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In this post, you’re going to learn exactly how to create and implement an effective digital marketing strategy, step-by-step.
So, if you want to learn how to use digital marketing to grow your traffic, this strategy guide is for you. What is a digital marketing strategy? A digital marketing strategy is a plan of action that describes how to use one or more online marketing channels to reach your target audience. It has a list of steps and specific digital marketing goals. Having a digital strategy is important because it will help you orchestrate the different online marketing strategies so that they all work towards achieving your business goals. Together with his team, they will make sure that every marketing activity is part of your digital marketing plan. How to create a Digital Marketing Strategy These are the steps to follow to create an effective marketing strategy.
1. Specify measurable business goals The first step in creating a digital marketing strategy is to specify your business goals. In other words, to determine what you want to accomplish with digital marketing. Any goals you set have to be measurable and well-defined. Everything in a digital marketing campaign is measurable (from start to finish) and you need to take advantage of this and form a digital marketing plan that has specific milestones and targets. Some typical goals are:
While the above is a good starting point, they are still vague. A better version would be: Raise brand awareness by: Increase organic traffic by:
Here is an example to understand this better. A typical step could be, “Publish 3 new blog posts per week”, which needs to be broken down further to specify which/topics keywords the blog posts will target and what would be the expected outcome in terms of traffic increase. Experienced digital marketing specialists know that this is not always easy to calculate because digital marketing is a dynamic industry and changes all the time. But, having a detailed plan will help you adjust your strategies so as to get closer to your goals as possible. The bottom line is that you need to have a digital marketing plan to follow and not start running campaigns on different channels without knowing what you want to achieve. It goes without saying that your plan has to be realistic, taking into account the competition and complexities of your industry. Also, to be able to analyze data and make informed decisions, you first need to track it correctly and accurately so, having a good analytics system in place is more than essential. 2. Identify your target audience The second step is to identify your target audience. In other words to specify in detail who you want to target with your campaigns. Some marketers, place this as the first step in the process and this is not wrong. What is certain is that this is an exercise you need to perform in the early stages and before finalizing the next steps of your marketing strategy. What does identifying your audience means? Specifying in detail the characteristics of people that might be potentially interested in your offerings. In your audience identification, you should include things like:
Learn as much as you can about your audience The exact details depend on the industry you’re in and the products/services you are trying to promote. A good way to start crafting your buyer personas is to analyze the data you already have available. Digg into your Google Analytics reports, Facebook audience insights, Google Ads reports, and start creating your customer profiles. 3. Understand users needs and search intent Once you know the profile of your target customer, the next step is to use different techniques and try to understand their needs and how they express this when searching for information using a search engine or a social network. There are two ways to approach this process. The first method is to take the typical digital sales funnel and identify what your customers might need at each stage. Digital Sales Funnel The second method is to take the different customer profiles created above, and come up with a separate sales funnel for each. This is my recommended method because it makes it easier to set up and run dedicated digital marketing campaigns for each customer profile. Let me give you an example to understand this better. So, by analyzing each buyer persona separately, you can come up with a more accurate plan of how your content, products, or services can help them solve their problems and needs. Search Intent In the digital marketing world, the needs of users are expressed through search queries. When a user types a search query in Google, it has a specific intent and if your content/products or services do not satisfy it, your digital marketing strategy will fail. That’s why it is important to perform keyword research from the very beginning and capture all topics, keywords, and phrases throughout the buyer journey, from awareness to conversion. Social media networks don’t reveal the ‘searchers’ intent’, what happens then? It’s true that users browsing Facebook may not have a specific intent in mind but they have a particular profile. To increase your chances of targeting the right type of audience, you can analyze the profile of your search visitors (using Google Analytics) and using custom audiences to find matching audiences (Lookalike Audiences) on Facebook. Always use any available data that you have as your starting point for research. The results will be more accurate than using data that is external to your website. Resources to Learn More About Digital Marketing
The next strategic step you need to make is to create a library of content assets. You know your audience and their needs, now it’s time to create various types of assets to use in your campaigns. A digital asset can be a blog post, infographic, image, video, podcast, cover image, logo, and anything else you can publish on your website or social networks. Content Types In the digital marketing world, this is what content marketing is all about. Content marketing is important because it’s the process used to decide what kind of content to create, when, and where to publish it. I prefer to execute this step in the beginning and before running any campaigns because it’s more efficient to have a pool of content assets ready in advance rather than having to do this every time you’re about to start a campaign. When you follow the steps in the order described in this guide (set goals, create customer personas, identify needs, and search intent), then you have all the information you need to work on your content assets. It’s also easier to assign the content creation part to the different members of your team to work in parallel. Content Marketing Strategy Plan 5. Start with SEO as early as possible A strategic decision to make that can positively impact your digital marketing efforts is to start with SEO as early as possible. SEO is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies but it has a caveat. It takes time to work. Unlike other digital marketing strategies, when you start an SEO campaign, it may take 4 to 6 months to generate any results. This is a long time to wait so most marketers tend to focus on other digital channels first (like Facebook Ads, Google Ads). That’s a good approach but the common mistake is that they forget about SEO and only re-visit SEO after they realize that they cannot build a successful digital marketing campaign based solely on paid advertising. So, a better strategy is to allocate a portion of your marketing budget from the very beginning on SEO related tasks. In parallel, you can start working on your paid campaigns and other channels. This way, you’ll reach a point sooner where most of your traffic and sales will come from SEO and rely less on paid ads. In business terms, this means an increase in revenue and profit and this is exactly the goal of a successful digital marketing strategy. How to get started with SEO SEO is a huge topic. Search engines take hundreds of parameters into account before they decide which webpages to show in the results for a particular query. To make it easier to handle, SEO can be broken down into three main sub-processes: Technical SEO, On-Page SEO, and Off-Page SEO. SEO Overview Each process is responsible to optimize your website for a number of parameters that will eventually lead to higher rankings and traffic. SEO is important because the majority of search traffic is distributed to websites that appear in the first 5 positions of the search results. So, if you want to get traffic from search engines, you need to appear in the top positions for search terms related to your business. The best way to get started with SEO is to follow a step-by-step approach: Step 1: Review your technical SEO and make sure that search engines can access and index your content without any problems. This is important since any issues at this stage will be catastrophic for your efforts. Step 2: Optimize your content for search engines. In Step 4 above, you will create content that satisfies the needs of the user. Before publishing, you need to make sure that it’s SEO optimized. This means, giving the right signals to search engines (through your titles, descriptions, headings, etc) to help them understand your content better. Step 3: Promote your website and content. One of the most important SEO ranking factors is how other websites on the Internet ‘think’ of your website. If other relevant websites trust your website and they express this through a backlink, this is a strong signal to Google that your website deserves to be on the top positions. If SEO is something that you haven’t done before for your website, the best way to approach this is to add it to your digital strategy and assign this task to SEO experts. You can also use the resources below to learn more. 6. Explore paid advertising channels When you start an online business, you know in advance that a large portion of your marketing budget will be allocated on PPC marketing (paid ads). But, not all PPC platforms are the same. Based on your previous analysis (steps 2 and 3 above), you need to choose which platforms are more suited for your audience. You can use the table below to get an idea of how the user profile looks for the most popular social networks. Social Media Platforms Demographics. For example, if you have an eCommerce website selling directly to consumers (B2C) then Facebook is probably a good choice. If on the other hand, you are targeting Business executives, then LinkedIn is more appropriate. Run Pilot Campaigns First The best way to find out which platforms to incorporate in your digital marketing strategy plan is to run pilot campaigns. A pilot campaign will not waste your budget and at the same time, it will give you enough data to make an informed decision. A common mistake made by digital marketers is to blindly allocate all their budget on one channel because it’s the trend without testing or considering all of the available channels they can use. Here is a list of the most popular advertising platforms you can use to reach your target audience: Facebook Ads – ideal for all kinds of businesses. Works better for B2C. The best platform to raise brand awareness. Instagram Ads – suitable if you want to reach a younger audience. Twitter Ads – Business oriented. Great for informing your community of updates. Linked Ads – Strictly for business-related advertising. Use it to reach decision-makers. Google Ads – The most reliable platform to get targeted traffic to your website through paid search ads. Google Display Ads – Use it for retargeting purposes and to reach your audience in the various Google products (YouTube, Gmail) and thousands of websites that participate in Google AdSense. Bing Ads – Not as powerful as Google but a good alternative to get more search traffic to your website. 7. Use email marketing segmentation and automation The end goal of a digital marketing campaign is to generate more revenue for a business. But in order to get to your ultimate goal, you first need to consider micro-conversions. Micro-conversions are actions taken by users that are part of the funnel that leads to sales. For example, while one of my goals is to sell my digital marketing course, an intermediate goal is to get people to subscribe to my email list (micro conversion). I consider this an important step because I know from my statistics that a large percentage of people that subscribe to my list, will eventually convert. The same concept can be applied to any business or product. You need to give incentives to users to sign up for your email list and then send them personalized emails that will help them make the final decision, which is to convert by buying your products or services. An important element to make this work is segmentation and automation. With email segmentation, you segment your list into groups of people that share the same interests and send them customized content. For example, people registering to my list to download the SEO Checklist will get different email content than people who register to receive my posts updates. If email marketing is a new concept for you, then you can realize that it involves a lot of work and that’s where email automation comes into play. Here is a visual example of how email automation works. Email Marketing automation example. With email automation, you can orchestrate the whole process to run without intervention and manual work. Your job is to set up the automation campaigns, monitor their performance, and take corrective actions. In addition to micro-conversions, email marketing is a great way to raise brand awareness and build a community around your brand. This is something that can positively influence the performance of all your digital marketing campaigns. Resources to Learn More About Email Marketing
