International tourism in the Philippines reached its all-time high in 2017 with 6.6 million foreign tourists, according to an article released by the Department of Tourism. Events such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit and Miss Universe Pageant certainly made an impact on the tourism industry last year.
The local tourism industry is also seeing a lot of action. According to a Philstar online article, 60 million Filipinos visit local tourist spots every year.
Basically, we all know that the travel, tour, and accommodation industries are doing well. But have you ever thought of how much customer persuasion can Google provide and how can a competent digital marketing in the Philippines breathe a new life to the algorithm?
I mean if your site is doing well for popular tourism keywords, what would that mean for you?
Using relevant keywords, ahrefs.com shows this data below:
We see that it’s mostly the locals who are looking for travel and tour agencies online, followed by the US and Canada.
We see that many are typing in these keywords below. As of now, “travel agency in Manila” takes the crown for the most searched keyword.
If you want to know more about searches relevant to your local business, please contact us for information. We would be glad to give that information out to you for absolutely no charge.
On the other hand, here are the other terms people are searching for are:
Here’s what you need to do to get your placement in Google for keywords such as above:
Get a website if you don’t own one yet
Do keyword research and set-up your pages logically for each market that you work in
Add textual content and videos that are uniquely made by you on the page
Add correct meta data to those pages
Apply correct schema mark up to those pages
Apply for Google My Business (free Google service) so you can do SEO for the Maps section in Google, such as below:
Connect your site to Google Webmaster Console
Connect your site to Google Analytics
Submit a sitemap to Google using Search Console
Fetch and render your website
Go to popular and international directories, like Yellow Pages, and list your business for local citation
Educate your site users through blogging and article writing
Have a Facebook page and Instagram account to showcase stunning photos
Invite your previous clients to review you (positively)
Always be aware of your Google competitors and look at what’s working for them and why they rank
Keep up posting content to other websites and building backlinks to your website
Have you ever wondered how Google traffic flows for certain industries?
I do.
Here’s what I found and some insights on what’s happening in Google searches for insurance, real estate, tourism, medical schools, aviation, call center, job, and automotive industries.
I really wanted to see what keywords were being put into Google by consumers internationally, as well as nationwide for Philippine-based queries, but I found out that there was no real research on the topic. We know a lot about what is happening in the States, then I came across a word-stream blog on the most expensive keywords, on which I commented:
Since I couldn’t find anything specific for Philippines, I had to start from scratch.
It’ll be a bit hard to start from scratch but, somehow, I felt like I had to get to people whatever data I’ll gather.
I used Ahrefs.com and basically typed in Major Business Categories with the word Philippines suffixed to the industry. This gave me a list of a ton of keywords which I later sorted myself.
So, I focused on Ahrefs.com’s results and searched if any transactional keyword would pop-out. Basically, a transactional keyword is one of the 3 types of keywords:
Transactional (looking for product or service)
Informational (wanting to know more about a thing – could turn to be transactional eventually)
Navigational (looking for location of a place or object)
I had over 40 keywords which I thought had pretty solid search volumes. I then transferred those keywords into Google Planner in Adwords.
These were the industries and their keywords, respectively:
And the list of keywords, sorted by maximum clicks and not monthly searches for Googles Pay Per Click.
Here’s the most clicked paid keyword: Real Estate Philippines with almost 5,000 clicks, each click costing P14.32.
Here’s the most expensive keyword: Health Insurance with P42.84. I omitted Medical School Philippines as the Clicks per month and the CTR were very low, although the CPC was higher than Health Insurance Philippines.
Now, let’s look at the organic, non-paid part of Google and see what we can find.
What this tells us is that there are some keywords that have a high search volume with low competition.
So, if you are in those industries, you can have your SEO person try and rank your site organically for such keywords. Construction keywords, Medical Schools, Tourism focused on Boracay keywords will work well for you instantly.
Conclusion: These industries have a very high chance of doing well in Search Marketing using both Paid Ads and Organic SEO.
I wrote a blog on the Purpose of SEO just in case, you want to know more about it and in case you want to know how to be an SEO master in the Philippines yourself. In this blog, I discussed the nine points why SEO is not just about ranking, but how it is also about branding, communications, and overall professionalism.
Lots of companies are starting to question the existence of blogs as most of them aren’t getting read and not generating any wanted leads at all. The truth is, the sweet fruit of blogging takes time to be achieved – you don’t just put a block of text and expect it to be a sensational hit. Successful blogging takes a lot of hard work.
People who dismiss it and say it’s part of the past aren’t perseverant enough to be in the industry. You should know that consistency and persistence are required with this digital marketing tool, as realized by some of the top bloggers today.
If you’re operating a digital marketing company in the Philippines and you’re beginning to fail to see of importance of blogging, look at the following points to help restore your confidence!
