Let’s be real: traditional ads just don’t hit like they used to. We scroll past them, skip them, maybe even roll our eyes. But you know what we don’t skip? Content shared by real people. And that’s where User-Generated Content (UGC) shines.
UGC is like word-of-mouth for the digital age. Think of it as when your friend tags a brand in an Instagram story or someone on TikTok shares their honest take on a new product. UGC feels real because it is real—no scripts, just regular people sharing what they genuinely like, which is why it’s ruling the marketing world right now.
Why UGC is Stealing the Spotlight in Marketing
Real People = Real Trust 🔒
Let’s face it: we trust people more than we trust polished ads. A friend’s unfiltered review? Way more convincing than a brand’s claim. UGC brings a sense of honesty that ads just can’t match, making it marketing gold.
Major FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) 😎
When we see others hyping up a product, it’s natural to want in on the fun. UGC sparks that “I need to try it!” feeling. It’s relatable, which makes it contagious. People see it, want it, buy it.
UGC doesn’t need a big budget.
When fans or followers create content around a brand, it’s like they’re doing free advertising. And it’s super effective, because other potential buyers tend to believe it more.
UGC brings people together around a brand.
Comments, shares, tags—UGC inspires interaction. Brands using UGC don’t just gain customers; they build a community. This engagement can turn casual followers into loyal fans.
Made for Social Media 📲
UGC and social media are a perfect match. Think TikTok reviews, Instagram stories, Twitter shout-outs. Social feeds come alive with UGC because it’s personal and less, well, corporate. For brands, it’s a way to keep their image fresh and relevant.
How SEOdigital Can Help?
UGC might be magic, but it needs the right platform to shine. That’s where SEO Digital comes in. With our expertise in social media marketing, we help brands harness the full potential of UGC, boosting visibility, engagement, and trust. Whether it’s amplifying customer reviews, sharing viral-worthy posts, or building buzz around your products, SEO Digital has the tools to make it happen.
A crucial first step towards success is creating a brand identity that aligns with the principles and features of the business and its offering. Ideally, every aspect of a company’s branding contributes to a single, overarching message. The following nine actions will assist you in creating a strong brand identity:
1. Conduct research
Begin by analyzing the market and identifying strengths, opportunities and weaknesses. Understand who you are as a company and your point of difference. Pinpoint elements that make you unique from other brands.
2. Determine business goals
Form your mission statement based on your brand’s capabilities and the reason behind your brand. Indicate which elements distinguish the company that you work for and why there’s a need for your products or services. If you work for an organization with a defined mission, think about what advertising goals can best support both the company’s and your client’s needs.
3. Identify customers
Conduct surveys, focus groups and interviews to identify a consumer group. Understanding customer needs and expectations can help shape brand identity to best build customer loyalty. This may involve conducting audience segmentation and discovering multiple subgroups within your overall audience. You might categorize these subgroups based on various factors, including a customer’s age range, geographic location or shopping habits.
4. Determine personality and message
Create or redefine the brand’s personality by considering if your brand focuses on fun or solving a consumer’s problems. The brand’s voice is an identity that remains consistent throughout the branding process and gets clearly communicated through methodical choices in brand identity. All brand elements, from name to color choices and typography, align to create a coherent identity.
5. Make a logo
Make or redesign your logo. A logo is a visual trademark or symbol identifying the brand. Similar to a sports team mascot, the logo visually represents the brand and the ideals it embodies.
6. Consider other visual elements
Think about how the other visual elements involved in your logo, packaging, advertising or website can embody your brand. This might include considering the following visual aspects:
Color: Unique and specific brand colors instantly increase product visibility. For example, the color choice of heather gray may communicate serenity, while a more robust, more vivid hue of green can portray confidence.
Shape: The visual appearance of shape identifies some brands as well. For example, a soft drink’s unique square-shaped bottle or a game controller’s linear forms can immediately identify the brand.
Graphics: Distinct patterns can also help build a memory structure around a specific brand, making identification instantaneous.
Text: The size and style of your font can communicate a brand’s personality. A wispy font, for instance, might convey a sense of relaxation, while Times New Roman may portray tradition and stability.
