Guest post by Alice Jenkins of How2become.
Whether you work in the b2b world, in non-profit marketing or with a brick-and-mortar retailer, you know that having the right online presence can bring even more customers to your organization. While you may have a website and a Facebook page, there is much more to maintaining a successful online marketing presence. Here are a few of the top online marketing trends for the second half of 2013 that may help you grow your sales both online and off faster than you expected.
Social media will remain important
Stay in touch with your customers by utilizing Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media sites to your advantage. This doesn’t mean you should just post information to these sites and then forget about it. In order for a site like Facebook to work to your advantage, you need to engage your fans. This means posing questions to your followers about why they like your products, what would they like to see more of, and anything else you can think of that would get your followers engaged and replying to your posts. If you have a large fan base, but you get no likes or replies to any of your posts, odds are you are posting the wrong information and may need to change your marketing approach, because a successful social media presence will remain an important part of your online marketing profile.
Mobile marketing will continue to grow
You probably already know that smartphones now account for more than half the mobile market. What you may not have known is that most customers now access their email on these devices, which means that the existing email marketing methods you probably use will no longer work with these smaller devices, particularly because content that is designed to be displayed on a computer will not be viewable on a smartphone.
In order to make the most of mobile marketing, make sure your website and any emails you send to your customers are mobile friendly. One of the easiest ways to do this is to avoid using unusual fonts on your page that may not display properly on mobile devices. Fonts like Arial and Veranda are best.
The design is as important as the content
Poor website design and usability practices (e.g., slow page load times, Flash, placing important content below the fold, no/poor mobile display, iframes, etc.) will increasingly get site penalized by search engines and human visitors alike.
There are now many tools, templates and frameworks for creating user-friendly website designs that are accessible to businesses of all sizes. To strengthen your online presence, make sure your website looks as good as the content it contains.
Work to improve customer value not just the customer base
With the economy still struggling to improve, it is more important than ever to keep your existing customers happy instead of focusing on new customer acquisition Offer customers new products or services that can better meet their needs. Learn more about what your customers want by asking them via your Facebook page or other social networking resource. When your customers believe you have their best interests in mind, they are likely to purchase more from you.
Quality content will be key
To stay in the good graces of Google and other search engines, make sure the content on your website adds value to any customer or prospect who visits. Not long ago, many websites were more concerned with providing keyword stuffed content that would draw search traffic to their pages, but provided little in terms of useful content to the visitor. The search engines have since tuned their algorithms to ignore useless, keyword stuffed content. While they still rank sites by keywords, search engines are looking for content that is well crafted and actually provides useful information to the visitor. If your existing content is thin or less than perfect, there is still time to improve your rankings. Just make sure any new content you develop serves a purpose to your visitors, and your rankings will likely improve as a result.
These are just a few of the top online marketing trends for the second half of 2013. Whether you add a few or all of these to your online marketing efforts, they are virtually certain to help improve your online reputation and attract prospective new customers.
Alice Jenkins is a writer for How2become.com; a leading career and recruitment specialist. How2become currently offers over 140 different titles across a wide range of careers providing insider information to help you prepare effectively. You can also connect with them on Facebook.
Diane says
Good job.
I too would link to post article as guest post. So please send the mail address to send article.
Tom says
Please don’t take this the wrong way Diane, I’m trying to be helpful, not demeaning: if you want the opportunity to provide a guest post on a professional blog, a sentence like “I too would link to post article as guest post” is not going to help your case.
Idham Perdameian says
Nice. Social media for online marketing is more important today.
Emily says
Could not agree more, especially with one and five. I am a great believer in utilizing the social signals directing to client sites, and as a writer I definitely think content is key!
Tom says
Thanks Emily, so true.
Nancy- Film Release Liner says
Great trends you put together. Social Media will continue to rise in everyday business. The only one that to me is not as important is your design. I think that your content is what really matters. You can have a basic design as long as you get your message across with the content. Thanks for the post!
Tom says
Thanks Nancy – I do think professional design helps though. Yes, perhaps someday I’ll apply that thought here. Shoemaker’s kids and all that. 🙂
Anthony says
Good article, thanks. In terms of ‘other social media sites’ it is worth listing those that bring some value: LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram, Youtube and possibly Google Plus at a push.
Don’t bother with Delicious; it is unofficially dead 🙂
http://oowot.com
Tom says
Thanks Anthony. LinkedIn, YouTube and G+ I agree on. Reddit – I’ve never had much luck there, even with a post like IT: Business as Usual, or the Next Epic Change? which seems like something ideal for that site. And Instagram – in consumer marketing, sure, but it’s not a B2B tool. I did’t realize delicious was dead. 🙁
Anthony says
Delicious isn’t officially dead, but there is very little activity on it now. It’s not really surprising; it gets very little coverage and is really an outdated tool now.
Tom says
Got it. Zombie stage. In the MySpace zone.