5 Persuasive Tips for Digital Advertising
Advertisers use specific tools to gain the attention of their target audiences. Whether it is towards a specific age group, race, sex or religion, these tools have proven to engage people’s minds and to trigger specific emotions. By strategically combining these elements, advertisers create sales, clicks or votes in smart, unique ways. We’ve listed five common techniques used by advertisers to consider including in your next advertising brief: The Bandwagon Appeal This technique attempts to persuade consumers into feeling that a product or an idea is a need when it is usually a want. Due to its popularity and social status, the intention is to make consumers feel as if they would miss out or fall behind if they don’t join this trend’s wave. Use words and phrases which imply scarcity and evoke a sense of urgency such as ‘exclusive offer’ or ‘limited availability’. Celebrity Association or Testimonials By using a celebrity or a public figure to promote a product, advertisers reach millions of fans around the world. Their endorsement or even a mention creates a ripple effect with consumers grappling to purchase the product. Research your target audience to pinpoint what will ultimately appeal to them. The likes of Meryl Streep may not appeal to a group of millennials, for example. Emotional Appeal Advertisers appeal to the masses through emotions such as fear, sadness, excitement and happiness. This technique explicitly draws on these emotions to get consumers to buy into the idea of a product or to follow a certain trend. Advertisers concentrate on sentiments that every consumer can relate to. Humor This type of advertising highlights or showcases a certain viewpoint which makes consumers laugh. Cartoons, sketches or a comic undertone is used. Through the information of the product or the message, change your consumers’ minds, positively influencing them to buy into the product. A clever, witty advert is more likely to stick in your consumers’ minds. Product Comparison This technique focuses on presenting two or more products with various specifications. Each product is put up against one another with the negative characteristics highlighted. Promote the benefits of the product and backup your product’s claim by including research and the basis for your product’s uniqueness. Whichever technique speaks to you, make sure that you know your target audience to effectively execute a product’s marketing strategy. Contact us for more information on how to effectively market your product, knocking your competitors out of the...
read moreFrancois Muscat Won the WSI Lifetime Achievement Award
WSI are immensely proud to announce that Francois Muscat recently won the WSI Nick Lattanzio Lifetime Achievement Award at the WSI Global Convention, which was held in Cancun in October. For the first time, Francois was rendered speechless. This award isn’t something that digital marketing consultants can enter themselves for. The Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded to people based on their contribution to the WSI Network over an extended period of time. Francois Muscat is a WSI Training Coach and Certified Mentor who advises other Internet marketing consultants around the world on business strategies and internet marketing programmes. Sixteen years ago, Francois made the leap from the corporate life and started his own business. Francois bought a WSI Internet franchise and said that it has been such a ride. He’s had many highlights, but the Lifetime Achievement Award is a personal highlight that tops them all. Francois advised that is was an unbelievable honour, and he want to thank everyone who has worked with him, his team and his wife...
read moreWe Won the Top Rated Service Provider Award at the WSI Global Convention
Our company won the Top Rated Service Provider Award at the WSI Global Convention, which was held in Cancun in October. It was an honour to win this award against stiff competition, and Francois Muscat is immensely proud of his team for the work they pulled off back at the office to be rated so highly among WSI’s digital marketing consultants. What sets us apart are our quick responses, the value of our services and the mentorship of new consultants. Our team members understand that a proactive digital marketing strategy requires snappy responses to clients, keeping an eye out for opportunities in their industries and being able to implement changes quickly. The real value of our services lies in how it boosts clients’ bottom lines. By having measurable goals that we’re working towards, we make sure that whether we’re writing content or designing a new site, we’re doing so with a real business goal in mind. Global Digital Marketing Solutions Provider Over the years, Francois Muscat has been in a fortunate position to mentor new digital marketing consultants that join WSI. While many of them partner with us for mentoring, even more end up using our services – and they recommend us to others. Francois would like to credit his team for not only building and maintaining strong connections with our consultants, but also for providing them with the solutions that help them achieve their business goals. His company isn’t a one-man-show, it’s a team of creative and intuitive copywriters, web developers, SEO consultants, administrative staff who provide everything from mobile marketing and marketing automation to email newsletters, content marketing and social media services to clients all across the...
