UPDATE 04/2020: With people self-isolating, digital marketing is even more important. We’ve put together a list of some other ways businesses can adapt to the current climate here.
The world of digital marketing is constantly changing, but here are some major themes that Australian businesses should look out for in 2020.
Digital marketing is essential for businesses of all sizes, with more than 21 million Australians, or about 87% of the population, using the internet today.
But with so many digital marketing options available, it can be hard to know where to invest your marketing budget to get the most value for your business.
Luckily, Hootsuite and We Are Social have compiled some strong digital marketing insights in their report Digital 2019 Q4 Global Statshot to help marketers understand the current marketing landscape.
Here are five key takeaways from the report:
1. Market to mobile
If you are using digital marketing, make sure your activities are optimised for mobile.
Globally, people spend the most time on their phones, with 51.7% of total web traffic served through phones, followed by laptops and computers at 44.5% and then 3.65% on tablet devices.
Australians are likely to spend even more time on their phones going forward since we have the fifth-fastest mobile internet connection speeds in the world, up 17% year-on-year to 65 megabits per second.
2. Get e-commerce ready
E-commerce is booming, with Australians spending $28.6 billion on online shopping in 2018.
According to Statista, more than 18 million Australians will shop online in 2020 and will continue to grow to almost 21 million people by 2024.
The Global Statshot report showed that 82% of internet users surveyed from around the world searched online for a product or service to buy, while 75% had purchased a product or service online.
3. Voice is on the rise
People are using voice commands more and more to control apps and search for information without lifting a finger.
Only 28% of surveyed Australian internet users aged 16 to 64 used voice-controlled functions on their devices compared to 43% globally, meaning Australia has some catching up to do on the voice front.
Half of survey participants aged between 16 and 34 had used voice searches or commands, while older people were less likely to use voice commands.
Using structured data (also known as schema markup) in your website is a great way to help your website perform in voice search.
4. Social media continues to grow
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter continue to attract users from around the world and grow their advertising audiences.
The report showed that Facebook had a potential advertising reach of about 1.93 billion users, while Instagram was able to reach 879 million people.
LinkedIn had a possible reach of 653 million users, while Snapchat and Twitter offered audiences as large as 360 million and 260 million, respectively.
5. Expand your content
If you’re thinking about broadening your content marketing mix, then definitely make a video or podcast.
The Global Statshot report revealed that 91% of surveyed internet users consumed online videos each month while 40% listened to podcasts.
It also showed that the average engagement rate for Facebook page video posts rose more than 6% in Q3 2019.
Is your marketing ready for 2020?
If you need help implementing a new activity into your marketing mix or you’re looking to kick the new year off with a refreshed marketing strategy, then Assemblo can help.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne, with a team of highly skilled marketing professionals including strategists, account managers, designers, software developers, journalists and copywriters, social media producers, photographers, SEO specialists and more.
To learn more, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or drop us a note via the contact form below.
With so many ways to promote your business, how do you know which tools and techniques are best to boost your digital marketing activity?
Whether it’s A/B testing, growing your email database or creating a content marketing plan, let us guide you through the best ways to boost your digital marketing.
Here are 5 easy ways you can improve your digital marketing activity:
1. Always use A/B testing
If you’ve got a great idea for an article, social media post or ad campaign, you also need data to back it up.
This is where A/B testing, also known as split testing, comes in, because it is the most effective way to analyse the success of a marketing campaign.
It’s a way to uncover which activities are working and what the audience is responding to – think of it as a scientific approach to marketing with measuring actuals.
With this method, slight variations are made to a landing page, social media post, a headline, call-to-action or advertising campaign, and the results of each variation are compared.
This empirical evidence will allow you to create and test assumptions, and ultimately allow you to inform future marketing campaigns.
2. Grow your email database
Email marketing is a high-impact, low-cost way to communicate directly to people who are interested and committed to your brand. So, growing your email database makes sense.
Building your email database means more visitors are likely to flow through to your website, engage with your content and maybe even make a purchase.
The flow of email marketing to website visits will also help you to understand what customers are responding to now and what they will buy in the future.
You can use simple tactics to boost email sign-ups, including:
- Adding a powerful email sign-up form to your website, through a super footer or the Hello Bar (the strip across the top of the homepage)
- Use engaging language for your call to action
- Run a competition or promotion to attract email sign-ups
- Make your email newsletters valuable and shareable.
Get more tips on how to boost your email database here.
3. Track where your visitors are coming from
There’s a tiny bit of code that helps you evaluate the success of a campaign and provides you with information that can radically improve your success in future campaigns.
They are called custom campaigns and marketers use them to track where their visitors are coming from and to determine which campaigns are yielding the best results.