Blogging is more than just text
The first thing to keep in mind is that blogging is more than a stack of paragraphs filled with well-researched information and fancy wordplay. While this is true in the early days of blogging, the same thing can’t be said today. With the continuous advancement of technology, more and more innovations are being added in blogs, like:
Video embeds
Infographics
Podcasts
Social media post embeds
Other multimedia displays
Simply put, blogging has become more interactive and attuned to the modern way consumers read and advertisers promote. As a digital marketer, you should take advantage of this. The fact that blogging continues to be innovated simply means that it’s still as important as before.
Why blogging is still important in marketing
While fairly new, blogging has some rich and impressive history:
In 1999, at least 23 blogs were existing in the internet.
During the early 2000s, there’s a sudden rise of interest in blogging: political articles, how-to guides, and pop culture pieces are some of the most popular ones.
By 2006, there were 50 million blogs in the World Wide Web.
The evident leap of numbers show how widespread and ingrained blogging is into the general media and while more people are saying the best types of marketing medium today are videos, it looks like blogging isn’t going anywhere as it only has reached its peak, on traditional format. There are more to discover about it in the future.
Aside from the given responsibility to provide insights and pieces of advice, we do blogging because of the technical and business side of things. Here are some reasons that made blogging important since it first came out and they’re still relevant as of today.
SEO and link building
Blogging is good for SEO as it helps your site rank on search engines. When a blog satisfies both the reader and the knowledge graph of Google, then you’re doing well.
Furthermore, blogging increases site visits through link building. Just a single blog post with the right amount of link building can earn you a multitude of visits that your site needs.
Branding
When you blog, you talk about your services or the company as a whole. And if you display your expertise in the field through these topics, the credibility and awareness of your brand are built up.
Distribution network
Blogging can also be a channel to release information about your company and services. It also helps fill up content on your social media handles. Your blogs can be tweaked and be fed off as social media posts or micro blogs. These improves SEO, link building, and social media presence.
Audience insight
In a way, blogging can also help you gauge what your audience actually wants. Your first few blogs can be a little tricky because you’re not completely aware of their interests then.
Look at your most read or most shared blogs and the ones that got the least attention to know your market and the topics getting responses. Through doing so, you’ll know how to approach your writing better.
Techniques to create rewarding blog posts
If you feel that your constant blogging isn’t going anywhere, you could be doing something wrong with your methods and techniques. Look at some of the best practices when blogging to improve returns:
Have the right writer
The best blogs come from the heads of the business, may it be the CEO or the owner as they have the complete grasp of the mission and vision of the business. In our previous blog, we’ve told you the story of Marcus Sheridan, owner of River Pools and Spas. He used blogs to show his expertise, the key to revitalize his business, and it should inspire you to do the same.
If the head of the business doesn’t have the time or capacity to write a blog post, select the most capable writer who can absorb information from both the owner and external sources, and integrate it into one valuable blog post.
Contemplate the titles and topics thoroughly
The best blogs have provoking content. Ponder on your titles and topics comprehensively and make sure that what you write feels like a conversation, one that provides unique user experience and translates the message of the blog properly.
Start with the solution
Mix it up and offer the solution to the problem on the outset! But be careful not to give away everything – a sliver of it will do. As the blog goes on, gradually provide proofs of the solution before wrapping it up precisely at the end.
Maximize the first 8 seconds
One of the things that many bloggers miss is injecting the value of entertainment. If you’re not enriching your blogs with images, videos, and other multimedia embeds, then you’re missing out as it’s known that most people will only stay for at least 8 seconds in a single blog. If they don’t find it engaging at all, they will opt out.
Retaining visitors can be challenging but one technique you can try is to use bucket brigades as popularized by Brian Dean. Bucket brigades are words or brief sentences that catch the attention of a reader to keep them interested.
Here is a video from Brian Dean about the said technique:
Focus on consumer stories
Our current society values human stories more than ever. You can see different companies integrating this into their digital marketing strategies and you can do the same. Try featuring accounts of past customers, iconic people, or ones unknown to many, to tap into the emotions of your readers as humanity is still one of the best elements in digital marketing. This is one reason why blogging is created in the first place: to satisfy the needs of humans.
There are still a lot of uncharted territory when it comes to blogging and as a digital marketer who aspires to thrive in the field, you have to be passionate and patient enough to reap your desired benefits.
Redkite is a digital marketing company located at 2nd Floor Veluz Building 1, Emilio Aguinaldo Hwy, Dasmariñas, Cavite, Philippines. Our contact numbers are 858-480-7688 and (046) 416 2483. Learn of our digital marketing services today!
Basically, SEO helps in bringing tons of visits to your website through search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Since we all know that Google is the most popular search engine in the world, we will use it as the featured search engine for this discussion.
SEO in A Nutshell
First things first—let’s briefly discuss what SEO is. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a process wherein someone optimizes the pages in a website to conform to the guidelines and preferences of Google. By doing so, your webpages will be optimized, giving your website a huge chance to be in the #1 page results for certain keywords you want the site to rank for.
