Eric Ritter

Naturally and automatically adjusting on the fly is a critical part of success in nature, sports, business — and even web design. Perfecting responsive web design is a marketing concept that allows your website to effectively adjust instantly on all your customer’s devices.

It keeps users where you want them; on your site.

Mobile devices have changed the landscape of online browsing and shopping. Since smartphones were introduced in 2007 and the iPad came out in 2010, more and more internet users are using them to browse and make purchases.

Why is this important to you?

Because if your site isn’t mobile responsive, you’re losing users (and possible customers) by the minute.

Responsive web design isn’t really a marketing concept anymore. It’s a marketing requirement.

Here we’ll discuss how having a mobile-friendly website can’t be avoided anymore.

The best part is, it’s not as hard as you might think.

Now let’s begin.

Responsive Design is a Key Marketing Concept

The number of mobile users has surpassed desktop users. That’s a huge thing to get your head wrapped around.

Think about it this way: if the layout and presentation of your website doesn’t adjust across all mobile devices, more than half of the money and energy you spend getting users to your site is wasted.

When’s the last time you were browsing on your smartphone and landed on a site that was clearly designed only for desktop? What did it look like and what did you do?

Most users aren’t going to navigate an unresponsive site on their mobile device. It’s too clumsy, hard to read and looks unprofessional. It also gives a poor first impression of your business.

Most users will leave and head to a competitor as soon as they see your site is not mobile optimized.

That’s more than half of your users that never access all the great content your site provides.

When you think about responsiveness as a marketing concept, remember that it basically doubles the results you get from your marketing dollars, while showing users that you are professional and up-to-date with technology.

This is one important marketing objective to roll out as soon as possible.

Give Users the Best Experience Possible

If you expect your users to adapt to the technology of your website, you’re going to be disappointed.

Many designers, developers, and publishers assume that if a user doesn’t have a good experience on mobile, they’ll take out their laptop and access the site that way.

In reality, it just doesn’t happen most of the time.

Unless your blog, product or service is in such exclusive demand that you could still get orders through a PO box, there’s a much more likely scenario you’ll face:

After landing on your site from a Google search and seeing that it’s not mobile optimized, what will the user do next?

The vast majority of the time they are going to hit “back” and find a site that gives them a better mobile user experience.

So how do you adapt the content so users get the best possible experience on desktop, smartphones, and tablets?

Let’s say you own a restaurant. When someone lands on your site on desktop, they are likely doing research for a night out sometime in the future. All the foodie pictures you’ve taken work great on desktop because you want to entice them into calling for reservations.

Detailed customer reviews should be prominent and easy to scroll through. Desktop users take their time on your site and want to get a good idea of what your atmosphere is like.

These should be some of the first things they see on your desktop site.

Now let’s take the mobile user.

Most mobile users looking up restaurants are ready to eat right now. They want to immediately know your hours, location and menu. They shouldn’t need to search very hard for this information.

Someone browsing on mobile typically wants to know how many stars your ratings reflect. But they probably won’t take much time to read detailed reviews like desktop users do.

Think about how to adapt this concept to your desktop and mobile sites, regardless of what kind of business you’re in.

6 Reasons Why Responsive Web Design is a Successful Marketing Concept

1. Improve your SEO rankings. Most website owners know the importance of effective SEO. However, did you know that if your site is not mobile responsive, it all but kills your SEO efforts? Search engines do not like non-responsive sites.
2. The use of mobile phones continues to rise every year. Did you know that there are now more mobile phones in the world than there are people? Although that’s a scary thought, it means that being un-responsive is no longer an option.
3. More and more people do their online shopping via mobile devices. Of note, 62% of smart phone users have made a purchase with their mobile device in the last 6 months, while 80% use them while shopping in-store to compare prices at competitors.
4. It’s easier than ever to have a responsive site. Several years ago, developers had to individually manage two separate websites: a desktop version and a mobile version. Today there are thousands of website templates and themes that adapt your site with minimal effort — allowing you to manage one site and remain responsive.
5. The social media factor. With over 80% of social media activity happening from mobile devices, you want to maximize the traffic you’re getting from your social media marketing. If someone lands on your site from a mobile social media app and sees it’s unresponsive, they’re gone.
6. The bathroom… yes, the bathroom. About 69% of smartphone users admit to using their phone while in the bathroom (it’s probably much higher!). The average person spends over a year in the bathroom within their lifetime. Giving them a better “bathroom mobile experience” could very well lead to more online success — as crazy as that sounds!

