It has turned out into a habit for many to fall asleep on Facebook and wake up on Twitter, and it is one of my habits too. While some use Social Media as a hobby, others tend to make money through it. But in the process of marketing, how far do the Sri Lankan brands do Social Media marketing?
Three reasons made me write this post. Firstly, it is the Social Bakers’ statistics about the leading social media profiles and pages. According to that statistics, I noticed that it is mostly Sri Lankan entertaining sites like Hiru TV and celebrity profiles that are being followed by most of the Lankans, and the local brands don’t top on that overall list. To know further, I checked into the overall profile reach, and I found out that there are brands like Coca-Cola in the top ten. “So why couldn’t the local commercial sites get more fans than the local entertaining sites in social media?” was the only mind voice of mine.
Secondly, while writing about Digital Marketing in my last post, I happen to notice that most of the local marketers think Social Media Marketing is digital marketing, while it is not. And what Sri Lankans think of social network marketing is posting something about their product on famous social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter and boosting them would attract more users.
Thirdly, in my last post, a user commented on what he felt about social media marketing. The one who commented said that some of these pop-up adverts on social media are more annoying than helping us pick the product or even to check the website about the product. The result of all these reasons is the post.
If new to social media marketing, know why you should do it.
With an internet penetration rate of 29.3% in Sri Lanka, the per cent of active social media users has reached 14% of the population. With the entry of smartphones, most of them use social network platforms on mobile. An overall view suggests that the most frequently used social media platforms, especially on mobile by the locals, are Facebook (94.17%), Twitter(2.62%), Pinterest(0.67%), Google Plus, YouTube, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. This usage rate is the reason for one to make use of social media effectively if he/she is into promoting products and services.
Unlike the traditional marketing methods, this social media marketing allows the marketers to interact with the target audience. Through this relationship, a marketer can analyze the preferences of the users and change his way of marketing according to those wish lists of overall consumers. Plus, it is the portal to get a direct and quick response from the customers, and for the customers to know about products.
Guess what? Social media marketing improvises the brand’s loyalty because of the crowd one has on such platforms. Such loyalty is build up through the brand’s engagement with its audience on the platform they use.
One might have a website, but the traffic the site gets is limited. This social networking is a portal to attract more diverse users to the site one owns. The more one is active on social media, the more the page or profile attract the audience.
Another plus is that the platform, Social Media, is free. Let it be Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, every platform is open. But, social media marketing tools are not free. There is little cost when using such tools, yet the tools are cheaper when compared to the marketing trends used earlier.
Are you unsure where you fail?
The Biggest Mistakes We See Companies make when they first hit Twitter is to think about it as a channel to push out information.
– Tim O’Rellly & Sarah Milstein
Most of the marketers kicked off into this social media marketing because they thought it is a cool thing to do, and they entered the virtual world with no objectives. This irresponsibility, I would say, has led them nowhere actually. The reality is that having a thousand followers isn’t the only thing about social media marketing because one cannot make money out of it. What one as a marketer has to do on Social networking platform is entirely different. After an analysis of where marketers fail, let’s look into how one could overcome such failures as well.
How often do you update your pages? Most of the local companies have created a Facebook page, Brand’s Twitter and Instagram, but how often do you update your account? While the media sites and celebrities of Sri Lanka frequently update their page to make fans stick with them, brands fail. Regular updates are quite important to show off the followers that the page is still active and worth following.
About what do you post? From a user point of view, local marketers seem to focus on posting only about what they sell. But when a new follower check into their social media page, how would he/she feel when he/she sees that everything shared are links to the site? Pretty boring right?
As a marketer, do you monitor your social media sites? Like the first reason mentioned here as a failure, most of us don’t take social media severe enough to follow it closely. We fail to hit hard with the fact that social media is one of the leading platforms to “catch” audience and customers if used in the right way.
Are you on the right platform? Everyone wants to have an account on popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. But, think. What if your site is not relevant to be on either of those stages, but on stages like LinkedIn and Instagram? Creating a profile on all the social media platform can be stressful when thinking of maintaining them all.
Unsure of when and to which post “boost” option should be used. The boost option is to attract new followers. Where our marketers make a mistake is, not choosing the right audience, and not thinking of the alternates like “promoting a post.” But what most of the marketers sometimes do is, boost almost every post they publish which would cost them more than they have allocated.
A few handy suggestions to overcome failures
Publish great content — content that teaches people something, entertains them, makes them think or, in some other way, adds value to their lives.
– Brian Boland
Keep the profile updated. It is very much important to stay active on your page (even more than you are on your profile, maybe). Even if there are days when you couldn’t be updated, maintain a regularity or make use of “scheduled posts.”
Publish random posts. Don’t stop with publishing about your product; share something you found interesting from other profiles. If you are on Twitter, retweet some tweets from your followers, and let it be something interesting (and that may or may not have to do anything with your product.)
Keep an eye on your social media sites. There are tools like Buffer that would not only help you analyze your social media reach, but would also assist you with scheduling your posts for a different social media platform.
Choose the right social media platform. Marketing is not seeking publicity. It is promoting your brand and product to potential clients. Therefore there is no need for you to choose the popular social media platform, but the right one. Know your audience, and know about the platforms available to stick with your followers.
Know your content and choose. Boosting a post is an option that could be worth enough if you know to handle it. Maybe it is time to stop boosting almost all the post you have shared, and to choose the right one. If you are someone who had made the above-said mistake, start with your “EverGreen posts.” Keep in mind that the “boost” option is to attract new followers, so when boosting let it be a better post. And, do not choose the boost option to make a post reach your “target audience.” Either you could you “promote your post” option for such activities.
Tips and Trick to make the lead in it
Use hashtags. If you are still trying to attract “like-minded” clients, use Hashtags (#) in your posts. Not all the platforms are going to allow you to use hashtags, yet popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram do allow you. Hashtags allow you to engage as a community.
Maintain a community. Always remember the primary goal of being on social media: to create a network. Just by posting links from your website, or about your product wouldn’t help you. Talk to your audience, and listen to their thoughts. Create a poll, or make them review your product. Use your creative team to make users get engaged with your social media accounts.
Do some “re-marketing.” There are always some posts that would bring a new audience, maybe because it turned “trendy” recently. Such posts can be re-marketed with relevant hashtags of the “trending” subject.
Use images, videos, and GIFS. These are known as visual content marketing. I happen to see most of our local marketers using their Television ad promos as Video sharing on Facebook and Twitter. People who watch your ad on TV and Facebook can quickly get bored of seeing the same promotion. Try to do some new uploads. And make sure that your uploads convey your message as well as has a CTA.
Write according to the platform It is general to post contents on social media, but some platforms are good enough for longer posts while some are not. For example, Twitter doesn’t allow more than 140 characters, so your contents should be catchy and short. While Google plus encourages long timeline conversations more when compared to Facebook. Know your social media platform very well and change your content according to that.
Marketing plan If you are a starter in doing marketing in social media, make sure you have a plan. Have a SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) framework when planning your social media marketing.
As a follower of some local brands, I happened to notice how such brands handle their social media. I have covered only a few, yet essential suggestion to the local marketers. If you are a consumer, let us know how you feel about social media marketing and advertising. And if you are a marketer, feel free to share your thoughts on handling social media. Let your thoughts flow in the comment box below.
As a Sri Lankan, I have spent more time on TV and radio during the civil war. If there is a program on a TV for 30 minutes, 10-15 minutes would be allocated for advertisements, in other words, promoting brands and products. Sometimes, they used to attract me quite well, but then such ads interrupt my favorite TV or radio shows. It was after the civil war I got introduced to the internet and social media. My gradual attraction to the internet made me realize that the brands I have seen on TV are more often seen over there too. I couldn’t understand why I see this. And I wanted to know why, which made me read about it further. I learned that it is the new trend called Digital Marketing. Wait! If Digital Marketing in Sri Lanka is new, then what was the old pattern? I wanted to know it. What I found out as a result of my curiosity is presented below.
Marketers in Sri Lanka quite well understand how much their internet marketing techniques are dragging the users towards the brand. But the freshers don’t. Marketing and the Internet have got along more often these days than they have been in the earlier stages of digital marketing in Sri Lanka. The record of InternetLiveStats shows that the “internet penetration” rate was 8.8% in 2009 (the year the civil war ended). But, the stats drove up after 2010, and the recent report announces that the penetration rate has reached 29.3%. This improvement puts Sri Lanka in 57th place among the 201 countries in 2015, according to the InternetLiveStats. Sri Lanka is still a developing in the field of e-commerce. But with the surge of internet penetration, the digital marketing ecosystem is growing too.
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What was marketing like during the Civil War?
Due to civil war, (before 2009) the internet access was pretty down. The locals used traditional marketing methods like printing and broadcasting about products and brands as their marketing strategies. Although it was costly(when compared to the cost of digital marketing now), they had to make use of it, while the world was developing in digital marketing.
