Whether you opt for bubble graphs, bar charts, heat maps or treemaps, you can rest assured in the knowledge that scientific research is on your side. Of course, the text has its inescapable time and place, but when we consider that as much as 90% of information transferred to the human brain is visual, with images being processed 60,000 times faster than text, good data visualisation is a must for businesses wanting to deliver an easily digestible story to their audience.

A content strategist’s hunt for new and innovative ways to present data in visually appealing ways is never-ending. With that being said, let’s take a look at some effective data visualisation techniques that are worth bearing in mind during your next big campaign.

1. Inspiration: You Are Not Alone

So, some good news… sourcing data and creating an effective piece of data visualisation (data vis) to go with it doesn’t necessarily require suffering in silence. The website informationisbeautiful.net is one fantastic Pinterest-esque tool at your fingertips, filled with creative data vis inspiration and guidance.

2. Data Visualisation Tools

In a similar vein, be sure to explore the available online tools which are there to help you visualise your data in minutes. Such examples include:

DataWrapper

· Allows you to copy and paste from Google Sheets, Excel, CSV files.

· Allows you to link to URLs to create customisable charts.

· Allows you to preview the chart before you go ahead and publish it.

RawGraphs

· Allows you to copy and paste the relevant data directly from your spreadsheet.

· Allows you to choose a data vis type, with adjustable metrics.

Tableau

· Includes a blog full of useful tips well worth checking out.

3. Don’t Overcomplicate Things

Good data vis should simplify a message, making things easier to understand. Despite this, it’s incredibly common for people to associate increasingly complex graphs with higher quality. After wading through numerous eyesores on the ‘ugly charts’ section of the highly recommended website flowingdata.com I stumbled across this example highlighting why, in fact, the reality is often the exact opposite.

1. Mobile Friendly

Designing for mobile phones is a great opportunity to present data in new interesting ways.

You could:

· Stack your data vertically rather than horizontally and introduce a zoomable visual.

· Scale down the graphic.

· Create an entirely new graphic, focusing only on the critical insights (with the desktop version providing more context).

2. Choose Wisely

The type of data vis you choose is certainly no stab in the dark. Of course, a specific data vis will suit certain data, but when it comes to a (not-quite) one-size-fits-all choice, you can often not go too far wrong using maps, not least due to their ability to open up outreach targets. Furthermore, including an index may well be of use when dealing with lots of different metrics in your data, as is the case for interactivity, but remember to keep in mind the old adage of ‘less is more.’

By carefully taking this all into account, that next big campaign should be rooted in success.

As always from the team at Byter, good luck!

www.byter.com

Simply put, the potential revenue of an online company takes a massive hit if its website isn’t getting anywhere near enough traffic. With this in mind, let’s take a look at what you need to keep an eye on in order to help ensure that your business doesn’t succumb to such a fate.

Target audience

Question Time

The reasons your website isn’t getting any (increased) traffic can vary, but they’ll never be known unless you have a clear understanding of who to target. As such, ask yourself the following questions: Who are they? What are their needs? What are their concerns?

Your target audience not knowing that your website can provide them with solutions or, worse still, not even being able to find you in the first place, isn’t exactly a great way to increase your traffic. As such, we come to a fourth question that needs asking: in what ways can your business provide solutions?

Research

It all begins with research. Be sure to delve into your existing customer database to lead capture forms as well as analytics data to help create your ideal buyer persona and gain a fuller understanding of their buyer’s journey. Having done this, your website’s content can be suitably adapted.

Awareness

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing tactics can be used to ensure that your target audience is actually aware of your business and can associate you with solutions, paving the way for them to become customers.

To create such traffic during this awareness stage, it’s all about using the correct channels to provide relevant information for your target audience. Ideas include:

· Creating relevant content

· Improving SEO leveraging social media platforms

· Creating a Google Ads campaign

This should help in getting them on to your website, but they need to be engaged enough to stick around. At this stage of the buyer’s journey, new channels could be used. Ideas include:

· Chatbots

· A call to action

· Forms

CRM integration is a great way in which you can turn a lead into a customer at this stage. If this isn’t an available option for you, why not try emails and workflows? The resulting surveys and feedback on the likes of Google My Business or general social account promotion could snowball into attracting new visitors.

Keywords

With keywords playing a vital role in your site’s ability to rank well, you need to ask yourself what keywords you are trying to rank for through your current content and whether they are in line with what your target audience are searching for.

Keywords involve somewhat of a balancing act. Ones that are too popular are generally harder to rank for, while the opposite can drive no traffic at all. As such, it’s worthwhile to use a keyword tool, which provides an insight into the search volume and ranking difficulty of each keyword, as well as highlighting similar popular keywords related to your search term.

