Increasing your Conversion Rate with Location Information

SEO is all the rage in the business world right now, but it doesn’t guarantee you success. Customers need to be able to both find your company easily online and find what they’re looking for on a straightforward, attractive template. The true key to increasing your conversions is company-to-consumer connection. 

Recent studies show that appearing local to your customers is the best way to connect with them. Landing pages, social media accounts, and local business associations have proven themselves to be effective in upping the amount of customer interaction a business receives. Furthermore, 83% of consumers will typically only travel to shop at stores 15 minutes away or less. Most consumers value location over product price, a surprising find considering how much emphasis is put on SEO for marketers. Most buyers do, however, value quality over location, meaning they’re often willing to travel further distances if the quality of a product is outstanding. 

If your business sells something that people buy consistently, such as food, gasoline, cigarettes, or bus tickets, consumers will seek out the location closest to them to make frequent purchasing easy. Customers prefer gas stations situated no further than 6 minutes away from their homes, grocery stores 9 minutes away, home, garden, and auto stores 14 minutes away, and clothing stores 20 minutes away. 

Having this information at your disposal is convenient, but using it is a bit tricky. There exist many dependent factors that determine just how far a customer is willing to go for a product or service, including method of transportation, access to highways, and traffic level. Converting travel times into distances using roadway routes with light traffic comes out to 2.2 miles every 6 minutes, 4.1 miles every 9 minutes, 4.9 miles every 12 minutes, and 9.3 miles every 20 minutes. 

Studies provided by Google and Access are too broad to use, citing that 80% of customer purchases are made within a 20 mile radius of home, and 72% of customers looking in their area choose a store no more than 5 miles away. With these newfound results, businesses can be confident that consumers visit grocery stores, cafes, pharmacies, post offices, and laundry service locations that are situated no more than 4 miles from their homes. 

Now that we know how powerful location is, how do we use it to turn consumers into customers? You’ll first have to make the location information of your business very accessible. It may seem more beneficial to advertise your products on every inch of your website that’s free, but this may end up driving your website’s visitors away, especially if it takes up an entire mobile phone screen. Include a Contact or Location section in your website’s tab collection and fill it with location photos, interactive maps, and nearby addresses to clearly highlight where your business is. 

If your company has more than one location, you’ve probably already taken the time to create a page on your website with the addresses and hours of each store. Although this is useful, don’t stop there; create a landing page for each store as well. If you don’t think that’s worth the effort, at the very least, create a Facebook page, Yelp listing, or Google My Business profile for every location. Your audience will then have all the information about your stores at their fingertips, more easily turning casual site visitors into loyal customers. 

Your store’s address may be all your customers need, but if your location is unusual or hidden away, descriptions of the space around the store are extremely useful for newcomers looking for it. Add information about nearby buildings, stores, and intersections to make the process of locating your store easier. A collection of photos from different angles can also help consumers coming from a different direction recognize your store. 

To accommodate customers traveling to your store from more than 10 minutes away, mention well-known landmarks that the building is near. Describing your store’s location in relation to a popular plaza, highway, or department store will almost guarantee that no consumer seeking out your store will get lost on the way there. People from out of town will especially appreciate your efforts. Even though your location doesn’t move, change its description depending on who you’re targeting, using words each audience will recognize. 

Location plays an unexpectedly big role in customer acquisition, and should therefore never be neglected. Give your audience the location information they need, and they’ll give you the conversions you want. 

The Pros and Cons of Influencer Marketing

There are few tactics in modern-day advertising that are as effective as influencer marketing. Even though it’s over a decade old, influencer marketing has only become commonplace recently, approaching an impressive $2 billion in revenue last year alone. It then comes as no surprise that 41% of marketers had a greater impact on consumers when using influencer marketing than when using other methods of advertising. Additionally, 32% of marketers claimed influencer marketing was necessary for the success of their campaigns.

