November 2018

The times, they are a-changin’.

If you’ve been in the digital marketing world like me, Mauricio “Moe” Piña, for some time, then you’ve probably learned to roll with the punches. And why do I mention the importance of evolving and adapting in digital marketing?

Because, according to Forbes, 2019 will see a renaissance of sorts in digital marketing with global consumer Internet video traffic accounting for 80 percent of all consumer Internet traffic. This was backed by Google search engine this past summer when they updated results pages with video carousels rather than individual video boxes.

What does this mean for business owners? Basically, it’s time to step up your video content strategy.

Whether you’ve never uploaded a video or it’s been some time since you’ve worked on getting traffic to one, I’ve got a couple of tips on how you can improve your organic video search results.

Check them out below.

Attracting Moe Traffic to Video Content

1. Integrate Videos Into Related Blogs and Articles

This is one of the easiest actions you can take to improve organic video results if you already have plenty of content that you can work with. Check your data to see what blogs and articles have had an impact on your audience and consider using these.

Embedded videos in your articles and other content not only enhance the visitor’s experience but can also help to increase your website’s page views, sessions, and, ultimately, your conversion rate.

Lumen5 is an exceptional tool that can help turn blogs and long-form content into video in just a few short minutes.

2. Take Advantage of the Description Box

The video description box that you see while diving down the YouTube rabbit hole is a valuable piece of digital marketing real estate. And, yet, time after time, business owners fail to take full advantage of this valuable space.

Adding a direct link to your website into a video description enables your viewers to easily access relevant information that could enhance the user experience. Think about it…what’s better – a viewer interested in your product having to go through the whole process of minimizing YouTube, opening up an Internet browser on another tab or window, keying in search terms, and hoping that your website populates in the first search engine results page? Or a direct link straight to your website.

One click versus multiple steps is always the way to go.

Failing to properly take advantage of the description box is likely going to end in failed conversions. That’s money out of your pocket for something that can be easily remedied.

Aside from a link, a video transcription can also help to improve your video in multiple ways, including:

1. Improves SEO – In a 3-week long study conducted by SafeNet, researchers compared the search rank of a video that had no transcript versus the results after a transcript had been added. Almost a month later, the video content with the transcripts climbed search rankings for targeted keyword phrases, rising from no rankings to top 15 or higher.
2. Provides a Better User Experience – From a learning perspective, adding a video transcript enables your viewer to use whatever method he or she learns from best—whether that be from reading, watching, listening, or all three. Transcripts also simplify the search process for users looking for videos that hit particular topics or keywords.
3. Reach a New Audience – Lastly, transcripts also provide a means of learning for those that may be deaf or non-native English speakers. Expanding your audience is always a plus in the world of digital marketing.

Putting in the extra effort to create and market your video content can really pay dividends in the long run. When it comes to your visitors, however, they need to be able to navigate through your content as effortlessly as possible. Adding in relevant, optimized links and video transcripts in your video help to do just that.

3. Pinpoint Your Video Gaps and Create Content That Addresses Them

Coming up with content ideas can be hard, especially when you have to manage a business. I mean, you could hire a digital marketing team, but if you prefer a more hands-on approach, then there are some steps you can take to enhance your video marketing skills.

To start, you will want to analyze popular search queries and compare those terms to your current video library. Doing this should provide you with some insight into figuring out where your video content gaps are and what type of information you need to provide users to bridge that space.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re in the business of selling grapefruits. You have started creating video content that showcases the many ways that you can prepare grapefruits into extravagant dishes fit for parties and holiday get-togethers. While you may be getting a relatively small stream of viewers watching your content, there’s still more that you can do.

When doing some research and analyzing popular grapefruit search queries, you may find out that many people are looking for adult beverage recipes that include grapefruits. By pinpointing the content gap, you’ve identified what the buyer needs and how you can address those needs. Now you can make an actionable video content campaign that addresses those queries (i.e. grapefruit infused drinks).

Not only does this tip help to provide you with some content ideas, but it can also do wonders in bringing in more viewers/visitors.

Now is the time to perfect time to prepare your video content strategy. If you need more information on where to begin, then contact me, Mauricio Piña, for all of your digital marketing consultant needs at (956) 566-4998.

Whether you own a brick and mortar store or are part of the online market square, the holiday season is the most lucrative time of the year – especially if you have your marketing and sales funnels in order.

