Digital advertising is not easy, and the myriad of articles detailing what you should do can become overwhelming. Are you supposed to do it all at once, or pick out one or two strategies?

One way to start is to get an idea of what to avoid. This can help you select the best ways to move forward in your marketing plan. Below, we give our top 8 mistakes with advertising online. 

1. Overlooking the Mobile Market

No matter how good your website is, it will be useless if you have not optimized it for mobile. With smartphones becoming the primary method of internet browsing, a company that does not optimize for mobile is losing sales and conversions. A staggering 82% of phone users turn to their phones when making a decision on purchases. 

Being optimized does not mean you have to spend money building an app (though that would help a lot). You can have a mobile-friendly website by choosing mobile-friendly themes. Make sure the website loads quickly on mobile by hiring a developer to strip back unnecessary code and installing caching software.

2. Targeting the Wrong Demographic and Audience

To avoid wasting money on PPC advertising and marketing campaigns, you must make sure you have a defined audience to target. You must know who your customers are, and what their age, gender, income, and interests are. Take some time to research this, and ask your current customers for their information and details. 

Do not make the mistake of targeting a broad audience. Your ads will be ignored by the majority of people and cost you money. Even if you have a wide spectrum of clients, create custom campaigns for each of your customer types. 

3. Not Paying Attention to SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) far surpasses any other form of internet marketing, because it is free. It is also common knowledge that anyone who searches online is more likely to click on organic links over paid ones. You can not afford to overlook the benefits of SEO. 

SEO is not a short-term strategy. You must work at it over a period of time and incorporate it into the content of your website. To do this, you need to develop a full strategy implemented in everything you do. 

4. Mistakes With Advertising on Social Media

Social media is another free tool that allows you to reach a customer who is at home or on the move. The real benefit lies in the fact that people choose to follow you, so they already have a degree of trust and engagement with your brand. This can be used to increase the customer experience and drive conversions and leads. 

When starting on social media, make sure you spend time on the correct platforms. For example, if you are aiming your product at a business-orientated crowd, a platform like LinkedIn would provide more worth than a youth-focused platform like Tiktok. 

5. Not Utilizing Promotions

Promotions, done badly, can make a brand look desperate. However, done correctly in campaigns that are planned well, they can catapult your traffic. Once you have the people on your site, it is likely you can dazzle them with more products and services, getting them to spend even more.

Coupons and discount codes are a great way to do this. You can also use competitions for free items to increase your social media following and brand awareness. Make sure you are offering something of value, and always ask customers to share so more people see the promotion. 

6. Failing to Comment

Digital advertising is about building a relationship. Relationships do not work if only one person is responding. You need to spend time on answering questions and having conversations with customers and followers. This can be on social media or blogs. 

This does not just mean commenting on your own media. Having conversations online with people in your field or answering questions on sites like Quora can help make you look like an expert in your field. They can increase brand awareness and build trust with potential customers. 

7. Failing to Remarket

Acquiring new leads for your business is important, but remarketing to old customers or those who have shown an interest in your website is just as important. These people are the most involved with your brand, as they have either already bought something or are at the final step and just need a nudge. 

An easy way to do this is to collect emails from potential leads and send them a reminder, especially if something is left in a shopping cart. You can find out more about marketplace remarketing. 

8. Producing Content That Lacks Value

All content that you put out or advertise digitally must have value. It must provide something or be of worth to the customer. One of the worst mistakes someone can make when advertising brands online is putting out content that does not really advertise anything at all. 

Go back to your data and see what your audience wants. Have a look at what they are visiting on your site, what is being shared, and what they are downloading. Then brainstorm more content in this vein and use that as part of your digital advertising strategy.

Starting With Online Advertising

Now that you know the mistakes with advertising online, you can begin to work out a sound strategy.

If you need more help and assistance with online marketing and any digital business growth advice, visit our blog. We update daily, and you can keep up to date by bookmarking our website right now!

Did you know that Pepsi paid $1 million to design their logo?

That might sound excessive, but Pepsi knew the importance of good design. Some other brands who also got the message include McDonald’s, Apple, and Nike, all of whom can be recognized by millions of people from just their logo!

Whether you’re aiming for global fame or just want to build up local recognition, a logo is always a good place to start. But how do you design yours?

Find out more in our guide to how to create marketing logos to win over your audience.

1. Define Your Brand

Logo marketing is all about showing the world who your brand is. You really want your design to show off the personality of your brand, but to do that you have to make sure you know it too. Here are some questions to help you work out your brand identity:

• Why did you start your business?
• What are the most important values in your business?
• How do you stand out from competition?
• What 3 words best describe your brand?

2. Do Your Research

Once you’ve worked out who you are, it’s time to do some research. Start by finding inspiration from other brand logos and compiling a mood board. You could make a physical board or use a website like Pinterest so you can share it easily. 

You also need to check out the competition. Look at what colors they’re using, the style of their designs, and how their brand personalities are coming across. You can use some of this for inspiration but make sure your logo ideas are different enough to stand out. 

3. Choose Your Design Style

Once you have a clear idea of what you need, it’s time to move onto logo design! Start by deciding on the styles you like. Some different options include:

• Classic and traditional
• Retro
• Minimalist
• Quirky and fun
• Hand drawn 

4. Look at Color and Typography

When creating marketing logos, color is vital. Not only should this help bring out your brand personality and tie in with colors you’re already using, it can also be used to influence your customers. Look into color psychology to find out more!