How Does It Help My Site Rank?
Google makes money running ads on their search results, which means they need as many people as possible to use their search engine. If their search result pages give lousy results, then people won’t go back to Google.
Thus, the accuracy and relevancy of the search results they provide are very important to Google. They need to show only the best results out there organically, which refers to non-advertisement results.
For Google to show the best results, as well as the most validated results, their bots—known as Googlebots—crawl all the information in a webpage and do the following:
Index webpages – Read and store them
Sort webpages – Sort the good ones from the rest
Rank webpages – Give them a rank from the #1 spot to nth spot
Display webpages in order of quality (as per Google’s algorithm’s standard)
What Else Can SEO Do?
Now that we are done on what and how SEO works, let’s look at the other cool things that will happen to your site after a good SEO site audit and webpage optimization.
Quality of Website to Users
Optimizing a website includes creating informative and optimized webpage contents, like on-page blogs and easy-loading images. Optimized sites are more often the more organized and creative ones, giving website visitors an excellent user experience. Directly or indirectly, SEO efforts increase things like readability, content mashup (i.e. using text, videos, images), and loading speeds.
Organic Traffic from Google
Optimizing your site and marketing your website in directories and other websites gets you rankings. These rankings especially when you get to Page 1, gets clicks from potential buyers.
The Right Kind of Visits
People on Google are searching for products, services, solution, information, and more. If your website is optimized, Google will be able to categorize you easily, showing your site to relevant searches. As a result, you won’t get irrelevant visits. All the visits you will get would be of high quality, which means the visitors are 100% interested in a topic or query related with your website.
Professional-Looking Website
Sites that are optimized look amazing because they have been tuned so much to appeal to customers. Visitor experience is extremely important in SEO, even in simple local digital marketing campaigns, as it is also a ranking factor. SEO ensures that a website is organized, thought of, and professional, through comprehensive and responsive web design that’s optimized for the target audience.
Regular Updates
Content creation, as well as regular page and content updates, will make your site alive and active. The site will look open for business like a brilliantly well-lit and organized Gap or Guess store. It won’t look like a zombie waiting for someone to come its way.
Referral Visits from Link Building and Content Marketing
One of the most important things we do after the pages are in order and conform to the guidelines of Google is going out and marketing your webpages and content to other websites. We call this link building and content marketing. This is when SEO and social media connect.
Competitive Website and Business
If your website won’t appear as one of the results when a related search term for your business was entered in the search engine, guess where the searchers are going? Yup, the competitor! Know more about this through our blog If You Are Not Doing SEO, You Are Losing Business. PERIOD!
Dynamic and Adaptive Business Structure
When you are continuously striving to preserve your ranks, you are 100% required to conform to newer systems of Google (case in point: the inclusion of local business results in Google maps went down from a seven pack to a measly three snack pack)
and social behavior of customers (case in point: Facebook advertising = more Facebook followers = more human interaction with your brand = social signals = Google Ranks go up).
Blessings
In the end it’s about revenue. It’s about stability, relationships, and things you want to do.
Hopefully we can see the many benefits and purposes of SEO. Don’t overthink it. Don’t be in analysis paralysis. Get ready to act and never stop being awesome! Remember that you can ask us for help in this area.
Learning never stops for anyone. The digital marketing world has a lot of information to offer and its unpredictable nature is a reason why you should be well-read and well-versed about the industry.
If you’re planning to establish your very own digital marketing company in the Philippines or elsewhere in the world or if you’re just a practitioner, here are the books deemed important by the industry’s experts for every marketer, digital or not.
Jonah Berger, a professor at Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania, focused on the viral phenomena in this book. He argued that virality i.e. things going viral isn’t created solely by chance – there’s a lot of work put into it.
Berger said that for something to go viral, it needs to satisfy certain criteria in the society. He coined STEPPS as some of the key elements needed for a product to reach masses and actually be appreciated. The acronym stands for:
Social currency – sharable content that will make sharers look good to others
Trigger – marketing content that will make people easily think of you
Emotions – moving/touching content that will drive people to share
Public – product that will advertise itself in the open
Practical value – relevant information that people can actually use
Stories – narratives that people would actually want to follow
You need to read this book if you’re looking to get big on being viral. It’s a slim, easy-to-read manual that will teach you the science of virality and how to use it in your own marketing strategy.
This book by George Lois features a number system and each contains bite-sized words of advice. As you go from one page to another, you’ll get inspiring insights from one of the most celebrated advertisers of the 20th century, like how to come up with creative graphic communication and how to attach work ethics to it. Perfect for Facebook marketing!
The book is also a visual treat, which isn’t surprising since Lois is a top-tier artist who designed logos for some famous companies like MTV and Nickelodeon.