Be sure to specify search terms though long-tail keywords. For example, ‘branding agency notting hill’, as opposed to simply “branding agency.” Seed keywords with minimal competition as well as long-tail high-volume keywords are the way to drive an even higher amount of traffic.

Technical on-page optimisation

On-page SEO consists on technical elements, which should reflect the chosen keywords for each page. These technical elements include:

· Page titles

· Meta descriptions

· Alt tags

· URIs

· On-page content of a page

With on-page SEO being vital in terms of driving traffic to your website, it’s essential that you check that all of these technical elements are correct for your key pages.

Make sure not just to pull from the page content, and instead use a range of your offered services that a user may search for along with these terms. This will help Google to understand what your page is about, thereby improving your rankings over time, increase your traffic and ultimately allow your audience to associate your website with providing solutions to their problems.

Content

Ensure that the content on each page of your website is relevant to the user intent by linking your keywords, technical on-page optimisation and content all together. Your landing page is particularly important, as irrelevant content here will likely lead to nothing but your potential customers exiting the site, creating a high bounce rate.

Relevant Content Tips:

Keep content detailed

Use H1s and H2s to clearly organise content

Ask yourself, where in the buyer’s journey are your target audience?

Weave your keyword into your content

Don’t duplicate content from other pages

Blogs

Seldom does a great blog not involve a content strategy. By showing your expertise in the products and services you provide, an informative, authoritative and trustworthy image can be created. A solid and relevant content strategy will ensure you target a specific stage in your buyer’s journey.

As stated earlier, the potential revenue of an online company will take a huge hit if its website isn’t getting anywhere near enough traffic. By following the above advice, the possibility of your company falling into the same category should be kept well at bay.

Good luck!

www.byter.com

When we think of the main digital marketing channels available to us, it’s PPC and SEO that crop up most often. Though their features, targets and methods differ, the goal always remains the same: making sure your online presence is as strong and visible as possible.

This begs the obvious question: which is better?

PPC

Let’s first look more closely at PPC (pay-per-click).

PPC is jam-packed with clever technology but, despite this, still remains renowned for its speed. Of course, such technology does come at a price, but if set up correctly, it more than allows you to reap the rewards.

Google Ads

Being loaded with technology and algorithms, Google Ads allow you to home in on your targets, through tactics such as remarketing. The algorithms feed on your account’s data, providing the biggest bang for your buck.

This increasingly automated platform uses a huge bank of algorithmic data in targeting the precise time and searches that it knows will convert – all backed by an experienced paid media specialist, enabling your business to instantly reach the summit of the Google SERP.

This visibility is great for:

Promoting new websites.

Advertising new ecommerce product lines.

Keeping on the front foot against your competitors.

Reporting on every single piece of data, thus increasing the effectiveness of your campaigns.

SEO

Let’s now take a closer looks SEO (search engine optimization).

Likened to that silent hard worker in the shadows, SEO is technical, complex and analytical. With Google not revealing all the elements that make up their search algorithms, hours can go by researching, experimenting and implementing changes across a wide range of on-page tactics and off the site link. As a result, SEOs much research, plan and execute to ensure you get as high up the rankings as possible, although without the aforesaid speed advantages of PPC.

Nevertheless, if a strong strategy is applied, the potential long-term rewards are huge. Such a strategy involves optimising your content for targeted, valuable keywords, enabling search engines to crawl and index your site more easily. This leads to organic search results, hopefully near the top of page one, with your SERP snippet being engaging enough to entice users into clicking onto your website.

With the buyer’s journey acting as a guide, your site’s content can be crafted in a way that effectively answers your potential customers’ queries which, when coupled with a fantastic user experience, builds trust and ultimately action in the form of sales.

SEO and PPC: Head-to-Head

Put simply, when deciding on which route you want to take, think in terms of goals and objectives. Let’s see what a new business’ digital marketing journey might look like, building from the ground up.

4. Business building an audience at the top of the marketing funnel.

☝

3. Message of brand now being spread by returning customers

☝

2. SEO elements now used to capitalise on new traffic

Converting traffic into returning customers

☝

1. PPC tactics to ensure online visibility

E.g. wide-reaching campaign with broad targeting.

Remember, it’s choosing how and when you use each channel that matters. Although PPC might be faster and more measurable in terms of garnering traffic, once the money is no longer put into PPC, the ads stop and the traffic heads out the door along with them.

Alternatively, SEO can offer greater levels of (albeit longer-term) consistency for a less direct cost. Keep in mind SEO can effectively be done manually, through the likes of amending product descriptions on your site. Although the site will still earn traffic without this, it certainly doesn’t hurt to keep the momentum going.

