Is Digital Marketing Part of Your Marketing Strategy?

February 18, 2014 By ezbrz

Is Digital Marketing Part of Your Marketing Strategy?

You begin with your idea on your product or service and now it’s time to get the word out. Digital marketing, a concept that you now know is not only crucial but, essential to your business marketing strategy.

As you complete your digital marketing plan, which by the way should know be included in your marketing strategy, always keep in mind, not only the potential audience that you may be able to reach but after your digital campaign, you will have the analytics to measure the success, conversion rate and audience of your campaign. Nice tools to have.

Here’s a couple things to consider.

1. What’s the difference between Digital Marketing and Online Marketing?

Digital Marketing – The easy way to think about this is to say you will be marketing your brand on any technology platform, also known as electronic media. Which, may or may not include the internet or a cloud base service that connects to the internet, for display.

An example would be a digital billboard that you see on the roadways. Or maybe even a marquee in front of a resort or property that displays advertisements. Should you so choose and if the opportunity is available, your marketing effort may even display on a TV in a hotel room to a traveler or hotel guest in your area or in a designated demographic. Something like a DMR, Digital Marketing Region. Something that we can talk about later. None of these really use the internet or world wide web to display your ads. Simply, these are called stand alone systems.

Online Marketing – Oh I remember years ago when many thought I was crazy by saying “Look, we can reach thousands with this social media platform thing”. Well, look at it today. The internet is available to individuals at the palms of their hands, through any smart and or mobile device. And now, there are many ways to reach that end user, the potential customer, the desired audience, the targeted market, by using a delivery mechanism that can reach them all.

That mechanism is obviously the internet and the many platforms used to possibly reach that desired base are platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google and Bing, just to name a few. Another newer term for this, is Mobile Marketing.

2. What to consider for a digital strategy.

Building Your Plan – Don’t get lost in the digital maze. Not having a plan can be pain staking. You will bounce around different social media sites and then often forget some of the basics of reaching your potential or current customers through channels such as e-mail marketing. Yes, it still works.

You never really establish brand recognition online and you could waste your budgets on poor timing, unreliable keywords or simply not manage the analytics which can provide you much detail on what is working and what is not, in your digital marketing campaigns.

To start off, pick one platform and work your way through. Seeking advice from others who have taken the digital marketing plunge, is always fun and interesting conversation over a cup of coffee.

You’ll find the amount one spends on digital marketing to be a large variable. $10-$20 for Impressions on a social media site such as Facebook. This could get you anywhere up to 5000 looks at your ad. Not a bad branding approach. Or you could spend possibly $300-$400 a campaign to place ads on search engines to rank high in relative searches for your product or service. Therefore possibly converting those views of your ad to clicks of your ad, that lead potential customers, fans or current clients, to wherever you want to lead them to. Your website, social media site, affiliate site… wherever!

3. Measuring your digital marketing campaign.

Lastly, as your digital marketing campaign comes to an end, consider the following.

Optimize the Experience – No matter which platform, social media or marketing plan you use, keep this in mind. Optimize your efforts as much as you can by measuring your digital marketing campaigns performance.

Through analytic tools such as Google Analytics and the platforms you choose to place your ads, you can see how your campaigns perform. You can measure items such as how many hits you get a day, how long a visitor stays on your site, the ranking of key words in your campaign or site, to even the age group or gender of your visitors.

Also, depending on your hosting service, there may be free analytic tools available for you to use. One in general is called AWStats.

So if during your campaign you’re not seeing the results you would like to see, call an audible.

Review your stats, make some adjustments and compensate to some of the analytics you have. Changing up your keywords could be an example. You have full control. Here also, patience can be a virtue.

Then, when time comes to prepare and begin another exciting campaign that you have dreamed and thought of, apply some of the basics of the analytics that you have seen in your past campaigns and work them in your new digital marketing campaign.

Spend a moment, envision the plan, layout the course and then execute. You can do it!

June 22, 2013 By ezbrz

Choosing a Domain Name

So now you have decided to jump in and get a website, blog or simply register a domain to have a cool email address. Email address??? Yep, that’s right. An email address.

Choosing a domain name doesn’t have to be that difficult but, can be a fun creative process representing you, your business and your brand.

As you go through the process of selecting a domain name, here are just a few things to consider.

Brand – Think about a strategy for your domain. Is your brand you or your business. When looking to brand yourself and using a domain such as “myself.com” or “myname.com”, can make for an exciting marketing strategy when branding yourself. It’s all about you! You could even consider (if available of course) something like “princess.com” or “imcool.com” and market and strategize the domain to reflect you and your brand/image without really using your own name.

Want to see if your domain name is available? Try looking here and see if it’s available.

When considering a domain name for your business, again, be creative. You’ll want to consider how the market, your customers or search engines will find and remember you. If by chance the domain you’re looking for happens to be taken, try combining words or parts of words for an alternative domain name that may include your primary domain with your industry type keywords.

Ease – Do your best to keep it simple. Having too many characters with numbers or hyphens, can be hard to remember for some. Especially when you use your domain name for email purposes. And for marketing and branding purposes, keep it where little explanation is needed to describe or explain your product and services.

Price – There are many registrars out there and prices will vary depending on the services offered by a company or if someone is simply price gouging for domain registration. Just keep in mind, don’t put out the big bucks for this. Also, registering your domain name should be a onetime annual fee. Unless of course you register for multiple years at one time, you should never pay for a monthly or quarterly domain registration service.