“Damn Good Advice” is recommended for the creatives and the hustlers of the world who don’t want to waste hours on books with lengthy paragraphs. Every advice in the book proves that short but impactful pieces are the most effective elements in digital marketing.
It’s widely believed that nothing is original, that everything is a copy or an amalgamation of different ideas. If you’re a smart businessman, you’ll take this notion and make it as the key to your defining success.
Businessman and engineer David Kord Murray argues that there’s nothing wrong with emulating and improving the ideas of others and that every successful businessperson did it. An example showed in the book is how Steve Jobs stole the function and appearance of a three button mouse from Xerox and made a two button mouse for Apple, which he then slashed the price while retaining its primary function. This shows that ripping off with the right intentions is a good business strategy.
Murray also provided six personal steps that he uses to become an effective innovator:
Defining – identifying the problem you’re trying to solve
Borrowing – taking concepts from similar solved problems
Combining – mashing up different ideas to come up with a new solution
Incubating – development or “incubation” of the solution
Judging – inspection of the solution for strengths and weaknesses
Enhancing – further strengthening the solution to be unique from similar innovations
Read this book to get rid of your fear to stand on the shoulders of geniuses as it’s possible that they also did the same to get to where they are now.
Businessman and internet personality Gary Vaynerchuck pours his experience and expertise in this book to show how marketers can rise above the noisy social world and be recognized through their own brand.
Vaynerchuk used boxing offenses in his lessons in this book. He likens hooks to self-promotion and jabs to emotions, contending that many modern marketers still focus more on hook attacks that it undermines the emotions of consumers, which are more important for an effective social media marketing.
He then highlighted that good emotions can be brought out by using micro content – short texts, uncluttered images, and swift video ads. He also showed that while a short format is imperative, the context of the entire marketing should shine more than the rapidness of the message.
This is a truly informative book if you’re interested to utilize the greater potentials of social media for marketing. The quirkiness of Vaynerchuk in every pages is a model attitude that digital marketers should emulate, since a snappy and energetic behavior can keep the audience interested. As a marketer, you should want that.
Published in 1936, this book by Dale Carnegie remains as one of the most relevant self-help books. Although it’s applicable to everyone, it’s really for businesspeople since it tackles business communication and public relations that you need to develop to get people to like you. Read our other blog on the topic – We All Work For The Relationships and Communications Industry.
You’ll get advice on how to deal with individuals like:
How to talk to them
How to pique their interest on your business
How to finally close deals.
It might be old fashioned but this book offers extremely helpful tips that you might overlook because of their simplicity.
If you want to focus on digital marketing, you can read its third edition that came out in 2011 entitled “How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age.” It focuses on blogging, social media, and other digital marketing avenues with updated tips and pieces of advice for modern readers.
This humble book from Jay Baer shows how important “YOU” is in order to make a digital marketing plan to work. He posed a challenge to readers to inject their own brand of usefulness in their products and services so it becomes a necessity for the consumers.
There’s an account in the book that ties neatly to this philosophy. A luxury pool company in Virginia called Rivers, Pools and Spas is in decline and co-owner Marcus Sheridan thought of the best technique to save his own company: turning the mostly asked questions of his customers to blog posts.
Now, the company is one of the most trusted and most well-known pool services companies in the country. This is because Sheridan first showed his expertise in the field to build up trust and credibility, further proving that you don’t need the most expensive or the most colorful marketing plans to succeed – you only need to tap into the needs of the customers.
A digital marketer who is knowledgeable about the craft will find it easy to navigate the road to a successful digital marketing. There are other helpful books about digital marketing that aren’t included in our list, but don’t be afraid to browse them to broaden your knowledge!
When you had a 2GB ram on your computer back in 2003, you had one of the best specs that existed; but today, 2GB amounts to almost unusable. This is because of the rapid development of technology and digital marketing can’t function properly without following suit.
If you’re a digital marketer, you should know that even the smallest innovation can change the entire face of the game. Only a few months ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced that there will be an alteration on Facebook’s algorithm, creating ripples of challenging adjustments to different marketers.
We saw great technological advancements in digital marketing in the Philippines and rest of the world this 2018 – such as augmented reality, voice search, and continuous innovation of social media – which might make you wonder what’s in store for the coming years, say 15 years from now. You might say that’s still a long time, but 2003 feels like it was just yesterday!
So to ready you for the coming decade and a half, know some of the potential trends of digital marketing!
Stronger focus to customer value
Digital marketing has been less aggressive for the past decades and this is expected to even flourish in the next 15 years.
Today…
Marketers design content with the consumer in mind.
User personalization and general user experience are the top priorities of digital marketers, instead of blatant business branding and shoving the company’s principles to the user.
It paved way for:
Sudden rise of Facebook and Instagram stories
Video ads from companies that mainly feature the life of a consumer, rather than the brand
Internet marketing companies in the Philippines even use memes to promote their brand, showing how the brand is willing to feed consumer interest through humor even if a comical marketing strategy doesn’t suit the company’s identity.