If influencer marketing is so great, why don’t all marketers use it? The main reason many companies still avoid it is the challenges it comes with. It can be difficult to tell regular content apart from sponsored content in some cases, and the metrics it produces aren’t always clear. But the biggest problem that influencer marketing users experience is fraud.

Dishonest companies using influencer marketing as their main advertising strategy will pay consumers to like, comment on, follow, and promote their brand on popular social media platforms. Most of the time, these consumers haven’t tried the company’s products or services and are simply saying exactly what the company tells them to say. For a strategy that thrives on genuine recommendations of a brand, this is very harmful.

Fraud in influencer marketing happens more often than you may think. We forget that failing to clearly label sponsored content is also considered fraud, and over 100 large companies have been guilty of it in the recent past. To curb the incidents, the Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to those companies and created stricter rules about sponsored content. Smaller companies aren’t exempt from these rules, of course, but it’s much easier for them to break them without suffering any immediate consequences.

Incentives for advertisers may help decrease the frequency at which this problem occurs. Allowing compliant brands to access advanced analytics to see the effects of their marketing efforts or giving them the option to push overtly labeled sponsored ads to the top of user feeds could be a better way of encouraging everyone to follow the rules. Instagram has already begun to test out this strategy, offering a Paid Partnership tag that gives marketers access to the advertisement’s reach and interaction data.

Follower fraud is harder to identify than unlabeled sponsored content. Both individual users and active companies on social media can enlist the help of an autobot for a fairly low price. This autobot selects a series of fake accounts to follow the user’s account, making them appear more popular than they really are. Unfortunately, this sneaky strategy is happening more and more as social media becomes the centre of the advertising universe. Although it’s difficult to spot, it can be identified by closely examining follower numbers in relation to content interaction rates and unusual comment patterns. Companies that are caught in the act are blacklisted by the platform’s advertisement administrators.

All marketers should be aware that while their competitors may appear to have a plethora of followers, there aren’t enough policing systems within social media yet to quickly spot fraud, meaning those followers could be paid for or part of a pod. A pod is formed when influencers team up and interact with each other’s content. The algorithm for Instagram in particular will favour this activity and show it to more users.

Pods aren’t all bad, but they can pose problems to companies that are looking for organic results. Their partners could be commenting on their posts to increase their own reach without necessarily approving of or agreeing with the content. This can lead to a change in the company’s audience type and greater costs associated with the pod partnership. If you choose to use a pod, be sure to carefully monitor the amount and quality of comments you give and receive to avoid skewing your results.

Although pods and autobots are not as easily tackled as missing sponsored content tags are, a few organizations have been trying. Fohr Card, for instance, created a follower health tool that skims through an influencer’s followers and labels them as active users, lurking users, or autobots. That way, companies wanting to team up with an influencer can avoid fraudulent ones outright. Though this tool helps, most fraud analysis still needs to be completed manually.

Until the fraud issues are dealt with, businesses can use different marketing strategies and consumers can keep an eye out for insincere companies. If you choose influencer marketing despite its downfalls, play it safe and aim for authenticity.

Backing up your Social Media Content

If you have a number of social media posts that you don’t want to lose, there are a number of different steps you can take in order to ensure your social media profile is backed up safely and securely. Downloading your profile, content, and contacts is a good way to make sure you have everything saved securely so that you do not lose any information that’s valuable to your brand. Specific measures can give you the ability to ensure that your business is always going to run smoothly, no matter what might happen.

While this is a subject that certainly demands a great deal of additional research, there are still several things that you can try, in order to guarantee your documents, files, profile, and other elements are safe:

• Save your long-form content: Save to Word (or another file format), which you can then save locally and to the cloud file service of your choice.
• Back up your mobile videos: Make sure to always save copies of videos prior to uploading them to social media sites or elsewhere.
• Back up your photographs: The advice mentioned for mobile videos should of course be kept in mind with regards to photographs as well.
• Capturing testimonials: Screenshots can definitely prove useful in this regard. You do not want to lose sight of or waste time searching for that unique review that was posted to your profile.
• Download your profiles and pages: Most social media hubs have options that will allow you to back up your profiles and pages. If they do, follow the steps outlined. In most cases, you can download several elements of your page or profile so that you have it saved.
• Exporting contacts: You should always make sure your contacts are regularly exported and downloaded so that your network of contacts remains updated.