A complete digital marketing strategy should not only take into account the traditional online marketing channels but should also cater to new digital marketing strategies that rise to the surface. To be more precise, at the time of writing this post, there are a number of new channels that you can explore like:
These channels are new and most probably less competitive than established channels. This means you can get better results at a lower cost. Will these help your strategy? The only way to find out is to test them by running pilot campaigns (as explained above). 9. Use retargeting and personalization So far, all of the above strategies are related to how you can reach more people but it’s equally important to follow up on users that already know your brand, but are not yet customers. This is known as ‘retargeting’ or ‘remarketing’. With retargeting, you can show specific ads to users that visited your website (or social network page) but did not convert. How Remarketing Works It’s a very powerful technique that has higher conversion rates and less CPA (cost per action) than other marketing techniques. The ‘marketing rule of 7’ (established in the 1930s by marketers), states that prospects are more likely to convert if they see or hear an ad, at least 7 times. Unsurprisingly, it is a rule that is applicable today, and remarketing is the way to implement this. The most popular platforms to run remarketing campaigns are Facebook and Google Display Network. The concept is simple. You connect your website with Facebook and Google by adding a piece of code provided by the platforms. You then create custom audience lists that include the people who visited your website but did not convert. You then create campaigns and ads that are shown to these users as they browse Facebook or visit other websites on the Internet. To make remarketing more effective, you can also add the element of personalization. Instead of treating all visitors as one group, you can add rules to show different ads to people based on the actions they took on your website. For example, you can create a retargeting campaign for people that added an item to their shopping cart but did not checkout. To give them an incentive to come back and finish the process, you can offer them a discount via coupon code. As a matter of fact, retargeting should be a strategy to include in your digital marketing plan from the early stages. This way you’ll maximize the return for any money spend on paid ads or SEO. 10. Work on conversion optimization Another area that needs to be part of your overall marketing strategy is conversion optimization. I can tell you from experience, that 90% of digital marketing campaigns focus on how to get traffic and forget about conversion optimization. What is conversion optimization? In simple terms, conversion optimization is the process to follow to optimize your website so that a higher percentage of your visitors will perform the desired actions. This starts with your website design, content, landing page optimization, email signup forms, shopping cart, checkout process, and other elements that contribute (directly or indirectly) to conversions. One of the techniques to use is A/B testing. By applying a/b testing principles you can measure the effect on conversions by carefully changing parts of your website or sales funnel. I’ll not go into the details on how to perform A/B testing or conversion optimization (you can follow the links in the resources below to learn more), but from a strategic point of view, it’s important to add conversion optimization activities in your digital marketing plan. Here is an example of how a conversion optimization plan looks like: Conversion Optimization Plan You can add it as a step to be executed as part of a single campaign or as part of your general strategy review process. What I advise my team to do is to review conversion optimization after a campaign is considered to be optimized in terms of traffic. In other words, it’s better to try and optimize your campaign to get as many visits as possible with the lower cost and then start testing different landing pages, messages to see which one performs better in terms of conversions. As a rule of thumb, when doing A/B testing, you should focus on specific changes so that you can accurately measure their effect on conversions. Resources to Learn More About Conversion Optimization
11. Evaluate and revise your strategy Digital marketing is a highly dynamic industry. ‘Rules’ change all the time and it’s extremely important that you evaluate and revise your digital marketing strategy to stay current and relevant. Digital Marketing The best way to evaluate your campaign is to do it based on KPIs and other metrics. The most important metrics for any kind of digital marketing campaign are:
If you have a good analytics system in place and can track these for every campaign that is part of your strategy, then it will be easier to make informed decisions. Don’t forget that part of your evaluation should be to look for new channels you can add to your strategy. It’s always a good idea to take a look at your competitor’s strategies and identify which of their strategies you can include in your marketing mix. Key Learnings A digital marketing strategy is a plan that describes in detail how to use various digital marketing channels to grow your business. To create an effective digital marketing strategy, you start by defining your goals. Then through research, you identify the characteristics and needs of people to target with your campaigns. Once you have this information, you translate that into content marketing assets, having always in mind the ‘intent’ of the user. Creating the right type of content that can satisfy the user’s needs, it’s a critical success factor. Then you start with SEO. SEO is the most effective digital marketing channel but it’s not the fastest one. While waiting for your SEO to generate results, you can start testing paid advertising channels by running pilot campaigns. Once you figure out which channels are more likely to work for the satisfaction of your business goals, you concentrate on those. Besides generating traffic to your website, you also need to incorporate other strategies for converting traffic to customers such as email marketing, retargeting, and conversion optimization. At regular intervals, you should evaluate and revise your strategy to include new traffic sources and trends. Call Swift at (216)339-6041
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We help clients make core transformations in marketing strategy and operations to power growth through digital advantage. Digital marketing is no longer about merely adding online channels to the media mix; it is about integrating digital into all facets of marketing. Our global expertise across digital analytics, market research, technology, business design, and online strategy helps clients bring the full potential of digital marketing to bear on their business. What we doDigital marketing engagements are typically multifaceted, solving for specific digital marketing challenges while building ongoing client capabilities. In addition to defining new roles and responsibilities and helping develop businesses, we address technology infrastructure and identify potential partners. We work with clients primarily in three core areas:
Web design is the process of planning, conceptualizing, and arranging content online. Today, designing a website goes beyond aesthetics to include the website’s overall functionality. Web design also includes web apps, mobile apps, and user interface design. Did you know that web design can have a huge impact on your performance in search engines like Google? This article will give you some helpful insight into how to create a website that not only looks good, but functions properly and ranks highly in search. In this article we will cover:
Are you looking to create a website? Get started with Pagecloud! You can publish a one page website at no cost with access to Pagecloud's powerful design features, and unlimited draft pages. Finding Inspiration Designers look for inspiration everywhere. Here are some of the best sites to help get your creative juices flowing:
Check out our blog post for more tips on finding inspiration Choosing a Web Design Tool There are two main ways to design a website: using a desktop app or using a website builder. The tool you decide to use will vary greatly based on your team size, your budget, and the type of site you wish to build and its technical requirements. 1. Desktop Apps Desktop apps require designers to create their design and send it to a development team who can then convert the design to code. The most popular desktop apps for designing websites are Photoshop and Sketch. Typically, this is the standard for large and/or complex websites because it allows the designer to focus on the overall look and feel, while all the technical challenges are transferred to the development team. Unfortunately, this process can be expensive and time-consuming because multiple resources, skill sets, and team members are required. To avoid involving a developer, it is beneficial to use a website builder to design a website with fewer technical requirements. 2. Website Builders There are many website builders on the market today that offer a wide range of features and services. Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, and Pagecloud, are a few examples of popular website builders that vary in design capabilities, template options, price, and overall editing experience. Be sure to do your research, experiment with free trials, and determine which platform best fits your website needs. Website builders create either adaptive or responsive websites, which offer different building experiences. These concepts will be discussed in more detail below so you can best understand which builders will work for you. If you don’t know how to code, becoming familiar with the freedoms and limitations of various website design tools is essential. For example, although Wordpress is the most used website platform, it’s not popular with visual designers because of its limited customization options. Before you start building a website, determine your website needs: Are you creating a photo gallery? How often will you update your site? Do you need a contact form? Choose a website builder that can help you effectively accomplish those goals. Web Design Elements When designing a website it’s important to consider both the site’s appearance and functionality. Integrating these elements will maximize the site’s overall usability and performance. Your site’s usability includes elements such as an easy-to-navigate interface, appropriate use of graphics and images, well-written and well-placed text, and a color scheme. Your site’s performance refers to its speed, ranking, searchability, and ability to capture your audience. Visual elements Here’s a quick overview of the elements you should consider while designing your website to make sure everything works well together. Each section will provide tips and tricks to help you get started. Fundamentally, your website’s appearance and text go hand-in-hand. It’s important to have your content writers and designers work together in order to create a cohesive design with balanced elements. Focus on creating chunks of text (using text blocks) in order to compliment your graphics and images. Fonts Choose a font that compliments your overall design. Font should pair with your color scheme, graphics, images, and strengthen the overall tone of your website. Tools like Canva’s Font Combinator can help you find a perfect match for your font. Web design tools like PageCloud even include numerous font pairings within