Mobile Apps for Taxes, Taxes, Taxes! A Mileage & Expense Tracker!

No emojis here, but definitely some application technology that will win your heart and save you money. If you are a business owner or a traveling employee for your company, there are some excellent applications that will help you track your mileage and present you with a report you can use to submit for reimbursement or tax deductions. Stride Health company has developed an app and it sure has helped give them a good name.  These apps will win your heart come tax time and might even help your wallet grow a bit. Check out DriversNote app or Stride Health app!

Real Madrid // App for 360 ° and VR content

GEO-TARGETING & LOCAL SEO: STRATEGIES TO DOMINATE YOUR INDUSTRY

Website owners have a tremendous amount of control over their most important website elements. Things like content, user experience, design, functionality and additional features are all within your control. You can determine precisely which articles, photos or videos go on your blog, but you can also pick the color for your “buy” button in the online shop section of your website.

These are all within your reach, but your visitors are all diverse and they react differently to the same stimuli. Your visitors are, as every digital marketer knows, unique. They want to be addressed as individuals, not as group entities.Your business, even if it’s focused on the local market, can (and will) attract potential customers from all over the world. This is one of the cool things about online presence, and having a website – your local business turns into a global player. And each geographic market is different, so your website has to adapt to it. Your customers can vary immensely depending on their location: they may live in different climates, use different currencies, speak different languages and, most importantly, have a completely different culture.

So how can you individualize your digital marketing campaigns and get your website ready for each market you serve? How can you use local SEO and geo-targeting to attract the right visitors for your business, and turn them into customers?

Before answering these questions and delving deeper into the topic, let’s see what geo-targeting and local SEO actually mean:

• Geo-targeting – is the complete set of methods used to determine the location of website visitors and delivering the content based on their location. Geo-targeting may determine a user’s location based on various criteria, including countries, regions or states, cities, zip codes, IP addresses or ISPs. This strategy allows you to measure, personalize and predict your marketing campaign more precisely, especially when compared to traditional digital marketing.
• Local SEO – is a SEO strategy that focuses on providing search results relevant to a potential customer, based on their current location. It helps businesses promote themselves, their services or products to local visitors within a precise geographic area.

How can Geo-targeting and local SEO help you boost conversions?

Both geo-targeting and local SEO are hugely important digital marketing strategies to master, especially when considering the immense popularity of smartphones. Mobile searches are increasingly popular (87 percent of smartphone owners use a search engine every day*) and Google factors in the location data when displaying search results. Also, people are almost always looking for specific services or products and most of them include their location in their search query (neighborhood, city, county or state). What’s more, many customers are starting to pay attention to smaller, local mom-and-pop businesses over larger corporation or other well-known brands. Recent statistics show that 46 percent of all Google searches are local*.

Click here to see our previous article on 8 tips that will improve your local SEO presence

Let’s take a look at the best strategies to dominate your industry with geo-targeting:

1. The language of your website

Make sure you match your landing page to your visitors’ country of origin. This should always come with a “language switch” option. If your business has multiple locations, you should adapt each landing page according to your international visitors’ languages. For instance, if your company has a Mexican branch, the website should be available in Mexican Spanish, and visitors coming from Mexico should land on that page.

Similarly, your website should offer the “switch language” option if the company is active in an ethnically-diverse area. For instance, a company doing business in Miami should have their website available in both English and Spanish. Your customers may look for a Spanish version, and Google knows this, so make sure your website is up to the task.

2. Matching the currency

Offering multiple currencies is critical for websites who have an e-commerce section. Make sure you experiment with multiple currencies on different products or services. Always check your statistics and measure the sales depending on what currencies you use. Do you have better conversions when using the currency of the visitors’ country?

3. Focus on the visual elements

The design of your website says a lot about your business and different cultures may see it quite differently. While the psychology of colors is a vast topic, you should know the basics, test, evaluate, reevaluate and experiment constantly. White may communicate optimism and freedom in Western cultures, but it may send the opposite message for your Eastern Asian visitors. Keep this in mind when picking color schemes. Also, you can focus on other smaller, suggestive or indirect design elements. Things like flags, monuments, national symbols or locally-inspired graphics may be included in your strategy.

