Carmella Marketing
With the highly accessible nature of the internet and the total number of users online increasing every single day, the way we shop and purchase products and services is changing at breakneck speeds. For businesses, digital marketing (which is defined as any marketing that uses an electronic device or the internet) is a way to leverage digital channels to connect with prospective leads and current clients. At Carmella Marketing, we do so much more than function as your social media manager. Collectively, The Carmella crew make up a social media storytelling powerhouse of digital marketing experts. From the simple things like content curation and copywriting; all the way to cinematic videos and websites that deliver leads and convert. The Carmella crew’s passion for all things marketing shines through our client work, which ladders up to distinct business goals and wins our clients awards. We are privileged to work with some of the best companies and biggest events in Western Canada. Our best clients bring us business problems to solve and let our proven tactics drive the ROI they are looking for. Carmella Marketing’s established reputation is, “innovation at every turn”.
Let’s take a deep dive into the heart and soul of the crew at Carmella. The best digital marketers have clear parameters and measurement tactics set in place to ensure every campaign ladders up to their overarching business goals. Digital marketing is vital for business and brand awareness – and should be embraced by any company who is looking to be competitive in the marketplace. There are many different types of digital marketing; here at Carmella we leverage every aspect of digital marketing to ensure we deliver our clients success.
2023 Marketing Trends
Know Your Customers
Getting close to your customers and telling their stories is a surefire way to boost revenue for your business. Positive customer reviews have a significant impact on purchase decisions, with 90% of buyers considering them before making a purchase. To effectively tell your brand’s story, lean into those customer reviews and create raving fans who will spread the word about your business. By leveraging the stories of satisfied customers, you can strengthen your brand’s reputation and attract new customers.
Cookies and Privacy
Google’s stance on cookies is that consumers rule, and privacy wins. As such, businesses can no longer ignore their customers’ preferences for data privacy. To succeed in this new landscape, companies need to invest in organic plays and create the necessary infrastructure to collect first-party data. Google recommends creating APIs to connect with your domains while respecting authority, and taking this issue seriously by investing in teams and tools to support your privacy efforts. By prioritizing data privacy and taking proactive steps to collect and manage first-party data, businesses can build trust with their customers and thrive in the long term.
AI
AI has arrived, and it can help marketers in many ways. One way is through improving SEO by using technical edits to satisfy Google’s EAT algorithm. There are several AI powered tools available that can increase efficiency and productivity. Companies should embrace these tools to work more efficiently and gain a competitive edge.
Does Your Company Care?
In today’s society, a company’s stance on socioeconomic issues is becoming increasingly important. It’s essential for brands to take a stand on societal matters that align with their values as a company. Brands that have a social purpose are gaining popularity, and consumers are more likely to support companies that take a stance. It is crucial for companies to get off the fence and take a stand on issues that matter.
Recession
As we enter a period of economic uncertainty and a potential recession, companies should prioritize organic marketing and drop their spending ego. A recession is a normal part of the economic cycle, and it usually lasts for about 10 months. It is crucial to prepare for economic recovery by focusing on organic marketing and channels that can be grown. During a recession, competition is lower, making it a great time to try new ad formats and test new things. This is why it’s recommended to accelerate ad spend during this time as ad spend is lower, and your budget will go further.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is perhaps one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. Picture your website as a castle in the sky with no roads or pathways leading to it. How are you going to attract your ideal customers with no road map of how to acquire information on utilizing your product or service? This is where SEO steps in and takes the wheel. There are a number of ways to approach SEO to help generate the traffic you want to your website. First, there is what we call ‘On page SEO’ which focuses on all of the content that exists on your website. We implement the best on page SEO by knowing what your customers are searching for and what their search intent looks like in terms of keywords. By having an in-depth knowledge of what your ideal customer is searching for, we use this information to rank higher on the search engine results page and give them the answers they didn’t yet know they needed.
The flipside of on-page SEO is off page SEO which focuses on all of the activity which does not reside on your website. This mainly focuses on backlinks, which are the websites that link to your site. Through networking, we can earn more backlinks to your “castle in the sky”, leading more of your ideal clients to your website. Last but not least, we focus on the back end of your website and setting up SEO best practices such as meta-descriptions, alt-tags, file optimization, and more. In a nutshell, if we combine all of these SEO practices into one traffic-generating strategy, you should be ranking in the top search results in no time.