Conclusion

If you’re still running a site that isn’t responsive, you should now understand the importance of why that needs to change — and fast.

Don’t fall behind your competitors by giving a mobile user experience straight out of 2007. Get responsive today and see the difference it will make.

Need help on implementing this marketing concept? A digital consultant will help you make this happen. Get in touch right now and we’ll get to work together.

Here’s to your mobile success with responsive design!

I don’t have to tell you that customer experience drives today’s consumer decisions more than any other factor.

86% of consumers will pay more for a product/service accompanied by a better experience. 67% will leave a company because of a bad experience. 75% admit that they don’t really know what customer engagement is. But in nearly the same breath they say that they’re measuring it.

For years, businesses have known this importance and striven to provide customer experience through common sense initiatives. But in an increasingly digital world providing the expected experience isn’t possible without strong reliance on data and analytics.

A digital consultant applies advanced industry tools specific to creating this flawless customer experience.

Let’s look at what a consultant can do to help your ad agency thrive in this new digital reality.

Performance & Predictive Analytics

Analytics is likely an increasingly central part of your advertising campaigns. But as an advertising agency, you may face challenges like:

• Collecting the right data – You may not have the systems or technology in place to measure engagement and results. You may not have what you need to not only understand what customers do, but what they will do.
• Collecting clean data  – If your data is bad then your ad agency can’t trust it to make decisions. A digital consultant can help you put systems in place to acquire more accurate data on which you can place your trust.
• Knowing which data is important – You may collect endless data. You know it’s a gold mine. But who has the time to aggregate it manually to extract the gold ore from the worthless rocks? With machine learning and automation, a digital consultant can help get to what’s important.
• Responding in real time – In the ad world, opportunities can disappear fast whether they’re on an industry level or an individual one. Seize the moment when you can better predict customer behavior and send them the right message at the right time.

Data-Driven Creativity

It seems like an oxymoron, but it isn’t. While it’s true creativity needs room to grow and flourish, when creativity is backed by data it becomes a nearly unstoppable force to be reckoned with.

Just how does a digital consultant do this?

1. They predict consumer behavior.
2. They go in depth to determine which creatives are most effective and why.
3. They analyze similar campaigns, the competitors of your clients and industry trends to help you design the most impactful digital content.
4. They help you understand what customer engagement really is within a given industry, media type or campaign. And they show you how to measure it.

Branding Consistency

A digital consultant can help you improve the consistency of your message and image across campaigns, platforms, and mediums.

Customers like to know what to expect from a company. When they can predict it, they can anticipate it. They can share that experience with others, knowing that they will have the same experience.

Consultants use a combination of solid cross-industry experience, state-of-the-art tools, and consultant objectivity to create a consistent experience.

Trend Following, Application and Setting

A digital consultant follows marketing and analytics trends. They understand how influencers and industry leaders are getting their top of the line results.

They can then help an advertising agency achieve these kinds of results.

Because they’re so in tune with the heart beat of digital marketing, they cannot only follow trends but can help you establish yourself as a trendsetter and thought leader in advertising.

Personalization

A digital consultant can help you take the personalization of your advertising content to the next level.

60% of marketing firms are having trouble personalizing content. And yet personalized content has an efficacy rate of up to 6X that of unpersonalized content.

Simply targeting a demographic isn’t as effective as it used to be. You need at least some personalization in your advertising to reach your customers.

And this level of personalization must be data-driven and automated. Fortunately, digital marketing consultants know how to use tools to accomplish this time- and cost-effectively.

Translating Traditional to Digital

If your ad agency is established, you’ve undoubtedly brought into the digital world. But old habits can die hard. And you may still be trying to apply traditional marketing strategies and metrics to digital.

