Hiding negative reviews does not breed respect. Instead, a mix and match of positive and negative reviews help build trust and credibility for your brand.

Negative reviews are frowned upon by businesses, so much so that 87% of them don’t take any pains to address negative reviews, not even for their most popular products. Businesses might even protest that they are not in the wrong for ignoring negative reviews, that negative reviews showcase the company in a bad light. But for all the notoriety associated with negative reviews, it’s worth keeping in mind that 5x more buyers seek out negative reviews over positive ones for the purchase of goods and services. On top of this, addressing negative reviews might miraculously change an upset customer into a happy one. [si_guide_block id="79186" title="Download our Free Resource – 12 common e-commerce marketing mistakes" description="Find out what e-commerce marketing mistakes you need to avoid./] Further,…

Five practical steps to improve your video SEO and align objectives with strategy and tactics

Video is becoming an increasingly important element in the modern content marketer’s toolkit. When we consider that YouTube alone is the world’s second largest search engine in the world, there’s a breadth and scale to video that marketers can’t ignore. ‘How-to’ videos, in particular, are very popular and something that brands can take advantage of in order to appeal to their own prospects and customers: Whilst the creation of great content itself is essential, it’s equally important to ensure that the content can be found by your target audience. Search engine optimization is one of the most effective ways of boosting the discoverability of content and a topic covered in depth on Smart Insights previously. Whilst many SEO techniques can be…

In order to fix your brand’s customer experience (CX) issues, you first need to find the problematic experiences

In life as in business, having a clear vision and tactical execution maps are essential for success. Otherwise, as Lewis Carroll cleverly put it in Alice In Wonderland: ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.’ When it comes to the customer experience your brand delivers, a journey map — and the data behind it — help your team discover the issues preventing your customers from having a five-star experience. Only after discovering these issues can you fix them, then watch your customer loyalty and profits grow. [si_blog_banner_cta]

What’s a customer journey map?

According to the Harvard Business Review, a customer journey map is a visualization of all of the stages a customer goes through during their experience with your brand. It starts when they initially become aware of…

How to outline to customers how their data will be used as part of your marketing strategy

The data we capture and collect has become a highly valuable and important part of what we do as marketers. As we’ve become increasingly connected online, marketers’ ability to collect vast amounts of data has skyrocketed to the point where we now have new and unprecedented opportunities to organize data, build marketing technology stacks and shape strategies to target consumers more effectively. [si_blog_banner_cta] Whilst the collection of data has many benefits - from personalized content experiences to accurate analysis of consumer behaviour - it has also proved problematic. The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal and Marriott International data breach are notable examples of where personal data has been used without people’s knowledge or consent. Aside from these headline stories, over the last decade, in particular, brands have been taking advantage of the lack of regulation to auto-opt users…

Voice search is an important marketing trend, with consumers wanting convenience when searching

Voice search is the future of online marketing. If your business is not optimized for voice searches, you cannot expect to reach your audience and achieve its growth targets.

The digital marketing landscape is ever-evolving, with strong new trends emerging time and again. Voice search is one of the prominent trends coming to the forefront. The reason is obvious - users love the convenience of searching by saying the search terms rather than typing them.

With the voice search trend set to grow even bigger, embracing voice search becomes imperative for every business. To benefit from voice search, there are SEO innovations to be put in place. But before delving deeper into optimization strategy, let us talk about the basics.

What exactly is voice search?

As the name suggests,…

Business owners must be careful to abide by the laws of various countries when tracking customer data online

The internet has erased many international borders when it comes to commerce and interactions. However, business owners must be careful to abide by the laws of various countries when tracking customer data online. Marketing automation is the use of systems to collect and store visitor information with the goal of fine-tuning customer-directed messaging to produce income through sales. In its broadest sense, any collection of information from the computer or device used by a website visitor that identifies them can be considered marketing information. [caption id="attachment_134955" align="alignnone" width="640"] [Image Source][/caption]Privacy policies are required to disclose what information a website or app will track and collect from the visitor. In recent years those policies have drowned in legalese and the consumer data…

One of the best ways to keep people on your website longer and build up trust and conversions is through great content

Getting people to trust and ultimately buy from your business is a long process. It starts by getting people to visit your website, but traffic is not enough. You also need to give people a reason to stick around for longer so they can ultimately convert. One of the best ways to keep people on your website longer and build up trust and conversions is through great content. [si_guide_block id="85104" title="Download our Free Resource – Top 10 common content marketing mistakes" description="This guide gives recommendations for marketers responsible for managing and improving content marketing who want to develop a more strategic approach."/] In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to leverage content to keep people on your website longer.

Why it’s important to keep people on your website for…

If your company has struggled with prospecting, there is a high possibility that you're guilty of one or more of these major lead generation strategy mistakes

Generating new leads through content marketing, SEO, and advertising has been (and always will be) the main priority for any marketing team. This is what propels your business towards continuous growth – but many marketers find that the constant search for new potential clients and customers is extremely challenging and draining. According to HubSpot’s research report, generating more traffic and new leads remains a top marketing challenge year-after-year, with over 60% of teams stating that it is the hardest part of their job. [caption id="attachment_150038" align="aligncenter" width="640"] [Image Source][/caption]Unfortunately, this leads many marketers to make up excuses for their lack of results. Many blame it on a lack of funding, their team is too small, or…

Your email list is priceless, which is why you need to build it up and increase your audience

Email is the champion of the marketing world. Almost 60% of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI and they’re not wrong. With an average return on investment of more than $40 for every $1 spent, it’s hard to ignore the power of email marketing for both B2B and B2C companies. [caption id="attachment_140518" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image source: AWS[/caption] While the stats speak for themselves, another reason why building your own email list is so effective is simply because you own it. Sure, you can acquire lots of attention and followers on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. You can even create strong online communities there. But at any moment, these walled gardens could take it all away. Then how will…

Employee engagement has been shown to impact many different areas within an organization with three primary areas being performance, retention, and revenue

The shift of employee engagement to disengagement often comes down to a mismatch between employee expectations and what the organization is offering, particularly in relation to training and development. Across all experiences, I have encountered students and employees who are disengaged and at times, I have been disengaged myself. So what got people re-engaged? For others, it was personalizing the learning experience, what had got them to this point and where they wanted to go moving away from the ‘one size’ model and searching for new and novel ways to engage them. For myself, it was recognizing that I had needed to take responsibility for my own continuous learning. To say that I’m passionate about learning and engagement. [si_blog_banner_cta] A little bit of background about myself. Even though my initial training was in secondary…