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Email marketing is a tactic businesses use to target a specific audience and customer group via electronic mail. However, customers have to give permission to the company to send them emails. Email marketing strategies aim to boost conversions and revenue by providing the customers on the email list with valuable information, commercials, or content.

The first marketing email was sent back in 1978, resulting in over $13 in sales. However, modern email marketing has moved away from a one-size-fits-all approach and towards personalization and consent.

This blog post will cover everything you need to know about email marketing and give you tips to improve your email marketing efforts.

How Does Email Marketing Work?

As mentioned above, nowadays, email marketing is based on segmentation and personalized content. Email marketers usually segment their customers into different email lists to do this. The segmentation process is based on personal preferences and interests. Personalization is crucial since sending customers superfluous emails could lead to them unsubscribing from your email list. 

But there are more components to email marketing campaigns. To execute a successful email marketing campaign, you’ll need to craft an eye-catching and relevant email subject line and incorporate images that resonate with your email subscribers.

When to Use Email Marketing

Email marketing can be used to:

• Create brand awareness: Sending relevant, well-crafted email messages to your customer base will keep your company in your customers’ minds. And when they’re ready to engage or sign up, they can!
• Promote content: You can also send emails with brand new blog content to your customers. This way, you can boost engagement with your site’s content, which might lead to signups and conversions.
• Market products: Send your customers your new products and services to boost sales. 

Email Marketing Benefits

Here are three benefits of email marketing:

• Conversions: Email marketing can help you boost conversions. For example, you can send customers personalized coupons or special offers on their birthdays.
• Scalability: Emails can be sent to many recipients in one go. Bulk emails are a cost-effective marketing tactic compared to other channels like social media.
• Customer loyalty: Sending relevant emails to your customers can help you build a loyal customer base.

If you need some help with creating an excellent email marketing strategy, visit the WSI New Media Marketing website today,

We are a full-service digital marketing agency in Greensboro, NC and our services include inbound and outbound marketing, content creation, advertising, and more.

Want to discover how to blend web and digital marketing analytics?

There are multiple ways you can monitor the performance of your marketing campaigns. It’s crucial to understand the progress of your digital marketing strategy, how your users interact with your website and your most popular and least popular products. Doing so will help you map out your subsequent marketing steps and any changes you need to make.

For example, if you notice that your marketing efforts aren’t paying off for your business, you might be missing some crucial data points that are causing you not to see the whole picture. 

Fortunately, combining web and digital marketing analytics can help you determine if you are missing critical data and improve your marketing effectiveness.

This blog post will cover the differences between web and marketing analytics and how you can combine the two.

The Difference Between Web Analytics and Marketing Analytics

Before we jump into the differences between the two, let’s first cover what web analytics and digital marketing analytics are.

Digital marketing analytics looks at how users interact with your site, how long they spend on your website, when they leave, and when they decide to switch to mobile apps. It essentially compares your online marketing channels and their conversion rates.

Web analytics analyzes the performance of your site. However, most businesses go beyond just a website. Consequently, it’s not adequate for companies to monitor just their website performance. 

As a result, the main difference between the two lies in the fact that digital marketing analytics doesn’t only monitor your website marketing performance but also the performance of other online platforms like CRMs, mobile apps, and social media platforms.

How to Blend Web Analytics and Digital Marketing Analytics

Here’s how you can link web analytics to your digital analytics:

• Use your site’s web analytics to track unique visitors, bounce rate, and other metrics that you can use to achieve business goals and boost customer experience. 
• Combine your web and digital marketing analytics in one platform. This way, you can evaluate how the different digital channels influence one another.
• Store your web and digital marketing analytics in one location. Here, you should gather data from call tracking services, ad services, CRMs, and other sources.

If you need some help with creating an excellent digital marketing strategy, visit the WSI New Media Marketing website today.

We are a full service digital marketing agency in Greensboro, NC and our services include SEO, paid search, website design, build and optimization, inbound and outbound marketing, and more.

Learn about the different digital marketing strategies used by businesses today along with the pros and cons.