Creating scannable content that includes information-carrying words, subheadings, bullet points, short paragraphs, and bold text can make it much more popular and increase its visibility on search engines. To rank higher on Google, it’s important to always keep your content up to date and to provide value to your readers. This means creating comprehensive and helpful content that satisfies their thirst for knowledge and helps them achieve their goals. Understanding search intent and performing SERP analysis can help you identify the primary and secondary keywords that your content should target. In addition, it’s important to get to the point quickly and use data insights to make your content stand out. Refreshing your content on a regular basis, you can passively attack backlinks and generate more traffic to your website. By following these best practices, you can achieve higher rankings on Google, drive more traffic to your website, and ultimately build a more successful online presence.
Content Marketing
Next up in the digital marketing hot seat is content marketing, which entails all of the creation and promotion of content assets that help us build your brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and customer acquisition. In 2021 we have set our sights on the content king of marketing with video packages for our clients. Why video? Video marketing is expected to account for 82.5% for all web traffic in 2023.
As we evolve and become more adept users of electronic media and the internet, we digest information at a more rapid pace than ever before. As marketers, we have a mere 7 seconds to capture our audience’s attention before they move onto the next piece of content. You’ll notice that intros are long-gone and more and more videos are jumping right into the main point of the content, a method
which tries to keep the users attention for longer. Just like your website, with content marketing we are ensuring we optimize the content for growing and popular topics as well as competitive keywords. With the onslaught of platforms such as TikTok and IG Reels, it’s no wonder the future of content marketing is video! It’s important to keep your content marketing approach flexible and adaptable. Circumstances evolve, and that includes your marketing goals. It’s important to always reevaluate your approach to see if it needs to be adjusted.
From Facebook to TikTok, Pinterest and more, it’s no secret that there are a lot of social media platforms out there, and they only seem to be growing. Without an end in sight and a plethora of platforms to choose from, how does one know which platform will work best for their company? It’s simple, really; some platforms are purely pay to play while others function like a search engine. When it comes right down to it, once you know where your ideal customers are spending the majority of their time, that is where you should be, too. That being said, each platform has its own specific use.
Even if you’re new to the digital world, there is no doubt that you have heard of the infamous social media giant: Facebook. Facebook is one of the many social media platforms that we use here at Carmella to help increase brand awareness and drive traffic for our clients.
Most people nowadays seem glued to their phones and cruising social media every chance they get. In fact, there are 2.963 billion monthly Facebook users who spend a daily average of 147 minutes on social media. User engagement is changing; as digital marketers, we are always looking for new trends and analytics to back up our methods.
Advertising on Facebook is big business: it is forecasted that Facebook’s advertising revenue will reach $71.3 billion in 2023. There are millions of eyes on Facebook every single day, and that is why we create a comprehensive advertising strategy and focus your Facebook ads on exactly the right audience for your business to maximize ROI.
The other useful feature on Facebook that we have been utilizing for our clients more and more are chatbots. A chatbot is a computer program that automates selected tasks by chatting with a user through a conversational interface. Beyond managing simple, repetitive requests, your chat bot can have built-in logic that can help you acquire quality leads and pass them directly to a salesperson in live chat, to close the deal.
Offering chat solutions in various platforms, especially in Facebook where customers are often comfortable, means you offer increased opportunities to connect with your brand. 69% of consumers prefer to use chatbots because they deliver quick answers to simple questions. Leveraging chatbots and AI on social media platforms as well as your website can have great benefits, including gaining you more ROI. If there was one thing you could keep an eye on with regards to the future of digital marketing, it would be chatbots and artificial intelligence!
Did you know that Pinterest isn’t just a social network? It’s a visual search engine!
Millions of users turn to Pinterest to enhance their lifestyle, and they are doing so by using the search function on Pinterest. Pinterest functions similarly to the Google SERP by delivering results in the search engine based on your search query. Let’s face it, Pinterest will definitely not overthrow Google as the go-to for search, but as more users catch on and use Pinterest to search and share, it will become a discovery and search tool for billions.
According to Pinterest, the platform reaches 77% of all women 25-54 in the US. And, as the global income of women reaches trillions of dollars, women are expected to control almost 75% of discretionary spending worldwide by 2028.