5. Work With Your Designer

Just as when creating content, where you’d use a company like Farm Fresh Content Marketing to get the job done properly, you need a logo designer. You’ll need to communicate effectively with your designer. Make sure they know all the information you’ve collected above and you both have a clear idea about the kind of logo you want. 

If you’d prefer to design yours yourself, use an online logo maker to create it. These tools make the design process a lot easier and quicker, and you can build a professional logo in less than an hour!

Create Professional Marketing Logos

Once you’ve been through these steps and found an awesome designer or logo maker, it’s time to start creating your marketing logos! You should have a few different options designed so that you can pick the perfect logo for your brand.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out more on our website!

Did you know that 60% of all travel searches start on mobile? People are searching online for where to stay, where to eat, and what to do. So, if you want to increase your nightly capacity at your hotel, you need to be online.

You can attract your ideal visitors to your hotel by attracting them to your website first. If you’re wondering how your website marketing strategy can help your hotel grow, then you’re in the right place.

Don’t spend any more time wondering how content marketing can increase visitors to your website. Keep reading to learn five ways SEO can help your hotel increase your capacity every night. 

1. Target Your Ideal Visitors With Targeted Keywords

Go further than simply targeting “hotels in your city” and target your ideal visitors. You can do this by writing articles about the museums in your city or the top dog parks in your city. These articles will attract people who want to visit your city but aren’t sure if they can find a pet-friendly location. 

2. Attract More Visitors With List Posts

Some visitors aren’t sure where they want to go, so list posts can be a great way to cast a wider net for future clientele. Use your favorite keyword finder software to target searched for terms such as “top cities for families.” Include your city and hotel in your article and you’ve naturally incorporated your search and your sales pitch without seeming spammy. 

3. Guest Post on the Sites Your Visitors Are Also Visiting

Your content marketing doesn’t have to stop on your own webpage. Write great content for several travel blogs and you will reach a much larger audience. Link back to your website and you’ll naturally drive visitors back to book with you.

4. Optimize your website for maximum ROI

Nobody likes a slow website. In fact, most people will leave your site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. So don’t neglect the technical side of your site, be sure to optimize it so it is running smoothly and quickly. 

5. Get Help When You Need It for Your Marketing Strategy

You don’t have the time to spend hours on your website and blog. So, outsource your content marketing to an expert who can help you grow your business through organic search. Your hotel SEO marketing is too important to leave to chance. Bring on the experts and watch your business skyrocket next vacation season. 

Increase Visitors To Your Hotel by Driving Visitors To Your Website

You want to increase your hotel capacity night-over-night. That begins by driving visitors to your website and gaining their trust with helpful information.

People are visiting your city every day. But are they staying with you? Get visible and share your love for your city through your blog and optimized marketing strategy. 

That will, in turn, drive traffic to your hotel and raise your bottom line. Don’t stand empty any longer. Use the valuable real estate on your website to get visitors and grow your guest list naturally and organically with content marketing. 

For more great information on this and other topics check out the rest of our blog. 

Leads are the lifeline of any successful sales organization. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling or who you’re selling to – in order for a company to be successful and generate revenue, it has to have a number of leads that will convert into customers.

With an abundance of leads, however, comes a curious caveat – what sales organizations don’t want is a plethora of leads that aren’t going to convert into customers. That just wastes their time on poor-quality leads.

Consequently, one has to first qualify leads to ensure that they are actually serious about becoming a potential customer, before spending a lot of time trying to engage with and close that lead into a sale.

In this article, we’ll teach you how lead qualification works.

Persona Fit

The first thing to consider with lead qualification is persona fit. One thing that your marketing team should already have built out is an ideal customer persona. Think of this persona as a profile of your most ideal customer that is ready to buy on the spot.

The persona will include a variety of factors stretching from geographic location to gender to age. In the event that you sell to businesses (a B2B company), then your buyer persona would be of a company and encompass things like headquarters location, company size, company industry, and the like.

To qualify the lead, it should meet some minimum requirements in the persona. For instance, if you only work with customers in the United States, no lead that comes in from Europe can be considered a marketing qualified lead.  

Interest Demonstrated

Another way to qualify leads is to take a look at the interest that they have demonstrated. You don’t want to spend a lot of time following up with leads that simply don’t have a lot of interest in the product or service that you are selling.

There are a few different ways to gauge interest, and the ones you employ will vary based on your industry. You could leverage marketing automation to track their browsing history – have they spent a lot of time on your website? In addition, if you add them to an email list and send them email broadcasts, email opens and link clicks could be an indicator of demonstrated interest.

Last but not least, another way someone could demonstrate interest is by reaching out to initiate sales conversations. These are likely to be your hottest leads.

Budget Existent

Finally, your lead also has to have the budget to buy your product or service. It doesn’t matter how interested they are if they don’t have the capacity to pony up the cash. But you get qualified leads that fit your general customer profile, have demonstrated interest, and are willing to come up with the cash, then you’ve got deals just waiting to be closed.

How to Qualify Leads

There you have it! Now that you know how to qualify leads, your sales team can be much more effective in chasing the deals that they know have a high chance of closing.

For more general business advice, check out the rest of the website!