4. Knowing local preferences and tastes

The people, their preferences, their tastes and their heritage are surprisingly different, even in small geographic areas. Your website has to be ready to welcome them and look professional, without offending or insulting their culture. Your products or services must be adapted to your visitors’ preferences and desires. For instance, a restaurant franchise may adapt its menu for local residents – it may offer additional dishes specifically designed for the locals.

5. The power of reviews and local media

Search engines take a lot of information from review aggregators and websites, as well as from local media. Is your business active on Yelp, FourSquare or on other important review platforms? Do your customers leave reviews and do you monitor them? The same goes for local media content – make sure your business pops up in local news articles, reports, reviews or interviews. Google loves this and will see you as an important local player – and this means A LOT of new visitors for you.

6. Make sure you get the technical details right

In order to tap into the benefits of geo-targeting, you also have to get the technical aspects right. Here are the things you need to focus on:

• hosting location – the location of your server is very important; if your business is active in the United States, the server must be located there;
• your domain – if your business is global, the .com is the best domain extension; on the other hand, use a country-specific domain (.dk, .uk or .nl) if your company is active only in one country, as they rank better in local SERPs;
• loading speed – your website’s loading speed is hugely important in Google’s eyes, so you’ll have to make sure your hosting plan is excellent;
• contact us page – this page contributes considerably to your geo-targeting efforts, so make sure it’s up to date and the information is correct.

Monitoring your geo-targeting efforts

OK, so you’ve done all the hard work and everything is looking good.

Now, you will have to monitor your efforts, analyze the statistics, experiment, adapt and change, in order to take advantage of your hard work. Your first and foremost source of information is Google’s Analytics tool. Here, you can see a full report on how your website is performing, how many visitors you receive, where they are coming from and what are they doing on your website.

Other tools to use to try are browser extensions which let you choose the location and browse as usual. You can also use a “global geo proxy network”, which lets you browse the web from different locations.

Here’s what to look for:

• check if everything works properly
• see if the settings are correct
• check performance, latency and load times
• check the ads: are they location-specific? are they displayed correctly?

Importance of Geo-targeting

With the advent of Google’s mobile-first strategy, your visitors’ location will be far more important than their browser, device or screen resolution. People already look for local products or services, and your business has to make sure it is visible in the search queries.

Geo-targeting is a hugely important strategy to use in your digital marketing efforts. There is immense potential in converting traffic from specific geographic locations, and geo-targeting is the perfect strategy to make it work. What’s more, it is simple to implement and it is the ideal way to experiment, optimize and evaluate your market. With geo-targeting, you can better understand both your customers and your competition, and gather invaluable statistics that will boost your conversions.

References:

*- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/local-seo-stats

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/local-seo-optimize-website-rank-multiple-locations/96929/

http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2016/29351/geotargeting-proven-practices-of-location-tailored-seo

https://searchengineland.com/10-practical-tips-using-geo-location-reach-target-audience-217301

2018 THE YEAR OF THE BOOM IN CUSTOMER SERVICE

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SMDigital Partners presents a summary of 2018’s upcoming Digital Trends. This summary is a product of an in-depth investigation of different reports, as well as attending events, fairs and international digital marketing conferences.

2018 is here.  Here are six digital trends to watch for and boost your digital presence:

1. Back to the Roots: A rising need to return to your brand’s roots while connecting to today’s conscientious consumer and next generation.
2. Content is the Answer: Responding in a concise way to the consumer’s questions while catering to voice search queries.
3. Mass Adoption of Virtual Reality: Big brands increasing their use of virtual reality technology to engage their customers.
4. Digital Advertising – “Catch me if you can”:  A more complex online advertising landscape with a more elusive consumer.
5. E-mail 3.0:  Email personalization and automation will lead the communications agenda in 2018.
6. The Boom in Customer Service: Using technology and artificial intelligence to enhance customer service.