Children today will experience a finely tuned digital marketing in the future:
It will suit a person’s preference.
The branding won’t take a backseat – it’ll be infused subtly, but not malevolently.
More convenient displays and interface
The devices and gadgets we use today aren’t as advanced as you think. Truth to be told, we are still using a Jurassic-like system when it comes to our electronics:
Hardware is still bulky.
Cables are still plenty.
Servers still have similar principles from 1960 data centers.
What will happen?
Within the next decade…
There should be a guaranteed change to this system, especially when you look at the technology releases we have today.
There’ll be more of a plug and play and mobile standard to the latest technological updates, which means:
Less screens
Less servers
Less hardware
Examples: wearable gadgets (like smart watches) and virtual reality consoles
Displays won’t require keyboards at all – every function and each action is just one screen tap away.
Since minimalistic and easy-to-use products are hits to consumers, digital marketers will incline more on convenient technology to promote their businesses.
Innovative delivery and logistics systems
How you deliver, receive, or carry a product is also starting to take a new form. For example, the product you ordered can be delivered almost instantly through drones. Amazon, UPS, and even Domino’s Pizza are currently looking to get big on this method.
The pros
Not only is it cheap and hassle-free, but it’s also great marketing.
Using such innovation shows the company’s eagerness in improving their services.
It builds the company’s credibility, business sophistication, and capability to adapt into progression of technology.
Companies are taking baby steps on this system, but expect that it’ll fully blow in the decades to come.
Improved email systems
Surely e-mails will still be around within the next decade and e-mail marketing will still be one of the effective tools for digital marketing. Some experts believe that it’ll be a brand new experience, which will set a challenge to digital marketers on how they’ll email market in a technical but attractive manner.
In the future
Emails are believed to be even more personalized, which means:
You’ll have more control of the interface appearance.
The content supplied to you will be based on your submitted preferences.
Emails are expected to be more interactive and visually appealing.
There will be 3D controls set to rule this domain and you can organize your emails just with prompts and gestures.
Innovation in email also means less email spam.
Artificial intelligence have more control
Do not panic! This doesn’t mean robot invasion like you see in the movies. Artificial intelligence (AI) having more control means they’re more involved on what you do. And no, this doesn’t denote androids or mechanical appendages. It’s about search engines and bots which can greatly help how you market digitally.
In the future
By then, search engine optimization will be more creative and more engaging, making it more attractive to consumers.
Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP are also seen to be more precise, as AIs are more advanced in bringing consumers the best content in the web.
Bots are assumed to be a better automated service system. They can be trivial in function and a little bothersome to users nowadays; but within the coming years, they’ll be better developed to bring a human-like consumer service.
Social media still a hit
Even with the announcement that Facebook will dwindle business promotions and ads, social media will still be one of the biggest digital marketing tools. If not Facebook, other prominent sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube are predicted to be even more gigantic when it comes to advertising. Familiarize yourself with their features now to get you prepped in the future!
One thing is for sure, i.e. getting attention from the customers of the future will have challenges. Currently, a user can give your message eight seconds of their time. In the future, they’ll be likely to give much less.
As technology continues to advance, we shouldn’t forget that both the user and the marketer should benefit from the changes. Marketers, as always, will be able to conform to the needs of the market.
Marketing is a fundamental tool for businesses, especially for start-up companies. To grow quickly, they rely heavily on it to invite customers and investors. Without marketing, both established and start-up businesses will never roll out. Since we’re on a digital age, it’s necessary to embrace the digital ways of marketing. Start-ups can also maximize the digital tools to their advantages.
It’s expected for a start-up to break through the industry fast but don’t let the pressure thwart your plans. Remain calm and learn how to create a digital marketing strategy from scratch to keep everything under your control.
Brand the Business
Digital marketing goes beyond planning for your social media posts. It all starts with the creation of the company’s name. It shouldn’t be just any other name because it should represent the identity of your product and services you offer.
List out several potential names, then narrow it down and select one that has a rhythm and gives information about your company. You’ll know you’ve chosen the suitable one based on customer reception. If that doesn’t work, there’s always room for change.
Show What Sets You Apart
The business industry is thick with tough competition. To stand out, you need to show that your business is different while remaining true to your framework as you adopt the features of the platform you’re using. Don’t alienate followers or users by being too unconventional.
Show how you can improve what other companies are already doing. Take a look at what Airbnb is doing for the lodging industry. Travelers can easily find a room at their destination because of the app’s pairing system. There’s no need for fancy hotels – individuals can offer their empty homes to anyone. It fits right into the needs of both the traveler and the property owner who wants a flair-free lodging transaction.
Be dedicated in making everything user-centric. Users will continuously come back if there’s a high value of user experience. Branding with your service will give exciting results, while adding your own spin of creativity will enhance the strategy. Remember that multiple heads are better than one. Seek the aid of a content generation company from the Philippines to get a variety of creative ideas.