7. Create your slogan
Compose or refine the brand’s slogan. This is simply a brand’s position stated memorably. Ideally, a slogan is brief and memorable so that it’s easy for customers to recall. Many brands, for example, use slogans with alliteration or rhymes.
8. Decide on your tone
Figure your brand’s style or tone. Specific word choice, or “diction,” is the vocabulary used in connection to the brand and helps to shape the brand’s tone and attitude. The type of language used to communicate to consumers can dictate the type of customer the brand attracts. The tone of your brand typically connects to its personality. For example, a brand focused on fun might use a more casual tone, while a brand that provides medical devices may prefer to cultivate empathy.
9. Think about your audience’s other senses
Consider how you can awaken your consumers’ other senses through your branding when relevant. Also referred to as sensory branding, this type of marketing might appeal to all five of a prospective customer’s senses. Here’s a brief description of how you might incorporate the other three senses into your branding:
Sound: A brand’s unique set of auditory notes, tones or sounds can help to raise brand awareness. Often, a musical jingle might bring the brand name to a customer’s mind, leading to a stronger brand identity.
Taste: A brand’s flavor or flavor combinations can play a crucial role. For example, a restaurant might offer a secret sauce in a specific dish, while a particular brand of soft drink might offer 27 flavors that are uniquely their own.
Touch: For companies that sell products, consider how that product physically feels. You might think about, for example, if the product or packaging feels heavy, smooth or rough to the touch and how that contributes to the branding.
Scent: Companies that sell products with smells, like food or beauty products, might consider refining specific scents that customers can associate with that brand.
Building a strong brand identity is crucial for making a lasting impression and staying ahead in a competitive market. By defining your brand’s core values, understanding your audience, and maintaining consistency across all channels, you can create a powerful and memorable brand that resonates with your customers.
If you’re ready to take your brand to the next level, our expert team is here to help. Contact us today to start building a brand identity that stands out and drives success. Let’s create something extraordinary together!
Approximately 70,000 cumulative profiles, Pages, and groups have been removed from Facebook and Instagram as a result of Meta’s significant action against a well-known sextortion group operating out of Nigeria. Additionally, the mechanisms to prevent them from returning have been strengthened.
Meta says that these accounts were associated with a group called “Scammers,”.
These scammers originally relied upon the old “Nigerian Prince” type of scam, where they’d try to dupe unsuspecting marks with promises of riches. But more recently, they’ve switched to romance scams, where they create fake profiles, then convince their targets to share money and/or personal details to maintain the relationship.
Meta says :
”We removed around 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria that attempted to directly engage in financial sextortion scams. These included a smaller coordinated network of around 2,500accounts that we were able to link to a group of around 20 individuals. They targeted primarily adult men in the US and used fake accounts to mask their identities. 63k profiles is a lot, and you can imagine how this group could look to use a coordinated effort of this size to intimidate targets.”
In addition to this, Meta also notes that it detected a coordinated network of around 2,500 accounts through a combination of new technical signals and processes. The majority of these accounts had already been detected and disabled by our enforcement systems, and this investigation allowed us to remove the remaining accounts and understand more about the techniques being used to improve our automated detection.
In other words, Meta has effectively been able to use this research to gain additional knowledge on the ways in which these ”Scammers” and other groups plan and collaborate in order to put pressure on users.
Which should put Meta in a better position to prevent such incidents in the future, but as is always the case, as detection systems advance, so do the strategies used by these groups. Although it’s still a cat and mouse game, Meta appears to have prevailed in some of the bigger, more significant (at scale) incidents overall, according to its continuous reporting.
Meta eliminated 5,700 groups and 1,300 Facebook pages that had been disseminating advice on how to pull off online frauds in addition to these profiles.
But again, the scammers will evolve, and in the age of AI, there are now all new vectors for them to tap into to initiate their schemes. Hopefully, Meta will also be able to evolve its systems in line, in order to maintain some kind of balance in enforcement.
Web development is in a constant flux. It changes with technology and dynamic user expectations. Moving into the future, several trends and innovations are going to change the way in which websites and web apps would be developed and consumed. Here is an inkling into what one should expect in the future of web development.