1. Back to the Roots.

In 2018, we will see how brands will have an unexpected turn towards their roots. Digging deep into their history to the creation of their company.  We will see how they touched their consumers in the beginning and what they originally meant to the loyal customers that helped to make them the household names they are today. Consumer tendencies are changing fast and in a radical way. The brands that embrace this will reconnect with consumers by revisiting and communicating the same message that made their product and company successful in the beginning. They will use digital platforms to get their message out there, and they will get it out there, FAST!

Today’s upcoming generations are behaving very different from the traditional ones in connection with brands. So is the consumption of their products and services in a digital world. They are less complicated consumers, but at the same time more demanding.  Today’s consumers have a wealth of information at their fingertips. They are willing to pay a little more for the brands they associate with.  They chose their brands not only as a trend or fashionable solution to their needs, but also to connect with the values, production methods, and causes that those brands stand for. Add those roots into your digital strategy to follow this digital trend and watch your brand grow!

2. Content is the Answer.

2018 will see a sharp rise in the demand for concise content that responds to voice searches through virtual assistants such as Alexa , Siri, Cortana or Google.  This is will be one of the hottest digital trends this year as more consumers use a virtual assistant to shop, get answers or listen to music.

This year Google will increase the use of snippets to offer quick answers to users without leaving Google.com.  They will even sacrifice the potential for Adwords revenue in order to provide the consumer with the results they need.  This sacrifice for the “needs and experience of the consumers first” will drive changes in how Google and other search engines will index content, websites and information on the web to reward the best optimized pages for informative, factual and concise answers. Here’s a snippet:  Make it short, sweet and informative. 

3.Mass Adoption of Virtual Reality.  

In 2018, many brands will create experiences with virtual reality. Sectors such as automotive, B2B, education, real estate, tourism among others will invest in creating brand encounters in a virtual world.  The focus of these virtual reality experiences will be to enhance the digital interaction with a brand’s product or service. It will create an experience that appeals to the all of consumers’ senses. Likewise, we will see companies such as Facebook, Apple, Samsung and Google continue to bet strongly on this technology that will surely bring great surprises throughout the year.  Here’s a little taste of reality, augmented for a realtor, really and digitally!

4. Digital advertising – “Catch me if you can”  

In 2018 reaching the consumer will be increasingly difficult. Adding to this challenge for brands will be:

1. An increase in adblockers ;
2. Facebook forcing brands to pay to show their content (only 2% of organic publications reach users);
3. The difficulty of the influencers to find a business model that allows coexistence with brands;
4. The increase in users’ privacy policies;
5. And, the creation of new payment-for-content business models that move away from traditional advertising financing.

All of these factors are sure to make 2018 one of the most interesting years; full of opportunities for digital agencies to show the brands they represent the important role digital strategies play in enhancing the  connection between a brand and its consumers.

5. E-mail 3.0  

E-mail will continue to be the preferred form of communication by consumers. This adds another effective but challenging facet to 2018’s complex landscape of digital advertising.  Brands will be using email for growth in the creation of communities, coupled with much more intelligent messages based on the behavior of users both offline and online. To accomplish this, brands will begin taking their first steps with machine learning tools generating personalized and fully automated e-mails.

6. The Boom in Customer Service  

In 2018, the brands will start to balance the customer acquisition budget much better than the retention budget.  A large part of the customer service will migrate to social networks and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp. Likewise, the chatbots will improve their performance by having more learning. During this year, we will hear about Social CRM and we will see the impact of automation technologies and how they will be more relevant to efficiently serve customers. These pioneering efforts and technologies will demonstrate how brands will continue to make an important effort to satisfy their customers beyond the traditional contact center.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

What is IBM Watson?

IBM’s Watson named after their first CEO Thomas J. Watson, is a computer system that was developed in 2011. Watson is a computer system that is able to answer any questions asked of it, in a natural language.

The system was able to win a prize of a million dollars when it competed on the show Jeopardy against former winners. The Watson IBM system may very well be a genius and help you answer any question in the world, but what are the ways with which this system can help you market better in 2017?

Continue reading ‘IBM Watson Helping Business with Marketing Solutions’ »