The Different Types  of Digital Marketing

Here are some of the types of digital marketing you may incorporate:

• Search engine optimization (SEO) is shrouded in mystery – only because Google and other search engines change their algorithms to deter cheap tricks. The goal of SEO is to increase your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) to ensure that your business is found by your target audience.
  • On-page SEO optimizes web pages to boost search visibility using elements such as content, keyword usage, structure, metadata, and UX.
  • Off-page SEO deals with increasing your authority using elements like backlinks and social shares and accounts for 75% of SEO.
• Search engine marketing (SEM) is a type of internet marketing that uses paid advertising above search results to attract visitors to your website. SEM leverages keywords that are searched often on search engines to improve the ranking of your website on SERPs. Consequently, a lot of planning and keyword research is needed to yield long-lasting results. Google AdWords can reach 90% of global internet users.
• Pay-per-click (PPC) is similar to SEM in that it is a form of paid advertising where you are charged only when a user clicks on your ad. This digital marketing strategy is not limited to search engines, but can also be found on Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and even banner ads. Because the cost per click (CPC) is determined by how popular the keyword is, finding keywords that are in-demand yet reasonably priced is key. 
• Content marketing is the cornerstone of all marketing efforts. Whether used on your website, in blogs and newsletters, or for video marketing or podcasts, high-quality content adds value. Although used in digital advertising, content is more than just hard selling. What you share must inform, amuse, inspire, or convince your prospects and buyers through its relevance. Because content marketing is a specialized and ongoing activity, using the services of a professional content marketing team is worth spending money on.
• Social media marketing (SMM) targets your audience on social media platforms. There is a network for every kind of business, e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. The beauty of SMM is that it makes two-way communication easy through comments, likes, and so on. For actionable insights, each platform has some form of analytics; and for maximum efficiency, marketing automation can schedule posts for when your audience is browsing social media.
• Email marketing, when used appropriately, helps you build your mailing list, onboard new buyers, and retain existing customers. By including social buttons, referral rewards, and compelling content, email marketing can be a highly integrated marketing tactic that shortens the sales cycle.
• Mobile marketing reaches your audience via their smartphones or tablets. Considering that we spend “a third of our waking time (4.8 hours/day) on mobiles”, getting your message in front of consumers means sending it to their cellular phones. Geofencing lets you target mobile ads to clearly defined audience segments for relevant engagement.

Why Should I Have a Digital Marketing Strategy?

Online marketing success requires a roadmap that starts with a thorough analysis of your competitors, market segmentation, and persona development. Only then can you create a digital marketing plan that aligns with your marketing goals, resources, and budget. To implement your plan, schedule online activities, launch, and then measure and manage the results.

Pros of Having a Digital Marketing Strategy

• Reach a wider audience and tap into new markets.
• Personalize content to grab users’ attention.
• Build relationships with engaging marketing tactics.
• Cost effective when ROI is measured.

Cons of Having a Digital Marketing Strategy

• Trolls can cause unnecessary stress.
• The changing algorithms and regulations enforced by search engines means you must stay up to date.

To explore the best digital marketing strategies for your business, get in touch with WSI New Media Marketing online or call 336.763.4006.

“Is it possible that digital marketing accounted for X’s success?” wondered Y*. They sold similar products at matching prices and offered comparable service. Read on to find out X’s secret!

What is Digital Marketing?

Simply put, online marketing is the promotion of your brand using digital media. It connects with your target audience via the internet and smart devices. It uses digital means to disseminate your brand message, advertise, and track the impact of your brand. It usually refers to marketing efforts that appear on mobile phones, laptops, tablets, or any type of digital devices.

Here are The Different Types of Digital Marketing

For a company taking its first foray into the world of digital marketing, it can be intimidating. All the jargon, abbreviations, and ever-changing algorithms seem daunting – never mind the myriad different types of digital marketing. Let’s explore the digital marketing channels you might use as part of your digital marketing strategy:

• Content marketing is the base of all your marketing campaigns. Whenever you distribute messages that educate, entertain, encourage, or persuade your audience, you are creating content.
• Search engine optimization, a.k.a. SEO is the heartbeat of all digital marketing tactics. By analyzing the keywords and rankings of your website, you can work to optimize your digital presence to be higher up on the search engine results page (SERP).
•  PPC stands for pay-per-click – a way to advertise on search engines like Google by bidding on keywords that bring in the most online traffic. Your account is billed every time someone clicks on one of your ads.
• Search engine marketing (SEM) combines PPC and SEO efforts to attract visitors to your website through search engines using paid and unpaid methods.
• Social media marketing (SMM) helps you reach your audience via social media platforms from LinkedIn to TikTok.
•  Email marketing is a fantastic tool for promoting offers and discounts, sharing content, and distributing relevant information directly to subscribers’ inboxes.
• Mobile marketing sends messages through SMS and push notifications that reach your audience on-the-go.
• Influencer marketing and affiliate marketing involve collaborating with people in a position of eminence – be they industry experts or social media celebs.

