content marketing strategy

How the marketing industry was changed by the pandemic

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In the past, businesses have stuck with email marketing, informational websites, television, radio and other forms of marketing. However, overnight the marketing industry was catapulted years ahead of schedule. Once the pandemic hit, it was important for businesses to adopt more digital marketing plans than traditional marketing into their strategy. Which left businesses trying to adopt digital marketing technologies, and quickly.

E-Commerce

Ecommerce became a big thing in 2020. Everyone was ordered to stay at home, which meant no shopping unless it was for essentials and I’m not sure a new pair of shoes would count as essential. Shopping online needed to become quicker, easier and personalised. Instagram quickly introduced its own ‘Instagram Shop’ allowing brands to set up their own digital storefront. Which allowed them to advertise their products to be purchased directly through Instagram. Customers would be able to browse, save and purchase items listed by the business. They also introduced features where content creators could tag items in their photos which were available to purchase through Instagram. Since then other social platforms, such as TikTok followed suit. Creating a focus on their shop would allow the user to purchase items direct from content creators’ videos. They even created a buy now button, taking the relevant information from your phone and with Apple Pay/Google pay to make the purchase instantaneous. Keeping up to date with changing e-commerce technologies is vital for a business. Whilst it may not suit every brand, gaining knowledge of what is available to you is important should the business need to quickly change its approach again.

Laptop showing e-commerce marketing site Shopify on the screen

Video Content

With more people at home, social media usage increased, particularly video streaming. 2020 was the year TikTok blew up and gained 2 billion downloads globally. They started with 15-second clips initially and quickly expanded to 60 seconds after the demand for longer content. Since then, in July 2021 they increased the length to 3 minutes in an effort to expand how users engage with the app. Not long after TikTok became popular, Instagram announced they were introducing Instagram Reels. This allowed a user to record and edit a 15-second clip, they have since extended the length to 90 seconds.

Brand Loyalties

The change of behaviour for brand loyalties also changed along with COVID-19. With consumers trying out different brands and not continuing with purchases with their regular brands. Because of this, businesses have needed to increase their promotional offers to existing customers. Needing to give them a reason to stay loyal and spend their money with them. The marketing industry plays a big part in promoting a business’s brand awareness, as well as improving brand loyalties with their existing consumers. Carrying out research on competitors and how they’re achieving customer loyalty is a vital part of a digital marketing role.

Expectations

Since the pandemic consumers expect even more from businesses. They’d received experience from the best in the business, such as Amazon and now they expect it from every brand they connect with. According to impactmybiz.com, 57% of consumers won’t recommend a brand to a friend or family member if they have a poorly designed mobile website. They want the website to do the work for them, not the other way around. If a brand’s website is difficult to navigate, you can bet their bounce rate is going to be through the roof. Customers tell double the number of people about a bad experience than we they would a good one. Consistently monitoring and analysing data brought in from a business’s website is important. This will allow patterns to be noticed and any issues quickly resolved. It is not surprising that because of this brands have inputted a lot of money into the UX of their website.

Piece of paper with graph showing an incline of progression from the past to the future

Conclusion

Overall, once we were through the rough of the pandemic, it made businesses realise how important marketing was for their business and brand. Digital marketing and its technologies were driven to the forefront of businesses and the changes brought were here to stay. The CMO survey reported in February 2021 that 72.2% of companies saw the importance of the marketing industry within the business increase. Now more than ever, it’s important that businesses have a strong marketing strategy. That starts with an effective digital marketer.

Like the sound of the ever-changing marketing industry? Then maybe a Digital Marketing Apprenticeship is the perfect thing for you. For more information take a look here.

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White Hat SEO tips to Elevate your Search Marketing in 2022

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Laptop on wooden desk with Google search engine on screen

Whether your an organic search beginner or expert, our White Hat SEO tips will benefit your search marketing far beyond 2022. Read on to find out how.

Wait, what is White Hat SEO?