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How Does the Local Search Algorithm Work?
Is your ultimate digital marketing goal to increase your reach when it comes to your local community? This is definitely a worthwhile objective as a focus on local search is known to boost conversions. In order to master the art of targeting locals in your area, you will need to not only understand how the local search algorithm works, but you will also have to adjust your website’s SEO and PPC strategy accordingly. Here are the facts that you need to know. Location Ultimately, the biggest factor in Google’s local search algorithm is where your business is actually located. Scroll down to the bottom of a page on your website and it will often list a zip code that Google thinks you are in. Reputation Your local search rankings are certain to improve as your online reputation grows. The best way to boost this reputation is through your SEO efforts, such as creating authoritative content, engaging with your customers on social media, and ensuring that your website offers a magnificent user experience. The reviews that you receive online are also certain to make a difference. Keywords It can be very helpful to use your location as a keyword in any new content that you produce. This signals to Google that you are serious about pleasing your local customers. And, in so doing you are likely to appear more prominently in relevant Google searches by people residing in the area. A good rule of thumb is to include your location in your meta title/page title, meta description, as well as in the first and last paragraphs of your content. Mastering the art of local search and content marketing is no easy feat, hence the reasons why countless businesses rely on the digital marketing experts at WSI OMS to do it for them. As a leading digital marketing agency with an international reputation, we are ready to help get your business noticed online! Contact us today for...
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5 Social Media Tips for the Holidays
With 2019 coming to an end, it is time to consider your social media marketing strategy for the upcoming holidays. If you want to stand out from the usual kitsch festive season advertising, here are five different tips and tricks to place you ahead of the game: Give Your Customers the Head Start You can start by letting your customers know that you are there to make their holidays better. Reconnect with your existing customers as early as possible – without the hard sell. During the festive season, you can start aggressively advertising by making offers your customers won’t be able to resist. Give Your Social Media Platforms a Festive Season Makeover In order to get your customers hyped and excited for the festive season, give your Facebook chatbot (and your other social media avatars) a fun holiday makeover to showcase your customer appreciation. You’d be surprised how engaging such a simple action can be. Consider Collaborating with a Like-Minded Social Media Influencer To generate better results (and to potentially boost your sales), reach out to a popular social media influencer who can help you market to a wider audience. Brainstorm one or more fun and creative collaborative campaigns you can execute during the holiday season. Go Live on Facebook You can use holiday-themed Facebook Live videos to engage with your audience. Facebook tends to favour content that generates social interaction, particularly conversations between people in the comments on the page’s posts. Gather your team together and come up with ‘out the box’ fun and creative ideas to engage with your customers and to ensure that your brand remains not only at the top of their feeds, but also at the front of their minds. Create Holiday-Themed Content Draw up a social media calendar for the weeks leading up to Christmas and New Year. Come up with holiday-themed content based on your brand’s goals for this period. You can look at running a competition or two, creating fun themed surveys for your customers to complete or even posting funny holiday memes. Need some inspiration for your year-end marketing? Contact us today for more...
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How to Optimise Your Content for Voice Search
Voice search is a speech recognition application, which allows users to search by saying terms aloud instead of manually typing them into a search engine. Think Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. The future of web search, namely voice search is foreseen to dominate 50% of all searches by 2020. So, how do you ensure that your content pulls through these voice searches and gains the traction it deserves? Here are a few simple tricks: Create Content Which Keeps the Conversation Going Instead of using random words, which are bound to produce a short list of results, ask a query or make a command that requires a response. ‘Alexa, where’s the best pizza place in my neighbourhood?’. ‘Siri, how many cards in a playing deck?’ Put Yourself in a Searcher’s Position How do searchers ask questions? What are the words they would use out loud? Create clear and simple responses based on these questions to optimise your content for voice search. Less Is More. So, Keep it Simple! You can optimise more content by keeping things simple. Forget the jargon and use clear content to amplify your message. We are doing less typing and more talking, after all. Cover Your Bases for Optimising All Types of Searches Optimising existing content (with relevant search terms, familiar languages and searches) is a lot easier than creating all new voice-optimised content. The goal is to make sure that your content is optimised for all searches whether voice, mobile or desktop. This doesn’t sound too hard, does it? ‘…Siri, how do you optimise content for voice search?’ Need help with your SEO or digital marketing? Then contact WSI OMS...