Custom campaigns use UTM (Urchin Traffic Monitor) parameters which are little bits of code attached to the end of a URL that tracks the source, medium and campaign name which sends information to custom campaigns in Google Analytics.
While commonly used in digital campaigns, assigning unique UTM parameters can also reveal whether traffic has originated from a newspaper ad, billboard, radio ad, or TV commercial, when used in conjunction with custom URLs.
4. Improve your website
There are always ways to improve your website to boost performance, attract more traffic and deliver a better user experience.
To improve search ranking, try adding descriptive alt text to images to improve site usability and visibility which will help your search ranking.
With more than half of all web traffic consumed on mobile devices, it’s imperative that your website is mobile-friendly. People will quickly lose interest and Google penalises sites that aren’t mobile-friendly.
You can also redirect the www subdomain, set up and use reporting tools, and clean up messy URLs to improve website performance. More info on that here.
5. Create a content marketing plan for your website
Time spent developing a content marketing plan for your website is time well spent to grow your business and build your brand.
A plan has the power to attract new business, increase sales and place your business as a leader in its field.
The first step is to be clear about your marketing goals and you’ll need to refer back to the company’s overall marketing plan.
Ask what you want to achieve in the next year – is it increased customer retention, lead generation, thought leadership or higher conversion rates?
Creating a content marketing plan can involve a lot of work, but once it’s done you can be assured that every piece of content on your website will be relevant and aligned with your business objectives.
Call in the digital marketing experts
Are you looking to boost your digital marketing activity but don’t know where to start?
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne, with a strong focus on all things digital.
We can help you with everything from creating strategic digital marketing plans to building websites to refining SEO.
Keen to know more? Give u a call on (03) 9079 2555 or drop us a note via our contact form below.
Do you treat your digital channels separately to other channels on your marketing plan? Think again.
If you’re planning your digital marketing activity separately from your traditional marketing channels then you’re probably missing out on some pretty powerful opportunities.
Going back to marketing basics, you know that if you only use print, radio or press in isolation to communicate your message, you’re not going to be running a very effective campaign.
When it comes to marketing, the concept of “effective frequency” is commonly applied to campaigns because consumers often need to be exposed to an advertising message several times before the marketer achieves the intended response.
It’s said that people need to see or hear your message at least seven times before the message sinks in and they take action, meaning an isolated ad on one platform just won’t cut it.
Your website, social media, content strategy, SEM/PPC and SEO are all marketing functions that work in the same way as a TV ad spot or DL flyer drop. So, why do marketers still insist on planning their digital campaigns separately, and often as an after-thought?
A fully-integrated approach
We’ve now reached a point where a digital specialist is as crucial to a company as a designer or copywriter, and planners should have a strong understanding of integrating digital platforms into the business objectives of their marketing plans from day dot.
For every aspect of marketing, it’s important to consider which platform will be most effective for delivery.
Whether you choose print, TV, radio or the web, each platform should inform and support the other’s delivery and service the overall business goal.
An example might be when you are planning a TV spot – ensure you reach a wider market by also making a 30 second or 10 second version for social media campaigns such as Instagram or Facebook, and think about how your message will translate if your video is viewed without sound.
Or, if you create a radio script, use snippets of the text for your Facebook advertising campaign or on your website. If you run some print advertorial in a newspaper or magazine, use a shorter version for your blog.
Considering digital at the early stages of your campaign, rather than at the end, leads to a more cohesive and cost-effective campaign.
Digital is a key part of your marketing mix
Digital, as a medium, should not be viewed or used in isolation to other marketing mediums. Rather, it should be used to support marketing done via other channels.
Different audience segments prefer to consume different mediums, so having your message spread across a range of mediums (such as digital, TV, radio, print) means you can reach a wider audience and not be limited to capturing an audience using only one medium. Some people prefer to catch their news at 6pm while cooking dinner, others might read the headlines from their mobile device on the train home from work.
Mobile has dramatically influenced the way people consume media and marketing campaigns should easily integrate with traditional mediums as your target audience goes about their day.
Digital marketing can even be used to test concepts and audience segments quickly before rolling out more costly, and permanent, advertising in print, radio or television.
Limiting your marketing to just one channel limits the reach of how far your message will go. Just using digital or just using print to share your message will be limited to only those audiences and therefore won’t perform that effectively.
So, ensure when you create a marketing campaign you consider your digital channels alongside all other mediums. It’s a far more effective way to get more bang for your buck, and ensure the message you’ve created reaches as wide a distribution as possible.
Do you need help bringing digital out of isolation in your marketing?
Assemblo is a full-service agency with strong experience in integrating effective digital strategies with traditional marketing. To find out how we can help your business, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or drop us a note via our contact form below.