More than one – This can get interesting. So, you’ve come up with a cool name or have found the domain name that you want. But, there are other domain names that can associate with your brand or your primary domain name. As part of a marketing strategy, you could also register those available domain names and have them directed to your primary domain. An example would be your primary domain name is “exampledomain.com”. Next, the secondary domain name “myotherdomain.com” could be a great association to that primary domain name. So, you get both names registered then you have “myotherdomain.com” directed to “exampledomain.com”.

What this does is anytime someone is searching for you and can’t quite remember your primary domain name or, someone searches with particular keywords fitting your brand and seo strategy, the domain “myotherdomain.com” appears in the search. When they select “myotherdomain.com”, they will automatically be directed to your primary domain name “exampledomain.com”. Just another way to help increase traffic to your primary domain and of course, your website.

Selecting a host – Finding a hosting service can also be key to the success of your website traffic. Just as with domain registrars, there are many hosting services out there. But again, do a little research first. Prices and services can and will vary. Hosting services should also provide a control panel that gives you tons of features such as email tools, analytics, backup, free website building templates, database management and much more. Another great feature you should also find is free CMS software such WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and so on. Nice tools to build your website on.

As you go through this process of registering your domain name and hopefully moving on to build a site, stay encouraged and focused. It’s an exciting time to build your brand and name and there are many tools to help you do so. Have fun!!!

This article is part of EzBrz Groups training series.
Art Vivas, owner and founder of EzBrz Group, is a professional multimedia solutions provider, consultant and executive management leader.
For questions please email info@ezbrzroup.com

November 30, 2011 By ezbrz

Effectively Using Your Email Management Tool

After selecting a host for your site, one of the first steps one usually takes is setting up their email. Then the process begins on how to effectively use your email management tool. Your domain is now registered and you want to immediately begin using the name@yourdomain.com email address. You are now official!!!

Here are some email management features to consider.

Auto Responders – Once you have drawn visitors to your site, you want them to get in touch with you directly by email. The email address could be something like this: info@ezbrzgroup.com or support@ezbrzgroup.com. Next you want to respond immediately to your potential follower or client but may not be able to respond quickly to the email that you just received. By activating the auto responder feature, that visitor can receive an email from you the minute that they send one to you. The response that they would receive could be something like this:

“Thank you for contacting [Company name]. We appreciate your response and look forward to working with you shortly.We are excited to share our services and how we can support you.”

Best regards,
[Company Name]

A simple step like this can be very important to your client base. It’s an immediate response and it shows that you care about your visitor and their interest into your website and services.

Of course the next big step is to actually follow up with your visitor but you get the idea. React and build trust and develop a new client and friend.

Email Forwarding – This feature allows you to have emails from one account forwarded to another. An example would be, someone would send an email to your info@ezbrzgroup.com email address and then have all info@ezbrzgroup.com emails forwarded to your own personal email address such as myname@ezbrzgroup.com. This is good in some cases where you may want to receive certain emails but don’t want to have your own personal email listed or posted as a primary email on your site.

Another thing to consider is if you’re using an email program that allows you to have multiple accounts you can receive emails to your personal account but then send back out from one of your other accounts. Therefore avoiding having to have your own personal email displayed and used for common correspondence.

Webmail – You wouldn’t think to consider it, especially with the technology that we have at our fingertips today, but there may come a time when the email functions in your smart phone, iPad or any other technical email device just doesn’t work. But, you have internet access. Here is where you can again take advantage of your hosting service. The greater percentage of the time, there will be another way to get to your email and that is through webmail. A URL address that should be provided to you from your hosting company where you can access your email using any web browser. Believe it or not, this has come in handy from time to time and it is good to know your webmail address and login info.

Simple? Yes. Effective? Absolutely! You see, this should all be part of your marketing strategy in building your brand. A small portion of that strategy it may be, however, effectively managing your email management tool can be advantageous.

So, stay with us as we cover these topics. Along the way, should you have any comments or feedback, please send those back to info@ezbrzgroup.com.

Sincerely,

Art Vivas
EzBrz Group

This article is part of the “How To Manage Your Control Panel” training series.
Art Vivas, owner and founder of EzBrz Group, is a professional multimedia solutions provider, consultant and executive management leader.

For questions please email info@ezbrzroup.com

November 29, 2011 By ezbrz

How to Manage Your Control Panel

In conversations regarding web hosting, I have come across many who ask “What’s a Control Panel?” Website owners should know that they have some of the simplest and most powerful tools available to them when managing their websites. Whether you manage your own site or not, there are some very nice features that are or at least, should be, available to you.

Now keep in mind, there are several control panels out there today that offer many different features and that work on many servers. But, for the most part, they all have similar functions. For our discussion, we’ll be focusing on the features that are easy to use and the most visible and show you how you can get the most use out of your control panel and how it could benefit your sales and marketing strategies.

To make this a little easier, this topic will be broken down into a three part series:

1. Effectively using your email management tool

2. Digging through Web Analytics

3. Backing up your data

So, stay with us as we cover these topics. Along the way, should you have any comments or feedback, please send those back to info@ezbrzgroup.com.

Sincerely,

Art Vivas
EzBrz Group

This article is part of the “How To Manage Your Control Panel” training series.
Art Vivas is a professional multimedia solutions provider, consultant and executive management leader.
For questions please email info@ezbrzroup.com