There are some similarities. But for the most part, they’re apples and oranges. And you may not be reaching your full potential if you haven’t adapted fully to all that digital marketing has to offer.

Efficiency

You may be spending a lot of time on campaigns that don’t work anymore. Sometimes it can take weeks — or longer — to know that something isn’t working.

But a digital marketing consultant can help you measure results faster and more effectively so that you can make adjustments and always stay ahead of the competition.

Cost Savings

Because you can run a more efficient ad agency with a digital consultant, you don’t have hourly employees running up overtime. You don’t have salaried employees burning themselves out.

Research shows that productivity drops significantly after as little as 50 hours.

That’s fewer sick days. And it’s reduced turnover.

Did you know that replacing an employee can cost you as much as 1 year’s salary?

You can experience greater, faster results with fewer, more productive hours worked.

Measuring Results

Digital consultants are all about measuring results.

We’re very self-motivated people. Not only are we helping you set and achieve goals. We’re setting and measuring our own.

But regardless, your ad agency wins. Because a digital consultant understands how to measure results and to help you make informed decisions for your advertising agency.

Hire a Digital Consultant

A digital marketing consultant will help you expand your own in-house capabilities to get optimal results for your clients.

If your ad agency is struggling to adapt to digital or you’re looking for a competitive advantage in an incredibly competitive industry, it’s time hire a consultant.

To learn more about how I can help your advertising agency compete in a digital environment, contact me today to set up a consultation.

We’re well on our way into the new year, and we’re already seeing some popular trends popping up in the digital marketing world.

And as any other industry, keeping up with these trends can make or break you as a professional.

Keeping in the know is mandatory in an ever changing landscape. So we’re here to help you.

Here are the five trends in digital marketing you need to know.

1. Social Media Marketing

Social media is here to stay. And for the past few years, it’s been trending. But it’s still one of the top trends in digital marketing because social media is still a key to good marketing.

It’s important to note that while social media is still popular, the ways users interact with social media are changing.

The days of simply posting flat content onto your social page will not get you the attention your brand needs. You’ll need to adapt to the changing social media platforms.

Quicker Information

The audience in 2017 wants their information quicker and more compact.

One of the biggest trends in digital marketing, and social media, that we’re seeing is video streaming. Whether it’s live or recorded, users are more willing to pay attention to short videos than reading through a long article or post.

You want to keep your users engaged. And so far in 2017, keeping an engaged social media account means getting your audience information quickly.

Changes in Popularity

Facebook and Twitter have always been the top dogs in the social media sphere. But this year there are some big names following close behind them.

There is a decrease in Facebook usage. In fact, studies show that between 2012 and 2017, Facebook usage has declined rapidly. But what’s taking its place?

Apps such as Snapchat and Instagram (and even Pinterest) are making huge jumps in usage. So what does that mean for the digital marketer?

Keep up with the trends in digital marketing and look at new platforms. Instead of focusing so much on marketing to Facebook, look into how business can be built with these other more popular apps.

2. Big Data

If you’ve ever read George Orwell’s 1984 then you know exactly how far technology can go.

But we’re not that far from that same scenario today. Big Brother is always watching, and his name is big data.

Increases in technology have gifted digital marketers with big data. And now it’s becoming one of the trends in digital marketing this year. But what can a digital marketer do with all of this information?

Software is able to pull all types of information from visitors to social media platforms and websites. Things ranging from age to location, you now have your target audience served to you on a silver platter.

Digital marketers can use this information to tailor content directly to their ideal audience. With predictive analysis, you’ll be able to target ads to customers based on what they’ve recently searched for or purchased.

It may sound scary, but it’s actually pretty cool.

3. Personalized Content

Big data brings us to one of the other trends in digital marketing – personalized content.

Marketers are shifting their focus from a broad audience, to specifically choosing a target audience to sell to.

Thanks to big data, you’re able to use this information to focus on one group of people. Now that you’re aware of the potential customers’ personality, you’re better able to create information that will benefit them personally.