7 Key Trends Shaping the Future
1. Progressive Web Apps
Progressive Web Apps are web applications that provide a native app-like experience by working offline, loading fast, and being installable on the user’s home screen. This closes the gap between web apps and mobile device apps by providing a native user experience across devices. Notice an increasing number of businesses implementing PWAs to enhance engagement and accessibility.
2. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are finding their way to changing web development. From chatbots and virtual assistants to customized content recommendations, AI and ML offer a rich experience for users and make complex tasks easier to handle. Only then will developers integrate these technologies to make web applications wiser and more responsive.
3. Voice Search Optimization
Optimizing websites for voice search is going to be imperative as devices that are voice-activated, including smart speakers and voice assistants, begin to proliferate. That means understanding and responding to voice inquiries through NLP. That basically means that voice search optimization is going to play a very big role in enhancing accessibility and user convenience.
4. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
AR and VR are in the process of changing the way users experience and interact with web content. These technologies aid in creating extremely immersive experiences—majorly in industries such as e-commerce, real estate, and entertainment. For instance, a user could see what a product might look like in his or her space using AR, or how a virtual tour may turn out using VR, thus building engagement and decision-making.
5. Single Page Applications
A single page application loads only a single HTML page, which is then dynamically updated based on user interaction with the app. SPAs really provide a native-like user experience, so they are very suitable for complex applications. Viewed by many as the future of frontend development, SPAs are becoming ever more prevalent, and React, Vue, and Angular are leading the charge to help developers efficiently and scalably develop web applications.
6. WebAssembly (Wasm)
WebAssembly is a binary instruction format designed for high-performance on the web. It empowers developers to write code in languages like C, C++, and Rust and executes it in browsers at near-native speed. Wasm boosts web applications to be faster and more powerful.
7. Improved Cybersecurity
As cyber threats become sophisticated, enhancing the cybersecurity measures will be essential. The developers will need to focus on secure coding, using HTTPS, Content Security Policy, and keeping themselves updated on the latest security measures and protocols. Without protection of the user’s data and trust, success for web apps will be elusive.
Future Predictions for Web Development
1. The Rise of the JAMstack and Serverless Architecture
The JAMstack is gaining immense popularity. It makes use of pre-rendered static sites to deliver content and APIs for dynamic data and functionality. There are a number of advantages of this approach of serverless computing.
Performance: This means a user can have promptness like a static content.
Scalability: As a result of it, it is capable of handling as many traffic volumes as possible without having a limitation on servers.
Security: It is, therefore, critical to note that static sites are way more secure compared to traditional server-side applications.
Reduced Development Costs: Therefore, one will not have a case of the ongoing maintenance for any client using a serverless infrastructure.
2. The Metaverse and Web 3.0
Of major influence on web development will be the concepts of Metaverse—the persistent virtual environment—and Web 3.0, a blockchain-driven decentralized web. Imagine engaging online experiences where users can own digital assets, interact with 3D settings, and move with seamless continuity across platforms. Therefore, that may be new frameworks and tools required for making safe and participatory experiences inside the Metaverse.
3. Democratization of Web Development
The introduction of low-code/no-code platforms and user-friendly tools is likely to further democratize web development. This may further diminish the boundary between citizen developers and formally trained developers since, with the help of these tools, persons with zero coding experience will be in a position to build simple websites and applications. Complex functionality creation and high-performance application development will still have to involve professional programmers.
4. Ethical Considerations and User Privacy
Even while AI and machine learning find a place, increasingly, in web development, user bias and data privacy ethics have to be factored in. Developers will have to make algorithms that will ensure equity, non-discrimination, and transparency in the judgment-making process. In addition, the developers shall give top priority to secure data storage and let users have control over their information since the laws governing user data privacy are probably going to get harsher.
5. The Evolving Developer Landscape
The developer landscape is also likely to change in tandem with the new trends. Few might have predicted a rise in extremely specialized jobs related to themes like blockchain development, AI integration, and metaverse experiences, among others. Moreover, it shall be indispensable for developers who want to remain relevant in a world changing at high speed in terms of technology to upskill and continue learning.
In that respect, certain fabulous opportunities will keep developers and enterprises that want to remain at the forefront of future, evolving paths in web development on their guard.
