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How to Maximize Digital Marketing for your Business

Gone are the days when starting a business came with the challenges of how to reach your target audience, how to create more visibility for your business, and how to engage the traditional media like print media, billboards, and many more.

With the advancement of digital marketing, reaching out to larger audiences, and getting your business in front of them has never been easier.

Unlike before that, you have to think of the marketing and advertising cost of going to the radio, television, or newspaper media. Digital marketing has helped a lot of businesses not just in visibility, but being able to start up and reach out to thousands of people from the comfort of their homes.

And with the continuous increment in internet usage with each passing day, the internet has provided a unique opportunity for businesses to maximize their potential with the help of internet power by delving into the online advertising space.

Many still believe that the digital market is just about posting on social media, but it’s more than that.

Digital marketing has so many aspects such as…

  • Email marketing
  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Social media
  • Content marketing
  • Copywriting
  • Video marketing
  • Website

And many more

An important aspect of digital marketing is email marketing, but oftentimes many businesses tend to ignore it.

According to Gabriel Showole, CEO of Kayshow Concept, when digital marketing is properly implemented, there’s no limit to what businesses can achieve.

Gabriel is a highly experienced digital skills coach. He trains entrepreneurs and career professionals on how to maximize digital marketing for their businesses.

Our marketing team struck up a conversation with him on our podcast. This is what he had to say about digital marketing and business growth today.

The Importance of Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the cost-efficient digital marketing strategies out there but people tend to ignore it probably because it’s been around for years so people underestimate its value.

Considering the fact that an email account is required to open any social media account, which means there is no one with a social media account that does not have an email. 

Going by this simple calculation, there is no limit to the number of people that you can reach via their emails for the purpose of marketing.

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What a website can do for your business

There are so many reasons why your business needs a website. From being able to automate your business to reduce the cost of renting space. You can put all your information on the website and just direct people to go and check you out from your comfort zone.

Having a website can take the stress off you as a business owner, reduces staff costs and resources, at the same time it shows how professional your business is.

Now the challenging aspect of the website especially in a country like Nigeria is that most people don’t trust the website.

How do you close the gap of distrust on the website?

It is not wrong when people are being skeptical about your website or scared of being scammed. But one of the many ways you can help your audience see that your website is genuine is through reviews.

Statistics have shown that most buying decisions on the website are made after the customers have gone through the review page.

What is the importance of testimonials and referrals from your customers?

To build trust, testimonials are very important for your business. For instance, you can get a 3rd party app like google review for your website. 

When people are able to give a review about your product and services, it won’t only help build trust between you and your customers but also boost your ranking on the SEO.

How can you make your business stand out on Google search?

Placing your website where it’s visible

Connecting your website to the Google search console, google analytic is very important because this is where you get to see if your website is getting ranked and what you need to do to improve it.

Maximize the use of your social media account

Being consistent with content on your social media accounts is very important. Creating content, writing, and posting on blogs can help to boost your visibility on the Google search engine.

Digital marketing is one of the proven ways to reach your target audience and achieve your business goals.

 

With varieties of strategies that you can implement for your business, you can increase your business sales, visibility, loyalty, awareness, etc. through digital marketing.

Choose the strategy that best suits your business as the success of your marketing strategies depends on how best they suit your business and how you execute them.

Do you wish to take advantage of digital marketing and websites for your business? Simply click here to book a free consultation with our marketing strategy team today.

 

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How we Create a Diverse eCommerce Content Strategy

One of the fundamental part of gaining brand recognition and attracting new customers is by creating content to market your online store.

Instead of promoting your store and products directly, content marketing is the practice of sharing valuable information with your target audience to connect with them, provide useful tips and expert know-how, establish a relationship, and ultimately drive sales.

Content marketing strategies are typically centered around any of the following:

  • On-site content, like blogs, guides, and infographics
  • Informational, educational videos
  • Lead magnets, like eBooks and checklists
  • Webinars

What is content strategy?

A content strategy is a clear plan that details the goals you want to accomplish with your content and how you plan to achieve them. 

It often details what types of content you want to write, the general topics you want to cover, the SEO keywords you want to optimize for, and the audience you want to reach.

Content strategies are essential to giving focus to your blog posts, videos, and lead magnets, and a necessary step in helping you build your brand. 