It’s quickly becoming apparent to marketers that Pinterest is the place to post and host your business related content, to get in front of more of the decision makers in the marketplace.
Pinterest is considered to be a trusted platform by reducing misinformation such as climate change and weight loss, as well as using moments and interests to unite ‘pinners’ to make their experience more personal. With more users more likely to make a purchase in a positive environment, statistics show that shopping baskets are 5 times larger from Pinterest in comparison to other platforms. With 445 million users every month, these users are likely to engage with advertisements on Pinterest.
What’s more is that Pins are somewhat ‘evergreen content’. You won’t gather likes and shares on your content right away, but over time as more people search for your pin content using keywords and find your content, the more it will gather engagement and be featured more frequently in the Pinterest search results. This is why a rock solid pin strategy is important so you can offer more results to users’ search queries. The more relevant information you can give via your pins, the more you will see a return on your investment.
I bet that you, like us, have become disenchanted with Twitter. The lack of updates, the user interface, the user experience could all use an update in our opinion. But maybe we shouldn’t tell Twitter to be more like it’s kindergarten friend Instagram and we should instead use Twitter for what it is great at, creating content. Twitter is like the blackmarket for content. Fast, cheap and you should always verify it before you use it. Twitter boasts more than 217 million active daily users making the social media platform an important piece of your marketing strategy. But with 350,000 tweets sent per minute and 500 million tweets sent daily, you need to be strategic and savvy to win (and hold) your audience’s attention and achieve your Twitter marketing goals.
There are some really fantastic ways to use Twitter to mine content quickly.
Twitter is a great listening tool. People come to Twitter to find out what’s happening right now. Conducting specific searches daily on Twitter is a great way to find new content. Looking to find influencers, media groups, or anyone publishing content? They’re all on Twitter promoting their content or their brand.
The ability to mine Twitter based on a keyword, key phrase or hashtag and then populate a database with this content, allows us to generate content banks in about half the time it used to take. Once you have mined the keyword you are looking for, you can then sort based on engagement and look at what content is performing across Twitter. The next job is up to a human. After rewriting or tweaking the content so its tailored to the business and targeted at the ideal client, it is scheduled and posted.
200 million businesses choose Instagram for marketing, and it’s no wonder why—Instagram is one of the most versatile, social media platforms for marketing. Now, more than ever, Instagram is seeing users online and interacting with content on a regular basis. Did you know that a whopping 59% of Instagram users login daily to check their feed at least once a day and spend on average 29 minutes per day on the platform? There is a reason we preach the use of Instagram to our clients, and that is because of the sheer number of users that a business on Instagram is able to reach. Instagram ads can reach up to 1.48 billion people. That’s 29.9% of all internet users and 23.9% of everyone over age 13 worldwide.
Who would want to miss such a great marketing opportunity?
Among many social media platforms available for businesses today, Instagram offers the biggest variety of opportunities for visual marketing to show your business’s personality. A strategy is important because there are so many different functionalities on Instagram now, it is as though there are platforms within the platform. What do we mean? Well, there are regular posts, sponsored posts, boosts, advertisements, Stories, Lives, Reels, and new on the scene Instagram guides. So how are you to know which is best for you? That is where we come in and put together a great Instagram strategy tailored to our clients business needs to ensure we are leveraging the platform to the best of our ability for that specific client.
Since the beginning of 2023 we have already seen significant changes to the platform. After shutting down Facebook Live Shopping back in October, it looks like Meta’s stepping back from live social commerce altogether. Starting in March 2023, Instagram will no longer be able to tag products during live broadcasts allowing for more focus on products and features that provides the most value for users. Instagram recently launched broadcast channels – a broadcast chat feature that will allow creators to share text, images, and more with followers.
YouTube
It’s no secret that it’s been getting harder and harder to stand out amongst other businesses on Facebook and Instagram. And as big and impactful as these platforms have been for promoting brands in the last few years, without paid advertisement or influencer marketing it’s very difficult to get discovered there. The reason for this is that Facebook and Instagram are not search engines. Sure, you can use relevant hashtags and hope to get noticed, but if your business is in a specific field and is just starting out, chances are the users of these platforms will just keep on scrolling.
