5 Simple & Effective Strategies to increasing traffic to your website

Besides increasing the number of customers of a company, marketers work hard to fulfill another of the most important objectives: to drive traffic to a website.

In an increasingly digital age, having an online presence is essential. Therefore, it must become one of the main goals of any Internet business.

But how can we increase traffic to our websites? Well, there are many ways of doing it. Let's get to know some of them!

Lean on advertising.

Yes, it is obvious, but many people forget that paid search, display advertising, and social media advertising are great ways to drive visitors to a website.

This way, one of the things you can do to increase your site traffic is to adjust your paid marketing strategies to suit those goals.

Take a careful look at each payment channel and choose the one that can help you gain traffic.

Pay attention to the SEO of the page.

With so many sites fighting for the top positions in search engine results, you can't forget about SEO if you want your website to gain traffic.

Even after so long, search engines' content optimization is still a valuable practice, especially when online businesses want to be successful.

Analyze if your site is meeting the SEO criteria and work to increase your organic traffic!

Write outstanding and irresistible headlines.

Headlines are one of the most important elements not only of content but of your site as such.

Even if your blog post is very comprehensive, an unconvincing headline will make it go unnoticed.

Mastering the art of headlines takes time, but it can be fruitful. Did you know that the writers of the most popular sites on the Internet write at least twenty headlines before choosing the one that will generate the most traffic?

In other words, you should think carefully about the title of your post before hitting "post."

Work on long-tail keywords.

Many people believe that all SEO work ends with high-intent keywords, but that is not the reality.

In addition to popular keywords, you should also target long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords account for a large percentage of web searches. That means that you are missing out on many benefits if you do not include them in your strategies.

Diversify your marketing strategies.

Yes, we have evolved a lot! And this includes marketing actions. But there are still many traditional methods that can work very well to help us achieve our goals.

If you want to drive traffic to your site, don't focus solely on content marketing. Other techniques like email marketing can be powerful.

A friendly, non-invasive reminder via email can help boost your site visitor numbers.

Final thoughts.

All of these are ways to increase your website traffic quickly, even if you decide to do it on your own. And do you know what the best part is? There's still more!

Keep reading our posts and discover more tips to be successful in the virtual world!

Three Signs that tell you if you need to improve your digital marketing strategy.

Do you really know if all your social media work is paying off? Many people strive to develop a good image for their brand and invest a lot of money in advertising, but they usually forget that their presence in the digital community is also important.

Moreover, it may also happen that they are really interested in growing their business on platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, but the actions they are implementing do not lead them to obtain the number of clients they want. Do you know why this may be happening? There are signs that tell you when your company's digital marketing strategy is on the road to failure and, to help you out a bit, we have decided to explain each of them. Thus, you can quickly identify them and recover all the time you have invested in your precious project.

1.       Your results only show likes:

This is one of the most obvious signs that something is not going well with your digital marketing strategy. Likes can bring many benefits to a brand, but if your results only show good numbers in likes, then your brand or business is not achieving the objectives it should.

Your company's social network accounts can offer you much more than likes. From them, you can get sales, alliances, and much more. You must ensure that your current activity generates value for your target audience.

2.       Your audience is not to your brand or business.

How many people interact with you when you upload content to your social networks? How many of your customers buy your products or services because they trust your brand? Social networks are one of the main means by which the audience connects and communicates with your company or business.

If you have a lot of followers but you can't get them to buy what you offer or even interact with you through comments or other actions, and then your marketing strategy is pointing to the opposite extreme.

3.       You don't know what your main sources of traffic and sales are.

You have managed to maintain your sales numbers, and some new followers arrive from time to time, but do you really know where these people come from? A good marketing strategy allows you to know where the traffic of your social networks or web pages generates. This way, you will be able to identify which platforms you should invest in the most to achieve a greater conversion rate.

If you don't know where your visitors or followers are coming from, it is very likely that you are carrying a digital marketing plan aimlessly.

Some other signs you must pay attention to:

-          You do not know your target audience and their motivations.

-          You don't know what your competition and the brands you admire the most are doing.

-          You feel that your goals are impossible to reach.