“White hat SEO” are SEO tactics that follow search engine-approved guidelines. This article will outline what those tips are so you can ensure you’re playing by the rules too. Also known as Ethical SEO, they are the opposite of black hat SEO. We will speak more about those below.

Why is White Hat SEO important?

“White hat SEO” are is important because they set a standard, ensuring Search engine results pages (or “SERPs) contain high quality results, which users find valuable.

Also, not following SEO best practice may result in a lower ranking or Google even banning your website from their result pages altogether. You may also end up with a ban from other search engines too. A disaster for your paid and organic search traffic!

So, what are your top White Hat SEO tips?

The following White Hat SEO tips will ensure your domain stays in the good graces of search engine providers, and search engine users:

1. Optimise for humans, not for search engines

Resist the temptation to optimise for higher rankings, rather than for your end user. It is obvious when a page is set up with rankings instead of customers because the tone of the content sounds robotic. Instead write well-written, high quality for your web users. Doing so increases the odds of them becoming a repeat visitor. Great copy will boost your site credibility, which will result in a higher position on SERPs!

2. Use fresh, relevant content to attract better quality traffic

Poor quality, repetitive, commonplace content will result in a lower result on search engine results pages. Make sure you publish regular unique, relevant and interesting content on your website to contribute to better organic search results. Also make sure your content is free of typos!

3. Ensure you use a natural amount of keywords

Gone are the days when people could fill their webpages with keywords and see their website rank at number one. Now, search engine algorithms are much more sophisticated and savvy.

A webpage should contain a natural amount of keywords, so that the page copy reads well. But how much is a good amount you may ask? Industry best practice recommends about one keyword per 150 words.

Three White-and-black S, E and O Scrabble Tiles on Brown Wooden Surface
Good SEO practices mean better organic search results!

4. Optimise images with alt attributes

Alt attributes allows you to add a text description to your images on a web page. They should be used for all images, as best practice.

Alt text is short for alternative text. If an image does not load due to a poor connection or error, the alt text will be displayed instead.

More importantly, alt attribute are vital for accessibility purposes. Web users with screen readers are able to understand what an image is displaying if you include alt attributes!

5. Link to relevant sites…

Linking to relevant sites helps search engine crawlers understand your website more. By looking at the sites you link to, and your internal links, search engines better understand what your business is about,

6. … And ensure backlinks are quality too

Ensure all inbound links are high quality. This is important because these backlinks act as a signal to search engines that a resource finds your content credible. Therefore if the sites linking to your websites are spammy or low quality, this implies to the search engine that your site is too!

7. Adhere to HTML structural best practice

Make sure your web pages are coded properly, using the appropriate tags. Think title tags, good quality meta descriptions and the other things that make up web pages. Well-structured web pages help crawlers to understand the structure of your site better, which may result in boosted rankings.

So there you have it! If you adhere to these White Hat SEO tips, your organic search results will be the best they can be.

P.S. DO NOT follow these Black Hat SEO methods

Make sure your web pages do not follow the tactics listed below, as doing so violates search engine rules:

  • Poor Quality Content
  • Keyword Stuffing
  • Cloaking (presenting uses and search engines with different content)
  • Sneaky Redirects to other websites or pages
  • Duplicate Content
  • Invisible Text
  • Link farming & Irrelevant backlinks
  • Blog comment spam

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Beginners Guide to SEO – Digital Marketing

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Beginners Guide to SEO 1

When you’re a beginner to the world of digital marketing one of the most daunting things is getting to grips with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). In this article I am going to explain not just how to get good at SEO but how to move from crappy SEO to building habits to consistently Ranking page 1 on Google Search.

Even if you are following all the basic advice of ‘creating great and engaging content’, ‘adding keywords to your website’ and you’re even ‘making sure your website loads fast. It won’t alone make your website shoot to the 1st page of Google Search. So let’s break down 5 steps.