Why Do You Need Digital Marketing for Your Business?

Digital marketing is to organizations. In comparison to print, radio, and television ads, it is deemed less expensive. In a manner that traditional advertising and marketing cannot, digital marketing campaigns are simple to set up, execute, and track, with outcomes that are quantifiable. 

As X discovered, digital marketing is essential for business success because it is:

• Affordable and offers great ROI
• Flexible – test, measure, and tweak
• Interactive – engage and manage your reputation to be regarded as an authority
• Accessible where your audience is
• Exciting – include multiple types of media, interact with influencers, track your customers’ buying journeys

If, like Y, you would like more information on how to leverage digital marketing to outperform your competitors, contact WSI New Media Marketing at 336.763.4006 or online. (*Names changed to protect the innocent!)

In order to get the most out of your digital marketing, it is essential to know how to use social media for your business. There are currently almost 5 billion people using social media platforms. Each of these spends an average of 2.5 hours per day on their platforms of choice. These hours offer perfect opportunities to target new customers and build brand awareness. Do you know how to take advantage of these opportunities? Follow these tips for social media mastery. 

Brainstorm your ideas

It is vital to emphasize the ‘social’ in social media, even in the beginning as you develop your strategies, tactics and content. Bring your team together and get everyone’s input. Some team members may be excellent copywriters but may not be comfortable with social media. Others may be social media natives with strong ideas on how and where to post for best results. Talk it out, get creative and throw all possible ideas on the table before you start to hash out a strategy.

Decide which platform best suits your company and content

Your success depends on using the right platform. Some businesses will be better off reaching their customers on Facebook, while others should stick to a mix of Twitter and LinkedIn, for example. Think carefully about the kind of work you do, the sector you are in, and the preferences of your target market.

Build relationships to grow and expand

Many people make the mistake of focusing only on numbers in their social media: more followers, more fans, etc. Don’t get us wrong, the numbers are important, but it is more important that you are targeting the right people – those who will become committed customers and longstanding members of your community. When you build a community, its members will engage with you, and spread the word about your brand, helping the community to grow organically. You may even want to bring social media influencers into the mix.

Pay attention to trends and be interactive

Social media trends move and shift with alarming rapidity. It is no good posting the same kind of content, in the same way, all the time. It is essential that you pay attention to what your community and other people on social media are doing and saying, and keep up with the trends – even better, learn to anticipate them. You may want to bring an influencer on board to help. 

WSI New Media Marketing is a full-service digital marketing company in Greensboro, North Carolina. Contact us for expert help with social media for your business, and all aspects of digital marketing, including your content marketing strategy and more.

Social media marketing is the best way to build brand awareness and develop a loyal fan base. However, you can’t simply “wing it” through your social media marketing. It consists of several core skills and tactics that you need to master. Social media marketing courses are the best and quickest way either to learn the fundamentals or to upgrade your marketing efforts.

Where should I begin?

There are many social media courses available, covering every skill level from beginner to advanced. It makes sense to start with a beginner’s course if you are a newcomer to social media marketing. If you have already been working in the field for a while, and are looking to get better results, you can either take a refresher course, or go back to basics – you may find that there are a lot of basic concepts that you don/t know about yet.

How do I know which course is right for me?

To help you choose the right social media marketing course, consider your current skill level, desired skill level, and budget. These three elements should help you zero in on the course that you and your team need at any given moment. Whatever your current skill level is, you want a course that will take you up to the next level. With your end result in mind, you can then look at the cost-vs-benefit balance among all the options, and make an informed choice. 

