Everyone is now aware that the best way to stand out online is through digital marketing. Businesses are looking for the newest search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques as we enter 2023.
The most important SEO components are still in place. Your starting point should still be keywords, SEO backlinks, meta tags, and organic content marketing.
We’ll talk about five SEO trends you should include in your continuing marketing plan. To find out more about them and how they may help your business, keep reading:
Do you know about Google’s EAT? It reflects how Google evaluates the information on your page. The days of creating a website and using unethical SEO methods to rank in search results are long gone.
Google now expects your website content to demonstrate your subject-matter expertise. In blogs and other written and visual content, it searches for authoritative voices. Finally, it wants to make sure you can be trusted to deliver the good or service you promise.
Although EAT is not brand-new, it is evolving into a potent tool for promoting trustworthy websites.
In SEO trends, long-form content is reemerging. People seek out informative and interesting content of high calibre. Provide useful information on your website if you want visitors to stay there longer.
Strong writers that can write about your products, services, and industry news should be part of your business SEO strategy. Make sure the content is simple to share on social media and via email.
The popularity of video is growing. Many entrepreneurs are using the camera to promote their brands today. That is a fantastic business SEO strategy that will develop further.
In several marketing sectors, video advertising is taking the place of television advertising. Also, there are social networking and streaming services with business plans where you can monetise your video output.
Around 3.7 billion people will use smartphones to access the internet by 2025. Websites must be responsive to mobile devices and mobile-friendly. Following SEO trends involves replicating the user experience that users have on desktops and laptops.
To assist businesses in evaluating the effectiveness of their business SEO, Google provides a mobile usability report.
The way we communicate online is changing as a result of artificial intelligence. If you want to enhance interaction with your digital marketing, you’ll need it for business SEO.
Examining the following AI SEO trends will help you achieve better results:
All three contribute to strengthening connections with present and potential clients. Business SEO should employ AI to enhance their outcomes, much like search engines do.
You’ll be well on your way to a successful new year if you implement these SEO trends. Keep in mind that consistency is crucial. Keep your website and social media current by providing new information often.
Do you want to learn more about SEO? Check out the services BrisTechTonic Bristol SEO Company has to offer.
The number of start-ups, consultancies, and platforms that help companies on their ESG journeys has increased dramatically in recent years.
Determining which service is best for you as an SME can be extremely overwhelming if you don’t have a committed team to focus on these challenges. Big issues like environmental issues, governance factors and inclusion and diversity can take up lots of time.
As a PR consultancy, we’ve been trying to work through this landscape for our own activities, as well as aiding our clients through the same process. We want to share what we’ve discovered thus far.
When it comes to ESG and sustainability PR, it’s of paramount importance for your communications around these topics to be founded on genuine data and concrete commitments.
ESG for SMEs
ESG strategies are still in their beginnings for the majority of businesses. Using data from an ESG survey or materiality assessment, or setting up sustainability software can be a challenge without professional help.
It’s key to research the top ESG platforms for SMEs, learn what each one offers and consider what you should think about when making your choice. There isn’t a fix that works for everyone. Engaging a specialist firm to create an ESG roadmap may be the appropriate first step for larger SMEs with a complex supply chain or stakeholder network.
Becoming a sustainable business
Choosing to invest in a platform in your ESG strategy, such as those covered here, can have clear benefits for your company in a number of ways, including data collecting, improving sustainability reporting standards, risk management, sustainability education, staff engagement, and many more.
It is difficult to classify these platforms, as they offer various services. This is a quickly changing and dynamic market, with everything from employee participation to carbon footprint estimates, and product surplus distribution to sustainability issues.
Discover a selection of sustainability software providers and ESG platforms that may benefit your ESG operations below.
A startup situated in Bristol, Spherics, assists SMEs in comprehending their supply chains’ and their own carbon emissions. The application uses what is referred to as a “spend analysis” to establish your carbon impact and interfaces with the accounting software used by businesses.
This procedure is appropriate for smaller companies to follow and complies with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. It might be difficult to manage the necessary data collection without a committed sustainability staff. Therefore, it’s essential to use an automated system like Spherics to construct a footprint and access recommendations for emissions reductions.
Data collection is paramount to be able to have the right conversations about sustainability with your stakeholders.
Ecologi began as a platform dedicated to assisting individuals in making a positive effect on the environment. Ecologi customers may do their part to protect the environment by using carbon reduction strategies and encouraging tree planting.
