Great Marketing Starts Here

It can be stressful to manage a new marketing campaign. Anything that makes engaging with your audience online easier can come as a welcome respite to overwhelmed business owners. That’s where utilizing automation as part of your overall marketing strategy can help make your time and your money go further.

There are a number of reasons to start taking marketing automation into serious consideration for your business. With the help of a team of marketing professionals and an effective and cohesive strategy, business owners can do much of the planning they need to do at more convenient times and let automated workflows handle the heavy lifting. This makes it easier to manage the many different aspects and daily operations of running a business while effectively balancing and maintaining an engaging online presence to attract and nurture more leads.

What You Should Know About Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is the use of software to automate necessary but often repetitive marketing tasks to connect and engage with a target audience in different stages of the sales funnel.

Every business owner wants more engaging customer relationships and increased positive brand awareness but, as a business owner, it is often difficult to find the time to cultivate these things naturally. As part of a comprehensive marketing plan, marketing automation tools can provide a range of insights and analytics that can help business owners fine-tune their business strategy, build stronger, longer-lasting relationships and create a streamlined customer service experience that will keep customers engaged. More effective customer relations can in turn increase brand loyalty and result in additional conversions and sales.

With the help of the qualified and skilled team at Splash Omnimedia, Lexington and surrounding area business owners can incorporate automation into their marketing tactics to help streamline and make their efforts more effective.

Marketing automation can help answer questions, respond to inquiries and give customers the relevant information they need to move to the next step of the sales funnel without exhausting your time or resources. Sharing important messages online can drive traffic to your website or even increase visits to your brick-and-mortar store. Relevant and timely messaging also helps foster trust and build a sense of community within your target audience. Loyal customers who feel a connection to a business are more likely to continue purchasing and recommend your business and products to friends and family. Here are two big ways marketing automation can help you make an impact and engage your audience without stretching your time too thin:

1. Continuous Communication with Multiple Touch Points

Customers don’t often buy with an initial email. It may take up to seven or more “touches” to get a lead to make a purchase. As it takes time and effort to convert, business owners need to think of long-term strategies to retain those customers and potentially upsell them on additional products and services. Marketing automation strategies help to continue to make contact with consumers personally and directly. Through individualized, action-driven emails and messages, you can engage customers right where they are within the sales funnel.

Marketing automation provides information on how customers are behaving, where they visit and what information they are looking for. Different messages can be sent to groups or individuals at various stages and automated beforehand, freeing up time and resources to spend on other necessary tasks during business hours, while continuing to engage and encourage customers, both new and old, right where they are online.

2. Relevant and Timely Messaging

As a business owner, you should use every opportunity available to get to know your current and potential customers better. Are you nurturing leads? Are you speaking to the needs of different audiences at different points in the customer journey? Business owners who fail to differentiate messages may be unknowingly turning off potential customers. It is important to have an effective system to follow up with prospects and customers. With the help of a skilled full-service marketing team, using marketing automation can be an effective tool to help increase both conversions and revenue, help you track the progress of leads and measure the impact of delivered content.

Get More Support with Splash Omnimedia

Even with great messaging and content, your business may be overlooked if you’re targeting the wrong audience at the wrong time. Deliver your message to meet your customers where they are in the buyer’s journey. The experts at Splash Omnimedia can help you get the most out of every marketing effort. Contact us today for a free quote or to find out more about how to incorporate marketing automation into your overall marketing strategy.

Video is by far one of the most powerful and important tools you can have in your portfolio to drive organic engagement. It’s no secret that video is in big time right now. As time goes on, video will continue to become more predominant on social media and websites. When it comes to your business, this is definitely a bandwagon you want to jump on. Videos shared on social media generate 1,200 percent more engagement than text and images combined. To make a statement and effectively engage your audience with videos, your business needs high-quality, professional videos that will:

• Fit your brand and its marketing strategies and goals
• Stand out against amateur and low-quality videos
• Reflect your business in a positive way to help you maintain your reputation

Even if you know that you need to incorporate videos into your comprehensive marketing strategy, it can sometimes be challenging to know where to start. Here are a few things to look for when choosing an effective video team:

Experience:

When it comes to video, it is important to choose a team that is skilled, qualified and has a wealth of knowledge and experience. Video is NOT something that you want to bargain shop for. Anyone with a phone can shoot a video, but it takes real experience to incorporate the professional quality and unique elements that will make your business stand out from the competition.

