The integration of digital and traditional marketing is being seen more and more by big businesses, but small businesses can also take advantage of their digital presence in their traditional campaigns.

One way of doing that is by creating landing pages for each of your campaigns and including an easy to remember URL in your traditional ads. This will lead potential customers to your website where they can immediately get the information that they were looking for, and then also go on to learn more about your company and your products or services.

Another way to integrate your marketing is to promote your social pages on print materials. Social sites are an excellent way to engage your customers and create a personal connection between them and your brand; by providing the social information on your print materials, you will drive more traffic to your social sites.

Why Do They Do This

Relevancy!  Its all about relevancy.  Google’s path to becoming the most used search engine is made up of being the search engine that has provided the most relevant results for the search phrase that you enter.  To keep this competitive edge, these updates are important as technology and SEO strategies evolve.  This update was focused on one goal: to fight search engine spamming.  This update is focused on reducing the effects of Black Hat tactics such as keyword stuffing, linking schemes, cloaking, and duplicate content

To Stop What?

If you not familiar with these spamming tactics, don’t feel like the lone ranger.  If your not immersed within the interactive industry then it is nearly impossible to know.  Consequently, its critically important to work with an agency that only uses White Hat tactics to optimize your website.

SEO should be the driving force behind EVERY digital marketing strategy! Learn more about common SEO mistakes and best practices during our webinar on Wednesday, May 23rd.

The article goes on to talk about some strategies that you need to follow to have a successful mobile customer experience.  Don’t assume you know what your customer wants in mobile.  Sometimes as business owners and marketers we are so much involved in the company and the industry, we don’t look at marketing from the customers point of view.  This is the age of digital marketing, we can interact and listen directly to our customers.  Use social media to listen to what your customers are asking for.

Don’t focus on conversions.  As mobile site may just be a way for your customer to easily find out more about what you are doing, or what is going on with your business.  The first step of listening to your customer will help you not make this mistake.  Don’t lose sight of what your business goals are.

Companies that prioritize mobile can leap their competition.  The time to market on mobile devices is now.  If it fits your overall strategy, and you have listened to your customer and know what the purpose of your mobile site is, then it is time to go to market.  Here is an opportunity for a company to overtake their competition, because your customer in online, and looking for someone who can service their needs.  One last point of caution, though if you jump in too quickly with out being prepared, and knowing what your customer is looking for you may be put behind your competition because of the bad experience you customer had on your mobile site.

Here is the article in it’s entirety:

You also don’t want to bombard your social audience with posts that sell, sell, sell. Social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin are not the best platform to sell your product. However, these sites are perfect for brand building, and getting in front of your customers in a non-aggressive way.

What content should you post?

Well, that depends on your audience. The first step is to get to know your target customer and what they’re interested in. For example if your target customer is a woman, you may want to provide recipe and entertaining ideas.

This will keep your customer familiar with your brand, and create a personal connection. Also, by offering your audience content that is valuable to them, you can actually reach even more people via sharing, and word of mouth.

Of course, you should post some content about your new products, company news and even coupons, just make sure that it’s not all your offering your audience.

I-Media Connection  had a great video on 3 reason TV and Digital need each other.  This is an interview with Kristian Magel, EVP, director national broadcast, at Initiative U.S., talks about video relying on digital marketing.  Kristian is talking about working with large companies, but it is very easy to take it down to a small business level.  Some of the great tips that can be received from this video is that it is not a immediate solution, it takes time to figure out exactly how your content is going to be consumed by the customer.  It is very important to watch what is going on with your social channels, see how your customers are understanding your message and how they are transferring it from one medium to the other.  It is all about extending the conversation that you are having with your customers.  Let your customer be the guide.  Another really good point in this video is that there needs to be an integration of digital and traditional with in your company.  For too long they have existed in separate silo’s.  These two departments need to be working together for the same goal and on the same strategic plan.  There are so many new techniques and tools out there, what an exciting time to be in this industry.  Please share your experience with integrating digital and traditional marketing or hurdles that you are hitting in trying to integrate the two.

To assist in getting more information we have written a white-paper that addresses how to get more from the web.  In fact we even titled it “Get More From The Web” and you can get your copy of this paper FREE!!!  Just go to our website to download your copy.

I found this graph in an article that I read. You can see that mobile ad spending only accounted for 1% of advertising budgets in the US last year; but you can also

see that mobile devices have the second highest usage rate. Also, it is predicted that by 2014, more people will use a mobile device to access the internet than desktop computers.

So what can you do to capitalize on this new trend? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Mobile Websites

I can’t stress enough, the importance of having a mobile website these days. Mobile phones are not designed to display a regular website, and users will get frustrated waiting for pages to load, or navigating the entire website on their phone. Having a mobile website allows you to provide information that a mobile user is most likely looking for – like coupons, specials, contact information, location or hours.

Another option is a mobile app. We generally recommend a mobile website though, because it will work on all smartphones and the user doesn’t have to download it.

SMS

Texting is a great way to market these days, and companies are getting pretty creative with it. For example, at The Mirage hotel in Las Vegas there are signs to opt into their texting list, they will then send you event updates and specials based on your interests – but only for the next three days. So once you leave you’re not bombarded with texts from them, they only text you once per month with a hotel deal.

GPS

This is a really great feature of mobile devices that can be used in a ton of different ways. I recently heard about a campaign where Walgreens gave customers a coupon for checking in on Foursquare. This is great because you can reach out to your customers when they are in your store.

Of course there are a thousand other ways to use mobile advertising, so get creative and go mobile!

Web Design Is A Process

Unlike common perception, coming up with a website design is not just locking a bunch of creative people in a room and tell them to come up with something.  It is a process.  Just like anything worth doing, it takes time, and resources by all parties involved, including the client.

We must start by defining who the client is, who the clients’ client is.  Why are building the site?  What are the goals of the site?  What should be most prominent?  How technically savvy is the end user that will be using the site?  All of this goes into developing a great design.

When we first start talking to a potential client, it is too early in the process for us to be able to provide quality designs.

There Is A Cost

As a digital marketing agency, our product is our time.  There is a cost to that time.  If we were to do speculative design that cost has to be paid for by someone.  Should the potential client not hire us, that cost then has to get passed along to the clients that do hire us.  We don’t think that is fair!

In The End It Comes Down To Quality

At the end of the day we want to produce the best work we can.  That is why we have won numerous international awards for our designs.  We are confident in our ability to produce a product that will give you results, we just can’t do that when we first meet.

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So you may be asking yourself, why do you need to use pay per click advertising.  Everyday people are relying on search engines to help them find products and businesses that fill their needs.  If they doing know a specific company they are using generic business catagories or products with their location to find what they are looking for.  Pay per click is the fastest way to make an impact online, since it allows you to target your exact customer.  One of the biggest mistakes we see in online marketing is going into it with out a plan.   Especially with pay per click advertising, not have a strategy is really just throwing away money.  

At 3Sixty Interactive we put together a strategy that will get your Google ads to appear to potential customers and entice them to visit your website.  We are able to specifically target these ads to users who are searching your area of exactly what you offer.