Marketing – Mandy Gilbert

Measuring Success: Key Performance Indicators for Digital Marketing

October 14, 2024June 4, 2024 by Mandy.Gilbert

Hey there, data-driven marketers and business owners! Ready to dive into the world of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for digital marketing? Grab your favorite analytics tool and get comfortable, because we’re about to explore how to measure and maximize the success of your digital marketing efforts.

Before we jump in, let me share a quick story. Last year, I worked with a small online clothing boutique – let’s call it Chic Styles. The owner, Emma, was investing heavily in digital marketing but had no clear way to measure her return on investment. Fast forward six months, and with a strategic KPI framework in place, Chic Styles had increased their marketing ROI by 150% and gained a clear understanding of what was working (and what wasn’t). How’d we do it? Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to explore today.

Understanding KPIs in Digital Marketing: The Basics

First things first, let’s break down what we mean by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in digital marketing. KPIs are quantifiable measures used to evaluate the success of an organization, employee, or campaign in meeting objectives for performance. In digital marketing, KPIs help you understand if your marketing efforts are paying off and guide your future strategies.

Here’s why KPIs are crucial:

a) Measure Progress: KPIs help you track progress towards your marketing goals.
b) Identify Strengths and Weaknesses: They show you what’s working and what needs improvement.
c) Inform Decision Making: KPIs provide data to guide your marketing decisions.
d) Justify Budget: They help you prove the value of your marketing efforts to stakeholders. e) Set Benchmarks: KPIs allow you to set realistic targets based on past performance.

For Chic Styles, we started by identifying their primary business objectives and aligning their marketing KPIs with these goals. This immediately gave Emma a clearer picture of her marketing performance.

10 Best SEO Tools Used To Help Boost Google Rankings

October 10, 2024February 27, 2023 by Mandy.Gilbert

Unless you are prepared to pay for traffic to your website via PPC advertising, the other main source of online traffic will likely be the organic search traffic from search engines, the primary one being Google. To rank well on Google so that your website appears in the results when a prospect is searching for the types of goods and services you offer, a significant amount of search engine optimisation (SEO) must have taken place.

SEO is one of those fields within marketing that is almost enigmatic, given that so many people have tried and failed to make it work. One of the problems they encounter is that for SEO to be effective, you need a lot of data and information relating to your website, your competition’s websites, keywords, and many other elements of SEO, and they do not know where to obtain that information.

The answer is SEO software and tools, of which there are many. However, only a select few are tried, tested, and used by most top SEO experts and agencies. Here is a list of the top 10 SEO tools that SEO experts, the Perth SEO company use and recommend;

Ahrefs: Regarded by most SEO experts as the ‘must-have’ SEO tool, Ahrefs is second only to Google in the amount of data it collects while crawling websites. It generates a ton of data relating to everything from keyword search volume, backlinks, and competition analysis, and it also allows you to track all of it.

SEMrush: Knowing what you need to do to beat your competition in terms of Google rankings is essential for implementing SEO that will achieve it, and that is where SEMrush comes into play. It provides exceptional data concerning your competition’s pages and how their SEO compares to others.

Moz Pro: Another highly regarded SEO tool, Moz Pro provides several SEO tools. They include a site auditor, keyword research, and backlink analysis. Before purchasing, you can try them out with a free toolbar for your browser.

How Landscapers Can Create A Highly Successful Blog For Their Business

December 2, 2022November 30, 2022 by Mandy.Gilbert

Many landscapers have websites to help promote their business and the landscaping services which they offer to local residents and businesses. Each of those websites will differ, both in their quality, and their design, and you do not need to be a digital marketing expert to know it is the ones that have been professionally designed with high-quality content that will be more successful.

Part of that will be due to how much those who visit the website become engaged with it, to the extent they may request a call to discuss a landscaping project. The other reason is that better quality websites with great content are identified by Google as being so, and therefore those websites are likely to enjoy higher rankings when someone searches for landscapers in their area.

One of the most successful strategies for gaining the positive outcomes we have just mentioned is to have a blog as part of your website. A blog is the part of a website where content such as articles, videos, images, infographics and audio are all posted by website owners with the view that visitors to the website will enjoy and consume that content.

Many landscaping business owners are unaware of just how many benefits creating a blog on their website can generate which is a pity because there are several as you can see below.

5 Tips Which Will Help Your Blog Posts Boost Your Kitchen Renovation Company’s Online Marketing

October 16, 2024January 3, 2022 by Mandy.Gilbert

If your kitchen renovation company’s website has a blog then if used correctly it can provide your business with multiple advantages over your competition. A great blog can improve your branding and generate increased numbers of prospects, and it will also help boost your SEO, which can lead to higher rankings on Google.