Source: http://www.unlimitedexposure.com/basic-digital-marketing/390-backing-up-your-social-media-content.html

Japanese Company Replaces Workers with AI

Recently, the Japanese insurance company Fukoku Mutual Life made the decision to reduce thirty-four employees and replace them with the IBM Watson Explorer AI. This is news that comes to us in the face of an understanding that as time goes on, computers and machines are going to take on an increasing number of jobs. These would be jobs that were once performed by humans.

At Fukoku Mutual Life, the IBM Watson Explorer AI is responsible for calculating payouts to policy holders. The firm believes it will increase productivity to a degree of thirty percent, while returning the investment within a period of less than two years. The firm has further indicated that it is expecting to save 140m yen per year, once the 200m yen per year AI unit has been installed. It is believed that maintaining the system is going to cost around 15m yen per year.

While the decision is being celebrated by those who are interested in efficiency and the bottom line, the decision is also naturally less popular with the employees who are being laid off. The move is also being viewed with significant concern by those who are still employed, but could perhaps become “redundant” later on, when a machine becomes capable of doing their job.

As the country considers utilizing AI in government work, a 2015 survey that comes to us from the Normura Research Institute suggests that nearly half of all the jobs in Japan will be replaced by robots by the year 2035.

Source: http://www.unlimitedexposure.com/basic-digital-marketing/389-japanese-company-replaces-workers-with-ai.html

Spending Too Much Time on Social Media During Holiday Season is Harmful

The University of Copenhagen recently conducted a study with some surprising results. Those who are “addicted” to social media sites particularly during the Holiday Season, such as Facebook, are as likely to make you unhappy and envious of others as deliver seasonal happiness. This study, with over 1,000 participants, found that there is a negative result of spending long stretches of time on social media.

The university’s recommendation is that you “take a break” from visiting social media sites during the Holiday Season. This typically will preserve your emotional stability and positive outlook on life in general. Why?

Problems with Frequent Social Media Browsing During the Holidays

Spending long hours on Facebook or other social media, seeing all those families enjoying the season, can fill you with envy at all the fun they seem to be having, making you more dissatisfied with your “lot in life.” Most people realize that posed photos or scripted videos often do not represent the true status of the people depicted in the images.

Study researchers found that many ‘Net surfers experience unwelcome mood “deteriorations” for those spending lots of time viewing the happy pictures and reading the equally happy stories of others. Along with these unwanted mood changes, you may suffer “unrealistic” comparisons to your Facebook friends’ seemingly perfect families.

The U of Copenhagen recommends you do more than look, but engage in conversations and connect with those whose social media sites you visit. You should find this to be a much more positive experience than maintaining your animosity as being a social media voyeur.

The study indicates you’ll change your mood from negative to positive if you connect with people on social media rather than remain a passive observer. While conversations on social media are less beneficial than in-person interaction, they are much more positive than simply enduring those “happy family” photos.

Conclusion

You should resist the temptation to spend your valuable leisure time making inferences from viewing photos of your friends on Holiday vacations on the ski slopes or in warm destinations on the beach. University researchers recommend that you suspend visits to social media sites for, at least, one week during the Holiday Season to avoid depressive thoughts.

This U of Copenhagen study appeared in the magazine, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. Since more women than men are regular active visitors to Facebook and other social media sites, it’s not surprising that the majority of 1,000-plus study participants were women.

Don’t become a victim of envy, a progressively more vital condition of personal dissatisfaction. If you are compelled to visit social media sites during the Holidays, avoid making potentially mistaken assumptions about the real happiness of the posted words or pictures of the holiday revelers.

