IS YOUR BUSINESS READY FOR 2016?
The online marketing industry is complex and volatile, but an exciting one for any SME who maintains their strategic involvement and keeps up to date with modern trends. Digital advertising in Australia will become an $11 billion industry over the next five years, growing at about 11 per cent a year. With this online economy growing rapidly, taking full advantage of this growth, understanding your customer, setting goals and implementing the right marketing strategy could prove the difference between getting on top of your competitor and achieving success in business or falling behind in 2016.
Understanding latest market trends for Small-to-Medium businesses in Australia, below we have listed our top 3 topics every SME should be on top of for online marketing success in 2016;
MOBILE; THE CENTRE OF MARKETING
Mobile is becoming the centre and dominant force of marketing. From smartphones, tablets to wearable gadgets, the evolution of mobile devices is one of the prime factors influencing the marketing world. With more than half of all internet searches now coming from a mobile device, for a small business, understanding this and adapting to this growth of mobile usage is key to business success for 2016. SME’s need to be moulding their business’ process and marketing strategies around this and ensure that they are ‘mobile friendly’ in every way. The new year is fast approaching and now is the perfect time to review and plan to capture your target audience across all different medias and platforms.
The Asia-Pacific is the world’s biggest mobile advertising market, with mobile attracting about a third of all online traffic. Currently, more than 50c in every advertising dollar will go online and with forecasts stating that by 2019, almost 80 per cent of those digital marketing dollars will go on mobile advertising.
Make sure your business has all angles covered for mobile and ensure your website, marketing plans and even business processes are optimised and taking advantage of mobile growth. There are various and specific advertising products and techniques tailored around mobile which stem from the general and traditional online marketing approaches being; Local SEO, Mobile PPC Ads, Social Media Marketing, YouTube Advertising as well as Mobile Display Banner Ads, In-App Ads etc. All of these products and strategies MUST always be supported by a very mobile friendly and responsive website.
Click here to speak with one of i-ADS NZ product strategists about maximising your mobile marketing!
UNDERSTANDING AND ACHIEVING GOALS
Online Marketing and more specifically, Search Engine Marketing, is, is all about results. From the first time you create an ad campaign, it’s important to know what you want to gain from your campaign, what your goals are and how you’re going to measure and track your success. Now is the perfect time to review what your business goals and goals of marketing are for 2016 and start working out the plan on how they are going to be achieved.
From an online marketing perspective, whether it be brand awareness, visibility and online presence, website enquiries, phone enquiries, increased sales, conversions, or ROI; establishing, identifying these goals of online marketing and then tracking the performance is very important and could be the difference between success or failure. Not only understanding the overall goals of the business’ online marketing but also completely identifying what we are classifying as a conversion is very important. This could range from completing the enquiry form, making a purchase from the site, subscribing to a newsletter, improved bounce rate etc.
Having dealt with so many businesses in various industries, sectors and each with different marketing goals, i-ADS NZ not only has the experience and expertise in identifying and tracking performance, but we’ve also developed and right tools to measure success. The various types of regularly used and recommended tracking and reporting tools are; Phone Call Tracking, Conversion Tracking, Google Analytics Goals and Funnels, amongst other tracking programs and strategies.
By implementing the right tracking and reporting tools, it allows the business owner to fully understand the performance of their marketing but also understand their customer better. Using past data from any marketing campaign is the best information in planning future campaigns and direction of ongoing advertising. Understanding where success has previously come from and the trend of your customer, will allow you to optimise your campaigns and follow the right strategy.
KNOWING YOUR CUSTOMER & THEIR ONLINE MOVEMENTS
How can you advertise effectively to a customer if you do not know or understand who that customer is? Knowing who your exact target market, demographic, lifestyle and even your customers’ movements, is a great advantage in running an efficient business and marketing plan and therefore ultimately being the deciding factor on how you advertise your business and spend your marketing dollars in right places.
Once again, we all know the power and digital and mobile. In this digital era, when marketing to their customers, businesses need to capture an audience across different medias and platforms. Gone are the days were you could capture 90% of the population and target audience in a living room between 6pm and 8pm of an evening. With the rapid growth of the internet’s usage and more specifically, mobile usage, Australian SME’s must adapt, follow this trend and understand their customers movements and ‘Micro Moments’ online.
The average person with a mobile device, will look at, use or action something on their mobile approx. 150 time per day. Whether it be on Social Media, searching for a local business or product, checking emails, text messaging, watching YouTube videos, listening to music etc. the saying “We Don’t Go Online. We Live Online” is completely accurate.
Understanding who your target market is and identifying the online movements and ‘micro moments’ of your customer can be extremely powerful and critical to success. Online marketing can be very targeted with the right approach. Advertising on the internet is certainly not a ‘one size fits all’ method and you need to custom strategize where your marketing dollars are best spent in order to maximise success and ROI. Whether it be via Paid or Organic Search, Display Marketing, YouTube Ads, Social Media Marketing etc., targeting the right platform and vertical is key.