Get ready to future-proof your web presence. With Seoghana, you’re always on top of the latest trends in web development, so you’ll never be passed by those who are ahead of their time. Our team can develop anything, from Progressive Web Apps and AI-driven features to seamless Single Page Applications.
Do not be left out in the new digital revolution. Let us show you how we can transform your web today to give your business a facelift. Building together a better future!
SEO Ghana has been honored with the prestigious award at the MEA Markets’ seventh annual African Excellence Awards- 2024.
We are happy to announce that SEO Ghana has won the African Excellence Awards 2024 for Most Reliable Digital Marketing Company in Ghana. This prestigious award emphasizes our dedication to quality, creativity, and major contributions to the economic growth of the African continent.
In its sixth year, MEA Markets has presented the prestigious awards program known as the African Excellence Awards. It honors companies that have made a significant contribution to the economic and social progress of Africa and celebrates their exceptional accomplishments. This year’s awards program addressed a wide range of companies in different industries and sectors, from start-ups to major international firms.
Seoghaa for the third time has been recognized for our unwavering dedication to Digital Marketing , showcasing our resilience and adaptability in the face of global challenges. This award is a testament to the hard work and commitment of our team, and our continuous efforts to drive innovation and excellence within the Digital Marketing sector.
The Company CEO, Evans T. Ampofo expressed, “We are incredibly proud to receive this prestigious award from MEA Markets.” In addition to honoring our accomplishments, this acknowledgment also celebrates our shared goal of promoting the growth and development of companies around the world. We are motivated to pursue our goals and keep improving the communities we work in by it.
Showcasing exceptional standards and accomplishments within the various business environment of the continent, the African Excellence Awards 2024 bring together the greatest minds in African industry. With the goal of honoring companies that are committed to the economic and social development of Africa, MEA Markets seeks to promote resilience and growth.
As we celebrate this significant milestone, SEO Ghana remains committed to pushing the boundaries of innovation and excellence. We look forward to continuing our journey, driving progress, and making meaningful contributions to the African business community.
For more information about the African Excellence Awards 2024 and the complete list of winners, please visit MEA Markets Awards.
About SEO Ghana
SEO Digital is a multiple award winning creative media and inbound marketing firm operating from Ghana and the UK. Staffed by digital marketers and marketing professionals with international expertise, the company excels in digital advertising and social media marketing. Our mission is to improve search rankings, attract niche-based customers, and build brand trust for businesses in Ghana, Africa, and globally.
Did you know the Great Wall of China actually isn’t visible from space? At least not to the naked eye.
Also: bats aren’t blind, Viking helmets didn’t have horns, and toilet water in the Southern hemisphere does NOT rotate the other direction.
We love busting myths!
So, in this article,we’re going to take 5 of the most commonly held beliefs about digital marketing and hold them up to the light.
The internet is so full with information that it’s simple for marketing falsehoods to catch on fire. To dispel these myths, we need to be proactive in our efforts. Join me as we dispel the top 5 fallacies around digital marketing and give you useful, workable solutions that will let you take control of your marketing approach.
Myth # 1: Digital marketing is only for bigger businesses
One of the most widespread misconceptions we encounter or hear is the idea that only larger organizations can afford or reap the benefits of digital marketing.
While it’s true that larger businesses are typically able to afford to invest heavily in costly advertising campaigns and optimize their presence on all social media channels, including their website, smaller businesses can still reap significant benefits from digital marketing. This does not require them to make large financial investments.
Establishing a social media account and building an excellent mobile-friendly website (ensuring that it loads quickly and that the pages adjust to the size of the screen, among other things) is a positive first step.
Free social media sites are available, and hosting for websites is not too expensive. Without breaking the bank, you can begin with the fundamentals. It is far better for your company to just have an internet presence than none at all. Regardless of size, digital marketing and a strategy may help businesses of all kinds.
This will put you miles ahead of your rivals who continue to think that digital marketing is ineffective!
Myth # 2: Digital marketing results cannot be tracked
A prevalent misconception regarding digital marketing is that since there is nothing tangible to observe, the results cannot be monitored. On the other hand, practically anything may be monitored, including the bounce rate, the sites that users clicked on, and the quantity of visitors to your website.