Now, you know the signs that may be alerting you if you have an inadequate digital marketing strategy. Remember that this is not about being negative, but about anticipating any possibility and being ready to act correctly if our brand or business needs it!

Digital Marketing in Times of Crisis: Why Is It So Important?

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 cases in almost every country in the world has led humanity to experience one of the most difficult times of crisis in history. Since the WHO declared this disease as a pandemic, many governments began to implement containment and prevention measures that resulted in a partial paralysis of the economy.

This - in addition to the fact that we had to completely transform the way we work - led us to understand how important it is to grow our business and take advantage of all the benefits that the Internet offers us. For that reason, we want to show you how you can take advantage of digital marketing to survive such a challenging time. Do you want to know how to do it? Continue reading!

The era of digitization.

Before the term "coronavirus" reached every corner of the planet, the way in which people operate their businesses had already found a new path. The era of digitization brought with it a series of changes in consumer behavior and owners of small, medium, and large companies were forced to modify their plans to adapt their projects to new technological trends. However, the arrival of the pandemic accelerated this whole process.

Now, traditional marketing and sales methods are no longer enough. The reasons behind it are the following:

-          People spend more hours on the Internet since they have more free time.

-          Online shopping has become increasingly popular as it is more secure and does not require buyers to leave home.

-          Sellers cannot work the same way as before and must promote their services remotely.

-          There are no longer so many face-to-face events, so sellers should look for other ways to show their products.

-          Social networks have become essential in daily life, and many users use them as a reliable way to get to know a brand or business.

How can I take advantage of digital marketing?

Digital Marketing, in this way, is an excellent ally to take advantage of the challenges of this situation and turn them into opportunities to grow your business. Here are some tips based on its principles:

-          Find out who is more likely to become your customer: One of the objectives of digital marketing is to identify your ideal audience so that you can focus your efforts on the right people and increase the effectiveness of your strategies.

-          Generate quality content: If you already know who you want to target, then you have more possibilities to create good content that generates interest. Digital marketing allows you to optimize it and also helps you develop an ideal action plan to publish it and take advantage of all its benefits.

-          Facilitates interaction and proximity with the audience: Currently, the links between the brand and the user are very important. In this sense, digital marketing promotes a direct and personalized relationship with customers to encourage engagement.

And there are even many more advantages! Digital marketing also allows us to measure and analyze the results obtained after its implementation, which is why experts consider it a very complete tool. Are you determined to use it to grow your business during periods of crisis? Remember that hard times will pass and we will have experience and knowledge. We can learn something new every day thanks to them!

Updating Your Digital Marketing Strategy Post COVID-19

If you’re like most small business owners, the COVID-19 pandemic has almost certainly left you reeling.

The closure of “non-essential” shops and services, combined with widespread travel restrictions and lockdowns has brought about the perfect storm for many local brick-and-mortar establishments.

It’s been a rough few months that’s for sure…

Now we’re beginning to see a drop in new COVID-19 cases, and governments are beginning to ease lockdown measures, it’s probably a good time to start contemplating how to get your business back on its feet. One of the best ways to get the ball rolling is to implement a solid digital marketing strategy.

To that end, we’ve put together a guide that will refresh your digital marketing knowledge and lay the foundations for success in a post COVID-19 landscape:

Laying Down Some Ground Rules:

Before we get started, it’s vital that you tread cautiously and take heed of the following important advice:

1. Create a Plan of Action:

When business owners complain that digital marketing “doesn’t work”, it’s usually because they jumped in at the deep end before they were ready.

Digital marketing can be tricky to master and slow to yield results in the early stages. To avoid disappointment, always work to a strict schedule and set realistic milestones along the way.

2. Avoid Multiple Platforms and Mediums:

Many marketing experts will tell you that you need to “dominate your niche” or “be everywhere” to attract the most interest.

There’s definitely some truth to that advice, but if you’re a beginner to the world of online marketing, it makes the most sense to master just one (or two) mediums at a time.

Advertising tools like Google Ads can have a steep learning curve, and social media and content marketing require a lot of up-front time investment. Spreading yourself too thinly will yield sub-optimal results everywhere.

Take our advice: Concentrate your efforts for maximum impact.

