GIF 101 – How to and Why?

via GIPHY

With social media marketing, creating diverse kinds of media can be a useful strategy to keep people’s attention. In addition to images and video, incorporating gifs in your posts can be a fun way to showcase your brand and company’s personality. Gifs are not only entertaining, they can also be a powerful tool to communicate with your audience.

A GIF is essentially a series of bitmap images that are linked together into a single animated image. They have lower frame rates than videos so they generally are smaller files that are easier to share online. They can also be quick and simple to make using GIF conversions sites online like GIPHY, Make a Gif or Gifs.com.  

Using these sites you can choose a video to upload that you have on your computer or find one on YouTube or Vimeo and simply paste the URL into the converter. Once you upload the video to be converted you can decide on the length that you want for the GIF and set it using time stamps. You can then add text to highlight dialogue in the video since GIFs don’t include sound.

Once you’ve completed your GIF you can download it and drag it into your web browser where it will start looping. GIFs are useful because they play instantly and will continually loop so that people browsing social media will see it immediately. They don’t require any time or commitment to watch it the way a longer video might so it can catch user attention more easily.

GIFs are simple yet appealing and engaging for social media users. They also offer variety to your posts so that you are keeping people interested with different types of media instead of only sharing photos or videos. Using GIFs occasionally in your social media posts can be an effective way to boost engagement and increase brand awareness.

 

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/gif-101/

Real Time Event Marketing

With changing technology, people expect things to be instantly available, convenient and easily accessible. Businesses need to meet those needs by providing customers with the immediate information that they need and simple ways to take action. That’s why real time marketing is so crucial in today’s advertising world.

Real time marketing means advertising that takes place in the moment and connects to your audience at an important or ideal time. This is especially useful for social media posts because they tend to be more effective when they take place as an event occurs. Instead of posting an album of photos after an event has ended, with real time marketing you can share media as the event is happening and get more people involved.

When businesses use real time marketing it can still require a lot of special planning even though it appears to be spontaneous. The company will need to brainstorm the best strategies for letting people know about an event and responding to their feedback or questions as it is taking place. If you plan your real time marketing strategy well you can incentivize more customers to attend or participate in your event.

One useful tool for real time marketing is to share a live stream video of your event as it is happening. You can prepare by letting people know about the live stream ahead of time and planning out what aspects of the event you want to showcase in the video. You can also use other tools like pictures, links, promotional codes and other types of media to give people useful information they might need.

As you practice real time marketing, it is important to stay connected with your audience and respond to comments and questions in real time as well. Customers will enjoy being engaged with your event and will be more likely to attend in the future.

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What Are Your Digital Needs?

Understanding and assessing your company’s digital needs can be a difficult task as it can encompass so many different things. Your digital needs could include anything from website design, social media, digital marketing, SEO and much more. There are a number of unique factors that can come into play as well such as your marketing budget, your internal staff and your company’s goals.

A good way to start to determine your digital needs is to focus on what your specific goals are online and what your strengths and weaknesses are in relation to those goals. One of the biggest digital needs that most companies have to work on is their online marketing strategy. Are your current marketing plans increasing traffic and driving leads and sales?

You can assess which aspects of your digital marketing plan tend to work well and which ones need to be updated. These can include SEO, content creation, social media, web analytics and reporting as well as marketing automation. You may need to incorporate or improve some of these categories in order to meet your company’s digital needs.

Digital marketing is crucial but you will also need to be able to attract people to a well-designed and functional website. Any issues with your website could drive away customers so your digital needs could include updating and redesigning your site to the best possible version. It should be easy and straightforward to use, aesthetically appealing and have no technical problems that could deter visitors.