Since then, the company has developed and is now able to provide both global corporations and small and medium-sized companies with solutions. A Climate Positive Workforce solution, which aims to involve employees in carbon reduction, is an option for businesses.
Ecologi also introduced Ecologi Zero this year, which is designed specifically for small and medium-sized companies. The platform, like Spherics, enables data collecting, interfaces with accounting software used by companies, and helps carbon footprint creation and development. The technology, which is presently under beta testing, will be compliant with industry-leading standards for carbon reporting and target-setting.
Additionally, Ecologi Zero will work to keep expenses down for SMEs by offering a free option.
Giki, which stands for “Get informed, know your impact,” strongly emphasises knowledge in all of its offerings. Displaying your individual carbon emissions and offering advice can help you perform better and achieve your personal and professional ESG goals. The main platform has been created to support change on a smaller scale for customers.
Giki Zero Pro is all about increasing employee engagement for businesses. Additionally, this sustainability software creates statistics that companies may utilise to show their dedication to ethical environmental policies. This website demonstrates that ESG good practices do not have to be dull or reserved for senior management by using behavioural insights from study findings to ensure the sustainability journey for employees is interesting and enjoyable.
With the use of the data platform, Eevery, small businesses can be given the tools they need to enhance their performance in governance, economics, and the environment.
The creators of Eevery recognised that while SMEs are frequently dedicated to enhancing their ESG efficiency, they frequently lack the capacity and ability to comprehend intricate frameworks like the GRI standards or the EU Taxonomy.
Users then enter non-financial information regarding their ESG performance and influence on Eevery. After that, they get templates, advice on where to make improvements, a reporting dashboard, and other things.
The main principle behind Neighbourly is that local transformation leads to global change. Companies can join Neighbourly and offer money, employee time, or surplus items. Then, these resources are directed toward the areas of the neighbourhood that most urgently require them.
The platform enhances transparency and aids ESG reporting in addition to ensuring donations and support get directly to communities in need. The specific results of the involvement, such as the number of meals donated, the amount of CO2 associated with avoided food waste, or the number of volunteer hours provided, are fed into ESG data tools by the Neighbourly web platform. The portal offers public case studies in addition to statistics, allowing businesses to showcase their influence.
Another startup is prioritising local action is YouDoo. Six areas are used to break down sustainable living into manageable steps: voice, food, use less, travel, home, and money.
While the platform is focused on individual actions to progress towards a more sustainable world, there are lots of tips and approaches that can be used in business ESG strategy too. By spotlighting local projects, suppliers and opportunities to get involved, YouDoo also helps keep value and investment in the local community.
The team behind the Couch to Carbon Zero, Every One of Us, wants to empower employees and assist organisations in creating a workforce that is climate-positive rather than serving as a provider of sustainability software or ESG data. Like some of the other platforms on this list, they offer a fund to promote neighbourhood grassroots initiatives.
Getting started with your ESG strategy
ESG data, sustainability research and reporting, and platforms for responsible business operations are much more than just financial data and ESG disclosures. There are several methods for smaller businesses to obtain accessible support for your strategy, whether you’re striving for net zero or seeking to reopen the dialogue about sustainability with coworkers, it’s possible.
Problem
HTML rendering in email clients is widely inconsistent. This is due to various factors including the level of support for different HTML and CSS features, how different email clients handle unsupported features and even how they embed the HTML email message within the email client user interface. In addition to the email-specific factors, there are cross-browser compatibility considerations that must be taken into account. In fact, this goes beyond web browsers because the Outlook Windows and Windows Mail desktop apps still use Microsoft Word as a rendering engine – and not a web browser engine!
Setting the right goals
Consistent HTML rendering across email clients and presenting your brand message in an identical way regardless of the email client used to view it is not a bad thought, but given the factors listed above it is not an attainable goal.
A more achievable and impactful goal is sending emails that are consistently usable, accessible and at minimum presentable and responsive while communicating the same message without sacrificing the brand image. At Flourish we believe this approach is more effective in achieving our clients’ ultimate goals from their CRM communications.
Approach
Ensuring the recipient can access and consume the contents of the email and interact with it (where applicable) whilst ensuring the email remains presentable across all relevant email clients is a big technical challenge.
Accessibility
Building HTML emails that are accessible to as many people (disabled or not) as possible is a major goal for all emails we build. The target audience here is literally everyone. This includes people who need to use assistive technology to access the content and those who use it to make the consumption of content a lot easier. It includes who need to rely on software to translate the content and those who must use alternative input devices to navigate.