You and everyone in your business should have clear and well-defined business principles and goals. Through them you can generate ideas on how to be distinct from other businesses in a much better way.
Make Your Own Statements
When marketing digitally, adopt statements through hashtags, slogans, and contents in your digital marketing channels. But don’t forget to stay true to the company’s identity. Make sure every content is of high quality, consistent, and valuable to the company. You can’t just spew out inspirational mottos which might damage your business. Believing in what you write sets the entire track for your start-up process.
Register Your Company
Making your company official legally is also a step to a successful digital marketing strategy. You can decide if you’re a non-profit, a limited liability company, or a corporation. This is also the time when you’ll receive your permits and tax liabilities. It’s a very important step because without being certified, your customers might treat you digital marketing efforts as a plaything, rather than a credible endeavor.
Make Use of Every Platform
Now that you have the essentials, it’s time to start putting your digital marketing plans to action. You’ll never run out of platforms to use, but keep in mind that using them properly is better than using them extensively.
Social media can be tricky but you’ll discover how useful they are once you get the knack of them. Build a strong social media presence by tapping into the emotions of people. You also need to give your best in making every post socially relevant.
Make the most of blogs, email marketing, and your very own website, and continuously enhance your digital marketing endeavors. Of course, keywords and SEO solutions should be on top to make sure that everything you produce will yield desirable results.
Follow It Up
Digital marketing doesn’t end with clicking the “post” button. You should enrich the post beyond the face of the platforms. It also entails regular site audits, ad boosts, as well as CRS or good Customer Relationship Management, the ideal way of handling clients whether they’ll invest on the company offerings or not.
Digital marketing is the bridge towards your services but your services should make your digital marketing strategies reliable! A well-planned and well-calibrated digital marketing strategy can elevate your start-up company in no time. Just make sure you have enough resources and the right mindset to make the most of it. Find a reliable company that offers remarkable web design services now!
If you’re not implementing brand conformity, then you might be losing more of your business than you think. Brand conformity is the practice of keeping everything uniform in your brand – right from the colors, to the themes, up to the messages that you use on your websites, social media accounts, and promotional ads.
On the one hand, if every detail in your brand is parallel and produces one pleasing brand identity when combined, then consumers will most likely trust your business because consistency reflects professionalism and business maturity.
On the other hand, if you haven’t realized it yet, it might be the perfect time for you to adopt brand conformity! Before you get the help of a trusted digital marketing company in the Philippines, here are some points you should know to prepare you for the task:
Benefits of Branding
Almost all businesses use brand conformity these days. Businessmen, like their own domain names and advertising teams, work hard in coming up with their own statements and visual identities. This is because branding is a way to communicate with your clients without spelling out everything about your business.
Branding can be conveyed verbally and non-verbally, most commonly in names, logos, slogans, and overall visual frameworks. You can easily find it in the establishments or the products of the businesses. Still, every businessman should know that branding extends beyond tangible elements. It could also be shown through the operation of the company – how employees treat customers and investors, where they are located, and how culture works within the organization. These are all very important to make an effective branding.
Then again, if they’re not congruent with each other, the business will take the toll. You can’t serve food that taste differently depending on the branch because people will be confused on what you really want your product to be. If not regulated over time, people will think that you don’t give importance on your services and products. Consistency is how you create credibility.
Maintaining Brand Conformity
There are many approaches to standardize branding and make sure it’s aligned throughout. Below are some strategies you can use starting today:
Make Visuals Even
Surely when you start a business, you probably already have certain colors, fonts, and designs in mind. Once you’ve finalized your choices, stick to them, especially when doing ads. While colors and texts are some of the best elements to use to associate your brand on a certain product, there are psychological effects behind them that you must know so you could choose which will best suit your business.
Take a good look at the For Dummies, a series of instructional books which cover a wide range of topics. Black and yellow are the main colors used throughout the series and it’s easy to think about them once you see the color combination.
Furthermore, don’t forget to fill every gap in your social media profiles – from the cover photo to the display picture you use for the company’s email.
Have a Distinct Tone
You can’t be overly playful with your social media posts today if you were posting as a hardened, no-nonsense business outlet yesterday. Remember that both tones have their places and you can’t recklessly shift from one to another if you’re aiming for a particular style for your social media marketing. Keep your tone coherent in your slogans, hashtags, blog posts, and even in the contents of your website. Ensure that they all mirror your company’s mission and vision.
Optimize Emails
Besides email marketing, businesspeople should also focus on improving their email addresses and email signatures. Make the most of your own domains and be creative and concise when writing your addresses. Employees should have uniform email signatures which should include the correct details of the company’s location, contact numbers, and overall branding.