3. Avoid “Analysis Paralysis”:

Whilst we’re big advocates of self-learning, there does come a point where you’re actually going to have to take action and do something!

There are hundreds, if not thousands of armchair experts out there that have read every morsel of information about digital marketing, but have failed to make any headway whatsoever.

It’s good to be cautious. Just make sure it’s not an excuse for inaction!

4. Steer Clear of Marketing Gurus:

All the information you need to become a digital marketing expert is both easy to find and totally free. There is absolutely no advantage to purchasing the latest $2,000 course from a so-called “Marketing Guru”. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

5. Avoid Guesswork:

Never run adverts, post social media links or write Tweets on a hunch.

Everything you implement within the scope of digital marketing should be trackable and measurable. Test, test and test again. Never use random guesswork in your campaigns.

OK, Enough of the Lecturing, Let’s Get Started!

Paid Advertising Campaigns

Paid ads are the absolute gold standard in online marketing.

Getting your product or business to the top of a Google search page is still a worthwhile marketing tactic in 2020, but it requires SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or a long term content marketing plan. Both of those disciplines take a long time to master and yield results very slowly. In addition, both require a significant financial outlay if you decide to outsource the work.

On the other hand, paid ads are getting cheaper all the time and in addition, offer a very measurable (and fast!) way of getting eyes on your brand.

So which advertising platforms perform the best?

Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram for Business and LinkedIn Ads (in that order) all have their own unique advantages and disadvantages.

Take time to consider which of the platforms is most frequented by your potential customers. Your mileage may vary greatly.

What Should I Advertise?

If you’re a local business with very low competition, then it’s perfectly fine to run ads that link directly to your website. In some instances, these types of hyper-targeted ads can be extremely cheap, and yield excellent results.

With that being said…

In more competitive niches, savvy business owners might want to play a longer game: Try using adverts to direct prospective customers to well researched blog posts and even videos. Once you’ve enticed traffic onto your landing page, you can offer free giveaways, discounts and extra information in exchange for a visitor’s email address.

Why bother capturing a visitor's email?

In spite of the rise of social media, email is still the best medium by far for converting leads into sales. In part, that’s because the vast bulk of leads will only be converted into buyers after several interactions with your brand. Timed email sequences can help you to stay relevant with your prospects.

So to Sum up:

• Use carefully crafted ads to send prospects to a landing page.

• Give away great content.

• Persuade visitors to subscribe to an email list by offering an incentive.

• Use email sequences to gradually convert leads into sales.

Get a Google My Business Listing

If you run a bricks-and-mortar business, you absolutely MUST get a “Google My Business” (GMB) listing up and running.

When your establishment is listed in GMB it will appear above all of the organic search results in a dedicated box. In smaller towns and cities, this is an absolute game-changer that in many cases can render traditional SEO completely redundant.

In addition, GMB comes with some extra features that could work well for your business: GMB listings feature a “call” button for smartphone users, a “directions” link to Google maps and a small snippet of information about opening times and user ratings. Adding your business to GMB also gives you the opportunity to link directly to your main website.

One More Game Changing Feature:

Last but not least, many business owners are unaware of the newly implemented but extremely powerful “Google Posts” feature for GMB.

Essentially “Google Posts” allows businesses to share mini blog posts which show up in the right panel on Google searches. Each Post can be up to 300 words in length and include a photo, as well as a clickable call to action button and a date range (for businesses promoting events and special offers).

These posts sit somewhere between a Tweet, a landing page and a blog post, but come with the added benefit of an instant SEO boost and very prominent placement.

Social Media Marketing

If you’ve exhausted your advertising budget and you’re willing to commit the time, social media marketing can be powerful, but needs to be treated with care and a very light touch.

Rules of the Game:

1. Keep a Strict Posting Schedule

The number one rule of social media is to keep the accounts manned, and keep them current. If your Facebook or Twitter feed looks deserted, and you rarely respond to queries, you’re doing your brand more harm than good. If you don’t think you can commit to regular social media interaction, it’s actually best to drop the idea completely and concentrate on your company website.

Stay Away From Health and Politics

This might be the most controversial piece of advice in this guide, but hear us out:

You’re probably not a virologist, so stay well clear of reposting COVID-19 health advice. If a customer directly asks you about your implementation of social distancing rules or your hygiene policy, by all means gently reassure them. Just make sure you don’t get into heated debates about COVID-19 best practice.