Your website and digital marketing plan should be a top priority as well as making sure your social media sites are posting effective content regularly. A successful business should periodically assess their digital needs and make the necessary changes to ensure that they are using available digital tools in a way that benefits them.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/what-are-your-digital-needs/

Balance Between Creative and Analytical Marketing

With any marketing campaign you will need to have both a creative idea and an approach that will work based on data you’ve gathered. Businesses need to make sure that don’t rely too heavily on analytics in their marketing but also don’t avoid the necessity of analyzing data to focus solely on creativity. A balance of both strategies can make marketing more effective at reaching new customers.

For some companies, incorporating both a creative and analytical approach will require them to change their mindset and practical aspects of how they create marketing campaigns. At the outset of creating a marketing campaign they will need to encourage creative ideas and innovation for new marketing content. They will then need to learn how to refine and perfect those ideas through lots of testing and data-driven analysis.

A creative idea is only one part of producing a marketing campaign that will function the way that you want it to. When you put a creative idea into practice you need to get feedback on how it is performing and use to data to determine how it can be adjusted to work more effectively. Testing, analysis and revision are aspects of marketing that many businesses don’t focus on enough to get the results they want.

To create more balanced marketing, businesses will need to hire both creative minded people and those with a talent for analytics. Each team needs to have clear roles so that they can make decisions that incorporate both sides into the campaign. Creative and analytics staff members can create more balanced marketing by collaborating with each other on multiple projects.

Analytics can greatly improve marketing performance but it needs to be paired with unique and creative ideas that represent your brand. Balancing both creativity and analytics can be a rewarding challenge for any business.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/creative-and-analytical-marketing-balance/

Giving Yourself an Email Marketing Audit

Many businesses will periodically perform an email marketing audit to make sure that their emails are working the best they can. You may not even be aware when technical problems occur or if a certain format is not performing as well as you expecting. An email marketing audit can help you identify specific issues so that you can make the necessary adjustments in order to perfect your emails.

There are certain areas of email marketing that may be useful to look at during an audit. You can consider whether or not you have effective subject lines for your emails based on how many of your emails remain unread. If you have a low open rate then that could be a an issue to address by making more enticing subject lines that appeal to readers.

Another thing to look at during an email audit is how your sender name appears to readers. Does it look trustworthy or does it seem like spam? You should look at how the sender name is displayed and how the name impacts whether the emails are opened or not.

Other important aspects of an email marketing audit include personalizing more emails based by including the recipient’s name or sending specific emails based on their purchase history. You also need to make sure that the body of the email has effective copy that is increasing click rates, leads and sales. Content should be concise and compelling, urging the reader to take action.

One of the key elements of email marketing is having an effective call to action somewhere within the email. Your call to actions need to be clear and unique so that customers will read them and potentially click through. The goal of an email audit is to find ways to make adjustments that will get more customers to open and read emails and hopefully click through to your website to make a purchase.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/giving-yourself-an-email-marketing-audit/

10 Reasons You Should Be Using Online Marketing To Grow Your Business

For entrepreneurs and business owners, the landscape is rapidly changing in exciting ways. Many traditional ways of advertising are quickly being supplanted by internet and social media based forms of marketing. Here are some of the ways creating a strong online presence can be some of the strongest ways to market your business in today’s world.

1. A Level Playing Field
Traditional marketing often related on mediums such as billboards and television ads, that were controlled by outside forces. They are very expensive, requiring a huge investment that smaller and starter companies often could rarely afford. By contrast, a website, that you can set up and control yourself, is much more inexpensive, and something you can do to spread the word about your business from the very beginning. This enables smaller and medium companies to be able to become just as recognizable among some people as huge corporations.

2. Cost-Effective
A report from HubSpot shows that online marketing can generate 3 times as many leads as traditional advertising, and yet cost 62 percent less. With a website, you can spend less money on content that will be seen by far more people. If you are a small business struggling to find the capital to do the necessary work of advertising, online tools are the most cost effective opportunities to let people know about the services you can provide for them.