their app. Colors Colors are one of the most important elements to consider when designing a website. Keep in mind there are many misconceptions about the psychology of color, and it’s more important to focus on colors that compliment your overall design and tone of your website. Align your color scheme with your brand and the messages you want to convey to your audience. Layout How you decide to arrange your content will have a dramatic impact on both the usability and functionality of your site. There are no specific rules to follow when choosing a layout, however, there are a few main principles to keep in mind. Make sure to consider the needs of your target audience and avoid using an overstimulating layout that might detract from the messages you want to convey. Shapes The use of graphic elements in web design can help seamlessly integrate text and images, and help with the site’s overall appearance. Combining beautiful colors and shapes can help direct the attention of your sites visitors and contribute to your site’s overall flow. Spacing Spacing is a key element to creating visually pleasing and easy to navigate websites. Every element in your design will incorporate spacing in one way or another. Appropriate use of whitespace is crucial in creating a design that perfectly balances text, photos, and graphics. Keeping your spacing consistent can help your users navigate your website with ease. The concept of whitespace is definitely a priority of modern web designers. Images & Icons Amazing designs can communicate a lot of information in just a few seconds. This is made possible with the use of powerful images and icons. Choose images and icons that support and strengthen your message. A quick Google search for stock images and icons will generate thousands of options. To help simplify your search, here are a few favourites: Free images and icons Premium images and icons Videos Integrating videos into web design is becoming increasingly popular amongst designers. When used properly, videos can help your users experience or understand a message that can’t be properly conveyed through text or image. Keep in mind that like having a TV screen on in a restaurant, visitors’ eyes will be drawn to moving images. Make sure your videos don’t compete with or detract from other important elements. Functional elements These functional elements are imperative to consider when designing your website. A website that functions properly is crucial for ranking highly on search engines, and giving your users the best possible experience. Navigation Your website’s navigation is one of the main elements that determines whether your website is functioning properly. Depending on your audience, your navigation can serve multiple purposes: helping first time visitors discover what your site has to offer, giving easy access to your pages for returning visitors, and improving every visitor's overall experience. Check out these best practices for more tips on navigation. User Interactions Your site visitors have multiple ways of interacting with your site depending on their device (scrolling, clicking, typing, etc.). The best website designs simplify these interactions to give the user the sense that they are in control. Here are a few examples:
Animations There are tons of web animation techniques that can help your design grab visitor’s attention, and allow your visitors to interact with your site by giving feedback. For example, adding “like” buttons or forms can keep your site’s visitors engaged. If you’re new to web design, we’d recommend keeping your animations simple to avoid developer intervention. Speed No one likes a slow website. Having to wait more than a few seconds for a page to load can quickly deter a visitor from remaining on or returning to your site. Regardless of how beautiful, if your site doesn’t load quickly, it will not perform well in search (i.e. won’t rank high on Google). Top site builders typically compress your content for faster load times, however, there are no guarantees. Make sure to research which site builders will work best for the content you will have on your site. For example, PageCloud optimizes your images to ensure fast loading times for sites with large and/or multiple photos. Google’s Page Speed Test Site structure A website’s structure plays an important role in both user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO). Your users should be able to easily navigate through your website without encountering any structural issues. If users are getting lost while attempting to navigate through your site, chances are “crawlers” are too. A crawler (or bot) is an automated program that searches through your website and can determine its functionality. Poor navigation can lead to a poor user experience and site ranking. Cross-browser & cross-device compatibility A great design should look polished on all devices and browsers (yes, even Internet Explorer). If you’re building your site from scratch, we’d recommend using a cross-browser testing tool to make this tedious process faster and more efficient. On the other hand, if you’re using a website building platform, the cross-browser testing is typically taken care of by the company’s development team allowing you to focus on design. Types of Website Design: Adaptive vs. Responsive Understanding the pros and cons of adaptive and responsive websites will help you determine which website builder will work best for your website design needs. You might come across articles online that talk about a whole bunch of different website design styles (fixed, static, fluid, etc.). However, in today’s mobile-centric world, there are only two website styles to use to properly design a website: adaptive and responsive. Adaptive websitesAdaptive web design uses two or more versions of a website that are customized for specific screen sizes. Adaptive websites can be split into two main categories based upon how the site detects what size needs to be displayed: 1. Adapts based on device type When your browser connects to a website, the HTTP request will include a field called “user-agent” that will inform the server about the type of device attempting to view the page. The adaptive website will know what version of the site to display based on what device is trying to reach it (i.e. desktop, mobile, tablet). Issues will arise if you shrink the browser window on a desktop because the page will continue to display the “desktop version” rather than shrinking to the new size. 2. Adapts based on browser width Instead of using the “user-agent”, the website uses media queries (a CSS feature that enables a webpage to adapt to different screen sizes) and breakpoints (certain width sizes) to switch between versions. So instead of having a desktop, tablet, and mobile version, you will have 1080px, 768px, and 480px width versions. This offers more flexibility when designing, and a better viewing experience as your website will adapt based on screen width. Pros
Cons
Responsive Websites Responsive websites can use flexible grid layouts that are based on the percentage each element takes up in its container: if one element (e.g. a header) is 25% of its container, that element will stay at 25% no matter the change in screen size. Responsive websites can also use breakpoints to create a custom look at every screen size, but unlike adaptive sites that adapt only when they hit a breakpoint, responsive websites are constantly changing according to the screen size. Pros
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It’s important to note that website builders can include both adaptive and responsive features. For example, Pagecloud recently introduced a series of features that allow your content to act responsive even though the website itself is still adaptive. Adaptive Website Builders Wix and Pagecloud are arguably the two best visual website builders on the market today. Both use an adaptive approach, meaning their drag-and-drop and WYSIWYG capabilities are second to none. You can build just about anything without having to write a single line of code. Wix has been around since 2006 and has since developed a wide range of features and templates to suit just about every business need. Today, it’s considered one of the easiest tools for beginners. Wix has been around since 2006 and has since developed a wide range of features and templates to suit just about every business need. Today, it’s considered one of the easiest tools for beginners. Although it’s hard to choose a winner in this category, here are few things to keep in mind:
As both platforms offer free trials, we’d recommend trying them both before deciding. Responsive Website Builders Tools like Squarespace offer responsive website builders, however, this means your editing experience is more limited. Creating a fluid responsive website is hard, and without knowing how to code, it is nearly impossible to build unique websites using responsive website builders. This is where more complex web design tools, like Webflow and Froont, come into play. Here are some of the pros and cons to consider when looking to adopt one of these tools: Pros
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E-commerce E-commerce websites are an important part of website design. Creating an online store that is easy to navigate, informative, and accurately displays your products is crucial to creating the best online shopping experience for your customers. If you want to learn more about starting an online store, check out our article for 5 easy steps to creating an e-commerce website! Next Steps Hopefully this article helped you to better understand the essentials in web design. To review, let’s take a look at some key elements in designing a website that is both beautiful and functional: 1. The user always comes first: user experience should be at the forefront of your design, as your users will ultimately be the ones to determine whether your website is worth visiting. 2. Choose the best website builder for your needs: ask yourself what your website’s major functions will be, and choose a website builder that will ensure those needs are met. 3. Balancing visual elements: it’s important to maintain a balance between your text, graphics, multimedia, and color scheme to avoid an overstimulating website that detracts from the messages you are trying to convey. Now that you’ve mastered the basics in website design, be sure to check out more posts to learn more about types of website builders, design trends, design elements, and much more. In need of a web design company to create a sleek and attractive modern website? We’re experts at designing you a visually striking website across all devices. Our mastery of design principles results in beautiful UIs and well-organized content layouts. From the second your users land on your website, they’ll be in awe of the marvelous design that greets them. We’re not happy and won’t rest until your website is a lead-generation that converts. In need of a web design company to create a sleek and attractive modern website? Why Swift Digital Marketing Is a leading web design company? An Eye for Beauty. We understand that websites need more than stellar UX to be successful. Our design know how empowers us to appreciate what colors, balance and shapes work together in harmony to produce a truly aesthetic web experience. In addition to design savvy, we offer you expertise in vital areas that guarantee website success, like SEO, UX and CRO. Our team offers you comprehensive web design services that run the gamut from ideation and design to successful launch and revenue acceleration. Dedication to Lead Generation. The most important goal of any website is to generate leads. At Rise, we understand that better than anyone, which is why we focus on perfect SEO, UX and CRO to turn your website into a lead-generation machine. Meticulous Planning Building a user-friendly and lead-generating website is complex because it takes meticulous planning and successful execution. Our expert team’s tried, tested and true site-building process ensures a high-quality build that’s within budget and meets deadlines, every time. A Full-Service AgencyWhen your needs extend beyond your website, we’re still able to help. Our skilled team members also specialize in:
Call (216) 339-6041 To Begin Your Design with Swift Digital Marketing Agency Just like your personal identity makes you uniquely you, your brand identity is the special sauce of your business that sets you apart from every other Tom, Dick and Harry, Inc. on the block. And your brand identity design? It’s what shapes your company. But what exactly is brand identity? What does it have to do with design? And how do you shape a strong brand identity that takes your business to the next level? Here’s the breakdown: Table of Contents