Throughout the years, while we watched Instagram accounts, for many companies, quickly resemble an online store, and Facebook turned more into a portfolio than a social network, the huge Google giant of social media has stood tall – YouTube.
YouTube will be bigger than ever in 2023 as it continues to expand its offerings to stay relevant in the fast-changing world of video content creation. While TikTok’s popularity has led to the rise of short-form video content, YouTube is set to make a significant investment in its Shorts format, offering ad revenue sharing and an updated Partner Program for Shorts creators. YouTube is also making big leaps into podcasting, including creating a new podcasting guide aimed at YouTubers and a dedicated Podcasts page. YouTube plans to become a stronger platform for educational creators in 2023, with a new video player, built-in courses, and quizzes.
People tend to use YouTube for how-tos and tutorials, but, from a business point of view, there is so much potential to reach audiences you wouldn’t be able to reach on other platforms. Just think about it, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine (after Google) which means you CAN and WILL be found (provided you put your content in front of the right users). According to the latest research, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18–34 than any cable network. It’s free, educational, entertaining, curated, and everyone uses it.
So why would you want to start a YouTube channel for your business? When you started your business you probably considered yourself a pro in a certain area. You did your research, took courses, watched YouTube tutorials (see, we all do it), and spent hours perfecting your knowledge of the subject. And when you take into account how huge the educational content is on this platform, why not share what you have learned with other people whilst shamelessly plugging your brand and how it can help people interested in what you’re teaching them? On YouTube, you have an opportunity to give more than you get and receive the respect and gratitude from your potential clients to make it easier for them to trust your business. On video you come across a lot more personable, your subscribers (or at least those who come across your videos) can see the real people behind the brand, not just models/influencers wearing your products or trying your service.
Tik TOk
This hot new platform has blown up faster than Facebook, and it’s not likely to go anywhere anytime soon. Initially what started out as a lip-synching application has quickly grown into the top social media platform of the century. TikTok has 500 million active users worldwide, and businesses like you can use it to introduce your products or business. While TikTok and its engagement metrics are amazing, it’s not for every business. The main use of the TikTok platform is to produce fun and engaging content – in other words, it’s not the place for seriousness. The more jovial and raw your content is, the better! No need for high production videos here, TikTok videos, just like IG Reels, are all about authenticity and in-the-moment real content. If your target audience is part of Gen-Z or Gen-Y, TikTok could be the perfect place to capture their attention and direct your marketing efforts.
The most common online method for advertising is called Pay Per Click (PPC). This type of online advertising is one of the most common ways to help move more traffic to a business website. With PPC, you pay every time your link is clicked and a user navigates to your website. If they don’t click, you don’t pay. One of the most common platforms for PPC is Google Ads, but other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn also have PPC capabilities. Another type of online advertising is native advertising. We use native advertising on social media platforms alongside other non-paid content to help attract your target audience without seeming “salesy”. Native advertising content may look more like an average social media post, but it is most often sponsored and will encourage the user to your website or to your product offering. The benefit here is that we are able to attract users who might not otherwise have clicked on an advertisement from your company.
To succeed on TikTok, businesses need to focus on being real, raw, and relatable, while constantly testing to achieve the best results. It’s also essential to follow hashtags, trends, and lean into a specific niche to empower AI and always have fresh content ideas. A low-fi and authentic approach is preferred over a fancy production set-up, as it’s more accessible and relatable to the audience. Posting daily helps test different content approaches and creative styles, and learning from that can be leveraged on other platforms and paid advertising. It’s crucial to focus on creating content, not sales pitches, and participate in everyday storytelling while keeping track of trends. Finding the utility that allows promotional messages to be more meaningful and connect with more people is key. By leaning into a specific audience with a deeper, more meaningful approach, content creators can get discovered and make it personal. Cultivating the comments is also essential as it is a great place to find insights and inspiration from viewers. By activating customers and amplifying the community, AI can help find ideas and concepts for everyday content. The success of TikTok content can also be applied to other platforms, as a solid organic and paid strategy can extend beyond TikTok.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is a technology that automates marketing processes and campaigns across multiple channels, such as email, web, social, and text, based on sets of instructions called workflows. It helps businesses target customers with automated messages, streamline lead generation, nurturing, and scoring, and measure overall ROI on campaigns. Marketing automation simplifies complex marketing and sales roles, saves time and resources, and reduces human error. It enables businesses to create personalized experiences for customers and tailor every interaction based on their data to create seamless journeys through every brand touchpoint. Marketing automation best practices include setting clear goals, collaborating with other teams, preparing for database segmentation, creating a content strategy, planning for a slow rollout, and analyzing as you go.