Whatever advice applies to COVID-19 posting applies triple to political discourse: You’ve been warned. Just stay quiet.

We live in turbulent times. It doesn’t matter what cause you do or don’t endorse, stick to the business of selling products and leave the politics at home.

Concentrate on Being Helpful

If you can’t give health advice or show political support, what can you use your Twitter or Facebook feed for?

Simple! Give great advice and answer customer queries.

Be warm, honest and caring and engage with your local community. Get back to the roots of what made social media so great in its formative years.

Handling Postponed Events

Were you using digital marketing to promote an event before the lockdowns and social distancing rules came into force?

How are you planning to bring your event back to life?

Know When to Pivot

None of us can truly gauge when life will return to normal. Especially when discussing any kind of event where a crowd will gather.

In this situation, the best advice is to keep your powder dry, keep the budget tightly constrained and learn how to read the social media queues and analytics to keep abreast of the situation.

When marketing during uncertain times, it’s important to be able to pivot on a dime. If you need to move from a national to a more regional event, so be it.

Are you worried the event will get the go-ahead just in time for bad winter weather? Don’t rush to reschedule if the event would be more successful next spring.

We’re living through unprecedented times. If all of the major international events have been cancelled for 2020, then there’s no shame in holding off your own event until next year either. Be patient, stay active on social media and think about free marketing channels like blogging until the time is right to start spending your ad budget.

Consider Taking Your Business Online

If there’s one final piece of advice we’d give to businesses looking to keep their heads above water during these crazy times, it would be this:

During the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns, some businesses saw increases in web traffic of up to 150%. That means loyal customers are more than willing to keep shopping at their favorite stores despite the logistical issues.

If you have the ability to open an online store, do it already! If you’re in a B2B niche, consider offering free Skype consultations.

COVID-19 might have been the most unprecedented event in a generation, but with a little marketing savvy and the determination to succeed, you can also uncover some of the biggest money making opportunities of your lifetime!

2 Current Marketing Trends to Take Advantage of NOW

Trends are very important to your success as a social media marketer. You must keep up in the face of the super-fast paced digital landscape that we have become accustomed to in this day and age. If we fail to stay up to date with trends, we are leaving ourselves at risk of being left behind, or even worse losing out on the chance to further optimize our business to the best of our capabilities. The trends will we be going over today are lifecycle marketing and conversational marketing. These will all be vital to your company’s success.

1.      LIFECYCLE MARKETING: We need to pay more attention to the different stages our customers go through or lifecycles. We have the reach stage when we are first reaching out to them, whether that be through a social media channel, a YouTube video, a digital ad, an email marketing campaign, or even more traditional forms of media such as television, radio, or billboards. This is our first step is to grasp the customers attention. Stage 2 within the lifecycle would be to act on that attention we’ve grasped, now that we have their attention, we have to reel them into our website, which should be optimized for desktop and mobile usage, this is crucial, a poor website can drive customers away potentially losing out on a sale. Stage 3 is converting this curious consumer into a customer we can do that through encouraging them to sign up for our email newsletter through some type of incentive, this will allow us to continue onto the next step which is engaging with our customers, Stage 5. In this stage we will be focusing on creating customer loyalty, we will do this through our amazing product and or service, as well as our attentive customer service. This will assist us in creating further word of mouth opportunities.

2.      CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING: Is utilizing the smart speakers which are now very prevalent in westernized households all across the globe and picking up on keywords, to assist us in figuring out which products customers are most interested in buying, this will help us to further pinpoint specific demographics that will be most likely to want to buy our products and services. We must utilize the ever-advancing field of technology to our benefit, as it makes our jobs easier as markets and takes more and more of the guessing out of the equation, we now have a more precise approach we can take as opposed to the traditional buckshot approach that was common.

Well that’s all we have for you today folks I hope this information was informative and assists you in all of your future marketing endeavors!