4. Wearables

You’re seeing them more and more – wearable mobile devices.

Whether it’s an Apple Watch or an augmented reality device, they’re everywhere. Last year digital marketers focused on making sure websites were optimized for mobile devices (and you should still!) and now screens are becoming even smaller. In fact, the market for wearables is expected to reach $4 billion this year.

So with these types of trends, what are you to do? Roll with the punches! Just like adapting to social media and mobile devices, you must make sure that your information is adapting to these smaller devices.

You’ll need to adapt to reach your audience in the most effective way possible.

5. Managing Online Reputations

Remember back in the day when word of mouth would make or break a business?

That’s still relevant today, except the internet is involved. When people are happy or upset with a business or brand, they take it to the internet.

And we all know how permanent the internet is.

So one of the trends in digital marketing is making sure your online reputation is kept clean. What are some ways you can ensure that a business and brand is kept safe? We’ll give you a few tips.

Focus on Obtaining Positive Reviews

Even if you have some negative reviews or comments, there are ways around this. While you can’t necessarily change the opinions of the negative reviewers, you can wipe out their relevance by enticing customers to leave positive comments.

Encourage your customers to leave positive reviews on sites such as Yelp. These reviews are huge for future customers, as most people will check a review before purchasing a product or service.

Start a hashtag revolution on your Twitter (or any other social media platform) page that asks happy customers to share their experience. This way, current and potential customers will be made aware of the positive reviews.

Take Immediate Action with Negative Reviews

Did a previous customer leave a nasty comment on your Facebook page? Ensure that you’re on top of that comment before others join in. Things can get pretty nasty fast if you’re not quick to jump in.

Also ensure you work to resolve the problem immediately. Showing that your brand cares about a customer’s dissatisfaction will build positive feelings towards your brand.

Be on the Watch for Trends in Digital Marketing

Things are constantly changing.

As someone who is familiar with trends in digital marketing, you’re well aware of this.

However, there are some trends that somewhat stay the same – they may just change a bit. For example, the changing tides of popular social media platforms.

What are some other trends in digital marketing that you’ve noticed for 2017? Let us know in the comments!

It’s impossible to deny that the climate for every kind of business is changing. If you have a digital consultant, how do you get them to assist with inbound marketing?

Truthfully, inbound marketing is a good part of your consultant’s job. Inbound marketing is all about generating leads internally: you focus on creating good content through whatever means you like, and you build a customer base that continues to grow.

Your audience, therefore, become your clients, as they’re more likely to buy from somebody that they trust.

It’s entirely possible to accomplish this without a major budget and a big team.

Curious how to make inbound marketing work with a digital consultant? We’ve got the answers!

Outbound strategies losing momentum

When you think of marketing, you’re probably thinking what we call “outbound strategies.” Things like fliers, cold emails, cold calls, etc. all fall under that category.

These are classic for a reason: they work. Or, at least, they used to. In today’s business climate, consumers are bombarded with outbound marketing strategies at every possible level – and consumers are catching on.

Customers aren’t interested in being pitched and sold to, so outbound strategies are using the dominance and power they once had in the marketing world.

Building hype!

That doesn’t mean that all is lost! Your digital consultant can help build hype and momentum through inbound marketing!

Whereas with outbound marketing, every day is a reset, inbound marketing is a little bit more of a snowball effect. Your digital consultant can help you find leads that are drawn over a period of time.

This lets the two of you focus on your steady stream of content and getting recognized rather than meeting a quota.

Long-term growth!

Similarly, inbound content doesn’t disappear at the end of the day. Every bit of content you create adds on more to the content you created before.

The inbound strategies your digital consultant creates will all tie into one another. This means that (hopefully!) you’ll be creating leads for a while. Even if your early content doesn’t seem to drive the traffic you want, it’s still definitely useful.

Things will all come together down the road, especially if your digital consultant is worth their salt!

Inbound techniques allow your business and marketing to grow along with the technique, which creates a more organic feel. Your digital consultant may be able to pull that off seamlessly.

