Our friends at Lucent Creative, a woman-owned digital marketing agency, have a few tips for navigating marketing in 2024.
New year, new approach–it’s time to sharpen our content planning game. The days of throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks are long gone. In this era of information overload, strategic content planning is the secret sauce for cutting through the noise and capturing your audience's attention.
So, grab your coffee, and let's embark on a journey into the future of content planning.
In 2024, it's all about understanding your audience on a personal level. Consumers are craving content that speaks directly to their needs, preferences, and pain points. Start by diving deep into your audience personas – who are they, what keeps them up at night, and how does your content make their lives better?
Leverage data analytics and social listening tools to gain insights into your audience's behavior. What are they clicking on? What are they sharing? Understanding your audience's digital footprint is key to creating content that resonates. Personalization is the name of the game, and the more you know about your audience, the better you can tailor your content to meet their expectations.
Bonus! Master your social media campaign with this blog post.
Static content is no longer enough; your audience wants to be a part of the experience. From quizzes and polls to interactive infographics and 360-degree videos, the possibilities are endless. Interactive content keeps your audience engaged and invested in your brand.
Make interactive elements a priority in your 2024 content calendar. Host live Q&A sessions, create polls on social media to gather opinions, etc. The more you can involve your audience in the content creation process, the more connected they'll feel to your brand.
In the age of information overload, quality trumps quantity. In 2024, it's not about bombarding your audience with a constant stream of content. It’s about creating meaningful, high-quality pieces that add value. Invest time in researching and producing well-crafted content that solves problems, educates, or entertains. Whether it's a blog post, video, or podcast episode, make it worth your audience's time. Consumers are looking for substance and authenticity.
If video content wasn't at the top of your content planning list before, it should be now. Video content is no longer optional; it's essential for capturing and retaining audience attention. Whether it's short-form content for social media or long-form storytelling on YouTube, video is the medium of choice for many consumers.
Incorporate a variety of video formats into your content strategy. Think about how-to videos, behind-the-scenes glimpses, customer testimonials, and even interactive live streams. Video not only allows you to convey information more dynamically but also helps humanize your brand and establish a deeper connection with your audience.
Bonus! Read about optimizing your blog with video in 2024 here.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is still a crucial element of content planning in 2024. The way people search may evolve, but the importance of being discoverable on search engines remains. Keep a keen eye on emerging SEO trends, such as the rise of voice search and the continued emphasis on user experience.
Craft content with relevant keywords, but prioritize natural language and readability. Google's algorithms are getting smarter, and they're favoring content that provides a good user experience. Focus on creating content that answers questions, solves problems, and keeps users engaged – this will naturally boost your SEO rankings.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn't just for sci-fi movies; it's a game-changer in the world of content planning. AI can analyze data, predict trends, and even suggest optimizations for your content strategy.
Explore AI-powered tools for content creation, such as automated writing assistance or image recognition for visual content. AI can help you understand what content is resonating with your audience, predict future trends, and optimize your content strategy for maximum impact. It's like having a digital ally that guides you through the ever-evolving landscape of content creation.
From understanding your audience on a personal level to embracing interactive and high-quality content, the rules of the game are evolving. Video is king, SEO is still relevant, and the power of AI and UGC is undeniable. So, roll up your sleeves, stay agile, and embark on your content odyssey armed with the trends that will shape the narrative in 2024.
Need a hand with content in 2024? Get in touch with Lucent Creative’s team of marketing professionals.
Your website acts as the first impression for customers and clients. In part one, we gave you the rundown on web design statistics and a few pointers on creating an epic design. If you missed that post, check it out here.
You may not be designing your site from the ground up, but we encourage you to audit your existing site against today’s tips. What checks out and how can you make improvements? A well-designed website doesn’t mean it has to be a robust or high-tech site. Really, a lot of intentionality and attention to detail will result in a website that puts the user’s needs front and center.
Let’s get straight to today’s tips!