Here’s how to create the content strategy for your online store in 7 easy steps:

  1. Write down your Content Goals
SET GOALS

You absolutely need to know what you want your content to do for you before you start. This will affect how you’re optimizing it…

…the audience segment you focus on, and the topics that you choose.

Write down your overall business goals for your content marketing campaigns (like selling more or increasing brand recognition) as well as smaller steps you want to accomplish in order to reach those goals.

These are a few common ones:

  • Increased site traffic
  • Heightened SEO visibility
  • Improve your site’s domain authority
  • Increase social shares
  • Establish credibility for your brand or building thought leadership
  • Drive email sign-ups or other forms of lead generation
  • Boost sales and increasing product knowledge or awareness
  1. Dive Into Competitor Research

Competitor research is an often overlooked part of content strategy creation, but it shouldn’t be.

Look at what direct and indirect competition is doing and gain inspiration from their content.

Aim to do something more and something a little different. Snag their best strategies and adapt them for your brand.

If you want to take this to the next level, use tools like BuzzSumo and SEMrush to identify top competitors in your space, including those who are ranking for SEO keywords or topics that you want to rank for.

  1. Start with Topic  & Keyword Research

You’ve conducted the research into your own goals, your audience, and your competition. Now it’s time to apply that to topic creation. 

SEO Friendly Content
  1. Assess, Monitor & Optimize

As your content strategy is implemented, monitor your progress closely so that you can adapt as needed. 

Note that it will take several months (sometimes longer) to see progress. That’s okay; it’s about momentum.

Content creation can be like the holy grail of marketing for a business, but only if it’s executed strategically. 

Businesses with eCommerce websites should invest the time into creating a strong, perfect-for-them content strategy that is designed to appeal specifically to their target audiences. 

This is how you can set yourself apart from the competition and scale your business moving forward.

Thank you for reading kindly leave a comment below, if there’s any other thing you will love to know.

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HOW TO USE YOUR BLOG TO PROMOTE YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.

Having a company blog is one of the key ways to indirectly promote your business online, but what about using your blog to directly promote your products and services?

While it may not be “blogging best practice” to promote your products and services directly on your blog, we are going to show you how it can be done in a tactful and clever way.

There are many advantages to having a company blog, but the two most important things that your blog helps to establish is:

  1. Traffic to your website (which hopefully converts into sales)
  2. Your reputation as an expert and thought-leader in your field.

This means that your blog needs to first and foremost be perceived by your audience as extremely valuable and helpful to supporting their needs. This is truly the first step and if your company blog is not yet here, it may be best to not proceed any further.

While you never want your blogs to simply be about all the cool things your company does or all the products you have for sale, there is some merit in sharing some of the services and products your company provides.

The trick with doing this successfully is to absolutely avoid the 3 No’s which are-

NO to being salesy

NO to being pushy

NO to being obvious

Blogging is very different from advertising, and your company’s sole intention should never be to use blogging as a direct marketing tool.

Establishing a solid blog following and earning the trust of your readers there may be a small window of opportunity to directly promote your products and services.

Here is how to go about it in a clever and tactful way-

Ask Yourself- Is the product or service I am promoting on my blog useful?

If your brand made it or owns it, chances are you are going to think it’s useful, but go a little deeper. Your products and services may cater to a specific audience but chances are there is an even more specific market that is interested in your blog.

Ensure whatever product you choose to promote offers direct and clear cut value to your readers and not just your overall demographic. This is going to help your promotion to be more successful and better accepted by your readers.

What Am I Promoting and Why? 

After you have selected the best product to promote to your readers it is important to establish why you are promoting it. This is going to help you not only formulate a solid blog post but it is also going to help  you set the intention of what you are trying to achieve.

Speaking of intention, mentioning a product or service in your blog posts doesn’t always have to be about getting a sale. It can be about simply educating your customers or learning what your customer’s reaction is to the product or service.

Formulate your intention and then assess the product you have chosen by asking yourself- why?

In order to determine the best product to choose, take a moment to browse through your reader comments or questions. You may find a common theme in what they are asking, or you may discover a product or service that could be most helpful.

Popular or trending topics on your blog may also provide a clue as to what products or services can be seamlessly promoted.

Let the Benefits Become the Pitch

The benefits of your products or services should be the theme of your blog post and not the product or services themselves.

This helps to gently suggest your products or services to your readers rather than pushing it or forcing it on them. It also helps to ensure that your blog post is offering greater value than just a sales pitch.