With this mindset we write code that heroes the content semantically and visually. We collaboratively work with our designers to ensure a high level of readability, sufficient colour contrast and sensible dark mode choices.
Progressive enhancement
This is why we take a progressive enhancement approach in which we first build the HTML email with the minimum needed to render semi-consistently across email clients and a big focus on keeping the content accessible. Then we progressively enhance that minimum baseline HTML with fancier nice-to-have features. These features are implemented in a way that if not rendered by the email client, they would not break that baseline HTML.
In some cases, we may have multiple levels of progressive enhancements. For example, a coloured gradient can be rendered as a solid colour in some email clients, a static background image in some or from a programmatically generated image with CSS.
The above example revolves around aesthetics only – which can be important to maintain the sender’s brand image. However, there are also cases where multiple levels of progressive enhancements are needed to ensure the email’s contents remain accessible and useful to the recipient. Due to the limited feature detection techniques in email land, this is when we utilise email client targeting techniques to fine-tune rendering with greater care for specific email clients that are relevant to the sender’s audience. Making data-backed decisions here can essentially guide our team to focus on what is important to our clients’ unique audiences.
Optimise for the unhappy path
When viewing a HTML email, there are two distinct states. The first is when the message is displayed with all external resources such as images and web fonts – which is what everyone optimises for. However, we don’t believe it is enough to solely rely on the happy path, so we pay attention to the second state: when a user disables the download of external resources. This can involve styling the alternative text for images appropriately which would typically be hidden and ensuring the content remains as accessible as possible.
Forfeiting control, intelligently
Due to the limited support of many HTML and CSS features in email, it is not always possible to control how things are rendered in all situations. For example, it is not possible to render dark mode styles in some email clients that have auto dark mode conversions such as Gmail. This does not mean we simply forfeit full control. Instead, we make intelligent choices to ensure the email still renders well in dark mode. This may involve collaborating with designers to tweak some colours and use images that render well in both light and dark modes.
Performance
Unlike the web, performance, in relation to rendering and page load time, is not a widely discussed topic in email. On a normal web page when displaying a single image, it is possible to provide the browser with several versions of the same image for different screen sizes and display densities. You can explicitly tell the browser which version to use for which environment, or you can provide it with the information needed for it to pick the appropriate version on its own. This way the user doesn’t download a 4K quality image when they are on a display incapable of displaying the image at that quality.
This is not possible in most major email clients. This is why a balance between performance and quality is needed and may take additional considerations in email. Defaulting to retina quality images (suitable for high density pixel display) is a common practice. It is vital that images are properly compressed and are saved in the most appropriate format for the image type.
When a single high-quality image is used for all environments and screen sizes, image rendering can be slow in some cases. This can potentially cause vertical content layout shifts. We can enhance the image loading experience by telling the browser to maintain the aspect ratio of the image even before it loads. This approach does not break the responsiveness of the email.
About the Author:
Hussein Alhammad is Lead Developer at Flourish and a founding member of the Email Markup Consortium (EMC), a community-led group of industry professionals working to improve the email experience for everyone. For Hussein, developing is not a profession but an art form and he’s passionate about pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with code.
Need help ensuring your emails are reaching the right audience, with the right message, at the right time? Get in touch with the friendly experts at Flourish Customer Journey Marketing.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of raising a website’s visibility and position in search engine results pages (SERPs). Several factors influence how well a website performs in search engine results, but three main factors—on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO—are viewed as being the most important.
Enhancing a website’s content, title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags for search engines is known as on-page SEO. On-page SEO is to make a website’s content relevant, beneficial, and understandable for both users and search engines. This entails making the website’s content keyword-optimised, user-friendly, and simple to navigate, as well as making sure that it runs swiftly on mobile devices.
Off-page SEO refers to factors such as the quantity and quality of links pointing to a website, its social media presence, and its reputation online that are out of the website’s control. By building links, off-page SEO seeks to increase the website’s visibility and authority in the eyes of search engines. To do this, you need to build reputable backlinks from other websites, market on social media, and build a strong online reputation through user reviews and referrals.
Technical aspects of a website that may affect its visibility and positioning in search engine results pages are referred to as “technical SEO.” This includes topics like website architecture, security, and performance. Technical SEO seeks to make sure that a website is free of any errors or issues that could negatively affect its visibility and ranking as well as that it is easy for search engines to crawl and index. Making the website’s code and structure more effective, making sure it is swift and responsive, and making sure it is secure from viruses or hacking attempts are all examples of this.
