Last time we talked about the first marketing mistake businesses usually make - not knowing your results. If you haven’t checked it yet, you can find the link in the description.

Now, it’s time for mistake #2 →

Not Investing in SEO & Content Because It’s Too Slow

Did you know that 90% of web pages never get any traffic? While it’s good to run successful advertising campaigns, it’s still crucial to work on your website’s SEO & Content to get free organic traffic and leads. Yes, you can’t see the results overnight, but, in the long run, quality content and proper SEO optimizations will pay off by bringing you more website visitors and prospects.

If your website doesn’t get enough organic traffic, maybe it’s time to create a proper content plan to boost it.

But first, here are a few important questions you need to ask yourself:

☑️   Do you have any articles on the first page of Google? (If yes, awesome, if no, you should start working towards this goal. Of course, it takes time to get there, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.)

☑️   Is your content bringing you any traffic? (If you’re posting blog posts but no one visits them, you should rethink your strategy and maybe focus on less competitive topics.)

☑️  Do you have a content plan in place? (If you have an end goal, your content plan should reflect it. In other words, posting content without a specific purpose won’t bring you much.)

☑️  How much time do people spend reading your content? (If your website visitors spend only 30 seconds on a 1500-word article, they probably don’t find it very useful or relative. Yet, if they spend at least 3 min on it, then you’re on the right path.)

☑️  Do people share your blog posts? (If users read your articles but rarely share them, then they don’t find it particularly compelling or more insightful than the already existing content on the internet. It’s time to give them more value and unique insights.)

☑️  Has your content generated any leads or sales? (If your content doesn’t make people want to buy your products or services, maybe you should rethink its structure or experiment with lead generation tactics and CTAs.)

So, were the answers what you were expecting? If not, it's another sign you need a change in your strategy.

In our next video tomorrow, we’re going to talk about the third most common marketing mistake you might be making. Stay tuned and if you’re curious, you can download our Free Marketing Audit right now! Just click the link in the description and get to know whether you’re doing your marketing right!

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http://zima.media/5-marketing-mistakes

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#marketingmistakes #digitalmarketingtips

Google is giving businesses more insights to interactions happening on your Google My Business profile. This is going to be valuable for brick and mortar businesses.

After working with more than 2000 clients, we’ve seen a lot of marketing mistakes businesses are making without even realizing it. We decided to share all our secrets so that YOU don’t make the same mistakes.

Not Knowing Your Results is one of the five most common marketing mistakes.

You need to know what you’re spending your money on and whether it’s worth it. For example, you might be paying for social media posts, while the one blog you wrote three months ago is actually bringing you most of your total traffic organically. Or you might be paying for ads that bring only clicks, but no sales.

If your ROI is positive, maybe you should invest more into the best performing platforms and cut the budget for the least performing ones, or stop using some of them completely.

If you want to avoid ruining your marketing efforts, here are a few questions you need to ask yourself:

☑️   What is your cost per lead? (If you’re a dental clinic, paying $100 for a lead that’s going to spend thousands once booking your services is pretty good. However, if you’re an ecommerce store selling a product worth of $20, and your cost per conversion is $40, then something is wrong.)

☑️   What is your ROI? (If your marketing budget is bigger than the overall sales revenue, then you need to take action asap.)

☑️   What is your most important audience demographic? (If your most profitable target audience consists of millennial women who are into cruelty-free skincare, then you should probably focus more on building your marketing strategy and a brand message around this buyer persona and stop advertising to 65+ men :)

☑️   How many people visited your website last month? (If the number isn’t significant, you should work on getting people to the site with the help of ads, seo, content, social, etc. And if the number is big but you get no conversions, work on adding more value to your site.)

☑️   Are your website visitors turning into customers? (If you get only a few conversions or leads per month, you might need to rethink your business offer and website design, or change your Call-to-Action.)

☑️   How much time do people spend on your site? (If people spend 10 seconds on your website, they probably didn’t find what they were looking for. It means you might need to add more useful information or target a different audience.)

☑️   What is your most successful channel? (If 95% of your traffic comes from paid advertising and only 5% from organic Google searches, you might need to double down on ads and try improving your SEO.)    

If you can't answer these questions or the answer doesn’t satisfy you, it’s the sign you need to rethink your marketing. Simple as that.

In our next video, we’re going to talk about the second most common marketing mistake you might be making. Stay tuned and if you’re curious, you can download our Free Marketing Audit right now! Just click the link in the description and get to know whether you’re doing your marketing right!

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Since early December, Apple requires developers to publish privacy labels.

If you inspect the App Store, it says one month ago on Chrome, Google Search, and YouTube, among many others.