As with all matters relating to marketing online, you will only see any of those positive outcomes if your blog is used correctly. Sadly, there are countless blogs on business websites which have so much potential, but they are sadly abandoned, empty , or the blog posts are poor. We can at least help you fix the latter of those problems so here are 5 ways to ensure your blog posts help your kitchen renovation company’s digital marketing campaigns.

Write Them In Clear English

It would be best if you remembered that your target audience is not literary scholars but people who looking to renovate their kitchen so there is little to be gained by using long, obscure words and jargon in your posts. Also avoid terminology that only specialists in your industry would recognise.

Write in as simple English as possible so that, no matter the education level of the person reading your posts, they will be able to understand what you have written fully. Go through each post you write and take every opportunity to simplify the text.

5 Tips To Ensure Your Recycling Business’s Google Ads Campaign Is Successful

October 16, 2024October 11, 2021 by Mandy.Gilbert

When it comes to marketing your recycling business online, there are two main classifications of traffic, and these are organic traffic which comes from the search engines, and paid traffic which can come from any website where your online paid advertising appears. As for which specific form of paid advertising you use, the digital marketing professionals have no hesitation in recommending Google Ads.

Using Google Ads has many benefits including increased numbers of leads, the ability to edit and improve your ads, you can see immediate results (often within minutes), and you are in full control of your budget which means you can move your ad’s budget up or down depending on your current marketing strategy.

If you do decide to set up a Google Ads campaign there are several ways in which you can improve your chances of success, and most importantly increase your return on investment. Here are 5 of them, which, if you follow them, can make a huge difference to your Google Ads campaign’s performance.

Tip #1: Spy On Your Competitors

One of the best ways to ensure your Google Ads campaign is successful is to model it on the campaigns of other businesses who are using it successfully, especially your competition. Now, we are not for a second suggesting you copy or steal their ads, but instead to look at them and emulate them. Look at what types of images they use, what keywords they are targeting, check the call to actions in their ads, assess the ad copy, and try to better them all.

Best 7 Social Media Marketing Tools

October 10, 2024August 21, 2021 by Mandy.Gilbert

Unless you have been living on a desert island for the past 20 years, you will be aware of the impact and indeed the influence that social media has had on our lives. It has many uses including staying in touch with family, providing the means for giving your personal opinion on just about everything there is to, and most importantly for any business, you are running, marketing.

If your business is not yet using social media in any way, then you are missing out on a huge opportunity. If you are but are not seeing the results you had hoped for then the reason might be that you are not managing your social media campaigns effectively. The resolution to the former issue is to start using it now, and to the former, start using social media marketing tools and software. To help you choose, here is a quick guide to 7 of the best social media marketing tools.

Social Pilot

For any business that is seeking a cost-effective and simple social media management tool, you will find that Social Pilot fits that description. It has an easy to understand interface that allows you to schedule all your social media posts and to analyse their performance. Another great feature is its content curation which suggests posts from several business sectors. Has a 14-day free trial and affordable tiered price plans based on the number of social media accounts.

CoSchedule

This could be described as a hybrid tool that not only lets you manage your social media campaigns but also helps you plan and schedule your other marketing activities. Its ReQueue function provides a means to automatically schedule posts for optimal times. This tool can integrate with many other platforms including WordPress, HubSpot and Zapier. It has a free 14-day trial and very affordable monthly fees.

5 Best Cloud-Based Marketing Tools

October 17, 2024June 10, 2021 by Mandy.Gilbert

Not that long ago, almost all of the software and tools that a business would use to make many of its operations quicker and easier had to be downloaded onto a desktop computer or laptop. While it may not have seemed a problem at the time, using software that way presented a few issues.

The first is that the software or tool could only be used on the computer that it was downloaded to. This meant that if a business needed more than one person to be able to use it, it had to buy multiple downloads or purchase a corporate licence, which invariably cost a significant amount.

Another issue was that as the software was loaded only to one computer if an employee’s role meant they went ‘on the road’, any task that relied on the software in question could not be done until they returned to their place of work and logged on to their primary computer.

There were other issues, such as if the software started to act up, no one was sure if it was a problem with the software or the computer it was loaded on. There could also be problems due to the computer not having enough disc space or having a slow CPU causing the software to run slowly. That is a lot of the issues created by something that is supposed to make life easier for a business.

Thankfully, software and tools for many functions, including those relating to a business, have moved on with the growth of what is called ‘cloud-based’ software. The cloud is nothing to do with weather but rather a term that describes software, tools, apps, and file storage running and operating online. This means instead of being downloaded to a single computer, it remains online and thus can be accessed from anywhere and from any device.

Cloud-based software and tools operate in every niche and can help with every task a business could need. As for any digital agency there is a vast array of cloud-based solutions, but to narrow the field down for you, here are 5 of the most popular cloud-based marketing tools available today.