SEO Step 1 – Find Three Keywords

These are words that you will create content around that is relevant to your intended target audience. For example, if my audience is Gen-Z female gifters then there is no point in me creating content that would resonate with Generation X male gifters. A way to get around this is by using a site like ‘answerthepublic.com’. This site shows questions, prepositions, comparisons that people post on forums, blogs and social media. This content in turn will influence the content you create but also act as long tail Keywords being an easy way for our site to start appearing number one in less competitive searches. This will also have the added benefit of allowing our content and website appeal to the terms our target audience actually want to see.

Another option for finding Keywords is ‘explodingtopics.com’. This is another free tool that lists a bunch of Keywords for new topics in your chosen topic of exploration. Because all the topics are new current trends it usually means that the Keywords associated with them are less competitive than the standard ones. You can even head to this site first and then put the topic into ‘answerthepublic.com’ to get even Long tail Keywords.

SEO Step 2 – Create Epic content

Once you’ve chosen your three Keywords now it’s time for the fun part, now it’s time to make content around these three key words. This step is very important. The internet is full of amazing pieces of content that people have the luxury of picking up for free to assure you content is one of the lucky ones chosen, you are going to have to make the content captivating. I can’t tell you exactly how to make your content stand out, actually If I had the answer to that I’d be a millionaire but what I can do is give some key pointers as things you can do when you onto something to make your content more shareable and linkable.

  1. Publish content that is long and in depth. This will mean there are more touch points for other sites to want to link back to as it increases the likelihood that you have something shareable.
  2. Add something to hook your audience into the content that would make them want to share or link to it. examples of these could be:
    1. Statistic or Data Visualisation
    2. Example Case Study 
    3. Unique Strategy
    4. An innovative brand new tool

Anything that will make someone feel the need to link back to your content.

  • Beginners Guide to SEO 2

SEO Step 3 – Optimise the Keyword for you Content

No longer is Keyword optimisation all about stuffing your page with Keywords, now the goal is to help Google’s algorithm understand what topic your site is about. 

The first step is to include your target Keyword in a few important places on your webpage.

This are but not limited to:

  • Title Tag
  • In the first 100 words on the page
  • in the image alt text
  • In the H1 Tag and in the H2 & H3 Tag
  • In the Last 100 words of your page

The next thing to do is to add a little something called LSI Keyword. Without sounding too simplistic LSI Keywords are terms closely aligned with your main Keyword. For example if my Keyword is gifting then my LSI Keywords would be Birthday, presents, christmas and more. Doing this will reinforce to the Google algorithm that your website is about your chosen Keyword Topic. The easiest way to find this is by searching your keyword, heading to the bottom of Google search, and using the ‘Search Related to…’. This brings up a list of potential LSI Keywords for you to use and add your webpage.

Step 4 – Optimise your content for users

Backlinks alone are not enough for your content to rank well in Google’s search algorithm, it must  be optimised for your users. This is because the algorithm pays attention to how users for lack of a better term use your website. If the users click onto your page and then straight off it then it will start to push it down the search rankings. The opposite though is true, if users click and stay on your page then a Search ranking boost shall come your way. 

Here are some tips on how increase the time spent on your site by users:

  1. Front load the important information. 
    1. Don’t buy into the long introduction slow burning the information people are seeking. Give to them upfront so they’ll actually read it and then have the rest of the content be more depth on the topic being discussed.
  2. Make sure the visual design of your site is simple and easy to digest for audiences to consume. This will mean that your great content actually gets viewed as there is nothing distracting the user from what they came for.

Step 5 – Build Backlinks

A backlink for the uninitiated is simple: it is the link on another site that sends users to your webpage. All the best practises discussed above leave you in a good position for backlinks to be made to your site. A great proactive way to build backlinks is to find ‘broken links’. A broken link is as it says on the tin a link that doesn’t lead to a page anymore. These offer the opportunity to message the author of the site with the dead/broken link to replace the link with similar if not the same content on your webpage.