Printed media was one of the primary source used for marketing and advertising. The marketers focused on commercializing their products and brands through newspaper advertising, magazines, and leaflets given randomly or during events like an exhibition. Also, to attract the travelers, marketing through huge banners on empty lands was another trend of the time in Marketing.
The next traditional method of marketing was broadcasting or telecasting the promotions. Here more frequently marketers used the celebrities, like cricket players and local cinema stars, to promote their new products or brand. The number of TV watchers and radio listeners were high at that time, at least to get know the conflict updates, which also helped the marketers in promotions to advertise their products.
Remember when you had to fill up a coupon when you did quite a big shopping at a shopping mall or supermarket? Mobile number and address are the details you had to fill in such coupon. Ever got promotion notifications from them later? Well, the shopping centers and supermarkets were handling it as another technique to send promotions to its customers. Marketers also dealt with cold calling to convince customers about the products.
Final method was that some companies employed sale representatives. While cold calling was an another way to promote beyond boundaries, sales rep of areas had to take samples of the brands to doorsteps of everyone in the particular range. And, these were all used as marketing methods before Digital Marketing started to penetrate into Sri Lanka.
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What influence does digital marketing have in Sri Lanka?
The end of Civil War made several opportunities open to the marketers. As the staticsabove has shown about the internet penetration in Sri Lanka, marketers have started to take advantage of it. Online advertising started parallel to the advertising and marketing through the simplex mode. Some websites started rising, and marketers began to realize the worth of online marketing. Still, only a very few people engaged in that new pattern, maybe because it was the beginning of the era of digital marketing.
For the start, the companies have only been looking to posting ad banners on the websites. For them, it was like posting an advertisement on newspaper. But the actual substance started to click as they began to get to know more about it. Then the companies began to move on to other marketing platforms available on the internet. Also, this new marketing world provided new entrepreneurs an idea. Bang! It gave a few individuals an idea on starting a digital marketing agency.
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Why should the Marketers focus on it?
Firstly, the Sri Lankan marketers would fall for its uniqueness: duplex. Digital Marketing helps the marketers analyze the effect their skills have on customers. This uniqueness helps them adapt according to the user experience. It also helps them to get real-time reviews from the product users, like Cinnamon Air for example, which would attract other customers towards their product.
[blockquote photo=”” author=”” ] Instead of one-way interruption, Web marketing is about delivering useful content at just the precise moment that a buyer needs it.- D.M. Scott, author New Rules of Marketing and PR [/blockquote]
Digital marketing is wide open; this is another possibility. How open is it? Digital marketing is wide open around the world. With the e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay, imagine how one would be able to know about them, without marketing it online? Like you wouldn’t bother about getting to know it if such sites have been advertised or sold on the traditional method of marketing: through printed media or TV and radio. One-click check-ins have made it very easier and simple. This feature of digital marketing is quite supportive to the enterprises that are focusing on global market, attracting international customers.
Digital Marketing is quite cost effective. When compared to the cost of traditional marketing methods, online marketing is pretty cheap. This online marketing would more likely replace some of the traditional methods like cold calling, advertising on television and radio. Although there is still some attention to the simplex mode of marketing, the number has reduced when compared to the ‘during the war’ stats.
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What type of Digital Marketing trends do the local companies handle?
Although there are several methods like the website, social media marketing, PPC, video marketing, email marketing, remarketing, the local marketers only managed to catch up with a few. Mainly, the website, social media marketing, PPC, and SMS marketing.
There are around 20 digital marketing companies in Sri Lanka which delivers Search, Social, Local and complete e-Commerce strategies to the global brands through an online platform, which includesPrime One Global LLC, Loops Solutions, Orix marketing and others. And according to Mike Berry has foreseen in 2012, the marketing trends in the year 2016 in the digital commercialization of Sri Lanka has grown.
The objective of the content and PPC marketing is to rank the company’s site on the top, or near the top lists while been searched. Since the company’s site would be quite new, or haven’t been in the required state for the search engine to display it while being searched, the digital marketing companies would polish it up for it to be ranked. According to the ranks, the company’s brand and the product get promoted. Also, PPC is another method where the companies ‘buy visits’ through the advertisements on search engines and on other sites.
While these two techniques are on the top in digital marketing environment of Sri Lanka, there is another big world for marketers waiting — the world quite big and equal to the Internet — social media. With the landing of smartphones, Sri Lankans spend more time on the social media (and the internet). Readme and Loop Solution conducted a survey in 2013, in which 58% of respondents access Facebook and Twitter through mobile. Almost 71% of the local respondents answered that the marketing done through social media has been quite effective than the traditional media marketing. Also, 49% of the respondents said that they watch TV less than one hour daily, while only 28% of them read the newspaper daily.
The survey on Social Media Marketing conducted by Readme and Loops solutions. Source: Readme.lk”
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Also, according to the survey 85% of them answered that they have been following local brands. Also, marketing through Facebook has influenced 79% of the users to purchase the products. This force has made marketers focus more on social media marketing than on the other methods available.
The latest trend the marketers are focusing on is SMS Marketing. Since the number of mobile phones users is quite high, rather than cold calling, dropping a text about their product or brand is getting trendy these days. And, most of the companies focus on making much out of this growing style of marketing in Sri Lanka.
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How has social media marketing influenced the users of Sri Lanka on the local brand?
The local brands that has got more audience through Facebook. Source: Social Media.lk
The local brands that are growing fast on Facebook. Source: Social Media.lk
The brands that have the largest audience on Twitter. Source: Social Media.lk
The brands that are attracting more audience on Twitter. Source: Social Media.lk
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What should the Marketers focus on for the future?
There are many other digital marketing activities which our marketers need to focus. Digital Marketing trends like Remarketing, Google Tag Manager, email marketing and so on are not very actively used among the local marketers. Since the industry is still developing one, we could expect the marketers to get into this trend in future. Within the short period, Sri Lanka has got adapted to the digital marketing world. There is a long way to go because this digital world is changing day by day. If focused on the newly turning up digital marketing environment as well, the prospect of the domestic market to be a part of the global market would be rising. If the marketers are already focusing on the global market, it is advisable to concentrate on the broad range of social media. Social media doesn’t stop with Facebook and Twitter but extends to Snapchat, Instagram and so on. So focus on the rest of the available global platforms that would attract the global users.
There would be constant updates about the growth of Sri Lanka’s digital marketing, so don’t forget to keep an eye on our blog. Also, feel free to catch us in a comment about the digital marketing in Sri Lanka.
Ever since the last MajorPenguin Rollout in December 2014, the incoming requests for “How to Remove Bad Backlinks” and “How to fight manual penalty” have been on a very steep rise.
The internet was shaken once again this year on January 8, 2016, when all the main Rank Tracking Tools reported massive movements in SERP Rankings. At first, we had taken this as the Penguin 3.1 rollout, but Google later confirmed it as “Core Algorithm Update.”
As reported by SeRoundTable, Google stated that this was not a Penguin update, but no details were provided by the Search Giant to prove otherwise.
Needless to say, being in the Prime One Global Manual Penalty Recovery Team, I face dozens of requests on end from clients who are either facing Negative SEO Attacks or frustrated newcomers who are reaping the fruits of cheap SEO tactics that they indulged in the past.
In contrast to this, you can very well imagine what is the state of my inbox. It is flooded with emails that go something like this:
How to remove bad backlinks?
How to remove a link from a Pornographic Website?
How to remove backlinks from a site?
How to remove spam backlinks?
How to find bad backlinks from Negative SEO?
Can you send me a Link Removal Request Email Template?
How can I remove a website from Webmaster Tools?
How do I check for bad backlinks?
How do I identify bad backlinks?
And the list is endless…
Yes, I agree that my Inbox looks like a graveyard. And this is the main reason that pushed me to blog about this topic, so I can just help everyone out.
In the last two years, I have worked on fixing a lot of damage on the web. Not only have I recovered my own websites from Penguin or Manual Penalty, but I have helped over 72 Clients (pardon me if I missed someone out… eheh) in fixing and removing their bad backlinks.
So, without further ado, I would like to move directly onto the ‘Situation’ here. But, one request before reading further. I would like you to be patient with the process as it is time-consuming. It can take somewhere from months to a full year to see a recovery.
I understand that having to watch all your traffic and sales disappear overnight is a nightmare for any Internet Entrepreneur, but I assure you, that if you keep your patience, we will get through this and in a matter of months, you might actually get your website back on the track.
Just follow the process I have outlined in this Guide and trust me, there is hope for recovery. You will soon be on the route to lifting your penalty and recovering your SERP traffic.
How Important Is Link Removal?
Does Google Disavow Really Work?
Since you are already reading this guide, then I will take for granted that you have either reached me from your Inbox, or you have managed to come across this Google Link Removal or Disavow Guide through some search Engine.
Before I dive directly into how we can be “En-route to Google Penalty Recovery,” I would like to take some time out to talk about the importance of removing bad backlinks.