read moreA Quick Guide to Digital Marketing Careers
Within the digital marketing space, there are multiple departments that include content, social media and email marketing. With a high demand for digital marketers and an international critical shortage of these skills, here are the most common positions for you to consider: SEO Manager Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quality and the quantity of traffic to a website through organic search engine results. A SEO Manager is responsible for planning, implementing and managing a company’s overall SEO strategy. This role’s duties usually include web marketing, web analytics, content strategy planning, link building and keyword strategy. Social Media Manager Social Media Management involves creating, scheduling, analysing and engaging with content posted on the various social media platforms. Social Media Managers use social media management tools and services to assist them with reaching their specific target markets and to run their social media campaigns in the simplest of forms. UX Designer A UX Designer conducts research, design, writes UX copy, tests and presents design solutions for businesses. This role is the voice of the user. UX Designing is the process by which design teams create products and provides relevant experience for their users that include product integration, branding, design, usability and function. Digital Marketing Manager Digital Marketing Managers are the ‘face’ of their companies by developing, implementing and managing marketing campaigns that promote their products and/or services. Playing a major role in maintaining and enhancing their brand’s presence within the digital space, they are also responsible for driving website traffic and converting leads into customers. Marketing Assistant A Marketing Assistant is the main support to marketing managers and executives on marketing campaigns, i.e. the marketing department. Working closely with everyone in their department, their duties include (and are not limited to) advertising, market research, production, sales and distribution. Marketing Analyst Marketing Analysts gather and analyse consumer and competitor data. They assist companies to understand which products consumers prefer, who will buy them and at what price by studying the relevant market conditions. In this rapidly evolving industry, digital marketing is here to stay. The prospects of the potential of digital marketing are endless, and the digital marketing industry looks to welcome this exciting revolution. Need help with your SEO, social media management or digital marketing strategy? Then contact WSI OMS...
read moreHow Franchisees Should Adopt Local Digital Marketing
Running your franchise can be time-consuming. Despite having to attend to the everyday tasks and objectives of your business, the marketing of your franchise requires attention too. While some business owners grasp the concept of a digital marketing strategy, they lack the knowledge and experience to successfully implement it. Here are four digital marketing avenues for you to explore: Look in to Mobile Advertising Digital marketing is the most effective route for franchisees to reach prospective customers. With the increasing usage of all things mobile, your potential customers probably spend most of their time browsing online on their mobiles rather than viewing ‘hard copy’ ads. An app with push notifications or simply a mobile text messaging strategy can help you get in front of your customers’ eyes. Create a Local Business Page You can create your local business pages on various platforms including Google+, Facebook and Bing Places for Business. With the aim of appearing in similar (and local) business category search results, this proves highly valuable when it comes to increasing your exposure online and helping potential customers to find your business. Consider Social Media Marketing One of the drivers behind digital marketing is that it is cost-effective. Whether it be your franchise’s website or social media platforms, you will spend less for more. One advantage of social media marketing is that you can specifically target your audience, making it easier to attract your ‘perfect’ potential target group and converting these into potential customers. Investigate local business advertising groups and/or pages on Facebook. These platforms are usually free to advertise on, and they normally form part of a community’s friendly support initiative. Incorporate Local SEO Keywords Keyword research is vital. You’ll need to find out which search terms your community uses when looking for a business within your area. Spend some time experimenting with keyword combinations for the face of your website and for the background, and decide on which keywords will gain you the highest level of traction. Most importantly, remember to include your city and region names to your industry relevant-terms. With digital marketing becoming easily accessible and user-friendly, you need to be aware of the crucial strategies and tools made readily available to you. Brainstorm a digital marketing strategy, do your research and pinpoint your exact target market before implementation. Keep consistent communication flowing and have fun! Need help with your franchise’s digital marketing, SEO or mobile marketing? Then contact WSI OMS...