There are multiple reasons to give site visitors value straight out of the gate.
Here are just a few:
So, how do you provide value on your website? We discussed social proof in last week’s post and how it elevates your brand’s expertise. There are multiple ways to pique visitors’ interest and get them to stick around.
Three ways to provide value to your customers:
Integrate a chatbot into your web design. Customers need a place to get answers to their questions. Enter chatbots. They provide the customer service element while also adding value to your brand. Customize your chatbot to fit your brand to create a memorable customer experience.
Have a free resource library. Provide immense value while also capturing emails and building your email list. A free resource library should be more than just one pdf download. We recommend using multiple kinds of media since we’re all unique and retain information differently. Webinars, downloads, audio recordings, and interactive worksheets are all great fits for a resource library. Build a robust library that rivals your competitors and you’ll generate loyal customers!
Our web design partners at Lucent Creative built an epic landing page for a boutique African travel agency. Check out the value that’s offered to customers right away.
Web Design and copywriting rely on each other to create a memorable site for your potential customers/clients. Work with a designer that sees the value of emphasizing your brand’s message. A web designer and copywriter essentially have the same goal–to put your brand on the map and create an uncomplicated journey for your customer to commit to a purchase.
Here are a few tips to keep in mind for optimizing your message through design:
Your design and brand messaging should go hand-in-hand. Our biggest piece of advice would be to have a look at some websites you like and then, pull inspiration for your project. Here’s a round-up of our favorite projects by Lucent Creative. Pay attention to how the design supports the message:
A dog training and pet care services company:
A pizza franchise brand:
An online event:
Search Engine Optimization is a specialty as it should be! It’s a multi-faceted beast and we’re going to go ahead and suggest you hire an SEO expert.
Did you know over 53% of overall website traffic comes from organic search?
The difference between a DIY approach and hiring an SEO guru is that your website will see the light of day! Optimizing your site with SEO means:
As with any strategic marketing move, you’ll want to work with someone who also understands the data. What are your analytics teaching you about your current setup? Where are there areas for improvement?
Our partners at Lucent Creative have an SEO team and we’ve worked closely with them to optimize our site.
We’ve already established your business needs a great website to compete in the online space. It’s not only a great first impression for potential clients, but can also act as an ongoing resource for existing clients.
Whether you need a website refresh or need one from scratch, we’re in the business of helping!
Learn more about our partners at Lucent Creative here.
Contact our team to book a free consultation call.
Don’t forget to catch part one of this series.
Zoho is a well-trusted CRM full of magic and wonder– no matter the issue your business is encountering, we can almost guarantee Zoho has a product or solution for you
In a recent blog post, we discussed the awesome benefits of Zoho Books, the Zoho application that covers all your accounting needs in one place. Sure, entrepreneurs often start businesses to help greater humanity, but our businesses also center around one important thing: money.
When it comes to money, businesses can’t play around. There are tons of rules and aspects for managing financials, and Zoho Books has you covered.
With a deeper look into Zoho Books and Zoho CRM, you will discover the magic of EbizCharge. EbizCharge is a payment processing platform that can take care of payments, while Zoho Books takes care of the rest. Your sales team can take payments directly from within the CRM! Did you know it’s one of the only payment processors that offers this type of integration and functionality? The integration means your smaller company may not need a system as robust as Zoho Books. Not only are we big fans of having everything conveniently in one place, but we are about to give you several more reasons we are proponents of EbizCharge!
Let’s think back to the last time you made an online payment: You probably ran to your laptop, jumping for joy at the thought of clicking ‘submit.’
Yeah, we are being sarcastic– payments are a pain. If you can’t set them to automatic withdrawal, you potentially face late fees, annoying notices, and other unnecessary problems. What’s more, there are added headaches and hoops to jump through for businesses relying on these payments.
This is where EbizCharge comes in and saves the day! You can directly receive customer payments through your accounting system (like Zoho Books). No more third parties getting involved or disorganized processes– get all the payments directly sent to the same place.