3. Targeted Audiences
Traditional advertising is seen by everybody, with no way to control who gets the message or focus only on the people likely to be responsive. In contrast, paid online marketing allows you to choose the people who receive your marketing content, or tailor your message to a specific audience. Knowing and controlling the people with whom you communicate can dramatically increase the effectiveness of your message.

4. Building Credibility
Online communication is instantaneous and interactive. When you deliver on your promises, it can make a huge difference with your customers. The internet gives these satisfied customers a platform to share their positive experiences with others. In this way, your online presence can be significantly amplified as loyal customers become your brand ambassadors, tellings other about the services you provide.

5. Possibilities of Search Ratings
According to Internet Live States, 88.5 percent of people in the U.S. have access to the internet through a cell phone or computer. This means almost everyone has gotten used to using a search engine as one of their primary ways to find information. With the help of experts at Emarketed, we can show you how to increase your search ratings so they are likely to be found on the first page of someone’s search results. This will enable your company to come to the awareness of anyone who might be seeking your services.

6. Trackable Data
With traditional advertising, it is sometimes difficult to evaluate the difference your marketing was doing. It was often hard to tell how many people see a television or print advertisement, or how it affected their purchasing decisions. Online marketing comes equipped with different tracking and analytics tools, so you can see who visited your website or saw your content, in real time. These resources allow you to see just how effective a marketing campaign is, or whether you should make changes.

7. Give Convenient Ways To Respond
Marketing’s primary goal is to get potential customers to respond to a call to action, by buying the product or service being offered. Online marketing content can easily also be an online store, allowing someone to respond to your message instantaneously upon hearing it. This allows for a degree of impulsivity when your messsage is likely to reach maximum impact, and a convenience that creates few barriers to allow a customer to respond.

8. Test-Drive New Ideas
Whether it’s through a website, social media, or e-mails, there are a wide variety of options and different ways to create online content that communicates a desired message. There is room for creativity, trying out new things. Lower costs mean lower risks for experimenting, and seeing how effective a particular message can be. The possibilities are potentially limitless.

9. Generating Higher Revenues
For all these reasons, online marketing can greatly help your business’ revenues. According to Google, effectively used digital marketing strategies can make a business grow 2.8 times better than expected otherwise. This is especially true for smaller businesses, that can increase their revenues by as much as 3.3 times as much. Online marketing can be like rocket fuel that causes your business to take off, and find opportunities for customers that are otherwise not possible.

10. Go Where Customers Are
The internet is already being used by most people on earth, giving people access to receive information that before would not have been possible. In the future, even more people will come more and more to rely on the internet as one of their main sources of information. If your business doesn’t have an online presence, you are missing out on one of the biggest ways to attract attention to your business. Just a few simple steps can open your way to limitless possibilities for your business’ growth.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/grow-business/

Should My Company Take a Political Stand?

We live in complex times politically and the country is strongly divided on more issues every day. Companies may feel inclined to weigh in on their beliefs about the current political situation but aren’t sure how it will affect their business. While expressing positive company values can be important, it is sometimes best to tread lightly when it comes to taking a political stance.

Consumers are more interested now than ever in hearing a company’s political views but in certain cases it could lead to alienating or angering some audiences. Customers may respond positively to a political stance in some instances but there are also dangers that businesses need to be aware of. People believe that businesses should take action so taking a political stance could generate a lot of interest in your company.

Bigger corporations tend stay on the fence politically but smaller businesses can actually generate more awareness of their brand by being political. One thing to consider however is that taking one side of a debate is likely to cut down your potential audience by a certain amount. Not everyone is going to agree with your political stance and they may avoid buying from you if they are offended by your beliefs or actions.

Remember that one in five consumers have boycotted a brand because of a scandal or negative press. You also need to think about what stakeholders or investors might think of your political stance and how they will react. If people are not already aware of your political beliefs it could have a huge impact on your business’s success.

Taking a political stand can be a risky move and may work for some businesses more than others. In the end you need to weigh the potential costs and benefits to see if it is the right decision.

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