In conclusion, the three fundamental types of SEO are technical, on-page, and off-page. Using on-page SEO, the website’s content is enhanced, making it more user- and search engine-friendly. Off-page SEO raises visibility and authority by constructing backlinks and engaging in social media marketing. A website’s technical optimisation helps make it error-free and straightforward for search engines to crawl and index. This is done with the help of technical SEO.
It’s crucial to remember that SEO requires ongoing work and cannot be finished once and then neglected. To maintain and improve a website’s visibility and ranking in search engine results pages, it’s critical to continuously monitor, evaluate, and improve that website’s SEO performance. It’s also essential to keep up with the most recent trends and algorithms if you want to compete in the search engine results pages. Best practises for SEO are constantly evolving.
Any strategy for internet marketing must include SEO. By focusing on the three main SEO areas, website owners can improve their website’s visibility and ranking in search engine results pages as well as draw in more relevant visitors. With the right strategy and persistent effort, SEO could help to increase website traffic, leads, and ultimately money.
Want to learn more about SEO? Check out the services BrisTechTonic, a Bristol SEO Company, has to offer.
Like many businesses, Stuff has been through a lot of changes over the last couple of years. And this has led us to carefully consider the best way forward for the agency.
We’ve seen a shift in the way clients work with creative agencies, with an increased demand for creative support and expertise and a reduced desire for account management.
That’s why we’ve restructured and gone back to our roots as a creatively owned and creatively led studio.
Our clients still get the great service they are used to, but they’ll be dealing directly with the people that ‘do’.
We believe this creates stronger relationships, which leads to better work and ultimately, better value.
Our ethos is simple – We get creative stuff done.
Our friendly team of hard working specialists use our creative and strategic skills to help brands shine brighter and make our clients’ lives easier.
We work across the three core areas behind all successful brand communications – strategy, development and delivery.
Whether we’re creating a new brand from scratch, refreshing an existing one or delivering tactical campaigns and assets, our pragmatic approach provides realistic solutions with minimum fuss.
You can find out more by visiting our new website – https://wearestuff.studio/
Mr B & Friends has created a future-focused new brand and website for digital learning provider, Sponge.
Sponge provides workplace learning for companies across the globe. They had a strong reputation in the industry for highly creative, cutting-edge bespoke learning content but, following a series of acquisitions, they needed a way to combine a broader range of product and service offerings. Sponge were looking for one compelling proposition that would resonate with a diverse audience set whilst retaining their strong brand positioning. Following a series of acquisitions to grow their portfolio of products, the company was poised for growth and needed a strong proposition to take them to the next stage.
Mr B & Friends conducted research with customers and colleagues to understand the true benefit that Sponge delivered. From here, the agency created an Organising Thought of ‘Unforgettable learning’. Combining an understanding of the way that humans absorb information, with data science and excellence in technology delivery, Sponge engages learners in a way that makes the subject stick.
The brand has been brought to life through a new identity that combines the magic of Sponge’s creative solutions with the logic of intelligence and use of learning science to optimise learning. This emerges through the colour palette – warm, earthy tones for logic, fused with vibrant colours for magic and ever-changing shapes that collide for unexpected effect.
Nathan Crosby, Associate Creative Director at Mr B & Friends, says, “The combination of magic with logic were at the crux of our creative approach. Sponge offers more than a learning platform – they use innate understanding of how humans learn with engaging solutions. We wanted to make sure this balance of cleverness and creativity was apparent.”
The website has a straightforward, easy to navigate interface. Key benefits are called out with opportunities to learn more at intervals throughout. Relatable examples from big name brands demonstrate expertise and impact without intimidating.
In addition to providing a dynamic new brand for customers, the transformation has also become a focal point to bring together the global Sponge team, providing them with one purpose and a unified culture.
Gareth Atkinson, Associate Strategy Director at Mr B & Friends says, “From our first contact with the team at Sponge we could see the value in their category leading approach. Combining creative excellence and learning science, with the support of technology innovation, delivers the holy grail of learning. The one thing their clients need; learning that works. Cutting through the noise and jargon of the category with a clear and relatable promise, positioning Sponge for their next phase of growth as a brand-led business. It was a delight to work with such a focused and ambitious team to help them bring their vision to life.”
Olivia Haywood, Chief Marketing Officer at Sponge says, “Throughout this process, we were determined to make a clear statement to the industry that, even as Sponge grows, our core ambition of creating innovative and visionary workplace learning is stronger than ever. From the start, Mr B & Friends were fellow visionaries: we just clicked. They were true strategic partners, guiding our decisions with creative integrity to ensure we never strayed from this path and, ultimately, delivering a great result.”
