Monthly Archives: February 2021

Digital marketing has exploded over the last decade, and there are now dozens of ways to reach out to customers. However, there is still one technique that rises above the others. Believe it or not, email marketing still has the best ROI, even beating out social media marketing.

Why email marketing?

Probably because people tend to pay more attention to their email. You can scroll through a newsfeed aimlessly, but email needs more direct attention since it can contain important information. Catching your target audience when they are paying attention is the key to successful marketing.

Of course, that is easier said than done. You want to evade spam filters and give customers something useful, all while managing your own successful company.

Let’s face it, you don’t have the time to manage personalized email marketing campaigns for each customer, which is where managed email sequencing comes into play. Building a strong email sequence is the foundation that will lead to strong sales leads in the future.

Work smart with email marketing automation

You DO have time to create a winning email sequencing strategy.

So how do you make the magic happen for you and boost your ROI? It’s this simple, focus on your consumer and your brand. It’s a time-tested formula that never fails.

The best email marketing campaigns are multi-faceted so that you take advantage of every potential lead. Set up multiple email sequences and watch your digital marketing returns skyrocket.

Trigger-based email sequences

These are more customized because they capitalize on the real-time movement and behaviour of browsers and/or potential customers. These emails are pre-set to be sent whenever a user browses your website, abandons a shopping cart, purchases a product, or downloads content. The purpose of these highly effective email sequences is to show the consumer your brand cares about them and is always just a click away.

For instance, a shopper leaves their cart behind and a day passes. The sale may seem gone, that is until an email pops up the next day reminding the shopper to finish their purchase. A cute little tagline and photo of their car works wonders. Maybe they got interrupted or didn’t feel like grabbing their purse, but now your email is giving them second thoughts and they click back to finish the purchase.

Sophisticated CRM management software can make trigger-based email sequences an automatic process so you don’t have to lift a finger, but your customers feel like you gave them individualized attention. It’s a win-win situation.

Time-Based Email Sequences

The second type of email sequence is time-based. Sometimes referred to as automatic emails, these emails can also be scheduled ahead of time to email customers in a predetermined fashion.

For instance, every new customer that opts-in to your website or downloads content will receive a welcome email, and then thirty days after they sign up will receive a second email. Maybe you send out weekly emails that highlight your weekly specials and offer a piece of informative content. Set up the sequence once and let your email marketing campaign do the work for you so you can focus your efforts elsewhere without losing any leads.

If you want to talk about your email marketing, your CRM or marketing automation in general, book a call today or send us a quick note.

Creating eye-catching social media posts when you’re not an Adobe Photoshop or InDesign pro can be challenging. But gone is the era of stern and boring images for your social media pages.

If you lack the time or the desire to learn the Adobe suite to create stunning images and videos, Canva is the tool you need. This user-friendly online platform turns all of us Adobe suite foreigners into graphic designers, and for free (premium memberships available).

In short, Canva combines a myriad of publishing and editing tools into one online design platform, plus it gives you access to thousands of templates, images, fonts, stickers, and much more!

Follow this quick guide to learn how to create stunning images using Canva, easily and in no time at all.

1) Choose your format

Whether you’re looking to create an image for a social media post, a brochure, a blog banner, or even a logo, you’ll find templates that fit the exact dimensions for the platform or design of your choice.

Upon login, click on the purple ‘Create a design’ button at the top right-hand corner and either select a custom size or choose a design from the suggested ones (i.e.: Facebook post). This will open a new window with a blank white page in the requested dimensions.

2) Start designing

You have a blank canvas in front of you. Now it’s time to make the magic happen. Choose from the hundreds of templates available for your specific dimensions or start creating your image from scratch.

i. Starting with a template

On the menu bar on the left side of your screen, you will find a ‘Templates’ tab. Scroll through the hundreds of them available to you and choose the one you prefer.

Once you’ve selected a template that works for the purpose of your post, swap out images for one of the thousands available under the ‘Images’ tab or upload your own through the ‘Upload’ tab.

ii. Starting from scratch

From the menu bar, choose to add images, text, or stickers to your creative. Canva offers thousands of elements to bring your vision to life, and makes it easy for you to search through their extensive library of elements with a search bar.

With access to hundreds of fonts, as well as elements such as frames, stickers, lines, shapes and even charts, Canva enables you to let your creative juices flow in the easiest way possible.