There was a time when Matt Cutts said:
Google is all about great content and backlinks did not impact Google Rankings. However, SEOs soon discovered that backlinks were the secret sauce to take a website to the top of Search Results for any keyword. Soon, automated link building applications like SeNUke and Xrumer and what not came into being and just destroyed the natural and beautiful process.
People stopped paying for content and started investing more money in building automated backlinks and overnight a website would be on the top of the Ranking Charts. This disturbance of equilibrium in the internet ecosystem caused a massive headache for Google since the quality of their search results was in danger. And, thus began the game of Disavowing Unnatural Backlinks, when webmasters started receiving “Unnatural Link Warnings” from Google Webmasters Tools.
Since then, Google has constantly been penalizing low profile websites and websites with unnatural backlinks, and as time passes, its algorithms are just becoming better and better at uncovering Underground Link Networks, SAPE Networks (Russian Link Farms), Private Blog Networks and other sorts of low profile or spammy link farms.
DIY Bad link Removal Service – The Disavow Gameplan
If you think that you have been hit by a manual penalty, then I am listing down a series of steps that will make you an Expert Bad link Removal Agent. There are five main steps that you need to take to fix a backlink profile:
Recognize the Google Penalty
Discover the bad backlinks
Remove the bad backlinks
Perform link Disavow Requests
File A Reconsideration Request to Google
In the wake of the Penguin, I saw a lot of nervous webmasters who filed a complete backlink disavow request to Google, because they were unsure of what to leave and what to retain. I understand that it is all right to be nervous, but taking such steps is not going to mend the cause. Losing all your backlink profiles will put you in a much worse condition than you would be, if you carefully follow this guide and inspect your backlinks yourself or leave the job to the pros.
Step Number 1 – Recognizing The Google Penalty (Manual / Algorithmic)
There aretwo forms of Penalty. One is Manual Penalty and the Other is Algorithmic Penalty. So, before you even start removing your links, you need to understand, which kind of a penalty has hit your website.
Manual Penalty
A manual penalty means that your website was reviewed by a Google Employee, and a manual infringement has been put in place. If you have received an email from Google Webmasters Tools (see the image below for an example), there is a high chance that you are struck by a Manual Penalty.
Algorithmic Penalty
If you think you have not been hit by a Manual Penalty, then you can consider doing a check with the Penguin Tool from Reconsideration.org. It is a free tool that will help you log in with your Google Analytics Account and overlay the Algorithm Updates from Google on top of your Organic Traffic over time.
This tool will also help you spot keyword-specific penalties that have only been imposed on certain over-optimized or spammed keywords.
NOTE: When you use this tool, be sure to check that only organic data source is selected in your Google Analytics Account and other Traffic from Referral Networks and Social Media are not affecting your results.
Step Number 2 – Discovering All Your Backlinks (Creating A Backlink Profile)
To create a complete backlink profile for a Website, it is important to collect all possible backlinks from major backlink aggregators and crawlers. Start out with importing your backlinks from Google Webmasters Tools first and create an excel sheet to keep a tab on all the links that you will be eventually collecting
Select the Website for which you want the backlink profile
On the left pane, you will see a Link Called “Search Traffic” click on that
Then select the “Links to your website.”
Under “Who Links the Most” click “More.”
You will get a complete list of Backlinks from websites that link out to you the most. Select all of them and copy them into a Tab in Excel. Call that Tab (Webmasters Tools)
Now collect Backlinks from all other Backlink Crawlers like:
Some of these solutions have a freemium option that allows you a certain number of backlinks for free. The others require a paid subscription. You can get many sellers on Fiverr that offer Backlink Profiling with the following Software, just make sure to select a vendor with a good reputation and history. Ideally, you can even get in touch with me, and I will help you create a backlink profile for your website.
Once you get all the Backlinks. Place them on individual tabs in the Excel document like I have done below.
Now once you have all the links, combine them together in a single tab Called All Backlinks. I will tell you why.
Before you have collected all the backlinks and proceed to manual inspection, you need to remove all the duplicate links that have been found by the software. So once you have copied all the connections in the All Links Tab. Select the entire link column and then Click on Data > Remove Duplicates.
Tadaaaaa! Now you have your complete backlink profile.
Save the Excel Sheet and move on to the next step.
Step Number 3 – Manually Scrutinizing Your Backlink Profile (Not as Painful as it Sounds)
Once you have summed up all the backlinks and removed the duplicates, here comes the tricky part. Don’t panic now. There is no need to panic as I am going to put together all possible ways you can understand which link is right for you and which link is bad. Alright? So, take a deep breath, and let’s get moving.
When you want to consider the authenticity of a link, these are all the things you need to check:
Is the website de-indexed from Google? (Perform a site:websitename.com and see if it returns any results)
Links from Directories
Links from Spammy or Poor Quality Websites
Links from Paid or Sponsored Posts (Paid Guest Post Websites)
Linking pages have too many do-follow outbound links (Links without the rel=nofollow tag)
To understand more in-depth, we will use some of the same tools that we previously used to find your backlinks.
Start with MajesticSEO:
Check for Site-wide links quickly with this tool
Over Optimized Anchor Text links, or links pointing out from the same keywords too many times.
Are there lots of 301 Redirects pointing to your website?
Follow-up with Ahrefs:
A total number of links and types of links pointing from a domain. (Inspect the domain to see if it is a low-quality domain or if it has hyphens in its name or is it keyword-stuffed)
Is there an unusual amount of Unique Referring Domains?
Is there little or no anchor text diversity in the domains?
Were all links acquired over a short period and then stopped? Have some of the links vanished?
Don’t Jump to Conclusions Just Yet
Ask yourself these final questions before you profile a link as a bad link and proceed to removal or disavowing it.
Does the website have the user in mind?
Is the link coming from an associate brand or partner firm?
Does the link have the potential to pass as a referral link?
Is the website spammy in appearance? How is the user experience of the website?
Once you have carefully followed these steps for a single link, you can profile it as a good link and paste it into a new tab called Good Links, or in the bad tab called Bad Links. Follow the same process for all the links in your All Backlinks Tab.
Yes! You need to do that for all the links. No matter if you just have 100 Links or over 10000 Links, you need to follow this process.
Thankfully, Bruce Clay has put together a very neat infographic on the entire Link Evaluation Process.
Once you have gone through the entire list and are 100% sure about your bad backlinks, you can move on to the Link Removal Process or Link Disavow Process. I will give you a clear outline of how you can handle the process of removing bad links like an expert.
Regrettably, Google wants the webmasters to try hard really. And when I say really, I mean really-really-really work hard and put a lot of effort into the process. It would be a wise decision to document all your moves and show it to Google. This will make them understand that you want to regain your website rankings and that you are an ethical person.
Step Number 4 – Creating A Proper Documentation (Showing Google Your Hard Work)
No matter how much effort you have already done in deciphering the backlinks, all be in vain if you do not follow this step thoroughly. It is critical for the future health of your website that you document your entire process and present it to Google as Proof that you have done whatever you could or spent a lot of time to repair the damage caused to your website by those bad links.
Create A New Spread Sheet and Copy all the Bad Backlinks into it. Then make a Performa, like the one I have mentioned below in the spreadsheet. This Performa will help you keep track of your email outreach since you will be sending out tons and tons of emails very soon.
Link From: URL Linking to your Website
Link To: Your Website URL in Question
Email Address of Site Owner: Address of the site Owners
First Link Removal Request: First Email request date
Second Link Removal Request: Second Email Request Date
Third Link Removal Request: Third Email Request Date
Any particular notes that you want to leave (For example – Website owner asking for payment or something)
Save Time by Writing a Customized Email Template:
Since you will be sending out a lot of emails, it would be a good idea to create a customized email template that you can use for all the outreach. When writing the email, it is critical that you maintain a very polite tone and that you do not try to bribe or show your anger to the webmaster. According to human psychology, being polite has the most success rate if you want someone to do something for you. Here are some points you should consider when writing your customized email template:
State that you are the owner of the website and show proof of ownership of the website. Then tell them politely that you are trying to recover from a link.
List the URL of your website in question and mention the Link from the URL along with the Anchor Text.
Politely ask the webmaster to remove the link from their website as it might be hurting your rankings.
Try to Personalize the Email Subject Link with their name and include as many details as possible to ensure that they open your email and take action.
Or, just customize this Link Removal Request Email Template?
Hey {Insert Name of Site Owner}
I am {insert your name here}, the owner of {insert your website URL here} and I wanted to reach out to you regarding a link(s) that is pointing to my website from your website. I would like to bring it to your notice that my website has recently been penalized by Google and to get the infraction removed, I need your cooperation with the removal of a link from your website that is pointing to my site.
Here is the link along with the anchor text:
List all the links along with anchor text here.