Top 5 Influencer Marketing Platforms

October 10, 2024January 17, 2021 by Mandy.Gilbert

Have you ever bought something because it was recommended by someone else? Was it someone online who had written a glowing review? Perhaps it was a respected figure whose article shed a positive light on the product or service in question. The scenario we have just outlined is what happens on millions of occasions every day online, and such is its impact that it has been given a name, influencer marketing.

Before we go any further, we must clarify that influencer marketing is not the same as movie stars or sports heroes promoting products on TV. That is advertising. Instead, influencer marketing is mostly content-driven. In other words, the content written by influencers is what persuades people to act in a certain way, including purchasing products, but that content is not an out and out advert screaming “Buy This!”.

The question this raises is “Why would a business use influencer marketing instead of simply have a celebrity endorse or advertise their product?” The simple answer is the return on investment from influencer marketing is over 10 times that of traditional advertising. Also, there is fly in the ointment of the modern consumer having barriers up to persuasion when most adverts appear on TV.

So, if a business wants to take advantage of influencer marketing, it first needs to find the influencers creating the content. That is where influencer software becomes a business’s best friend. It is often called an influencer marketplace or influencer network but more commonly it is referred to as an influencer marketing platform. It is what allows a business to research, find, and connect with influencers, and subsequently set up influencer campaigns. Here are our Top 5.

Upfluence

Upfluence is two marketing tools in one. The first component is Reachr which allows companies and brands to find the influencers that will be creating the content. Their database covers over 200 business sectors, and you can search using 50 filters to ensure you find the match most suitable.

Shopping for groceries? There’s an app for that

October 12, 2021March 11, 2019 by Mandy.Gilbert

Grocery shopping is a necessary evil, and we think, best done online without stepping foot in the supermarket.

Woolies are hoping their new iPhone app will make grocery shopping just a little easier.

The TV ad with Amanda Keller shows Amanda and hubby using their smartphones to scan barcodes from their empty cartons in to make a shopping list – that looks pretty useful. You can also search for product names and add them to your shopping list.

It doesn’t yet allow you to fire up your online shopping account and order everything to be home delivered tomorrow, but hopefully this is a future enhancement. That would make it almost the perfect solution – if it was synchronised to existing online shopping data and allowed you to amend shopping lists, and add new items to your online list from the app.

One to One Integrated Digital Marketing

October 12, 2021December 1, 2018 by Mandy.Gilbert

Customers Have Changed

How customers engage with organisations is vastly different from the fairly recent past and will continue to change in the future. Customers engage with individuals and companies in two way communication through multiple channels, across multiple communities and platforms. Through this engagement they are shaping how companies and brands are perceived. Marketing needs to change to address this change in behaviour and to engage with customers in a personal and consistent way.

Current Situation

Many companies are struggling with internal organisations, processes and systems geared up for product centric, one way, mass marketing which is increasingly irrelevant to today’s customers . It’s safe to say that the companies that succeed in the future will be those that make the shift to one to one marketing and engage customers as individuals.

Today many companies use multiple and uncoordinated databases, processes and campaigns. This leads to uncoordinated activities with multiple, inconsistent customer contacts. As well as often being irrelevant to customers, it is also inefficient, costly and doesn’t provide the greatest return on marketing investments (ROMI). Companies that provide a consistent customer experience, integrated across channels, that is personal and relevant to the customer can improve customer retention and advocacy, as well as achieving greater returns.

5 Email Marketing Errors Removalists Companies Must Avoid At All Times

June 21, 2022December 15, 2013 by Mandy.Gilbert

If you have read any of our other posts and articles relating to online marketing you will have doubtless seen us strongly recommending email as an online marketing channel. For all kinds of businesses, including removalists, email marketing provides one of the simplest, but most effective means of communicating your message to prospects and existing customers.

Given its simplicity, it might seem strange that so many businesses try email marketing but soon give up because they do not see any positive outcomes. They then assume that what they had read about email marketing being so effective, was wrong. The issue that has arisen is not that email marketing does not work, but that how they are using email marketing is incorrect.

In most cases where a business is failing to see any positive outcomes from their email marketing, you can usually identify one of the five most common mistakes made when using email for marketing purposes. To help you avoid these same mistakes we have outlined them below along with advice as to how they can negatively impact any email marketing campaign you implement for your removalists business.

5 Key Data Points Removalists Can Use To Measure The Success Of Their Online Marketing Strategy

October 14, 2024September 9, 2013 by Mandy.Gilbert

Whenever you have an online marketing campaign set up and implemented for your removal business, you must have the means to check its performance. By doing so, it will allow you to take further actions that can complement and improve the campaign. As desirable as that sounds, unfortunately, many business owners do not measure their online marketing campaigns properly nor sufficiently.