You may even monitor your campaigns to determine which elements are profitable and effective, as well as which ones are not. A website with strong search engine optimization (SEO) will receive more natural traffic than one with weak SEO.
You can gain insight into your website’s reach and the paths customers have traveled to visit your website and make a purchase by utilizing free tools like Google Analytics.
Tracking all of this is a terrific method to expand your audience and strengthen your brand.
Myth #3: ”I Can Use the Same Content Marketing Strategy as Other Companies”
Whether you run a multi-million dollar company or a five person firm, you have to figure out what works best for you and stay on that path. Just because something works well for one company doesn’t mean that it will work well for you. Like anything in this business, you have to work at it through trial and error.
Myth #4: More Traffic = More Money
Do you want to increase sales? All you have to do is increase website traffic.
Correct?
Yeah, well, not quite.
Please do not misunderstand us. We at SEO Ghana are big fans of traffic—the type that comes via websites, not cars.However, keep in mind that not all traffic is created equal and that none of it is bankable. Traffic must truly convert to leads and sales in order to be considered valuable.
Recognize that “traffic” refers to more than just a dashboard indicator. It is a group of breathing, living humans with issues, anxieties, dreams, and hopes.
Additionally, you must persuade them to convert on your website by emphasizing its benefits in a way that is both frequent and powerful enough.
Want to learn how to do that? Contact us for more information!
Myth #5: Having a Website is Enough to Market My Firm
You might assume that if your website is well-designed and you’ve done a fantastic job with it, it will handle your marketing. Ultimately, visitors can use your website to obtain information and make contact with you.
The act of finding your website is the sole issue. How do potential customers initially discover your website? Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements, social media, content production, SEO, and other tactics will drive traffic to your website, where you may wow visitors with an amazing user experience and design.
It is easy to become misled by myths in the quickly changing field of digital marketing. Our staff at SEO Ghana is available to assist you if you’re prepared to advance your digital marketing strategy or if you need assistance navigating the confusing digital landscape. For a consultation, get in touch with us right now. Together, we can debunk more fallacies and advance your company.
Since the web first ushered in a new era of e-commerce, marketplaces, payment services, and massive scaling of shipping and distribution networks have made e-commerce successful. This reading considers how e-commerce might change over the next decade.
Future trends for e-commerce
No one can say for sure which innovations today will be used tomorrow. However, a few e-commerce trends stand out:
Specialization of smaller retailers
Immersive customer experiences
Distribution and delivery innovations
Specialization of smaller retailers
Large online marketplaces and retailers will still probably account for most online purchases. Smaller retailers may increasingly become more specialized by offering highly customizable products, niche product categories not offered by larger retailers, and more personalized service.
Immersive customer experiences
Today, many customers still like to go to a physical store because they want to handle or try on an item before they buy it. Virtual and augmented reality can provide immersive experiences online so customers feel like they’ve handled an object or tried on a garment without actually making a trip to the store.
Virtual reality (VR) is fully immersive. By putting on a VR headset, users are able to view a simulated physical world with audio-visual feedback. Imagine putting on your headset and going to the virtual dressing room to try on clothing items before buying them. That is an example of a VR experience.
Augmented reality (AR) is semi-immersive. Users may not need to enter a simulated physical world. AR adds audio-visual feedback to your existing world. What if you could automatically view sunglasses in your shopping cart overlaid on a virtual image of yourself on your phone? What if it saved items from any e-commerce store so you could “try them on” again? This would be an AR solution to shopping at different stores in person.
Chatbots are computer programs designed to simulate conversation with human users. They can ask you if everything is fine and if you need help. This would be an online version of a sales associate asking you the same questions in a physical store. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning by chatbots using data from actual conversations may improve the overall experience for shoppers.
Distribution and delivery innovations
You might have heard or read about the possibility of drones or self-driving vehicles making the last-mile trip between a warehouse and a residential home or office. These methods of distribution and delivery may be commonplace in the next ten years.
Key takeaway
No matter which technologies end up being adopted over the next ten years, e-commerce will continue to grow, and our daily lives and habits will change, too.