If you can kindly remove that for me, I would greatly appreciate it. As you already know that Google will not reconsider my website if I have not made an effort for removing the links myself and that is the prime reason I am reaching out to you. I will be documenting all my efforts and trying to remove all the links manually by reaching out to individual website owners.
I do not intend to in any way demean you or your website. I am just trying to be careful as it is my business website. I will not use the Disavow tool unless I absolutely have to use it, so I am expecting to receive your full cooperation in this matter. I hope you understand my problem. If you could send me an intimation after the link has been removed from your website, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanking You,
Your’s Faithfully,
{Insert Your Name Here}
{For www.yourwebsite.com}
Various Tricks to Find Contact Information of Domain Owners
Now that your email template is ready, it is time to quickly list down all the contact information under respective links in the Excel Sheet that you created at the beginning of this step.
Take note that you may not find the email addresses of all website owners and some websites might just have a contact form. The contact form followed by a Social Medial Outreach to the websites should be your last resort and in such a case you should provide a link to the Contact Form page or the Social Media URL instead of the Email Address.
Here are the primary ways you can get contact information for a particular website:
Check the Contact US page of the respective websites or even the About us page. Sometimes the Contact Information is also provided in the Header or Footer Widgets of the websites.
Perform a Who.is lookup to try to find out the name and email of the domain owner. This technique might not work if the owner has set the Who. details to private. In such a case, resort to other methods.
Use Spyonweb.com – Even though this tool might not get you the contact information of a website. But it will help you find similar owner websites by tracking the IP Address, Analytics, or Adsense Codes placed on the websites. This way you can find a related website owned by the same person and retrieve his contact information.
Lastly, resort to using the Contact Form or Social Media Profiles of the respective websites. It would be a plus if you can provide a screenshot of the same.
Step Number 5 – Performing The Email Outreach (Taking Action On Your Research)
Now you have the email template ready along with all the possible ways to contact the domain owners. It is time to send out personalized emails to all the domain owners to help you recover your Google Penalty.
As you send out emails and fill up contact forms, remember to document all the things that you are doing in the spreadsheet you created in Step number 4. Write down the dates when you send out the emails.
Here is a fantastic app that will help you streamline the follow-up process –Boomerang. This application will remind you about all the emails that have not received a reply back, and you can set up alerts for a week or ten days. This will help you keep track of all the webmasters who have not responded to your email so that you can contact them again after at least a week of sending out the first email. Again, remember to document the date of the follow-up emails in the spreadsheet.
It is not important to get a 100% Success rate with all our email outreach endeavors. But, what is important is to show Google that you tried hard. Leave the rest to them. Just follow karma.
Now, for the outcome of your Link Removal Email Outreach
There can be four possible outcomes to every email you send out:
They cooperate with you and remove the link
They removed the link but did not respond to your email
They responded by asking for money or favor in exchange for link removal
They took no action at all
Don’t worry about the webmasters who either did not respond to your email or blackmailed you for money. Just ignore them. Remember, documentation and filing notes in the Excel sheet is the key.
Make sure your documentation is picture perfect and that you have input the dates correctly in the respective cells along with important notes for uncooperative websites and helpful websites.
In the case of a manual penalty from Google, you will need to take more physical action to heal the damage caused to your website. A manual penalty is a sign of participation in unethical tactics for link building like comment spam, paid links or other unnatural link building strategies. Before you submit your Google Reconsideration Request, you should have made a considerable effort to remove the backlinks yourself and have a disavow.txt file ready.
Step Number 6 – Performing Link Disavow (Requesting Google to Overlook Backlinks)
When the Google Disavow Tool was first introduced in 2012, SEOs and Webmasters thought it was a boon to the Internet Community. Well, it still is, but the tool opened up a lot of doubts about, which links should be disavowed and which links should be counted.
If you think about it logically. Google is directly using the Google Webmaster’s Disavow Tool for Link Removal by crowdsourcing their spam monitoring efforts. Take into account that this step should only be performed as the last resort. That is, after all your manual link removal attempts have failed, and you are able to provide documentation for the same.
Google also warns users that this is a very advanced and risky tool if they do not know what you are doing.
Here is a direct message from the Google Webmaster Tools Disavow Links – “If you’ve done as much work as you can to remove spammy or low-quality links from the web, and are unable to make further progress on getting the links taken down, you can disavow the remaining links. In other words, you can ask Google not to take certain links into account when assessing your site.”-
I will remind you again that make sure you have done all you could and tried as hard as possible to remove as many backlinks manually as possible before doing this step. If you have taken the help of a Google Penalty Recovery Company or you have done all the steps mentioned in this guide, you are ready to begin the disavow process.
Follow these steps to the teeth if you want to create a complete disavow.txt file for Google.
This step can be broken into two parts.
Make a list of all possible backlinks to your website (which I am assuming you have already done if you are on this step)
Make a list of sites that did not cooperate with you or asked for money, or you got no response from them.
A sample Disavow.txt file will look like this:
NOTE: The Pound Symbol (#) is used to denote a comment or a note about the websites that are listed below it
#List of Websites that cooperated with me and removed all the bad links
nameofwebsite1.com
nameofwebsite2.com
…
#List of Websites that did not respond to my query
didnotrespond1.com
didnotrespond2.com
…
#List of Websites that asked for money in return for link removal
websiteaskedmoney1.com
websiteaskedmoney2.com
…
#List of URLs that certain webmasters missed who cooperated with me
missedurl1.com
missedurl2.com
…
#End of Disavow File
Handy Tip: If you want to disavow all the links from a particular domain, you can just give the line “domain: nameofdomain.com”
Handy Tip 2: Always disavow on the domain level for websites that have too many low-quality links pointing to your website. If you disavow individual URLs, you run a high risk of skipping some URLs that have your bad backlinks.
Handy Tip 3: Make sure you remove all websites with special characters that are not either alphabet, numbers or hyphens in them from the disavow tool.
Handy Tip 4: Also ensure that you do not give www. or http:// or https:// along with the domain names in the disavow file to avoid any errors during upload.
How to Upload the Disavow File in Google to Remove Bad Backlinks:
Select the website in question from the drop-down list.
Click the Disavow Links Button
Upload your Disavow.txt file
Uploading a new Disavow.txt file will override your past file in Google Webmasters Tools. Also, be patient after you have updated the file. If you have received a manual penalty, you can usually see improvements in your website rankings in a few months. However, if you have been hit by a Penguin Algorithm, then you must wait till the next Penguin rollout to let Google Crawl the backlinks of your website again. The process can sometimes take months, so do not check with backlink software and wait patiently for Google to do its job.
Step Number 7 – To File or Not to File a Reconsideration Request (Beg for Mercy)
Everyone does not need to submit a reconsideration request. If you have been hit by an algorithmic penalty, then you do not need to file a reconsideration request. However, in case of manual action, when you receive an email as the one stated below:
Then you need to submit a reconsideration request. Few things to notice when you receive an email from Google Webmasters Tools Team:
A yellow caution sign means you are in trouble
A drastic drop in your website rankings
There are too many low-quality backlinks pointing to your website
Filing A Proper Reconsideration Request to Google
You will have to prove to Google that you have given your 110% to clean up your backlink profile and get as many of the backlinks manually removed as possible. I will remind you again that Google is not looking for a 100% success rate with all your manual outreach for backlink removal, it is looking for the right mindset and effort.
The most important part of filing a reconsideration is to have proof that you took action. Just by saying that you contacted 1000 webmasters, you will not be able to get your website under the radar. You will have to present to a Google Employee in a believable manner that you took action and contacted the owners not once, but thrice before you decided to file a disavow.
Even though Google has not given out many hints on what to include when submitting a reconsideration request, here is a short video of Matt Cutts giving a short pitch on what an ideal reconsideration request should be like. Take a look.
A Synopsis of the Video:
The main aim of your reconsideration request should be to convey to Google that you are sorry about the past state of your website and have read and understood the Google Quality Guidelines. You should tell them about whatever mistakes you did, whichever site owners you tried to contact and failed and what are you presently doing to improve the reputation of your website.
Here are some of the things suggested by the former head of Google Spam on what to include in a Reconsideration Request:
Details of contacted websites along with a copy of emails as proof.
Details of any hidden link network that were used by the website
Details of any SEO Companies that did the SEO of the website
Changes that were made to the website to ensure its quality was at par
As many details as possible can be included in a reconsideration request
Upload and share the document through Google Docs as most often, Google Employees do not like to click on Unknown links
Here is a Sample Google Reconsideration Email Template:
Dear Google Webspam Team,
This is a kind note in order to inform you that our website {insert URL here} was hit by a manual penalty. We are very apologetic for the inconvenience caused due to this. Furthermore, we would like to thank you for reviewing and pointing out that our website was not at par with the Google Quality Guidelines, as we were totally unaware of the fact that our SEO company was not using the right tactics.
When we received the warning from Google, we immediately contacted our SEO company {Insert name here} and asked them to provide us a detailed list of all the tasks they were performing for our website.