In order to formulate the pitch or the heart of your promotion, it is important to focus on the benefits that your product or service is going to offer and then use that as your foundation.

Here is a 4 step guide to help you with this process –

  1. Select Your Product or Service (eg. water bottle)
  2. List the Top 3 Benefits (eg. staying hydrated, beautiful design, BPA free)
  3. Pick a Benefit to Write Your Content About (eg. Why It’s So Important Your Water Bottle is BPA free)
  4. Integrate pitching your product as a solution (eg. we offer BPA free water bottles…)

Offer More Than One Solution

It is important to offer more than just your product or service as a solution to the “problem” or “hurdle” raised in your blog post.

When you only provide your product or service as the solution it can cause your readers to become skeptical and can make them feel hesitant in trusting you or taking action.

Offering more than one solution is therefore recommended to avoid your blog post coming across as pushy or salesy.

Set Up Tracking for Analytics 

Once your blog post is written you will want to be sure you can track your audience and how many people click and follow through with purchasing your product or service.

This will help you to determine the effectiveness of your post and whether promoting through your blog is helping or hindering your business.

To do this you can set up a conversion pixel on your post or use a special shortened URL that can be tracked and monitored to see how many people are clicking over to the checkout page.

Promoting the Post 

Stay away from using headlines to promote your post such as- “Check out all the great things our product or service can do for you.” Instead, focus on promoting the benefits without even mentioning your product or service.

Remember, the art with this is to be tactful and to stay away from obvious promotion.

Sticking with the drink bottle example, your headline for your blog promotion can simply be- “Why BPA is dangerous for your health…” or “Why your water bottle may be bad for your health.”

Again, this headline or promotion sticks to dealing with the benefits. This will also make your blog post promotion seem far less salesy which may help to earn you more clicks and conversions.

Measure Your Blog’s Performance 

After publishing and promoting your blog post you have to track the results and see how your blog post is converting into sales, and whether it is having any adverse effects on your readership.

Through analysing you can determine what is working and what may need to be changed or tweaked.

It may also be interesting to compare the performance of promoting in your blog posts with promoting on other mediums or channels.

If you have been tactful enough and truly provide content of value on a regular basis, you may find that your blog promotions earn you a nice handful of sales. Just be sure that you don’t abuse your blog promotion skills however, as readers can very quickly become desensitised.

Conclusion

Your company’s blog is one of the most valuable marketing tools you have. It’s valuable because it is not centered around making sales and instead is centered around offering your readers and potential customers value. This helps your brand to appear worthy and credible and conveys a powerful message- that you care about your customers.

If you abuse your blog, it can have the reverse effects and can make readers see your brand as pushy, unworthy or not to be trusted. It can also cause your readership to go elsewhere, which over time can negatively impact on your conversion rates and sales.

DOWNLOAD THE DUCEHOST BLOGPOST AUDIT HERE to optimize your Blog Performance. This is worth 20000. Try it and experience a boost in your Blog performance and in turn a boost in Sales of your Your products and Services.

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5 Shocking reasons why every business needs a website

In this 21st century, it is unrealistic to run a business effectively without a website. With the advent of the internet, not being ‘Tech savvy’ or ‘Lack of funds’ or even ‘I don’t have enough time’ is no longer an excuse for not getting a professional website for your business. Not having a website is actually costing you a fortune financially including your time and energy.

This is a bit of statistics that might give an insight to how important a website is to you, 81% of people research a business or service on the internet prior to making a purchase decision. That’s 25.92 million people searching for businesses online. Yet a huge percentage of business owners listed on business directories like vconnect don’t see the need for a website. We’re not statisticians, but we can see that there’s a glaring disconnect here.

Still unsure if your business needs a website? Keep reading

A Website attracts new customers which in turn generates more income for your Business

An insight to the statistics of 81% of prospects researching your business before making a purchase online is that people check your website an average of 5 times before buying from you. If you don’t have a website, you are losing money on the table.

Your website can be available 24/7/365 even when you’re not. A website acts as your “always-on” business advocate during and outside of office hours.

A Website builds instant trust for your business and service

First impressions count, and websites allow you to make a very strong impression with a well-designed introduction for your business.

A website can help showcase your expertise and better position your business to the customers you want. A website can be your number one tool for standing out in a crowd.

