Month: November 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HubSpot a marketer and developer of software products for inbound marketing and sales offers several free digital marketing certifications. As a marketer, I received a recommendation to partake in a certification at HubSpot. I enrolled in the inbound marketing certification.  The course consists of eleven lessons with videos and quizzes to review your understanding and a final test to obtain your certification.

The lessons include approximately 5 hours of videos. The instructors are well trained and do a fantastic job explaining inbound marketing concepts utilizing graphics,  pictures, small quizzes and definitions for each of the lessons. Like a good learner and spent approximately 8 hours reviewing the lessons as I was taking notes to prepare for the final exam. Final exam time is 3 hours and average student time to complete the test is 60 minutes. I wasn’t on the average as I spent over 70 minutes, but most important I passed and obtained my certification.

As I mentioned before instructors are prepared and known their topics. Also, images and definitions are helpful to understand their main points. Their academy commitment teaching students can help HubSpot enhancing sells of their products. I didn’t have any frustration during the whole course as I was engaged in all lessons.

During the whole course, I learned many concepts used to enhance inbound marketing. Per example, keywords are crucial for your digital campaign, how important is to design specific landing pages to boost your goals. How the use of social media can make a difference as you can target many audiences in many sites. Lead generation and management help you to increase traffic and generate more profits. Search engine optimization enhances your title, image, content and other aspects of your campaign. The importance and use of topic cluster and pillar pages to cover all the aspects of a topic.  Conversational growth strategy where can obtain ways to adjust their campaign via conversations. SMART goals can accommodate and help your goals integrating new ideas and tools to succeed.

Also, conversions and how you can optimize your conversions to boost your customer’s experience and your revenues. Lead nurturing to engage and define your target group.  Sales Enablement and how technology can help your sales and team and the need to pair your marketing campaign to boost your sales.

Lastly how important is to polish your relationship with your customer aligning your digital campaigns making sure these are always connecting with their needs. Overall, the certification covers several main points necessary to sustain and help your campaign goals.

The inbound marketing campaign certification covers many aspects to consider to grow and sustain a good digital campaign and a business. I can see the value and totally recommend to other marketers ranking the certification with from 1 to 5 scale with a 5 and promote it with those who don’t have any knowledge in a digital campaign and inbound marketing.  HubSpot is offering the certification free and marketers can take advantage to train employees for zero cost.  It is totally recommendable for those who want to gain more tactics and tools utilized in a digital marketing campaign and strength your inbound marketing knowledge.

 

 

B2B is the new trend for business to access different channels on web media and a crucial part for a successful digital campaign is a well-defined email. Marketers realized that emails are one of the biggest resources on the web at their disposition to enhance their campaign and sales. According to Salesforce, email marketing has an average ROI of 3800% and for every dollar invested in the campaign, the average return is $38 dollars. Many tools are at the disposition of marketers but without a doubt, email is the biggest tool as their disposition to nurture an online business and make it grow.

We can determine that email marketing is been effective and will continue expanding as technology continues improving. Sales, conversions, and traffic will increase, and companies should take advantage to boost their emails marketing strategies and make sure these emails don’t end in the trash. A customer receives a plethora of emails with offers and your company’s tactics need to be competitive and align with email best practices and to assure success the following are my seven tips to boost your email marketing strategy.

1 Define an Effective Attention Subject Line

Subject lines have a huge impact on your email marketing campaign. Avoid unnecessary words that don’t attract consumers and make sure your subject is objective, clear and attach to your goal. Also, if you have the information from your customers personalize each email and don’t forget complete honesty on what you offer to avoid further issues.

2 Make Your Email Simple

A simple email enhances your campaign goal with a better response from your customers. Also, consider that people use different devices and make it simple. Make sure your email campaign objective is targeting your goals and makes aware customers of your sales and promotions. A simple clear email is easier to access and attracts consumers attention.

3 Create a Specific Landing Page to Support Your Campaign

Campaign goals are achievable and a good landing page can help you to succeed. Assure your email is connected to a specific landing page to avoid misunderstandings. When many customers are intrigued by your offer the last thing you need is to drive them to your home page where they can’t see the offer. The landing page should be consistent with your email and have a call to action button to attract conversions. An effective landing page boost sale and increases ROI and don’t forget to add images or videos to enhance your landing page.

4 Use Segmentation to Target Specific Markets

Market segmentation is essential to boost your campaign and make sure specific emails are developed for specific markets. Understanding your market can assure that your campaign is achieving your goals. Make sure small segments have specific emails to make sure all your customer groups receive accurate information.

5 Contemplate Automation

Take advantage of the tools you can find to optimize your email marketing campaign. Software programs are such a great tool that you can trust to create and send emails to your customers. Smart email automation programs can create relevant information to your customer, remind them when they forget to complete their purchase and provide information on their transactions. Your company can take advantage of technology but if you go this path don’t forget to monitor constantly the emails to assure these concur with your goals.

6 Consider Reusing Effective Emails

A successful email marketing campaign you created it can be reused and can attract new customer and persuade those customers that don’t be attracted the first time bolstering your sales. Also, you can use automated programs to resend these emails and you can gain more from your successful campaigns.

7 Test your Emails

Don’t forget that you can test your email marketing campaigns to determine these are effective and achieve your goals. A/B test can provide insight and help you to make necessary changes to your email marketing campaign.