Upon receipt of the list of tasks, we came to know that they were indulging in wrong SEO Practices like buying paid links and blog spam commenting, and more. We have stopped hiring them now and asked them to undo the actions that they took.
We have been working ethically according to all the guidelines to remove manually all the bad backlinks that are pointing to our website. Over the last three months, we have tried getting in touch with all the webmasters who own the sites our links were found on. Attached herewith is a Google Document File that details all the steps we took during our Link Removal Outreach.
Some of the webmasters cooperated with us to remove the backlinks, while others have either remained unresponsive or have asked for money in return for link removal. We have filed a disavow.txt file to disavow all the links that we were unable to remove with our manual outreach.
We would like to assure you that we have given our 100% to ensure that we are at par with all the Google Webmaster Guidelines. We would also like to assure you that we would be careful in our future marketing efforts. We have created a new in-house team to ensure such a thing does not happen in the future.
Please do look into the following document and do the needful as we are sorry for the misdeed.
Thanking You,
Regards,
Piyush Agarwala
After you submit the reconsideration request, you need to be patient as it takes quite some time before they review and respond to your email. If your website did not get a manual penalty, then you will receive an automated email stating no spam was found on your website. If you were under a manual penalty, then the response might come somewhere between three to six weeks.
Conclusion
Rest assured that if you followed all the steps thoroughly, you would be able to see your website again in Google SERPs in a matter of a few months or after the next Penguin Update Rolls out depending on your situation.
One thing that I would like to remind you again is that you need to be really patient. The entire process can actually take months to complete, which is why we always suggest taking the help of Professional Link Removal services to aid you.
I understand that it is a very difficult process to endure this slow poison and see your sales and traffic diminish slowly. If you have done everything as we have outlined so far, you will be on the road to recovery.
I think I have substantially covered the entire topic, and you shouldn’t have any questions after this. However, I am willing to help you guys get through this tough time, so just leave your questions in the comments section below if you have any.
I wish you good luck with your website and hope that you can recover from your penalty at the earliest. God bless!
Maybe you are an Online Digital Marketer or a Blogger, Freelancer, Entrepreneur, Local Business Owner or from any other trade, but one thing will remain constant for everyone. You all need marketing. The effort and resources needed to market your products or services may be different. But, without marketing, there is no exposure and your business is bound to get stagnant at some point in time.
“Digital Marketing in 2016 is an investment that is done for the betterment of one’s Business”
I will be talking about essential marketing strategies that are never going to die, some that are going to be more useful than ever in 2016 and some that we need to leave behind because they will not work anymore.
Successful Entrepreneurs and Business Owners spend an average of 30 minutes a day on Business Education and Self Development.
That is a form of marketing. It is time invested in understanding the changes in your Demographics, Market Place and Key Performance Indicators of your Business.
Realizing the opportunities when you intelligently utilize today’s marketing channels like Social Media to build a long-lasting, relatable and profitable relationship with your customers in an entire community of referring fans for your business, is how you can excel at marketing.
2016 Marketing Channels To Avoid At All Costs
Vine, Foursquare and Swarm have died a silent and painless death in 2015. If you are using any of these channels, it might be a good time now to write it down and scratch these out of our routine. Blogging still remains a very important strategy. However, content with no strategy is not going to get you very far. Spend more time on planning out your content instead of randomly churning out articles for your business or getting them outsourced. Digital Marketing Trends continue to reveal that the use of Stock Images and Video footage has declined a lot last year itself. Consumers have seen it all, they want original and authentic feeds.
As Google and other email corporations become more stringent, ” sending a bunch of emails to your subscribers is not going to work either “ Instead you will need to focus on Email Automation and Personalization (more on this in the blog).
Banner Advertisements are on a decline too. There is a mobile movement going on for the past few years and the rise of smartphones is creating smarter consumers and creating more opportunities for smarter marketing. Consumers have become “banner blind”, so investing in banners is not a great idea unless you are already getting good results from a particular source.
Also, it might be high time to consider whether you need to allocate more funds to marketing your business on desktops vs. mobile environments.
THE MOBILE MOVEMENT STUDY
Over 2015, mobile search queries have skyrocketed to new heights. People search for everything from Travel Information to Product Reviews, Local Restaurants to random Trivia to become more knowledgeable.
While Word of Mouth and Display in Stores do lead to people to search for products on their smartphones…
…71% of consumers search for a product because they saw an advertisement.
4 out of 5 people take an action based on an advert they saw either on PC or on their Tablets and Phones. Mobile Advertisements are the new trend.
82% of Mobile Users notice mobile Advertisements. However, 79% of Top Advertisers still do not have a mobile-optimized website. It is more important than ever this year to provide your visitors with a good mobile experience. Don’t just check this box if you have a responsive website. It is important to check how your website functions on different browsers and different gadgets to get the most out of your time and resources spent on marketing. (You can contact me if you need help with creating a great mobile experience for your consumers).
Consumers today use a smartphone to keep updated, stay connected, for entertainment or to search for information on the go and obviously to make a smarter shopper. The shift is already happening, Don’t miss the mobile movement.
Here’s my list of the top 15 Latest Digital Marketing Trends for 2016
Re-targeting,
Promo Marketing,
Google Tag Manager,
Email Marketing (Automation and Personalization),
Marketing Automation,
Content Marketing (with a twist),
Buyer Follow-up Plan,
Search Engine Optimization,
Social Selling,
Conversion Rate Optimization,
Sideway Marketing,
Self-development and Business Education,
Podcasting (You read it right, people still listen to podcasts),
Google Ad Words PPC,
and YouTube Video Marketing.
This list is in no particular order. You may or may not have even heard about some of the ways, but if you find something interesting or questionable – Let me know through the comments section.
Now since you have a fair idea of what to expect inside this blog post, let us move into the details of each of the aforementioned tactics.
#1. RE-TARGETING / RE-MARKETING
Also known as “Pesky Salesman” Marketing. Re-targeting (Re-marketing) aims at balancing branding and direct response.
Since too much direct response can lead to consumer saturation and too much branding entails brand exposure without any direct correlation to an increase in sales, Re-targeting is a form of marketing that aims to balance both aspects of branding and direct response.
Re-targeting allows you to deliver certain value in advance and be assured that there will be a follow-up regardless of any contact detail or sale acquisition.
For Re-targeting to work, you need to ensure that you have great content. As sending users to landing pages related to content has lower costs than sending them directly to a product landing page, this method has an overall lower cost per lead.
Your first priority should be to build a pixeled audience. You can do this from either Google or Facebook, both are great in their own ways. Then remarket your products to only the pixeled audience which left your landing pages without converting.
Here is a very interesting read I came across on HubSpot about retargeting ideas. If you find the resource helpful, don’t forget to bookmark their page for future reference.
RE-MARKETING STORY
A quick look at Remarketing with Google AdWords and Analytics
Watchfinder, a premium, and pre-owned luxury watch retailer discovered that less than 1% of visitors were purchasing from their website. Since the average order value on their website was close to $3,500, the company found that buying decisions often spanned over a long period of time. Watchfinder’s challenge was to re-engage and converse with these users who had shown interest in the luxury watches to incite them to return to the website and make a purchase.
This is where re-marketing came into play. Once their remarketing campaign was properly set up and executed, they had a massive 1300% increase in ROI. Their average sales volume also increased by 13%.
Click here to read their full case study in detail.
#2. PROMO MARKETING CALENDAR
Don’t just look at the Promo Calendar as a list of days when your company blasts festive emails to all your subscribers. If planned in the right way, a Promo Marketing Calendar can help you reach your company milestones faster.
Here Are 6 Effective Ways of Using a Promotional Calendar
Break Larger Business Goals into Smaller Milestones
Create Success Checkpoints and Breach KPI’s
Set project Deadlines and Track progress
Understand How and When to Allocate Resources
Increase Brand Awareness Amongst Consumers
Increase Revenue From Your Email Marketing Lists
Keep the focus on your marketing plans first, and use the promotional calendar as a means to overcome the aforementioned objectives.
So, how can you go about creating the perfect promo calendar marketing plan?
Have you been using promo marketing for your business before? If so, take statistics of the last few years and narrow down on the promotions that worked and the promotions that failed. Once you have the list, you can focus on enhancing the promotions that worked for your business. Think of it as an immediate source for generating sales.
Write down a 12-month revenue goal that you plan on obtaining. Perfection is the key. You need to have something to work towards, but do not overlook your business milestones. Write down what you expect to achieve out of every promotion.
Now, create a list of holidays in your financial year and slot them into appropriate months. Here is an interesting resource that lists down all possible promotional holidays on the calendar. Source.
Jot down your slow and fast business months. Every business faces a down phase in the year. For example – Some businesses sell more on vacation time than others. Trying to heavy promote your business during slow months is only going to build resentment for your brand.
Categorize non-revenue and brand awareness generating goals separately.