Two Ways to Embrace Your Inner Marketer

Today we’re going to be discussing why you should become a marketer. Every day we are bombarded with advertisements, tweets, posts, memes, viral videos, billboards, commercials, infomercials, constantly within our view. Going after not only our conscious thoughts, but also our underlying subconscious thoughts. Being a marketing means being a master at the art of persuasion, a master at the art of appealing to your consumers emotions or logic. You will need to become adept in the art of influencing others. It is interesting to become a marketer because you give the products meaning, you create a story behind them, and make them worth having!

1.      Express Your Creativity: Becoming will allow you to express your creative side in many different ways, you get to create art for businesses, you to create videos for them that tell a story about their company, products and/or employees, you get to shoot beautiful photography for them displaying their products and services in all their glory, you’ll get to create infographics that are pleasing to the eye as well as the mind, you can create viral memes that use your product that will bring laughter to thousands as well as increase brand recall. There is a myriad of ways to get in touch with your inner creative as a marketer and that is one of the most rewarding things about this job.

2.      Being the Lifeblood of a Business: Marketing is without question one of the most important factors of running a business, you could have the greatest product in the world, but if no one knows about it then it isn’t going to sell! So how do you get it to sell? You market it of course! You find that target demographic that you know would love your product and you find out what appeals to them, what emotions influence them the most? Take Military ads for example, they want to make you feel proud of your country and armed forces, make you feel unique, and make you feel like you can be a leader who makes a difference by joining. Take Taco Bell for example they are always playing on humor as their main targeted emotion, always attempting to create satire, jokes about their newest items and deals, and it has proven to be very successful for their targeted demographic. All of these business create stories that appeal to their demographics, marketers are master story tellers and story is KING when it comes to business.

Harnessing the Power of Podcasting in Brand Marketing

The recent retirement of the Indianapolis Colt's star quarterback, Andrew Luck, swept through social media and news outlets, with pundits and fans weighing in on his decision and wondering what's next for the athlete, including those wondering if Luck would use his popular Andrew Luck Book Club podcast as a platform to launch into a different career path.

Podcasting has certainly come of age and shows no signs of slowing down.

As a medium to reach targeted audiences, Podcasting continues to explode, with staggering growth levels between just 2018 and 2019.  According to data compiled by Apple, there were 550,000 active podcasts in 2018 with 18.5 million episodes in total; by 2019, those numbers have grown to 700,000 active podcasts with 29 million episodes in total.

The widespread use of smartphones worldwide has driven the growth in podcasting, with smartphones listed as #1 for the means in which users find, access, download, and listen to podcasts.  Using smartphones to listen to podcasts allows users to access their favorite audio content in a multitude of environments, including at work, at home, while traveling or commuting, and during exercise or workout sessions.

With the ability to reach audiences through dozens of languages, podcasts have taken fire worldwide, and the top categories include society and culture, business, comedy, news, and health.

While larger producers of podcasts such as NPR reach a listening audience of 20 million people per month, there is room for smaller, more targeted podcast producers to reach their ideal listener, making podcasting a valuable addition to branded content and advertising campaigns that seek to build brand recognition and brand authority.

Creating the right podcast content to reach your target audience is critical.  Seek to inform and entertain your audience instead of hard-selling your product or service.  Building authority in your niche and trust with your audience is key.

If you're wondering how to incorporate podcasting in your overall marketing scheme,  contact Real-Time Outsource and let us help you in creating quality podcast content that builds your brand and reaches your niche audience.

Digital Strategies 101: Explaining Some Common Online Marketing Concepts

Having an established brand and high converting website is one thing, but when it comes to digital marketing in 2019 there are so many possible strategies to pursue it can make your head spin! After all, there seems to be an ever-growing amount of social networks, platforms and tools to use than ever before. In fact, some get so overwhelmed when trying to understand marketing that they give up before even trying. And then for the ones who do try, it can be very disappointing when their money is lost due to a failed marketing strategy. But don't worry. This article is going to break down all the different kinds of marketing strategies that exist today and catch you up to speed as to which is right for you.

Social Media

Social media is the use of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to promote your brand. Every brand should use some form of social media - most platforms are free to use and it is a great way to engage with your customers. The brands who should not be on social media are the ones who look to create a platform on every platform. This is unwise because it will lead to you doing a lot of work for what could be a low return on your investment. 