3) Save your image or video

While Canva automatically saves your designs every minute or so, it is always safer to take the time to click the ‘save’ button once in a while for good measure. To do so, click the ‘file’ menu tab in the top left-hand corner, then click ‘save.’

Once you are satisfied with your design, and the status bar you see at the top of the screen says ‘All changes saved,’ it is time to download your design. Simply click on the ‘download’ button and choose which format you want your design to be saved in, and click ‘download.’ Your design will automatically be saved in your download folder.

You now know how easy it is to create fun and eye-catching designs to supplement your social media posts and boost engagement on your pages. Take your time learning about the platform and experiment with everything it has to offer!

The term digital marketing gets thrown around a lot these days. People know they need a well-designed website or a couple of posts on Instagram a week, but anything further than that seems a little intimidating. Pixels? Retargeting ads? 2% lookalike audiences for people aged 20-35?!

We know, it seems like a lot! Don’t worry though — digital marketing can be as simple or complicated as you make it. You don’t need big bucks to get some benefit, and a lot of the work is in laying a good initial foundation for your business.

Check these steps off your list, and you’re on your way to a digital marketing strategy that gets your amazing product in front of all the right people.

Know Your Customer

This one’s true for all marketing, but particularly useful in the digital space. Customers these days are drowning in choices. They can visit any e-shop in the world, all from the comfort of their couch.

With all that competition, you want to make sure your business gets seen by the right people. And to do that, you have to know who those right people are!

Answer these basic questions:

• Who is my customer? Age, gender, geographic area, spending power, other interests.
• Where do they spend their time online? Social media, reading blogs, watching videos, nonstop Netflix marathons.
• Why did they go looking for your product? This is called a pain point, if you want to get jargon-y.

These are just starting points. The best way of figuring out the answers to these questions is by asking a real customer! Maybe you’re a rock star, and you understand every little detail about your customers, but it doesn’t hurt to double check with the real deal.

Create a Social Media Presence

On average, people spend 2.5 hours a day on social media. Let’s make the most of that time.

Since you now know where your customers spend all their time, you should know what social media they use the most! Make sure you set up social media accounts for your business. Even if you don’t post at all, it’s good to at least prevent other people from taking your name.

You SHOULD be posting though, since regular posts and interactions on social media boost your brand awareness and familiarity. On top of getting the word out about your great products, social media lets you interact with customers and your niche community in totally unique ways.

Some quick tips for building your social media presence:

• Figure out your voice early. Some brands are relaxed and friendly, others are more formal. Whatever tone you decide to use, make sure it stays consistent. Your decision should align with what you just found out about your customers!
• Find your industry hashtags. Every industry has its own subculture on social media. Try a quick Google of your industry + social media platform, to get an idea of what hashtags, groups, and trends you should be watching.
• Stay visual. Use as many images and videos as you can. Posts that have accompanying media do better in terms of reach and engagement. Also, it’s just more fun.
• Engage with your audience. Every now and then, ask a question to your followers. Try and get some dialogue going. People love to be listened to, so when appropriate, tag or reply to other accounts on the platform.

All of this work builds your credibility in the industry, with the added bonus of building a community of loyal customers around your brand.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Have you ever wondered how Google decides what search results to give you? Basically, Google has a complicated algorithm that decides if your site is relevant, easy-to-read, and trustworthy. The better you score on these three categories, the higher up on the page you’ll rank.

Of course, you want to be as close to the top of the search results as possible. Most people don’t bother scrolling to the bottom of page one, much less glimpse page two. To climb to the top of rankings, you’ll need good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on your site.

To improve your SEO, you first have to think about what sorts of things your customer searches for. These search terms are called “keywords.” The more keywords you have in your website content, the better your SEO is. While your content should already have a bunch of important keywords, it doesn’t hurt to have a quick skim through, and make sure that you’re writing about what your customers are looking for.

SEO is a pretty deep topic, and we promised a “quick” guide. So here’s a snapshot of what you need to know.

• Keywords – You know your customer pretty well by now, right? Think about what they’re Googling, and make sure you’re answering that on your website.
• Blogs – Google likes sites that are regularly updating with interesting content. For most sites, this means a blog. That’s why you see blogs on everyone’s site nowadays. They help with rankings, and they allow you to put different keywords into your site.
• Yoast – We could list all the little technical things that go into SEO, (H1 tags, alt text, meta descriptions, etc.) or we could give you the handy dandy tool that spells it out for you. Yoast plugs into websites seamlessly and gives you a foolproof checklist for your pages and posts. Find it in your web host plugin section or right here.

