Will your brand survive the next social media blackout?

A few weeks ago, Facebook and Instagram experienced outages, leaving users frustrated—and brands in the dark. Unable to post content and connect with their customers, many businesses lost revenue.

So, what’s the lesson? The social media blackout is a great example of why integrated, multi-channel marketing is so important for brand success. Placing all your marketing eggs in one basket—or relying too heavily on one central media strategy—is risky.

A recent article in Entrepreneur magazine reinforces that point, “you can’t build the foundation of your business on someone else’s platform.” The author argues that brands must protect and maintain the assets that they control: their websites and mailing lists. (read the entire article via the link below)

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/330200?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email

While I agree that your website is an owned marketing asset that’s central to maintaining consistent and reliable brand-driven connectivity with your audience, I’ll take that one step further: For your brand to survive and thrive in today’s digital marketing arena, you need to establish relationships with your customers—connections that are guided by an integrated, cross-channel marketing plan.

This strategic plan should be revisited and updated on a regular basis:

• Website. Ensure your website is primed for business: Your messaging should communicate who you are, what you do and the value you offer. Be clear and concise, using strong CTAs (call to action) that prompt action.
• Email marketing is essential to brand success (72% of consumers prefer email as their primary means of communicating with brands). Optimize this channel by updating/maintaining your mailing lists; and use drip campaigns to keep your brand front of mind. Test your emails and redeploy campaign elements as needed.  
• Product packaging. Review your current packaging: Does it provide an opportunity for customers to interact with your brand—either physically or electronically? Consider incorporating ways for users to consume your content or experience your brand using elements such as augmented reality or video.  
• Promotional and printed products. How are you making brand impressions with your audience? Use tangible touches—like promotional products or unique printed items—to make those connections. Brainstorm ways to incorporate these items into your marketing plan, as they have a longer shelf life than digital ads or social media posts.

Social media is like most technology: It’s great—until it doesn’t work. Of course, social media is important and essential in brand marketing. But always, balance is key. To ensure your brand weathers the next social media blip, have a diversified plan.

Good luck,

Tim Connor

Website Lead Generation Tips You Need to Know

You wouldn’t meet with a prospective customer without being prepared to discuss the value you bring to the table; that would be an opportunity missed.

Similarly, you don’t want visitors to log on to your website without providing them with essential information and a means for continued dialogue. Website lead generation tools do just that: They engage the visitor and provide them with important information, while allowing you to gather valuable data about them, as you nurture the lead and prompt continued conversation surrounding your brand.  

According to Forrester Research, companies that nurture their leads see 50% more sales-ready leads than non-nurturers, and at 33% lower cost. So, it makes good business sense to prime your website for lead generation. Following are tips and tools to help you convert visitors:

1.  Use forms (more than one) – Make it easy for visitors to contact you using content forms that are brief and to-the-point (you can gather more details later).

Use multiple forms throughout your site based on page content and site placement; and follow up with A/B testing to see which form(s) are getting best results.

2.  Include basic CTAs throughout your site, including on the homepage – Consider your end goal and then work backwards with thoughtful calls to action: Offer a perceived “value” with each, such as a free demo, a whitepaper, a free trial, special promotion, etc. Next, route these recipients into specific nurturing funnels and conduct A/B testing and then modify, as needed.

Make your CTAs command attention by using “power words” such as: Get, Overcome, Boost, and Join.

3.  Offer live chat – Today, people are starting to expect this customer service benefit on websites that offer services/vendors. Be prepared to answer questions about products/services. And use the live chat as an opportunity to actively guide a visitor through your site to a specific end goal.

4.  Provide social proof – Prove that you can do what you say you can do by sharing videos of customer testimonials, social media reposts or online reviews. These social moments are great opportunities for making brand connections and allow you to further customer engagement on social media channels.

5.  Build trust by being authentic – Tell your story using photos—provide faces with names to help customers make connections; and speak to visitors, not at them using 1-to-1 videos. Provide evidence of your skills/quality/capacity by promoting awards, certifications, ratings, etc.

6.  Blog – Use your blog to generate website traffic and drive SEO (not necessarily to drive leads). Be useful in your posts and people will come back for more. A few tips:

•     Consider solutions-based posts
•     Develop groups of posts covering industry-relevant topic(s)
•     Incorporate keyword research into posts
•     Include videos and graphics to drive interest
•     Provide offers within the blog – free whitepaper, ebook, etc.
•     Add CTAs when relevant
•     Add links to specific pages in website – drive traffic back to site
•     Include social sharing links

As we prepare to revamp our Shamrock website, these are some of the guidelines we’ll be using to optimize our new site. Are there any that you’d add to the list? Share your feedback at emoriarty@shamrockcompanies.net.

Ellen Moriarty

Website Design Trends to Keep Your Site Fresh

Keep up or get left behind. This is the everyday marketing challenge in today’s fast-paced, digital world. When it comes to your website, staying on top of the latest trends in relation to both site appearance and functionality is what will help you make a strong brand statement: Strive to make it accessible, easy to navigate—and memorable.

Here are a few trending design elements to incorporate to best position your site to stand out:
  
Mobile-first design. It seems obvious but is worth reinforcing: Studies show that readers won't stay on your site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Make sure your website is user friendly for mobile and tablet access. And consider that Google prioritizes these websites over non-mobile sites.

Flat design. Taking a fresh and straightforward approach to connecting with users, we’re seeing clean, crisp, minimalist graphics with broken grids, asymmetrical layouts and more open/white space. With less clutter, it allows the reader to focus on the message.

Micro moments are user-focused animations that create quick, one-touch access to information on mobile devices. Also called micro interactions, these animations are take-action prompts that allow users to interact with your brand. When done right, these subtle animations can direct the reader to the right content at the right time, driving them to important messaging or to complete a form or initiate a download.

Movement using interactive video. There is power in video—and today’s trend is pushing more high-quality video content on websites. Video conveys messages quickly and effectively and boasts a higher retention rate than reading static copy.

In addition to product or process videos, we’ll continue to see more video in the form of cinemagraphs, particle backgrounds, and animated thumbnail images.

Hero images. Bigger is (still) better: We’re continuing to see designers using over-sized leading images—these create a unique, compelling story and draw the reader in to learn more. Large typefaces with serif fonts are also having a moment.

Bold, saturated colors. Making a high-impact graphic statement, the trend is using vibrant colors and unique graphic treatments like double exposure, gradients, and drop shadows to create depth.

 
Personalized and customer-centric content. The key is to drift away from traditional static content to a more dynamically-rich content. The best practice is to create a dynamic website and a smart marketing automation plan that delivers top content.

Our team at Shamrock is embarking on a redesign of our website and we’ll be incorporating a lot of these elements in our new site. Stay tuned for the big reveal!

Ellen Moriarty