The different options available

There are way too many social media marketing courses available for us to list here, but here are four of the best:

• Social media marketing certification from HubSpot: The HubSpot Academy offers a wide range of courses covering all aspects of the field. This particular one is a well-rounded social media marketing course that teaches you everything from strategy to social media listening, social media advertising, and more.
• Hootsuite’s social media training: Many social media marketers probably already use Hootsuite to schedule their posts. This course will turn beginners into competent marketers, and help established ones take a more strategic, and technically competent approach to their posting.

• Social media marketing mastery by Udemy: Udemy has a course for pretty much everything, and this one is a really comprehensive one that will turn you into a social media expert. 

• Social media marketing foundations (LinkedIn): LinkedIn offers this for free on its Learning Platform, and also provides access to several paid social media courses from intermediate to advanced skill levels. This course offers a quick, free overview of everything you need to know about social media.

WSI New Media Marketing is a full-service digital marketing company in Greensboro, North Carolina. Contact us for expert help with your social media marketing, and all aspects of digital marketing, including your content marketing strategy and more.

Content marketing is not just about trying out various tactics and hoping they will benefit your business. Content must be used carefully and strategically to meet your business goals. A content marketing strategy is therefore vital to your success. How do you develop a content marketing strategy? Here is a step-by-step guide.

Who is your target audience?

The first thing you need to do is get very clear about exactly who you are trying to reach with your content. Do you have only one audience, or several audience segments? Whoever your ideal customers are, you must understand how to reach them and design your content accordingly. Once you completely understand your audience, you can choose the appropriate channels to reach them, as well as planning the content itself.

Define your main goal

What do you want your content marketing to do? Is your main objective simply to raise awareness of your business, do you want to build your list of potential leads, or are you more interested in converting the leads you already have? Although you will be tempted to try and develop content that serves multiple purposes, it is important that you narrow your focus.

Brainstorm ideas

Once you fully understand your audience and know exactly what you want to achieve with your content, you can start getting creative. Bring your team together and start throwing around ideas about topics, channels and tactics. At this stage, there should be no limit to the possibilities. All ideas should be considered. Once everyone has raised their suggestions, look at everything with your audience and objectives in mind.

Choose your content management system

It is very important that you choose an effective and easy-to-use content management system (CMS) to execute your strategy. CMSs enable you to handle creation, publication, analytics and more. There are many CMS options available, so choose the one that best suits your purposes and budget.

Publish, manage and maintain your content

Finally, it is time to take your content, put it out there and monitor the response. Draw up an editorial calendar to help you publish carefully planned, well-managed, balanced and diverse content. You should also create a social media content calendar to complement your main content.  

WSI New Media Marketing is a full-service digital marketing company in Greensboro, North Carolina. Contact us for expert help with your digital marketing campaigns, including developing an effective content marketing strategy and more.

Every piece of content you create for your website and other online platforms forms part of your content marketing funnel. Each communication is designed to move your audience members from one phase of the funnel to the next. Therefore, it is important to know what all the different sections of the funnel are, and how to create content for each one.

The content marketing funnel consists of four sections or phases, starting from the first interaction and progressing to the point where the prospect becomes a paying customer. These four sections are Awareness, Evaluation, Conversion and Delight. Let’s take a closer look at each one in turn.

Awareness

When potential customers first enter your funnel, you can safely assume that they are completely new to you, and have previously been unaware of your brand and what you do. At this initial stage, it is your job to make them aware of your products and their benefits. The awareness phase, also known as the Top of Funnel (TOFU) stage, is the point at which you educate your audience about who you are and what you do.

Evaluation

When your audience progresses to the middle of the funnel (MOFU), they reach the Evaluation stage. Here is where the audience members consider whether they really need your product or service. Your content thus moves beyond the introductory material to more in-depth discussions of your products’ benefits. Typical communications at this stage would include case studies, white papers, emails, events and webinars.

Conversion

If your customers have made it to the bottom of the funnel, they are clearly interested in your products. Now you have to give them reasons to buy. You can tell them about special offers and compare your products to those of your competitors, clearly highlighting the benefits you offer. Always make sure that you have a clear call to action and that you make purchasing as easy and attractive as possible.

Delight

The final part of the funnel is about retaining customers once you have converted them, keeping them happy and enabling them to provide feedback that will help you bring in more people like them. Your content should keep customers engaged and encourage them to interact and refer their friends.