When you view your friends’ social media pages, connect with them. Even if your conversation borders on “mindless drivel,” it may spike up your mood and satisfaction with your life. If you can, just stay away from social media sites during the holidays.

Source: http://www.unlimitedexposure.com/basic-digital-marketing/388-spending-too-much-time-on-social-media-during-holiday-season-is-harmful.html

France Workers Can Now Disconnect from Office Emails

As workers throughout the United States and other countries continue to fight for their rights, France workers now have something to celebrate. A recent law has now given them the power to ignore emails from the office that arrive after hours. The United States currently rates dead last in this specific arena. In a number of other areas that relate to wages, equality, maternity leave, and other crucial aspects, they continue to lag to a significant degree.

In the wake of this recent bombshell from France, which stands as one of the more significant examples of workers’ rights being realized, there are several things that must be kept in mind. The new labor law in France now gives a worker the ability to “disconnect” email, smartphone devices, or anything else that is electronic and related to their job.

The Ministry of Law made the reason for the law clear. They want to ensure that a clear divide is established and respected between professional responsibilities and essential leisure/downtime. This rule compels companies of fifty employees or more to negotiate new out-of-the-office guidelines for email and other forms of contact, as it relates to management and staff. It is believed by virtually all that the disconnect law will give employees the ability to function at their places of employment more efficiently. This is another piece of legislature that comes from the country that is already known for the thirty-five hour work week.

It is also worth mentioning that many French companies already have rules in place for emails and similar issues such as after office hours. Some companies have even gone so far as to shut off their systems entirely after office hours.

The impact of this new law has yet to be truly felt in the United States, where a number of battles are currently being waged over several topics related to the rights of workers.

Source: http://www.unlimitedexposure.com/basic-digital-marketing/387-france-workers-can-now-disconnect-from-office-emails.html

Introducing the New "Drive Safe Mode"

Even though checking your phone for emails or texts while driving still isn't considered to be as much of a crime as not fastening your seat belt or driving while under the influence, cell phone addicts might soon find themselves cell phone-less in their vehicles. And not by choice!

The United Kingdom's Department for Transport (DfT) has reported that they have recently started to develop a new technology which enables the blockage of mobile phones once a driver enters the vehicle. By implementing this new solution, drivers would be unable to use their phones while on the roads, as this new technology blocks all phone signals and disables all functions requiring an internet or telephone network connection.

The fact that last year more than 17,000 people had a court case involving mobile phone usage while driving, and that almost one in three drivers admitted to having used their phone previously while on the road, encouraged the members of the DfT to take their project to the next level. To discuss the future steps required to implement such systems in automobiles, ministers involved in the cause are meeting with representatives of the car manufacturing and telecommunication industry next year.

The goal is to change the attitude toward texting and driving, since people unfortunately find it acceptable to do so. By implementing this new technology, members of the cause aim to bring texting to the same level of social unacceptance as driving while drunk and not wearing a seat belt. The possible future regulation should be a strong deterrent, preventing the future generations from sharing the same wrongful and dangerous views on the effects of driving and texting.

The details of the new technology are still unclear, but smartphone manufacturers have also been encouraged to implement a new device mode which would be known as 'drive safe mode' - similar to flight mode. As governments have been promoting laws for texting and driving, which were hoped to be a deterrent strong enough, the new innovative technology might finally deliver the resolution they were after as the number of pro text & drive motorists is still on the rise.

While you might argue that the method applied by this new technology is too harsh, consider this fact first-- in the United States, 1 out of every 4 car accidents are caused by cell phone usage, while back in 2014, it was reported to be the biggest cause of road fatalities in the United Kingdom. A resolution is indisputably necessary!

Source: http://www.unlimitedexposure.com/basic-digital-marketing/386-introducing-the-new-drive-safe-mode.html