Businesses can send email links to customers, and customers can quickly pay with just one click! EbizCharge accepts most major credit cards, and it even allows multiple invoices to be paid at once. No more double-entries or tracking the bread crumb trail of individual payments.
To clarify, EbizCharge is not a Zoho product– it’s just a platform that nicely compliments the many things Zoho has to offer. Think peanut butter and jelly or cookies and Santa– EbizCharge and Zoho Books are the perfect combinations.
EbizCharge integrates with tons of other services, like Quickbooks and WooCommerce. You name the accounting or e-commerce software, and EbizCharge probably works with it. Zoho Books is an effortless and natural pairing for EbizCharge, already a well-rounded accounting platform. (And remember, with Zoho Books/Zoho One comes over 40 other Zoho products for your business.)
Every year it becomes increasingly important to take data security seriously. Almost weekly, it seems like there are alerts in the news about recent cyber attacks and security breaches. Everywhere you insert personal data, mainly financial information needs to show they take security as seriously as you do!
EbizCharge proudly acknowledges that it takes PCI-compliant security measures. What is PCI compliance? If a company is PCI compliant, they are meeting a strict set of requirements set forth by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). By abiding by these requirements, companies responsibly handle and secure credit card information. PCI compliance means taking a few extra steps to prevent detrimental data-security mistakes.
One thing is for sure; customers will appreciate you taking extra care of their data. The security measures taken by EbizCharge and Zoho are both selling points when new customers are considering giving you their business!
Since we love saving time ourselves, we often emphasize how any Zoho product makes running your business so convenient. Efficient, cost-effective, and user-friendly– it’s a pretty easy choice for us!
EbizCharge is another element taken care of in the same place as everything else. Don’t worry about lugging your laptop everywhere; easily access EbizCharge on any device, including your smartphone. Customers can access it from any device as well!
Not only does it add much-appreciated convenience to your routine, EbizCharge can also save you some cash. It is designed to reduce processing costs by 15-40%! Sure, that’s a big range, but you’re pretty much guaranteed to see some savings! We’re sure there are some other places business owners would rather spend that extra dough.
We are not ashamed to admit being a part of the EbizCharge fan club, and we think you could be as well! Hand over aspects of your business to the experts while saving yourself some time and money. Quit worrying about all the details you could mess up as a business owner!
Take a load off, and rest assured that you can trust EbizCharge and Zoho to do the heavy lifting. After all, have your friends here at Woggle ever led you astray? Give us a shout, and we will gladly chat with you about this or any of your other business woes!
Every year it becomes increasingly important to take data security seriously. Almost weekly, it seems like there are alerts in the news about recent cyber attacks and security breaches. Everywhere you insert personal data, mainly financial information needs to show they take security as seriously as you do!
EbizCharge proudly acknowledges that it takes PCI-compliant security measures. What is PCI compliance? If a company is PCI compliant, they are meeting a strict set of requirements set forth by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). By abiding by these requirements, companies responsibly handle and secure credit card information. PCI compliance means taking a few extra steps to prevent detrimental data-security mistakes.
One thing is for sure; customers will appreciate you taking extra care of their data. The security measures taken by EbizCharge and Zoho are both selling points when new customers are considering giving you their business!
Since we love saving time ourselves, we often emphasize how any Zoho product makes running your business so convenient. Efficient, cost-effective, and user-friendly– it’s a pretty easy choice for us!
EbizCharge is another element taken care of in the same place as everything else. Don’t worry about lugging your laptop everywhere; easily access EbizCharge on any device, including your smartphone. Customers can access it from any device as well!
Not only does it add much-appreciated convenience to your routine, EbizCharge can also save you some cash. It is designed to reduce processing costs by 15-40%! Sure, that’s a big range, but you’re pretty much guaranteed to see some savings! We’re sure there are some other places business owners would rather spend that extra dough.
