%).

This ratio is the average ROAS for a Google Ads campaign ($2 earned for every $1 spent), but can be as high as $8 for every $1 spent.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Your ROI is the ratio between your net income and your investment and is used to determine the effectiveness of your investment.

If your ROI is low, it means your business is losing money somewhere, and you need to find out why and adjust your strategies to keep your business profitable.

To calculate ROI, you need to constantly monitor the ratio of conversions to investment costs. If you want to see the exact formula, you can look up how to calculate your ROI here.

You can also look at the CLV to CAC ratio. If you notice that your acquisition cost is low and your lifetime value is high, that’s a very good indicator that things are working!

Customer lifetime value is how much a customer earns on average over a certain period of time, and customer acquisition is how much you need to spend to attract a new customer.

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6 Actual Methods of Competitive Analysis https://www.wsbusinessinc.com/6-actual-methods-of-competitive-analysis/ Wed, 28 Aug 2019 17:49:00 +0000 https://www.wsbusinessinc.com/?p=129 Let’s take a brief look at the main approaches used by marketers to analyze competitors: SWOT analysis The SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis assesses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and prospects of a business. This will help cull the information gathered during the competitor analysis and determine the next steps for your own business. …

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Let’s take a brief look at the main approaches used by marketers to analyze competitors:

SWOT analysis

The SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis assesses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and prospects of a business. This will help cull the information gathered during the competitor analysis and determine the next steps for your own business.

Each SWOT analysis will include the following four categories. Items may be added depending on the area of the business. A SWOT analysis would not be complete without each of these elements:

  • Strengths. Strengths describe what the organization excels at and what sets it apart from its competitors: a strong brand, a loyal customer base, unique technology, and so on.
  • Weaknesses. Weaknesses prevent the organization from being successful. These are areas in which the business must reorganize in order to remain competitive. These could be, for example, a weak brand, lack of quality service, high prices.
  • Opportunities. Opportunities refer to favorable external factors that can give the organization a competitive advantage.
  • Threats. Threats refer to factors that can harm the organization. For example: rising costs of materials, increased competition, labor shortages.

Ask the following questions: what strengths and weaknesses are repeated in competitors’ branding, marketing, and products? What opportunities do you see for the business to benefit? What actions of competitors might pose a threat?

SNW analysis

SNW analysis is similar to SWOT but has more comparison criteria. This method is chosen for a more detailed study. Here, not only the weaknesses and strengths of the business are taken into account, but also the neutrals. The purpose of this analysis is to study the business from the inside out to determine what new features or options are not yet being tapped by competitors. Once researched, you can add them to your business and use them as an advantage.

The 4P (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) is an approach that is based on four main “points” of marketing planning:

  • Product (or service);
  • Price;
  • promotion;
  • Place (distribution, distribution channels, store location, etc.).

These are mandatory planning elements when bringing a product to market. As you do your research, ask yourself the following questions for each item:

  • The product or service. What do they sell? What features or options are included in their product or service? What appeals most to customers about the product or service? What are the weaknesses of the product or service? What customer problems do competitors’ products solve?
  • Price. What pricing model do they use? Is it a one-time purchase or is the customer in constant need of the product (service)? How much does the product or service cost? Do they offer sales or discounts? Is the price commensurate with quality? How do customers perceive the quality of the product or service? Is there a loyalty program for customers?
  • Promotion. How do competitors talk about their product or service? What advertising channels do they use? What features of the product or service do they emphasize? What is unique about the selling proposition? What is their company’s history? How do they position their brand? Does the company use advertising slogans? Does the company run promotional campaigns? Do companies collaborate with other brands to promote each other?
  • Location. Where do competitors sell their product? Do competitors have offline stores? Do they sell directly to customers or collaborate with retailers or third-party marketplaces? Is the competitor’s product present on marketplaces or bulletin boards?

These questions are just a starting point from which to start analyzing competitors. Don’t be afraid to expand your list and tailor your questions to your area and your research goals.

PEST analysis

PEST-analysis (Political, economic, social, technological) is a marketing approach, which is necessary for finding the political, economic, social and technological aspects of the external environment which influence the company business. By conducting a PEST analysis, you can find out how competitors will react to any external changes. Will they see these changes as an opportunity to scale the market or will they see them as a threat? This will provide insight into how competitors are acting.

Suppose there is a social change and your competitors can’t handle it. Then it is worth developing your own strategy to help the business in the new environment.

Porter’s Method (Porter’s Five Forces Analysis)

Porter’s Five Forces is a model that identifies and analyzes the five competitive forces that shape each industry. It also helps to identify the weaknesses and strengths of a business. This model can be applied to any segment to understand the level of competition in an industry and improve a company’s long-term profitability. The Five Forces Model is named after Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter.

The following items should be considered for analysis:

  • Competition in the industry (number of entrants in the market, market potential).
  • Potential of new entrants in the industry (risks associated with new similar businesses).
  • Strength of suppliers (number, prospects, amount of resources).
  • Influence of customers (customer needs, demand forecasting).
  • Threat of substitute products (consideration of the likelihood of new products to replace yours).

SPACE analysis

SPACE-analysis (Strategic position and action estimation) is a method that helps to evaluate the financial perspectives and strategies of a company. The SPACE-analysis examines 4 groups of factors. Each of them is evaluated from 0 to 6. After that, the average value of factors in each group should be calculated. The data obtained is transferred to the coordinate axes, which results in a quadrangle, which can be analyzed.

The whole process of analysis can be done in the following steps:

  • Define the evaluation criteria (4 main factors), such as competitiveness, financial stability, etc.
  • Evaluate each factor in groups, scoring from 0 to 6.
  • Calculate the average values in each group of factors.
  • Make a graphical representation of the results (SPACE-matrix).

Analysis of the obtained results according to the obtained matrix. The options may be as follows: aggressive state, competitive status, conservative state, defensive state. The state should be determined by the quarter in which the straight line is most distant from the center of the figure. Determination of the marketing and development strategy according to the state of the company.

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