What is brand identity? What does the term brand identity mean? Brand identity is the collection of all elements that a company creates to portray the right image to its consumer. Brand identity is different from “brand image” and “branding,” even though these terms are sometimes treated as interchangeable. The term branding refers to the marketing practice of actively shaping a distinctive brand. Brand is the perception of the company in the eyes of the world. Let’s dig a little deeper. Let’s say you are a middle school student. As an awkward pre-adolescent, you want to be perceived as cool and get invited to sit at the best table in the cafeteria. But you can’t just force other people to have that image of you. In order to develop this brand, you need to do some work. So you make sure you watch the right YouTube channels so you always know the latest meme. Maybe you start working on your free throw. And cultivating on an impression of Mr. Archibald, your science teacher. These actions are the work you’re putting towards develop your desired image; they’re your branding. Finally, you need to make sure you look the part. You save up your money to buy the new Adidas shoes everyone covets. You get a new haircut. You try out for (and join) the basketball team. Those tangible elements—the shoes, the haircut, the team membership—that’s brand identity. Your brand identity is what makes you instantly recognizable to your customers. Your audience will associate your brand identity with your product or service, and that identity is what forges the connection between you and your customers, builds customer loyalty, and determines how your customers will perceive your brand. How to develop a strong brand identity Know who you are. Before you know what tangible elements you want to make up your brand identity, you need to know who you are as a brand. A colorful, playful & fun brand identity design by pecas Who you are as a brand is made up of a few key elements:
These elements are what define your brand, and before you start building your brand identity, it’s important you have a clear understanding of each. If you’re having trouble figuring out who exactly you are, don’t sweat it. Sometimes, all you need is a simple brainstorm to help you get clarity on who you are as a brand. Ask yourself:
You can also check out this awesome branding workbook from consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. While this workbook is geared towards personal branding, the strategies will work for any type of business model. Once you’ve locked in who you are as a brand, it’s time to build the identity that will bring your brand to life and show who you are to the people who matter most: your customers. Design: the foundation of your brand identity Just like your Adidas built the brand identity of your middle-school-star-athlete persona, your design is what will build the brand identity of your company. Your corporate design assets are the tangible elements that will determine how your brand is perceived. Things like your logo, your packaging, your web design, your social media graphics, your business cards and the uniforms your employees wear. In other words, nailing your design = nailing your brand identity = building a successful business that’s an accurate representation of who you are as a brand. So, how exactly do you nail your design and build a brand identity that will take your business to the next level? Developing your brand designBefore you start creating your design assets, you need to start from the ground up and lock in the basics of your design structure: the building blocks of your brand identity. The building blocks you’ll want to determine before you create your design assets include: TypographyTypography refers to—you guessed it—the font (or type) you choose for your branding materials. It’s particularly important to choose logo fonts and brand fonts wisely. There are four major types of typography:
The typography you choose will say a lot about your brand, so choose your fonts wisely. Color palette A brand guide with brand colors by ludibes Next up is color. People—your potential customers included—have psychological ties to different colors, and using branding colors and logo colors strategically can have a serious impact on how your brand is perceived by your audience. Here are what the colors of the rainbow (plus a few extras) can do to help your brand identity:
Form/ShapeWhen it comes to your designs, you also want to think about form and shape. This subtle but effective element that can be used to reinforce the desired reaction from your customers: so, for example, a logo that is all circles and soft edges will inspire a very different reaction from a logo that’s sharp and square. Here’s how different forms can shape your brand identity (pun intended):
Designing your brand identity Your brand identity is made of many elements. Once the building blocks of your design are created, it’s time to work with a designer to bring your brand identity to life and translate who you are as a brand into tangible design assets you can use in your marketing. Your brand identity can be expressed in any number of elements. Depending on the nature of your business, one asset or another may be more or less important. For example, a restaurant should put a lot of thought into their menu and physical space. A digital marketing agency, however, needs to focus more on their website and social media pages. Common elements of brand identity include: Logo design is the cornerstone in your brand identity. When working with your designer, you want to aim for your logo to tick off the following boxes:
You also want to make sure that your design partner delivers your logo in multiple formats (like a black and white version or multiple sizes) to ensure you always have the logo you need—and that each is in line with your brand identity. Learn more on how to design the perfect logo. Website Your website is one of the most representative aspects of your brand identity. Especially if you’re running an online business or a digital product, your customers will definitely check your website out before deciding to do business with you. Your website is where your brand identity should come through in full force. Learn the building blocks of effective web layouts. Product packaging Rose Finch gin bottles designed by sikarame. lIf your product is a physical one, then product packaging is key to attracting the right customers. Whether you’re thinking about the bottle of a cold-brew beverage, or the mail you’ll send to your customers who purchased clothes from your ecommerce business, don’t underestimate the value of good design in improving the experience – and driving both loyalty and repeat purchases. Packaging is an awesome opportunity for your design to shine. Business cards. If you’re doing any sort of business development (and who isn’t), you’ll want to stock up on business cards. A well-designed card offers the chance to reinforce a positive opinion of yourself in the eyes of potential clients or customers. When it comes to business card design, keep it simple: your company logo on one side of the card and your key personal details on the other side should suffice. Learn how to design the perfect business card. Email design Email is a great way to engage your customers and drive business. But most people are at inbox overload, so if you want to grow your business via email, you need the right design strategy to set yourself apart from the clutter. Think about the purpose of the email. Are you trying to make a personal connection? Then keep it short, sweet, and simple. Are you trying to educate? Then format it well so it’s easily readable and scannable and add a few images to make it pop. Are you trying to tell your customers about a new clothing line you launched? Make a few stunning product images the focus. Create a brand style guide A brand style guide is a must to preserve your brand identity.Once you’ve got your design assets, you want to make sure they’re used in the right way, which is why you’ll definitely want to create a brand style guide. This document—which outlines your design assets, when and how to use them, as well as any design do’s and dont’s for your brand—will ensure that any future design is in line with your brand identity and generates the right perception with your audience. Consistency is key to create a strong brand identity. You wouldn’t want your brand to look totally different on social media than it does on your website. That would confuse customers and make your brand feel less trustworthy and professional. So, make sure to always stick to a brand guide that covers all the different elements of your brand identity. That’s what is going to enable you to build brand recognition and brand loyalty in the long term. Brand identity in a nutshell… Your brand identity is what sets you apart from the endless sea of competitors and shows your customers who you are and what they can expect from working with you. And if you want your brand to be perceived in a positive light, it’s crucial that you nail your brand identity and create designs that accurately portray who you are to your customers. And now that you know how to nail that identity, it’s time to start designing. Want more construction contracts and booked projects? It all depends on having a great construction website. Your website is not an online brochure—it’s your 24/7 virtual sales rep, capable of generating a massive amount of leads and sales. Regardless if you’re in commercial or residential construction, your target audience expects a seamless, engaging website experience--75% of consumers have judged a company’s credibility based on its website design. If your website is outdated, doesn’t attract traffic, doesn’t convert visitors into leads, or simply isn’t up to your satisfaction, you need professional construction website design services. Swift Digital Marketing Agency specializes in designing websites for construction companies that not only look great but also rank well in search engine results and convert your visitors into clients. Let us help you redesign your website and turn it into your number one sales and marketing tool! CONSTRUCTION WEBSITES Construction Website Design Services Proven to Increase Leads & Sales Want more construction contracts and booked projects? It all depends on having a great construction website. Your website is not an online brochure—it’s your 24/7 virtual sales rep, capable of generating a massive amount of leads and sales. Regardless if you’re in commercial or residential construction, your target audience expects a seamless, engaging website experience--75% of consumers have judged a company’s credibility based on its website design. If your website is outdated, doesn’t attract traffic, doesn’t convert visitors into leads, or simply isn’t up to your satisfaction, you need professional construction website design services. Blue Corona specializes in designing websites for construction companies that not only look great but also rank well in search engine results and convert your visitors into clients. Let us help you redesign your website and turn it into your number one sales and marketing tool!
Our Custom Construction Website Design Services From small general contractor website designs to large construction company websites, we have the website services for you.
What Does it Take to Have a Sales-Driving Construction Website Design? Wondering why your competitors are outperforming you? It most likely has something to do with their website and what’s on it. The best construction websites are visible in search engines, mobile-friendly, fast, secure, and have an optimal user experience.
Our web design services aren’t one size fits all—there are no cookie-cutter solutions, at least not from the best companies. A good website design agency will help you figure out the best type of website for your business. What’s important is that your website is beautiful, thoughtfully laid out, and lead-focused. SHOULD I USE A TEMPLATE OR HAVE MY CONSTRUCTION SITE CUSTOM-DESIGNED? Choosing between a template and a custom-designed construction site will depend on your needs and your budget. Most small businesses will do just fine with a proven template, but if you have a large company, have specific needs, or want a website that doesn’t look like any of your competitors’ you should go for a custom website. WHAT’S THE AVERAGE LIFESPAN OF A WEBSITE? Your website is not a set-it-and-forget-it marketing asset. You need to continually update it to keep up with the modern customer’s expectations. When you’re building construction websites you always need to keep in mind that the average website has a life expectancy of 2-5 years, so be sure to pick a design and platform that won’t be too difficult to update.