In this article, we can show you how we create some of our best email newsletters and the process behind them. This blog post will be an organised explanation of how you can grow your business through email newsletters and the services we provide in order to help you do so.
Email newsletters are a great way to advertise and showcase your company’s successes and services while keeping customers updated on any improvements and changes within the company. Nearly 5 Billion people worldwide use email, according to mailChimps blog post on writing email newsletters. Weekly emailing can raise your chances of reaching a higher percentage of these people each week. Whether you want to advertise a new product, service or event, email marketing/newsletters can be an easy and effective way to capture customers’ attention and drive more traffic to your website. Therefore resulting in more sales or higher interaction with your customers.
Keyword research is a practice that professionals in marketing use to use terms, phrases and words that users might enter into a search engine to find information on a particular topic, subject or object. Using words specific to your topic or product within your email newsletters can optimise traffic and reliability, ensuring that people feel you are a source they can trust when looking into a particular topic. Audience research and keyword research is a great ways to kickstart your email newsletter; they can allow you to adapt and change your email newsletter to your specific audience. Ensuring you get the reactions you are hoping for.
The subject line of your email is what is going to be the part that draws attention to your email and catches the attention of your audience. This will be the first aspect of your advertisement that your audience sees. Therefore you will want to ensure you fill it with keywords, and relative content and present it in an inviting manner to ensure it grab their attention. Make sure you include the information of the sender and recipient of the email, the date and any other vital information surrounding the content of the email.
Creating a good header and introduction is vital when grabbing the attention of your audience and getting them to stay interested throughout. During your audience research, you will discover how long your clients spend reading an email and gauge how much time people have to spend reading email marketing. If people have busy schedules that involve a lot of email traffic, then you will want to keep your advertisement short but effective. You can do this by ensuring your header is clear and concise and include all vital information quickly in your introduction. Images and infographics can also be a good way of engaging people while also delivering information quickly.
To ensure that your content is going to be useful and effective, you need to ensure you follow some simple steps.
One of the most important things is to create an email that isn’t overloaded with text and information. When advertising a product, service or event, people can get carried away with wanting to give all the information in a dense and lengthy email. People want to have content that is easy to digest, simple to read and full of the necessary information. Try not to go overboard with text unless the information you are writing is vital for your clients.
You can use infographics and images to help show key information in a clear and concise way.
There is no point in making an advertising email newsletter about an event, product or service that was relevant two weeks ago or is happening the day after they receive the email. You want to ensure that your audience has time to react to the information they have been given. Whether it’s a product you want them to buy, an event you want them to be a part of or a service you provide, you want people to have enough time to purchase, sign up, ask questions or react to your email.
There are some useful methods that you can find on our email marketing page, that show you how you can personalise your email newsletters in order to be sent to specific groups of people. You want the right advertisement to be received by people who are most likely to interact with that content. This links back to audience research/ keyword research and ensures you know what your audience is looking for.
Make sure that the tone of your email newsletter matches the tone of your current website/ online presence and service you provide. Someone advertising days out at a waterpark aren’t going to have the same tone and use the same language as someone advertising Luxury spa days or luxury wine. Know your audience and create a tone that they will understand. Ensure not to use phrases and words that your audience may have trouble understanding while also ensuring to be polite and pleasant with the way you communicate with people.
Imagery and the layout of your content can be one of the first things that grab your audience’s attention. You can also create content that incorporates important information to make sure your customers can clearly find key information they might need.
Following these steps when creating content can help you get more out of your content and email newsletters overall. Email newsletters are one of the best ways of reaching audiences all over the world. Ensuring that the content you provide is well-designed, personal, relevant, not over complicated and has the right tone can help you get the best results.
Here at Fanatic, we offer Email Marketing services that include creating engaging, eye-catching written and visual content, and bespoke email flows and we can also analyse email performance to ensure we are doing all we can to optimise your email Newsletter campaigns. For more information, please refer to our email marketing and email newsletters here. Feel free to get in touch to see how we can help you with the services we provide.
Paid Social is when companies and brands display sponsored advertising content on third-party platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, targeting audiences that match their brand. Marketing professionals use Paid Social strategies to increase traffic to their website or content, improve or increase marketing efficiency and market to larger audiences to capture new subsets of customers.
After the 2021 pandemic, social media saw a considerable rise in users, and people spent more time online than ever before. As a result, people’s activity on platforms such as e-commerce websites and social media stores increased, allowing companies to target audiences more precisely to match their brand. Through Paid Social, companies can post ads to audiences with a higher chance of the users interacting with the content.