Bonus
Want to experience AR? Google has added 3D animals to its AR search results.
If you have an Android smartphone or Apple iPhone, complete these steps:
1. Open your browser app (preferably Chrome).
2. Enter “Bengal tiger” for a search. You can also enter a dog breed like “Yorkshire terrier” or “German shepherd.” Note: You may need to scroll down in your search results for the 3D animal.
3. Click View in 3D.
4. After clicking View in 3D, if you want to view a true-to-size version of the animal in your physical space, click View in your space.
Note: This step requires you to give the app access to your device’s camera, microphone, and device storage.
A marketing funnel is a powerful way for businesses to focus and coordinate their marketing efforts. To get the most out of a marketing funnel, businesses must optimize their work at each stage of the funnel to reach desired outcomes.
The marketing funnel video in this course introduced you to a simple and generalized funnel design with four stages:
Awareness
Consideration
Conversion
Loyalty
You also learned that there are multiple versions of marketing funnels. Marketing funnels have been revised over time to reflect changes in business, technology, and even customer behavior. This reading provides a brief history of the funnel’s evolution.
How is tofu related to a marketing funnel? Actually, ToFU (not the bean curd product) is an acronym for Top of Funnel. There are also MoFU and BoFU which stand for Middle of Funnel and Bottom of Funnel, respectively. When using any funnel, the aim is to get the most desirable outcomes for ToFU, MoFU, and BoFU. As you read about different funnel designs, you can also think about how the desired ToFU, MoFU, and BoFU outcomes for each are similar or different.
Traditional sales funnel
Funnels probably took shape first as sales funnels. A simple sales funnel has awareness, interest, decision, and action stages as depicted in the following graphic.
Desirable outcomes for a sales funnel, like the one shown in the graphic, might be:
Awareness (ToFU): The customer has a general awareness of your brand, product, or service.
Interest (MoFU): Your brand, product, or service comes up as a top choice when the customer researches, comparison shops, or thinks about options.
Decision (MoFU): The customer chooses your brand, product, or service over your competitor’s.
Action (BoFU): The customer purchases your brand, product, or service.
Combined marketing and sales funnel
Most likely, combined funnels for marketing and sales grew out of sales funnels. One example is shown below.
Desirable outcomes for a combined sales and marketing funnel, like the one shown in the graphic, might be:
Awareness (ToFU): The customer has a general awareness of your brand, product, or service.
Interest (MoFU): Your brand, product, or service comes up as a top choice when the customer researches, comparison shops, or thinks about options.
Desire (MoFU): The customer has motivation or an incentive to purchase your brand, product, or service.
Action (BoFU): The customer purchases your brand, product, or service for the first time.
Conversion (BoFU): The customer makes regular purchases and a customer relationship is established.
Digital marketing funnel
As business and technology evolved, more specialized funnels were then developed, as in the case of a funnel entirely dedicated to digital marketing. An example of a specialized digital marketing funnel is shown below. Note that the Remarketing stage of the funnel is only for customers who engaged with your brand, product, or service at least once before and didn’t previously convert. New customers can proceed directly from the Consideration stage to the Conversion stage.
Desirable outcomes for a digital marketing funnel, like the one shown in the graphic, might be:
Awareness and engagement (ToFU): The customer has a general awareness of your brand, product, or service, and engages in online activity to learn more.
Consideration (MoFU): Your brand, product, or service comes up as a top choice after the customer has engaged.
Remarketing (MoFU): The customer who didn’t convert is re-engaged to consider your brand, product, or service again.
Conversion (BoFU): The customer purchases your brand, product, or service for the first time.
Retention (BoFU): The customer makes regular purchases and a customer relationship is established.
Other marketing funnel variations
Today, specific funnels exist for many individual areas of marketing. Examples include an e-commerce marketing funnel, a social media marketing funnel, and even a content marketing funnel.
E-commerce marketing funnel
An e-commerce marketing funnel can include the following stages that focus on attracting and retaining customers:
Awareness: Build awareness of your e-commerce business.
Consideration: Build the brand.
Differentiation: Stand out in the business category.
Purchase: Reach shoppers most likely to purchase.
Brand readiness: Increase the potential for shoppers to make return purchases.