WHAT’S INCLUDED IN YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN PACKAGES:
What is Digital Marketing?Digital marketing is the act of promoting and selling products and services by leveraging online marketing tactics such as social media marketing, search marketing, and email marketing. When you get down to it, digital marketing is simply marketing. It's how today's businesses are getting their message in front of their best prospects and customers. Rule #1 in marketing is to make the right offer at the right time and in the right place. Today, your customers are online: hanging out in social media, staying updated on news sites and blogs, and searching online when they have a need. Digital marketing puts you in those same channels, so your best prospects can see you, learn more about you, and even ask questions to learn more about you and your products or services. If you're new to digital marketing, it may feel overwhelming to think about mastering all the online marketing tactics used in digital marketing. We get that... And yes, there are different tactics you'll need to learn. But they all work together to create a foundation for your business: attracting prospects, nurturing relationships, and making offers your audience will appreciate and respond to. Let's take a closer look at how that happens. How Does Digital Marketing Work?In many ways, digital marketing is no different than traditional marketing. In both, smart organizations seek to develop mutually beneficial relationships with prospects, leads, and customers. But digital marketing has replaced most traditional marketing tactics because it's designed to reach today's consumers. As an example... Think about the last important purchase you made. Perhaps you purchased a home, hired someone to fix your roof, or changed paper suppliers at your office. Regardless of what it was, you probably began by searching the Internet to learn more about available solutions, who provided them, and what your best options were. Your ultimate buying decision was then based on the reviews you read, the friends and family you consulted, and the solutions, features, and pricing you researched. Most purchasing decisions begin online. That being the case, an online presence is absolutely necessary—regardless of what you sell. The key is to develop a digital marketing strategy that puts you in all the places your followers are already hanging out, then using a variety of digital channels to connect with them in a multitude of ways... ...Content to keep them updated with industry news, the problems they're facing, and how you solve those problems... ...Social media to share that content and then engage with them as friends and followers... ...Search engine optimization (SEO) to optimize your content, so it will show up when someone is searching for the information you've written about... ...Advertising to drive paid traffic to your website, where people can see your offers... ...And email marketing to follow up with your audience to be sure they continue to get the solutions they're looking for. When you put all these pieces together, you'll end up with an efficient, easy-to-operate digital marketing machine. And while it looks intimidating to build that machine from scratch, it's as simple as learning and integrating one digital marketing tactic at a time. Which is why we've put together this guide: To help you build or refine your own digital marketing plan without the false starts and missteps that come with doing it alone. What Are the Benefits of Digital Marketing?Having a strong digital presence will help you in multiple ways:
Learn the Strategies That Get Real ResultsBe aware, the digital marketing scene is ever changing. Gurus, podcasts, and bloggers declare a tool or tactic hot one week and dead the next. The truth is, digital marketing is less about "digital" and more about "marketing," largely because digital marketing has come of age. Its fundamentals have already been established. At Swift, our objective is to clear the confusion about the tactics that work and how to use them to grow your business. We stand firmly against the so-called "gurus" who promote the next "shiny object" or "quick fix" that will reportedly kill email marketing, digital advertising, or search engine optimization. Here, we're all about the fundamentals. As you'll see in this guide, these 8 core disciplines of digital marketing will be critical to your business growth today, tomorrow, and for years to come. Each of these disciplines will be covered in depth in a chapter of this Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing as shown below. About The Ultimate Guide to Digital MarketingDigital marketing isn't magic, and you don't need to be a computer whiz to be good at it. If you offer a product or service that the market desires, you can successfully market them in digital channels using the strategies taught in this guide. The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing doesn't present hype about the latest flashy tactics in marketing—digital or otherwise. Instead, this resource covers foundational disciplines such as content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing, always in the context of the goals that businesses care about. These goals include acquiring new leads and customers, monetizing the leads and customers you already have, and creating communities of brand advocates and promoters. Areas we serve
Contact us today to start! Have you ever heard people refer to themselves as “Apple people,” “Nike people,” or “Trader Joe’s” people? This is what brand awareness can do for a brand: embed itself into consumer lifestyles and purchase habits so that they don’t have to think twice before becoming a customer — time and time again. This guide will help you better understand brand awareness, establish it among your audience, and build campaigns that allow it to continually grow and change with your business. Let’s dive in. Brand awareness represents how familiar your target audience is with your brand and how well they recognize it. Brands with high brand awareness are generally referred to as ‘trending,’ ‘buzzworthy,’ or simply ‘popular.’ Establishing brand awareness is valuable when marketing and promoting your company and products, especially in the early stages of a business. Brand awareness might seem like a vague concept, and in truth, it is. For those marketers and business owners out there who like to gauge success with neat and tidy numbers, brand awareness will likely ruffle your feathers. But just because it isn’t a metric that can be perfectly determined doesn’t mean it doesn’t carry value. Brand awareness is incredibly important for business success and overall marketing goals. Here’s why. Why is brand awareness important? Brand awareness fosters trust. In a world where consumers rely on extensive research and others’ opinions before making a purchase, brand trust is everything. Once a consumer bonds to your brand, they’re more likely to make repeat purchases with little to no forethought — which then bridges the gap between trust and loyalty. Brand awareness establishes that brand trust. When you put a proverbial face to your brand name, consumers can trust easier. Brand awareness efforts give your brand a personality and outlet to be sincere, receive feedback, and tell a story. These are all ways that we, as humans, build trust with one another. The human/brand relationship isn’t any different. Brand awareness creates association. When you’ve had a paper cut, I bet you’ve put on a Band-Aid. When you had a pressing question, I’m sure you’ve Googled it. When you needed to make a few copies, I’m guessing that you Xeroxed them. And when you’ve packed for a nice picnic, I’m willing to bet you grabbed a Coke to drink. Am I correct? Most likely. But ... notice how the some of the words above are capitalized. These are brands, not nouns or verbs. That’s what brand awareness does. It associates actions and products with particular brands, subconsciously encouraging us to replace common words with branded terms. And before you know it, simple paper cuts or picnics are doing the marketing for us. Brand awareness builds brand equity. Brand equity describes a brand’s value, which is determined by consumer experiences with and overall perception of the brand. Positive experiences and perception equal positive brand equity, and the same goes for negative notions. Here are a few valuable things that come from positive brand equity:
How does a brand establish (and increase) brand equity? By building brand awareness and consistently promoting positive experiences with the brand. Brand awareness is the foundation of brand equity. Once a consumer is aware of a brand, they start to recognize it without assistance, seek it out to make a purchase, begin to prefer it over other similar brands, and establish a loyalty that not only spurs on other purchases but also inspires recommendations to family and friends. That is why brand awareness is so important. It establishes trust with your customers, creates positive associations, and builds invaluable brand equity that allows your brand to become a household name and consumer staple. How to Build Brand Awareness
Brand awareness among your audience and the general public doesn’t happen overnight. It also doesn’t happen from a simple advertisement or marketing campaign. Strong brand awareness is a result of multiple simultaneous efforts that extend beyond trying to get paying customers. If you expect to raise awareness of your brand by running a few product advertisements on Facebook, you won’t get very far. Not only will the consumer be focused on the product (not the brand), but the ad will also lack impact beyond a simple sale. Here are some ways to establish a solid brand awareness foundation and make a lasting impact with your audience: 1. Be a person, not a company. When you get to know a new friend, what do you like to discover about them? I like to learn about hobbies, passions, likes and dislikes, and more. I also pay attention to how they speak, what they like to talk about, and what stuff gets them excited. These are the traits your brand should determine and promote about itself. To leave an impact with your audience, you’ve got to define yourself as more than a company that sells stuff. How else would you define yourself? What words would you use if you had to introduce your brand to a new friend? 2. Socialize. Introvert or extrovert, outgoing or quiet, all humans benefit from social contact and spending time with one another. It’s how we stay connected, learn new things, and become known by others. The same goes for your brand. If you only attempt to connect with others when trying to make a sale or get support, you won’t be known as anything beyond a business with a singular intention (and the same goes for a person). To raise awareness of your brand, you’ve got to be social. Post on social media about things unrelated to your product or services. Interact with your audience by asking questions, commenting on posts, or retweeting or sharing content you like. Treat your social accounts as if you were a person trying to make friends, not a business trying to make money. Research shows that over 50% of brand reputation comes from online sociability. Being social leads to greater awareness and simply being known. 3. Tell a narrative. Storytelling is an incredibly powerful marketing tactic, whether you’re marketing products or promoting your brand. Why? Because it gives something real for your audience to latch onto. Crafting a narrative around your brand humanizes it and gives it depth. And weaving this said narrative into your marketing inherently markets your brand alongside your products or services. What should your narrative be about? Anything, as long as it’s true. It can be the narrative of your founder, the tale of how your business had its first product idea, or the little-engine-that-could story of how your small business made it in this big world. People like hearing stories about each other. Authenticity is impactful, and it can lead to a big boost in brand awareness. 4. Make sharing easy. Whatever your industry, product offering, or marketing strategies, make it easy for your audience to share your content. This could be blog posts, sponsored content, videos, social media posts, or product pages. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s shareable. Word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective way to establish trust and familiarity among customers. If someone sees that a friend or family member is recommending a product or service, they’ll take notice of that product … and brand. Is this a brand worth exploring? Do they have other great products I can rely on? What are their social accounts like, and what do they talk about? If you make it easy to post about your stuff, consumers will raise brand awareness for you by simply clicking “Share”. Brand awareness is about impact. It’s about interacting with your audience in ways that don’t only ask for money, participation, or loyalty. Imagine if you met a new person who wanted to be your friend. If they asked for any of the above, you’d probably laugh and walk away, right? Not only is that a shallow approach to friendship, but it also leaves no lasting impact on you. The same goes for establishing and building brand awareness among your audience. Brand Awareness Strategy