Marketing automation and chatbots are not a new concept, but their use is on the rise. This type of marketing refers to software that we use to automatically serve marketing to your ideal customer. Marketing automation is what makes our job here at Carmella, slightly less time consuming than it otherwise would have been. Marketing automation can be achieved through newsletters and email automation for new signups via a form on your website, the use of social media post scheduling platforms to automatically push out your content on a regular basis, lead workflows and processes can be automated, and campaign monitoring can be used to actively monitor your campaigns progress. The more we are able to drill down into your target audience and their needs, the better we are able to set up automations for your business to save time and money while seeing the results you want.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is perhaps one of the most poorly leveraged digital marketing strategies available to businesses. This strategy is based on sending regular communications to prospects and customers and is the most effective marketing channel. Of course, with all the hype over new social media platforms such as TikTok, email marketing has been slightly “forgotten” – but not by us! Did you know that the majority of users online are on email, coming in at a whopping 85%? This beats out search engines and social media by quite a bit which is why at Carmella we are focused on building successful email marketing campaigns for our clients. Our take on email marketing is different, as we try to stay away from sales pitches and advertisements, and remember that we are a guest in your subscribers inbox. Our way is simple… email campaigns are like being invited over for dinner; we take our shoes off, say our P’s and Q’s and make sure to offer to wash the dishes when we are done.
Automating your onboarding process through email sequences is an effective way to educate, nurture, and guide new customers and leads towards a purchase decision. By spending time educating prospects, you can establish trust and increase the likelihood of conversion. Email automation can be used to proactively re-engage existing customers, capture lost sales, and lower churn rates. Through abandoned cart email reminders and added discount codes, B2B businesses can maximize their effectiveness and achieve conversion rates of up to 9.09%. Advanced segmentation and email automation can also be used to deliver more engaging communication that targets specific audiences, resulting in higher engagement rates and more repeat customers. AI can be leveraged to deliver product recommendations, optimize email send times, and generate compelling subject lines. By using data points to make sure your emails are relevant, you can show your users that you understand their needs and preferences. Email marketing provides a high ROI of 38:1 and allows businesses to own and control their first-party data, making it a valuable tool in any marketing strategy.
Influencer Marketing
With the rise of social media platforms, the rise of sponsored content and influencer marketing is obvious. Scrolling through the feed on each platform, it seems as though more and more posts are sponsored or contain “hidden marketing” content… and that is for good reason. Research shows that people remember branded content twice as long as they remember a traditional advertisement. Sponsored content is thriving on social media, and Instagram is the channel where this type of marketing is seen the most frequently, with TikTok as the runner up. Sponsored marketing doesn’t just stop at social media. At Carmella, we are consistently keeping an eye on best practices and what works best for sponsored videos, podcasts, social media, and blogs while still following federal advertising guidelines.
A brand may partner with an influencer because they align with the brand’s messaging. It was a way for brands to connect with different communities that they might have access to otherwise as a brand. By tapping into niche markets, brands are investing in creative, someone else is creatively telling your story in a different voice signalling trust, authenticity, and relatability.
Businesses need to stay current with the constantly evolving marketing landscape to stay competitive. In 2023 we are set to see growth in emerging trends such as prioritizing data privacy, leveraging AI-powered tools, taking a stand on societal issues, utilizing organic marketing, and leveraging stories of satisfied customers to help promote your brand. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, are essential marketing tools that businesses should utilize strategically to achieve their marketing goals. Just remember – just because you can have them all doesn’t mean you should. Choose the right platforms that are in alignment with your target audience. Marketing automation, email marketing, and influencer marketing are all powerful tools that businesses should use to connect with their target audience while saving time and resources. By staying flexible and up-to-date with the latest marketing trends and technologies, businesses can build trust with their customers, increase efficiency, and help your company thrive in the long term.
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