Part of the problem is that some business owners have tunnel vision, and thus, the only number they look at is their revenue. Whilst this is certainly a key metric for all businesses, including removalists, it is not the only one. Further, it may not necessarily provide as accurate a measure of an online marketing campaign’s performance as is necessary.

Within any online marketing campaign, several markers paint a far more useful illustration of where the campaign is working, where it is not, and crucially, which elements are providing an excellent return, and which are not. The importance of measuring data is so that the campaign can be improved where possible, and if necessary stop some aspects of the campaign altogether if they are proving to be completely ineffective.

To assist you in measuring the performance of any online marketing campaign you are running now or in the future for your removalists business, here are 5 key data points which you should be focusing on.

10 Awesome Design Tools To Help Enhance Your Online Marketing

October 10, 2024March 3, 2013 by Mandy.Gilbert

From the earliest days of sales and marketing, what prospects see, rather than what they read or hear, has often determined the campaign’s success. Today, the professionals from Oxygen Marketing will tell you that whether it be a drawing, a photograph, an infographic, a video, a logo, a colour, or a font, they have all made positive differences in the success of a marketing campaign.

At one time, graphics and imagery were the domain of skilled graphic artists and designers; to be fair, their talents still have a massive role in the world of marketing today. However, with the advance of technology, several tools and software have allowed almost anyone to create high-quality designs. As such, we would like to share 10 of the best of them with you so that if you wish to test your design skills for your next marketing campaign, you can do so.

Canva: Probably one of the most well-known and popular sites on the internet for those who need marketing graphics and want a simple and affordable way to create them. CCanva’s drag-and-drop interface can be used to create infographics, logos, charts, graphs, or just about anything visual you can think of.

Venngage: As with Canva, it would probably be quicker to tell you what Venngage cannot be used to create than list all the graphical assets for your marketing that it can be used to make. It has a free and paid version, with the paid version opening up many additional templates and customisations.

7 Ways In Which Digital Marketing Can Benefit Your Family Law Firm

October 14, 2024December 22, 2012 by Mandy.Gilbert

Whatever services it offers and how it is structured, there is no escaping the fact that your family law firm is, ultimately, a business, and as with any other kind of business, it can only survive if it is generating sufficient revenue. If you are looking for ways to enhance your revenue levels through a digital marketing agency, you should consider some ideas from digital marketing specialists.

Their experience and expertise in digital marketing have allowed them to create several strategies that have allowed businesses of all types to grow and achieve levels of success that any business owner would wish to replicate. In truth, that success can be replicated by your family law firm if it correctly utilizes digital marketing.

If so, there are several benefits that you will accrue, and not just the core one of increased revenue, albeit many of them will help to facilitate that. Here are seven benefits digital marketing can bestow upon your family law firm.

More Effective Identification Of Target Markets And Audiences: By using digital marketing, or better, if you employ a digital marketing agency with all their expertise and experience, the ability to identify and target the audience and that sector of your marketplace which are the ideal candidates for your marketing messages is greatly improved, meaning enhanced results.

Beyond The Basics

October 13, 2021June 15, 2012 by Mandy.Gilbert

Why The Largest Australian Retailers Are Losing The Online Battle

Australia’s large retailers face increasing competition online from both Australian and overseas retailers. We have conducted research into 62 of Australia’s largest retailers in Australia and their basic capabilities across web, email, social and email.

Today, consumers use multiple online channels throughout the purchase lifecycle – for information search and evaluation, for purchase and for post-purchase service and reassurance about a product or service. Every Australian retailer therefore needs to understand their customer and these digital touch points to ensure they provide a seamless customer experience and optimal engagement.

Our research found a broad range of capabilities used by Australia’s largest retailers. The most basic capabilities are used by almost all retailers. Going beyond the basics we found that most retailers are selling online but the techniques and capabilities used vary widely with tried and tested techniques in some cases only used by a small minority of retailers.

Is Australian online retail really that bad?

October 12, 2021September 11, 2011 by Mandy.Gilbert

A recent Round Table discussion we held asked the question “Is Australian online retail really that bad?” Recent reports have highlighted that online sales in Australia continue to grow but that a large proportion of these sales continue to go overseas.

In June Pacific Brands chief executive Sue Morphet told an Australian Institute of Company Directors event that Australia was about three to four years behind other countries in retailing trends, (source – The Australian 27/5/2011). She said online represented about 10 per cent of total sales in the UK and 8 per cent in the US, but only 3 per cent in Australia.

Overseas online retailers have a disproportionate share of the market, and whilst the market is growing overseas suppliers will grow their market share to the detriment of local online retailers. It also seems to be generally accepted that Australia is 2-4 years behind the US and UK (our closest cultural comparison) in online retail and eCommerce.

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