You already know how to start building your brand awareness from the ground up. Now, it’s time to put together a simple yet powerful brand awareness strategy that will keep the flywheel turning. 1. Guest blog on other niche websites. Guest blogging is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness with minimal effort. You can take advantage of the traffic that’s already arriving at another website to get more eyes on your brand while offering helpful and relevant content. In other words, you’re not just pushing out your product on people who aren’t ready to buy, but rather writing in your brand voice and presenting yourself as human first, company second. Another great alternative to guest blogging would be publishing sponsored content on niche websites. 2. Co-marketing. Co-marketing is an excellent way to build brand awareness — not only because you’d be taking advantage of another brand’s audience but because it can highlight who you are and what you offer in the marketplace. For instance, if your company sells dog leashes and toys, you could potentially partner with a dog walking app. The campaign itself could appear in any number of ways: You could create a shared offer (“download the app and get one free leash”) or host an Instagram live together. No matter what, partnering up with another brand could help you double and even triple your reach. 3. Advertise everywhere. I know, I know: Advertising many not build brand awareness so much as it builds product awareness, but still — it’s one of the best tools you can use to get people to find out about your brand in a low-touch, unobtrusive way. Consider Grammarly. It feels like just a few years ago, no one knew about Grammarly. Now it’s one of those brands that you automatically think of when you consider online proofreading software. That’s because they’ve launched robust social, video, and display advertising campaigns that appear nearly everywhere. You might consider starting with online advertising, which includes paid social media and PPC. If you’re interested in truly appearing everywhere and launching more sophisticated campaigns at a mass scale, you can launch programmatic advertising campaigns. 4. Hire a face or create a mascot for the company. This may not be doable for smaller companies, but if you do have the budget, consider hiring an actor or spokesperson to represent the company. What do you first think of when you think of Progressive? Flo, who’s even been termed “Progressive girl” for her fun and friendly personality. This allows you to not only humanize your brand, as mentioned in the previous section, but give a sense of the friendly and knowledgeable service customers can expect to receive. You don’t have to use a person, either. GEICO is a great example of this. The moment you see that friendly lizard, you know it’s GEICO. Creating an animated mascot may be a cost-efficient but equally effective way to give a face to your brand. 5. Choose an image or symbol that represents you.Nike is not even Nike anymore. It’s a check mark. The moment you see that check mark, you know it’s Nike. Or how about McDonald’s yello “M”? Or Apple’s bitten apple? I’m not just talking about a logo, either, though it can certainly be part of your logo. But work with your branding team or a freelance graphic designer to create a symbol that you ubiquitously use in your marketing, advertising, and organic campaigns. You might also consider taking a note from Apple, McDonald’s, and Nike, and incorporating the symbol into your product packaging and design. 6. Create a short, catchy slogan.Extending the Nike example, you think of the brand immediately when you hear “Just do it.” Creating a short motto or slogan is a cornerstone of a strong brand awareness strategy and is an easy and simple way to increase brand awareness. It’s definitely tough — imagine condensing everything you’re about in one short sentence. It must explain how you’re different, what you offer, and why customers should choose you. How to Increase Brand Awareness
Your brand awareness is now effectively off the ground, and people talk about you without needing to see an ad. What about expanding your established brand awareness and building on that strong foundation? What can you do as a brand to campaign for awareness and constantly increase it? Here are a few campaign ideas to boost your brand awareness beyond your initial strategy. 1. Offer freemium. Freemium is a business model that offers a basic product or product line for free, only charging for any products deemed premium or enterprise-level. It’s a popular pricing strategy for software companies. Offering a freemium option allows customers to get a taste of your brand and product before making a purchase. It’s a try-before-you-buy opportunity that can, technically, last forever (as opposed to a free trial period that some companies choose). It’s common to offer a freemium option with the condition that the brand’s watermark will be shown on any public-facing parts of the product or service. This makes freemium a win-win situation: The consumer gets the product for free, and the brand gets free advertising when consumers use it. Typeform is another great example of this. Typeform offers a freemium option of its survey software, but customers must include a thank-you page that features the Typeform logo and message. Depending on your type of business and product offer, Freemium may be the best way to raise awareness of your brand among your audience. 2. Create free content. Nowadays, creating content is easier than ever … which is a good thing because today’s consumers turn to the internet for any and all questions, concerns, and DIY projects. Content is a fun way to raise awareness of your brand because it’s the easiest way to show personality and share opinions and positioning on issues — two major components that personify and humanize your brand. Content doesn’t have to be in written form, either. You can also create videos, infographics, podcasts (which we’ll cover below), and more. Sure, written content like blogs and downloadable guides are arguably the easiest, but they’re definitely not the only option. Content doesn’t have to live on just your website, either. Guest posting and sponsored content provide opportunities to get in front of new audiences and diversify the type of content you create. If your brand isn’t creating content, you might be missing out on some major brand awareness opportunities. Content provides an amazing way to authentically connect with your audience while getting your brand name in front of people. 3. Sponsor events. How many festivals, concerts, fairs, and exhibitions have you attended? These types of events are typically not possible without the help of brand sponsorships. (Take a look at a t-shirt, koozie, or string backpack you likely grabbed from the event. See any brand names?) Sponsoring events is a surefire way to get your brand in front of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people that likely fall into your target audience. From banners to flyers to water bottles, your brand name will be everywhere if you sponsor an event. Sponsoring an event also allows you to pin your brand name on an event that matches your personality, interests, and passions, meaning consumers will then associate your brand with that event and its aesthetic and character. It can also gelp your company build brand awareness among highly specialized and qualified audiences. Professionals don’t attend events just for fun. They attend to learn the latest developments in the industry. It’s more than just being a booth in a sea of booths. By being a consistent event sponsor, you’ll cement yourself in attendees’ minds as a leader in the field. They key is to be consistent in your sponsorship. Consider Red Bull. Red Bull is an energy drink, and without any brand awareness efforts, we’d simply consider it an energy drink. But, thankfully, Red Bull took their marketing to the extreme — literally — by consistently sponsoring extreme sporting events like cliff diving and motocross. They also sponsor athletes. Now, we inherently associate Red Bull with daring and adventurous … and believe that, if we drink it, we can be the same. 4. Give your brand a personality. When you market your products and services with personality, you can’t help but boost your brand awareness because your brand will shine right through. Sure, your consumers will take note of the pants or pasta you’re marketing, but they’ll also experience your personality through your advertising. This is a great strategy when mixing your traditional marketing campaigns with brand awareness campaigns. They don’t always have to be one in the same, but they definitely can be. Advertisements for their hygiene products are overflowing with personality and humor, and they still mention their products throughout. The advertisement not only makes an impact on its viewers, but a mere mention of the “Old Spice man” also sends consumers back to YouTube to watch the commercial … and to the store to buy some deodorant. 5. Produce a podcast. More than one-third of Americans 12 and older listen to podcasts regularly. There’s no doubt podcasts play an important role in our lives … and marketing efforts. Podcasts used to be a complicated process, only created by those with a studio and fancy microphone. Now, it’s easier than ever to create and release a podcast, and doing so can do wonders for your brand awareness efforts. Why? Because podcasts, like written or visual content, provide a way to connect with your audience authentically. Instead of blatantly promoting your product or service (which we’ve agreed isn’t the best way to go about boosting brand awareness), podcasts give you the opportunity to educate, inform, entertain, or advise your audience and build trust by doing so. See how these brands have chosen podcast topics that relate to their 1) overall brand message and 2) products or services? Doing this helps them relate the podcast back to their brand and continue to raise awareness, too. Boosting your brand awareness through campaigns gives you a chance to dabble in marketing and advertising opportunities you’d otherwise not invest in — meaning new, powerful ways to connect with your audience. How to Measure Brand AwarenessHow do you know if your brand awareness efforts are working? How do you know if you need to change direction, top the competition, or fix a crisis? Just like any other marketing metric, you measure it. Wait … I thought you said brand awareness couldn’t be measured! Aha! You’ve been listening. I appreciate that. You’re right — brand awareness can’t be measured in the traditional sense. But, you can still review activities and metrics that’ll help you gauge where your brand stands in terms of popularity and consumer awareness. Here are a few ways to gauge your brand awareness and learn where you can tweak your efforts: Quantitative Brand Awareness Measures These numbers can help you paint the overall picture of your brand awareness. To measure quantitatively, check out these metrics:
Qualitative Brand Awareness Measures This step is where your brand awareness “score” gets a little murky. But these tactics can still help you gauge who and how many people are aware of your brand. To measure qualitatively, try:
These quantitative and qualitative metrics will help you understand your brand awareness among your audience and the general public. It’ll never be a perfect number, but keeping your pulse on this measure will help influence campaigns and stay connected to your audience. Regardless of how you gauge brand awareness for your company, avoid these common mistakes when measuring brand awareness. This is a brilliant brand awareness move that capitalizes on customers’ love of personalization, and with it, Coca-Cola ensures it remains an unshakable American classic. This example shows how far personalization will get you in your brand awareness campaign, so try to personalize whenever possible. If your product isn’t disposable, consider giving customers the option to add their name. Over to YouBrand awareness is a powerful (albeit vague) concept that can have a major impact on your marketing efforts, consumer perception, and revenue. Follow these techniques for establishing and building awareness for your brand, and you’ll find yourself with a loyal audience that recognizes your brand among competitors, chooses your products time and time again, and recommends their friends and family do the same. Inspirational designs, illustrations, and graphic elements from the world’s best designers.9/27/2021 Professional web design starts with really understanding the client’s business and brand. After all, a website represents a very significant voice for the brand. And, that voice should be front and center in a great website.  The word chocolate can be associated with many words: dark, white, milk, hot, sweet, spicy. As one would expect, chocolate website often use an appetizing brown dominant color.