While you should have, hopefully, a digital marketing plan in place by this point in the year, there’s still enough time to implement a couple of strategies if you don’t.

Listed below are four valuable digital marketing tips you can use to attract potential customers this holiday season. And in case you missed it, one of our recent posts also dives into social media marketing for the holiday season.

Last Second Digital Marketing Tips for the Holidays

1. Schedule Your Content Ahead of Time
This one is really important. It’s no surprise that when the holiday season comes around, things get busy. But just because you lack the time to do standard search engine optimization doesn’t mean that you get to deviate from your digital marketing responsibilities. No, you’ve got to plan ahead.

Crafting blog posts, product reviews, video, tweets, email marketing, and/or managing social media accounts has to get done early to be effective. Thankfully, a lot of social media platforms give us the ability to schedule everything in advance, which should allow you to cover your business until the holiday period is over.

If you haven’t gotten to it, now is the time to create some winter holiday-related content, social posts, ads, and blogs.

2. Use Seasonal Pay-Per-Click Keywords
If you don’t use seasonal keywords in your Google Ads campaign, you’re shooting yourself in the revenue-generating foot. Some year-round keywords can be mildly successful, but normally, users are searching for holiday-related terms. And if these aren’t included into your ad campaign, your business runs the risk of underperforming sale wise.

Let’s say for example that you own a bakery. The keywords “buy cookies” may cut it for the majority of the year, but if you don’t start bidding on seasonal keywords like “Christmas cookies” or “gingerbread,” you could really stymie your sales.

A successful PPC campaign will always include seasonal keywords that are meant to attract potential customers to your product, but it doesn’t stop there. Solid research and testing are paramount when finding out what works and what doesn’t.

And a good way is to check last year’s data to see what was trending.

3. Holiday-ify Your Branding
This is probably the most cost-effective and easiest way to incorporate holiday marketing into your business. The addition of a simple visual update to your logo that is related to the holidays shows that your company’s website is up-to-date.

You can even get really creative and create a holiday mascot, much like Coca-Cola and their polar bear ad campaigns, which have been going strong for years.

4. Retarget Your Customers
Retargeting customers can be approached from many different angles. Many times, it involves solid email and/or social media marketing campaigns to reach out to past customers that:

• May have purchased a product from you in the past (perhaps last holiday season).
• May have shopped online on your website but abandoned the shopping cart.
• Are loyal to your particular brand, thus purchasing products or services more often.
• Should be informed of holiday discounts—or exclusive returning customer discounts—that they can take advantage of.

Not only does retargeting past and potential customers encourage sales, but it also fosters customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. It also goes without saying that a happy customer improves your word-of-mouth advertising.

Need some additional holiday-related marketing tips? Reach out to the digital marketing expert, Mauricio Piña, today at (956) 566-4998.

It’s no secret that the professional world comes with an abundance of stressors. And it’s no different for digital marketers.

As a digital marketing consultant, I know just how challenging a single day of marketing can be. From developing the perfect social media campaign to creating enthralling content and blogs, there’s plenty of pressures that can drive you off the digital edge.

Luckily, I’ve developed a few techniques to help me get through the day and deal with some of the industry’s most common (and problematic) stressors:

What Drives Marketers Mo’ Crazy

1. Daunting Data

It isn’t collecting the data that’s the problem; it’s what comes after that can drive a digital marketer insane. When you’ve diligently planned and put all your effort into a campaign but the metrics just don’t show you the results you expected – stress overload.

If that isn’t enough, you have to justify reworking the campaign to the client.

When setting up your marketing plan, have your goals in order, and include some that aren’t tied into just sales. There is plenty a digital marketing campaign can do for a business and these objectives can turn daunting data into a meaningful success.

2. “Barely There” Budgets

It’s an unfortunate truth, but as the old saying goes, sometimes you have to spend money to make money. This is especially true in the digital marketing industry where Pay-Per-Click advertising can require some solid investment.

Of course, one of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is cost-effectiveness. Just because a client doesn’t have a million dollars to throw at a digital marketing plan doesn’t mean they can’t find some success. As a digital marketer, you just have to be honest and set realistic goals.