These can be-
Blog Launch
Podcasts
Webinars
Books
Etc…
Keep seasonality in mind when plotting promotions since no business have even earnings all throughout the year. Always have a certainly expected figure for every promotion. That way, you can measure its success. If you fail to meet your expectations for any promotion, then carry forward the deficit to the next promotion. Keep going until the end of the year.
List all your additional requirements.
If you need to launch a new product/service
Acquire New Leads
Launch new campaigns
Create a more pixeled audience etc.
Use the Promo Calendar wisely, and incorporate other marketing tactics into it. There are endless combinations. Feel free to contact me if you need ideas on how to get started. Trying to focus on the entire calendar can be overwhelming to start with, focus on quarterly or half-yearly plans at first.
#3. GOOGLE TAG MANAGER
Imagine being able to see every single click that happens on your website??!? The Google Tag Manager not only allows you to do just that but is also very easy to set up. I am not going to show you how to set up GTM, but if you need help you can get in touch with me through the comments at the end of the post.
Refer to the Google Tag Manager as a Dashboard that helps marketers accomplish just about any goals related to marketing. Google Tag Manager does not replace Google Analytics, but it supercharges GA to an extent that the reports provided by analytics are much more detailed and useful.
Though the GTM has an extensive learning curve, the time you spend on setting up GTM will eventually add up in the long run. It makes it easy to place tracking pixels and scripts on various parts of your website like specific button clicks and page views.
As a beginner, you should stick to only tags and triggers in GTM, later on, as you gain more confidence you can start accessing the advanced data layers.
Email Marketing is not all about blasting your subscription lists with tons of emails throughout the day. In fact, if you are doing this you are not going to get any benefits at all. Email marketing in 2016 is more about automation and personalization.
Also, pay very close attention to what you write in your emails because that is the most important piece of copy you are going to write.
Take into consideration a very hypothetical situation –
Let’s say that you send out 10,000 emails that get a 10% open rate with another 10% of readers clicking on the link and 5% of them buying your product = 5 Sales.
Now if you just aim to improve your copy to double your open and link click rate – 10,000 emails that get 20% open rate and 20% link click rate and 5% buy = 20 Sales. Which is a direct 400% increase in sales just by writing a better email copy?
Here is a very interesting resource on writing great Email Subject Lines to boost your open rates.
Take notes on some of these positive keywords that boost email CTR:
Exclusive
Free Delivery
Gift
Latest
New
Sale
Alert
News
Video
Daily
Weekly
Editor
Update
Breaking
Limited
Review
Here are some negative words that you should cut immediately from your Email Subject Lines –
Use your emails to help your customers to work with you. Give them the information they need to interact with your brand. Use effective CTAs to incite them to take action.
Understand that change is a constant thing. If something is working today, it may not work tomorrow. Always keep testing. Your competitors are testing.
Learn new things and implement them yourself. Test and verify yourself.
#5. MARKETING AUTOMATION
Marketing Automation refers to software that aims to automate the goals of marketing. Especially, repetitive tasks like Emails, Social Media and other common website actions. Most marketers opt for it, try to set it up and leave it unfinished because the process is very overwhelming.
In simple terms marketing automation refers to software and tactics that help companies to have a buying cycle like big eCommerce websites. This helps them to encourage better brand communication with consumers and convert stuck-on-the-fence users into reliable and repetitive buyers of the business.
Problem with Marketing Automation
Most marketers live under the impression that marketing automation orbits all the essential marketing tools necessary for the growth of a business including lead generation software. This mere delusion leaves most marketers automating the middle of the funnel without any solution to generate new leads and create new business relationships.
Marketing Automation Case Study
Sixth Division built a $3MM Coaching and Services Business in 4 Years.
How do you say?
Solely with lead generation tactics and marketing automation.
Sixth Division acquired leads through four channels, namely –
Facebook
Google
Live Events
And partners
After acquiring leads, SixthDivision invited prospects to a Webinar. At the end of the Webinar, they showcased a single product for the prospects to buy. Once converted into buyers, SixthDivision had their entire follow-up plan automated.
They sent out a Three Email Series to all buyers to schedule a consultation.
The first email was a video that introduced them to SixthDivision. This video confirmed the date of the consult and showed them what they could expect from the consult.
The second video was a simple reminder about the upcoming appointment. The Date and time were planted in three places – the Subject Line, picture and Closing Sentence.
The third email was a pre-consult message reminding them about things they should have ready before they take the call.
This simple and effective automated plan allowed them to scale their business seamlessly and grow it into a $3MM Coaching and Services business in 4 Years.
#6. CONTENT MARKETING
Content shall always be the king of the internet. Just that its ways are changing. Previously you could get away with an unplanned content strategy and still extract decent ROI out of your marketing campaigns, but now the rules of the game have changed.
As smartphones are enabling smarter users, people are becoming very particular about the kind of content they see in their news feeds. You can’t impress them with any random “tech-joe” talks. You need to have carefully researched data and plan to even invite them to click and reach your landing pages.
This calls for a twist in the tale and here is how you can go about it.
Break Your Longer posts into Shorter and Detailed Versions. Don’t give all your information away at once. This will lead to higher bounce rates on your website if you manage to get the clicks. Instead, focus on giving away beginner-friendly information in earlier blog stages and then move on to advanced information in the later stages.
The best way to go about is to publish one part every week. Unless users are really interested in whatever content you throw at them, focus on sending one informative post every week to their email. You can remind them throughout the week about your post, but avoid information overload at all costs.
Choose a post that worked well and enhance it. Add more information to it and update it. Once you update an old post you can publish it with a “More Information Title” or something similar and publish it again.
If you have a recurring post that can be updated periodically, make it a point to update it and republish it with a new title. Push the old content down and add the changes to the top of the post.
Google loves websites that keep updating their old posts. Sending signals that you have updated an older blog post will definitely entail more SEO benefits and traffic.
#7. EIGHT WEEK FOLLOW-UP PLAN
Starting from the moment a customer purchases their product, this is how it will look like….
First Week –
Focus solely on establishing a relationship with the customer. Give them a walkthrough of the product or a video guide and let them enjoy its benefits.
Second, Third and Fourth Week –
Focus solely on social proof by introducing them to other customers who have used your products. Show them testimonials on Social Websites and invite them to leave feedback themselves.
If you have an online community or forum, introduce them to it and ask other members to congratulate them on joining. Basically, establish a friendly rapport with them, not just a buyer and seller relationship.
Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Week –
Start measuring your results. They have used your product for almost a month. Now it’s time for you to reach out to them and help them document it for you. Get even more testimonials and proof of results, reward those who keep the chain alive and continue to show new people the power of your products.
By doing these little things, you can save a lot of money and invest it into other marketing channels.
Keep in mind that your motive is the encourage advocacy of your brand. There is no way those customers are going to turn against you once you have been with them for the first sixty days and they have shared their unbiased testimonials with their followers on social platforms.
The more you can get people to use your products and share their experiences. The better chances you will have at convincing newer customers and showcasing them the power of your brand and that YOUR BRAND is THE SOLUTION TO ALL THEIR PROBLEMS.
#8. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Do not forget the power of earned media. Go to the Google Adwords Tool and do a search for your industry keyword.
If you are in the Fashion Industry, try searching for “Fashion” and the average bid should show you an estimate of what the keyword is worth in terms of clicks.
Likewise, you could be from the Makeup, Self-Development, Women Care, Beauty etc industry.
Now, let’s take a keyword that is worth $0.15 cents. If you are able to rank for that keyword and get at least 5.879 visitors a day from organic traffic. You are technically saving $881.85 a day for marketers who are advertising for that keyword. Now if you take into account the yearly expenses 881.85×365 = $321875.25 yearly. Magical isn’t it?
Always try to include an industry keyword in your domain name. This makes your chances of ranking in the long term a lot easier as compared to fully branded domain names.
Remember, Copywriting is the end all and be all of the marketing. It is present everywhere. Be it a 150 Character Tweet you want to promote, or a short AdWords Advertisement, the subject line of your business email or the content that goes onto your website and blogs. Always hire quality writers and better still, train and recruit them in-house.
What Are Possible Signals to Google That Your Page Rocks?
The CTR on your website – a number of clicks from your homepage to other internal pages of your website shows that visitors are interested in what you are sharing with them. So craft a good copy and CTA that gets clicks into the deeper inner pages.
Headlines play a very crucial role. Always keep testing your headlines. Remember the thumb rule of marketing – What is working today, will not work tomorrow. Your competitors are always testing, so should you.
The average time people spend on your page is also a key indicator of your website’s quality. The more the average time, the better your chances of ranking shall be in the eyes of Google.
Scroll Rates – Consumers cannot make a purchase if they cannot see the buy button. Ensure that your website copy incites users to scroll around and doesn’t have any blocking elements or irritating popups.
Use original photos and videos on your website as a means of keeping people engaged with your content for a longer period of time. Use long and in-depth videos to show customers more about your product and services.