The quality of product photography on chocolate websites is remarkable. Images are often large and dominant and are given a lot of both horizontal and vertical space. In fact, chocolate, especially gourmet chocolate, is often very visually interesting. The ingredients that go into it can also be very aesthetically pleasing. But they all have in common this fascinating sweetness everyone loves. #SwiftDigital How do you boil down the entirety of your brand’s goals and impact into a few short sentences? This is where your brand mission comes in. Your brand mission will be a cornerstone in every other aspect of your branding process. And it will help your audience understand the purpose of your brand and what it aims to accomplish. Let’s learn more about mission statements, why they’re important, and how to draft one. A brand mission statement clearly communicates a brand’s purpose, objectives and how it plans to serve its audience. It is action-oriented and gives readers an idea of what your business does and what impact it wants to make. This statement may shift over time as the company grows and redefines its goals. Asana’s mission statement is a great example of how a brand mission can be broad yet specific to the company’s goals. Its mission is “to help humanity thrive by enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly.” The message gets straight to the point and is descriptive enough that defines what Asana stands for. The brand missions incorporates the larger impact the brand wants to make as well as the more practical role it plays in its user’s lives. Brand mission vs. other elements your brandIt can be easy to confuse the brand mission with other parts of your branding, like brand voice and brand identity. While they are related, each of these elements plays a different role in shaping your brand. Here’s how:
What is a brand mission statement? Many brands create a style guide or brand guide that illustrates every aspect of their brand. Style guides includes their mission and vision statements, brand voice and brand identity. Mission statements vs. vision statements Whereas your mission statement defines your brand’s goals, objectives and approach, the vision statement describes the long-term impact you want to make with your mission. More simply stated: the mission describes what your brand aims to achieve and how you will achieve it. The vision statement defines where you want those achievements to lead in the future. Why are mission statements important? Defining a clear mission for your brand will help you identify your target audience. Once you have a clearly defined mission statement, you can tie everything your brand does to that mission. It can act as a perfect elevator pitch when presenting your brand to a new audience. It can also be an excellent barometer for determining whether new projects align with your overall brand mission. Your mission statement should be a defining factor for both your audience and your employees. A brand mission statement should also be a framework that your employees can follow when making decisions or speaking on behalf of the organization. Lastly, the mission statement can be an important factor to present to potential partners and investors and easily convey the value that your brand brings. Creating your brand mission statement Defining something as integral as a mission statement can seem like a daunting task if you’re just starting. A great first step is to research some of the mission statements of other brands in your industry. Of course, your mission statement should be authentic and representative of your brand. But you can draw inspiration from how other brands have defined their missions. Next, make a list of your brand’s goals and the impact you hope to make to your audience, and in the world. Your mission statement should also reflect your long-term goals. Even though you can adjust the statement as your goals shift, you should write your brand mission with longevity in mind. It should reflect the larger purpose of the brand and stay relevant for at least 2-3 years.  Here are a few questions to ask during the process of crafting a brand mission statement:
Keep it conciseYour mission statement doesn’t need to be long. A few concise sentences will suffice. You can have a longer and more robust internal business plan for employees. But the mission statement you share with the public should be succinct. TED’s mission statement is exactly two words: Spread Ideas. It’s a perfect representation of their brand that is known for sharing short yet highly valuable content for virtually anyone. Their mission statement gets straight to the point and is perfectly on-brand with what they stand for as a company. Make it a team effort When crafting a brand mission, it helps to have people from all areas of your organization involved in the process. Your social media team is likely well-positioned to help refine the brand mission and implement it into social media content. When you have the first draft of a mission statement ready, gather feedback from employees. Their feedback is valuable in understanding whether your mission carries itself internally. Employee feedback may be able to highlight gaps between the mission itself and the internal culture of your brand. How to embody your brand mission in all aspects of your organizationHistorically, brands have avoided taking controversial stands in politics and other sensitive topics. Today, people are looking more closely at which brands align with their values. Consumers are becoming more critical of which brands they advocate for. According to our research, 53% of consumers feel more connected to brands whose values align with their own. Brand authenticity, especially on social media, is more important than ever. If your brand mission is not authentic and aligned with your actions, your audience will notice. Recently, many brands have made public statements of support and adjusted their missions to include initiatives on racial injustices and representing diversity. On the surface, these statements seemed well-intentioned. But consumers realized that, in some cases, these statements didn’t reflect in the organization’s actions.  With the level of resources and information available to the public, performative support on social media is not enough. Consumers want to see how a brand’s actions back up the statements they make.
When creating a mission statement, brands need to make sure that they’re ready to embody that statement fully. That means observing how they can make changes in all aspects of their organization, both internally and in the public eye. Your brand mission needs to be reflected in all aspects of your organization. This includes your hiring process, internal communication practices, marketing and everywhere in between. Final thoughtsEven though you want to get your mission statement right, it’s important to remember that you can always adjust it. The statement should be broad enough to reflect the brand’s long term mission, but that doesn’t mean it can’t change. As a brand changes and sets new goals, the mission statement can shift to reflect that growth and change. It’s a good idea to revisit the mission statement every 2-3 years to make sure it still aligns with the brand’s goals and purpose. As the social media landscape changes, consumers will continue to push brands to have more intentional missions. To learn more about how to adapt your brand to be more socially conscious, check out our blog highlighting how brands can create change in the era of the conscious consumer. Categories Statistics and rates can tell you considerable things about how visitors’ value, use, and interact with your site — and that’s where web analytics become useful. Analytics about your web data offer plenty of intel that levels the playing field against your competition. If you want to press forward and dominate your industry, you need expert web analytics services to interpret and accelerate your site’s growth. Keep reading to find out what you need to know about web analytics services. Google Analytics Consulting Google Analytics is a go-to tool for tracking and reporting site performance. If you need to harness its benefits, we have a qualified team ready to take the data and turn it into results. Internet Analytics ConsultingYour site can have a massive impact across the Internet, but the World Wide Web is a big place that generates massive amounts of data. We tackle the analytics so your online presence can thrive. What are web analytics? Web analytics revolves around the practice of gathering, reporting, and evaluating website data. This data lends insight into user behavior through helpful metrics and reveals how well your Internet marketing campaigns work. Your web analytics can reveal patterns and lead to actionable steps to improve user engagement and marketing goals. Through tracked measurements, you can see what page visitors entered through, the length of their session, which pages they navigate to next on your site, and more. Whether you want to keep tabs on your paid advertising or organic search results strategies, these analytics deliver clear indications of your efforts. Web data allows your business to make informed decisions about its performance. Why are web analytics important? With qualified marketers and applied methods, you might overlook tracking and web analytics. If you start out well, then why do you need to follow along with minor performance details? Despite your campaign kickoff, you must continue paying attention to its development and effectiveness. Just like a dedicated coach doesn’t sit on the bench during a game and tune out, you can’t ignore signs of progress in your marketing efforts. Web analytics services help you stay aware of your website’s reach when you don’t have the time. Web analytics are crucial to running profitable campaigns because they keep you updated on your site activity. They allow you to stay in-the-know so you can reshape or tweak any areas of your strategies that aren’t excelling. So, what web analytics metrics matter to your site? Let’s review six metrics that you want your web analytics services to focus on: 1. Observe traffic and sourcesA significant motivation for Internet marketing comes from boosted visibility. You want a vast number of eyes on your site and brand, and you want those eyes to belong to high-quality leads. To learn about the traffic that comes to your site, you can use web analytics to measure how many new and returning visitors you have. The traffic data you can access includes referrals — or other websites that sent users to your site. You can see the payoff from the network you built when other businesses, customers, and industry leaders refer people to your pages on the Internet. You can also look at sources and channels that generate visitors like social media platforms, affiliate links, and display ads. If you know the most worthwhile places that funnel traffic to you, you can capitalize on those sources and bolster weaker areas. Web analytics services can help you discover the most valuable sources of traffic for your company, as well as develop a plan for maximizing the impact of traffic coming to your website. 2. Examine bounce rate and exit pagesThe features on your site that cause people to leave are hard to pin down, but web analytics makes them clearer and accessible with metrics like bounce rate and exit pages. Bounce rate — the percentage of single-page sessions that occur — is a significant number to look at, because it points out which pages don’t retain visitors. This is a strong indication of how you satisfy users, and it lets you concentrate on pages that need to meet user needs better. Exit pages show the places where visitors lose interest — or hopefully, complete their journey down the sales funnel. If your order completion page or a related end-of-the-line location is where people leave, then it appears you’re making sales and doing well. However, if people leave from a product page or blog page, you can hone your content to call them to action and to convert. 