The amount of companies using Paid Social in 2022 has dramatically increased due to the increased global engagement with social media. According to Search Discovery, this number is set to grow even more by 2025 to 4.4 billion users. People also spend much longer on social media platforms, averaging 147 minutes daily for the average person.
Social media strategies have become much more streamlined, and eCommerce websites are becoming one of the most accessible platforms for consumers to purchase products and services. In addition, the ease and simplicity of buying and consuming content through social media has enabled companies to generate traffic and sales much more efficiently. For example, through Paid Social, companies can streamline their advertisement to be seen by more specific audiences who are more likely to interact with the ads—leading to further sales.
Privacy and user safety have moved to the forefront of significant changes in how companies use Paid Social. According to a recent article by Clicky, after Apple updated IOS15 in September, 80% of global respondents chose not to be tracked. Companies will have to look into how they target audiences and how they can make their Paid Social campaigns more effective, reflective of the updated statistics.
Being diverse and authentic has become crucial to running successful ads. According to the same article by Clicky, 75% of Gen Z are more likely to support and use brands that are authentic in the way they advertise products. Companies must use original methods that reflect their message, story, values and overall products to attract their desired audiences. Paid Social can allow companies to do this on a larger scale, targeting audiences more likely to interact with their content. Companies that are more diverse in their advertisement will also see greater impressions and reactions. Diversity in the platforms companies use will also significantly impact the responses they receive to content. Companies that are also diverse in how many social platforms they use for their Paid Social ads could triple their audience reach and subsequently generate higher impression rates and CTR. TikTok is becoming one of the most powerful platforms for marketing, with over 1 billion users each day; utilising new media is a crucial way of reinventing Paid Social strategies and getting the most out of campaigns.
Short video content has dramatically impacted how we market and advertise products throughout 2022. Going into 2023, this remains the same. The increase in users on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram has seen many ways people use short 1, minute videos to create effective and engaging content while also allowing companies to interact with influencers within their subject audience.
According to Hootsuite, users of TikTok spend 95 minutes a day on the platform, and 78.6% of users use TikTok to find entertainment, making it one of the leading platforms for Paid Social. In addition, according to Hootsuite again, Google Trends’ interest in the platform has increased by 1,125% since 2020, meaning you will likely start to generate the most impact on TikTok going into 2023.
Influencers and the rise of Influencer culture on many social media platforms have created a unique and powerful influence on Paid Social and advertising on social domains. Despite being around for many years, the amount of organic user-generated content creators has increased rapidly throughout 2022, especially on social platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, where short video and review video logs, or ‘Vlogs’, are used daily.
According to an article for fbcomms, new social media platforms such as BeReal are set to emerge even more and become more prominent in 2023, hoping to break through into the heavily populated market. However, they pointed out that many new social media platforms tend to be niche sites with limited impact. However, utilising the trends produced by these platforms is useful when considering the design and storyline of companies’ advertising.
We live in a world with a far shorter attention span than generations before. Short videos, animations and interactive aspects of content can be a great way to get and secure audiences’ attention and get them to interact faster. Platform algorithms are introducing new ways in which content creators and brands can create two-way dialogues with their audience, rewarding those who produce successful content. For example, Instagram allows viewers to like, comment, share, and add stickers to social posts and stories. Aspects like this are a great way of building and maintaining relationships with followers. It gives audiences more say and enables brands to edit and shape advertisements to get the best results.
Since 2020, after the pandemic, we have been talking about the increase of people shopping online compared to the number of people who shop in physical stores. According to fbcomms, people will likely not have to leave their social platform to shop for goods and products advertised through posts. Through media such as Instagram and Facebook, customers will be provided with an even faster route to purchase products without going to another website or a different platform. Ensuring companies keep up to date with the ever-changing world of eCommerce is essential to running successful online businesses and creating an impactful online presence.
Paid Social is a fun, creative and highly effective method of finding potential customers and is considered by some to be one of the most effective ways of marketing in the current social image climate. Paid Social allows brands to connect with a target audience specific to their brand and gain a more extensive reach through the size of the platform. Focusing on diversity, interactivity, video and animated content, and eCommerce performance will help brands get the most out of their advertising going into 2023 and how Fanatic can help you.
Our Paid Social and Digital Marketing experts will consider your audience, competitors and existing online presence and branding to create a Paid Social campaign that is sure to get impressive results. Get in touch today and find out how we can help you on your Paid Social journey.