Last but not the least, Grammar, Quality Links, Social Shares, Relevant Images, Captions, Author Authority etc, will help visitors stay on your page for a longer duration, decrease your bounce rates and increase your overall SEO score as well.
#9. SOCIAL SELLING
Let’s not talk about Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn marketing separately. That is why I am putting all of these under one tab and we can call it “Social Selling.”
Before I get into the nitty-gritties of Social Selling, it is important to understand how a typical sales funnel looks like.
Lead Capture –> Sales Page –> Order Form –> Upsell –> Thank You
Don’t use social media as a platform to directly sell your products. Instead, focus on advancing the customers from one stage of the sales funnel to the other.
Brands that constantly try to sell directly to their pixeled audience increase churn and eventually burn their lists. People eventually become blind to their advertisements and promoted posts.
The aim of Social Selling should be to establish a rapport with your customers and increase purchase frequency by establishing continuity and credibility.
Use platforms like Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Linked In and Twitter to build Likability and Trust amongst customers.
Start with Giving Value First and Establishing Credibility
Send visitors from Social Media to an Ungated Offer. It can be a Blog Post, Resources, Checklist, How-to Guide etc, but don’t ask for anything in return just about yet.
Alternatively,
You could also try sending them to a gated offer like White Paper, PDF Ebook Download etc, and try to get their emails first. Testing is the key here.
Alternatively,
You could offer them deep discounts on evergreen products, services or software. Use this technique if you are selling something that needs no introduction. For example – Digital Services like SEO, Copywriting, Explainer Video Creation etc. These services need no introduction, and there is already a heavy demand in the market for them.
The idea here is to use value first to drive traffic from Social Media to your website or platform.
Now, Embed Core Offers into Your Ungated Content
Plant an offer or propose a sale towards the middle or end of your content and try to convert them into buyers. Don’t go for your most expensive products, use cheap ones instead. The idea here is to make them swipe their cards and spend as little as a dollar towards your business. Just create a connection.
Or, Upsell Products from Deep Discounts
For every group of people who are willing to spend money to buy your products, there will be some people who can always spend more. The idea of Upsell offers is to aim at those customers and try to sell more from the 2nd stage of the funnel because they have already shown interest in purchasing your products.
Pixel and Retarget Customers Who Left from Funnel Stage One
Customers who clicked your promoted posts and went to your website were interested in what you had to share with them. Pixel those customers who leave from this stage and re-target other products that fall into the same interest category.
INCREASING BUY FREQUENCY AND REPEAT ORDERS
The mathematics is simple here. More than 70% of Customers turn to Social Media for after-sales service. If they get a reply, they are most likely to purchase from you again and become stable customers. If they do not get a reply, there is a 15% chance of them not placing any orders in future.
77% of customers say that valuing their time is the best way a company can provide better customer service.
So, ensure that you reply to all social messages within 12 hours and that resolution to customer’s problems is provided within 24 hours at all costs.
Use Social Listening Tools Effectively
Statistics report that more than 50% of customers do not tag the Brand when they are talking about it on Social Media. Thankfully, you have ways to eavesdrop on their conversations on Social Media. Use it effectively, and you can reach them right in the nook of time.
Hootsuite – an entry-level searchable tool that monitors your social media
Mention – a mid-level tool that monitors streams – listen for keywords
Radian6 – an enterprise-level tool to monitor social media
#10. CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION
So, you are spending money on Facebook Advertisements, Google PPC, Retargeting, Offline Advertisements, Billboards etc, but have not allocated any resources on Conversion Rate Optimization?
You might be technologically challenged as an Entrepreneur, but if your I.T Department has not mentioned anything about optimizing the conversions on your website, it might be a good time to reconsider hiring the right guys.
Marketing is not about the number of visitors that come to your business, but it is about the number of visitors that convert into trusted and returning customers of your business.
So instead of focusing on driving new leads to your business, your focus should also be on improving the amount of “what-sticks-and-what-doesn’t” on your website. This is where Conversion Rate Optimization comes into play.
Resources:
InstaPage – create a landing page in just 3 minutes
Unbounce.com – build and test landing pages without I.T.
There are various tests you could be running on your website to Conversion Optimize it, here is my list of what’s really going to be on target in 2016
Conduct Offer Tests – like product bundling, visitor interest-targeted messaging, writing a benefits copy above the fold, offering discount coupons on website headers etc.
Geolocation Tests– Use of different images, wording and language according to Geolocation tests.
Personalization Tests – This is going to be a big one in 2016. More than 60% of marketers have called it the game-changer. It’s about personalizing who sees what and when.
Shopping Cart Recovery Tests and Email Reminders for Shopping Cart Abandonment
Button Color and Standard CTA Tests are also here to stay. (forever).
Lastly, do not forget to do mobile optimization tests. Mobile-Friendly Websites go way beyond the means of just responsive websites. You need to test how your website works and functions on different devices like Mobile, Phablets, Tablets, Laptops, Desktop Computers etc.
Also, plan different advertisements and content for different devices. For example – the banner ad you use for desktops might not gain the same traction on mobile devices. Your content strategy should differ according to the device.
#11. SIDEWAY MARKETING
When you do not have a huge marketing budget but your competition is stiff, it’s better to market your business sideways than to get into a head-on collision with your competitors (who can easily crush you).
If you already have an Email Marketing Subscriber List, try running it through Towerdata.com
As soon as you scan your list on Towerdata, the website will give you age, gender, marital status, income, zip code and more of the people on your list. You will also get an overall snapshot of your market – length of residence, home market value, presence of children, charitable donors etc,
You can also collect purchase data and interest data from Towerdata.com. Once you have all the information in front of you, you can market your products and personalize your future emails, even more, to gain more traction from the email marketing list.
Apart from giving all the above information, Towerdata.com also gives you the net worth of leads.
When I ran a list of one of my Makeup and Beauty Industry clients on Tower data, it returned that more than 50% of the leads were high net worth.
But the cost of Beauty leads acquisition = $4.52/lead
So instead of buying Beauty leads, I bought 1000 Cosmetic leads for $0.69 each = $690 investment. Guess what? Women who were interested in cosmetics are bound to be interested in the Makeup and Beauty Niche. This way I not only acquired $4552 worth of Makeup and Beauty Leads (Immediate 650% ROI), with just $690 Investment. But also knew that at least 50% of the leads would be high net worth.
Can you see how this data can be used to sideway market your business to cheaper leads and still extract more than decent ROI from it?
Take for example the Golf Industry. You can venture into the Golf Niche, but sell products like properties, luxury cars, business loans etc., to those golfers. Because people in this niche and mostly affluent and have a classy taste for everything.
The core idea is to think of what people in your market are doing when they are not doing what you are selling. Think outside the box. Do You want to sell Insurance to people? But Insurance leads would cost you a massive $10-$18 per lead. Instead, search for Dog Lovers or Dog Breeds, which you can acquire for a few cents. Once you have that in place, try to get customers into your den with cheap tripwires like (Dog Tags and Dog Care Ebooks) and then Upsell them “Pet Insurance” once they opted for your Dog Tags. See what we did there? There is a simple science behind it, and this can be implemented in each and every industry.
#12. SELF DEVELOPMENT AND BUSINESS EDUCATION
Why is Self-Development and Business Education placed in the Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2016 you ask? Why shouldn’t it be? Marketing is an investment in any form that is done with the aim to grow your business in the long run. Marketing should add value to your business, and Self Development and Business Education thus is an important part of marketing.
I will repeat myself from the Introduction – Most successful entrepreneurs and business owners spend an average of 30 minutes a day on business education and self–development. While the majority of entrepreneurs shy away from the idea of personal development, strangely because they think that the idea of being a better person is silly or stupid.
We all want to be better individuals but we resist it because somehow the idea of facing all-out internal junk scares the hell out of us and we would rather give big speeches and take less responsibility than vice versa.
What we believe in, will set the stage for everything in our lives and will also determine the course of our expertise and experience. Successful entrepreneurship requires inculcating a set of beliefs that the majority of the people do not hold. Self-Development and Business Education will arm you to be better prepared for situations that normal people cannot handle. Like how to cope with business pressure during low volume months, or how to use negative publicity that your competitors do, in your favor.
All sorts of weird human tendencies sabotage our personal success. This is the subconscious mind and is not rational. We need to change our Self-sabotaging and Success Blocking Tendencies. Self-development can teach you how to cope with the fear of added responsibility, criticism, and failure. It will also teach you how to cope with success-blocking tendencies like Laziness, Procrastination. You do not want to become this perfect godly figure, but just a better version of yourself.
Think of it like this – Every minute you spend on self-development as an Entrepreneur will take away a dollar from your marketing efforts because, you are going to be making better decisions, managing your time effectively, and learning how to deal with stress, which is a critical progress killer.
Radio might be dead, but Podcasting is still a great form of marketing. People love media, especially if you are able to deliver it to them at their convenience. The art of direct marketing into your customer’s ears is one that needs a little bit of honing.