A Website is not as expensive as you think

The initial fear of starting your website development process is totally unnecessary. Most web hosting companies like ducehost also offer web design as an added service for clients. This makes your signup process quick and painless.

A Website offers a better return on investment than any other form of advertising. If you’re planning to market your business, a website should be your first priority.

Over time the relatively low investment of getting a business website will payoff for your company by driving you new customers and building your brand.

A Website keeps you in control of your Brand

Do you know that you can be reviewed as a business with your website? Sometimes unknowingly and/or negatively. How does this affect you? 79% of users who read online reviews believe them and this in turn influences the brand.

A website shapes the perception of your business in a way that social media channels cannot provide. Having a website helps you position yourself in the market to get the exact type of customers you’re looking for

A Website will save you time

Whether you’re trading emails, taking calls, or sending out proposals – communicating with potential customers takes time. Your website can save you that time by providing answers to common customer questions and inquiries. What does this mean for you? You can spend your time doing more valuable things.

There’s a very small and inexpensive barrier to entry, and there is a massive opportunity to help grow your business.

If you’re going to do one thing today to help your business be more successful, it’s to make getting a website your top priority.

It’s easy to be a better business. Get a website.

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5 things we must know before building your website

Your website is the foundation of your internet existence. It is the bridge that connects your great products and services to the online community that is your market and audience. In today’s world, it is almost impossible for a business to succeed without a firm web presence.

Even if you already have a website, reviewing these points may shine a light on that one thing you overlooked. Use this guide as your resource to make the process of creating your own website a whole lot easier.

Establish the aim of your website

It’s always important to ask crucial questions about why you’re building the website. Is the aim of your site to inform people that your business exists and encourage them to get in touch? Is it to sell your products online? Or how about to showcase your creative work? Having a clear focus will help you as well as your visitors.

 Know your target market

Make sure you clarify this early on as it will affect your theme, design, content, usability, networking efforts and search engine optimization. In short, everything revolves around your target market.

Choose your domain name wisely

Pick something that’s short, easy to remember, and reflects the nature of your site. It’s not easy to change it at a later date, so now’s the time to get it right. Of course, if your site is for your business, then it only follows that your domain name to it.

Be informed about SEO

Search Engine Optimization is going to play a big part in attracting people to your website. As well as incorporating keywords or search terms that your audience is likely to be typing into Google, you need to provide the search engines with a succinct explanation of what those visitors will find when they get there. In the meantime, Google Adwords is a great tool for researching keywords in your subject area.

Set yourself a deadline

Web design can take more time if you don’t manage your time properly. Set yourself daily or weekly targets of having certain areas of your site done – this way you won’t get tired and frustrated doing too much at once. It is important you build a process that is efficient enough to bring results. If you can answer the first question of establishing the aim of your website, it will provide you with knowledge on what functions you want for the website.

Planning out your content on your website gives you an edge of optimizing the features of your website for your prospective clients. Important questions to ask are how do you want your customers to feel when they come to your website (i.e. User Experience). Another important question to ask is, how easy will it be for users to navigate your website (i.e. User Interface)

Designing a website is more than having a lot of functions, you always want your customers to come back and engage with your website. Planning how your site looks, along with the features will make you reach your target audience at a faster rate and in turn improve on your Sales or leads or any other form of Data you will want.

You still have a chance of getting your website up and running with our team at ducehost. We offer planning strategies that make your website a sales machine for your business. This includes us knowing who your ideal customers, what they like, who they are etc. Which all become data in building your website.

You’re also more than welcome to contact the design experts at Ducehost on Instagram to get a free, completely customized quote about making your site with high performance and Responsive!Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at Ducehost.

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How does responsive design help your website?

You may have heard the phrase ‘responsive web design’ thrown around a lot over the last few years. If you are unsure whether or not your business should be implementing a responsive design to your site, learning a bit more about it might help you with your answer!

Responsive design can help you solve a lot of problems for your website. It will make your site mobile-friendly, improve the way it looks on devices with both large and small screens, and increase the amount of time that visitors spend on your site. It can also help you improve your rankings in search engines.

The ultimate goal of responsive design is to avoid the unnecessary resizing, scrolling, zooming, or panning that occurs with sites that have not been optimized for different devices. It is often very difficult to navigate these sites, and it may even cost you potential customers who become frustrated with trying to figure out how to do something.