Last month the team worked on several exciting projects making updates to the product pages for Effect Doctors, finalising a project they have been working on with DAZN, and creating a new and improved website for them. Stathis and Ian also visited the Somerset and London venues for Artfarm, taking time to walk around their lovely Piet Oudolf-designed garden and re-visit Mount St Resturant.
After a productive brand presentation for a new seafood restaurant, we enjoyed a lovely cocktail with our clients from Aqua Shard, Micah and Marie. We also welcomed Mary to our Digital Marketing team this month! You can see how she’s getting on further down!
This month one of our largest website projects has gone live. The website is for DAZN, a market-leading sports broadcaster in Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Japan and Taiwan but is known largely for its boxing proposition in the UK.
We built the new corporate site for the DAZN, which communicates how they have brought a new way of watching live sports such as boxing, formula one and football to viewers.
It was important that this website communicates the multi-threaded nature of today’s viewers, who want to simultaneously consume sports across multiple devices. They view and interact with the platform through multi-game/sports views or in-game bets. This is a fast-moving space, and the corporate site is there to communicate how DAZN are changing the face of sports streaming.
It was great to work closely with the in-house brand team, as well as the DAZN management, to bring together a website design that not only hits the right message but in the right tone and with the right energy for this fast-paced brand.
Naturally, the site uses a lot of videos and features a lot of movement as the visitor scrolls down the page. The site has also been challenging for our developers, who love something new to challenge them to bring a more conceptual design to all browsers and devices.
In January, we made some improvements to the product pages on a long-standing client’s website, Effectdoctors.com. The product pages were several years old and had been updated many times as A|B tests and UX updates mean a busy eCommerce site is consistently being evolved. There’s only so far a page that can be modified both in terms of keeping a clean UX and for the cleanliness of code behind the scenes, so a fresh build is required occasionally. After using the previous product pages for a few years, they were overwhelmed with many added features and content over time, affecting their user experience.
We reevaluated which features were essential and created a plan to simplify the content of these products while maintaining depth and detailed descriptions of each product. These changes and adaptations to the product pages resulted in a much simpler-to-use WooCommerce management experience and a much clearer User Experience for their customers.
We have been steadily expanding our work with Artfarm’s Somerset venues over the last year or so. Last month, during a visit to the venues, we took time to slow down and walk around their on-site, including the pleasure of taking in the artwork in the Hauser and Wirth gallery, a walk in their Piet Oudolf-designed garden featuring artworks such as the sculpture by Smiljan Radić, that was previously located at the Serpentine in Hyde Park.
We then had our regular meeting with our Artfarm clients over lunch in their Roth Bar and Grill, looking at design work for various projects before visiting their farm shop, for which we run eCommerce marketing campaigns.
We were also able to indulge in a fondue hat! YUM!
It was an excellent way for us here at Fanatic to become more immersed in how all the venues fit together within the Artfarm location, an essential element when creating content and expressing the brand through our multiple marketing campaigns.
We also re-visited the Mount St. restaurant in Mayfair, which we visited in the summer of 2022 as a building site. The finished Audley Pub, Mount St. Restaurant and connected private dining rooms are one of the finest examples of exquisite dining venues we have seen in over 20 years worth promoting F&B venues, with the Art engrained in the very fabric of everything we see and touch!
We currently run and manage multiple digital channels to drive bookings for the venue and love working on projects for Mount St. restaurant.
This month, there have been several updates from the world of Digital Marketing. Microsoft Bing launches ChatGPT, the EU rules that Meta’s ad practices are illegal, Google agrees to pay up in a 12-year-long lawsuit, and Apple ads network could bring new opportunities to marketers worldwide. Meanwhile, Google optimise is set to be removed this year, and Twitter is rolling out keyword ads to advertisers. More details can be found in this article.
Microsoft Bing with ChatGPT reportedly launching in March 2023
Bing has announced the integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Chatbot technology, enabling the site to answer search queries with complete sentences rather than just suggesting links and generic search results. Expected to launch towards the end of March 2023, it is intended to give Microsoft that significant edge over Google. It is creating a new level of rivalry between the two search platforms.
Microsoft already has a partnership with OpenAI. Microsoft already utilises Open AIs technology through OpenAI’s cloud services in tools that let users create text, code and imagery using instructions and learning models using internet data.
Microsoft has reportedly drawn a lot of attention to the platform within the tech community, specifically, after they announced that Microsoft was in talks to make a second, tens of billion-dollar investment in the AI business back in October 2022. Although it needs to be clarified whether the current version of GPT will power the service, Microsoft continues to collaborate with OpenAI on ways to integrate GPT into Bing with hopes of improving its user experience.