Social media marketing funnel
A social media marketing funnel can include these stages that turn a customer with brand awareness into a customer who is an advocate:
Awareness: Attract potential customers unaware of your brand, product, or service.
Consideration: Stand out among your competitors so potential customers have a good impression of your brand, product, or service.
Action: Convince potential customers to act and make a purchase.
Engagement: Keep customers engaged after they make a purchase so your brand, product, or service remains top-of-mind and in the spotlight.
Advocacy: Build trust with customers so they recommend your brand, product, or service to others.
Content marketing funnel
A content marketing funnel can include these stages to help marketers organize and focus their content:
Awareness: Build web pages, blogs, social media posts, infographics, and podcasts.
Evaluation: Focus on surveys, email, webinars, and educational events.
Conversion: Provide customer success stories, webinars, specifications, and demos.
Key takeaways
The key takeaways for funnels are:
There isn’t a single funnel that fits all needs.
Funnels are created for general sales and marketing needs.
Funnels are also created for specialized areas of marketing.
Effective marketing efforts incorporate funnels to optimize desired outcomes.
Finally, as a reminder, although this reading introduced a variety of funnels, the marketing funnel that you will refer to often in this program is the one shown below.
You may have heard about the customer journey, now before a purchase happens, each interaction with a brand during a customer journey is called a touchpoint.
Customer Touchpoints are important to monitor because they reveal the kinds of decisions customers are making during their customer journey to purchase your product or service. Touchpoints occur when a customer engages with your website or mobile app. But they also include customer interactions on all media channels before a customer discovers your website.
This reading explains how to classify touchpoints for media channels, and how to use these touchpoints to learn more about your customers.
Touchpoints relate to a specific context or need
When you identify touchpoints, you may be tempted to list social media or display ads. These channels may be the mediums in which touchpoints occur, but actual touchpoints provide much more information. When you identify a touchpoint, think about how the interaction might satisfy a customer’s need.
For example, instead of classifying social media as a touchpoint, classify a customer’s response to a flash sale announcement on Twitter as a touchpoint. When they click the link, they are interested in knowing what they can purchase at a discounted price.
From the example, notice how much contextual information is lost if you simply lump every social media interaction under a single touchpoint called social media.
Touchpoints have context and reflect customer needs. In the example, the context was curiosity, and the need was saving money.
Touchpoints are customer-centric
Touchpoints should also be customer-centric. Going back to the previous example, imagine if you viewed touchpoints from the perspective of the business instead of from the customer experience. If increasing sales is a business goal, touchpoints can easily become part of a rolling calculation, like a ratio of touchpoints to purchases.
While a ratio of touchpoints to purchases is still informative, notice how a customer-centric versus a business-centric analysis can provide more insights about buyer motivations.
Key takeaways
Use touchpoints to your advantage. To get the most from touchpoints, carefully define them for all media channels. Touchpoints that are customer-centric and relate back to their needs will yield the most useful data about customer motivations, preferences, and behaviors
As a digital marketer, being inclusive is an essential part of making deeper connections with your customers. Inclusive marketing is the practice of improving representation and belonging within the marketing and advertising materials that an organization creates.
In this reading, you’ll discover why inclusive marketing is important and how a company can make inclusion part of their marketing and advertising strategies.
Why inclusive marketing matters
In digital marketing, the creative choices a company makes can impact how people view themselves and how they view other people. Sometimes marketing campaigns (especially those that are older or more traditional) can reinforce stereotypes and leave out the perspectives of underrepresented groups of people. Inclusive marketing, on the other hand, seeks to represent a variety of perspectives, particularly those that have been marginalized in the past.
If a company focuses its marketing exclusively on a specific age group, gender, ethnicity, or other identity traits, they’re likely missing out on reaching potential customers. By approaching marketing decisions with a focus on inclusion, a company can positively and authentically market to the diversity that exists in their audience, and the world.
Making inclusive choices and avoiding stereotypes
Digital marketing requires getting to know your audience in a deeper way. With inclusive marketing, you can take this a step further by seeking to understand how parts of your target audience have been excluded, stereotyped, or misrepresented in the past.