3. Overcoming Google Updates

If there’s one thing every digital marketer loves, it’s Google’s constant – and we mean constant – updates. These updates can happen multiple times a day and major ones can absolutely devastate a website’s ranking if we aren’t on top of things.

Luckily, there are quite a few strategies – alongside honest to goodness hard work – that can keep you ahead of the curve and your marketing campaign working effectively. All despite Google’s penchant for updating its algorithm.

4. Proving Your Value

The average person (and business owner) may hear the words, digital marketing, and think of cute social media posts with a few emojis or a quick Instagram posts with some hashtags.

But digital marketing is so much more.

Proving your value to a client can take a tremendous amount of energy and strategy. But the pressure to succeed can be made much easier for a digital marketer when they:

• Define their audience
• Specify goals (alongside the client)
• Establish viable budgets
• Effectively design their marketing strategy
• Use data and metrics to correct issues
• A/B test when possible
• Take the results of everything and enhance the campaign as needed

5. The Power of Words

Content is king and getting the right message out in front of the right people is absolutely essential to a successful campaign. But in the process of making sure everything else runs smoothly, it can be very easy to overlook grammatical and spelling errors on any content that gets published.

While a simple error isn’t the end of the world, it can throw off the timeline of a campaign (and continually sloppy work can really hurt your brand).

Take your time. Get your message right on all content and make sure your grammar is on point.

6. Tech Trouble

Tech plays such a huge role in digital marketing. But oftentimes, we get caught up in the strategizing, creation, and implementation of the campaign itself, that we fail to fully account for all of the technical aspects that go into running a successful marketing plan.

When things go sideways on a technical level though, it can bring a world of stress. Keep in mind:

• Make sure all SSL certificates are up-to-date. Failure to have these in place can make your website(s) vulnerable to hackers and your client’s personal information unsafe.
• Mobile optimization is essential in today’s mobile-first world. Shoppers have a growing preference for using their smartphones and a slow website (not optimized) can hurt your bottom line.
• Backup your website data! Website crashes can happen for any number of reasons, and without a backup, you are in some serious trouble.

Dealing with It All

Despite all the craziness that the digital marketing industry brings with it, there are some simple steps that you can take to reduce your stress.

1. Start with recognizing your anxiety.

There’s a difference between rational worries and unjustified anxiety.

Start the process of de-stressing by recognizing those irrational fears and anxieties. Focus on what you actually have power over and take action in those realms.

2. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

As a digital marketer, you’ll likely have your hand in a lot of different cookie jars.

Doing your fair share of the work is a must, but biting off more than you can chew because of fear that the job won’t get done right is bound to leave you overworked, tired, and stressed. Have faith in the skills of your teammates and allow them to do their jobs.

3. Breathe for a moment.

You might be tempted to remain seated at your desk for 12 straight hours, tackling the day’s assignments. Kudos to you for being such a hard worker, but the reality is that working nonstop without a break is quickly going to lead to a mental breakdown.

Give yourself a moment to breathe throughout the day and take a few minutes to walk around the office or around the block to take in some fresh air and sunshine.

Those few minutes away from the project at hand can actually lead to some insight—or at the very least—they can help you to clear your head and restart your brain.

4. Sometimes you just need to unplug.

As a digital marketer, it’s absolutely possible to remain connected to a project all day and night with your smartphone and computer. Whether it’s responding to emails, updating a social media post, or handling some SEO tasks, working as a digital marketer can become a 24-hour around-the-clock job.

Remember, though, that it’s okay to unplug when necessary. If it’s a few hours in the afternoon to help your child with their homework or a few hours in the morning as you exercise and meditate, unplugging from your phone and computer can really help put you at ease and reduce stress.

5. Work it out—literally.

It’s easy to forget that stress can have a real effect on your body. From causing headaches, teeth grinding, neck ache, back pain, heartburn and stomach pain to truly serious consequences like increasing your risk of cardiovascular diseases, mental health problems, eating disorders and more, stress can exacerbate many health problems.

But fortunately, you can manage stress by exercising a bit. Besides improving your physical health and helping to fight disease, exercise has also been shown to reduce fatigue, improve concentration, and enhance overall cognitive ability. Studies have also shown that regular exercise can even decrease overall levels of stress and tension, elevate your mood, and stimulate anti-anxiety effects.

And don’t forget to continue visiting me here at my website for all things digital marketing and entrepreneurship.