We are not ashamed to admit being a part of the EbizCharge fan club, and we think you could be as well! Hand over aspects of your business to the experts while saving yourself some time and money. Quit worrying about all the details you could mess up as a business owner!
Take a load off, and rest assured that you can trust EbizCharge and Zoho to do the heavy lifting. After all, have your friends here at Woggle ever led you astray? Give us a shout, and we will gladly chat with you about this or any of your other business woes!
Have you ever temporarily lost your phone and feared all that was lost with it? Did you think about what could happen if the wrong person accessed your applications? When you found your phone (phew), did you start thinking about ways to protect all the cherished photos stashed on it? Or how to increase your data security?
There are about a million examples of why losing data can be detrimental, along with many ways to lose that data. Data is everywhere- from work documents to the games you play on your phone. It is estimated that 7.5 billion people will be creating data by 2030! We often think about what’s next on the to-do list in the day-to-day grind and not about things like backing up our data. But in all honesty, data backup should be incorporated into our daily agenda, especially with the world becoming increasingly digitized.
That’s right, humans make mistakes. Just to be clear, we always make the general assumption that you simply “misplaced” your phone; we won’t talk about the other possibilities (ahem, like giving your phone a first-class ticket to the toilet bowl).
Not only can devices like phones and laptops be lost, but they can be stolen as well. In the United States, a laptop is stolen every 53 seconds. Not only is data lost, but data security is in the hands of a thief.
Then there’s always the scenario where the wrong thing was deleted, or someone inadvertently downloaded a virus. These kinds of things are the reasons backup plans are created!
Cybercriminals are out there, and they are constantly learning new ways to make money. All too often, data is compromised, and businesses have no choice but to pay the criminal who is holding information hostage. Businesses are attacked by ransomware every 11 seconds. By 2031, that number is expected to be 2 seconds. Not sure about you, but we can’t even make a decision about what to get for lunch in 11 seconds, let alone 2 seconds.
Not only is ransomware becoming more and more of a threat, but the cost of dealing with it is also increasing. In 2015, over $325 million went towards dealing with attacks throughout the world. By the end of 2021? $20 billion. By 2031, the cost is expected to increase 13 times the 2021 figure: $265 billion.
Unpredictable and often inevitable problems can occur that can cost you data, time, and money. This can be anything from a power surge or hardware overheating. Hardware failure also includes things like flooding and other environmental factors that could harm your devices (especially at an office). Many random and uncontrollable factors could do more harm if you don’t have a proper backup plan.
Quickly recover and restore: First, let’s talk about the difference between recovering and restoring data. Restoring allows you to retrieve a copy of the data; a recovery is a group of processes that retrieve the data and make it usable. When it comes to your business (and life), you would probably prefer to use data once again (not just have it). The quicker your business recovers the data, the faster things return to normal. A better backup system means less downtime and losing less money.
Audits: Yeesh. Even spelling out the word audits makes us cringe. However, we all have to deal with them. If your data isn’t appropriately backed up, you’re risking losing pertinent documents and databases to show in an audit. Not passing could quickly put you out of business! It’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Protect what’s irreplaceable: Let’s refer back to the introduction- losing your devices could mean losing a lot more than money. No one wants to risk losing precious things like family photos and videos. Backing up your data can mean you will have cherished moments for years to come.
In 2020, 1.7 MB of data was created every second! Currently, over 5 billion people use and store data on their devices and in the cloud. Ok, we can throw statistics at you all day, but here’s arguably the most important: Globally, there will be around 200 zettabytes of data stored by 2025! In other words, we create a lot of data. There must be somewhere we keep all this data, which means we need companies that carefully store and manage it.
If this post leaves you wondering why you don’t back anything up besides your car when you awkwardly drive over a cement parking barrier, you’re not alone: 30 percent of people have never backed up their devices! Thankfully, solutions like Skyvia are out there to tackle our backup data fears. Skyvia not only backs up your data daily but will take care of all your CRMS. So instead of stressing about individually backing up all your cloud storage solutions, hand it over to an option like Skyvia.