Sometimes you might unintentionally overlook certain aspects of diversity, even if you remember to consider others. Here is a list of some identity traits that are helpful to keep in mind when you’re creating marketing or advertising materials for the people you’re trying to reach:
Race
Socioeconomic status
Age
Ability
Gender
Sexual orientation
Religion
Geographic location
Culture
Political perspective
Military status
Languages spoken
Gathering information about your audience’s demographics can help you broaden your perspective. It’s also important to consider the demographics of people who are not currently customers. These people may not use or even know about the products or services your company provides because the company’s marketing efforts haven’t reached them. By understanding their needs and desires, you can find a way to reach this group of people in a way that matters to them.
As an example, at least one billion people in the world live with a disability. If your product or service isn’t accessible to these people, they likely don’t use or even know about your product or service. And if your company’s marketing efforts don’t feature people with disabilities or address their needs, they may not view your company’s products or services as relevant to them.
That’s why it’s important to think deeply about your audience and their needs and to make sure their perspectives and stories are brought to life through the company’s marketing and advertising materials.
Key takeaways
Whether you’re developing marketing goals, researching your target audience, planning a marketing campaign, or analyzing data, keep in mind the principles of inclusive marketing. Maintaining a broader perspective of your audience will help you establish a deeper connection with your customers.
Resources for more information
You can learn more by reading the inclusive marketing guidelines and principles provided by Google.
Let’s be real: traditional ads just don’t hit like they used to. We scroll past them, skip them, maybe even roll our eyes. But you know what we don’t skip? Content shared by real people. And that’s where User-Generated Content (UGC) shines.
UGC is like word-of-mouth for the digital age. Think of it as when your friend tags a brand in an Instagram story or someone on TikTok shares their honest take on a new product. UGC feels real because it is real—no scripts, just regular people sharing what they genuinely like, which is why it’s ruling the marketing world right now.
Why UGC is Stealing the Spotlight in Marketing
A crucial first step towards success is creating a brand identity that aligns with the principles and features of the business and its offering. Ideally, every aspect of a company’s branding contributes to a single, overarching message. The following nine actions will assist you in creating a strong brand identity:
Web development is in a constant flux. It changes with technology and dynamic user expectations. Moving into the future, several trends and innovations are going to change the way in which websites and web apps would be developed and consumed. Here is an inkling into what one should expect in the future of web development.
Did you know the Great Wall of China actually isn’t visible from space? At least not to the naked eye.
Also: bats aren’t blind, Viking helmets didn’t have horns, and toilet water in the Southern hemisphere does NOT rotate the other direction.
We love busting myths!
So, in this article,we’re going to take 5 of the most commonly held beliefs about digital marketing and hold them up to the light.
The internet is so full with information that it’s simple for marketing falsehoods to catch on fire. To dispel these myths, we need to be proactive in our efforts. Join me as we dispel the top 5 fallacies around digital marketing and give you useful, workable solutions that will let you take control of your marketing approach.
Since the web first ushered in a new era of e-commerce, marketplaces, payment services, and massive scaling of shipping and distribution networks have made e-commerce successful. This reading considers how e-commerce might change over the next decade.
4. After clicking View in 3D, if you want to view a true-to-size version of the animal in your physical space, click View in your space.
Note: This step requires you to give the app access to your device’s camera, microphone, and device storage.
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Desirable outcomes for a sales funnel, like the one shown in the graphic, might be:
Desirable outcomes for a digital marketing funnel, like the one shown in the graphic, might be:
You may have heard about the customer journey, now before a purchase happens, each interaction with a brand during a customer journey is called a touchpoint.
Customer Touchpoints are important to monitor because they reveal the kinds of decisions customers are making during their customer journey to purchase your product or service. Touchpoints occur when a customer engages with your website or mobile app. But they also include customer interactions on all media channels before a customer discovers your website.
This reading explains how to classify touchpoints for media channels, and how to use these touchpoints to learn more about your customers.
As a digital marketer, being inclusive is an essential part of making deeper connections with your customers. Inclusive marketing is the practice of improving representation and belonging within the marketing and advertising materials that an organization creates.
In this reading, you’ll discover why inclusive marketing is important and how a company can make inclusion part of their