On December 7th was the last time Google updated its ranges of apps before the December 8th deadline Apple set for developers to adopt new privacy label disclosures to users on iOS devices.

The privacy label is filled out by developers' containing what data the app is tracking. This would give us an insight into what Google is collecting about users and how that user data is being used.

This label will be added to the App Store to increase transparency in the ways apps collect data. This gives more freedom of choice to align with more privacy-conscious Apps. 

The exciting part about all of this is 1-month has gone by, and there are entrepreneurs out there ready to offer and market new Apps to capture users that could have a strong sense of brand loyalty but find themselves to be a "switcher" because they value their privacy and data.

This label will introduce a new level of sophistication with unique points of thought about your brand positioning. In 2021, putting privacy into the center of your message will help you win new business on the App Store. 

Apple made a claim hoping other app stores copy the model, but  E-Foundation is a privacy-focused smartphone software company, and they already have this feature in their App Store since 2018. It can be downloaded to certain android phones or bought with it installed.

This is a good move for consumers, nonetheless. 

What will be included in the Privacy Label?

Your Physical Address,

Email,

Name,

Phone,

This can feed into the app developer, advertising analytics, product personalization.

This can include the habits that are linked to you too.

You Purchase History,

Financial Info,

Location,

Physical Address,

Contacts,

Photos,

Videos,

Search History,

Browsing History

This private information again can go to the app developer, advertising analytics, product personalization.

Next time you update your Google Apps on iOS. It will be a little more privacy-focused! 

That is a win for brand loyalty. Give a big thumbs up if that's the case!

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It is widespread in the marketing world today to hear about SEO and content marketing. We would even go so far as to say that these two things have become the bread and butter of many enterprises' marketing strategies.

In this tutorial, we are going to explain the relationship between SEO and content marketing.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SEO is what businesses do when they want to improve their ranking in search engines.

Historically SEO has a dark side, and many people still think it's a geek like me sitting in a dark room bashing a keyboard.

We hear about algorithms and keywords, and that's a part of the process. Google SEO strategy comes from a combination of planning, research, preparation, and optimization. This is an endless loop to build your authority with Google.

There's another word we hear a lot in the SEO world. Authority is how Google measures your expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness in my world; we call this E-A-T.

What is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing refers to the content generated by a company to attract potential customers, identify leads, and (hopefully) turn them into sales. Content can also be used as a retention strategy for existing customers.

The Buyer's Journey starts on your website when they enter your funnel.

Stage 1: Top of the funnel

Stage 2: Middle of the funnel

Stage 3: Bottom of the funnel

Why is content marketing important for SEO?

Your business can't fully reap the rewards of a good marketing campaign without effectively employing SEO and content marketing.

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Happy New Year! It's time to take advantage of all the hard work Google has been doing updating its algorithms to provide better search results. So, how is the Google December 2020 Core Update going to impact your results? Here are our impressions, but first. What's a core update?

"Several times a year, we make significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems. We refer to these as "core updates." They're designed to ensure that overall, we're delivering on our mission to present relevant and authoritative content to searchers. These core updates may also affect Google Discover."

Google organizes content from your website and uses algorithms to determine the searcher's query's true meaning. If Google understands the importance of the search, it's goal will be to show the most relevant search results.

If your website's traffic has declined following a Google core update, most likely, Google's algorithms have determined that there are other pages on the web that are more relevant and helpful than yours.

Suppose you are still building spammy backlinks and writing poor or thin content. It won't be easy to rank your website in 2021.

As a business owner, you have to care about reputation and brand. You are setting up all your social media accounts, having a modern and fast website, and excellent communication. These are factors that help elevate your brand trustworthiness with Google and website visitors from SEO.

Reviews and many other interactions that happen on and off your website are essential. Holistically, you're building a reputation and a brand. This is easy to understand and improve without being an SEO geek like me. What it comes down to is the content.

Google has been improving Natural Language Processing (NLP) to meet the needs of a search visitor. Artificial intelligence algorithms are doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. Focusing on your E-A-T is still very important in 2021.

We are starting to see in our analytics for ourselves and our clients that more relevant keywords are seeing improvements in rankings. This could be related to Google improving its efforts to analyze more text to decode what you are searching for online.

This is especially true with our medical niche clients. This relates a lot to the "Medic" update from many years back.

The emphasis is on the quality of the text and how deep it goes on a specific topic. Google seems to be balancing YMYL queries better and is leading to less Medic interference in ranking swings.

The pattern is consistent with every algorithm update. Some pages go up, and some pages go down. This is why understanding your internal content strategy is essential. The actual pages that are optimized and have improvements to content could be leading with results.