After Microsoft announced that it supports Open AI’s ChatGPT in BIng and edge browsers, Google retaliated by revealing its language model called “Brad”. However, it didn’t quite go to plan for Google as the AI chatbot gave incorrect answers during live demonstrations. The Bing ChatGPT is not available for everyone yet, and users must join a waiting list to join to use the tool.
You can try it out using the link here: https://www.bing.com/new
After seeing a 10x increase in Microsoft app downloads (according to data.ai.), could this be the beginning of the end for Google’s dominance over the search engine landscape and the start of Microsoft’s takeover?
The European Union ruling could change the faces of Facebook and Instagram’s ad business. After the EU regulators found that Meta had illegally forced users to accept personalised ads, Meta was fined 390 Million Euros.
Meta was fined for using language within their terms of service that implied that users must allow their data to be used for the personalisation of ads or stop using the platforms altogether; users were left with no choice but to accept the terms to continue using the service. Meta has been given three months to outline how it will comply with the ruling. This could result in Meta allowing users to choose whether they want their data to be used for targeted ads; this puts Meta’s ad revenue at risk, putting about 5-7% of it at stake.
People advertising within the EU could be affected. Still, the changes Meta may have to make will potentially impact users in the United States as well, as many companies apply E.U. rules globally because it limits them from being affected within Europe.
Consumers that say Google shared their queries with third parties without permission have finally ended a 12-year-long class action lawsuit. The lawsuit alleged that Google went against the Stored Communications Act, which governs access to records held by internet services in California.
The Customers affected will receive a $23 million payout, which is still under court consideration. Google must also provide added disclosures to consumers about sharing search terms. Privacy has become critical when running a website/ online business. With companies unsure how this will affect the future of advertising, privacy issues are still a hot topic.
You can read the settlement details here to learn more about the case.
Apple is again making waves, but this time it is its ad network getting attention. Apple is now placing greater emphasis on prioritising its services category over its consumer products, focusing on aspects such as search ads and App Store.
Google and other major brands at the top of the search market, such as Amazon, are usually the first places people go; however, these brands have been under severe scrutiny lately from the government and consumers. Google has been dealing with antitrust battles in Europe and the U.S. and the hefty fines accompanying the rulings. Amazon has also suffered lousy press recently with a $1 billion antitrust case in the UK and false advertising surrounding Prime Day.
With both its main competitors under scrutiny, Apple has the opportunity to work its way up the search market. Andrew Lipsman from Insider Intelligence stated, “I can easily imagine a scenario in which Apple grabs 10% of Google’s nearly $150 billion search ad business, which would translate to a $15 billion opportunity”.
Despite this, Apple filed a new class action lawsuit against itself back in November 2022, claiming that it continued to track users even after disabling tracking in device settings. This
led to the case stating that Apple’s promises about their privacy settings were untrustworthy.
Apple has now stated that its goal is to triple its advertising revenue and has already made some significant steps in the right direction, paving its way with diversified revenue streams. However, Apple’s privacy settings and measurement efforts will continue to affect consumers and marketers.
From the 30th of September, 2023, Google Optimize and Optimize 360 won’t be available to run user experiments and personalisations; however, the ones users have set up already will continue to run until that date. These changes may affect marketers’ ability to conduct A/B testing and optimise their website or app’s user experience.
Google has decided to do this to better serve users by investing in solutions that give customers access to more robust and trustworthy A/B testing capabilities. They made a statement that they want to focus on ways that can improve users’ experience and through improving tools through Google Analytics 4. At the moment, it’s unclear whether this means that Google Optimize’s A/B testing facilities will eventually be available in GA4.
In news from the world of social media marketing, Twitter has introduced a new ad unit called “Search Keywords Ads”, where advertisers can promote sponsored tweets in search results. Giving them the ability to reach further audiences, they can now pay for their tweets to be shown further up the search results page for specific keywords.
This update is similar to the promoted tweets that appear in users’ timelines but allows them to appear in search results. The new update is there to drive conversions to advertisers’ websites, and if users use Twitter Pixel or Conversion API on their websites, it can also maximise their relevance.
Reports have shown that ad spending on Twitter dropped by 71% in December 2022, mainly due to the top advertiser’s reduced spending on social media after Elon Musk took over. The company believes that this update will reinvigorate its ad revenue stream.
You need to load content from reCAPTCHA to submit the form. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.
More Information