Customization:

When choosing a video production team, look for experts who will customize your videos to fit the branding, messaging and goals of your business. Your videos should ultimately look like your business and promote your mission. Trust in a full-service agency that has the skills and experience to incorporate your vision and voice into your videos. Working with a team that can act as an extension of you also means that you get the biggest bang for your buck.

Relevant, Current Samples:

Every videography team has a unique and distinct style and technique. Before you choose the team that that you’re going to work with, make sure to watch full videos that each of the teams you’re considering has created. It is important to see real samples rather than just watching demo reels so you can get an idea of what a finished product would look like. Full video samples allow you to see an overview of the quality of their productions and can give insight into whether they can create the right video for your brand.

Think about whether the samples have the look you’re going for. Look at whether the team has done different types of videos and can create ones in the style, industry and method you’re looking for. Ask yourself questions like:

• Does their style fit my company?
• Are their videos engaging?
• Would my target audience connect with these videos?

Once you’ve found a company that you feel like is a good fit for your vision and your brand, look for client testimonials and ask for references from companies they have worked with to make sure you’ll be getting the experience you’re looking for.

Positive Customer Service Traits

Even the most in-depth research about a team’s production qualities can’t adequately prepare you for working with a video team. You can never guarantee how a video production team will be in the end, but you can search for clues that will give insight into how it working with them will be.

• See how well and how quickly they respond to your inquiry. If the team is good with communication and timely about getting back to you, that is a good indication of their dedication to customer service and satisfaction and overall time management skills.
• Look for creativity and passion. If sample videos stand out from the usual videos across the internet and the team shows a true passion for what they do from the start, you're more likely to be in for a good experience.
• Find those at the forefront. Make sure to talk with the person or people who are at the forefront of the team and the work they produce. This will give you an idea of their commitment to excellence and how they can make their skills work for you. They will be able to understand and support your strategies and goals and have the skills and experience to propel your initiatives forward. The best video production team is led by strategists and innovators who will know how videos can fit into the broader orverall marketing strategy.

If you’re searching for a video team to help you take your business to the next level, the team at Splash Ominmedia can help you create visually stunning and compelling videos to promote your brand and drive audience engagement. Contact us today to find out how we can help you effectively incorporate video into your overall marketing strategy.

As a business owner, you are probably already aware that you should be marketing yourself to your target audience on at least one social media platform. However, it’s not just about having a social media presence—it’s more about how valuable your social media presence is and if you’re meeting your customers where they are in their everyday lives.

Social media helps you attract visitors to your website, turn them into leads and keep them engaged as followers. It gives you the ability to communicate more effectively with your audience and develop meaningful connections that lead to real relationships.

Maybe you feel that your business already has a solid presence on social media. Or maybe you’re just now trying to gain some traction. Either way, there’s probably some room for improvement. How can you get the most out of social media for your business?

1. Adapt to the Platform

One of the best ways to maximize your social media efforts is to target each platform differently. Stick to the platforms where your target market spends their time. It’s important to look at the demographics of users on each platform to determine which ones include your audience.

Once you’ve determined which platform or platforms are most valuable for your business, think about the purpose of the different platforms and tailor your content to fit each one. For example:

• LinkedIn is a professional site perfect for sharing informative, authoritative content
• Facebook provides a more casual atmosphere to connect with your audience and share a variety of content, including photos, videos and content posts like blogs and articles
• Instagram provides the perfect place to specialize with engaging and compelling images, while YouTube is perfect for videos that speak directly to the interests and needs of your audience

It is important to adapt your style and message to each platform while maintaining a uniform brand and voice.

2. Rely on Features Each Site Provides

Social media isn’t just about sharing flat content. It’s about giving your audience a place to engage with you directly and feel like they are a part of the conversation. Social media platforms not only give you the ability to share images, videos, infographics and other forms of content but also unique tools to enhance your connection with your audience.

3. Engage Your Audience

Although the method and message for each brand and business is different, here are a few tips from the experts for effectively engaging your audience through social media:

• Have a uniform brand and voice that fits your message and goals
• Consistency is key
• Respond quickly to interactions, even the negative ones
• Have patience and focus on long term goals rather than short wins
• Directly address your audience’s goals, questions and problems
• Provide quality content
• Don’t be overly salesy
• Don’t expect to go viral
• Pay attention to where your audience is and what they are saying

Overall, you should know each platform, utilize the features offered to you and explore different methods for engaging your audience. The more you pay attention to who your audience is, what they're saying on social media and which types of interaction they respond to most, the more you'll understand about how to communicate with them.

While social media management may seem complicated and overwhelming, our team of experts can help you create and effective social media strategy that is tailored to fit your unique business needs and goals. Contact us today to get started!