Getting stuck inside the technical SEO is not essential, but that's easier than ever to set up with WordPress or Shopify. Getting critical with your content is the key to beating your competitors on the search result page.

What should you focus on in 2021?

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#google #googlealgorithm

Now, more than 150 million people in 30 countries use Google Pay every month.

Google Pay is launching a new experience that is designed around relationships.

Google is laying the pavement for a new kind of digital bank account with trusted financial institutions by 2021.

Split bills, send money, and keep track of everything in one place.

Google Pay is already available at over 100K restaurants, 30K gas stations, and paid parking lots in over 400 cities.

Google is launching with brands such as Etsy, Target, and Warby Parker to offer redemption and loyalty built into the app.

The Google Pay account links with your bank accounts and offers analytics on your purchase spending habits. Also, Google Search is coming to your finance to help find transactions quickly.

The newest addition is data personalization, which is switched off by default, with a three month trial period to evaluate if you want to keep it on or off.

Google Pay will not “leak” your transaction history to advertisers or anywhere on Google.

Plex is going to be a new way to bank online!  Banks offer Plex Accounts and credit unions, including checking and savings accounts with no monthly fees, overdraft charges, or minimum balance requirements, and help you save toward your goals more quickly.

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Shopify has announced a partnership with TikTok to connect over 1 million stores with the TikTok community. 

This partnership is another facet that will solidify into a great influencer reach for Shopify stores. There’s an early adopter opportunity for brands to leverage a new advertising platform, and TikTok might be one of the most direct channels for many emerging and existing Shopify stores.

This will make it easier for merchants to tap over 100 million active users in the US alone. This will be a new TikTok business manager features straight into Shopify with 1-click pixel setup, campaign targeting and creation, and an ad builder to create simple ads in minutes.

TikTok is also offering a $300 ad credit to launch your first campaign.

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Don’t be frugal, be a savvy investor in your marketing & advertising.

You are not wasting money on your website and marketing. It’s an investment over time like your retirement fund. Some marketing decisions might have a negative return like advertising, and some marketing investments appreciate like SEO. Always measure and expect every investment should have a positive outcome. If it does not, measure and find out why.

Every new business we help, we indoctrinate them to focus on testing and measuring. It will piss you off when you lose money. Get used to it. Your competitors lost way more to get to where they are. It’s a part of doing business, and you need to rectify where you’re bleeding the budget. This is why being a measurement expert helps make faster decisions instead of blowing it all on a pipe dream on hearsay from a successful friend and superstition you read about on a blog post. If you can apply, measure, and be patient, you’ll have dividends.

Investors don’t grow rich overnight, they grow wealthy over the long-term.

Form the right business questions.

Why are you going to take this action? Are you just following some second-hand advice from a YouTube video? Are you basing this off experience? It’s easy to start looking for answers to the wrong business questions. Get clear on these as fast as possible.

Everyone judges a book by its cover. Your website doesn’t have to look like apple.com after a new iPhone launch. You have to take your website seriously because high-end websites use the latest features to POP on your screen. Always improve, but don’t over-invest into your brand. Gradually do it over time.

There might be 2-3 questions you focus on a quarter and that’s the length of time it can take to test ideas and patiently wait to recover results. Making decisions in real-time and slow-time takes a great deal of restraint.

Focus on clear taxonomy and organization

Your collections/categories should map to your products, and your products should be clear and detailed. Invest time into the story and give all the details possible. This is where Google Shopping and Google find relevant keywords and improve your Google rankings positions for SEO and Ads.

Organizing your store will help you with your thoughts, inventory, and even your communication. The more aligned all your processes are, the less friction you’ll have. Make it clear to your customers, yourself, and your team. It will make the website feel more fluid for customers, and your team will operate more efficiently because you’re designing it around the website and sales experience.

Start working with influencers

Shopify and YouTube are launching a partnership to enable influencers to feature products and tag them to sell them. Tap influencers in your industry and start engaging their audience with your products. That extra push helps build young brands and helps emerging brands establish themselves in the market.

Before the pandemic, the influencer market was $6.5 billion when Google ads allow is about $134.8 billion both in 2019. Be aware that there’s room to grow, and it’s an emerging market, and big players are creating tools for ecommerce stores to leverage their networks.

It can give you instant social proof!

Just have fun.

If you don't jump out of bed excited to go to work, skip lunch, and have good days and bad days, and wish you can do it all over again and again. It's not for you. You'll have extended hours and sleepless nights, but you're building something that's yours at the end of the day.

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The DOJ is alleging that Google has an illegal monopoly over search, search advertising, and exclusive contracts.