Better Together?

With Google suggesting online consumer intent dependent touchpoints range from anywhere between 20-500, it seems unwise for a business to rely on one single channel for acquiring traffic. As expressed in the above diagram, the multi-channel approach helps to ensure that you don’t miss out on visibility across the entire buyer’s journey.

In summary, there’s no hard-and-fast rule about which one of PPC and SEO is better. Each has its own advantages at particular times, with different businesses being able to reap the rewards of each in different ways. More often than not though, a carefully applied strategy will contain a mixture of the two.

As always, good luck.

Byter Team.

Info@byter.com

0203 978 8820

www.byter.com

Do you want to build your brand name, grow an engaged online community and ultimately increase sales? If the answer to all these questions is a resounding ‘yes’, then ignore social media at your peril.

This article will help you to establish the presence of your business and voice on social media, as well as provide three great ways to increase traffic to you once you’re up and running.

But before we dive right into the land of likes and even more likes, let’s take a moment to fully consider what your brand message is and the various available platforms you’re consistently going to use to get it out.

Platforms and a Plan

All social media platforms have their own different strengths and weaknesses and it’s important that you consider which ones will be more beneficial to your specific business. For example, Pinterest is a great creative, photo-sharing platform far more suited to industries such as interior design than the likes of tech.

In terms of sheer numbers, Facebook rules the roost (2.38 billion users). Also, on the podium are Instagram and Twitter, boasting their own staggering userbases (1 billion and 330 million respectively). Honourable mentions that are definitely at least worth considering are Snapchat, Tumblr, Reddit and the aforementioned Pinterest. All of these platforms provide businesses with the chance to immediately reach a far and wide audience.

To augment your social traffic, it’s crucial that as a business you have analysed the benefits each platform could offer, the audience they will reach and the brand message they will send out. As might be expected, the demographics of each platform’s userbase do differ and a bit of research can go a long way in ensuring that your products and services are reaching the appropriate audience.

What’s your Goal?

When researching each available platform, it is vital to decide what exactly you want to achieve with social media. Perhaps you have a number of followers you would like to reach in a certain period of time. Perhaps it’s simply a key message you want resonated on the platform. Without a carefully considered set of specific goals laid out, it will be difficult for the correct processes to be put in place to maximise potential traffic to your pages. Such a plan will emphasise the point alluded to earlier that not all social networks are the same and that a one-size-fits-all approach is not a recipe for guaranteed success.

Ok, so what are the three ways you can increase your social media traffic?

1) Visual Content

For businesses such as yours, it’s essential that the content you post is eye-catching. With social media users often following hundreds if not thousands of different accounts, it’s important to remember that their attention spans are frequently low and competition for their attention is high.

Making your content highly visual is a great way to grab a user’s attention. Instagram is a fantastic platform to explore the use of visual content, allowing you to create an overall theme that, in time, can become instantly recognisable each time you post. Sadly, when it comes to great visual content, there are no shortcuts.

Think:

· High levels of professional photography

· Vibrant, striking colour schemes

· Visuals that tell stories and show your business in a new light

· And, above all, a clear message

2) Mobile-Friendly Content

With the vast majority of people using social media on their mobile phones, it’s essential that your content is created in a mobile-friendly manner that will be easy to navigate. Ignoring this point is a sure-fire way to activate that inescapable issue of your audience’s diminishing attention spans. Including key information about your company within its ‘bio’ section is an often-ignored point to keep in mind. Remember to include:

· A link to your website

· Your contact information

· A concise summary of your business

Try to keep things clear and instantly understood.

3) Reply Quickly

With social media has become a way for customers to interact with companies, whether that be reviewing products and services or dealing with any questions or complaints, one of the most effective ways a company can gain popularity is to communicate with their audience as often and as quickly as possible. When we consider that one in three people go to competitors after having been ignored on social platforms, we see that necessity in replying to tweets, private messages or comments. Furthermore, it’s worth considering installing the customer chatbot feature offered on Facebook, creating a live conversation with any potential buyers.

Stay on Track

The best way to see if what you’re doing is working is to keep track of your traffic at regular tri-monthly intervals, while always keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing to ensure you stay ahead of the game.

Again, when it comes to increasing your social media traffic, there really are no shortcuts. Creating the appropriate content and getting your brand’s message across takes time. State your specific goals before you dive and always keep in mind the importance of building relationships with your customers and potential business partners.

Keep all this in mind and you’re well on your way to increasing your social media traffic and gaining more customers as a result.

Good luck!

Byter Team.

Let’s start with the HubSpot provided definition…

“The buyer’s journey is the process buyers go through to become aware of, consider and evaluate, and decide to purchase a new product or service.”