read more5 best Practices for Mobile SEO
While SEO practices have a lot of commonalities across platforms, you also need to be conscious of the platform and devices from which your device is being accessed, and make some specific adjustments to your optimisation approach. Here are five key best practices to ensure that your site is optimised for mobile. Optimise Your Site Design Keep mobile at the top of your mind when designing your site and be sure to do the following: Use HTML5 instead of Flash. Many mobile devices don’t have the Flash plugin available, so users may not see the content you have created for them. Don’t use pop-ups. These can be annoying for users on all platforms, but they are easier to ignore on a desktop or notebook. On a mobile device, they could irritate your visitors and lead to a high bounce rate. Design with the touch screen in mind. Buttons that are too big or small can lead to accidental clicks. Optimise Titles and Meta Descriptions The same principles apply to titles and meta-descriptions whether you’re writing for mobile or not. However, with mobile in mind, you need to be even more concise. That doesn’t mean you choose brevity over content. Rather, you have to keep honing your ability to express the same message in the shortest possible way. Choose Your Mobile Site Configuration Carefully You need to make a call on whether responsive configuration, dynamic serving or separate site configuration is best for you. Responsive is the safe bet because Google favours it, but the search engine does support the other two as well. Here is a brief explanation in case you’re not sure of the difference: Responsive configuration uses CSS3 media queries to serve the same content to mobile and desktop users, using a flexible design that adapts to the user’s screen. Dynamic serving is essentially the opposite of responsive. It displays different content based on the user’s device. The set-up uses detecting user agents to determine what device is being used to access the URL and then serves the content that has been earmarked for use on that specific platform. This is a very useful tool for segmenting your client base. The separate site approach entails the creation of a parallel site for mobile users. Watch Your Page Speed This is one of the most important things to perfect – if you want to make sure that users stay on your site. Minify code, leverage browser caching to speed up load times, reduce redirects and optimise images. Don’t Block Anything There was a tendency in the past among web designers to block CSS and Javascript because mobile devices couldn’t support them. Images were often blocked too. Nowadays, this is not necessary and you don’t want visitors to miss out on any content as a result of those blocks. These elements are also necessary to enable Google to recognise and categorise your website and to determine whether your site is responsive, dynamic or has a separate URL for mobile users. WSI OMS stays on top of all the SEO trends to keep websites coming out on top of the SERPs. Contact us for help with your SEO strategies, whether for desktop or...
read moreNew Report Highlights Skills Shortage in Digital Marketing
In today’s rapidly changing world, digital transformation is no longer an option for business. Yet, with digital at the heart of all things marketing today, there is no guarantee that business will survive this fast-paced modern industry either. It is a fine line to cross, and a workforce who is oblivious to these changes can be crippling to any organisation. In a recent global survey published by The Economist Group and the Digital Marketing Group (Perpetual Evolution: The Interplay of Talent and Technology in the Future of Marketing), research highlights a dire shortage of critical skills and talent within this space. Based on interviews with more than five hundred international marketing executives, the report indicates that 74% of marketing executives are of the belief that the marketing industry faces a critical talent shortage of digital experience, marketing experience and soft skills needed to meet customers’ increasing demands. The marketers identified ‘customer experience’, ‘strategy and planning / brand management’ and ‘data and analytics’ as crucial to their organisations’ success and business performance. The survey further points out that many of these marketers will need to place a strong emphasis on recruitment and reskilling of their existing workforce equally. With global marketing struggling to ‘future-proof’ organisations during this skill shortage, business needs to become diligent about ongoing employee development and agile teams in order to easily adapt to this constant digital evolution. Need help with your copywriting, social media or digital marketing strategies? Then contact WSI OMS...
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