3. Inspect conversion rateYou can have many conversion goals that help you check-in on a visitor’s journey on your site. Conversions — desired actions on your website — are necessities for your business. The conversion rate for different goals gives you a good idea of your ability to engage customers, which takes constant review and work. You might set up your conversions as registering for site accounts, signing up for email updates, heading to check out, or leaving a customer review. The main objective with each of these is to establish a relationship with your audience and complete transactions. If you’re attempting to optimize your conversion rate, you can witness the evolution of your strategy as more visitors transform into customers. 4. Gauge successful keywordsThe keywords you want to rank for in search engine optimization (SEO) are the building blocks of getting exposure and revenue for your business. Web analytics in Google Search Console, for example, can reveal which queries people use to find your site, which lets you know if your keyword research and usage is productive. You can also see the average positions of your pages for chosen keywords and their click-through rate (CTR) by using web analytics services, which can pass on more information about your site’s strength. 5. Understand demographics The data collected about your site visitors takes away some of the mystery about who wants your products and services because it outlines the demographic details of your audience. With an analysis of your audience’s locations, interests, technology, ages, and genders, you can craft better content that fits your prospective customers. You can alter your site’s design and messaging to appeal to the demographic brackets that purchase products and interact with your pages. You can even assess the kinds of Internet browsers users have and the service provider they use on their mobile phones when using web analytics services. You can get the full picture of your users’ preferences and traits through tracking this series of metrics. 6. View revenue and ROIIt’s convenient to know how much money you spend and how much you make throughout your Internet marketing campaign. Web analytics also stays on top of the transactions and revenue your campaign musters. This web analytics metric also showcases the sources that turn into purchases. Do you know if your organic searches or paid search ads bring in dollars? Web analytic services can shed light on your most profitable strategies. This educates you on your return on investment (ROI), and you can have confidence that your Internet marketing services or in-house strategies are paying off and advancing your business. How web analytics services workNow that you’re familiar with trusted metrics, you’re probably wondering, “How can marketers track all those elements?” Analytics services don’t function alone — they use web analytics tools to evaluate the data. Web analytics tools typically use a tracking code to monitor a range of on-site activities. The code or tag gets assigned to domain owners. You have to then copy and paste the snippet of JavaScript onto the pages you want to track. The snippet goes into the HTML code and records user behavior as people click on a URL and interact with a site. As time goes on, data comes in, and you can secure information about your visitors for additional analysis. Split testing is another type of web analytics service that tests out different versions of a page to judge which one gets a better reception. A/B split testing uses a control and a variant of the page and examines and analyzes data to improve site functionality and design. How to choose the best web analytics servicesThe level of expertise that a web analytics consultant offers can transform data into real results for your company. However, the process of picking a web analytics expert can be overwhelming. What qualities do you need to look for to get the best web analytics services? Web analytics services should prioritize your goals and apply in-depth industry knowledge to your campaigns. Partner with us Here are the four steps to select your ideal web analytics agency: 1. Get experts that tailor their approach to your businessYou don’t want a cookie-cutter consultation for your unique company — each business has its own values and objectives. The web analytics services that can propel your business forward should understand the basics of your operations and long-term expectations. Customized analytics can bring richer byproducts. For example, an ecommerce site is going to be laser-focused on transaction metrics, while a brick-and-mortar business can thrive off publishing helpful content. 2. Consider the data timeframe For a well-rounded overview of site data, an expert shouldn’t pull their advice from a brief period, unless your website brings in a significant amount of daily traffic. Analysis requires a decent timeframe to identify problem spots and offer actionable solutions. If your business has seasonal connections, you don’t want to evaluate a slow part of the year and reorient core cornerstones of your site based on the slow season. That’s why it’s wise to cover a large period that spans dips and rises in your site traffic. Investing in your website’s analytics now and continuing to monitor your data can help build a snapshot of your site’s online performance, which can serve as an excellent reference point as your company continues to improve its website and expand its online marketing efforts. 3. Find helpful reportingAnalytics consultants can send out detailed reports at a variety of intervals. Whether you’re comfortable with weekly, monthly, or quarterly reports, it’s handy to gain a partner that delivers regular reporting. Explanations, along with the data can make the analysis more practical and efficient too. Highlights, summaries, and separate growth from campaigns can make reports insightful instead of tedious. Reporting is supposed to save you time and effort, so explore the options that website analytics service providers offer. 4. Look for transparent pricingIf the prices are hazy for web analytics services, you can’t be sure of your initial investment and your ultimate ROI. Transparent pricing prepares you for whatever additional fees you might encounter later, making it a budget-friendly characteristic. Many companies have a starting cost that includes the set up of various tracking and integration features, but you can also look for recurring rates by year or month that focuses on reporting and troubleshooting. 5. Receive detailed recommendations Web analytics services usually involve sessions with dedicated experts who pass on advice and enhancement suggestions for your site. When you have an ongoing analysis of your site, you can put recommendations into action and see a powerful change in your brand — but you need enough information to implement changes. Detailed instructions on how your site should work can elevate your Internet marketing efforts. 3 must-have web analytics toolsLike we said before, you can’t carry out web analytics without tools and resources. For web analytics, you need high-functioning software that aggregates data and condenses it into a more manageable format. Let’s go over three must-have web analytics tools that can speed along your web analytics set up and get you closer to high volumes of traffic and a steady flow of conversions. 1. Google Analytics As the most robust free web analytics tool, Google Analytics is the backbone of site analysis. Google’s experience in evaluating website quality makes it highly qualified to guide site owners through their web performance. Google Analytics has charts and graphs that pass on trends about your site. It’s broken into four categories — audience, acquisition, behavior, and conversions. There’s also a real-time analytics section that allows you to watch as current user actions shift the data around. Second-by-second and minute-by-minute, you can see what’s taking place on your site with the real-time analytics feature. Google Analytics has custom goals you can create to monitor your site too. You can precisely track important steps through these tailored goals. Here are the four types of goals you can set up:
Making sense of this data and related metrics in your Google Analytics reports is the trick to having a website that not only earns traffic but also generates conversions. Web analytics services help make that happen by translating these tough-to-read charts for you and your staff and providing actionable advice. 2. Google Search Console Google Search Console — working in conjunction with Google Analytics — is a useful tool for web analytics. It sticks with search-specific analytics, but it can support multi-strategy campaigns or SEO-devoted ones. You can integrate Google Search Console with Google Analytics, and it will show up under Acquisition in the “Search Console” section. Search Console has unique dimensions that stand apart from Google Analytics, which can let you delve deeper into configuring your site and attracting traffic. Here are the dimensions you can access:
Google Search Console is also free, and it’s an essential tool to manage long-term growth from a web analytics standpoint. Branching off from Google’s toolkit for analytics, MarketingCloudFX is another resource that tracks and generates data about your Internet marketing campaigns. Are you ready for the good news? It's included in all plans. Invest in web analytics services with Swift Digital Marketing. Discerning your next steps in Internet marketing doesn’t have to happen blindly. Web analytics gives you command of robust data and actionable feedback to guide your campaigns. In your search for a worthy web analytics service, you won’t come across an agency quite like Swift Digital Marketing. We offer both Internet analytics consulting and Google Analytics consulting to cover the area you need. Contact us online or call us at 216-339-6041 today! Starting a new business is exciting: There’s a fresh idea, a million to-do lists, and all the passion and drive to bring an idea to life. As the brainstorming process gives way to a concrete plan, it’s essential to take time to articulate the vision, mission, and values behind your new endeavor. These are three key elements of the foundation of your brand identity. When you take the time to fine-tune your brand basics, you’ll have greater focus, more motivation, and a better sense of how your business shows up in the world — and online. A solid brand foundation can save time later, simplifying creative decisions and providing clear context to any employees, partners, or collaborators. Read on to learn more about how to identify your vision, write your mission statement, and craft a list of your business’s values.
Consider your mission statement vs. vision statement Unlike the vision statement — which focuses on the big picture — your mission takes the abstract ideals of a vision and translates them into action. Since your vision statement is the why, your mission statement is the how. Learn how to craft both statements below. Identify your vision and beliefs Though it may feel rudimentary, taking the time to clarify your vision and beliefs is the key to establishing meaning behind your mission. Moving forward, many business decisions stem from the core beliefs of a business, so it’s worth the effort to hone in on what you care about and are building into your business from the start. In order to figure out your vision, start by considering the following questions:
Write your mission statement Once you’ve identified the problem you’re solving with your vision statement, get to the root of your mission statement by asking yourself:
List out your business’s values Unlike your mission, values aren’t tangible objects or plans. Instead, they’re the core ideals of your company that inform decisions moving forward. Strive to identify roughly five or six values to create a complete guide of the principles that govern the way your business shows up. Ask yourself:
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