But in all seriousness, we hope this post has you asking the right questions and thinking about appropriate data solutions. If all of this seems foreign to you, you may be in a little trouble. More than likely, you just need to tweak a few things within your data management. And as always, if you find yourself completely overwhelmed, consider services like Skyvia to take a few things off your virtual plate! Good help isn’t always easy to find, but you have plenty of great options in this case.
What is ECommerce?
As businesses rapidly gravitate to the online space, you’ve likely heard the word “Ecommerce” thrown around, even in casual conversation.
In fact, if you’ve just Googled “What is ECommerce?” under the table on a first date so you can keep the conversation going, we’ve got your back.
Our friends at Shopify put it simply. “Ecommerce, also known as electronic commerce or internet commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions. Ecommerce is often used to refer to the sale of physical products online, but it can also describe any kind of commercial transaction that is facilitated through the internet.”
So, ECommerce is basically an online shop.
There are pretty important nuggets of wisdom you will want to know before you jump headfirst into an ECommerce business. For starters, you’ll want to know how to succeed.
There are a lot of moving parts to ensure any business’ success, but an ECommerce business has its unique needs.
The success of an ECommerce business is heavily reliant on a fully optimized website. After all, the website is the storefront, customer support, and cashier of an ECommerce setup. There are key elements that an ECommerce website must have that go beyond impressive product photos.
To succeed as an ECommerce business, your website needs to be:
Shopify is really the one-stop-shop (see what we did there?) for ECommerce entrepreneurs. Not only does Shopify check off every item listed above, but they make marketing your business effortless right from the app! You can also utilize other sales channels like Walmart Marketplace, eBay, Facebook, and Instagram with Shopify. If you’re wanting to test the waters, let us know here and we’ll sign you up for a free 14-day trial.
There are so many ways to market an ECommerce business. So many, in fact, that you may feel overwhelmed on where you should start. Marketing trends are always ebbing and flowing as algorithms change. At Woggle, we’re all about empowering you with resources and automation so you can keep it simple. ECommerce businesses don’t market themselves, but Shopify can do the heavy lifting for you. Here’s how.
Email marketing is still effective! Yes, even in the world of social media. It turns out that people still want to hear from businesses in their inbox. The proof is in the stats.
Shopify knows the proof is in the pudding (do people still say that?). That’s why they offer email marketing capabilities right in the app. ECommerce businesses can utilize pre-made templates to cut down on time. An added bonus is that you don’t have to hire a designer. Once you have customized your template, Shopify allows you to:
This Shopify marketing feature is one of our favorites. Chatbots are an amazing tool for an ECommerce business to have. They elevate the customer experience by making product recommendations, lending a hand with FAQs, and offering discount codes in real-time.
Are you convinced yet that business chat is the way forward? Like email marketing, Shopify allows customization to your chat and shows you how it is performing in analytics. You can also integrate your chat into Facebook Messenger and other messaging apps. Shopify works seamlessly across various platforms so you don’t have to.
ECommerce businesses rely on ads to get their products front and center. Knowing where to start or even how to start an ad campaign can be a headache. The tricky thing about ads for most ECommerce businesses is figuring out where to advertise. Shopify takes the guesswork out of ads by setting you up for success in their platform.
Being able to advertise, sell, offer customer support, and market from one platform is invaluable to ECommerce business owners. Shopify offers impressive perks when it comes to advertising your products.
Our Woggle team has seen Shopify in action and it’s transforming Ecommerce businesses by increasing their ROI, improving the customer experience, and helping their ads be seen by their ideal customer.
Remember, we can sign you up for a free 14 day trial with Shopify if you’re not ready to commit and want to take it for a test drive.
Woggle is a huge fan of making business simple, and we’re equally as passionate about seeing your business grow! Reach out today, together we'll get everything sorted!
-Off you go! Your horizon awaits.