Conclusion

The evolution of B2B is continued and businesses need to stay in the vanguard to compete. Email marketing can bolster a digital marketing campaign and is one of the biggest tools available for digital marketing. Emails should clear and concise, have a specific landing page, target a specific segment audience and possess a strong direct subject line to attract traffic and sales. Digital marketers need to use all resources offered to support their email campaigns such as automated programs that help and support their campaign strategies and goals. If you like to learn more about strategies to enhance your campaign you can find many companies dedicated to improving email marketing campaigns.

 References:

“Bolstering Your E-commerce with Email Marketing.” Salesforce.com, www.salesforce.com/products/marketing-cloud/best-practices/ecommerce-marketing/.

Chale, Ray. “10 Practical Email Marketing Tips – Boost Sales For Your Business.” Digital Marketing Blog, LYFE Marketing, 13 Sept. 2018, www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/email-marketing-tips/.

Mansfield, Matt. “The Top 7 Benefits of Email Marketing (Pay Close Attention to No. 5).” Small Business Trends, 3 May 2017, smallbiztrends.com/2017/05/benefits-of-email-marketing.html.

By Ernesto Astorga on November 2, 2018

The technology revolution and convenience continue leading many businesses to focus on their online advertising campaigns. The idea of attracting consumers leads to unethical practices violating our principles and creating instability in society. Current algorithms allow many to manipulate and use internet tools such as social media sites to obtain users information or disseminate false news.  The Cambria Analytical scandal uncovered the poor policies and regulations to protect consumer information and exposed how companies can abuse naïve consumers and manipulate them as they know tendencies and preferences while surfing the internet. Also, our society is experiencing a division based on the manipulation of those who take advantage of creating confusion and division based on different ethics and morals views.

How dangerous is the current model of online advertising for society? Online advertising is necessary and essential for businesses as is open access for consumers, but unfortunately, it is also a danger due to the problems and division it is creating among society. To describe the problem here are my 5 level grades of danger of misusing online advertising (5 is highly dangerous and 1 not dangerous at all).

5. Society’s “tech addiction” is spreading among adults and kids and the internet is full of fake propaganda, scams, fake new and bad sites. Society should enforce companies and authorities to regulate and fix the problem.
6. Social media can be used to influence and divide society, we all are exposed to thousands of ads a day while browsing.
7. Criminals can use online advertising to obtain sensitive information, steal money and propagate fake information damaging consumers and society.
8. Poor regulations of online advertising in the United States damage the industry.
9. Companies and users benefit from online advertising. Convenience, time and accessibility enhance business.

The regulation of online advertising is necessary to protect users and the ethics and values that regulate our society. Authorities must establish better regulations and make sure marketers comply, not only for better business practices, but also protect society from the instability we are experiencing today. Different ethics and values are creating chaos and we have to enforce better values for business practices and assure marketers are following these in order to maintain a balance. The following is my proposal code of ethics to regulate marketer online activities and make sure they comply to protect consumers and society:

• The American Marketers association should work with companies and authorities to create a set of regulations and policies to govern online advertising and apply sanctions when necessary.
• Companies are responsible for their marketers’ practices and regulate the content of their online advertising.
• Marketers should sanction when they abuse their capabilities and use online advertising, based on the regulation of the code of ethics.
• A code of ethics is applicable to all businesses that practice online advertising.
• Companies are responsible for tracking the activity of users or customers that damage their reputation and abuse their service spreading fake advertising or information and obtain benefits that damage others and society.
• Online advertising should be accurate to avoid problems with consumers.
• Companies and marketers should encourage consumers to help and report fake online advertising or news that creates problems among society.
• Marketers, companies, and authorities work together to monitor and continue making changes to regulatory policies to protect business and society.

We all as a society, users, and consumers, cannot cross our fingers and work together. Marketers are responsible for the content, but we also have our to do our part to ensure it is acceptable and protect the ethics and morals of society. Malpractices should be stopped, they only creating division among society, diminish users’ credibility and businesses’ trust. It is important to support companies and marketers, especially in social media by understanding the damage to online advertising malpractices are doing. The 2016 elections campaign digital propaganda is an example of how online advertising can divide a society and we must avoid further problems.

The General Data Protection Regulation is a great model in how it protects the European economy and society by regulating the use and dissemination of users’ data. Companies such as Facebook and Twitter are responsible for managing and protecting data. Recent scandals should urge marketers to protect what they collect and their moral responsibilities.

Technology continues expanding and an oncoming generation will continue implementing and expanding online business. There must be regulations in place in order to regulate marketers and companies to comply with the law. Loyalty is also necessary as many felt betrayed after different scandals. We must integrate and act responsibly to protect such an important business tool and society.

References:

Steimer, S. (n.d.). The Murky Ethics of Data Gathering in a Post-Cambridge Analytica World. Retrieved from https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/marketers-are-wading-through-an-online-data-swampland.aspx

Soghoian, C. (2017, January 26). How to protect your online privacy. Retrieved from https://blog.ed.ted.com/2017/01/24/how-to-protect-your-online-privacy/

Manjoo, F. (2018, January 31). Tackling the Internet’s Central Villain: The Advertising Business. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/technology/internet-advertising-business.html

Robles, P. (2018, April 04). Is the ad fraud problem really getting better? New research suggests not. Retrieved from https://econsultancy.com/is-the-ad-fraud-problem-really-getting-better-new-research-suggests-not/

Jensen, K. (2018, June 29). Negative Impacts of Advertising. Retrieved from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/negative-impacts-advertising-22146.html

Image:

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.google.com/search?q=how dangerous you believe the current model of online advertising is for   society?&rlz=1C1MKDC_enUS772US772&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQipz03bbeAhUQHTQIHR_DCrYQ_AUIFCgC&biw=1243&bih=684#imgrc=tLT5YWS5c2FbDM