If all these steps are followed this should set your web page and content well on the way to landing on the first page of Google search and you’ll have fantastic SEO. If you found these SEO tips helped and are looking for more support, please head to https://www.apprenticetips.com/ for more content just like this and much more.

A Guide To Effective Content Creation

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Digital-Marketing-Content-Creation-Flatlay

Content creation: an arguably vague sector within the digital marketing spectrum, but needless to say an oh-so-important one. Not only does it allow you to innovate with your brand, but also to grow with your audience. When you dive deep into the depths of what content creation can entail in your apprenticeship, you’ll find a vastness of creativity, ideas and excitement. And with an ever-growing range of outlets for your creations and the development of more ways to reach your audience, it is clear to see why content creation can be seen as one of the most exciting areas of digital marketing.

But with such remarkable opportunity for experimentation, and so much availability for new and exciting ideas, not only can creating content for your brand feel somewhat overwhelming, but it also means there’s huge potential to miss the mark when it comes to resonating with your audience. So, I’ve rounded up my top tips to ensure that the content you create in your digital marketing apprenticeship remains fresh and your results remain strong.

Know Your Audience

It’s the oldest trick in the book – and it’s easy to see why. When you begin to think about the type of content you want to create for your brand, the audience you’re targeting should be at the top of your list for considerations. Not only does this mean understanding what themes of content they’ll find relatable, but also where they’re going to be found.

For example, considering which channels they’re more likely to interact with (and more specifically which channels they interact with whilst in a conversion mindset) Also, it’s important to consider which types of content they’re more likely to engage with. For instance, do they prefer feed posts or do they show more engagement in stories? Creating customer personas are a great way to begin to understand this. And when you begin gaining data on content that performs well, you’ll be able to refine your understanding on what is considered engaging for your audience.

Use Your Voice

It’s certainly not an easy job, but it’s a worthwhile one. Creating a voice for your brand and company which goes beyond getting the client or customer to convert is one of the most effective ways to make sure content delivers results. By creating a tone of voice for your brand which is used across owned media, your audience begin to engage with your brand on a personal level. Rather than just being a company which provides a needed service, you’re now an organisation which tells a story and is relatable to the human instinct of your customer or client.

An effective way of doing this can either be by showing the behind-the-scenes workings of your business, creating content which inspires customer feedback and communication, or simply by using humour to engage with your audience.

Consistency Is Key

Once you’ve established a clear tone of voice and understand your audience, consistency within your content is a great way to keep your brand on your audience’s radar. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to recycle the same best-performing video over-and-over on every channel, or that you have to plaster your logo onto every piece of content you create, it simply means maintaining the brand’s online reputation.

This can be anything from writing copy which matches the brands tone of voice, subtly using brand colours or fonts within graphic design work, or even having a consistent schedule to post content. Consistency creates yet another layer of familiarity of your brand for your audience and is an effective method to keep customer interest retained.

Digital-Marketing-Content-Strategy-Planning

Plan, Prepare, Execute

PPE – no, not that kind… All jokes aside, having a content creation process which includes thorough planning will ensure that content is not only created, but executed to a level which shows off the full potential of your brand. By having a clear understanding of hero-trends, micro-trends and keywords that you want to target, you’ll ensure your content remains relevant and insightful for your audience.

Keyword research tools, Google Trends and even having a clear understanding of your audience’s current interests, are great methods to ensure you’re on the ball with planning and preparing relevant and engaging content.

And To Wrap It Up

From having a clear and solid understanding of your audience and how to reach them, to creating consistent content which aligns with your brand, effective content creation is one of the best ways to not only reach your target audience, but to also keep them retained. And whilst these tips only make up the foundations when it comes to creating effective and engaging content, they’ll allow you to experiment with content and grow your company, whilst staying true to your brand and audience.

For more content creation tips, take a look here, or for more information on Digital Marketing, check out our blogs.