Information

One of the reasons outbound marketing is losing steam is that customers have a plethora of information at their fingertips. They don’t need convincing to buy a certain product or go to a certain company when they can just look up whatever company is closest.

Beyond that, most companies have instituted a review system, and any company can be reviewed on sites like Yelp – or even Google itself.

Gone are the days when companies can let their sales color their customers’ impressions regarding their business and product. Anybody can access that information for free.

Rather than pitching your customers a product, inbound marketing with your digital consultant lets them build a relationship with you and find out about your product that way.

By putting out information and giving your customers info to read, you’re contributing to their opinion and making yourself an expert in any given category.

Building trust

If your digital consultant can come up with an educational, accurate voice for your brand, the two of you can work together to develop some great content.

When your audience notices your content and finds it useful, professional, and accurate, they’ll start to return to you. They’ll take your word.

They’ll trust you.

Trust is essential for generating leads and sales in today’s business climate, and your digital consultant needs to be a pro at it. You need to develop a rapport and relationship with your clients to ensure your business’ success.

Efficiency

Let’s be honest: outbound marketing is tedious and time-consuming. It takes forever. There’s even the chance that you’d have to hire another person just to specialize in your outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is much more efficient, and it can be mastered by your consultant. Don’t waste time with outdated tactics when you can be learning the inbound ropes.

Let your consultant help you with the best ways to connect with customers while you can focus on the important aspects of managing and running your business.

Time-saving

While outbound marketing comes with a sense of urgency and an expiration date (hence the emails, and the follow-ups, and stories pressing potential customers to act now), inbound marketing builds slowly.

It also has the added benefit of letting leads come to you, rather than you scoping them out.

If you want to save time to focus on important aspects of your business, inbound marketing may be the way to go.

More customers

Depending on how good your digital consultant is and how much your inbound tactics speak to your audience, you stand to gain several times more customers.

Effective tactics will continue to bring in leads after they’ve been executed, and you can only benefit by continuing to build trust with your customer base.

Saving money!

This is the dream of every company: effective marketing that doesn’t break the budget!

Inbound marketing takes a fraction of the effort that other tactics do, and it can be accomplished solely by your digital assistant. If you think you need a team to perform effective inbound marketing (like you do for outbound), you’re solely mistaken.

Let your business save money and put that toward more worthwhile ventures while you build trust and a customer base with this modern and unique way.

Why should you get inbound marketing with a digital consultant?

Inbound marketing is undeniably gaining momentum in today’s business climate. Regardless of if your business is new or old, you need to be taking advantage of it.

Luckily, digital consultants can help with most – if not all – aspects of inbound marketing. This relieves you of the need for a large marketing budget and team, meaning you can focus on your business’ priorities and products.

As a small business owner, you’ve got enough on your plate

Small business owners are some of the most driven individuals on the planet, mostly because they have to be.

It takes raw talent, passion, and drive to bring a new business into the world.

First, the idea comes to you. Then you survey your skills and the tools available to you.

The final step is the messiest – bring it all together through blood, sweat and tears to birth a viable, thriving new business.

But while you’re busy bring your dream into the real world, your focus might slip on one of the most crucial elements of a new business – digital marketing.

You can’t afford to ignore digital marketing – 88% of your customer base uses search engines to find businesses, and that number shows no sign of dropping.

If that number sent you into a mild panic because you don’t have your digital marketing objectives outlined, don’t worry.

We’ve got the definitive guide to making you an search engine superstar.

Check out these five digital marketing objectives that are going to make you stand out from the crowd.

Emails: Cheap And Cheerful

You probably send an email every day, so it makes sense to use it as a digital marketing tactic.

In fact, emailing is one of the top two internet activities. (We’ll get into the second one in a moment.)

Luckily, this marketing objective is relatively easy to do and, best of all, will make little to no impact on your marketing budget.

How do you get started? You probably have the tools already at your disposal.

You’ll need to get an email list going to start with. You can do this by going through your Quickbooks or your client list.

Don’t overwhelm your intended targets or they’ll unsubscribe from your list.

Start simple – put together a once a month newsletter for starters.

It doesn’t have to be too long either – keep it simple.