Live Up to Your Brand’s Promise
It’s easy to sustain brand conformity digitally but it’s challenging to be consistent on your brand personally. Enlighten everyone in your business about the importance of upholding the company’s virtues. You can even invest on top-tier training to ensure that your product is perceived the way you want it to be.
Your product’s presentation is also essential. For example, a handmade cosmetics company called Lush stays true to its principle that everything should be organic by fully displaying their soap products in raw form, which will only be wrapped once purchased. They also make it apparent through their labels and campaigns that they don’t use animal testing for their products. Take note that branding speaks more through actions and actual production rather than graphics and statements.
Importance of Improvement
The business industry is fast changing and you must catch up to stay in line. While it’s essential that everything in your business conforms to your brand, you should always be open to change because it always brings new lessons which are vital to the improvement of your marketing strategies.
Get in touch with a digital marketing company in the Philippines today for your brand conformity needs!
Last January, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new algorithm in Facebook that aims to change the face of the entire social networking site. The modification, which will be effective very soon, seeks to refurbish the newsfeed, focusing on social interaction rather than “public content from businesses, brands and media,” as specified in Mark Zuckerberg’s official statement. Many businessmen operating in Facebook through their ads and pages are already worried about the decrease in engagement, while many Facebook users themselves opt out of the change.
The Philippines is known as one of the countries with the largest number of Facebook users, rounding up to 33 million users last year. This is why perhaps every digital marketing company in the Philippines uses the networking site as a marketing tool; however, Facebook’s change is poised to shake the system.
In his statement, Zuckerberg assured that the shift is beneficial to businesses but this did not stop many digital marketers, influencers, and social media strategists from being reluctant.
For a wider perspective, take a comprehensive look on the subject matter as we give the positive points and the challenges which will occur with Facebook’s big change.
Cause of Change
Gary Vaynerchuk, a Belarusian American entrepreneur said, “Marketers ruin everything.” While this is debatable, there are several cases that can prove that it is somehow true.
Facebook was originally a social networking site intended to connect friends, families, colleagues, couples, and even strangers online. Before its new system in 2016, Facebook’s Newsfeed was composed of posts and activities of your networks in chronological order, allowing you to have a complete view of a certain person or page’s content. Today, what you see on Facebook are regulated content. Gone are the days of unconstrained information – instead, what you see now are based on your interests and only 30% of these are from the people you are friends with. The chronological system was also removed. When you scroll down, you see content in varying posting time.
Over the years, marketers took the plunge to Facebook as they saw how it is an effective tool to market their business or product. Currently, we see companies using multitudes of videos, images, stories, and ads as user interaction to increase engagement. With these, personal interaction has become less and less apparent and while it is still widespread, you will see from a larger viewpoint that Facebook rendered itself as one big channel for business advertisements.
Brand New Algorithm
Mark Zuckerberg himself is aware of the palpable boom of video and other public content in Facebook these past couple of years. However, with an aim to go back to the site’s original roots, he said that people could expect to see more posts from friends, family, and groups through the new algorithm. This means there will be less posts about businesses, brands, and other media. It alarmed businesspeople and companies that use Facebook as a marketing outlet, fearing lower ad impressions and decline in awareness.
Furthermore, Zuckerberg said that the time people will spend on Facebook will be more valuable although it will go down, as well as some measures of engagement. Truthfully, this upcoming change will be beneficial to digital marketers too, as well as for those in the world of social media marketing, but in ways many do not expect.
Benefits of the Change to Digital Marketing
Even though there will be fewer appearances of business marketing posts in Facebook, the chance for an effective impression will not be taken away. If anything, the new algorithm will provide more value to advertisements as digital marketers will be taken out of their comfort zones and will be prompted to improve quality by making each advertisement stronger and more interesting.
Once Facebook’s new algorithm is implemented, marketers should adjust to make the posts more emphatic and more user-centric. The social networking site’s built-in features, like the video player and the in-app browser, could also be used for advantage.
Moreover, this giant change in Facebook is not for the lazy and the thoughtless – it is for digital marketers who are determined and skilled enough to release ads that can say and impact greatly even in small dosages. As digital marketers, we must respect changes and find solutions to work our way around. Doing so will train us to adapt in the ever-changing customs of digital marketing.
While I have come across a lot of people who have testified how Search Engine Optimization (SEO), search marketing, and SEO outsourcing companies have quadrupled their businesses, I have also encountered quite some business owners who want nothing to do with SEO or search marketing.
They only want Facebook (and sometimes other social media marketing platforms) and for some reason are content with the fraction of vague internet leads they get. Some do not even bother to get a website, and if they do, they make one but no one actually visits their site.
Generally if you are not doing SEO, you are losing business. PERIOD!
You see, SEO is not only about gaining business. SEO is mostly also about not losing business.
In other words, SEO is not only about +1—it is making sure you do not get a -1.
How is that?
Here is a simple story to illustrate this issue.