WSI New Media Marketing is a full-service digital marketing company in Greensboro, North Carolina. Contact us for expert help with your digital marketing campaigns, including building and maintaining your content marketing, managing your social media marketing and more.

Let’s take a moment to discuss some new SEO, digital marketing, social media marketing and mobile marketing ideas.

Few industries evolve as rapidly as mobile marketing. With consumer habits and mobile technologies changing so fast, your mobile marketing needs to stay a step ahead of your competitors and remain relevant with mobile users. According to industry forecasts, targeted mobile advertising spending in the United States is forecast to surpass $32 billion by the end of 2023.

One of the big trends for 2021 is conversational chatbots which respond to customer questions by mimicking human interaction through a combination of pre-programmed scripts and artificial intelligence. User Generated Content is also growing this year and can be a very powerful weapon in your mobile marketing arsenal; while social commerce and shoppable advertisements integrate commerce into the social media platforms for a seamless shopping experience.

Product Launches Using Mobile Marketing

As consumers upgrade devices to take advantage of carriers’ 5G technology, mobile marketers must be prepared to exploit its capabilities.

Using mobile marketing for a product launch just makes sense. You can easily define a target audience and marketing plan to expose your product to targeted users over time. You can target according to geographical area (by using geofencing) as well as many other demographic criteria, providing opportunities to tweak your message.

How Do You Measure the Success of Your Mobile Marketing Campaign?

At the start of the campaign, make your key performance indicators (KPIs) as a social metric for your success. KPIs work best when they can be measured frequently and are easy for everyone to understand and work with.

There are other quantifiable metrics you can use too: interaction rate, mobile payment methods, codes, and coupons; click-throughs from a mobile site to your regular site; click-to-call rate, retention rate, and behavioral differences which can easily be tracked through cookies.

Ensure that the various elements of your site infrastructure lead to mobile optimization. In other words, bear in mind – when designing your site and your campaigns – that consuming content on mobile devices is different than it is on a desktop. For example, you need shorter sentences, engaging headers, and relevant media, like high-quality images and videos. Make it easy for users to skim through content.

Forecasts indicate that targeted mobile advertising spending in the United States will surpass $32 billion by the end of 2023. Remember that your mobile marketing strategy is a crucial pillar of your overall marketing objectives.

To help you apply these ideas to your business, WSI New Media Marketing offers a wide range of mobile marketing and responsive web design services. Contact our friendly team now at 336.763.4006 or online.

Where are you going with your SEO, digital marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing post pandemic? Start by asking what baby boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z are doing on social media.

During the pandemic, social media became critical to marketing. While spending on traditional advertising is on the decline, social media spending increased from 13.3% of marketing budgets in February 2020 to 23.2% in June 2020 — a 74% increase.

Social media platforms are now the main source of information and have surpassed print and other digital media platforms. The pandemic was a catalyst to the rise in social media usage with ever more people relying on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to stay up to date – not to mention the explosion in TikTok.

Recommendations for a Post-Pandemic Future

Having a bold presence on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media platforms is vital. Social networks offer marketing strategies that give a unique ability to connect and bond with customers in meaningful ways.

If there’s one thing we learned in the pandemic, it was that agility and adapting quickly were the best traits marketers could exhibit. We saw more innovation than we have seen in decades, and this should continue. We should learn from our responsiveness and remember that it can save or pivot our businesses again in the future.

Undeniably, social media marketing provides you with a platform to brand, sell, and market your products and services.

A powerful social media marketing strategy must include a process for identifying new features and channels so that you can quickly create content for them. One such example is Instagram Reels, which has “reel-ly” taken off!

Today, research yields fast results so that you can pivot a campaign in no time at all. You can identify influencers and creators who resonate well with your audience and work with them to create engaging content.

This is a good time to give your ads, emails, videos, webinars, and podcast episodes an overhaul to let your customers know that you are in touch with their needs and ready to face a brave new post-pandemic world.

Do you feel you lack social media talent? No problem! WSI New Media Marketing and our agency partners can help you realize the true potential of social media and brand advocacy. Contact our friendly team now online or at 336.763.4006.