Talk about how your past month went, what you look forward to next month, and maybe some relevant specials.

Email is an extremely effective, easy to accomplish and, best of all, cheap digital marketing objective.

Make Your Site Easy To Find

Remember how we said we would discuss the top two web activities?

The other activity that cracked the top two was searching.

Search handily beats out all other forms of content discovery.

It’s the number one way that customers are going to find you, hands down.

You might think it’s enough to have a website, but you need to build your sites around SEO.

SEO, or search engine optimization, will help search engines like Google lock onto your site and bring in customers.

There are a few tactics you need to bring into play to help you out.

First, consider keywords. Keywords are search phrases that people might be looking for.

Using vague keywords, like “tee shirts” won’t yield the best results. Go specific, using keywords like “vintage band tee shirts” to see a difference.

If you’ve got an online store that features a lot of products, you might be tempted to just copy and paste the manufacturer’s description.

Unfortunately, your page will be punished. Search engines look for original content to rank pages.

Take a few moments and write out your own content description; it’ll make a difference.

Bonus tip: it’s practically common knowledge that Google is the number one search engine. But can you name the second largest?

It’s actually YouTube!

A lot of businesses don’t know that they can boost their rankings with videos posted to YouTube.

Add this tip to your marketing objectives to put you ahead of the rest!

Be Social

Even though social media is a relatively new field, we can hardly imagine our lives without it.

You may wonder how it fits in with your digital marketing objectives, but it’s essential your business has a social media presence.

One in three of your potential customers look to social media to learn more about a business.

Although this might take up a bit of your time, social media is a crucial addition to your marketing objectives.

The first steps you should take are getting verified on Google and setting up your Facebook page.

You can worry about Twitter,  Instagram, and the rest later; Facebook and Google should be your first priorities.

Once you’ve got those set up, it might be hard to think of content, but the best thing to do is just be yourself.

Write your content in your voice but make sure it always brings attention back to the business.

You can post behind-the-scenes shots of your team at work.

Let your customers know when you’re having a sale.

Showcase a new product.

The ideas will come to you as you get the hang of it.

One quick note about social media – it’s a great way to be a direct part of your customers’ lives, so treat that with respect.

What we mean by that is take care that you don’t spam their newsfeeds.

Post regularly, like once a day; don’t send out 20 posts all in one afternoon.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Use your social media accounts to engage with your customers too.

If they have a question about a product or service, answer right away in a courteous manner.

It takes a little bit of time but it’s so worth it.

On The Go Info

No doubt you’ve seen people wearing smartwatches or activity trackers.

These are one of the most futuristic, sci-fi devices out on the market and we’ve just scratched the surface of what they can do.

Experts say that wearable tech might be a $34 billion market by 2020.

2016 marks the first time mobile usage surpassed desktop use, a trend that’s sure to continue as tech gets more and more portable.

Get in on the ground floor by paying attention to how to market to your customers with mobile technology.

A great way to get started is to make sure your website is mobile-friendly, especially if you’re looking to attract local customers.

Look into pushing scannable coupons onto wearable technology if you have a brick and mortar store.

Mobile tech is growing year over year; figuring out how to use it to attract business is a must for your marketing objectives.

Content Is King

Content marketing is an incredibly effective tactic to bring in customers, but it’s a little time-intensive.

You’re going to use all of the other digital marketing objectives to enhance the results you get from content marketing and drive engagement.

First things first – set up a blog on your business page.

When creating your content, you’re going to use the same ideas as for your social media posts, just expand upon them a little more.

Use your natural voice and focus on what makes your company better than the competition.

Use your email campaigns, social media, and keywords to drive traffic to the blog for a comprehensive, holistic approach.

While it will take up a bit more time than the other techniques, it’s worth it.

Which Marketing Objectives Are You Going To Use First?

All of these are great tips to get you started but to take it to the next level, consider hiring a digital consultant to give your marketing objectives a thorough once-over.

Now that you’ve got your digital ducks in a row, which technique are you going to try first?

Let us know in the comments and if you have an idea you want to add to the list, tell us!