Finding your ideal voice is the most difficult part of Podcasting. You need to venture outside your comfort zone and find the right tone and setting for your Podcast.
Photo credit: Nicolassolop
Here are the basic tools that you need to start a Podcast –
Don’t aim to be a perfectionist when you first start Podcasting. Your initial Podcasts may not get as much attention as you think you deserve, but eventually, if you have the right mindset and deliver quality information, people are going to pile up and wait for you to release the next episode.
Use Podcasting as a storytelling tool. Don’t be a script nerd and read out from the paper. Just write down the points and be natural. People tend to understand when you are speaking naturally and when you are being superficial. They will lose interest if they find that you are reading from a script.
You can also invite other influencers into your Podcast and have a great discussion with them for everyone to hear. In this case, too, you need to ask the right question and avoid scripting of any sort.
You need to be consistent with your podcasts. Once you get frequent, people are going to wait for you to release the next episodes on time. If you don’t, they will get emotional and leave or think that you are just not too serious about the affair.
To find the ideal format for your Podcast, try releasing a few episodes at first and experiment in each. Then ask your audience which episodes they liked more than the others to narrow down on what’s going to work and what’s not going to work for you.
#14. GOOGLE ADWORDS PPC
1. Ad Messaging Enhancements
Earlier you were limited to a mere 95 Characters on PPC Ads, but now you can spice up your advertisements with a ton of Extensions and actually deliver more information to get targeted clicks.
Now, Ad Copy Writing for PPC is not just about the script. You need to carefully plan and design your advertisements, just like you craft your landing pages.
There are seven manual ad extensions to choose from. Click here to read more about them. Google has also included structured snippets, which is really cool.
2. Video Ads
Video Advertisements aren’t a new thing, but 2015 does seem like the year where they have been used extensively. 2016 is going to be no different. With Google incorporating the True View Video Advertisement campaign into AdWords, this trend is already on a hike.
Most marketers are adding these as the icing on the Cake, especially if their clients have a high budget.
This is an ideal time to exploit this strategy before it explodes in the near future.
3. RLSA (Remarketing List for Search Advertisements)
Though this feature was officially launched in 2013, most advertisers are still not using it. RLSA lets you effectively modify bids, search ads, keywords when past website visitors do a Google Search for products similar to yours.
You can initially review how customers are behaving on your website after clicking on your Ads. If the cost of acquisition of returning visitors is higher on your website, then you can lower the bid on search advertisements for first-time users.
Google Adwords is huge. There is more to it beyond these three important elements. But If you are starting out, focus on getting the first two points and later move on to other advanced options as you become comfortable
#15. YOUTUBE VIDEO AD MARKETING
More than 73% of Smart Phone enabled users to watch at least one video on YouTube every day. If that is not reason enough to get into Video Advertisements in 2016, then what is?
53% of viewers who watch a video get inspired or entertained.
70% of millennials use YouTube videos to learn something.
“How-to” searches are on a hike (70%) of total searches this year.
When viewers go on YouTube to watch a video, they see an advertisement on the right-hand side or a pre-video advertisement.
Most marketers do not get into video advertising for two primary reasons –
Starters Block – They do not know what to do.
Or, they do not know how to do it.
Videos allow you to get the right advertisements in front of the right people, at the right time.
Start by using Open Broadcaster Software – you can directly stream into YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch etc with CTAs and Keywords.
Start recording a video.
Use them as in-display advertisements (10 cents per viewer)
Link to your landing page
You can also do in-stream Ads(like the ones that play before a video, or ones that can be skipped in 5 secs).
To get the best results, your advertisements must be very engaging in the first 5 seconds.
You can also target your advertisements through videos. You can have them display on specific videos.
Use Retargeting to build lists of people who have already seen your video and get back in front of them. You can import Pixel from Facebook Campaigns and Google Adwords Campaigns. Video Advertisements are short, attention-grabbing and crisp. If you haven’t launched a video marketing campaign for your brand yet, it is time to reconsider your marketing efforts.
Closing Calls
As customers and marketers constantly evolve with the ever-changing technology, it is important for everyone to stay updated. At the end of the day, it is not about how many marketing tactics are you using for your business, but about how much you are extracting out of your marketing campaigns.
What is working today, might be considered old fashioned or outdated tomorrow. As a marketer, it is high time to understand that we cannot take anything for granted. What may have worked for us in the past, might hold no significant value today? Technology is not the only thing that is changing, our customers are evolving too and the way they choose to connect with our brands is evolving too.
“The only thing that remains constant is change.”
As you’re building your marketing plan for 2016, keep the “dying” trends in mind. Don’t count on what worked for you before but rather learn what has changed and come up with new ideas and new ways to leverage the technology at hand.
At Prime One Global, we understand that running a business can be overwhelming. On top of this, making time for self-development and staying updated with marketing tactics is not easy at all. That is why we keep updating our marketing skills in all spheres. Get in touch with me for a no-obligation, free consultation and I will have a Dedicated Marketing Manager from Prime One Global guide you on the ways you can market your business in 2016.
Have a good day!
Here is a list of Useful Resources, Tools and Software That Will Help You Become Better at Marketing Your Business
Competitor Research –
Datanyze.com– find different tools in various industries
BrightKite– Top product research platform for all caregivers with detailed reviews
BuiltWith – Find out what software and plugins your competitors are using
HotJar – create session recordings, improve form design, heat map, surveys and form analysis.
Google Analytics – Freemium Subscription, check traffic acquisition, Source, Referrals, Behaviors, Site Content Flow, Check Sessions by hour, Find best performing content etc.
CrazyEgg – Best heat map, scroll mapping, understand how people from different sources interact with your website
Grytics – Facebook Group Analytics and management. Find when members are most active, understand when to interact with them.
Onsite Remarketing / Retargeting
io – Social Shares, Contents, Giveaways, On-site Retargeting
OptiMonk – Contextual exit popups, hello bar, scroll pops etc.
LoadImpact – ton demand load testing for developers.
Feel free to get in touch with me about any of these tactics in the comments section below or you can also leave feedback on our official Facebook page. If you think I missed something out, let me know and I will add it to this post in near future.
We are pleased to announce that we are the winners of Promotion World’s Readers’ Choice Awards 2015.
With over 5500+ votes cast across myriad categories, The Reader’s Choice Awards are a flawless indicator of a company’s influence in its genre of excellence. We are grateful for being able to work in such a positive community, with like-minded employees and comforting clientele that have supported us in every hurdle we faced.
Kokul Krishnan, The new CEO of primeone.global, said, “Another medal on our chest, a milestone in our journal that we have set our eyes on for the last five years, and many more years to come. It is such an honor to be nominated as the best Digital Marketing Agency of 2015. We have been in business since 2008, and since our inception, we have endeavored to create a company where the employees are eager to come to work and contribute enthusiastically. We are thankful to all our friends, family members, partners, stakeholders and clients for their unwavering support and loyalty towards Prime One Global. This success is just one of the many we aim to conquer under the shade of your love and guidance.”
This is not merely an award for us. It is the emblem of our drive to build a ground-breaking and ever-growing market of services in a highly competitive business environment. We will strive to improve ourselves over the coming years and deliver even better and realistic results for our clients. Results, which will boast of better returns on every dollar they choose to spend on Digital Marketing.
With new trends and technological advancements in the Marketing Industry, the likes of content marketing, retargeting, pay per click, mobile adoption, and video marketing all pacing ahead into 2016, the marketing landscape is ever-changing and it requires companies to rapidly evolve according to its dynamism. It is vital for all Marketing and Ad Agencies to embrace the change and stay update with best practices, hunt new opportunities and take calculated risks to stay ahead of the game. This cannot be simply achieved by looking for clients and dispersing services, but by being actively involved in the community through video outreach, guest speaking, blogging, seminars, webinars or teaching. Our ultimate motive in 2016 would be to become an even more active participant in the Marketing Community than last year.
Shan Dilan (Director of Operations) exclaimed, “A massive round of applause to all my colleagues, back-office staffs and Mr. Sharanyan for making this victory possible for us four years in a row. Yes! For all of you who are unaware or have joined our company recently, we have won Reader’s Choice Award of 2013, 2014, 2015 and this year, we have done it again! Thanks to all our clients and partners as your unbiased feedback and unfaltering support have helped us live up to our own expectations.”
Our devotion to quality and client satisfaction has led us to many awards winning moments, all of which have earned us high honors in the Digital Marketing Industry. As a fastest growing Digital Marketing Agency, We’ve won quite a few awards for accomplishments in entrepreneurship, search engine optimization, social media management, and web design. We have already set Reader’s Choice Award of 2016 in our future milestones because we know for sure, the best of us is yet to be seen.
The team at Prime One Global LLC would like to give a big thank you to everyone that voted for us in The Promotion Readers Choice Award. We are voted as the Internet’s favorite Digital Marketing Firm of 2015.