Right below our office is a business that rents expensive apparel especially for weddings and other sophisticated events. They have been in business for over 10 years and are one of the only providers of such a service in over a 20-mile perimeter. They have a huge advantage due to lack of offline competition.
But, in the last 5 years, with such a huge influx of private vehicles, we are running out of parking space. I mean literally, there is no spot to park anymore. The parking availability is used up by employees and owners of the businesses in our building.
The chance of a customer to park their car and walk inside to the rental store is very slim. So many cannot physically get to the store and may want to Google them instead or scan their website. However, this store has never paid any attention to the search marketing or internet marketing in Philippines—even the simplest basic website is absent.
A potential customer would come across other options while searching the Internet. They would see that there are actually tens of other stores present within their area. It just happened that they never thought about Googling for wedding gown rentals. This brought them to a lot of other options and prices. However, our friends below, paying such an expensive rental on the building, have made their gown rental prices slightly more expensive than those operating out of the Internet.
To make matters worse, other competitors have hi-jacked the name of their brand and are now getting customers using their brand name.
This happens all the time.
So to those who feel that Search, SEO, and Google have no value for their business, you may want to think again. As early as now, I suggest you consider getting a website and if you already have one, I suggest you get an SEO site audit to check how well your website is doing.
Remember you may not want more business using SEO, but you sure do not want to lose business not doing SEO. Enlist a company that provides incredible digital marketing offers here in the Philippines to learn more.
Oh, uhm, yes, of course! I should have noticed it. You are the vice president of marketing for your company.
Well, marketers, lawyers, photographers, ballerinas—all of us—have to do two things almost every day: communicate and build or keep relationships.
We could be at home, or stuck in an infinite amount of traffic to work, or enjoying a coffee break with a co-worker. We could be in the office working on a design which will make users take the desired actions we want them to take, the design that will then need to be communicated to the developers. And this design should tell users that “We care for your time and we care for you!”
Whether you like it or not, we all need relationships, and by golly we need to communicate our ideas to them.
In the business world, especially in digital marketing, a lot of emphasis is given to things like:
Increase page likes
Decrease website bounce rates
Improve link quality
Design better graphics
The list does not stop there. It goes on!
If you are a relationship and communications expert, the items mentioned above will actually sound like this:
Increase page likes: How will I get more people to like us? Where are they? How do I communicate to them? And how do I keep the relationship with them?
Decrease website bounce rates: How can I make my website more appealing to my viewers? How can people get to the content they need fast? Do I even have the best updated content for them? Am I delivering content I want them to see?
Improve link quality: How do I get other site owners to see the value I can give them by placing a linking going to my website?
Design better graphics: My design is not working well with my users, what can I improve?
Putting yourself as a relationship builder and communicator foremost above everything else will change the way you work and the results you will get. You can use this in almost anything.
Purpose and Goal – Make a website which will appeal to homebuyers. The website should be fast to load and must give all types of accurate information in a split of a sec with fast loading images. Be the most updated source of home inventory in my any time of the day.
Design – Naturally fluid navigation and menu with pre-selected categories with filtering options to find homes desired by the user. The design should be like a work-space—uncluttered but efficient.
Functionality – Keep the user engaged. Keep them searching, comparing, and saving homes even without a log-in portal such as using cookies to save homes of choice in the bottom of the site such as in E-commerce sites. They should get additional information from the agents with a click of a button. It should be call and SMS ready.
Basically, the idea is to flip the technical jargon/s and to replace it with people first.
The difference between an amazing design and a mediocre design is that great designers know that their designs have a purpose and are like a human voice that communicates with other people.
When people are put first, you will realize that we are all in the relations and communications industry!
To all dreamers out there, here is a comic strip inspired by one of the most successful business establishments in the Philippines, graced by an edited excerpt of Edgar Guest’s poem Things Work Out.
Before National Book Store became Philippines’ biggest and most-trusted local books and school supplies store, its founders, the couples Jose and Socorro Ramos, endured many obstacles to keep the business going. Not long after they founded their first store in 1940, it was destroyed during World War II when Manila was under Japanese attacks.
But not even a world-wide war can stop the Ramoses—around 1950s, they relocated to build their second National Book Store in the then commerce-blossoming Quezon City. Unfortunately, a typhoon that entered the country damaged several properties including Socorro and Jose’s second store. The typhoon broke and tore off the store’s roof, leaving many books and paper goods unsellable. Others might have given up then, with the universe seemingly conspiring against their dreams. Yet, the Ramoses trudged on.
They lost their supposed profit, but not their hope. Their roof might be broken, but not their souls. And so the couple repaired their store and began business again, working hard until they had saved enough money to buy a 9-storey building where the largest National Book Store branch in the Philippines now stood.
Today, National Book Store branches are scattered all over the country, all existing as proof that with passion, resilience, and perseverance, anyone could make their dreams come true despite the biggest trials.