Taking this definition in account, a business is required to ask itself a series of questions:

· How do people research?

· What symptoms and problems do they face in doing so?

· How do they move between the stages of the journey?

And, in the spirit of asking questions, how about we pose another: what are these stages?

Stage 1: Awareness Stage

Here, the buyer shows symptoms of having, and realises they in fact have, a problem. At this stage, their research is designed to help them understand the problem better, allowing it to be defined, rather than looking for solutions.

Stage 2: Consideration Stage

Here, the buyer has got to grips with their problem and is researching different ways to solve it.

Stage 3: Decision Stage

Here, the buyer knows how to solve a problem and researches

the various products or services enabling them to do just that. A ‘pros vs cons’ product comparison will be made, ultimately allowing them to make a purchase.

Providing Value to Customers

Traditional outbound marketing carries with it the inbuilt flaw of being essentially unhelpful to the consumer. Shouting from the rooftops about what they ‘need’ differs greatly from the inbound marketing route which seeks to provide value by educating potential customers. By providing informative content, we see the intrinsic link to the buyer’s journey, as it gives the customer the chance to understand their problem and their options for solving it.

Content: Quality and Timing

It’s no secret that your ideal customer wants the right content at the right time. As such, businesses must try and create relevant, aligned content that is helpful to their potential audience at each stage of the buyer’s journey, ideally in their preferred format. When we take this into account, the chances of them migrating to your website is increased, allowing the opportunity to nurture the lead with more great content, maximising the likelihood of them becoming a customer.

The Proof is in the Pudding Statistics

Let’s now turn our attention to some statistics which highlight the importance of the buyer’s journey…

· 71% of B2B researchers begin with a generic search, as opposed to looking for a specific brand.

· According to forrester.com 80% of the buying process with take place without direct human interaction by the year 2020. The future is now!

· More than 16 minutes is spent comparing before making a decision-stage purchase for 65% of buyers.

· Choosing vendors delivering content appropriate for each stage of the sales process was the case for 61% of respondents to a DemandGen report.

· 52% of respondents looked at least 8 pieces of content from the winning vendor.

· The creation of a cohesive buyer’s journey is critical according to 86% of senior-level marketeers.

Leads nurtured with targeted content offer increased sales opportunities of more than 20%.

Keyword Research

Of course, what use is your website if potential customers can’t even find it? As such, your content must appear in search engine results for the relevant keywords. This is where keyword research and keyword mapping come into play. By labelling keywords through keyword research to the stages of the buyer’s journey, content can be created that ticks both the search engine and customers’ metaphorical boxes.

It’s not uncommon for businesses to hire external marketing agency consultants to help intelligently fit together the various pieces of the strategic puzzle: keyword research, keyword mapping, content design, content creation and content promotion. Whether it’s a case of internal or external resources being used, the rewards can be huge if done well.

Appropriate Content

When it comes to the actual content being produced, we must ask three important questions:

1) What should it look like?

2) What format should it take?

3) How exactly should it align to the Awareness, Consideration and Decision buyer’s journey stages?

The first two questions are heavily dependent on your buyer personas, in essence the semi-fictional projections of your ideal customers.

It’s essential to develop buyer personas otherwise you won’t be able to create targeted content in an appropriate format, whether that be charts or blog posts to give a couple of examples. Without this, it will be extremely difficult to map accurate buyer’s journey for your audience. With this, and you’re on your way to strategically creating relevant and useful content

Buyer’s Journey Example

The above table shows how the buyer’s journey might look for the cooking-specific imprint of a publishing house. The logical process ensures that it’s not overly difficult to plant content to address the problems of your audience as they move through the three stages.

It’s frequently the case that certain kinds of search terms and phrases appear at the different stages, which moves hurdles out the way during planning and ultimately leads to more helpful and engaging content being created.

Though not a definitive list, here are a number of relevant terms in each stage of the buyer’s journey:

Awareness Stage – troubleshoot, how to, resolve, risks, upgrade, improve, optimise.

Consideration Stage – solution, provider, service, supplier, tool, device, software.

Decision Stage – compare, versus/vs, comparison, pros and cons, review, test.

Remember that evaluating search terms and their motivations can be helpful when planning content throughout the buyer’s journey but try to think of them as guidelines rather than concrete rules.

Which Content Types Fit the Bill?

Try to remember that these are merely suggestions which should be changed depending on each buyer persona as well as the specific product or service you sell. It’s all about creating content that is as helpful as possible for your personas at each stage. It’s by providing real value to your buyer personas that traffic is brought to your website; the fruits of which are waiting to be enjoyed in the form of the all-important sales!

Good luck!

Byter Team

0203 978 8820

www.byter.com