Responsive website stats suggest that it’s wise to appeal to both desktop and mobile viewers. The number of mobile viewers now outnumbers desktop, and this number will only continue to rise as global smartphone accessibility increases.

Here are some of the major benefits you get when your website is responsive

  • Cost effectiveness
  • Flexibility
  • Improved user experience
  • Search engine optimization gains

Cost Effectiveness

If you had the idea of creating a website for your desktop audience without your mobile audience in mind, please drop it. Majority of users would view your site on their mobile especially if you offer ecommerce services. Your can reach your sales goals when your site appeals to all your users on all devices.

Flexibility

When you have a website with responsive design, you can make changes quickly and easily. You do not need to worry about making changes on two websites. This flexibility is a huge advantage when you just want to make a quick design tweak or fix a typo on your site—you only have to do it once.

Improved user experience

User experience is crucial to website owners. You want people to enjoy using your site, and you want it to be easy to use which in turn makes it easy for you to convince them to come back. If someone visits your website on a mobile device, and it takes forever to load or your pictures do not have the proper resolution, it can make your company appear very unprofessional.

Being unprofessional with your site design will in turn affect how your customers perceive your brand. Having a responsive site will make it easy for visitors to trust your brand and engage with your content online.

Search engine optimization gains

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a strategy used by many companies to help boost themselves in Google’s search page rankings. The closer you are to the top, the better the chance potential customers will find you.

Responsive design can help with SEO because Google gives preference to websites that are mobile-friendly. In combination with other SEO factors, responsiveness can help give you a big boost in search engine results.

If responsive website success stories don’t convince you to make the change to this way of designing, then let the cost and time savings convince you. Responsive design is an important part of any modern web strategy—and it should be part of yours, too.

If you’re ready to invest in a responsive website, check out our responsive design page and our web domain and hosting platform to learn more about how much a new design will cost, as well as some other additional benefits we didn’t cover in this article. You’re also more than welcome to contact the design experts at Ducehost on Instagram to get a free, completely customized quote about making your site with high performance and Responsive!

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WHY ISN’T ANYONE VISITING YOUR WEBSITE?

When you open up your website’s analytics and see that no one is even visiting your website, how does it make you feel, pretty disheartening, right? It’s a moment when you may feel you’ve wasted your time. All the time, energy, and money you’ve invested into your website has had no impact.

The fact is, there are a lot of people online who want to connect with you and want to visit your website. They are online, researching solutions, and yes they want your services. The issue is not with a lack of people but the lack of a direction to you

Here are 5 Reasons why Businesses aren’t visiting your website

You’re missing on Social Media

Most businesses focus on building a website to make money and return on investment. They fail to build a corresponding online presence on social media. Your online community is the force you need to drive traffic to your website. If you can be found on social media, you can be found on your website

You’re not exploring Backlinks

Backlinks are simply links that link back to your website. They are good for both search engines and humans too. A great strategy to getting quality backlinks is guest posting, writing a column, getting featured in the media, or having such awesome and compelling content that everyone links to it.

Your site loads slowly

Statistics shows people will wait 7 seconds for sites to load before they hit the back button. Not only that, various studies show that website visitors are more likely to return to websites that load fast. That been said, it is very important to say that as a website or business owner, you are constantly optimizing your page speed and looking for ways to improve your page speed. The faster it loads, the more prospects you’re likely to retain.

Your website isn’t mobile friendly

Responsive website design is vital. One of the great features of a responsive website is that it can be optimized for speed. 

With the rise of mobile use, your website needs to support them. Google ranks mobile sites higher in mobile search results. This means you could really be missing out.

Search engines aren’t indexing your site

You don’t need to invest buckets of money into Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but you do need to have a website that is, at the very least, technically visible to search engines. On top of that, if you can do further on page, off page, and local search engine optimization, it can certainly help you get found based on searcher’s queries.

Making more awareness of your business online and what you do will take time. There’s no shortcut to building online relationships and getting known but once you’ve really reached out and connected, you’ll have solid and diverse traffic sources for your website.

And some of it is strategy and technical too. Getting backlinks, SEO, proper design, and having a website that is mobile friendly will all play a part in increasing traffic too.

What do you think of this list? Can you see where your website might be improved? As always, We’d love to know your thoughts. You can learn more about us or follow us on instagram. Would love to hear from you.