Social media works when your brand uses it to create engaging content that you post on a regular basis. It doesn't work when you try to inundate your customers with profiles on every single platform. This just wastes your own time and doesn't bear as much fruit as posting more strategically to platforms you know will be effective. 

Social Media Ads

Purchasing paid ads through social networks is a great way to spread the organic reach of your social media posts. This is a great tool for anyone who frequently shares content via social media or who wants to target specific demographics with their ads. It usually works when you have a specific audience in mind for your post. It doesn't work when you try to cast too wide of a net and end up reaching users who may or may not want to see your message. There is a low cost for entry when it comes to social media ads, so if you write effective copy and create compelling ads you can expect a significant return on your investment. 

If you need help putting together a custom strategy or have questions don't hesitate to contact us. We'd be happy to walk you through it all. 

Four Digital Marketing Habits to Get into in 2020

1.      Be diligent in your research: If you’re deciding how you’re going to advertise a new product, you must look at many different variables to find out who your target market is, what demographics do they fit into, their religion, their income, their gender, their ethnicity, the amount of children they have, and that is just on the surface. What makes your potential consumer tick, what are their inner most desires. You can find these things out and much more, through research, whether that be focus groups, surveys, etc. You have a wide range of tools at your disposal, and with the ever-changing landscape of the consumer market, it is important to always fine tune your target market.

2.      Know Your Why: While consumers are going to always be interested in what your selling, they want to know who is selling it, when it is going to go on sale. The most important W out of the 5 is Why, why are you selling what you are selling, what change do you hope to see in the world from people having your product and/or service. Is it simply to just have more money in your pocket and that’s it? While not exactly what I’d call inspiring, I do commend you for your honesty. Having a powerful why is one of the best habits to create for your business, take some time to really sit down and think about why you want to do what you want to do.

3.      Be Human: In a day and age of forever increasing automation, artificial intelligence, and fake connections. We should all as marketers want to try to be as genuine and human as possible in our approach. Whether that be in our advertisements, our public relations, or even with our own staff, we need to remember that transparency and the warmth that can only be created by a true human connection, are some of things hold closet to their hearts.

4.      Pay Attention to The Competition: For our last good marketing habit to get into, is to pay attention to your competitors! See what materials they’re using, what’s their customer service like, what is about their product that consumers like more than yours. Your competitors are one of your greatest reservoirs of information. So much to learn through their mistakes and successes. Do not be too prideful to make use of this information.

I hope you’ve found this information useful, and informative, and may it assist you greatly in all of your future marketing endeavors.

3 Tactical ways to go VIRAL in 2020

Do you think you have what it takes to go Viral? WE DO :)

Today we’re going to be discussing on how to get your business to go viral! The holy grail of social media the viral hashtag, challenge or meme! It is as elusive as it as glorious, many have tried and failed, but we will be giving you the toolkit on how to greatly increase your chances of success of achieving such a lofty feat.

1.     Create a challenge! Examples of challenges are the ice bucket challenge! The mannequin challenge! Or even the more dangerous tide pod challenge! (Please do not try this at home.), the Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge! Or to throw it way back planking! These are all viral sensations that were wildly successful, all very different but very intriguing to the masses, so get in the lab with your colleagues and begin to brain storm, jot down potential ideas, and experiment with the good ones and put them into practice, who knows you may be on the verge of the next big thing.

2.     Viral Hashtag! Examples of viral hashtags throughout the years are #TheDress, #HeForShe, #PutYourBatsOut, #BlackLivesMatter, #CupForBen, as you can see many of these viral hashtags are tied to cause that people are passionate about. Find a cause your company truly believes in and wants to assist and create something witty, hilarious, or daring that could potentially help to support that cause!

3.     Viral Memes! Examples of viral memes are the world record egg! Which shattered Kylie Jenner’s previous record of most liked Instagram post, it was a quirky post which caught fire all across the social media platform being liked by millions upon millions of users all across the world. Fixing things with instant ramen! Bottle Cap challenge! Tough Guy Entrance! And many, many more! There is so much opportunity to create the next viral meme, just requires some creativity, a little elbow grease, and a great sense of humor!

We hope you found this information to be not only helpful but inspiring in your quest to make your business the best it can possibly be!