Unlike most things in the digital landscape, SEO takes awhile to show results. Think of it as Google taking a bit of time to get to know your site. Keep at it though, and you’ll see your site climb the rankings soon enough.

Digital Marketing Foundations, Easy After All

That’s it for our quick guide on digital marketing. If you tick off everything on this list, you’re off to a great start in your digital marketing journey.

However, there’s always more you can learn and do to promote your business. Read our Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Tracking, if you want to dive into the wonderful world of digital advertising.

Still got questions? Let’s chat! We’re happy to help.

Pia Lim is a Content and Digital Marketing Specialist at Curve Communications. She’s got a passion for communication. Online or traditional, spoken or written, she’s interested in everything to do with sharing ideas and stories.

When it comes to creating your social media content strategy, it’s good to have a strong understanding of what you want to achieve before you dive in. That’s why we’ve curated our top four questions to ask yourself before creating your social media content strategy. By considering these four questions, you’ll find creating your monthly content will be much easier than you thought! Let’s get started.

1) Do I understand my audience, and do I know where they “hang out” online?

This is the first question you should be asking yourself when it comes to creating your social media content strategy. Knowing who your audience is, and where you can find them online is a crucial aspect in creating meaningful, engaging, and worthwhile content. Here at Curve, we suggest that each of our prospective clients conduct a “discovery,” which is a deep dive into their company, their current marketing initiatives, and how they can better reach their target audience through our customer persona exercise.

Whether you’re a small local business or a large corporation, conducting a discovery analysis should be your first step. Understanding your brand as a whole will help you better understand what you want to work on, and how you should prioritize your time. The end result of a discovery not only answers the above question, but it gives you a crystal-clear roadmap of your marketing steps and who your target audience is.

2) Do I have a concrete plan for execution?

It’s great to have a better understanding of who you’re marketing to and how to execute your marketing, but without a concrete plan, what’s the point? We suggest assessing your current social media content strategy in what we call a social media audit and setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based (S.M.A.R.T.) goals that you can achieve on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. In doing so, you’ll find it easier to gauge your strategy’s success. And when it comes to creating your monthly content calendar, you’ll be able to execute with ease!

3) Do I have access to a social media scheduler that will work for me?

Scheduling your social media content across all platforms is one of the best things you can do. It saves time, allows you to create a month’s worth of content at once, and gives you peace of mind when you’re busy with other tasks.

Here at Curve, we’ve worked with a variety of social media scheduling software including Hootsuite, Planable, and Facebook’s Publishing Tools, all of which cater to the different needs of our clients. There are so many scheduling platforms out there at different price ranges, you’ll be able to find one that fits your needs and your budget accordingly.

4) Do I have the right content creation tools?

When it comes to creating content, it doesn’t have to be groundbreaking, but it does need to get your point across to your audience. If you’re just starting out with content creation, you’ll need access to the right tools to get the job done. Whether you’re looking for user-friendly graphic design platforms, digital writing assistance tools, or the best free stock images online, there are hundreds of places to find them. We’ve made it easy and rounded up our top three online tools here:

Canva is an online graphic design platform with thousands of templates, a great selection of fonts, and other graphic design elements that will come in handy. Canva offers a free version that includes access to a majority of their features, and the upgraded Canva Pro version costs you less than $20 a month. It’s a great investment that our team uses on a daily basis for organic social posts, Facebook and Instagram ads, branded presentations, and monthly reports.

Unsplash is an online library of more than two million FREE stock images. We use Unsplash on a daily basis for almost all of our clients. Unlike the traditional stock image websites like iStock and Adobe Stock, Unsplash allows the use of images for commercial purposes without needing to credit the artist or pay per image.

Grammarly is an online writing assistance tool that can be used virtually everywhere! We love Grammarly because it offers both free and paid versions, so you can choose a plan that best suits your work style. It’s an awesome tool to use if you spend a lot of time writing, even if it’s not directly for social content. Grammarly is great at catching the little things that we often look past, especially after a couple of rounds of editing!

Conclusion

Once you’ve answered all four questions, you’ll be off to the races! We’re sure you’ll have more than four questions when it comes to starting your content strategy, especially if you’re starting from scratch, and that’s totally okay! If anything, these questions will act as a basis for you to build from.

Interested in learning more about how Curve Communications works with our clients to build top-tier and engaging content? Book an appointment with our team here.